Murder in Vienna by E.C.R. Lorac

Set in October, E.C.R. Lorac’s 1956 novel, Murder in Vienna, is the perfect atmospheric mystery to curl up with on a wet Sunday afternoon. 

Robert Macdonald heads to Vienna for a holiday to visit his old friend Dr. Franz Natzler, who he hasn’t seen in ten years. While he appreciates the relaxing atmosphere of flying on a Viscount airliner over land travel, he takes note of his fellow passengers. On a stopover in Zurich he becomes acquainted with a young woman, Elizabeth Le Vendre, who is to be the new secretary to retired diplomat Sir Walter Vanbrugh. Upon arrival the two part ways, Elizabeth to her new job and Macdonald to his holiday.

While Macdonald is familiar with Vienna, he hasn’t been back in twenty-five years, and Vienna has been altered by its recent history.* On the second day of his holiday, Macdonald plays the tourist, becoming reacquainted with the city.

In the afternoon Macdonald strolled over to Schönbrunn Palace, to renew his acquaintance with the gardens and fountains: it was another lovely sunny day and the warm coloured stones of the palace looked almost golden in the October sunlight. (“Maria Theresa yellow,” the Austrians called that subtle gold of the masonry.)

It was while he was standing by the garden front of the palace, looking up at the arches and colonnade of the Gloriette on the rising ground to the south that he saw Elizabeth Le Vendre again. She also was looking at the Gloriette, and as she turned and saw Macdonald her quick smile flashed out. (42)

The exchanges between Macdonald and Elizabeth are sweet and he treats her kindly. I appreciated the respect he shows her, despite her being no more than twenty-one and looking “young as a schoolgirl” (42).  Macdonald recognises that because of the position she has been hired for and being fluent in German, she must have studied Modern Languages at Oxford and had secretarial training. 

After enjoying a coffee on the sunny terrace against the old stables, Macdonald and Dr. Natzler drop Elizabeth off at the Vanbrugh mansion. The next time we meet her is in a thunderstorm in heavy rain near an old gun-site overlooking Vienna. 

It was there that they found Elizabeth Le Vendre: she was lying at the foot of the steps, as though she had fallen down them. In the beam of the torch, her fair hair shone a little, as the runnels of rain-water shone: she lay face down in a pool of water and her light woollen coat lay in sodden folds on the saturated ground. (62)

It is quickly determined that she isn’t dead, only unconscious, but she has a bump on her head and having spent up to two hours in the pouring rain, she is “deadly cold” (63).

Macdonald looks at the scene through the eyes of a detective, and immediately entertains the possibility that the seemingly accidental fall down stairs in a thunderstorm was actually an attempted murder. But who would want to kill Elizabeth Le Vendre, a woman who only just arrived in Vienna a couple of days ago?

And so, Macdonald dismisses the idea. He is on holiday, after all. That is until Walsingham, a writer who has been staying with the Vanbrugh’s, is found lying dead in the middle of a road with tire tracks over him. As luck, or lack of, would have it, it’s Sir Walter Vanbrugh’s nephew, Anthony, who discovers the body after nearly running over it in the storm.

Before long, a call is put through to London, the appropriate strings are pulled, and Macdonald is saying so long to his holiday. 

This book has so many things going on that at times I found it difficult to remember who is who, and who was supposed to be where and at what time. However, I suspect this may have been a fault of my own, as I did get distracted a few times while I was reading this book. Even so, it would only take me a moment to get my bearings and be on my way again. The timeline became perfectly clear at the end, and I was applauding E.C.R. Lorac’s ability to keep so many plates spinning at once without dropping a single one.

Readers who have come across Macdonald before in E.C.R. Lorac’s forty-five other novels featuring Superintendent Robert Macdonald of the C.I.D. will get a kick out of Elizabeth telling him, “You ought to be a detective!” (42). If you fall under the category of readers who have not read any of the other Macdonald novels, not to worry, I fall into this group and I can assure you that Murder in Vienna reads like a standalone. 

With a climax set to the backdrop of moonrise over the Gloriette (LINK), from start to finish, this book uses the history, landscape, and atmosphere of Vienna to great effect. I think this book would be best enjoyed with at least rudimentary knowledge of Vienna, its rough geography, and a few points of interest. However, a general familiarity with London would do. On occasion one of the characters will compare some aspect of the Viennese setting to London, providing the reader with a frame of reference for what they are meant to be seeing.

Regarding the area near the old gun-site where Elizabeth is found, Dr. Natzler’s son observes:

‘I often thought of this place when I used to go for a walk on Hampstead Heath when we were in London during the war. The distances in London are much bigger, of course, but Hampstead Heath gives a view over London as these hills do over Vienna.’ (61-62)

And on another occasion Macdonald compares the Tiergarten (zoo) in the gardens of the Schönbrunn Palace to Regent’s Park, London.

As he stood in the darkness Macdonald could hear some of the animals calling in their cages: nocturnal animals to whom the night brought their time of greatest awareness. It was a bit like being in Regent's Park at night, where the call of lions and the howl of wolves mingled with the rumble of the London traffic. Here, as in London, there was a glow in the sky, a glow which had replaced the afterglow of the sunset. In the eastern sky, the myriad lights of Vienna were reflected up to the misty clouds, and Macdonald knew that when his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he would be able to see the open arches of the Gloriette up there on the hill, opposite the garden front of the palace. (214-15)

Lorac only used this technique of comparing Vienna to London in times when the setting was of particular import. From the places I noted, the differences between the two cities are commented on, as well as the similarities, which I think respects the individuality of both cities.

In this novel, there is a juxtaposition between the familiar and the unfamiliar. In the beginning, Macdonald watches through the plane’s window as the English coast slips away. “He had often seen all this before, but never wearied of it.” (1) From up in the air all is tranquil on that September morning. I think it was a purposeful choice that once Macdonald is out and about, exploring Vienna, it is a new month, October. The transition starts even before the plane touches down. “He had seen Vienna and the Danube long ago, from the heights of the Leopoldsberg and the Wienerwald, but there was a sense of drama in seeing it thus from the air—the river, the city, the plain.” (28) Macdonald is getting a new perspective, and that theme continues throughout this novel. 

This book marked two firsts for me. If I’ve read a book set in Vienna before now, I’ve long forgotten it. This is also my first foray into Edith Caroline Rivett’s writing. I would be keen to read more of the books she wrote under either of her pseudonyms, E.C.R. Lorac or Carol Carnac.

Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of Murder in Vienna for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

*If you have no knowledge of Vienna’s history around this time, Martin Edwards touches on it in his thoughtful introduction to the British Library Crime Classics edition. I usually read introductions after I’ve read the book for fear of plot spoilers, but Martin Edwards’ introduction only discusses the first quarter of the book. He is careful not to reveal any plot points you would not already know from reading the back cover.