The Cure is Murder – Chapter 2

At breakfast, the room was buzzing and patrons kept turning to stare at the empty seat at our table and then at us.
“Didn´t you go swimming with him?” Beate of the chipmunk cheeks said. 
“No.”
“But I heard him talking to you about it, even warning you.”
I thought it was funny how things get distorted. Beate must have overheard Oskar warn me and taken it to mean a warning about swimming alone. But that meant she´d been trying to listen in on our conversation, since neither of us had been talking loudly. Anyway, I felt Oskar wanted to warn me about something quite different. I knew that it wasn´t about swimming alone, although I had mentioned that a swim before breakfast was a good start to my day.
“I imagine the police will be talking to all of us,” she added and cocked an eyebrow at me.
I wondered how she was able to do that. Maybe she was due for another shot of her youth elixir.
Her friend, Ellie, nodded and said: “He didn´t talk much. We hardly knew him. I doubt if we will be able to help the police very much. But you, Sabrina…”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Well, you…you like going off by yourself. You….”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Well, you´re not really one of…”
“Us?”
Beate glanced at Ellie and said: “She means you´re like a….
“Foreigner?” I said, hoping my face couldn´t be read like an open book. I didn´t want to get personal with her this quickly, but I´d seen what had happened to other foreigners. First there were the Jews, and the Muslims, all with Austrian passports, all disowned by Austria through its new laws. And now they were ganging up on Austrians having had to leave the UK after Brexit, but instead of welcoming them home with open arms, they were now treating them as traitors. Who would be next? Was that what Oskar wanted to warn me about? Were they going after those other traitors, Austrians who emigrated? Their kids? 
“Well, you know what foreigners are like,” Ellie said.
“I was born here,” I said, hoping to shut this conversation down. The two women were coming across as people I wanted nothing to do with, but I was stuck with them for the rest of my stay.
“Of course, you´re not like that,” Beate said. “You have Austrian blood.”
“Red?” I couldn´t resist. What was Austrian blood anyway? An imperial cocktail of Czech, Hungarian, Italian, Croatian, Serb and German plasma, with a dash of Mexican perhaps? Countries that were once part of an empire or two, now trying for a young fourth one? “What about Oskar?” I said. “Did anyone know him?”
“He had a scar on his face,” Beate said.
“Meaning?” I said.
Beate looked at Ellie and then over at Reinhold, as if asking for help, her eyes saying “should I tell her?”
“It´s an old scar,” Reinhold said. “He must have got it from a duel. Probably while he was at high school.”
“He did seem upper class,” Ellie said.  “He probably went to the Theresianum,” Reinhold added. “They did fencing in those schools.”