Lavender & Broken Glass

In Habsburg cellars last week old skeletons rattled in three quarter time, and the legend that launched a score of novels, movies, plays and operettas tottered. If the voice from the chill Norwegian grave spoke true, then Archduke Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary, did not die at Mayerling in a suicide pact with his young and lovely Baroness Maria Vetsera.

According to romantic legend, the young and ardent Rudolf had fallen in love with the youthful Baroness, who was small, round and luscious. For a brief time they were happy. Then, rather than obey Emperor Franz Josef's stern order to separate, they died together. Such was the cinema version of Mayerling which Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux played out against a background of Strauss waltzes.

The contradictory voice from the grave was that of the Archduke Johann Nepomuck Salvator of Tuscany. When he died six months ago, his neighbors in Kristiansund knew him as Hugo Koehler, retired lithographer. But in his safe he left papers that Norwegian courts thought authentic. The papers said that Rudolf, in the lovers' hideaway at Mayerling, had accused Maria of gossiping about political intrigues. The little vixen raged back at him, bashed in his skull with a champagne bottle. Promptly Rudolf's valet, Josef Loschek, shot her dead.

Whatever the truth, that little safe in Norway promised more confusion and intrigue among the Habsburgs. Already Norwegians, descendants of the lithographer, were claiming the crown of Austria.

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