CHAPTER X1
Mr. Ernest Henry Webster, described on his passport as a professional photographer, had not the good fortune to stay in the gracious quarter of Hietzing, near to the Schönbrunn Palace and the wooded hills, when he came to Vienna. Not that this troubled him: Mr. Webster was not, as he himself put it, ‘choosey.’ He considered that he was very fortunate to be given hospitality in Vienna at all, hotels costing what they do. “If it hadn’t been for Auntie, I shouldn’t have risked coming,” he said. Ernest Henry Webster was a gregarious soul: he liked talking and he talked to anybody he could find who spoke English—and a surprising number of Viennese had picked up some English during the Occupation.
“Auntie’s an old inhabitant,” said Mr. Webster. “Came to Vienna in 1905—and that’s a l
