1. Two medical certificates give two different descriptions of the wound.
2. The description of the wound given in both medical certificates differs from the description of it by Count Nigra, who, at any rate, had no motive for deceiving anyone.
3. While the descriptions of the wound are incompatible with the theory of suicide, correspondence in which the intention to commit suicide is clearly set forth has been published; but
4. The only one of those letters of the authenticity of which there is any evidence, may have been written with deliberate intent to deceive.
5. There is no agreement among those who quote the letters as to their exact text. The versions of the letters given in these pages are by no means the only versions which have been current. There are other longer versions, and versions which differ from those here preferred in various particulars. Even, therefore, if we could be sure that we had to do with genuine documents, the question would still remain whether the documents had not been doctored.
So we must leave the mystery, offering our own reconstruction of the drama for what it may be worth, but, at the same time, declining to accept without reserve the story currently told that the full and final solution of the secret is locked up, at the Hofburg, in an iron chest, which is to be opened after the lapse of fifty years. And yet even that story is not quite impossible; for there are two secrets, indicated by rumour, which may conceivably be guarded thus, with a view to disclosure at a time when the events to which they relate are remote enough to be treated as history:—
1. It was whispered, at one time, that the tragedy of Meyerling was due to the discovery that Rudolph and Mary were really brother and sister: that is to say, that Francis Joseph was really Mary’s father. The alleged iron chest might conceivably contain Francis Joseph’s acknowledgment of that relationship/
2. There is the rumour of which Countess Marie Larisch makes so much, of the plot to seize the Hungarian throne; and it is not inconceivable that the alleged iron chest may contain some secret police report bearing upon that subject.
Those are the possibilities—one can think of no others; and they are, both of them, exceedingly remote. The former of the two rumours, which is not, in any case, at all well accredited, strikes one as incompatible with the Baroness Vetsera’s alleged willingness that a liaison between her daughter and the Crown Prince should be “arranged.” Not only might the idea of such a thing have been expected to revolt her, she would also have felt that she had “claims” on the Emperor which dispensed her from the necessity of exploiting her daughter by such means. The latter rumour must be regarded as improbable on the ground that, if the alleged conspiracy had really existed, the secret would hardly have been so well kept for so long.
And yet the suggestion, though improbable, is not quite impossible. The secret police of Vienna are very suspicious and acute; and they are also as unscrupulous as they are polite. The idea that there ever was an actual plot worthy to be called a plot must indeed be discarded for the reasons already set forth; but the idea that there was loose talk and compromising correspondence of a quasi-seditious character is not so fantastic. The secret police may have opened letters, or overheard conversations, or even received information. If they had done so, they would naturally have reported their discoveries, even if these were rather intangible; and if it be true that there is, at the Hofburg, an iron chest, to be opened in the fulness of time, bearing upon the Meyerling affair, a report of the kind indicated is, after all, the thing most likely to be found in it.