The Keeper of Hands (11 page)

‘I could pay a fair rate.’

At this, the man’s expression immediately changed. He was full of sudden goodwill and
bonhomie
.

‘Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? Follow me. I’ve got a little rig by the side of the station.’

‘You’re going to take me?’

‘You want to go to Buchberg or not?’

‘But the station . . .’

The man waved away this suggestion. ‘Ach, there’s not another train through here for four hours.’

Thus Werthen arranged for the stationmaster – Herr Platt the man’s name was, as he discovered during the course of the uncomfortable ride – to take him to Buchberg and wait there for the return journey. The train in four hours’ time would be just right for going back to Vienna.

‘What business brings you to the Weinviertel, if you don’t mind my asking?’ Platt said as they plodded along the dirt track.

‘No, I don’t mind the question,’ said Werthen, as he sat next to the man on the board seat of the trap, pulled by one emaciated pony. ‘I’m looking for a family.’

Platt laughed at this. ‘Got plenty of those around here and that’s a fact.’

‘This particular family would have a daughter in service in Vienna and would also have an interest in universal languages.’

‘Oh, you mean Jakob Moos. Locals say he’s a nutter with that language of his. Always saying “Glidis” instead of good day. He’s a good enough man, though.’

Platt thought a moment. ‘Their daughter.’ He shook his head. ‘No good will come of that, you’ll see. Sent off to Vienna like she was. Pardon my saying so, but that city’s a sin hole. Father Bernard says so. And the girl was a handful here already, I can tell you.’

Werthen did nothing to encourage Platt’s loquaciousness.

‘There were stories about that one.’

Werthen could imagine. Any beautiful young girl such as Fräulein Mitzi would be considered,
a priori
, loose in the conservative environs of a place like this.

Finally noticing Werthen’s silence on that issue, Platt took another direction.

‘What business do you have with Jakob?’

‘It’s a private matter. Do you know where they live?’

‘Well I guess I should. I worked for Moos when I first came to this district from the Waldviertel. Looking for opportunities. Always looking to better myself. Moos, he’s got a few hectares and needed help at harvest time. I lived in one of their outbuildings, but took my meals with the family. Four daughters. Each prettier than the other.’

He flicked the reins at the pony, which had slowed to chew milkweed at the side of the narrow rutted track.

‘They would talk with one another that funny way. At first I just thought it was Weinviertel dialect, me coming from the Waldviertel. But nobody else around here talks like that. Still Jakob Moos is a hard worker, an honest man, always pays on time and goes to mass like clockwork – though, once in a while, he does go on about Marx and workers’ rights. I got the feeling, though, that Frau Moos didn’t really approve of all that language or political stuff. She comes from a real religious family. Brother’s a priest and all. Strange what love makes us do.’

Werthen looked sideways at Platt. He hadn’t taken him for a philosopher.

They travelled the rest of the way to Buchberg in silence. Moos had his small farm on the north side of the village. The house was low and whitewashed with a slate roof. Early geraniums in pots stood in front of recessed windows, making the house seem cheerier than it was. A pump stood outside the front door, a sheaf of wheat hung over the door for good luck. They would need it, Werthen thought, as he rapped at the door. Platt remained in the rig.

A short round woman answered the door. She wore an apron and was using it to brush at a streak of flour on her cheek. She had an expectant look on her face, but when she saw Werthen this turned to suspicion.

‘Oh, I thought you were the mailman.’

‘Gentleman from Vienna to see you, ma’am,’ Platt called out from his rig.

‘Vienna.’ The woman said it like an incantation. ‘Thank you, Herr Platt. Won’t you come in, have a cup of tea?’ This was directed to Platt, not Werthen.

‘I’ll just wait here, Frau Moos. Thank you anyway.’

Werthen had paid the man extra to decline any such invitations.

‘Could I have a moment of your time, Frau Moos?’ Werthen finally said.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Where are my manners? Come in, please. From Vienna. What a long way.’

She spoke quickly, obviously nervous.

The door opened directly into the kitchen. Three young girls sat at a large table in the center of the room. They were dressed in simple home-made clothing: colorful vests over white blouses and pleated skirts that matched the vests. Each girl wore a scarf over their long tresses, as did their mother. The girls were busy sewing; a lump of gray dough lay on the other end of the table.

‘I am sorry to interrupt your work, Frau Moos, but I need to speak with you and your husband.’

‘Jakob? He’s out back. Shall I get him then?’

‘Yes, please.’ He noted that she did not ask him his business. It was as if she were afraid to know.

The girls whispered among one another while their mother was gone. The middle one, perhaps twelve or thirteen, with rosy cheeks had a close resemblance to Mitzi. She looked up shyly at Werthen and then quickly back down at her sewing, giggling as she did so.

Frau Moos came back in, leading her husband, a large man dressed in a soiled white shirt and black trousers held up by black braces. He took off his hat as he entered the room.

‘What’s all this, then?’ he said. ‘A visitor from Vienna. Whatever for?’

‘My name is Werthen. Advokat Karl Werthen,’ he said, handing them a card he took from his coat pocket.

Moos examined the card closely. ‘Says here wills and trusts, criminal law and private inquiries. Which is it today?’

‘Could we speak privately?’

Frau Moos said quickly, ‘Girls. Outside. Get some fresh air and sun.’

The girls looked up in surprise, hesitating.

‘Now, girls,’ she clapped her hands.

After they shuffled out of the door, Moos offered Werthen a chair at the table.

‘Now, what business do we have with you?’ Moos asked.

Werthen felt his throat contract as he pulled out the photo of Mitzi he had got from Frau Mutzenbacher: the smiling young woman in the Wurstelprater hugging her stuffed bunny. He placed the picture on the table in front of the parents.

‘Is this your daughter?’

Moos glanced at it and put a thick hand over it, shoving it back to Werthen.

‘No. Never seen that face before. All made up. That’s not our Waltraude.’

‘Why do you ask, Advokat?’ Frau Moos inquired, her voice trembling.

There was no kind way to say what had to be said. ‘The young woman in the picture is dead. Murdered several weeks ago. I am making inquiries in an attempt to apprehend her murderer.’

Frau Moos breathed in deeply, her hands clutched together at her chest.

‘Doesn’t concern us,’ Herr Moos said. ‘Like I say, that’s not our Waltraude. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do.’

Werthen and Frau Moos sat in silence for a moment after her husband lumbered out.

She sighed. ‘That’s our Waltraude. I knew something was wrong, we hadn’t heard from her in so long. Such a good girl she was. Always writing and letting us know about her life in Vienna.’

She reached for the photograph, picked it up, and stared at her dead child.

‘My little baby,’ she said and began weeping.

Werthen weathered it. He needed information. But it did not last long, as Frau Moos made a final determined sniff and wiped her eyes with her apron.

‘You say she was murdered. Why? Who would want to harm my Traudl?’

‘That is what I am trying to ascertain, Frau Moos.’

She sat up straight staring into his eyes. ‘How did she die?’

‘She was strangled.’

The word shocked her into silence for a moment as she considered what kind of death that meant to her child. Then, ‘At her uncle’s? Why didn’t he let us know?’

‘Her body was found in the Prater. It’s a large park in Vienna.’

She sat in silence, looking at the image in the photograph.

‘Who is her uncle, Frau Moos? I will need to speak with him.’

‘But I don’t understand. She was living with Hieronymus. Keeping house for him.’

‘Not since last fall. I would like to speak with him. Could you give me his address?’

She rose and went to an open cupboard near the front door. She kept letters in a batch on one of the shelves and brought back a bundle of correspondence bound with a pink ribbon.

She pulled one out from the stack, removed the letter from the envelope, and passed the empty envelope to Werthen.

She pointed at the return address. ‘That’s where you can find my brother.’

Werthen read the address twice to make sure he had understood correctly. ‘Your brother lives at the rectory of St Johann?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. He’s the priest there.’ The priest brother that Platt had mentioned, Werthen suddenly realized.

She gathered her thoughts, attempting to be cogent despite her grief.

‘But if she wasn’t living with Hieronymus, where was she living? Not with that writer, I hope? My poor Waltraude. Why did we ever send her to Vienna?’

‘Which writer would that be, Frau Moos?’

‘His name is here somewhere. It was all she could talk about in her letters for a time, how Uncle Hieronymus had introduced her to this famous writer and he was giving her lessons in composition.’

She riffled through the stack of letters, opening one and discarding it then moving on to the next one.

Finally, ‘Yes, here it is. Man named Schnitzler. Our Waltraude was so proud to know somebody so important. Sounds like a Jewish name, though. Have you heard of him?’

Werthen ignored the question. ‘And when was this, Frau Moos?’

She looked at the date of the letter in her hand. ‘Last summer. Her letters were full of him – Herr Schnitzler this, Herr Schnitzler that. My husband was concerned, I can tell you. But I convinced him that Hieronymus would make sure she was a good girl and come to no harm. And then, last fall there was no more mention of the man.’

At this, she began sobbing again.

In other words, Werthen thought, no more mention of Schnitzler just before running away from her uncle’s home.

Looking up through her tears, Frau Moos asked, ‘Why didn’t Hieronymus tell us?’

It was a question Werthen wanted an answer to, as well.

Sudden suspicion filled her face. ‘Why are you here at all?’ she said. ‘Why not the police? Private inquiries, the card says. So who’s paying your bills?’

He said nothing for a moment.

‘Is it this Schnitzler fellow?’

She was filled with confusion and sadness, and Werthen let her assume whatever was comforting.

‘The police have given the crime a low priority, you see,’ Werthen began.

‘So Herr Schnitzler hired you to get to the bottom of things? Perhaps he is a real gentleman then, despite the name.’

He did not disabuse her of the notion.

She looked at him with a sudden thought. ‘Several weeks ago, you said. Our daughter’s been dead for several weeks? But we must fetch her. Bury her.’

‘She was given a proper burial, I assure you.’

‘This Schnitzler again, was it?’

He responded only with a tight smile.

In the end, Frau Moos allowed Werthen to take one of the letters mentioning Mitzi’s ‘education’ at the hands of Herr Schnitzler and also retrieved from the cupboard a more recent one from the time when she would already have moved into the Bower. While at the cupboard, she placed his card next to the pile of letters. The letters he now had in hand were, like all the others, written in Volapük – which, Frau Moos went on to explain, the father, an ardent socialist, had religiously taught his children in hope of making the world a finer place.

Werthen assured the woman that he would do everything in his power to bring her daughter’s murderer to justice. He knew that once she composed herself she would have further questions about where her daughter had lived for so many months and where she was buried. These he did not want to impart to her today. Instead, he told her to feel free to write to him with any further questions; they had his business card.

Let her keep an untarnished memory of her daughter for the time being, he thought.

As he left, the three girls came back into the kitchen, gathering around their grieving mother. Outside, he saw Herr Moos stacking wood, stopping occasionally to wipe his eyes.

‘You’ve brought happy news then, haven’t you?’ Herr Platt said sarcastically as Werthen climbed on to the seat of the rig.

‘No discussion now, Herr Platt. Just take me back to the station. I have a train to catch.’

‘I said no good would come of the girl going to Vienna.’

‘Just drive, Herr Platt. Please.’

‘It appears that Herr Schnitzler has been less than forthcoming.’

They were gathered in the restaurant of Gross’s hotel for late-afternoon coffee. A generous portion of
Schwarzwalder Torte
sat in front of the criminologist.

‘He lied to me,’ Werthen said, choosing not to mince his words. ‘There could be more than one possible reason for the lie, or course, but the fact is that he knew Mitzi quite well prior to her being established at the Bower.’

‘You said he was in a close relationship with a young woman now,’ Berthe offered.

‘Yes,’ Werthen said. ‘But from what I have heard, that has never stopped Schnitzler from dalliances before. It appears the man has no conception of monogamy.’

‘I knew a fellow like that in Graz once,’ Gross said. ‘Convicted him of multiple murders.’

‘I hardly believe Schnitzler is our man.’ Werthen took a sip of his
mélange
. ‘A womanizer he may be, but a killer? Perhaps Berthe is right. Maybe he is simply in love for the first time and does not want the lady to know about his sordid past.’

‘All she needs to do is attend one of his plays,’ Gross said.

‘So what next?’ Berthe asked.

‘I visit Herr Schnitzler again and confront him with Mitzi’s letter. I will, however, make certain that Fräulein Gussman is not in attendance, so we can speak frankly. After that, I believe it is time to pay the mysterious Uncle Hieronymus a visit and find out why he did not notify Mitzi’s parents of her departure from his care.’