The Keeper of Hands (36 page)

‘So why don’t we?’

They began discussing ways in which they might follow the captain, discover his secrets. But it was Frau Ignatz who took it to another level.

‘We’re not trained agents. He would surely spot us. I say we break into his apartment and go through the drawers.’

Berthe was amazed and almost shocked at the suggestion. Not that she opposed the idea, but she had had no idea Frau Ignatz possessed such
sang froid
. She could be a harridan when it came to her duties as a
Portier,
but what on earth would make her come up with such an idea?

‘I read a story like that in an illustrated magazine once,’ Frau Ignatz added.

‘But do we even know where he lives?’ Frau von Suttner asked, and by doing so tacitly joined in the conspiracy.

‘Perhaps we will be lucky,’ Berthe said, getting up and going into the foyer to the telephone table. A quick perusal of the directory showed her that luck was, indeed, with them. The man’s flat was only a few streets away, in the Florianigasse.

Frau von Suttner was still unconvinced, but still asking the right questions.

‘How would we get into his apartment?’

Erika looked a bit sheepish as she said, ‘I think I might be able to help with that. Huck was only too happy to teach me some of his . . . skills.’

Huck was the nickname of the young street urchin whom Erika had wanted to adopt. He had tragically died last year in a case involving the Wittgenstein family. Breaking and entering, Berthe thought, might very well have been among the boy’s skills.

‘And I can chat up the
Portier,
’ Frau Ignatz offered. ‘Keep her busy while you women go about your business.’

Frau von Suttner suddenly clapped her hands together. ‘Then what are we waiting for?’

And now, not half an hour later, Erika was delicately applying her hatpin to the lock on Captain Adelbert Forstl’s apartment door.

Have we all gone crazy? Berthe suddenly asked herself. Too late now to stop.

He commanded himself to walk slowly, so as not to bring attention to himself as he made his way through the operations room. He had tucked the mobilization plans into his high boots, just in case.

Captain Forstl had finally complied with the orders of his masters in St Petersburg.

This should keep Schmidt off my back for a time, he thought ruefully. Now to get these papers into a safe place in his apartment.

Nothing suspicious about a man leaving the Bureau for lunch. He would hurry back to the Florianigasse, tuck the papers away in his desk, and then be back at his desk before his absence was even noticed. Tonight he would copy the papers and return the originals in the morning, before anyone noticed they were missing.

Outside, the midday sun and heat struck him, and he blinked in the glare for a time before his eyes dilated. Then he set off at a brisk pace for his apartment.

‘My God, I wish I could afford one of these frocks.’ Frau von Suttner felt the silk of one of the gowns in the dressing room off Forstl’s bedroom. Berthe was surprised; she had thought the man was a bachelor, and said as much.

This brought a low laugh from Frau von Suttner. ‘I doubt these belong to a woman.’

She lifted one dress from its hanger; it was so broad in the shoulder that it dwarfed the Baroness.

‘You mean . . .?’ Berthe felt her face going red.

‘They call it transvestism,’ Erika calmly explained. ‘Men dressing as women and vice versa.’

Berthe had, of course, read about such things, but had never been presented with their reality. Then she remembered Gross’s description of Forstl’s rumored connection to Doktor Schnitzel. It all made sense now.

‘Karl thought he might be trying to hide some such secret. Something that would compromise him.’

‘There must be something else,’ Erika said. ‘Homosexuality is a crime, of course, but we are looking for something larger.’

Frau von Suttner had moved to a small table in the corner of the dressing room. A locked box sat on top of it.

‘Can you apply your skills to this, Fräulein Metzinger?’

He began sweating into his tunic as he strode along Josefstädterstrasse. Perhaps he would have time for a quick wash and brush-up at his apartment. Quickly now, he prodded himself.

The plans hidden in his boot suddenly began to feel heavy and hot. He knew it was only his imagination, but nonetheless, he picked up pace as he neared the corner of Florianigasse.

As soon as Erika had performed another hatpin trick, Frau von Suttner slowly opened the box.

She was barely able to stifle a scream as she dropped the box and its contents on the parquet floor. It landed with a loud clatter, and several fleshy bits scattered about the floor.

For a moment the three women stood horrified.

‘My God, it’s a man’s member!’ Berthe hissed.

Erika was the first to regain her composure. ‘And two little fingers. I do believe we have found the lodestone.’

Forstl had never been so happy to reach the apartment building on the Florianigasse. He was actually beginning to feel sick. All in my head, he kept telling himself. But he knew he could try to calm himself. The only thing that would make him feel better was to put these papers in a safe place.

He gave his mail box in the foyer a quick glance and noticed that there was a note indicating a package had been left with the
Portier.
He groaned to himself; he had no time to spare. But it might be something urgent from Schmidt: they sometimes made contact in this way. Instead of going directly to his apartment on the third floor, he stopped at Frau Novak’s apartment in the mezzanine to collect the package.

He knocked at the door and could hear voices inside. When Frau Novak finally came to the door, Forstl could see the pinched face of another woman seated at the deal table in her kitchen. Some old friend he thought, come to share coffee. The woman’s eyes seemed to brighten when Frau Novak addressed him by name and handed over the package. He looked at the return address. It was not important after all. Just a hat he had ordered from a milliner in Salzburg. Not even the thought of this lovely creation, with its nest of feathers, could take his mind off the damning papers stuck in his boot.

‘Oh, but Captain Forstl, please do not run off,’ Frau Novak’s friend said as he was about to make his way up the stairs. ‘I must ask you a question. You see I have a nephew who is interested in the military as a career. What branch would you recommend? Manfred is such a good young man. How would he serve his country best?’

‘I am sure I do not know, Madam,’ he said, irritation sounding in his voice. ‘I know nothing about your nephew. It would be better for him to speak with a recruiter.’

‘But you appear such an intelligent man and so young to have gone so far in the army. Surely you can spare an old lady a dram of advice?’

‘The cavalry,’ he said, exasperated. ‘They get all the pretty women.’

Frau Novak looked shocked at the pronouncement, but her friend merely laughed. A high cackle that grated on his raw nerves.

‘And a joker to boot,’ the woman said.

‘No,’ Berthe said. ‘We cannot take this with us. We have to leave it as evidence. Let the authorities discover it here. And leave the flat just as we found it, so that Captain Forstl is none the wiser.’

Frau von Suttner nodded at the wisdom of this.

‘Quickly, though,’ Erika said. She took a handkerchief from the waist of her skirt and picked up the grotesquely gray pieces of anatomy and returned them to their wooden box. She made sure it was locked and then placed the box back on the small table, careful to set it inside the rectangle of dust that had accumulated on the surface.

They hurriedly tidied up after themselves and were at the door when they heard footsteps on the stairs outside.

‘Captain Forstl!’

He turned abruptly on the stairs just below his landing. It was the old lady from Frau Novak’s. What now?

‘Captain Forstl!’

‘Yes. What is it?’ His voice had a sharp edge.

‘Your package,’ she said, her voice echoing in the stairway. ‘You forgot your package.’

They could hear Frau Ignatz’s voice. She had said Forstl’s name twice, as an obvious warning. Now or never, Berthe thought, opening the door as silently as she could and making sure the lock was in place before the three of them slipped out into the hallway, closing the door behind them.

There was nothing for it but to brazen their way down the stairs. If Forstl came up the last steps now and saw them moving towards the upper floors, he would surely know they had been in his apartment. Descending the stairs, however, there was no way for him to know where they had come from.

And it worked, Berthe was amazed to discover, as she passed the tall, thickset officer on the stairs. The three of them looked straight ahead as they passed him and Frau Ignatz, and quickly made their way to the vestibule and out on to the bright street.

Berthe breathed in a long draught of fresh air. None of them spoke as they waited several houses away for Frau Ignatz to appear. She did so several moments later and joined them.

‘Well,’ she said as she approached her friends. ‘That was a waste of time.’

Berthe looked at her, puzzled.

‘He is most definitely not the man I saw in the stairwell at Habsburgergasse the night before the explosion.’

‘I think you will find it was far from a waste of time,’ Erika told her, taking her arm as they hurried along the street to safety.

‘Y
ou could have been killed!’

‘We did not really consider that,’ Berthe said. Werthen had gone from relief to anger as she told him her story of discovery.

‘And how are we supposed to get the authorities to search the man’s premises?’

‘You men will think of something, I am sure,’ Berthe said, her voice sounding bolder than she felt. The adrenalin was wearing off, the moment of excitement passing, and she realized that Karl was right: they all could have been killed had Forstl caught them in his apartment.

Gross had remained silent throughout Berthe’s recitation of events. Frau von Suttner and Frau Ignatz had left earlier, but Erika continued working in the study. She came in now as she heard raised voices.

‘It was my fault, Advokat Werthen,’ she said. ‘I was the one who suggested we do something concrete.’

‘Well, to be completely truthful,’ said Berthe, regaining some of her former fearless giddiness, ‘it was actually Frau Ignatz who suggested we break into the man’s flat. She’d read stories about such endeavours.’

‘Proves once again the danger of an education in the wrong hands,’ Gross muttered.

Berthe finally said. ‘I am sorry this has given you a fright, Karl. But you must stop wearing a funereal face, both of you.’

‘It’s the fruit of an illegal search,’ Gross said. ‘You broke into the man’s apartment.’

‘But you’re the only ones to know that,’ Berthe insisted, suddenly tired of having to apologize for breaking the case wide open.

Karl smiled at her, then turned to Gross.

‘She’s right, you know.’ Then swinging back to Berthe, ‘Not that I condone such an action, but we had apparently come to a standstill in the case. This puts the murders squarely on Forstl’s shoulders.’

‘But Frau Ignatz did tell us he was not the man she had seen on the stairs that evening,’ Erika reminded them.

‘And who is to say that was the man who set the lethal charge?’ Werthen replied.

Gross made a sound somewhere between clearing his throat and moaning. Was he actually growling? Berthe wondered.

‘May I point out the results of the investigative work your husband and I have done today?’ Gross said this as if speaking to a classroom of first-year students.

‘Point away,’ Berthe said.

He quickly filled her and Erika in on the conversation with Moos.

‘Then we know that Forstl was in charge of the Bower operation,’ Berthe said. ‘It all fits.’

‘And what of this other man, the nondescript one who visited the Moos farm, who would also seem to fit the descriptions given by Frau Ignatz and the good Duncan? It would make sense that he is running Forstl for St Petersburg. And protecting him, keeping him undiscovered.’

‘Then why that horrible collection in Forstl’s flat?’ Erika said.

‘Ah, I was hoping you would ask about that,’ Gross said, looking awfully pleased with himself. ‘Now, a professional – and I assume our man, shall we call him Herr X, is a professional – would never keep such a collection. That is the sort of perverse action that bespeaks a neurosis. I do see a connection with such macabre ornaments and Herr X, however. The way the man holds his fingers . . . Moos was quite insistent about that. It indicates that the injuries to his little fingers were quite savagely applied. One does not like to make surmises on such scant facts . . .’

‘Please, Doktor Gross,’ Berthe interrupted. ‘feel free to do so.’

Werthen shot her a look, but Gross was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he did not hear the sarcastic tone to her voice.

‘Well, in point of fact, our Herr X might have suffered a most grievous injury that set him on the path of becoming an
agent provocateur
.’

‘You are right, Gross,’ Werthen said. ‘Scant facts for such a surmise.’

Gross eyed Werthen with something very close to disdain. ‘An agent must be among the fittest of the fit. Able to use brains and brawn. Able to kill with gun or knife, and even with his bare hands. Herr X appears to have a disability in that regard. It’s doubtful whether an intelligence service would actively recruit such a man. Ergo, Herr X was able to overcome such a seeming disability by sheer force of will, perhaps inspired by the injuries done to him. To convince skeptical professionals that he could perform the tasks of a secret agent as well as, or better than, others.’

The three of them listened closely to Gross’s argument.

‘You have been giving this some thought,’ Werthen said.

‘You must become one with your nemesis in order to conquer him.’

‘And what if Herr X is imaginary? And Forstl is the one responsible for all of this?’ Berthe asked.