The Keeper of Hands (23 page)

He was just finishing the codicil when Fräulein Metzinger – who was also devoting that day to the firm’s legal business – tapped on his office door.

Poking her head in, she announced, ‘A visitor, Herr Advokat.’

‘I thought we had no appointments this morning.’

She raised her eyebrows as if shrugging. ‘He doesn’t have an appointment, but says it is rather urgent. You saw him once before, I believe.’

‘Very well,’ Werthen said, putting the cap on his pen and blotting what he had written thus far.

A tall young man in a black cassock with a cincture or sash around the waist stood in the doorway. His fair hair was disheveled, as if caught in a strong breeze.

Werthen stood, immediately recognizing him. ‘Father Mickelsburg! How good to see you.’

It was a priest he had met on his previous case, tracking down the missing son of Karl Wittgenstein, the wealthy industrialist.

He moved around the desk to greet the priest, shaking his hand with real feeling.

‘Herr Advokat. You are looking well.’

They stood hand in hand for a long moment.

Finally Werthen directed the priest to a chair.

‘What brings you here, Father? Can’t be a will at your age.’

‘A good lawyer would recommend such a legal instrument for any age. One never knows when God will call.’

Werthen felt himself redden. The man was right, of course, but Werthen’s playful
bonhomie
seemed to have been lost on the priest. He credited Father Mickelsburg with a sense of irony, but wondered at his literalness.

‘In fact there are legal ramifications to my visit,’ the priest said. ‘I understand that you are investigating the death of a young woman named Waltraude Moos.’

Werthen looked at him blankly for a moment, then suddenly remembered the girl’s real name.

‘Ah yes, Fräulein Mitzi.’

Father Mickelsburg squinted at him.

‘Her name at, um, her place—’

‘Her professional name,’ Father Mickelsburg said perfunctorily. ‘There is no need for such prudishness with me, Herr Advokat. I seem to recall unburdening my soul to you last time we met. I am no stranger to the ways of the flesh, despite my cassock.’

‘Why is this of interest to you, Father?’ Werthen again felt the discomfort of addressing this younger man by such a title.

‘A certain friend is connected with these investigations. We were at seminary together.’

‘The girl’s uncle,’ Werthen said flatly, immediately making the connection. ‘Father Hieronymus.’

The priest nodded.

‘The man’s a cad.’

Father Mickelsburg did not respond for a moment. Then said, ‘A strong word, Advokat.’

‘He took advantage of his own niece. He may have even killed her to cover up his misdeeds. Such a description is hardly strong enough, in my book.’

Mickelsburg slowly shook his head.

‘You are the last one, I would think, who would want to cover up such practices,’ Werthen added, feeling real emotion, and realizing he was making the very mistake he counseled his wife Berthe against: becoming too emotionally involved with an investigation. But he could still see the mother in tears at that tidy little farm in the Weinviertel, still hear the words of denial of the father, unwilling to accept the reality of his loss.

‘Will you hear me out? Or are you now judge and jury in addition to private inquiry agent?’

There was the bite of irony he knew Father Mickelsburg to be capable of, and it brought him up short.

‘Sorry, Father. I have been much involved with this case of late. But there is something you should know. I no longer have any official standing. The client dispensed with my services.’

‘I see. But you sound as if you have not personally given up on the investigation. That you have more than a merely professional interest in the matter.’

‘Yes.’ Werthen said. ‘The girl was badly used from many quarters. I admit to a certain empathy.’

‘Have you discovered the person responsible?’

‘No. And as I say, I am no longer officially on the case. After the death of the second girl, the police have finally taken over.’

‘A second girl?’

‘Sorry. You wouldn’t know. I mean a second young woman from the same bordello, the Bower.’

‘A second murder. Then it couldn’t be Hieronymus, could it?’

‘Why not? Perhaps she was blackmailing him about the affair with his niece.’

‘Then you need to hear what I have to say. Will you do that?’

‘Of course.’

‘Not just listen to my words. I mean hear me with an open mind.’

Werthen wondered what kind of hold the corrupt Hieronymus could have over Father Mickelsburg. Nothing else could explain him coming to the aid of such a complete villain.

‘Father Hieronymus is one of the most virtuous men I have ever known.’ It was as if Father Mickelsburg were waiting for Werthen to protest. Greeted by silence, the priest continued. ‘As I said, we were at seminary together, and we became close friends. Intimates, but not in the way you are thinking. He was always the one to help others who could not do their duties, to aid those struggling, be it with theological concepts or with their own self-doubts. He very much wanted to be sent to Africa once he was ordained, but the Church wanted him here. He is the sort of shining light that the hierarchy wants in a public position. But Hieronymus campaigned for several years and finally was sent to the Belgian Congo. He lasted only a matter of months. He was badly wounded in an attempt on his life. Hieronymus said things from the pulpit about the rubber-plantation owners’ inhuman practices that they did not want to hear. He tried to expose the cruelty and hardship imposed on those workers, those poor children of God. He was brought back, badly wounded, and after recuperating was given a safe church where the bishops thought he could cause no trouble.’

Werthen had difficulty accepting this biography, remembering only the shifty eyes of the priest when confronted with his misdeeds regarding his niece.

‘What happened to him, then?’ Werthen said. ‘To make him forget his vows and take advantage of a young woman, his own niece?’

‘He tells me, and I believe him, that it was the young woman who made advances. Who actually came to his room one night, crawled under the covers, and began fondling him. He awoke in an excited state, but when he realized what was happening, he stopped her, made her go back to her room, and threatened to send her home in disgrace. She disappeared soon after, leaving behind a letter threatening to expose him, to lie about their so-called affair if he so much as contacted her parents. To his lasting regret, in this event Hieronymus was weak. Faced with such threats, he acquiesced.’

Werthen felt the ground slipping from under him, a vertigo of unrealized aspects gripping him. He managed to grab hold of one bit of flotsam.

‘I don’t suppose you have that letter?’

‘Once I heard my friend’s story and that you were the one interviewing him, I knew it was God’s way of giving me a second chance for having let my other friend down. For not standing up to the world and being honest. Such a coincidence could not be other than divinely inspired.’ When he met Father Mickelsburg previously, the priest had initially been less than forthcoming about his special relationship with a young journalist who was murdered. He had come to Werthen later to supply valuable information, but had obviously felt a great sense of guilt at attempting to keep this homosexual relationship secret.

Now Father Mickelsburg reached inside his cassock. took out a letter, and placed it on the desktop in front of Werthen.

Later, after the priest had departed and he was left alone with his own thoughts, Werthen remembered something the driver he hired in the Weinviertel, the man called Pratt, had said regarding the Moos girl: that she was the wild one, the one about whom stories were told in the village. He had dismissed this at the time as a product of rural conservatism and jealousies at play. But perhaps there was something in it.

Still, what did it matter? So the girl had a lusty nature. It changed nothing. Someone had brutally killed her.

Then Werthen began to wonder about other stories he had been told about Fräulein Mitzi – by Frau Mutzenbacher and Siegfried, by Salten, Altenberg and her one-time lover, Schnitzler. Were they depicting her as she really was, or were they hiding something? Something that could lead Werthen to her killer.

‘And you believe Father Mickelsburg?’

‘Yes, I do,’ Werthen answered.

‘In spite of the fact,’ Berthe persisted, ‘that he lied to you before?’

‘It’s different this time.’

‘It often is,’ Gross added.

They had gone out for dinner at Berthe’s favorite restaurant. It was her birthday, and Werthen had been so preoccupied that he had forgotten it until Frau Blatschky reminded him that afternoon. The Frau had stayed on to serve as babysitter while he, Berthe and Gross dined at the Black Swan, an eatery resembling a French bistro, despite its name, which sounded more like a British public house than a Left Bank restaurant. The Black Swan had been a favorite of theirs for several years, but only lately had it been discovered by that class of Viennese who dined out in order that others could see them doing so.

In fact, Inspector Meindl, the diminutive chief of the Vienna Police Praesidium, had just left with his wife, who was a good seven or eight centimetres taller and fourteen or fifteen kilos heavier than him, but from a very well-placed family.

Meindl’s presence had cast a pall over their celebrations, for he had given them the feeling that he knew exactly what they were discussing. Discovering it was Berthe’s birthday, he had the waiter bring over a bottle of Schlumberger Sekt, and they had duly toasted his generosity. Meindl smiled back at them. He was the only man Werthen knew who could make a smile look threatening.

Thus, instead of being able to talk about the state of their various investigations during dinner, they had to wait for his departure. Meindl was no friend to private inquiry agents, fearing that they might outdo the investigative efforts of his own detectives. Werthen, Berthe, and Gross had proved this fear to be valid on more than one occasion.

Despite the fact that Gross had been the man’s mentor as a young constable in Graz, Meindl had attempted to derail their investigations in the past and, Werthen assumed, would continue to do so. Meindl’s career to date had been marked by the single-minded pursuit not of justice but of personal advancement.

Once the police chief was gone, they set aside their barely touched glasses of Sekt, ordered a bottle of French champagne instead, and toasted Berthe’s health.

‘I still think Father Mickelsburg’s words should be taken with some degree of mistrust,’ she said.

Werthen did not want to reassess his vision of Fräulein Mitzi as the badly wronged country girl, any more than Berthe did; however, there was some compelling evidence.

‘I did a thorough hand-writing analysis this afternoon,’ Werthen announced. ‘We have the letter from Mitzi I discovered at the Bower, and the ones I was able to secure from her parents.’ He turned his gaze to Gross. ‘I followed your ten-point matching system, Gross, comparing them with the letter Father Mickelsburg turned over to me today.’

He paused.

‘And?’ Berthe said.

‘It was a ten-point match.’

There followed a moment of silence. Then Werthen added, ‘Which reminds me. We should get the letters from the parents translated. Do you think Baroness von Suttner would help out in this regard once more?’

‘No doubt,’ Berthe said.

‘I’ll have Fräulein Metzinger type a copy to send her. We need to keep the original in our files.’

‘Have you told Inspector Drechsler of this development?’ Gross suddenly asked, looking very pleased with himself.

‘Actually, no,’ Werthen said. ‘I wanted to try to verify—’

‘Yes, I am sure you do,’ Gross interrupted. ‘And what if it is impossible to verify this new information about Fräulein Mitzi with absolute certainty?’

Werthen visibly reddened.

‘The police don’t know about Father Hieronymus, do they?’

‘Well, I haven’t quite got around to delivering the file.’

‘You mean the one in which we are keeping the original of Fräulein Mitzi’s letter?’ asked Berthe, now understanding Gross’s line of questioning.

‘When were you thinking of delivering the file, Karl?’ she asked.

‘Alright. You both know how I feel about this case.’

‘The white knight,’ Berthe said.

‘Something along those lines.’

‘And now there may be other sides to Fräulein Mitzi you intend to do so?’

‘That may not be advisable, as they could pertain to another ongoing investigation,’ Gross said, leaning back in his chair and placing both hands over his stomach. He eyed Werthen with his mentor’s expression.

‘What? Why are you smiling like that? You haven’t shared your information from today, is that it? Out with it, Gross.’

‘You recall I requested a list of extra kitchen helpers and sous-chefs laid on specially for the von Ebersdorf banquet? After all, the fact that he was the only one to suffer from tainted shellfish is an Alp too high to believe in. The autopsy shows he was the deliberate target of poisoning.’

‘What else?’ Berthe insisted.

‘I’ve received a list of the temporary help. One name might interest you.’

He reached into his waistcoat pocket, withdrew a folded square of paper, spread it out on the table, and pushed it across to Werthen and Berthe.

Mid-list a name was circled: Mutzenbacher, Siegfried.

T
hey waited for him on the street. Werthen was familiar with Siegfried’s daily schedule now, which included mid-morning shopping. They had no desire to beard the man inside the Bower, where his sister could be his protector.

It was 10:23 when Siegfried came out, blinking in the strong sunlight, an incongruous-looking shopping basket in each of his large hands. They let him leave the precincts of the Bower, following a full block behind him. Siegfried made his way slowly through the lanes away from the Danube Canal (which far too many visitors to the city mistook for the Danube itself), looking into the window of a vegetable shop here, a bakery there. When he had gone just beyond the cathedral of Stephansdom, they decided it was time to overtake him. He was again staring into the window of a bakery and, as they approached, Werthen could see that Siegfried was appreciating a display of freshly baked poppy-seed tarts arranged appealingly in linen-lined baskets. Werthen and Gross stood on each side of him, ostensibly admiring the display. He suddenly focused on their reflection and jerked to attention, suspicion in his eyes.