The Keeper of Hands (31 page)

Forstl did not know that, nor did he care for any of Schmidt’s bizarre small talk today. He moved away from the crowds of children and from the cabinets to a velvet-cushioned bench under a window that gave out on to Maria Theresa Square, which separated the twin museums devoted to art and natural history. The red plush had faded to a shade of pink. They sat side by side. Schmidt was dressed in the same blue suit he wore for every occasion.

‘You brought them?’

Forstl shook his head. ‘There have been complications. Something else needs to be seen to first.’

Schmidt tensed at his side. ‘Our friends in St Petersburg will not be pleased. They are most anxious to see the mobilization plans.’

‘We are playing the long game here, I thought. I must establish my credentials. I have to become invaluable to Colonel von Krahlich. And now you want me to make him displeased? You tell me, which is the more important?’

‘Does this have to do with the Bower again?’

‘No,’ Forstl replied. ‘That was personal insurance. Von Ebersdorf, as you know, was meant to become the prime suspect in case there were rumors of a Russian double agent at work in Vienna. Loose lips of the chief of the Foreign Ministry’s Russia desk when in bed with a whore. How was I to know the fool would fall in love with the girl?’

‘Stop whining,’ Schmidt said. ‘I was the one who had to clean up that mess for you when the little whore wanted to run off with von Ebersdorf and when her friend demanded hush money for secrets they had shared.’

There was a moment of silence between them filled by the din of high, excited voices.

‘Then what is this meet about?’ Schmidt demanded.

Forstl reached into the inside pocket of his linen jacket and took out an envelope. Opening it, he pulled out a sheet of blue flimsy and handed it to Schmidt.

As Schmidt read the report, Forstl looked behind him out of the window to the statue of the Empress Maria Theresa in the little square below. More children were milling about its base, gazing up at the first female ruler of Austria. One child in tie and short pants traced the letters of the etched inscription on the base with a forefinger.

‘So there was a blown operation,’ Schmidt said, handing back the report. ‘Who is this von Suttner anyway? And why should we care?’

‘We should care because it is von Krahlich’s project. He handed it to me several months ago after hearing rumors of the husband’s dalliances with his niece. Apparently the wife, Bertha von Suttner, is influential among international pacifists. “Traitors” von Krahlich calls them.’

‘So the love birds are caught
in flagrante
and this evidence is presented to the wife with an ultimatum – tone down the rhetoric or we make this public.’

‘Along those lines,’ Forstl said. ‘But, as you see from my agent’s report, the operation came to nothing. Just as he was about to spring the trap and confront Baron von Suttner and his niece in their room at the Hotel Metropole, my agent discovered that his chief witness, the concierge, was no longer there. Indeed, according to the agent, the whole affair had been covered up as a scheme to present the Baroness von Suttner with a birthday present of a portrait of her niece.’

Forstl pulled out a pair of photos from the same envelope, and handed one to Schmidt. It showed a tall, handsome woman – not pretty, but handsome – dressed in a rather unconventional loose-fitting dress. None of the wasp waist that most women of a certain station wore, nor the high-collared look preferred for daytime. Forstl thought the material was muslin, but tailored so that it clung to the body rather than ballooning out with bustles and hoops. She was standing in front of a bakery, eying the goods, a little girl standing at her side, dressed in a sailor suit, her podgy hand gripping her mother’s.

‘The woman in this photo, Berthe Meisner, was spotted at the Metropole twice. The second time my agent trailed her to her home. He avers that it was she who ruined the operation, who somehow convinced the lovers of the portrait ruse – that they were only in a Viennese hotel room to secretly have the niece’s portrait painted for the Suttner woman’s birthday.’

He now handed over the second photo, this one of a man, also tall in stature, caught mid-stride as he was walking along a city sidewalk, his long legs a blur of motion. Forstl thought he had seen this person before; there was something about the loose smile, the self-assured movement, the eyes that seemed to fix on and bore into whatever he scanned. A pleasant face, he thought. An intelligent one.

‘This is the woman’s husband—’

‘Advokat Karl Werthen,’ said Schmidt, taking Forstl by surprise.

‘How do you know that?’

Schmidt quickly explained that he had seen the Advokat and an older man confront Siegfried Mutzenbacher, and had then followed them to Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s headquarters at the Belvedere.

‘You are becoming a costly asset,’ Schmidt muttered, reflecting on how many deaths Forstl had already caused in order to protect his role as a Russian agent.

‘How so?’

‘I think these men are in the employ of the Archduke. Werthen isn’t just a lawyer. He runs a private-inquiries firm that has handled several high-profile cases. I did a bit of homework on him in back issues of
Neue Freie Presse.
And his colleague is the eminent criminologist Hanns Gross.’

‘Never heard of either of them,’ Forstl said.

‘That may be so, but my fear is they may soon hear of you.’

Forstl shook his head, not understanding.

‘Triangulation, my friend. Simple triangulation. They already have two leads that could be traced back to your office – the Bower and this absurd action at the Hotel Metropole. One more lead, one more shoe to drop, and they should be able to fix you, as if in the sights of a rifle.’

Forstl suddenly stood up, straightening the crease in his trousers.

‘Well then,’ he said. ‘I assume you know your next assignment. If our friends in St Petersburg want certain documents and care for a mutually beneficial long-term working relationship, then you should proceed quickly and take care of this threat.’

‘A large “if ”, Captain Forstl. We shall see.’

‘And I need no further mementoes. Is that clear?’

Forstl did not wait for an answer, but turned and made his way through the throngs of schoolchildren to the exit.

Schmidt did not follow. He sat on the bench thinking for some minutes, and then got up and went back to the Lepidoptera cabinets. He had paid his one-crown entry fee; he would enjoy the arthropod collection.

T
hey made no progress on the matter for the next several days. Gross, however, was in a fine mood, delighted at the collection of larvae and insects he had gathered from the corpse of Herr Schnitzel.

Werthen and his family spent the weekend at the farmhouse in Laab im Walde. The weather was fine, and he was now able to see the green fuzz of the tennis lawn. Despite his complete neglect, the seeds had taken root and formed a large rectangle of delicate new pale green amid the profusion of tall grasses and wild flowers.

Frieda accompanied him and was now busily running her hand over the new grass.

‘Sof,’ she said.

‘Yes, it is nice and soft, isn’t it?’ Werthen leaned over and ran his hand over the new shoots; they tickled his palm.

‘Pwetty.’

He beamed at her. ‘Not as pretty as you, though.’

She grabbed his leg, her grip surprisingly strong, and buried her little head in the folds of his corduroy breeches.

‘Does it embarrass you to be told you’re pretty?’

She lifted her head, peering up at him.

‘Because you are going to spend a lot of time being embarrassed. You’re a beautiful little girl, just like your mother.’

‘Just like her mother how?’ Berthe said as she approached them. ‘Look at that! It has sprouted.’

‘It certainly has,’ Werthen agreed. ‘Maybe we should continue to ignore it. It seems to like low maintenance.’

‘Why do I get the feeling we are going to have a grass court?’

‘Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing, after all. Exercise would do us all good.’

They returned late Sunday night to find a telegram from Gross requesting that they meet first thing in the morning at Werthen’s office. The criminalist was his usual pedantic self, even in the abbreviated language of the telegram, demanding that they meet at eight sharp, and that Berthe accompany him.

‘Whatever is he up to?’ she said as they climbed into bed that night.

‘One of his unveilings. I assume he has discovered some evidence and wants to present it in dramatic form.’

In the morning they left Frieda with Frau Blatschky and walked to the Habsburgergasse. It was one of those clear, warm mornings that made Werthen happy he lived in the city. Everything seemed alive and vibrant; as they passed through the Volksgarten, they saw a dog slip its leash and run after a family of ducks. The dog’s owner, a well-dressed matron in her fifties, could only stand and clap her hands at her disobedient long-haired dachshund. The ducks escaped unharmed and a constabulary officer was able to regain control of the dog and keep it from further pranks.

‘Better to have a child than a dog,’ Werthen said, taking his wife’s hand. ‘No leashes.’

‘Wait until suitors start knocking at the door,’ she said, squeezing his hand as they walked.

By the time they arrived at the Habsburgergasse, the nearby businesses had already opened their shutters. The first gladioli were displayed in buckets on the street in front of Nestor’s; a rack of used books in uniform leather binding stood in front of Waltrum’s.

‘There’s Gross,’ Berthe said, drawing his attention away from the shops. Gross stood at the entrance to Habsburgergasse 4, an expectant look on his face.

He began speaking as they approached.

‘Well whatever it is that makes you command my presence first thing in the morning, I hope it is important. I did not even have time to finish my coffee.’

‘Good morning to you, too, Gross,’ Werthen said. ‘But you were the one to command our presence.’

His smile was cut short at the booming sound of an explosion overhead. Shards of glass sprayed the sidewalk. Luckily, they were all wearing hats and the glass fell around them. One splinter lodged in Werthen’s hand, which bled steadily, but he was initially too stunned to pay it any attention. Automatically, he reached pro-tectively for Berthe and held her to him. Her breath came in quick bursts. Gross stood unharmed but with mouth wide open as if in mid-scream.

The street was suddenly filled with people gaping at the smoke pouring out of the windows two floors up at Habsburgergasse 4.

Looking up, Berthe cried out, ‘Karl, it’s from your office!’

Werthen was still partly in shock. He calmly picked the splinter of glass out of his hand and wrapped his handkerchief around the hand to staunch the bleeding. ‘Gas leak?’ he said hopefully, and then dashed up the stairs, the others behind him. The smell of cordite was heavy in the air as he got closer to his floor.

Not a gas leak, then.

The outer door to the office had been blown off its hinges. Smoke filled the room, his inner office was a blackened ruin. He rushed to Fräulein Metzinger’s desk, his heart pounding, fearing what he might find. But there she was, cowering on the floor on hands and knees, her hair blown wild as if in a storm.

She looked up at him, like a frightened child. ‘I dropped a paper-clip,’ she said. ‘Just as Oskar was delivering the paper, earlier than usual. Dropped the clip and then bent down to retrieve it and the world exploded.’

She passed out in his arms.

At the door Frau Ignatz stood bewildered, searching the ruins. ‘Oskar, my little brother Oskar. Where are you?’

‘There are fragments of electric wire by the door to the inner office,’ Inspector Drechsler said. ‘As well as the remains of what Doktor Gross here informs us is a dry-cell battery.’

‘In short,’ Gross interrupted, ‘someone set a primitive bomb to go off when your inner-office door was opened. It would function rather like a burglar alarm, in that opening the door would close the circuit, sending electric current from the dry-cell battery to this.’

Gross held a small piece of charred metal in his hand; and Werthen, from his experience in a case involving the composer Gustav Mahler, quickly made the connection.

‘Part of a detonator.’

‘Exactly,’ Gross confirmed. ‘Which triggered a small explosion, setting off the dynamite it was nestled in.’

‘Poor Oskar,’ said Berthe.

Gross did not respond to this, holding emotion at bay as long as he could. ‘Fortunately, the charge must have been small. A couple of sticks at most. Otherwise, Fräulein Metzinger would be suffering from more than tinnitus.’

The secretary had, despite her objections, been taken to the hospital for observation. They were gathered around her desk in the damaged outer office. The inner office had been destroyed. Police were still scouring the building, looking for suspects. Frau Ignatz had been taken back to her rooms, under the care of a hospital matron.

Suddenly, as the shock began to wear off, Werthen felt the impact of Oskar’s death. His fault, in a way, for having the poor man deliver the paper every morning. He vowed he would find whoever had done this.

‘All the hallmarks of the Black Hand,’ Drechsler said.

‘Nonsense,’ Gross spluttered. ‘What have we to do with the Serbs?’

‘I’m only rehearsing what Meindl is sure to say. A bombing means anarchists at work, or the Black Hand. That’s how his mind works. You have a better explanation?’

They had not taken Drechsler into their confidence regarding the new information concerning the Bower killings – that similar types of crime had been recorded in several European cities.

‘There is the von Ebersdorf matter,’ Werthen extemporized. ‘Perhaps we were getting too close to the truth there—’

‘That case is, need I repeat myself, closed. Unless you have, in spite of my direct request to the opposite, reopened it on your own.’

‘But this one is very clearly open,’ Gross thundered. ‘There is a man dead here. Frau Ignatz’s brother. Bits of his body are still to be found in there.’ He pointed a condemning forefinger at Werthen’s office. ‘I picked through his remains retrieving evidence of the bomb. This is homicide, Drechsler, not a warning shot fired across our bows.’