The Keeper of Hands (34 page)

Werthen was about to suggest the same to Gross, when a man approached the monument. Clean-shaven, he carried himself like a soldier, though he was dressed in a linen suit and straw boater.

Werthen nodded at Berthe, who had taken up position under a nearby tree. She had the Brownie camera in her hands but she was not operating it, too busy staring at the man with a startled expression on her face. Werthen nodded at her to take the photo; they would not have another chance, for the man was beginning to look nervous.

Just as he thought this, the man abruptly turned and made his way out of the park. As planned, Werthen followed him, but professional training ultimately won out and Werthen lost him in the welter of interior courtyards at the Hofburg.

Gross and Berthe were waiting for him at the park.

‘Did you get the photo?’ Werthen asked.

Gross answered the question with another. ‘You lost him?’

Werthen nodded, then looked at his wife.

‘Oh, I took the photo. But there was no need.’

Werthen looked from Berthe to Gross, puzzled.

‘It was the watcher from the Hotel Metropole,’ Berthe said. ‘And we know who he works for. His name is Captain Forstl and he is on the staff of the Bureau.’

Schmidt watched the farce with some amusement. He assumed that the lawyer had lost the agent. Schmidt would not have lost him. But there was no need to follow; he already knew where the agent was headed.

And by the look of the animated discussion, it appeared that the lawyer’s wife and the criminologist had recognized the agent while the lawyer was fruitlessly tailing the man.

It was also apparent from the slight bulge in the criminologist’s right jacket pocket that he expected trouble, for he was armed and ready to defend himself.

Schmidt shook his head. This was not right. None of it. He had had enough of clearing up Forstl’s messes. If this blew up now, it could easily be traced back to St Petersburg; Forstl would surely say anything, sell anyone, to save his own skin.

His masters had made it clear to Schmidt that they were not ready yet for an altercation with the Habsburgs. Not until they had built enough railway lines to mobilize their army – and that could take another decade. Russia possessed the largest army in Europe, but this would be no use unless they could deploy the troops in a timely manner.

Another disgusted shake of the head. Schmidt rose and turned his back to the lawyer and his wife and Gross before closing his newspaper. He headed for the nearest tram stop to travel to the telegraph office at the South Railway Station. He would need to send a coded message to St Petersburg. He did not want to make this decision on his own.

Later that evening, after Frieda had been put to bed, Berthe, Werthen and Gross gathered in the sitting room, husband and wife shoulder to shoulder on the leather couch, and Gross occupying one of the Biedermeier chairs. They had brandies in their hands, but no one had taken a sip.

‘For me it is only too clear,’ Berthe insisted. ‘All the roads lead to this Captain Forstl.’

Gross blew air in derision. ‘Bosh! We have merely accomplished a certain degree of triangulation. But detection is not trigonometry.’

‘And there is nothing clearly linking Forstl to the Bower operation,’ Werthen agreed. ‘Schnitzler’s suggestions may well have fallen on deaf ears at the Bureau after the scandal of
Lieutenant Gustl
.’

Berthe took a sip of her brandy. ‘You say it yourself all the time, Gross. Too many coincidences. Sometimes you men cannot see the woods for the trees.’

Gross suddenly sat bolt upright in his chair, looking for all the world as if he had swallowed a partridge.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! That’s it. I think you may have something there, Frau Meisner.’

‘How do you mean, Gross?’ Werthen said, setting down his glass on a side table, as if ready to apply a life-saving slap to the man’s back.

‘The letter,’ he said, twirling his right forefinger through the air like a conductor. ‘The one to the girl’s father that includes the word “copse”. That one, fetch it.’

Werthen was too tired to respond with irony to this impolite demand, but simply got up and went to his office, riffled through the drawers until he found the relevant documents, and returned to the sitting room. He could hear Frieda’s regular breathing from her room as he passed it.

Gross was pacing about the room. He tore the papers out of Werthen’s hands and placed them side by side: the one in the original Volapük, and the other Frau von Suttner’s translation.

‘It’s this section,’ Gross said, stabbing the paper with a forefinger. ‘
The well-tended Copse says I am a clever girl! I love my patriotic work
. That section is the key to it.’

‘And it still makes no sense,’ Werthen said.

‘Assuming that it has been translated correctly,’ Gross added.

‘But how can we check—’ Werthen stopped in mid-sentence, seeing what Gross was getting at.

Berthe, too, understood. ‘Herr Moos!’

‘Quite right,’ Gross said. ‘I would assume the man would be more than happy to aid us in our inquiries. I propose a visit to the Landesgericht prison tomorrow.’

‘I’m afraid it will have to wait,’ Werthen said.

‘Why the devil should it?’ Gross boomed.

‘Because tomorrow is Saturday, and there are no visiting times on Saturday or Sunday.’

Gross merely harrumphed, as if Werthen himself had set the visiting hours at the prison.

On Monday morning Jakob Moos sat slump-shouldered on his bunk in the cell at the Liesel, the Landesgericht prison. Moos was being held in B block, for murder suspects.

The sallow-faced guard did not want to allow them into the cell at first, warning them that Moos had murdered a man with his bare hands.

‘It was in a moment of rage,’ Werthen replied. ‘There was no premeditation.’

‘It’s still the noose for him, killing a priest,’ the guard replied, sniffling as he took out his keys. ‘And don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ Another sniff, as if he was suffering from hay fever.

A call to Inspector Drechsler had allowed this visit but, to be honest, Werthen was not so sure about Moos. His one other meeting with the man had not gone well.

The prisoner sat hunched like a brooding bear, his massive fingers intertwined in his lap. He did not look up at the sound of the key in the lock, nor when Gross and Werthen entered. The guard remained outside the cell, his back turned to them, a snuffle emitting from him occasionally.

‘Herr Moos,’ Gross said, ‘we need your help.’

The bowed head did not move. He was dressed in standard grey convict jacket and pants, both of them at least a size too small. The man’s thick wrists and ankles showed. His hair had been shorn as if he were already convicted.

‘It is in regard to your daughter, Waltraude,’ Gross added.

This brought a low moan from Moos. Werthen was fearful that Gross might enrage the man after all.

‘We are trying to discover who killed her. Won’t you help us?’

The large hands flexed as if wringing the neck of a chicken.

Werthen tapped Gross’s arm in warning, but the criminologist plunged on.

‘I think I understand you, Herr Moos. Your daughter disappointed you. It is as if she was no longer your daughter before her cruel death. I have a son, you see, and we have been estranged for years.’

Werthen was shocked to hear Gross mention his only son, Otto. It was true, there was no love lost between father and son, but it was unlike the criminologist to mention his wayward son to a stranger.

‘But were my son to be so brutally murdered, I would want vengeance, I assure you.’ Gross spoke with real passion, Werthen thought. ‘I would want the killer brought to justice. That is what any father would want, isn’t it, Herr Moos?’

Moos suddenly stood upright, a movement so forceful it caught the attention of the guard who jolted himself into a semblance of action.

‘What is it you want?’ His voice thundered in the small cell; he towered over them.

Werthen stepped back a pace, but Gross held his ground. A tall man, Gross was not accustomed to looking up at others, but he had to do so with Moos.

‘We need your assistance with this letter from your daughter.’ Gross quickly drew out the letter in question, unfolding it for Moos.

The big man glanced at it for a moment, surprise on his face. ‘Where did you get this?’

Werthen said, ‘Your wife gave it to me when I visited your farm.’

Moos nodded his head. ‘Yes, I remember you. The fancy man from the city come to tell us our Traudl was dead.’

But he said it in a resigned tone, slumping back on the bunk, the letter in his hands.

Werthen turned to the guard, shaking his head. The policeman put the truncheon he had drawn back in its sheath.

‘I have underlined the passage we are concerned with, Herr Moos,’ Gross gently explained.

A sudden smile crossed Moos’s lined face. A strangled chuckle emitted from his mouth.

‘What is it, Herr Moos?’

Moos looked up at the two of them, his eyes watering. ‘She was always the bright one, our Traudl. The only one to really learn the language properly. So smart, she was. Such a waste.’ He lowered his head, choking back a sob, the paper trembling in his hands.

They waited a moment, not wishing to hurry him. It was perhaps the first time he had actually allowed himself to grieve the loss of his daughter.

He looked up again, his jaw muscles working. ‘We had a game, you see,’ Moos explained. ‘A little play with words, changing people’s names into a sort of code. A silly childish game, really, but it was our private fun.’

‘Is there a name here, Herr Moos?’ Werthen asked. ‘This passage has been translated as “the well-tended copse”. But that makes no sense, of course.’

An actual laugh came from Moos now. ‘To you folks, maybe not. But it is close.’

Then suspicion crossed his face. ‘You think this name is important?’

‘We think,’ Gross said, ‘that this is the person who . . .’ Gross hesitated a moment, wondering how much detail to supply.

‘The person responsible for leading Waltraude astray,’ Werthen said, simplifying matters. ‘And perhaps also her killer.’

Moos set his jaw again, nodding. ‘Let’s get it right then. Like I say, whoever tried to translate this got it right and wrong. It’s this word here,’ Moos pointed to the word
smafot
on the page, showing it to Gross and Werthen.

‘That’s made up. Traudl put together a couple of words in Volapük to get that.
Sma,
that means small; and
fot,
for woods or forest. So your translator got the small part right, as a copse is a small wood. Problem is
fot.
Volapük is an economical language and, like I say,
fot
can mean either woods or forest. In one meaning it is a wild forest or wood, but in another meaning we have forest like where you cut timber, like farming almost.’

‘That’s the “well-tended” part?’ Werthen said.

Moos nodded. ‘Like I say, right and wrong.’

‘And your daughter meant “little forest”?’ Gross said. ‘
Forstl
.’

‘That’s my guess. Mean anything to you?’

Gross sucked in air mightily. ‘Oh yes, Herr Moos.’

‘Wait. You don’t think he’s the one come visiting, do you?’

Werthen and Gross looked quizzical.

‘Another man from the city. He came several days after you did,’ he said, looking at Werthen. ‘Acting like he was handing out samples of perfume. I gave him short shrift, sent him on his way. Him and his bottles of fancy-smelling whale vomit.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘What do all city folk look like? Dressed in their suits and hats, so you can’t even see them.’

‘Tall, short, slim, fat?’ Werthen prompted.

‘Oh, he was a man you would never notice,’ Moos said. ‘Neither tall nor short, thin or fat. Almost like he had no features. But he wasn’t Austrian, I can tell you that. I’m a student of languages, and he spoke German like . . . Well, he didn’t learn it from his mama. Too clear, like; too formal. Not just city formal, but from foreign parts.’

Werthen was immediately reminded of Frau Ignatz’s description of the man in the stairwell at Habsburgergasse the night before the explosion; and Duncan’s description of the man with the sandwich board outside their flat. Everyman; the man who blended into the background.

‘But I did notice something about him. His hands. When he went to gather up the bottles of perfume he’d tried to give us, his little fingers were odd. He picked things up like a high-class woman drinking tea.’ He mimicked holding a tea cup between thumb and forefinger, his little finger sticking out straight. ‘But on both hands, like he couldn’t use them properly. Like maybe they had been broken.’

‘Do you remember the name of the perfume?’ Gross asked.

Moos looked to the ceiling in an attempt at memory, then to his left and right. Finally, he shook his head. ‘Can’t say as I do. I think there was some writing on the bag he was carrying, but I didn’t catch it. The only reason I noticed his fingers was because I had a friend once who had the same problem with a finger after breaking it. Just stiffened up on him.’

Moos looked down at the letter. ‘She was a smart one, was our Traudl.’

He handed the letter back to Gross. ‘You better keep this. It might be evidence.’

‘You’re right, Herr Moos. It might well be.’

‘I appreciate your help,’ he said after a moment’s silence. ‘You find the man who did this, right? He ruined our lives. All of us.’

As they were leaving the prison, Werthen was surprised to see two familiar faces approaching on the street. As they drew nearer, it seemed they remembered him, as well.

‘Frau Moos,’ Werthen said, lifting his hat to her. ‘Good to see you, again.’

‘Oh, it’s the lawyer, isn’t it? Wills and trusts?’

‘And private inquiries,’ Werthen added.

He turned to her companion, who disengaged his arm from that of Frau Moss.

‘Herr Platt, if I remember correctly.’

‘You do, you do,’ the man replied. ‘We’ve come to see poor Jakob.’

Werthen made speedy introductions all around, and then explained their visit to Jakob Moos.