The Keeper of Hands (4 page)

The man turned and waved to him. ‘Come on. She’s expecting you.’

Entering the hall, Werthen was struck by the heavy blend of aromas: cigar smoke, talcum powder and, from deeper inside, the smell of fried food. He followed the man down the long hallway with some difficulty. The world outside was iridescent in the spring light; here, inside the Bower, it was eternal night.

Finally they came to a door at the end of the hall. The man tapped gently and from inside a voice mumbled something. Werthen could not make out what was said. The man turned the knob, opened the door, and gestured Werthen inside with the wave of a hand.

‘In you go.’

Werthen found himself still in the gloaming; he could barely discern a figure sitting in an armchair at the far end of the room.

‘You may be seated on the divan,’ this figure – a woman by the tone of the voice – said.

Werthen did as he was bid. The divan was across the room from the woman.

‘Frau Mutzenbacher, I presume?’

‘Is this Salten’s idea of a clever detective?’

Werthen felt himself stiffen at the jeer. ‘May we have some light?’

‘No we may not, thank you very much for asking. You’re here so that I can determine if I want to hire you. What do you know of my business?’

The question took him aback for a moment. ‘I’m not sure what you mean. Salten tells me that you operate a house of . . .’

‘Say it, man. A house of ill repute. A brothel. A whorehouse.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Have you any familiarity with such establishments?’

‘Very little, I’m afraid.’ He tried to focus on her face in the darkness. It seemed she was wearing a veil.

‘Good. I want someone with fresh eyes. No assumptions. Would that be you?’

‘Madam, I must admit I am unaccustomed to this sort of interview.’

‘Too many words, Advokat. Speak plainly.’

This remark suddenly endeared the woman to Werthen, for it was an echo of what his wife Berthe had said to him when they first met several years before. She had accused him of sounding like someone running for mayor. ‘Pompous’ was the word she chose, and she was right.

‘Plainly said. I am quite good at what I do, as you are at your job. However, I am not a miracle worker. Neither do I have a bias against prostitutes. If you wish to employ me, fine. If not, I have other matters at hand.’

She said nothing for a moment. Then stirring in her chair, she nodded.

‘That’s better spoken, Advokat. With some feeling.’

‘What is it exactly that you want?’ Werthen asked.

Another long pause.

‘The young woman’s name was Mitzi, as I understand,’ Werthen began.

‘My girls are expendable,’ Frau Mutzenbacher said, as if not hearing him. ‘I can give you a list of Mitzi’s customers, but they surely use assumed names when coming here. Society spits on us, yet we hold the social fabric together. How many marriages do you think would survive, Herr Advokat, if we were not around to service oversexed husbands? How many marriages would be torn asunder by affairs with married women? How many ignorant youths would blunder on the wedding night were we not there before to train and gently guide? You ask what I want. I want justice for whores, that is what I want. I want society to finally acknowledge us. Barring that, I want to see the bastard who killed poor Mitzi rot behind bars in the Liesel for the rest of his pitiful days.’

‘Justice for all whores is a tall order. But I can try my best to find who killed this one young woman. And yes, I would like that list of names. It is a place to start, though the killer need not have been one of her clients. Do you have any suspicions?’

‘I’m not the detective.’

She sounded defensive; he did not bother to correct her choice of titles. ‘Private Inquiry Agent’ is what was listed on the brass plaque at his office below ‘Wills and Trusts’ and ‘Criminal Law’.

‘Was Mitzi close to any of the other women here?’

‘Fräulein Fanny.’ Said without an instant’s hesitation. ‘I will have her brought to us.’

‘In other words, you wish to engage my services?’

‘It appears so, no?’

‘Then I need to know something before we begin. Why do you care? You must have lost girls before. This can be a dangerous business for young women.’

She uttered a mirthless laugh. ‘Don’t I know!’

Suddenly, she turned up the wick on the kerosene lamp at her side and he could see her more clearly: a woman of ripe middle age, somewhat dowdy and matriarchal in appearance, thick in the middle with feet squeezed into lace-ups perhaps a size too small for her. She removed the veil covering her face and he saw the jagged line of a scar along the right side of her face.

Frau Mutzenbacher jabbed a finger at it. ‘That is what one of my clients left me as a going-away present. Did me a favor, actually. I couldn’t work the houses anymore, not even the streets, not with this. So I started using the other end of my body to make a living.’ She tapped her temple. ‘And it brought me all this.’

Werthen suddenly remembered what Salten had said about Frau Mutzenbacher: that she was not bitter about her former life.

Not a very discerning witness of human character, Salten.

‘You haven’t answered my question,’ Werthen said. ‘Why the concern for Mitzi?’

‘Well, take it as an old woman’s fantasy, but I looked on the girl as the daughter I never had. She was special. You never met her, you could not know. But she was attentive to one’s needs. Thousands of little kindnesses. I really don’t know how to explain it. She was also the living likeness of my younger sister, Theresa. Dead these twenty years from consumption.’

She paused for a moment, working the embroidered black silk of her skirts between thumb and forefinger as if searching for imperfections.

Werthen said nothing, allowing the silence to gather around them in the muffled room.

‘I was planning to adopt her,’ Frau Mutzenbacher said, looking up from her skirt. ‘This was all going to be hers.’

‘But she continued working?’

‘That was her decision. She was stubborn. Swore that she would keep working, that otherwise the other girls would think she had wormed her way into my affections and was using me.’ She permitted herself a sniffle.

Now she fixed Werthen with a look commingling ferocity and pleading. ‘She was special. You see?’

‘I am beginning to,’ he replied. ‘And as for my earlier question regarding any suspicions you might have. I cannot help you if you are not absolutely forthcoming with me.’

She touched the scar and then shook her head. ‘Everyone loved Mitzi. She had no enemies.’

He watched her carefully as she said this. After all, Frau Mutzenbacher was a woman paid handsomely for dissembling, as were all her employees.

‘No one client who was exceptionally attached to her?’

Another abrupt head shake. ‘As I said, she was beloved by all.’

‘Except for one,’ said Werthen. ‘The person who killed her.’

H
e met Fräulein Fanny in the parlor, and not in the company of Frau Mutzenbacher. He wanted candor from this young woman.

Fanny looked amused rather than concerned; her chalk-white face was still puffy from sleep, her black hair untidy but partially hidden under a shawl wrapped dramatically around her head. She held a cup of morning tea daintily between forefinger and thumb as if trained to do so.

‘Frau Mutzenbacher tells me that you and Mitzi were fast friends,’ he said, as the major-domo – still in his suspenders – left the room after delivering the young woman.

‘Well, aren’t we all working girls together?’

‘Did you know her well?’

‘I found her. If that means I knew her well, then yes.’

‘Found her?’

She nodded, giving a chirrup of laughter.

‘I saw her working the corner near the Naschmarkt. Bright-looking little pigeon she was, as I told Frau Mutzenbacher. She’d be tarnished soon enough working that corner, though. Obviously not very experienced in the trade.’

‘And you told your mistress about this young girl on the streets?’ Werthen said.

‘Of course. That’s part of the job, you know. Finding new girls, fresh girls. Mitzi had that look on her. The kind men like.’

She did not look away as she spoke, as if daring him with her frankness.

‘How long was she here?’

She wagged her head as if attempting to shake order into her thoughts.

‘Seven or eight months, I’d say.’

‘She must have been an extraordinary young woman, then,’ Werthen said.

‘How so?’

‘To have so impressed your employer, that is. To have charmed her and earned her love.’

He got the reaction he was waiting for. Fanny pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. She set the teacup down.

‘She knew what she was about, despite all her ignorance of the trade. Knew which side of the
Semmel
is buttered.’

‘I take it you were Frau Mutzenbacher’s favorite once?’

A knowing look transformed her face like wind on water.

‘Oh no you don’t. I see what you’re doing here, Advokat.’

‘What am I doing, Fräulein Fanny?’

‘You’re trying to make it look like I might have done for Mitzi. That I had some grudge. A motion.’

‘Motive,’ he corrected, and quickly regretted having done so. Fanny’s face grew sullen, her eyes hooded in defiance.

‘I assure you, Fräulein Fanny, I am not attempting to associate you with this murder. I only want to get to know the victim, to understand her workings. Knowing that might lead me to the person who committed this barbarity.’

She adjusted herself in the chair. Holding her head haughtily, she sniffed.

‘Truly,’ he added. ‘You must believe me. Whatever your true feelings for Mitzi, you must feel compelled to help. The person who perpetrated this outrage is still at large, perhaps hunting other poor young women at this very moment.’

She shivered at this pronouncement.

‘Did she have special clients? Any man who paid unusual attention to her? Someone she might have met off the premises?’

‘No, that is strictly forbidden. If Frau M found out, she would take the hide off your backside and you would find yourself on the street.’

‘Did she confide in you at all? What of her background, her family? Do you know where she came from?’

‘We shared a room, that’s all,’ Fanny said. ‘We weren’t friends. We just talked about the usual things. The new Paris fashions, what we would do if we found the right man. She was not very talkative. She saved that for her customers.’

There was an ironic edge to the last comment.

‘How do you mean?’ he asked.

Fanny shook her head. ‘She had that way about her. Used her mouth as much as what she sits on. And not in the way you are thinking, either. She came across the innocent young girl, and men loved that. They liked to talk to her, to confide in her. She talked to them and seemed to listen.’

‘Her clients shared secrets with her? Did she tell you that?’

‘Not in so many words.’

‘Any names? Of clients, I mean.’

Another sniggering laugh.

‘Oh, plenty of names. Loads of names. And all of them false, to be sure.’

She hesitated, thinking.

‘What is it?’ Werthen asked.

‘There was this one old duffer,’ she said. ‘He would sit and wait his turn if it took all night. Had a particular fancy for the young girls, even if they weren’t really so young. Funny-looking old guy with flowing moustaches, and sandals sometimes – even in winter. He would sit in the second parlor all on his own, writing in this little leather notepad he carried. Even drawing pictures. I saw him doing a face one time. Not a bad likeness of one of the other gentlemen swilling his champagne.’

‘You don’t recall his name?’

‘I told you, we’re not much on names here. They have the crowns or florins, what do they need with a name?’

‘Is there anything out of the ordinary you can tell me about Mitzi? Any sudden change in her emotions, for example?’

‘That’s exactly it,’ she said, suddenly excited. ‘A change in her emotions. Like she was worried. I thought at first it was because of her relationship with Frau M: that she was feeling, I don’t know, somehow strained by it. By what Frau M expected of her. But that wasn’t it.’

‘Did you ask her about it?’

‘Like I told you, we shared a room, not secrets.’

‘When did this change begin?’

‘Two, maybe three months ago. Not so you would notice it in public; but in our room, I would sometimes come in and she would be looking in the mirror at herself like she was searching for something, someone. I came across her writing a letter not long ago, and she hid it under her skirts like a schoolgirl.’

The major-domo – now wearing a morning coat – showed Werthen to the room Mitzi had shared with Fräulein Fanny. It was on the second floor of the old building, reached by a backstairs so narrow you had to walk single file and so dark a candle was needed at midday.

They had no candle.

The room, once they reached it, was dark and spare. The major-domo, whose unlikely name was Siegfried, lit the spirit lamp on the small deal table between the two beds. Werthen could now see that, despite being cramped, there was nothing squalid about the room. Rather, it was clean and functional like a dormitory at an all-girls school. The irony was not lost on Werthen, who could not suppress a smile when he was ushered in.

‘You find something amusing about our establishment, Herr Advokat?’

Siegfried was now standing close enough for Werthen to discern the aroma of the man’s sausage breakfast.

‘I believe I can carry on without your assistance,’ Werthen said by way of reply. ‘I shall call if I need you.’

‘Shall you, then? Very good, m’lord.’ Siegfried said this archly, like a comic performer at the German Volkstheater, and tipped a non-existent hat as he left.

Focusing his attention on the room, it was immediately clear to Werthen which bed was Mitzi’s, for the bedding had been removed and the mattress rolled up as at the end of term. He half expected to see hockey sticks, or perhaps a blue ribbon from the local riding club. There was indeed an element of unreality about this affair. Fräulein Mitzi had thus far been the stuff of plays and fantasies: a newspaper article read by Berthe; a proposal passed on by the writer Salten; and the misty-eyed remembrances of a madam. At least young Fanny had offered a piece of real information regarding Mitzi. She had been troubled by something lately and had been seen putting her thoughts down on paper. To Fanny it had appeared to be a letter, but Werthen knew that it could just as easily have been a journal or diary.