The Keeper of Hands

by Sydney J Jones

  Gross briefly explained the attack on the playwright.

  Brockhurst appeared unmoved. ‘And what do you expect me to tell you? That Austria’s power structure has lashed out at the man who betrayed his own officer class? Hardly. More likely some cuckolded husband took long overdue revenge on that Lothario.’

  ‘Officer class?’

  ‘You didn’t know? The man was a reserve officer. As I understand it, the General Staff used his services from time to time.’

  ‘If I understand you correctly . . .’

  ‘Yes. Schnitzler has the perfect cover. As an artist he has access to many influential people across national boundaries. He can travel without raising suspicion. In short, the perfect courier. A pity he had to ruin such a mutually profitable relationship by penning that worthless play.’

  The kitchen at the exclusive Hotel Excelsior was in the basement, a cavernous space filled with the bustle and hum of lunchtime activity.

  Finicky in his daily habits and hygiene, fussy about his bath and his application of bay rum, Gross was appalled by what presented itself before his disbelieving eyes.

  A scurrying in the bags of rice left open in one murky corner could very well have been a rat in search of lunch. He twice witnessed a sous-chef drop bloody cuts of veal on the filthy sawdust-covered stone floor, then calmly pick them up and lightly brush them off with his soiled apron before delivering them to the chef to dip into egg batter for breading. Another kitchen helper (what rank does one have if attired all in gray stripes?) appeared to have a cold and was happily sneezing all over the cucumber he was dicing.

  Marcel – not his real name, he was actually Felix Kolowitz from Hernals – stood majestic in his tall white chef’s toque, a commander in charge of spatula-wielding troops, dispatching his forces with a sang-froid that bespoke indifference to human suffering: the hallmark of all great leaders.

  ‘Herr Gross, this is not the most opportune moment for your queries.’

  ‘Doktor, actually, and Herr Direktor Mautner would beg to differ with your assertion. It is a simple query, actually.’

  ‘I will have to examine my records. There were a number of extra kitchen hands and stewards laid on for the von Ebersdorf banquet.’

  A dramatic pause. Then, ‘Such a terrible occurrence! Nothing of the sort has ever happened in a kitchen of mine.’

  ‘I’m sure Count Joachim von Ebersdorf would be equally appalled,’ said Gross, ‘were he here to complain.’

  The comment went unremarked upon by Marcel.

  ‘None of the other guests were affected?’

  Marcel shook his head so forcefully that his toque cracked its starched confines and seemed to melt on his head like a pat of butter.

  ‘The rest of the guests were quite pleased with the feast.’

  It was this very fact that made Gross wonder.

  She was early. She was always early. She also still had dreams of oversleeping for her Matura exam.

  It was the train that was late. The Franz Josef Station was hardly the place she would have chosen to spend an idle fifteen minutes; a cavernous and chilly mausoleum. Outside the weather had left behind the morning’s rain and gloom, and had changed to glorious summer-like warmth. In here, however, it was as if yesterday’s clouds had never dispersed.

  The Franz Josef Bahnhof was, Berthe decided, a perfect example of the usual graceless, tasteless architectural pomposity that characterized monuments to the Habsburgs – this one thrown together hastily about two decades earlier.

  Berthe found herself in a foul mood. The train from Krems was delayed, and she was twitchy.

  You should be enjoying this, she counseled herself. It is what you have been requesting for months: direct involvement in a case. Not just lending a charitable and informed ear to after-dinner discussions of the progress of a case, but actual personal involvement. Like this bit of surveillance at the Franz Josef Bahnhof.

  So stop being so impatient. Take a cue from Frieda, she told herself.

  Indeed, her child was cooperating marvelously, making little bubbling sounds as she napped. And why shouldn’t she be content? Bertha thought. Like a little pasha, she was nicely bundled atop a feather mattress inside the wickerwork of a Richardson Carriage. A gift from Karl’s parents, of course, and almost as expensive as a landau. It really was quite a marvelous bit of engineering, though, she had to concede. Unlike other children’s carriages, in which the child always faced backwards, the Richardson Carriage’s bassinet could be reversed so that the child faced forward. All one needed to do was loosen an axle under the middle of the enlarged bassinet and turn the bassinet around. And thanks to the enlarged bassinet, one could even use it for toddlers like Frieda.

  American, of course. It was as if they had invented inventing.

  Berthe pushed the carriage along Platform 12, momentarily casting her gaze towards the exit, where Erika Metzinger had taken up her watch. They exchanged glances but made no hand motions. It was only now that Berthe finally inspected the man under the clock. He had the unmistakable military stature, though he was dressed in a linen suit and straw boater.

  He also had the unmistakable look of a watcher. Of course, train stations were full of those waiting and watching for passengers, anxious to greet friends or relatives or business associates. But this man was different, Berthe felt. He was, she fancied, not the sort to personally meet someone at a train station.

  She had noticed him earlier but paid him no attention. Now she realized that trains had come and gone and still he waited. Could he be waiting for the delayed train from Krems?

  She chuckled to herself, thinking that she had only been on the job half an hour and was already an expert at surveillance, if not counter-surveillance.

  Her attention was brought back to the task at hand, hearing the hiss and thump of a train pulling into the station.

  She watched as the 11:15 from Krems snaked into the station, and wheeled Frieda’s carriage to the front of the platform, steps ahead of the engine. She knew Baron von Suttner would be in the first coaches, the first class.

  Sure enough, second off the coach immediately behind the engine was the Baron, looking expectant as he arrived in the capital. He turned back to offer his hand to a young lady descending from the coach, who seemed awfully pleased with herself in a frilly summer dress, a perfect shade of robin’s-egg blue to show off her blue eyes.

  The young woman had, Berthe thought, exactly the sort of self-satisfied expression that needed slapping.

  The Baron carried a walking stick, his niece a parasol. They could be father and daughter come up from the provinces for a day in the city.

  Except that it was evident they were not. Not the way the young woman wrapped her arm through his, nor the way she kissed him as she joined him on the platform, lingering with a playful peck just by the ear. She whispered something that made him blush and then break into laughter. They passed by Berthe unmindful of her, laughing together like young lovers meeting behind their parents’ backs.

  Berthe felt her stomach sink as they passed. It did not take a private inquiry agent to know those two were having an affair.

  From a telegram Frau von Suttner had sent earlier, Berthe knew they were coming to Vienna ostensibly to visit the Reinthaler Collection of Flemish art and porcelain.

  The only problem with that was that the small private museum was closed on Thursdays for cleaning.

  And today was Thursday.

  Erika Metzinger was making her way out of the exit, one step ahead of the love birds. The pair would doubtless take a fiaker to their destination – and Berthe, with Frieda in tow, would hardly be able to keep up with them. Outside, Herr Bachman, Karl’s prized driver, was waiting for Fräulein Metzinger to follow wherever they might go.

  As Berthe watched Erika climb into Bachman’s fiaker and drive off after the one the Baron and his niece had taken, the man in the boater came running out of the station, squinting in the noontime sun after the darkness of the train station
. He hailed the next fiaker in line and headed in the same direction as the others.

  With Fräulein Metzinger on assignment with his wife, Karl Werthen was acting as his own secretary; so when Hermann Bahr knocked at the office door without appointment, it was Werthen himself who greeted the writer.

  Bahr, one of the luminaries of the Jung Wien literary movement so much in fashion, was an intimate of Altenberg, Schnitzler and Salten. Werthen figured it was no coincidence that Bahr should appear at his office, but was prepared to allow the usual platitudes to issue forth before his visitor got down to what really mattered.

  Not so Bahr. Once the outer office door was closed behind them and they were ensconced in Werthen’s office, Bahr said, ‘This Bower business is a farce.’

  Bahr, a lapsed Catholic, had the beard of a Jewish elder. He squinted at Werthen as he spoke, as if he suffered from astigmatism.

  ‘How so, Herr Bahr?’

  For a man so loquacious on the printed page – Bahr had already penned numerous plays, novels and volumes of theatre criticism – he was oddly terse in his spoken communication.

  ‘One prostitute more or less . . .’

  He spluttered it out like a caricature of a stolid conservative landowner from Styria. The implication was clear.

  ‘I visited the young girl’s parents, Herr Bahr. I can assure you her death was not inconsequential to them. And what business, if I may inquire, is this affair to you?’

  ‘Schnitzler’s being hard used.’

  ‘Some might say he used the girl rather hard.’

  ‘You’re a literary chap, I’m told.’

  Werthen made no response to this seeming non sequitur.

  But that did not bother Bahr, who seemed to have his lines memorized.

  ‘It’s all experience. We store it up and later transform it into art. For a higher purpose. Schnitzler is a man of genius. Surely you see that?’

  ‘No one is accusing him of murder. Indeed, he is one of my clients.’

  Bahr, rather inelegantly, snorted at this.

  ‘And,’ Werthen added, ‘it was your friend Salten who commissioned the case to begin with.’

  ‘Salten is too involved with the woman’s memoirs. Hardly an appropriate subject matter for his talents.’

  ‘You did not answer my question, Herr Bahr. Why are you interested? Were you perhaps also one of Mitzi’s customers?’

  ‘I am a married man, Advokat.’

  ‘Many are.’

  ‘Altenberg said you are a perceptive sort.’ Bahr suddenly shot him a winning smile. ‘Jung Wien has its detractors.’

  So that was it, Werthen thought.

  ‘Scandal? Is that what you are worried about? One would think a hint of scandal would be de rigueur for the literary set.’

  ‘I have worked long and hard to achieve the respect our movement justly deserves.’

  ‘I assure you, Herr Bahr, I do not wish to bring public disapprobation to Jung Wien.’

  Bahr looked into his folded hands as he next spoke. ‘You are a friend of Karl Kraus’s, I understand.’

  ‘Yes. We have shared information from time to time.’

  ‘A villain if there ever was one.’

  Things were crystallizing now for Werthen. Bahr and Kraus were no friends, for Kraus thought Jung Wien was precious and febrile and lacked gravitas. In fact such opinions put into print in Kraus’s journal, Die Fackel, had led to that infamous altercation at the Café Central which ended in an Ohrfeig, a slap in the face for Kraus, administered by Salten. The feud had continued into the courts, with Bahr suing Kraus for defamation. The case had just been settled, in Bahr’s favor, but Kraus vowed not to be silenced.

  ‘What might your point be here, Herr Bahr?’

  ‘Kraus is the sort that will go to extraordinary lengths to avenge himself. He would like nothing better than to see scandal attached to the members of Jung Wien.’

  ‘Extraordinary lengths, such as killing Mitzi?’

  ‘You said it, Herr Advokat, not I.’

  ‘You’re delusional.’

  ‘You know the man’s penchant. He is forever writing about prostitutes.’

  ‘In their favor,’ Werthen pointed out. ‘He wants to protect their rights, not oppress them.’

  ‘The man is a sexual cipher. A monk. Repressed sexuality will find an outlet.’

  Werthen was not prepared to continue this discussion. He stood up abruptly.

  ‘I wish I could say it has been a pleasure, Herr Bahr.’

  For a moment, Bahr did not budge.

  ‘I am merely trying to be helpful, Advokat.’

  Then he nodded, as if in defeat, and hands on thighs pushed himself up and out of his chair.

  As he prepared to leave, Bahr cast one more crow-like remark:

  ‘I fear our Viennese Svengali has bewitched you, Advokat Werthen. You might want to ascertain Herr Kraus’s whereabouts for the night of April 30.’

  As arranged, Bachman returned to the train station to pick up Berthe and Frieda.

  ‘Hotel Metropole,’ he said as she lifted Frieda into the fiaker. Bachman stored the Richardson Carriage on the luggage-rack at the back and then nodded for her to take her seat.

  Berthe shuddered when she heard the destination. She had spent the last fifteen minutes, since the Baron von Suttner and his niece left the station, correcting her initial impression. Perhaps she was reading too much into a kiss on the cheek. The grateful niece giving her stodgy uncle a peck in appreciation for her day out. Perhaps the Baron had simply made a mistake about the opening days of the Reinthaler Collection. Perhaps it was nothing more than that.

  She had almost accepted this revision, but now Bachman put paid to that. It seemed the Reinthaler Collection had not been on the Baron’s itinerary, after all.

  Berthe did not want Frau von Suttner’s fears to be proved true; she did not want to be the one to tell her idol that her husband was conducting a tawdry affair with his own niece.

  The hotel was only a few streets distant, not in the best neighborhood and definitely not known for its rooms or restaurant. Instead, it was known for the discretion of its staff.

  As the fiaker pulled up to the kerb, Frieda peeked out of the window and then stared back at Berthe, grinning widely and showing off her two bottom teeth.

  ‘Dah,’ she said.

  ‘Mutti,’ Berthe corrected.

  Erika Metzinger came up to the coach.

  ‘Are they still there?’ Berthe asked.

  Erika nodded. ‘It appears they have taken a room.’

  Berthe’s stomach knotted.

  ‘The stupid man.’

  ‘Dah,’ Frieda said.

  ‘Yes,’ Berthe agreed.

  And then, across the street, she noticed the man in the straw boater from the train station, so intent on watching the front of the hotel that he seemed unaware of Fräulein Metzinger or of Berthe’s arrival.

  Berthe motioned for Erika to join her in the fiaker. ‘Are you sure about the room?’

  ‘In truth, I cannot be absolutely certain. Through the glass front doors, I could see the Baron speak with a concierge at the desk. I can only assume . . .’

  ‘Yes. But we have to be sure.’

  She turned to Frieda. ‘Will you stay with Tante Erika for a moment? Mutti needs to talk to someone.’

  ‘Tan-tan,’ Frieda said.

  Erika’s face brightened at this. ‘Clever girl.’

  Berthe slid along the leather bench and let herself out of the door of the carriage.

  ‘What will you say?’ Erika asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Berthe confessed. ‘But a bit of fresh air always helps activate my brain cells.’ Then, from the pavement, ‘Has anyone entered the hotel since they did?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You be sweet with Tan-tan,’ Berthe said to her daughter, but Frieda was already delighting in the examination of the outdated lorgnette that Erika insisted on wearing.

  Berthe made her way to the entrance of the
hotel. Out of the side of her vision she could see that she had finally attracted the attention of the man in the linen suit and boater. He watched her closely as she walked up the steps to the hotel and entered.

  Berthe experienced a momentary frisson of delight in the precincts of this hotel so well-known for illicit assignations. The gray-faced, jowly man behind the desk looked up at her as she entered. He appraised her with rheumy eyes that had seen it all. She stopped for a moment, then straightened her back and strode to the front desk.

  ‘Madam,’ the concierge said.

  ‘Good day to you.’

  ‘May I be of assistance?’ He managed to insert a large dose of nuance into those five words, so that Berthe felt she must bathe at once upon returning home. He spoke with a heavy Italian accent, and his eyes went up and down her body.

  ‘Yes you may,’ she replied. Opening her handbag, she extracted a lace handkerchief that Karl had just purchased for her. He enjoyed surprising her with small gifts: flowers, a special book, this lacework handkerchief.

  ‘I am playing the Good Samaritan. This was left in the fiaker I am riding in. The driver says he dropped his fare here. I thought—’

  ‘Very nice of you, Madam, I’m sure.’

  He reached for the handkerchief, but she pulled it back from him.

  ‘Don’t you want to know which guests?’

  He puffed his lips. ‘Of course. How silly of me.’

  ‘My driver tells me he deposited the young woman and a man here not fifteen minutes ago.’

  ‘Ah,’ the concierge nodded knowingly. ‘That would be Herr and Frau von Tilling. They make a point of staying with us when they come up from the country. It must be the young lady’s.’

  He thrust his meaty hand palm upward across the desk. ‘I would be happy to return it.’

  Karl will understand, she told herself as she relinquished the prized lacework.

  ‘Von Tilling, you say?’

  ‘Yes, Madam. Perhaps you know them?’ He turned for a moment, stuffing the prized handkerchief into one of the pigeon-holes behind him. Room 205.

  She shook her head, wanting badly to get out into the fresh air once again. ‘No. But I have done my good deed for the day.’

  ‘Indeed you have, Madam.’