The Keeper of Hands

FIFTEEN

The 7:00 a.m. train left the Nordbahnhof five minutes late. He was not overly concerned with such things today. A Sunday. The family would be at home all day.

He was a traveling salesman for the Viennese cologne-maker Heisl today. He carried a case with the brand name blazoned on the side in white lettering to prove it. Sunday was an odd day for a traveling salesmen to be doing his rounds; but he was also Jewish, for today.

In Vienna he was Schmidt, representative of the Heisl Parfumerie; in Berlin he was Erlanger, the rail engineer from Budapest; in Warsaw he was de Koenig, the agent of a Dutch mining concern; in Zurich he was Axel Wouters, rubber merchant; and in Prague he was Maarkovsky, an importer of Polish vodka. He had posed as policeman, actor, wine grower and noble. Sometimes he had difficulty remembering his true identity: Pietr Klavan, an Estonian who at one time had prospects of a career as a concert violinist. But that, he reflected, was so long ago. .

Schmidt was a cautious man, a man who did not like loose ends dangling. Loose ends could unravel an entire operation; and they could cost a man of many identities his life.

The train followed the course of the Danube at first, and then traversed flat farmland. Schmidt stared out of the window at the fields of spring wheat, and orchards in full bloom.

He was not sure what he expected from this trip; he knew only that he needed to see for himself. Schmidt was not merely a chameleon: he also possessed an uncanny ability to see into and through people, to instinctively read their emotions and fears. These were skills that had made him an invaluable asset to Russian Army Intelligence. These and certain other talents with his bare hands, and with knives and pistols.

A compact man, he took up not two-thirds of the window seat; the rest of the third-class compartment was empty. Later in the morning, after church services, there would be far more traffic. That was one reason for his early start: Schmidt liked to be alone with his thoughts.

Soon the train entered rolling hills striped with vineyards. They pulled into the station of Hollabrunn, and a family got on to the train, entering his compartment with eager energy that made him purse his lips and focus more diligently on the view out of the window. But he was processing all the time. Schmidt was never simply around other people: he analysed them, dissected them, searched for fault lines.

A farmer and his wife, dressed in Sunday best by the looks of them. Two gangly boys in knee pants, smelling of hay and incense. Just out of church, he registered. An infant in the red-cheeked wife’s arms. The man was carrying a basket covered over with a blue-and-white checked cloth. Off to the grandmother’s for Sunday lunch, bearing what? No yeasty smell of baking. More likely the freshly slaughtered Sunday chicken.

The boys began squirming on the wooden bench opposite him. One was pinching the other. The father barked a command in a strong local dialect that Schmidt barely made out to mean ‘Enough!’ and the boys sat still once again. The older one, the one initiating the tickling, turned his attention to Schmidt, but tried to act as if he was gazing about the compartment or out of the window as he glanced at the valise in the overhead rack and examined Schmidt’s reflection in the window.

All so obvious, Schmidt thought. He would kill the father first, of course. This was a game he played, a game of survival when around strangers. A blow to the thorax should do it. He smiled to himself: most would go for the older boy next, but he was not most. It was the wife second, for her full-throated screams would prove more of a threat to him than anything the adolescent boy could muster. A quick twist to break her neck. Then the older, curious boy. He would use a knife for him and his younger brother. Which left the baby. It would be crying by then. And that meant. .

But these thoughts were interrupted as the train pulled into the small station of Haugsdorf, his destination.

As the engine lurched to a stop, Schmidt stood, removed his hat and valise from the overhead rack, and nodded at the family as he left the compartment.

They had provided a few moments of amusement.

The day was beginning to heat up as he descended from the train to the platform of the tiny station. Only one person on the platform, a tall stick of a man who wore a station master’s uniform too short at the wrists. He waved the train on.

Schmidt waited for him to finish his duties.

‘Don’t suppose there would be a trap for hire to Buchberg?’

The man looked at him queerly for a moment as if he did not understand German. Schmidt was about to rephrase the request when the man said in a thick country accent, ‘Two in one week. Don’t tell me you want to visit Jakob Moos, too?’

The trap jogged along the rutted dirt track, the sun growing higher in the sky. Schmidt was in luck, for the station master — Platt was his name — could be hired for several hours. On Sundays train traffic was light, so he could take Schmidt on his ‘rounds’ and drive him back to the station. Happily, Platt demonstrated little curiosity about a perfume salesman making the rounds of rural Weinviertel on a Sunday. Who could account for the ways of big-city people?

Instead, he unwittingly filled Schmidt in on the latest tragedy to befall Jakob Moos.

‘We all said it would come to no good when she left. But Jakob always knows better. Sent her off to play housekeeper to her uncle and see what’s happened.’

Schmidt waited an instant. Then asked, ‘What did happen?’

‘Murder, that’s what the man who brought the news said.’

Schmidt’s antennae instantly lifted. ‘A policeman?’

Platt shook his head. ‘No, a fancy one from the city like yourself.’

‘But I’m a simple country man, actually,’ Schmidt said, putting on an ingratiating voice now. ‘Like yourself. Grew up on a farm and hope to get back to it once I’ve saved enough money.’

It seemed his fabrication was wasted on Platt, for the man ignored the comment and continued from where he left off.

‘Come from the city just like you and asked for transport to Buchberg. Come for the Moos family.’

‘Well, actually,’ Schmidt said, ‘I’ve never heard of the Moos family. But my superiors want me to introduce our new product line to citizens of the region.’

‘Not a lot of use for such fancies out here, I can tell you that.’

Platt went silent, tssking at his horse from time to time.

‘And the city man?’ Schmidt finally prompted.

‘Comes with the bad news and leaves right after. Frau Moos took it bad. Jakob, too, but he won’t let on. Says the working classes are always the victims.’

Schmidt filed this bit of information away.

‘Man’s an investigator, I hear,’ Platt added. ‘One of those private inquiry agents you read about. As if the constabulary isn’t enough. Some fancy city fellow has to stick his nose into it, too.’

‘Do they know who killed the poor young woman?’

‘No. Just that some big writer fellow in Vienna is paying for this agent. What a world we live in. I’ll never leave Haugsdorf, I can tell you that. And if I had children, they would never set foot outside neither.’

As they approached the small hamlet of Buchberg, Schmidt could see a scattering of low farm houses, their white plastered walls glistening under the strong sun.

‘Where to first?’ Platt asked.

‘You know, I’ve been thinking,’ Schmidt said. ‘My heart goes out to that family that lost their daughter. Maybe it would cheer the wife up if I left some samples for her.’

‘Your funeral,’ Platt muttered.

He directed the trap to a distant homestead on the north side of the village with a slate-roofed house and whitewashed exterior walls. Schmidt noted the geraniums in pots already in bloom in the low recessed windows. Showed care, he noted. Somebody tending the flowers indoors during the winter to get a bit of color in the spring. A good-luck sheaf of wheat hung over the door. A woman’s touch.

Schmidt descended from the trap, sample bag in hand, and knocked on the front door. There was a shuffling of feet inside and it was opened by a young girl with rosy cheeks.

‘What do you want?’

‘I wonder if I might speak with the lady of the house?’ He looked beyond the girl and saw a plump woman seated at the kitchen table, with two other young girls gathered about her. The woman’s eyes were rimmed in red. Her face was haggard as if she had not slept in days.

‘Good day to you, Madam,’ Schmidt said in his most pleasing voice.

‘Mother is sick,’ the rosy-cheeked girl said.

‘That is a pity,’ he said, stepping around the girl and coming into the room uninvited. ‘Because I have some samples in my case sure to cheer up the darkest day. Perhaps I could just leave them here. .’

‘Mother does not want to talk with anyone,’ the girl at the door said.

But he hoisted his case on to the table, opened it, and pulled out several sample bottles of cheap perfume.

‘And something for the young ones, as well,’ he said, as he surveyed the room and quickly searched his own mind for some gambit by which he could trick information out of the family and learn something of this mysterious visitor who had brought news of the daughter’s death.

His false cheer succeeded only in making the woman cry harder.

He heard footsteps behind him.

‘What’s going on here?’

Schmidt turned to see the man of the house standing at the door, looking like an enraged bear.

‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’

Schmidt’s eyes continued to scour the room for clues. And then he saw it: a professional card sitting on the shelf of a cupboard by the door.

‘Just giving the ladies some samples, sir,’ Schmidt said. ‘A nice bit of perfume.’

‘We don’t use such things in this house,’ Moos thundered. ‘Now get out of here before I throw you out.’

‘But of course. My apologies. Just trying to do my job.’ He hurriedly put the bottles back in the case, and closed and latched it. Then made sure to sidestep Moos to the right, so he came close to the cupboard as he departed.

He paused for a moment at the door and tipped his hat. ‘Good day to you, then.’

‘Out of here!’ Moos barked.

The door slammed behind him.

Schmidt made his way to the trap. As he walked, he fixed the information from the card in his memory: Advokat Karl Werthen, Wills and Trusts, Criminal Law and Private Inquiries.

‘Told you so,’ the dour Platt said as Schmidt regained his seat on the trap.

‘Just trying to be a good Christian,’ Schmidt said.

At which comment Platt flicked the reins and set the old horse on its way.