The Keeper of Hands

TWENTY-FOUR

‘You are never satisfied, Gross,’ Berthe said as they finished their coffee after a sumptuous Frau Blatschky feast of stuffed cabbage preceded by liver-dumpling soup and followed by Kaiserschmarrn, a kind of caramelized crêpe.

‘Prague has the world’s oldest university,’ Werthen added.

‘Yes, that is true,’ Gross said, eying the dish of Kaiserschmarrn hungrily. ‘But in a modern science like criminalistics, old is not especially good.’

‘But you would be back in Europe again,’ Berthe said. ‘It certainly is an improvement on Czernowitz.’

‘My dear lady, St Pölten would be an improvement on Czernowitz. And as for Europe, I believe you mean Central Europe. There is a difference.’

‘Come now, Gross. You’re just being obstinate. Prague is a lovely city. Berthe and I were there earlier in the spring. It’s quite cosmopolitan and the cultural life is vibrant.’

Gross sighed. ‘If offered the post, I suppose I would go. But you know, I have grown rather fond of my students in Czernowitz. We are making great strides forward in research.’

‘I’m not listening to this anymore,’ Berthe said. ‘Stay in Czernowitz, then.’

‘But there is my lady wife, Adele, to consider. She’s not overly fond of life in a yurt.’

‘It’s hardly the steppes, Gross,’ Werthen said. ‘Have another glass of this lovely Moravian wine you have brought and cheer up.’

Gross had been gone only a week and a half, but Werthen had to admit he was glad to see him. Especially after the less than satisfactory visit from his parents over the weekend.

Gross filled his glass as requested and put it to his lips, breathing in the bouquet as he did so. But his contrived look of expectancy turned to disappointment before he had taken even one sip. He put the glass down with a sigh.

‘It’s not the school, you know,’ he said finally. ‘It’s this matter of the Bower. We really cannot let it stand as it is.’

‘I thought as much,’ Werthen said. ‘And I quite agree.’

Berthe said nothing, turning the stem of her wine glass reflectively, like a chess player determining the next move.

Werthen and Gross sat in eager anticipation, two gymnasium students waiting to hear the results of their Matura graduation exam. Each was silent; each waiting for the other to begin.

The tension was almost palpable. Berthe stopped turning her wine glass.

‘For heaven’s sake,’ she said, exasperated. ‘Gross, you go first.’

‘Sensible woman. Yes, to be sure. I do come bearing information. I found time while in Prague to visit colleagues in the local Police Praesidium. Do you remember me talking of Jan Sokol?’ But this question was rhetorical and he did not wait for a response.

‘We met a dozen years ago at a criminalistics conference in Paris. Just a detective inspector then, was Sokol. He’s risen through the ranks. He could go toe to toe with friend Meindl now.’

Werthen began to squirm with impatience, Berthe noted.

‘Perhaps we could get to the information,’ she suggested.

‘Apologies,’ Gross said, now turning to his wine with his usual gusto. ‘Well,’ he wiped at his moustache with the knuckle of his forefinger. ‘Sokol and I had a fine chat. He quizzed me about my recent cases — he has been following our successes, Werthen.’

‘Penned so eloquently in your journal, Archive for Criminology,’ Berthe added with no little sarcasm.

‘Yes, quite. But I should get to the point,’ said Gross, puffing his chest. ‘Which is that when I informed Sokol of our recent case involving the deaths of the two young women, he looked profoundly shocked. “The same thing has been happening here!” he exclaimed. Those were his very words.’

‘The murder of young prostitutes?’ Werthen said, unwrapping his long legs, which he had managed to entwine to stop his right leg from twitching.

Gross smiled. ‘That’s what I thought, too. However, Sokol was referring not to the gender or profession of the victim, but to the severing of the little finger of the left hand.’

He sat back in his chair, a look of satisfaction on his face at the reaction he had provoked in both Werthen and Berthe.

He waited another half minute before plunging on. ‘The victim was a low-level officer in the Foreign Ministry. Suspicion fell on one Herr Maarkovsky, a Polish importer of vodka with whom the officer had lately been seen. Maarkovsky, of course, was nowhere to be found for questioning; nor, upon further investigation, was his supposed employer aware of his existence.’

‘An assumed identity,’ Werthen said in almost a whisper.

Gross nodded.

‘I became curious,’ Gross said. ‘Similar modus operandi in crimes in Vienna and Prague. Could there be others as well?’

He leaned back in his chair, looking as if he was once more about to smile, but Berthe’s voice brought him up short.

‘No Cheshire-cat poses, Gross. What did you learn?’ she demanded. Werthen noticed that tonight she had drunk rather more than her usual amount of wine.

‘Werthen, you must cease feeding your lady wife red meat,’ he said with a smile. ‘It brings out aggression in her. To answer your question briefly, I have discovered three other similar cases. One in Berlin, one in Warsaw, and one in Zurich. Our friend Monsieur Auberty, investigating magistrate of the Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciaire in Geneva, was most helpful in this regard.’

Werthen knew exactly who Gross referred to: they had made use of Auberty’s services in their first case together, looking into the Luccheni assassination of Empress Elisabeth.

‘It seems Auberty is becoming something of a clearing-house for criminal proceedings throughout Europe. Quite informally as of now, but I can foresee the day when countries around the world will band together in some sort of official international policing arrangement to combat crime. Auberty has made the acquaintance of police officers throughout Europe at one conference or another. He is what the British might term a clubbable sort. He has a mind that works like a filing cabinet and he is a relentless correspondent. It was he who put me on to the other three murders involving severed little fingers.

‘Five cases, then,’ Werthen said.

‘That we know of,’ Gross added.

‘Are there suspects in the others?’ Berthe asked.

‘Yes, suspects aplenty.’ From the inside breast pocket of his jacket, Gross dug out the small leather notebook he always carried with him, opened it to the page that was marked by a faded crimson ribbon, and began reading. ‘In Berlin, there was a certain Herr Erlanger, a Hungarian rail engineer who was the prime suspect; in Warsaw, it was a Herr de Koenig, the agent of a Dutch mining concern; in Zurich it was Axel Wouters, a Belgian rubber merchant. As with the mysterious Herr Maarkovsky, the person in each incident simply disappeared; and so did his professional connections, along with him. In short, no such person existed.’

‘What about the victims?’ Werthen said.

‘Yes. That is the other important piece in the puzzle. In each case, the victim was involved in one way or another with government security or information agencies: either low-level clerks or external suppliers, and in one case even a high-ranking officer of a counter-espionage unit.’

Werthen was out of his chair now. ‘Then what I have to show you may be more important than I originally thought.’

Werthen fetched the second letter from Fräulein Mitzi and its translation by Frau von Suttner from the study and placed the two pieces of paper side by side in front of Gross.

The criminalist’s attention went immediately to the underlined parts of the translation.

‘Patriotic work, she says. Hyperbole?’ Gross remarked as he read.

‘This is one of a series of letters sent to her parents, of course,’ Werthen allowed. ‘In another she made much of the literary tutelage she was supposedly receiving from Schnitzler. So, yes, it could be mere braggadocio, but-’

‘But. .?’

‘This fits our earlier theories rather too neatly to disregard. It would be just like the girl to describe her spying on the Foreign Ministry as patriotic work.’

Gross made a murmuring sound. ‘And what is this other bit here?’

All three looked to where Gross was pointing with his forefinger:

‘The well-tended Copse says I am a clever girl!’

‘Yes,’ Werthen said. ‘That caught my attention as well.’

‘Her controller?’ Berthe offered.

Werthen nodded. ‘That was my first thought. Or perhaps her nickname for someone at the Bower. In fact I have written to Frau von Suttner to make sure about the translation, but she has yet to respond.’

‘Do they have no telephones on her estate?’ Gross said, suddenly impatient.

‘In fact they don’t,’ Berthe said, remembering Frau von Suttner’s earlier discussion about their economic state.

Gross sighed.

‘So,’ he muttered, ‘here we sit mired in the nineteenth century while the rest of Europe buzzes along in the twentieth.’

‘Central Europe,’ Berthe reminded him.

‘Contrition’, that’s what the painting would be called. It would take a master of the homely emotive detail such as Ferdinand Waldmüller to depict the filtered morning light through the breakfast-room window picking up the wisps of steam rising from the cups of coffee; the glint of light off white porcelain and polished silver; the down-turned eyes of the woman; the set of jaw and pout of lips.

However, to capture the nervous tap of fingernails on damask table cloth it would take one of the Lumière’s moving-picture cameras.

‘Was I too hard on him?’ Berthe finally said. Still dressed in her blue robe and slippers, her hair done up in a bun, she ceased her finger-tapping exercise and tended to Frieda, who was busy spreading oatmeal on the surface of the wooden tray of her high chair.

‘Gross needs a nudging like that from time to time,’ Werthen said. ‘Makes him remember where the boundaries of the classroom lie.’

‘That’s right, darling.’ Berthe helped the child spoon the food back into her bowl.

She turned back to Werthen. ‘It really is not like me. I mean, I might think such remarks, but I usually am able to control myself.’

‘Not to worry.’ He reached a hand to her shoulder, feeling the pull of desire at the warmth coming through her silk robe. Perhaps it had been the wine, but that was hard luck for Gross. Berthe’s overindulgence had led to an amorous night for Werthen and his wife. Berthe’s abandon in bed had been quite different from her abandonment of social graces with the criminologist. And Werthen was not complaining.

The jingling of the phone in the hall made him put such thoughts aside.

‘Werthen.’ Frieda shrieked and then broke into uncontrollable giggles. It was her name for the telephone, as that was the way Werthen answered calls, even at home, giving his surname when he picked up the receiver. Silly habit, he suddenly thought; the person making the call should know who is on the other end of the line. Shouldn’t it be up to the caller to identify himself or herself first?

But the second round of jingling sent him out of his chair to intercept Frau Blatschky before she felt compelled to answer the ‘infernal contraption,’ as she still insisted on calling the telephone.

He was just in time to wave her off as she peeked out of the kitchen.

‘Werthen,’ he said, the receiver to his ear. There was an echoing sound to his voice as he spoke.

‘Drechsler here. I might have something for you.’

‘That is rather cryptic, Inspector.’

There was an awkward pause, as if Drechsler was unsure if it was his turn to speak or not. Then, ‘Cryptic or not, would you care to come to my office this morning? I do not believe your time would be wasted. And Gross will surely find some interest in it.’

The connection went dead. Werthen held the receiver at arm’s length, shaking his head at the instrument. Efficient, but an advancement in civilization?