The Keeper of Hands (10 page)

‘I sense a straying husband,’ Gross said playfully.

‘That seems to be the case. It was most difficult for her to talk of it. She is a proud woman.’

‘I hope you politely told her we do not do domestic cases,’ Werthen said.

Berthe remained silent.

‘Berthe?’ he said. ‘You did tell her we couldn’t take her commission?’

‘Well . . .’

‘Ah, you may soon want to add another line to your professional card, Werthen – divorce lawyer.’

‘Please, Gross. You are being rather too full of yourself tonight.’

‘With good reason,’ Gross said. ‘I have discovered the identity of the mystery man in the sketch.’

Berthe and Werthen both said at once, ‘You have?’

‘Not a matter of great detection,’ he said. ‘Inspector Drechsler recognized him immediately. In fact I actually met the man myself once – which is why I thought he looked familiar.’

‘Well, don’t keep us in suspense,’ Berthe said.

‘Count Joachim von Ebersdorf. Seems he died just a few days after our Fräulein Mitzi. Bad oysters.’

‘Yes,’ Werthen said. ‘I remember reading about it in the papers. ‘So he was the customer. Wasn’t he something in the government?’

‘Foreign Office,’ Gross said. ‘But the details of his employment there seem to be rather sketchy.’

‘
That
kind of sketchy, you mean?’ Werthen said.

‘It appears so.’

‘Wait. You two are talking in riddles,’ Berthe said. ‘What do you mean by sketchy?’

‘As in indefinite, unclear, unspecified.’

‘I know what the word means, Gross.’

‘Espionage,’ Werthen said. ‘If one’s title at the Foreign Office is not entirely clear, then it’s safe to assume one is involved in espionage. After all, the Foreign Office is our major information-gathering agency.’

‘I thought that the General Staff had such a role,’ Berthe said.

‘In fact they do,’ Werthen told her, ‘but it is something of a newcomer. One hears of competition between the two. Frankly, I find the concept of military intelligence to have internal semantic contradictions.’

Gross remained silent through this, smiling to himself like a satisfied cat.

‘You think there is a connection between von Ebersdorf’s death and Mitzi’s?’ Werthen finally said to him.

Gross folded his hands over his paunch. ‘Possibly. I have never been one to subscribe to the powers of mere serendipity.’

‘First the biblical reference to spies,’ said Werthen. ‘In
Joshua: 2
. And now Mitzi’s foremost customer turns out to be involved in espionage. Do you actually think Fräulein Mitzi—’

‘We should not speculate at this point,’ Gross said. ‘It is, however, a possible avenue of investigation.’

‘And what does Drechsler think now that he’s seen the sketch?’

Gross imparted to them what the Inspector had told him that afternoon.

‘Meindl again,’ Werthen sighed. ‘The man is insuperable.’

‘But it does make how we should proceed with our investigation clear,’ Gross said.

The three of them sat in silence for a moment, considering this information.

Gross suddenly said, ‘But do excuse me, Frau Berthe. I interrupted you.’

Werthen also refocused. ‘Yes, Berthe. I really hope you did not accept Frau von Suttner’s case.’

‘I did accept. And you will not have to be involved. It is all settled. Frau von Suttner merely wishes to see where her husband goes and what he gets up to when he comes to Vienna with his niece.’

‘She suspects his niece?’ Werthen said.

‘I thought you were not interested in domestic cases? But yes, she does. So I and Fräulein Metzinger will take turns following the pair when they come to Vienna.’

‘But Fräulein Metzinger is needed in the law office,’ Werthen said to his wife. ‘And you have a child to care for.’

‘Don’t worry, Karl. I talked with Erika – Fräulein Metzinger – on the phone this afternoon and she thought it was a wonderful idea. You know how efficient she is; and it is only once or twice a week, I assure you. It is something I very much want to do.’

He could see it in her face: she was committed to this.

‘Of course, then, if you feel that way. But I do not want you putting yourself in harm’s way.’

‘Karl, it is a domestic case. Frau von Suttner’s husband is a baron. I think the danger factor is rather low.’

Such a comment was like wishing for bad luck, but none of them said anything.

‘Besides, we can hardly turn her down now,’ Berthe added. ‘Frau von Suttner has helped solve the mystery of our missing language.’

‘You don’t say!’ said Werthen, who – having copied the note out longhand for fear of losing the original – had spent the better part of the day at the Hofbibliothek fruitlessly looking for linguistic sources to match the original. Esperanto had been a complete wash-out, as had Solresol, an artificial language developed about seventy years earlier.

‘Yes. You know Frau von Suttner travels in international circles, promoting peace and a sense of a shared destiny on this planet.’

‘Watch out, Werthen,’ Gross intoned. ‘I fear you may have a convert on your hands.’

It was Berthe’s turn to smile knowingly now. ‘If I may continue,’ she said. ‘Such international languages are integral to world peace. No more need for the tower of Babel to separate humankind.’

‘Perhaps we can dispense with the propaganda,’ Gross said.

‘The long and short of it is that I mentioned the note to Frau von Suttner and she examined it briefly.’ She paused dramatically just to annoy Gross.

‘And?’ Werthen said.

‘Volapük,’ Berthe replied.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Gross said.

Werthen thought the word sounded familiar.

‘Volapük. It is a language developed by a Catholic priest in Germany.’

‘Schleyer,’ Gross said, snapping his fingers. ‘Yes, that makes sense.’

‘Johann Martin Schleyer, to be exact,’ Berthe said.

‘The man thought that God spoke to him in a dream and gave him the idea of the language.’ Gross looked well pleased with himself.

‘It was the first widely accepted universal language, according to Frau von Suttner. Its name actually means “world speak”, or “world language”. Frau von Suttner studied the language for several years, and went to the 1889 Volapük convention in Paris. The entire proceedings were conducted in that language. But the movement fell apart thereafter.’

‘Too damned complicated,’ Gross announced. ‘Thousands of declensions and inflections and verb forms, which make Latin seem like child’s play.’

‘Yes,’ Berthe said, ‘but the basic vocabulary is quite simple, as Frau von Suttner demonstrated. I think she was happy to concentrate on something other than her domestic problem.’

She produced the note from Mitzi’s Bible. ‘If, as we assumed last night, this is a letter, then the first line,
Löfik
Mot & Fat
, should be a salutation.’

The others agreed and Berthe, referring to another sheet she was not as yet sharing with them, said, ‘It translates as “Dear Mother and Father”.’

‘Excellent,’ Gross said. ‘Is that the complete translation?’ He nodded at the other sheet.

Berthe ignored this and went on for a time, taking them through the steps Baroness von Suttner had followed in making her translation. The phrase
Nök Hieronymus
, which appeared twice in the letter, became Uncle Hieronymus. And then, Berthe explained, they were also able to trace place names. First came the name of a village,
Bukbel
.

‘As Frau von Suttner explained, Volapük is an agglutinative language, building new words by joining smaller ones together. Thus, “
buk
” is “book” and “
bel
” is “mountain”. So
Bukbel
translates as Buchberg.’

‘But there are hundreds of villages in the empire named Buchberg,’ Werthen said.

‘Yes,’ Berthe said. ‘But the very next line reduces the possibilities.’ She pointed at the word
Vinfoldil
.

‘That translates as the Weinviertel,’ she said with a smile.

‘Buchberg in the Weinviertel. Sounds a lovely place for a visit, Werthen,’ Gross said. ‘Sample the lovely white wines of the region.’

‘Let’s see the complete translation,’ said Werthen, finally losing patience with the game.

Berthe placed it on the table in front of them and they read it together:

Dear Mother and Father,

It has been too long since I last wrote, but I am very busy in Vienna, as you can imagine. Uncle Hieronymus has a busy household and I must attend to many duties. If I wrote my daily schedule for you, Father, you would laugh and no longer call me the seagull, the bird who just comes for the food and then leaves. Uncle Hieronymus says that young people should have a busy life to keep them out of trouble.

I hope to make it home to Buchberg for a visit soon. The Weinviertel must be lovely at this time of year. But as I say, things are very hectic for me here . . .

And that was where the letter broke off.

‘No family name,’ Berthe said, disappointed.

‘But how large could the village be? And how many of its families have a daughter in service in Vienna?’

‘You’re right, Werthen. A brief chat with the local postmaster or the
wirt
at the village gasthaus should do the trick. Everyone knows everyone else’s business in such a place, I am sure.’

Berthe looked at the letter again. ‘Makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it.’

‘About Uncle Hieronymus?’ Werthen said.

‘Mitzi had obviously left the man’s home months before she wrote this letter, but she could brazen out the lie to her parents of still living there instead of at a bordello.’

‘Which means Uncle Hieronymus did not alert the parents of her departure,’ Gross said. ‘One assumes that he actually was an uncle, and it was not simply a term of affection. If so, why would he not write to the parents and tell them?’

‘I intend to find that out tomorrow,’ Werthen said. ‘When I take the train to Buchberg.’

T
he next morning the Nordbahn was slower than usual. It followed the course of the Danube for a time, through Klosterneuburg and past the castle of Greifenstein. Just beyond that castle lay the village of Altenberg an der Donau. It was from this place that the writer Peter Altenberg had taken his pen name. The story, well-known in literary circles, was indicative of Altenberg’s proclivities and sentimentality.

A school friend – son of the publisher of the
Neue Freie Presse
at the time (an edition of which Werthen had purchased at the station before departure) – had invited the young Richard Engländer to the family home in Altenberg during the summer break. The family had three sons and four daughters. The girls were all younger than the boys and suffered the nicknames their brothers saddled them with. The youngest of these girls – an adolescent with thick auburn braids – was jokingly called Peter. Altenberg’s sympathies were with the young girls, whom the older brothers treated like servants, expecting them to fetch their shoes and bring them food.

Thus was born Peter Altenberg.

Although the train rumbled slowly through the countryside, Werthen was comfortable enough, ensconced in a first-class compartment that he did not need to share. The commission he had received from Frau Mutzenbacher was handsome enough for him to afford the little luxury of first class. He turned his attention to his newspaper and discovered he had been cheated by the vendor at the train station. This was yesterday’s edition. No matter. He avoided the news articles and instead read a feuilleton by the Hungarian-born playwright and critic Rudolf Lothar entitled
From India to the Planet Mars
. This piqued Werthen’s interest, as it was the title of a book by the Swiss professor Flournoy recounting, and mildly debunking, the claims of the French-speaking Swiss psychic Hélène Smith. She held that in séance she was able to communicate with Martians and, using the process of automatic writing, had written out bits of hieroglyphic-like Martian language which she later translated into French. Mademoiselle Smith – born Catherine-Elise Muller – further claimed she was able to communicate with Victor Hugo and averred that she was the reincarnation of a Hindu princess and also of Marie Antoinette. Flournoy’s book, published the year before, was a huge success and had stirred interest in the occult around the world.

Without ever stooping to mockery, Lothar managed a searing indictment of such paranormal fluff, making the French psychic appear a well-meaning spiritual naïf. Reading the lengthy feuilleton took Werthen all the way to Tulln, where the train crossed the Danube, heading directly north into the Weinviertel.

Now they were passing into a region of gently rolling hills, with strips of vineyard laid out like a chessboard. As the name suggested, it was a wine region, and the vines were in full leaf now, glistening green under a high spring sun. Hollabrunn was the next large stop, and Werthen found himself growing hungry; breakfast of coffee and a
Kipferl
was not sufficiently sustaining. He treated himself to the guilty pleasure of a wurst
Semmel
, purchased from a vendor on the platform at Hollabrunn.

The train jerked out of the station and in another half hour had reached the small town of Haugsdorf. Werthen gathered his paper and briefcase from the overhead rack and descended to the deserted platform. The smell of the country struck him at once, a mix of damp earth and manure. He inquired with the stationmaster – a tall rail of a man with a continual snuffle – about finding transport to take him the several kilometers to the village of Buchberg. The man stared open-mouthed at Werthen, as if not hearing him, and sniffed several times.

‘A cart, a trap, perhaps a fiaker?’ Werthen repeated.

‘You must be from Tulln,’ the stationmaster finally said, in an accent that sounded as if it might have come from the Mars of Hélène Smith.

‘From Vienna, actually,’ Werthen said and instantly regretted it.

His interlocutor squinted at him, for Werthen was now a frightening and potentially dangerous emissary from the cosmopolitan capital.

‘That explains it then,’ the man said. ‘You know, people work around here. We’ve got no time for such things.’