Sydney Jones - The Keeper of Hands

‘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.

But where would the young woman have kept it? The room afforded a distinct lack of privacy, furnished as it was by two metal-framed beds, the deal table, one straight-backed chair, and a pair of wardrobes along one wall. According to Frau Mutzenbacher, all of Mitzi’s things had been left untouched in her wardrobe.

Werthen opened the curtains on the room’s one window in a vain attempt to allow in more light, for the glass was hard upon the building next door. A bit of dull daylight came into the room. Instead, he turned up the lamp on the table, and then went to the wardrobe across from the foot of Mitzi’s bed. Here he found the tools of her trade: several blue schoolgirl uniforms with high starched white collars hung on the left side of the wardrobe, with embroidered crests on the left chest to enhance the fantasy for aged voyeurs. Suddenly the awful truth of Mitzi’s life and death struck Werthen. No longer was this a second-hand death. The pitiful reality of these school uniforms touched him in a way an autopsy report could not. He was surprised to find his eyes misting as his thoughts went to his own daughter, Frieda. How did a young woman come to this?