Sydney Jones - The Keeper of Hands

Mitzi had to have a history, but according to both Fanny and Frau Mutzenbacher the girl was a blank slate as far as her past was concerned. According to them, Mitzi never offered the least piece of information about her parents, where she came of age, any of it.

On the other side of the wardrobe hung what was presumably Mitzi’s off-duty clothing: an assortment of risqué low-slung evening wear mixed with domestic dresses in black and gray of the distinctly conservative nature a housekeeper might possess. It was as if Mitzi were herself cleaved into two separate lives. Hats, some with feathers, some with veils, lay on the top shelf of the wardrobe. Werthen stood on tiptoe to make sure there was nothing else of interest on the shelf. In the end he had to fetch the one wooden chair in the room to examine the top of the wardrobe, but his efforts were rewarded with a thin layer of dust and nothing more. There were very few areas in this Spartan room that would function as hiding places had Mitzi been keeping a diary or anything else of a personal nature. Werthen examined the back of the wardrobe as well, but found nothing.

He was about to give up when he noticed that there was a space under the wardrobe, as it stood on four rounded feet. Crouching, he was rewarded with a bit of dust, nothing more. Yet something was amiss here. It took him a moment to see what it was. The front of the wardrobe stood on two feet, one at each corner. However, at the back there appeared to be three. On more careful inspection he saw that the one in the middle was not rounded like the others, but was in fact more rectangular and was not made of wood. In fact, once he maneuvered the wardrobe out from the wall, he could see that this object was covered in dark oilcloth. It was wedged rather tightly under the rear frame of the clothes-press, and when he finally retrieved it and began unwrapping the cloth he discovered a Bible.

Not the sort of thing one expects to find in the room of a prostitute.

He opened the flyleaf and found nothing. If it had been a family Bible, then it might have provided a lead to Mitzi’s true identity. This Bible was an 1860 edition; nothing to learn from it.

Inspecting the book, he noticed a bit of paper sticking out of one of the pages. He opened the Bible at this page — the Old Testament, Joshua: 2 — and found a beige envelope with no address. He opened it and discovered what appeared to be a brief letter, with the date 12.4.1901 written at the top. But beyond that, he could not read a word. It was in some foreign language he could not make out at all. He scanned the letter again, looking for anything familiar, and found the phrase ‘ Nök Hieronymus ’ repeated a couple of times.

Hieronymus. A name that he could make out, yet one hardly in use in the modern world.

There was what also appeared to be a salutation: ‘ Löfik Mot amp; Fat .’ Mother and father?

Some of the words seemed to have a Latin base to them; others to be Germanic or even English in origin. He could make nothing of this note other than that it appeared to break off in mid-sentence.

Perhaps it was at this point that Fanny interrupted her room-mate and Mitzi never had the chance to complete the note. He folded it and put it back in the envelope, and then returned the envelope to its original place in the Bible.

‘What have you got there?’

It was Siegfried, standing at the door.

‘Looks like a Bible.’

‘It is,’ Werthen said. ‘I don’t remember calling for you.’

‘The Madam says you are to stop and see her before leaving. Something about a retaining fee.’ He nodded at the Bible. ‘Doesn’t surprise me she had one of those hidden some place. She wasn’t what she seemed, our little Mitzi.’

‘What was she like?’ Werthen asked, suddenly realizing that he had been antagonizing a possible source of information.

Siegfried’s eyes squinted at the question.

‘The more I know about her the more it aids the investigation,’ Werthen said, trying to reassure the lanky man.

‘They’re just whores to you.’

‘Not if you tell me otherwise.’

The squint slowly relaxed. ‘What’s in it for you?’

‘It’s my job. I like to do it well.’

Siegfried drew closer. ‘She wasn’t a whore. Not up here.’ He tapped a dart-like forefinger against his temple.

‘Where did she come from?’

‘Christ knows. Fanny picked her up off the street. The Madam took a shine to her right away. We all did. She wasn’t like the others. She cared about people. Really cared.’

Werthen could see emotion cross the tall man’s face like the shadow of a fast-moving cloud in the Alps.

‘Were you a personal friend?’

Siegfried crossed his arms over his chest, scowling at the question. ‘See what I mean? They’re all whores to you.’

‘I meant a friend, not a lover.’

A jaw muscle twitched. Siegfried rubbed his nose between thumb and forefinger. ‘I guess you could call us that. We talked.’

‘About religion?’

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, no! I gave up fairy tales when I was a kid growing up in Ottakring.’

‘About what then?’

He cast his face downward. Snorted through his nose.

‘It’s in the strictest confidence,’ Werthen said.

‘Food, that’s what we talked about,’ Siegfried said, raising his face and looking defiant. ‘I always wanted to be a cook, but never had the chance. Too busy surviving day to day. So here I get to finally do it. I make the coffee in the morning, fetch the fresh rolls from the bakery down the street, and do a sit-down lunch for the whole house. And not some bit of boiled sausage and cabbage, neither. Proper food from a cookbook. Mitzi, she appreciated the meals. Told me so, told me they reminded her of her mother’s home cooking.’

‘Did she talk about her mother, her parents?’

He shook his head. ‘No, just that once. Then she shut up about them. I got the feeling she wouldn’t want them to know what she was up to here.’

‘When you came in, you said it didn’t surprise you that Mitzi had a Bible. Why?’

‘Well, she just seemed that kind of girl. You know? Proper.’

It seemed to be Siegfried’s favorite word; a strange choice for the major-domo of one of Vienna’s most famous bordellos.

‘Do you have any idea who would want to kill Mitzi?’

Siegfried bit his lower lip, shaking his head. But his eyes squinted in suspicion.

Frau Mutzenbacher received him once again in her sitting room. Now, the curtains were drawn open and dusty daylight poured in. She was still ensconced in her chair. She nodded at a slip of paper on a side table near her. Werthen picked it up; it was a cheque for one thousand kronen drawn on the Austrian Länderbank.

‘Sufficient, I assume, to begin?’ she said.

He nodded, placing the cheque in the inside pocket of his jacket. It was more than some laborers made in a year. The Bower was obviously doing well for itself.

‘Did my brother fill you in on the doings of our little establishment?’

He was confused for a moment. ‘You mean Siegfried?’

‘Yes. Always was a chatty little monger, Siggy. Could talk the teeth out of a hen. Looks like you found something.’

She nodded at the Bible he was carrying.

‘It was hidden under the wardrobe. I checked just now with Fanny and she said it does not belong to her.’

She was silent for a time, then let out a sigh.

‘I didn’t know Mitzi was religious.’

‘Did she speak another language?’

‘I don’t think so. Why do you ask?’

‘No reason,’ he said, deciding not to mention the note he discovered in the Bible until he could get it translated.

Only now, with the daylight coming into the room, did Werthen notice some photographs on the side table near her. One, in a silver frame, showed a young girl with eager, innocent features, holding a stuffed bunny. Another, framed in black lacquered wood, appeared to be a photo taken at a graveside with various mourners. The photographer caught Frau Mutzenbacher just releasing a handful of blossoms on to an ornate coffin still suspended over an empty grave.