He met Fräulein Fanny in the parlor, and not in the company of Frau Mutzenbacher. He wanted candor from this young woman.
Fanny looked amused rather than concerned; her chalk-white face was still puffy from sleep, her black hair untidy but partially hidden under a shawl wrapped dramatically around her head. She held a cup of morning tea daintily between forefinger and thumb as if trained to do so.
‘Frau Mutzenbacher tells me that you and Mitzi were fast friends,’ he said, as the major-domo – still in his suspenders – left the room after delivering the young woman.
‘Well, aren’t we all working girls together?’
‘Did you know her well?’
‘I found her. If that means I knew her well, then yes.’
‘Found her?’
She nodded, giving a chirrup of laughter.
‘I saw her working the corner near the Naschmarkt. Bright-looking little pigeon she was, as I told Frau Mutzenbacher. She’d be tarnished soon enough working that corner, though. Obviously not very experienced in the trade.’
‘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?
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 & 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.
She saw his glance. ‘That was her.’ She picked up the silver frame. ‘Had an outing at the Wurstelprater, we did. Played all the silly games and even went on the Ferris wheel. She won that bunny at the ring toss. Slept with it every night, just like a child.’
She took a handkerchief out of her sleeve and brushed dust from the glass, replacing the photo on the table.
‘And that is from the funeral?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘Gave her the best farewell I could. She would have liked that.’
‘May I?’ he asked. She handed him the funeral photograph. Werthen looked closely at the graveyard scene, at each of the mourners in turn.
‘You recognize somebody there?’ she asked.
‘Perhaps.’
‘You’re a close one, especially as I’m paying.’
‘You will receive regular reports from me,’ he said handing her the photograph.
She placed it carefully back in the same position on the side table.
‘Mitzi’s body was found on May Day,’ he said. ‘Which means she must have been . . .’ He hesitated for a moment, not knowing how strong Frau Mutzenbacher was, despite her crusty façade.
‘Murdered,’ she said. ‘Say it, man. Damn it all, say the word.’
‘She must have been murdered the night before. What was she doing out that evening? Was it her day off? Did she have an appointment?’
‘That is a mystery to me. The first I knew she was gone was when Siegfried told me she had missed an appointment with a valued customer.’
‘Did she have regular days off?’
‘I don’t run a prison, Advokat. My girls are free to come and go as they like, in their time.’
‘And April 30 was not Mitzi’s day off?’
She shook her head. ‘Never missed a shift before that day. Always working, even if she felt sick. Her days off came close together every month. Same as for all my girls.’
It took Werthen a moment to register this. Of course. No work when the girls were menstruating.
‘I see,’ he said.
‘You find him, Advokat. Find the man who killed my Mitzi.’
Her voice broke on the girl’s name.
‘Now please leave.’