Lich is a little known village in the snowy mountains of Bavaria, it doesn't have a lederhosen shop, nor a brewery, but it is imperfect in many other respects too. As in most such towns [maybe, Lich is more a town than a village, despite not being quite big enough, it lacks the charm you expect of a village, so].
There is a locksmith, with a large workshop on the high-street, and a comfortable residence in one of the less plebeian parts of town, indicating some skill in extraction from sensible Bavarians. Bavarians who aren't even liberal enough with their wallets to support a lederhosen shop, and don't mind paying for beer that's travelled some distance over poorly maintained country roads.
Herr Hermitte, the locksmith, a married man, despite his surname. might have complained, in fact did complain, of the weekend, late night and holiday call-outs, but even as he complained, he was aware of the specific pressure that being unable to enter your house, when your bladder is full, exerts on your proclivity to be munificent towards essential workers, as Herr Hermitte would certainly not have regarded himself.
This story does not directly concern the locksmith of Lich, but, rather, the strange mental disturbance which afflicted Fräu Felimann, a comfortably off widow of generally sunny and incurious dispositions. Or, rather, to be fair, though you'll know soon enough, what Katja revealed, inadvertently of the town's security.
Katja needed to get a chair from her garden shed, what, unromantically, being unsheddy people, Bavarians call a 'Gartenhaus', because her sister was due to visit. When she tried to open the shed door, she found the key bent, took it to the locksmith, had it repaired and started to return home, somewhat, only somewhat, peeved at what seemed the enormous cost of such a simple job. She was generous at heart, and thought that locksmiths needed to eat, though Herr Hermitte's portly presence made it clear his need was not quite as great as that of the skinny sexton, she saw digging a grave for poor Herr Henkle who'd had an unfortunate accident with his hedge trimmer the previous Sunday.
What the road to Damascus was, when Saul, soon to achieve fame, a yen for travel, a new name, and, eventually, sainthood, was like, at the time of his coming-out as not the full denarius, at least in the view of his erstwhile Roman Centurions companions, we don't know.
That road was probably dustier and hotter than Fräu Felimann's road home, but it's the road that does the metamorphosis, isn't it? Certainly something in Fräu Felimann's brain changed, because, just after passing the dour Calvinist church - not a single plaster saint, or bleeding heart lavishly rendered with no concern for anatomical accuracy, to relieve the boredom of a sermon.
She was about to pass Herr Dourbermann's large establishment, with the door to his wine cellar visible from the road, when what, in modern, vulgarism, might be labelled a 'brain fart' [a most unlikely phrase, brains lacking digestive systems and sphincters] occurred, by reason, as we've established, of being on-the-road.
The Constabulary of Lich were unaware how fortunate they were to have had no burglaries, no robberies, in fact no thefts of any sort at all, for several decades. They were sufficiently employed by the aftermath of the local Oktoberfest, incidents of respectable citizens being spotted by matrons in conditions of undress, usually, as it turned out, a result of sudden infestations of ants (usually found to have moved on when the constable appeared) in the lederhosen, and, naturally, the occasional murder.
Local detective lore put the local lack of larceny down to the deeply embedded honesty of the German psyche, and the security of the brass locks fitted by the local locksmith.
Fräu Felimann was as honest as any other citizen, more so, possibly, because she'd mentioned to her sister that the chair she was retrieving from her Gartenhaus might be too frail for the sororal seat. Since then, her sister, when the visit came up in 'phone conversations, had taken to mentioning various important appointments that might endanger the visit.
This day, though, the synapse storm, caused Fräu Felimann to look from the cellar door to her newly repaired key, and think how similar the lock looked to her own. This novel neuronal nexus [or nexi, if it needed more than just the one to achieve the mental metamorphosis] then impelled her to the door, where she tried the key.
She was so surprised when it worked. She stumbled into the dim interior, with its dusty bottles. The shock of the cold, musty air, the sudden loss of the sunshine, and the feeling of being an intruder, must have reset Katja's momentary lapse. Her brain backup systems surged into action, impelling her to leave, closing the door afterwards. She went home, deeply shaken, to find not only that the key opened the door to her shed, but also her front door, back door, and the door to her pantry. The lock to the pantry had been fitted during a previous sibling visit, when jars of specially baked plätzchen had emptied, and a leftover leg of lamb shrunk to naked bone, overnight.
She was shocked to find herself with a magic skeleton key, and returned to Herr Hermitte the next morning to complain. Outside the locksmith, for it was still closed and half-past eight, no doubt a late night call out would be the excuse, Fräu Felimann bumped into her old friend from school, who lived the other side of the village, and told her the story. As a result, they compared keys - only to find they were identical. They tried opening the door of the locksmith's shop, and gained entry immediately, alarming Herr Hermitte who'd been practicing his Tai Chi in his underpants, a secret vice he'd picked up from following too many on-line advertisements, and being hugely impressed by the rippling torsos the adherents all seemed to have, along with, no doubt, a skin condition that made the wearing of shirts uncomfortable.
After a very polite, but ruthlessly thorough interrogation, the two of them, persuaded Herr Hermitte to confess the full extent of the dastardly fraud he, and his father, grandfather, and, possibly great-grandfather, had been perpetuating on the townspeople. There was only one lock in every door in town, all keys fitted all locks - there was no need for a special skeleton key, because every key was haunted with free access everywhere.
It was only the general lack of curiosity, avarice, and a strong disdain for whatever their neighbours had bought to reveal their terrible lack of aesthetic taste, that had kept the town safe. Nobody had bothered to look closely at the keys, nobody had, before Fräu Felimann's road home moment, tried a key in the wrong door, or, if they had, hadn't noticed.
Eventually, Herr Hermitte managed to persuade the two women that taking him to the police, or writing to the local newspaper, to expose his wicked exploitation, trickery and, indeed, threat to the security of every single person in town, would be counter-productive. After all, theft was not a problem, if nobody knew, the situation could continue.
When Fräu Felimann's sister did, eventually visit, she was surprised to find not the rickety rattan heirloom, but a new, plush, drawing-room suite, and, incidentally, a new oaken dining room table. When she quizzed Katja, she was extremely, uncharacteristically, vague, mentioning 'Road revelations', 'Pauline experience', 'unlocking unexpected gifts' and 'the key to life being obvious to everyone, if only they looked'.
