The Crooked Maid (21 page)

At long last the crime scene had been documented and a hearse ordered to transport the body to the morgue. In anticipation of its arrival they carried the body up from the cellar on a stretcher that one of the sergeants had been thoughtful enough to bring along. Soon enough they had laid the dead man out on the pavement, but the hearse was slow to show. The crowd gathered, pressing in on the policemen and the corpse. Frisch suggested they cover its face, but there was no sheet or towel to be found and nobody wanted to stain their coat. So they stood around the corpse with its livid face, trying to shield it with their bodies, while the afternoon sun burned down on them. The spectators stood in a ring, murmuring, sniffing the air for the whiff of decay. There were about twenty of them now, men, women, children, craning their necks for a look. From the back row Frisch heard a voice declaim distinctly, if quietly, “He looks like a Jew.” And though he could find no one who would admit to starting the rumour, it soon got around that a Jew had been found killed, or rather “butchered” with a knife or an axe. The rumour spread not only among the crowd (and where did they come from, these crowds, in the middle of the working day?), but also—once the hearse had finally arrived and they had heaved the body onto the rubber sheet inside—at the police station and morgue, so that the pathologist later greeted Frisch with a wink and a sly whisper that “he’s looking mighty ripe, your Jew.”

It was late afternoon by then, and Frisch was sitting slumped forward on a stool in the morgue’s examination room, fighting the smell with a series of cigarettes. There was one other body in the room, already examined and tagged, and covered with a fresh white linen sheet. Frisch watched the pathologist, a Dr. Kranz, perform the external examination, then excused himself when he started on the more invasive procedures. An hour later, having stretched his legs and eaten some food, he returned to the morgue and waited for Kranz outside his office, pacing the corridor
with short, even steps. The doctor approached at last, still drying his hands on the hem of his lab coat, and curtly invited him inside. They sat down across from each other and waited for the secretary to come and pour out their coffee. The pathologist bridged the wait by filling out some paperwork, rushing his pen across a pre-typed form and setting down his signature with considerable satisfaction.

This Dr. Kranz was an interesting fellow. Tall, handsome, and sporting a perpetual tan, he was also a notorious sloven whose office was filled with stacks of papers, slides, and all manners of junk, to the point that there was very little empty floor space. His lab coat and suit showed signs of a habitual and almost affected neglect, and it was not uncommon to find stains on his shirt or a tear in his cuff. When somebody commented on his rather disreputable appearance, Kranz would answer him only with a knowing wink. Indeed there was a terrible slyness to everything he said or did, as though he were hinting at some secret level of irony pertaining to all his actions and expecting his interlocutor to share in the joke. At the same time he spoke very formally and precisely, if with a broad Carinthian inflection, which itself had the effect of undermining his words, or rather of lending to them an air of mockery: it sounded as though a country bumpkin had somehow stumbled on a medical paper and was now reading it with great seriousness and gravity. His political past, Frisch knew, was similarly ambiguous. Though a member of the SS medical corps from ’42, Kranz had nonetheless been denazified and reinstated in his job with a minimum of fuss—a matter, however, to which he never made reference. Even though he was known to be married, Josef Kranz wore no ring and never so much as mentioned his wife.

The coffee came, was made from real beans. Frisch took a sip, held it in his mouth until it was cool enough to swallow.

“It was a homicide then?” he asked. “The man in the cellar?”

“Yes. He was dragged down the stairs and beaten. Widespread internal hemorrhaging; rupture of the liver, kidney, and spleen. Five fractured
ribs, one of which penetrated the right pleural cavity and lung. And any number of facial fractures, all of which were caused by the impact of a blunt object, most likely a boot.”

“Somebody really had it in for him.”

The pathologist nodded, then raised a wry, ironic finger. “Naturally, it is merely conjecture.”

“How long had he been there? In the cellar.”

Kranz leaned forward, his voice growing animated with professional excitement—though this too was accompanied by a sly little wink that lent a false note to his answer. “That’s very difficult to say with exactitude. Someone did their best to slow down putrefaction. His intestines were removed, and some kind of saline solution injected, to displace the blood. The interesting thing is that, whoever it was, they sewed him up afterwards. Quite competently, actually.”

“A surgeon?”

A smile. “More likely an internist. Or a gifted seamstress.”

“What else?”

“He was stripped and washed. The skin was rubbed in something, an arsenic compound by the smell of it. When that didn’t keep the flies off, they resorted to carbolic.”

“The reddish powder.”

“Precisely. A common-enough antiseptic, though applied in quantity it has a tendency to corrode the skin. Between that and the bruising, identification will be very difficult.” He gestured to his face, indicating the places where the victim’s skin was burned. “Though the glass eye should prove helpful, I suppose. I imagine you examined the clothes, Inspector. Was there a monogram, or a label?”

“Yes. At the back of the trousers. The cut is somewhat old-fashioned. From the thirties, I should say, though in good-enough nick.”

“And is the tailor still in business?”

Frisch shook his head. “A Sigmund Rosenstern. First district. Deceased.”

“Ah. Too bad. Well, I suppose it’s not your case, anyway. Not your district.”

Frisch nodded at that, sipped his coffee. “Who is the other corpse?” he asked.

“He was pulled out of the canal early this morning. The papers are full with it already. Some journalist took a nice photo.”

“Suicide?”

The pathologist smiled his noncommittal smile. “I should think so. Lungs full of water, blood full of alcohol, and a fracture in the lower third of his tibia from something he hit in the water.” He picked the report from a mound upon his table. “Eberhart Puck, thirty-four, unemployed. A veteran, naturally; it accounts for the frozen-off toes. POW till ’47. No permanent address. Last known employment: November 1937. Night watchman, Rothmann & Seidel, Electrical Works. Two arrests for vagrancy, pre-war, and an Iron Cross for blowing up a tank. No wonder he tended to despair.” Kranz dropped the report carelessly, rose, and stretched. “You think the war broke some little part of him and it finally caught up? Or did he just grow sick of begging?” He waited for an answer, shrugged, and walked Frisch to the door. “I better get back to work.”

They shook hands in the doorway.

“I would be obliged, Dr. Kranz, if you would call me if you notice anything else. About the one-eyed man.”

“As you wish.
Au revoir
.”

“Goodbye,” answered Frisch, thinking back to a time when they would have taken leave by raising their right arms, a gesture Kranz had performed with a peculiar flourish. Frisch had never been sure whether it was designed to signal his zest or his ironic distance. “My regards to the wife.”

He left the morgue and hurried home to sit with Trudi. It was too late, he decided, to go trouble Anna Beer.

Two

1.

Sunshine woke her, pressed its heat into her neck. Eva turned and knew at once that she had overslept. Light streamed through her bedroom window, found patterns on the dusty pane, along with the great net of a spider, already clear of morning dew. Her shadow fell on the insect as she freed herself from the thin blanket; and when her hand brushed the pane, it danced its eight legs clockwise round the spiral pattern of its web, its belly light, the waist as though strangled by a corset. Eva yawned, and smiled; combed her fingers through her hair. A soft, bright moan startled her, recalled her to a sense of haste.

It was not she who had moaned.

She had planned to get up early and leave the house before Robert knew that she was gone. There he was, lying on the floor next to her bed, his face buried deep in the bulk of a down pillow. He was wearing shirt and trousers. His stockinged feet peeked out from the bottom of the tangled blanket he held hugged against his chest. Dream drew sounds from him, too slurred to register as speech. His breath was regular and heavy. He would not wake for a good time yet.

Two nights ago, when he had barged into her room and shown her the photo, Eva had fallen asleep holding his hand; had woken in the middle of the night and been surprised to find him there, curled up sleeping on the naked floor. Annoyed, but at the same time careful not to wake him, she had fetched him a spare pillow and a wool blanket from the hallway cupboard;
had slipped the one under his head, the other over his slight shoulders, and had watched in moonlight the rapid movement of his dreaming eye, the other dreamless, still, beneath its vein-embroidered lid. Above them, in the attic, the crows had been restless, cawed and scuffled through the hours of the night.

The next day Eva had run around the house with petulant impatience, watching, waiting for the man with the red scarf. The boy had followed her wherever she went, earnest and chatty, intent on burdening her with confessions big and small (his plans for entering the priesthood, now abandoned; his dead father, good or bad?; the schoolyard scuffle that had cracked his eye). From time to time he paused to press her with questions about the photo and her past. She told him nothing, mocked and abused him, had him scrub the dishes, mop the floor; fed her anger on his unfazed equanimity, the gentle, trusting upslope of his smile. Night came and he padded after her with puppyish resolve, lingered when she disappeared into the bathroom, still probing with his questions, the heel of one hand rubbing the great bruise on his chest.

When he said good night to her outside her room, she surprised herself by taking his hand and pulling him once again towards the patch of floor next to her bed. He crouched, then curled up like a pet; looked up at her in trusting wonder as she slipped between her covers and took possession of his upstretched hand. The weather was warm, the window ajar; Yussuf strutting on the windowsill before swooping down to search the moonlit ground for prey.

On this, their second night, sleep did not come easily to Eva. She tossed beneath her blanket, flipped the pillow, searched for rest. The curtain was open over the window by her bed, moonlight etching sharply all the contours of the room.

After some hours of uneasy dozing she pushed her head past the edge of the bed until it hung directly over his. Robert was lying on his back, his face gentle, trusting even in sleep, his shirt front buttoned to the throat.
He is like I used to be
, it rose in her, dredged up a yearning for her childhood,
while spit collected in her down-turned cheeks. She waited until it had filled the hollow of her rolled-up tongue, then let it slide past the firm purse of her lips: a stringy drop of spit that descended on its own thread like a spider and hung from a mouth prepared to whistle or to kiss.

The first such missive hit the pillow by the side of Robert’s ear; it formed a foaming bubble that slowly seeped into the cover. On the second attempt she hit the socket of his eye. He woke at once, spit streaming past his open lid and down his temple; saw a third fat droplet thread its way towards his forehead; jumped up, laughing, to his feet and into bed; raised his pillow high above his head and brought it down into her giggling face. They fought like children, then lay wrestling like adults. It took a moment before she understood that he was kissing her: a wetness on her collar and her neck.

She stiffened when he touched her spine.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered, fingers sliding down the ridges of her vertebrae.

She slipped out of his arms and pushed him from the bed with hands and feet. He landed with a thump, looked back at her upon the mattress, kindness, pity, shining in his moonlit eye.

“Don’t,” she said, and he reached again to hold her hand.

They fell asleep without exchanging another word.

Now, awake, the morning sun colouring her dirty pane, she dismissed these nightly fumblings; rose, stepped over Robert, and got dressed as quickly as she could. Her hat was the last garment she donned, and the one over which she took the most care, adjusting its brim in front of the mirror. Then she chose a book from the pile she had pilfered from his suitcase, put it in the linen sack that served her as a handbag, turned, contented, and left the room.

2.

She made a mistake then. Rather than leaving the house at once, Eva—sleep-creased, thirsty—went into the kitchen first. She ran rather than
walked, and had already passed the doorway when she noticed Robert’s mother sitting at the table, intent on the task of transferring spoonfuls of white powder from a large tin to a row of saucers she had lined up in front of her. Her presence took Eva by surprise. Frau Seidel was not known to be an early riser.

A second mistake: Eva spoke. Found a glass, filled it, drained it, cast an eye on the tin’s label. And spoke.

“So we have rats,” she said.

She could have left it there, but didn’t. She had learned the expression at the orphanage, where it served to underwrite a complex system of coercion:
The devil rides her. The devil must be driven out
.

Well, the devil rode her now.

“Be careful not to mix it up, Frau Seidel. With all your other powders, I mean.”

Frau Seidel did not react until Eva turned to place the glass in the sink. “You can’t have him,” she said; transferred a scoop of poison from tin to saucer. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed. And don’t you get pregnant. It won’t help. My son is not for you.”

Stung and angry, Eva rushed out; returned again, the devil firmly in his saddle, stooped in the kitchen doorway, lacing up her shoes. “This man Robert has seen. The one who’s watching the house. You think it’s
him
, don’t you? Believe me, I’m rather hoping it is not. But perhaps, who knows, it might be
him
after all. It’s curious he doesn’t come forward, isn’t it? It’s eating you up, this waiting; asking yourself, What does he want? Oh, I can see it, the way you poke your head out, trembling, every time some ragamuffin rings the door for a penny or a bite to eat. And when the postman comes, God, you nearly snatch the letters from his hand. But so far: nothing, not a word. You know, I think he’s waiting for the trial. He wants to hear what Wolfgang has to say for himself.”