The Ludwig Conspiracy (46 page)

“Not if you do exactly as we’ve agreed.” Von Strelitz took out his pocket watch and glanced at it. “It’s now exactly seven o’clock. The attendants and gendarmes have instructions to keep away from the scene for at least half an hour, and only then raise the alarm. Furthermore, I used a Girandoni air rifle.” He looked appreciatively at the gun at his feet. “An excellent invention. No powder smoke, no cartridge cases to give away what happened, no muzzle flash, and the sound of the report is well within bounds. So we have all the time we need. Now, kindly help me.”

Carl von Strelitz began unbuttoning the dead king’s coat and stripping it and his vest off him. He carefully made a neat pile of the bloodstained garments, having first taken Ludwig’s pocket watch out of the vest pocket. “Pity about this handsome watch,” he murmured. “Well, at least posterity will know His Majesty’s exact time of death.”

Then he brought fresh clothes out from behind a bush and fastened the watch to another vest.

“This way, we can convince the first eyewitnesses of His Majesty’s suicide by drowning,” explained von Strelitz, reaching for a clean linen shirt. “However, before the autopsy, Holnstein and Lutz ought to spend a few little sums of money on the doctors in Munich. I’ve heard that they are all pledged on oath to bear us out.” He shook his head dismissively. “If you ask me, we can forget that. In cases of doubt, only money and threats will work. You don’t get yourself a fine country estate by swearing solemn oaths.”

“But . . . but it’s a dark winter coat that you have there,” stammered Gudden, pointing to the new garment in the agent’s hands. “You can see, the king was wearing a light-colored . . .”

“Damn it, I was told he’d wear a dark coat,” whispered the Prussian agent angrily, as he went on cleaning the blood off Ludwig’s body and dressing it in the clean shirt and vest. “If your ministers are too stupid even to plan an assassination properly, it’s not my fault.” The sweat stood out on von Strelitz’s brow. It looked as though, even after death, the king was defending himself against this degrading process. From my hiding place, I watched as Ludwig’s head lolled back and forth like a puppet’s. I was in such a state of shock that I was incapable of movement. The king was dead, murdered before my eyes! Contrary to my own better knowledge, I hoped that all this was only a dreadful nightmare from which I would wake at any moment.

“All this is nothing but a farce,” said von Strelitz, still annoyed, as he threw the new coat and an undergarment a long way out into the water. “When Lutz told me to gather material that would incriminate the king, I assumed that you had at least a
little
substantial evidence on your side. But there was nothing except the complaints of a few servants whose feelings had been injured.” He laughed contemptuously. “And to cap it all, that little informer crosses my path again at Herrenchiemsee and almost gets past my camouflage.
Quelle merde!
”

I started behind my bush. At last I realized why von Strelitz had been on the island in the Chiemsee. He had been collecting evidence of Ludwig’s insanity, and I had gotten in his way. But what had Maria meant when she murmured,
He’ll kill me,
just before von Strelitz appeared in the wood? Was there something else that I didn’t know?

“You . . . you really have no cause for complaint.” By now Gudden had recovered his old academic arrogance. Nonetheless, he stalked back and forth on the bank, looking nervously around him, as von Strelitz dragged the king’s body over to the lake. “How much did Holnstein pay you for this mission?” snapped the doctor. “How much were you paid to change sides and work for the Bavarian government? Thirty thousand reichsmarks? Fifty thousand?” He stamped his foot angrily. “If you had done your work properly, if you had collected evidence, or forged it for all I care, we wouldn’t have had to resort to such means as these. You were probably paid a good bonus for committing the murder, isn’t that so?”

“He was a king, after all; don’t forget that,” grunted von Strelitz, pushing Ludwig’s corpse into the waist-high water. “Killing a king has always been well paid. It’s been the same ever since the time of Judas. Now, for heaven’s sake, help me.” He beckoned impatiently to Gudden. “Don’t be so squeamish; you’re welcome to get wet. After all, you’re to tell everyone, later, that you tried to save Ludwig when he decided to drown himself in the lake.”

Dr. von Gudden sighed and gingerly made his way into the water, which was far too cold for June. After taking a few steps, he had reached the agent. The body of Ludwig, face-down, bobbed in the water beside them like a buoy.

Paralyzed by shock, I crouched behind the bush. I ought to have gone running along the lakeside path, calling for help. By this time, however, I was no longer sure exactly who was involved in the plot. I decided to leave my hiding place and steal back to the promontory beyond which the boat was still waiting. But I had hardly stepped out on the path, which was bordered by tall reeds at this point, before I heard the doctor’s voice again. Looking past the reeds, I could easily see the two figures now standing in the lake, some sixteen feet from the bank.

“And I’m not sure that we’ll be believed when we say it was suicide,” whined Dr. Gudden. “There will always be doubts. The king has been too reasonable for a potential suicide these last two days. He even said we were trying to kill him.”

“You’re right,” replied Carl von Strelitz calmly. “There will indeed always be doubts. Unless the king had done something shortly before his death to make him look deranged in the eyes of one and all.”

The psychiatrist looked at von Strelitz, baffled. In his wet coat, which was swirling around him in the knee-deep water like mourning ribbons, he resembled an overgrown, agitated coot. “I . . . I’m afraid I don’t entirely understand you.”

Carl von Strelitz carelessly pushed the floating corpse aside and waded toward Gudden. “You really don’t? I thought you were cleverer than that, Doctor.
Au revoir.
”

With these words, the agent put his strong fingers around Gudden’s throat and tightened them. The small, frail doctor had not the slightest chance. He grunted and panted for breath, tugging at his attacker’s arms, but von Strelitz simply kicked his legs out from under him and held him down below the surface of the water like a puppy. At first Gudden struck out wildly; then he began thrashing his limbs about so that the water foamed up around him in white jets. Those movements changed to twitching, and finally his body went limp.

Von Strelitz held Gudden under the surface for a little longer and then gave the corpse a slight push. Like a piece of driftwood, it floated toward the middle of the lake.

At that very moment my friends’ boat appeared on the choppy water. They had obviously suspected that something was happening. I could see Hornig and Kaulbach, both rowing against the wind as hard as they could. Dr. Schleiss von Loewenfeld sat in the bow, his hair blowing around his head. When he saw the Prussian agent, and the two corpses in the water, he cried out in horror.

“My God, the king!” he cried. “Hornig, look!”

Without hesitation, Loewenfeld leaped into the waist-high water and waded toward Ludwig. Meanwhile, Richard Hornig had thrown down his oar to dive straight into the water, and now he plowed his way through the lake like an ocean-going steamer. He soon reached Carl von Strelitz, who was waiting for him with his fists raised.

The two men were soon engaged in a life-or-death struggle, each vying in turn to push the other under the water. Hornig punched von Strelitz with a right hook to his chin, so that he staggered back and fell on top of Gudden’s corpse. Von Strelitz struggled up again and flung himself on the royal equerry with a piercing cry. Richard Hornig was a fit, muscular man, but he was no match for the sheer malice of the Prussian agent. Von Strelitz spread the fingers of his right hand like a tiger’s claws, digging them into his adversary’s face, and at the same time thrusting his knee forward to strike Hornig between the loins. The equerry doubled up with pain, and Carl von Strelitz struck the back of his head with all his might. Hornig sank into the waters of the lake with a gurgling cry.

“Kaulbach, do something!”

It was Dr. Schleiss von Loewenfeld who had called out to the painter. With almost superhuman strength, Loewenfeld was tugging at the king’s body, trying to drag it to land. Meanwhile, Hermann von Kaulbach was still sitting in the boat, his hands clutching the rail, rigid with horror and incapable of any movement. No one yet seemed to have noticed me behind the tall reeds.

While von Strelitz held the royal equerry down underwater, I looked desperately around. For a moment I was tempted to call for help at the top of my voice, but then my eye fell on the air rifle lying only a few paces away from me. I ran to it, snatched it up, and took aim.

In my time as a student in Strasbourg, I had been considered a good marksman, and I had also twice acted as a man’s second in a duel. But this weapon was new to me, and I had no idea whether I could fire it with precision. The steel was cold against my cheek. I loaded another ball from the magazine and aligned the sights on my target. Von Strelitz was only fifteen paces away and did not appear to have seen me. He was still holding Richard Hornig down under the surface of the lake, where white foaming bubbles were rising. Now Dr. Loewenfeld caught sight of me.

“Marot, heaven sends you!” he cried. “For God’s sake, pull the trigger!”

Startled by Loewenfeld’s voice, Carl von Strelitz briefly let go of his victim and turned his head to me. His face was a mask of hatred and alarm. A mocking smile played around his lips. He slowly raised his hands, and a coughing, retching Hornig emerged from the lake before him again.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” von Strelitz called to me. “I have influential friends—very influential. You can still decide to back the winning side.” He pointed behind him, to where Dr. Loewenfeld stood up to his waist in the water beside Ludwig’s corpse. “The king is dead, and believe me, that’s the best thing that could happen to your country. A deranged dreamer, that’s what he was. Is a man like that fit to lead Bavaria into the twentieth century?” He laughed and stroked his wet black hair down over his head. “Trust me when I say we’ll meet with challenges to which no dreamer is equal. Bavaria needs a strong king, not a starry-eyed idealist. In a few years, no one will care a whit about Ludwig. So be reasonable, and . . .”

“Go to hell, von Strelitz.”

I pulled the trigger and once again heard the muted, pleasingly quiet report of the air rifle. Carl von Strelitz staggered two steps back, but he stayed on his feet. He stared at me, his eyes full of hatred, one last time; then his gaze moved down in surprise to where blood was staining his white shirt red.

“You damn . . . fool,” he groaned. Then, at last, the agent fell backward and hit the water with a splash, his arms flung wide. Streaks of blood spread out around him like long, red threads.

I stood on the bank as if in a trance. The gun slipped from my hands and fell on the gravel path that ran along the bank. Only Richard Hornig’s coughing brought me back to the present. He had scrambled out of the water by now, but he was still fighting for breath. “God in heaven, Marot! You . . . you saved my life,” he groaned. He was pale as a drowned corpse, but otherwise he seemed to be in good shape. Now he took hold of the body of von Strelitz, scrutinized it disparagingly, and then threw it back into the lake like a piece of rotten wood. “That bastard nearly drowned me. Who in the name of three devils was he?”

“The man who murdered the king,” I said quietly. “We came too late.”

There was a moment of absolute silence, in which only the cawing of a single crow could be heard. A cloud of red had formed around Ludwig’s corpse and was slowly dispersing in the murky water. His thick black hair floated like seaweed in the gentle swell of the lake.

We stood on the bank as if numb, staring at our dead king, at Dr. Gudden, and the Prussian agent, all three of them drifting, face-down, in the water of the lake. Tears glistened in Hornig’s eyes, mingling with the raindrops, and none of us said a word. It was as if the world as we had always known it had stopped turning.

Not until we heard cries in the distance and saw the flickering of torches through the trees did we run into the night, without another word.

O
NLY AN HOUR
later the five of us sat, brooding, in the smoking room of Baron Beck-Peccoz, who had waited for the king in vain at the gate of his castle park with his carriage. When he heard of Ludwig’s death, he seemed paralyzed by shock at first. Finally, he drove us in the carriage to his estate of Eurasburg, which was very close to Berg Castle. We were now staring, our eyes glazed, at the glowing logs on the hearth, while the stormy rain lashed the windows.

“If there were any traces left to show how the king really died, then they’ll have been removed by now,” said Richard Hornig. “They’ll take the body of the Prussian agent away and make the whole thing look like the suicide of a deranged king. No one will ever know the truth.”

The rest of us nodded in silence. It was as if, after so much hectic activity, apathy had overwhelmed us, leaving us unable to speak of what had happened. The king was dead, and nothing could bring him back.

Suddenly Kaulbach the painter rose to his feet. With shaking fingers, he ground out his cigarette in the ashtray and looked at us one by one. “It was a mistake for us to run like hares,” he said angrily. “We must go to the Starnberg police. At once! This crime can’t go unpunished.”

“Go to the police? Don’t be childish, Kaulbach.” Dr. Schleiss von Loewenfeld shook his head wearily before going on. “Don’t you understand? This thing has been engineered from the very top. Are you really planning to oppose the future prince regent, all the ministers, and the majority of the Bavarian nobility? Only with the king alive and at our side did we stand any chance of reversing the coup d’état. It’s too late now.”

For some time no one said anything. In the midst of the silence, Hermann Kaulbach suddenly took his wet hat from the fireside and turned to the door.