The Sinner (34 page)

A musician, he thought. That's something, at least. But Grit
couldn't imagine that Cora had got together with him. "She had
a regular boyfriend, Horsti." Grovian had almost forgotten about
Horsti.

Grit gave another apologetic smile. "I'm afraid I only know his
first name. We always referred to him as Horsti. He was the love
of Cora's life. She was seventeen when she met him. After three
months she announced she was going to marry him some day and
leave here. She was absolutely besotted with the boy; nobody could
understand why. A weedy little fellow, he was - looked almost like
an albino, with pale skin and pale yellow hair. All he needed were
the pink eyes. I caught a glimpse of him a couple of times when he
was hanging around in the street, waiting for Cora. My Melanie
could tell you more. She's in Denmark, unfortunately - won't be back till next week - but she often saw them together. Cora's
infatuation tickled her. She christened him `the Wimp'."

A wimp for a regular boyfriend? It looked as if he were fighting
a losing battle. Next question: "What about her attempted suicide?
Do you know what made her do it?"

Grit nodded slowly, but her response was qualified. "I only know
what Cora told me. It didn't happen here. According to her, she
threw herself in front of a car. She never told me the reason, but she
didn't have to. It was obvious: she couldn't get over Magdalena's
death."

The very sound of the name made Grovian's head throb with
unbridled fury at the thought of Margret Rosch's duplicity.
Grit Adigar talked for nearly half an hour without a break. She
described the arrival of the blue baby, the burning of the pretty
dress in the tin bucket, the candle-scorched, blistered hands, the
knees sore from praying, the sodden bedclothes, the desiccated soul
of a child.

It was painful simply listening to it all, and he felt the whole time
as if he were on the point of grasping something, some factor of
whose existence he had never even dreamed until now. Not that he
wanted to grasp it, because it would point too unequivocally in the
direction of insanity. He found it impossible to imagine, as he sat at
the kitchen table with Elsbeth muttering to herself, that any child
could have developed normally under such a mother's tutelage.

The one thing he did grasp was Cora Bender's reason for not
mentioning her sister hitherto: that her death was associated with
a burden of guilt of which nothing and no one could relieve her.
She had been guilty, even before Magdalena's birth, of draining
her mother's strength.

He could have strangled the pathetic creature with his bare
hands. Looking at her bent over her plate, he felt satisfied that
she was responsible for Georg Frankenberg's death - indirectly
responsible, perhaps, but that did not detract from the onus that
rested on her bony shoulders.

Grit described Cora as a quiet, self-willed, introverted child and
a rebellious teenager who was touchingly solicitous of her invalid sister on the one hand, and, on the other, eager for a modicum of
personal freedom with Horsti at the Aladdin on Saturday nights.

A disreputable dump, it was rumoured to have supplied more
than music, dancing and drinks. Drugs too had been readily
available. The Aladdin had closed down well over four years
ago. The premises were now occupied by a nice, clean restaurant
serving good and inexpensive food.

"Was Cora a drug addict?" lie asked.

"Not while she was still living here," Grit said firmly. "She was
far too responsible. As for later on, shall I be honest?"

"Of course."

"I don't think so. I always thought the state of her arms made
that less likely than more so. They must have been covered with
suppurating sores. I've never had any dealings with junkies, but
I don't believe they'd inject into festering wounds. I spoke to her
about it at the time, and she said: `I don't believe so either, Grit,
but I don't believe a lot of things and they're true just the same. It
wouldn't be surprising if I'd done drugs after the drama here.'

According to Grit, the drama had occurred in August five years
ago. She hadn't witnessed it in person. She was away visiting
friends on the Saturday in question and hadn't got home until late
that night. To that extent she could only voice conjectures, she
emphasized, but they were conjectures that fell within the bounds
of probability.

In April the doctors had ascertained that Magdalena really was
on her last legs. In the middle of May her condition worsened.
Cora no longer left the house, even to do the shopping. Wilhelm
had to take it over. Meanwhile, Cora sat at her sister's bedside day
and night.

This was the period at which Grit had sighted Horsti a few times
when he was loitering outside so as to at least be near Cora or
grant her a glimpse of the love of her life.

That conflicted with what Margret Rosch had said about her
brother's two phone calls. Grit brushed this aside. "Margret must
have misunderstood him. Bad company? Wilhelm would never have
put it that way. Even if he did, he must have meant Magdalena, not Horsti. Wilhelm never got on with Magdalena, and the feeling
was mutual. She wasn't an easy person. Just because someone's
terminally ill, it doesn't mean they haven't got a mind of their own.
Magdalena did, take it from me."

With a ghost of a smile, Grit proceeded with her account of
Magdalena's last few months. She took her time dying. As often
happens with the terminally ill, she seemed to recover shortly
before the end. In August Cora decided to risk it. Wilhelm and
Elsbeth had gone to Hamburg, so she treated herself to a Saturday
night out with the faithful Horsti. She was gone only a few hours.
By the time she returned her sister was dead.

Grit rose. "Come with me, I'd like to show you something."
Leaving Elsbeth staring at her plate in the kitchen, she led the way
out into the passage and up the narrow stairs. There were three
doors on the landing, one of which she opened for him.

Beyond it lay a sparsely furnished bedroom. Two beds and a
bedside table, nothing more. The little alarm clock on the bedside
table had stopped at half-past four. Beside it lay a Walkman plus
earphones and a stack of audio cassettes, and in front of them
stood a photograph in a silver frame.

An amateur snapshot, it showed two girls seated side by side
on one of the beds. Their long hair, silver-blond and auburn
respectively, was cropped by the frame.

Grovian picked up the photograph and studied it. What most
attracted his attention was Cora's face and auburn hair. He had
never seen her smile like that. She made an earnest, solicitous,
affectionate impression as she sat there with one arm around her
sister's shoulders. As for Magdalena ...

"Two extremely pretty girls," he said.

"Yes, they were both pretty," said Grit, "but in Magdalena's case
that was an understatement. She had the kind of beauty that drives
men insane. I sometimes thought her outward appearance was
Nature's way of making up for all that was wrong with her inside,
or that those defects ensured that no man would be lured to his
doom by her lovely exterior."

She sighed and shrugged her shoulders, smiling sheepishly.

"You get peculiar ideas when you live on top of something like
that. Elsbeth must have looked like her as a girl. No wonder she
lost her mind, having a child like that. Cora takes after Wilhelm.
Magdalena was the image of her mother at that age."

"You wouldn't know she was ill, to look at her," Grovian said.

Grit smiled again. "Diabolical, wasn't it? Her heart was so badly
affected, her whole body was bloated. Her kidneys were failing too,
yet she looked the picture of health. Her bluish complexion was
the only sign that something was wrong with her. Cora wielded
her make-up for half an hour before I was allowed to snap them.
Magdalena didn't want to be photographed at all. She was very
vain - she wouldn't agree until Cora had got her ready. It's the
only photo of Magdalena in existence. I took it at the beginning
of April, two days before she went to Eppendorf for the last time.
We thought she was doing better than ever before. She'd put on
weight - she was fuller in the face, and even her legs had stopped
looking like twigs. It was only the fluid, in fact, but we didn't learn
that till later."

He replaced the photograph and turned round. Above one of
the beds was a shelf crowded with books.

"We found the books in the barn," said Grit. "Wilhelm fixed the
shelf above Cora's bed after she left and brought them up here."

They were mainly medical textbooks, two of which bore titles
suggestive of psychology. The topics were revealing: religious
mania and self-healing by means of willpower.

Grit omitted to mention that Wilhelm had also found a slim
little notebook in the barn containing nothing but figures. Over
30,000 marks! "How in the world did she amass so much money?"
Wilhelm had asked.

`After the age of sixteen," Grit went on, "Cora spent most of
her pocket money on these books. I often saw her sneak out of the
house at nights and go into the barn. That was where she kept her
trendy gear, make-up, and so on - things Elsbeth wouldn't tolerate
but teenagers find so important. Her books were there too. She used
to change and put on a bit of make-up when she went into town.
You'd have thought she was setting off to have a good time, but she usually had one of these tomes beneath her arm, and you don't go
dancing like that, or to the movies or the ice-cream parlour. Cora
didn't gad around. She can hardly be blamed for meeting Horsti on
Saturdays. She needed a bit of freedom, a few hours in the week to
herself The rest of the time she devoted to her sister."

Grit said that Cora had read a magazine article about heart
transplants and how successful they'd been in the States, and that
she'd often spoken of her intention to take Magdalena there some
day. A heart transplant wouldn't have done the trick, but Cora was
either unable or unwilling to grasp that.

"If that had been all," Grit said, "they'd gladly have operated
on her at Eppendorf, just to show they could. I don't know the full
details; you'd have to ask Margret. She fetched all the documentation
from the hospital, the whole of Magdalena's medical history. While
she was alive, nobody here knew exactly how things stood with her.
Wilhelm took little interest, Elsbeth was too stupid to understand
what the doctors told her, and Magdalena herself wouldn't accept
the truth and kept mum. In April the doctors wanted to keep her
at the hospital, but she insisted on dying at home. It seems she told
them she got all the nursing she needed here, but she didn't breathe
a word once she got back. Then Cora came home that night and
found her . . . When Wilhelm went upstairs the next morning,
because Cora hadn't come down for breakfast, she'd gone."

"When was that, exactly?" Grovian asked.

"Hang on, the date's on the death certificate. It's in their bedroom, I'll get it."

Grit darted out of the door and returned a few seconds later.
She handed him the certificate. "Cardiac and renal failure," he
read. The doctor's signature was illegible, but he didn't trouble to
decipher it. His eyes had fastened on two dates. Date of birth: 16
May. Date of death: 16 August.

Two sixteens. You didn't have to be a psychologist to grasp their
significance in Cora Bender's life and why her initial version had dated from the beginning of her romance with Johnny in May. It
was wishful thinking. So he could forget about the dead girl on
Luneburg Heath and her assertion that her aunt had lied to him.

Margret Rosch had probably told him the truth, or hinted at it
anyway, but the things she'd withheld! His anger hadn't subsided
in the least. How dare she volunteer to give him all the information
he needed - indeed, ram it down his throat - only to suppress the
most important point! It was obstruction at best, if not a deliberate
attempt to mislead.