When the Devil's Idle (22 page)

“
That’s right.”

“
Keep
looking. In the meantime, Papa Michalis and I are going to
Chora.”

“
You
going to tell the Bechtels about the old man?”

Patronas shook
his head. “Stathis ordered me not to. ‘
Oi nekroi
dikaiononta
,’ he said.” One must show respect for the
dead.

“
Respect, huh? Stathis is a bigger ass than I
thought.”

After parking in
Chora, Patronas stood for a moment and looked out, astounded again
by how far he could see. Far below were the white buildings and
bell tower that marked the Cave of the Apocalypse. Lower still was
the village of Skala.

The yellow crime
scene tape was gone and all was peaceful in the garden. A pair of
mourning doves were cooing in the trees. Patronas’ mother had hated
them—saying they were harbingers of death—and the sound of the
birds chilled him.

Gunther Bechtel
greeted Patronas and the priest wanly. “You brought us news?” he
asked in a tired voice. His face was more lined than Patronas
remembered, and there was something missing in his eyes, as if he
couldn’t quite bring them into focus. He hadn’t combed his hair or
shaved in some time and there was a greasy stain down the front of
his shirt.

Grief
,
Patronas told himself, remembering how his mother had looked in the
weeks following his father’s death—how she’d been lost to him for
days at a time, unable to see or hear.

“
I’m
here to interview your wife.”

“
She’s
in the back,” Gunther Bechtel said. “The Bauers are here now, too.
You said you wanted to speak to them.”

“
Were
they here when she was attacked?”

“
No.
They arrived late last night.”

Patronas started
with the Bauers, a heavyset couple with an avuncular
manner.

“
Was
anything stolen from the house?” he asked after he and Papa
Michalis introduced themselves.

“
Stolen? No, I don’t think so,” the husband said. “Everything
was as it should be.”

They had been
acquainted with the gardener and Maria Georgiou for only a brief
period of time, they said, and couldn’t or wouldn’t speak to
either’s character. As for the victim, Walter Bechtel, they hardly
knew him. A problematic house guest, the old man. He was hard of
hearing and kept to himself; consequently, it was difficult to
carry on a conversation.

“
How
long have you known the Bechtel family?” Patronas asked.

“
More
than twenty years,” the woman answered. “Gunther was at school with
our son.”

Patronas had sent
Maria Georgiou out of the kitchen while he talked to them. She
returned when he gave the signal and began preparing the midday
meal, peeling eggplants over the sink. Turning her head, she gave
him a long, searching look.

“
We
will miss Maria when we leave,” the husband said, smiling in the
servant’s direction. “She is a very good cook. We like the Greek
food she prepares, the moussaka especially.” He smacked his lips.
“Very tasty.”

“
Are
they all this obtuse?” Patronas asked Papa Michalis when they were
back outside.

“
Yes.
They are known for it, the Germans.”

Gerta Bechtel was
relaxing in a chair at the rear of the house, reading a German
magazine. She had a bruised lip and a line of scratches down her
left cheek, but otherwise appeared unharmed.

Putting her
magazine aside, she stood up and greeted them. “Chief Officer,
Father, good afternoon.”

Although not as
lush as the garden in front, the backyard was equally pleasant,
encircled with banks of bougainvillea and jasmine. A wooden fence
screened it from the service area behind the kitchen, the trash
cans hidden by the slats of the fence.

“
I
couldn’t be in the garden in front,” Gerta Bechtel said with a
shudder. “The cat and then Gunther’s father … it is dangerous
there, I think.”

Odd that she’d
started with the cat.

“
Is
there another entrance?” Patronas asked, silently kicking himself.
The estate was so large, they’d only searched the grounds near
where the corpse had been found, hadn’t taken the back of the house
into consideration.

“
Yes,”
she said. “There’s a door in the wall behind that fence there. A
small door. You have to bend down to go through it. Maria uses it
sometimes when she takes the trash out. She can show
you.”

“
Do
you keep it locked?”

“
Now,
yes. We lock everything—the gate and the front door, even the small
door in the back—but before, no.”

Patronas opened
his notebook. “Take your time,” he said. “Tell me what happened the
night you were attacked.”

“
I
will show you. It is better.” She smiled, embarrassed. “The
English … I’m not sure I know the words.”

She led them
around the house to a group of rose bushes. “I was cutting flowers
here. I wanted to have a bouquet for the table to cheer us up. I
was bending over and someone pushed me. I fell and they kicked me
many, many times. I started crying, afraid I would die like
Grobvater
.”

“
What
happened next?”

“
I
screamed and they ran away.”

Patronas studied
her, thinking how rehearsed it all sounded. The stilted English,
the elaborate pantomime. But then she was German, and as Papa
Michalis had said, Germans were nothing if not thorough.

“
I did
not see who did it,” she said, anticipating his next question. “The
light over the door burned out and Maria hasn’t changed it.” She
sounded aggrieved, as if the attack had somehow been the maid’s
fault.

“
Which
direction did your attacker come from?”

“
I am
not sure. Behind me, I think.”

Patronas entered
the information in his notebook. “Who was here that
night?”

“
Gunther and me, the children. Also Maria, she was here. She
was helping with the dinner.”

“
Was
she in the house the whole time?”

“
I
cannot say. I was in the garden.”

“
Did
you hear anything before the attack?”

“
The
trash, I think. Maria was in the back with the trash.”

So Maria Georgiou
was outside.

“
How
about after you were attacked?” He was hoping for the sound of
footsteps running down the path, anything that would lead away from
the Greek woman.

“
No,
no sounds. Nothing.”

Pushing her hair
back, Gerta Bechtel showed him her lacerated cheek, then pulled up
her t-shirt and pointed out the bruises on her abdomen.

“
Do
you want us to post a guard here until you leave? A policeman to
watch over you and your family?”

She gave him a
wounded smile. “No, we will be all right. But if you have a
cigarette, I would be grateful.”

He gave her his
pack of Karelias, after which he and Papa Michalis left. Patronas
didn’t buy her story. He wondered what had really happened in the
garden that night. Maybe her husband or perhaps that sullen
daughter of hers had beaten her up.

M
aria Georgiou acted as if she’d been expecting them.
Perhaps someone from Aghios Stefanos had phoned her the previous
day and told her the police had come to the village asking
questions about her. She’d changed out of her work clothes and was
wearing her blue dress again. As before, her hair was braided,
pinned up neatly at the nape of her neck. She was also wearing
makeup—powder and fresh lipstick.

“
Come
in, come in,” she said.

She treated them
to baklava this time and stood by the kitchenette while they ate.
She’d insisted Patronas and Papa Michalis sit in the upholstered
chairs, and when they’d finished eating, she took their dishes and
pulled up a straight-backed chair for herself.

Patronas had
called the police station in Skala after he’d finished the
interview with Gerta Bechtel and told Evangelos Demos and Giorgos
Tembelos to continue researching the dead man and let him know
anything they found as soon as possible. He also told them to
follow up on what Maria Georgiou had said about her time in Athens,
the salon she’d worked for and the rest of it. Perhaps she’d had an
accomplice. Given what Gerta Bechtel had told him, they might be
able to charge Maria Georgiou with the assault, although the
evidence, as with the murder, was thin and largely
circumstantial.

Worried, Patronas
had also called his boss, Stathis, and told him that he had reached
a critical juncture in the investigation.

“
Be
careful,” Stathis counseled when Patronas told him what Tembelos
had found on the Internet. “Tiptoe through those databases online
and the newspaper files and for God’s sake, whatever you do, don’t
contact the German authorities.”

“
What
about the Bechtels? Do we confront them with the victim’s history
and see what shakes out?”

“
Not
yet. Remember, even if the dead man was a Gestapo agent, he was
still their father and grandfather and they loved him. Don’t go
blundering in, making accusations. They’re grieving now. Respect
their feelings.”

After briefly
outlining what they’d learned in Aghios Stefanos, Patronas started
the interview with Maria Georgiou. “The victim, Gunther
Bech,”
he said, laying stress on the last name,
“
Bech,
not Bechtel, was in your village, Aghios Stefanos,
during the war. He played an instrumental role in the destruction
of your family, the deaths of your mother and father, Petros and
Anna Georgiou, and your three brothers, Constantinos, Nikos, and
Philippos Georgiou.”

Her eyes filled
with tears. “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her face with the back of
her hand. “You took me by surprise. I haven’t heard those names in
over sixty years.”

“
I’d
like to know what happened the day of the massacre. You were there.
Can you describe it to me?”

She didn’t speak
for a long time, just sat there, crying. “It would have been better
if I’d died that day, too,” she finally said. “How I longed for
that, to have died with them. You can’t start over after something
like that. There’s no way to go forward. My aunt took me in, but
times were hard in Epirus and she didn’t have enough for her own
children. I was like the ghost at the banquet, the one they talk
about … I don’t recall his name. He keeps turning up and
reminding the living of all they wished to forget.”

“
Banquo,” the priest said quietly. “It’s from Shakespeare.
Macbeth
.”

“
Banquo,” she echoed. “Yes, that’s who I was.”

Feeling guilty,
Patronas pushed on, seeking to close the case. Bech’s unholy
appetite was the key, he was sure of it. “Did he ever take you to
the cellar?”

“
Ah,”
she whispered, “you discovered our secret.” Her initial bout of
crying over, she was sitting there peacefully, hands folded in her
lap.

A stone that
never smiles
. Patronas remembered his mother’s
words.

“
I
repeat,” he said wearily. “Did he take you to the
cellar?”

“
No.”

“
But
you knew?”

“
Yes,
Daphne was my friend and I saw her after it happened. I saw her
walking to the river and I followed her. It was just us and the
trees and water. She was wearing a pink dress and standing in the
shallows, washing what looked like spots of saliva off the front of
her skirt. I asked her what was the matter and she wouldn’t tell
me, but then I saw the blood on her thighs and her filthy
underpants. I helped her clean herself up and held her while she
cried. We never spoke of it, but yes, I knew. Everyone knew. I
sometimes wonder if that’s why he burned our village … to
cover his tracks.”

“
Did
Bech give the order?”

“
I
don’t know. I was a child, Chief Officer. But I always thought the
timing was curious.”

“
You
say everyone knew. Why didn’t someone report him to his commanding
officer, go to the German authorities?”

“
And
tell them what?” Her laugh was unpleasant, mocking. “That one of
their Gestapo agents was behaving badly? We were at war, Chief
Officer. We were the enemy. Vermin, they called us, same as the
Jews. Cockroaches, nits. They didn’t care if we lived or died. They
took our lives, for God’s sake. What difference did it make if one
of them took our innocence?”

“
You
recognized him on Patmos,” Patronas said, making it clear he wasn’t
asking, but stating a fact.

“
Yes,
I recognized him. I would have known him anywhere. Those scars. His
face was etched in my mind.”

“
But
how could you be sure? You were only six years old at the time of
the massacre.”

“
Seven,” she said. “I was seven.”