HS04 - Unholy Awakening (15 page)

Lavedrine thrust his hands deep into his pockets and sucked in air, breathing out noisily as he stared up at the sky through the trees. ‘This homeland of yours never fails to amaze me, Stiffeniis,’ he said. ‘The Church of Rome is more sober in its storytelling than any Prussian. First, vampires. Now, a man tied to a tree and consumed by dogs!’ He turned to the officers. ‘Herr Stiffeniis wants to know whether the cemetery gates were open, or closed.’

The two men exchanged a glance.

The older man nodded; the younger must speak.

He told me what I had already heard. Two hours earlier, a French patrol had come by the cemetery, and found that dreadful spectacle in the clearing on the opposite side of the lane. The gate appeared to be closed, he said, as it was at that moment. Perhaps the key was one of those on the ring, he added.

‘Which ring?’ I asked.

He looked with disgust at the pool of blood at the corpse’s feet.

‘Perhaps it has sunk into the gore, monsieur,’ he said.

For one instant, I was tempted to fall down on my knees and thrust my hand into the awful mess. ‘Neither of you has been inside to check?’ I asked.

I saw the perplexity on his face. ‘Inside, monsieur?’

Lavedrine spoke out. ‘Inside the cemetery, Remy. That’s what he means.’

Remy stared wide-eyed at Lavedrine. ‘Why would we do that, Monsieur le Colonel? We were busy enough out here without going to see whether the graveyard is in order.’

Lavedrine turned to me, and a thin smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. ‘A good question,’ he said. ‘What would they have been looking for inside the cemetery?’

I did not reply, but walked rapidly out of the clearing and across the lane. I placed my hands on the metal gates and shook them hard. They were securely locked. I grabbed hold of the spikes which were intended to repel trespassers, braced my foot on the lock, and pulled myself up. From that position I could see the spot where Merson and I had buried Angela Enke. The grass still grew; the earth had not been disturbed. No-one had attempted to disinter her.

Lavedrine had followed me. ‘If you wish, I’ll have them find the keys,’ he said. ‘Sooner or later, people will start arriving. They’ll need to be able to enter the precincts of the burial ground.’

As I stepped down off the gate, Lavedrine rested his shoulder there, folded his arms, and peered at me through half-closed eyes. ‘Helena will be coming to tend to the child’s grave, I suppose?’

Was that what he thought I had been looking at? The grave of Anders?

‘I think she comes here every day,’ I said.

Lavedrine tilted his head the other way. ‘You
think
? Don’t you know?’

He shook his head and turned away.

‘Find the keys, Remy,’ he called to the officer. ‘Do what needs to be done. These gates must be opened. The soldiers can stay here on guard until the town decides who will take the place of the dead man.’

He took three steps away from them, then called me to him by waving his finger.

‘Do you believe all three were murdered for the same reason?’ he asked.

I recalled the strange paths his mind could take when trying to get to the root of a mystery, but I did not offer him an answer. ‘Can there be three different reasons for three such similar deaths in the space of three days?’

The din of the crowd seemed to have died away, as if they were trying to listen to the conversation that we were holding animatedly in the middle of the lane. We were too far away for them to hear, of course, but the two French officers, who were so much closer, seemed equally preoccupied.

‘I would guess that the man killed yesterday, and the one killed over there in the wood, were meant to be found. They were supposed to terrify the life out of those people down there,’ he said, nodding towards the crowd. ‘An iron spike through the heart. What did you say the rite was called?’

‘
Magia postuma
.’

‘And now, a man torn to shreds by dogs.’ He raised his left hand and counted off on his fingers as he spoke. ‘Vampires, cemeteries, wild dogs. Some body wants to bring your fearsome Prussian legends to life.’

I nodded in agreement.

‘And yet, there is the question of the girl who was found at the bottom of the well. It would seem as though our “vampire” did not want her to be found.’ Lavedrine took a step closer, bowing his head to meet my eye. ‘I ask you again, Hanno. Are you sure that these three victims have all been killed by the
same
vampire?’

‘Was that death any less horrid?’ I asked him. ‘The killer certainly intended that the corpse of Angela Enke should be found.’

‘Can you be sure?’

‘Terror has been the aim from the start,’ I reasoned. ‘Throwing the corpse into a well was a calculated move. No-one wants to die alone, and in dark ness. And there are other details that you are not aware of. The well-cover, a tooth…’

Lavedrine’s curls brushed against my forehead, he came so close. ‘I want to know those details. I want a written report this morning. A complete report, leaving nothing out. Two copies, please. One will be for Colonel Claudet.’

He took two paces back, his authority established.

‘A report for you, Lavedrine?’ I snapped. ‘This is
my
investigation.’

Lavedrine and I stood toe to toe, like dogs shaping up for a fight. There was not a sound in the lane – not from the Prussian crowd, nor from the French officers. It was as if everyone were waiting to see who would throw the first blow.

‘Investigating? Is that what you call it?’ His voice was cold, sarcastic. ‘Where are your witnesses? Where is the evidence? I don’t believe that you have found a thing which will help you solve the mystery. You are blundering in the dark. Three murders, and no thing to show for them.’

‘You do not understand the complexity…’

‘I’ll give you two hours,’ he said. ‘We’ll meet in the office of Colonel Claudet to compare notes. Before you go, speak to your people down there. Send them about their business, so that we can get on with ours!’

Lavedrine turned up his collar and began to fasten the buttons of his coat. The wind was cold, but it seemed to me that he was doing up his armour ready for a battle. ‘We are hunting criminals together once more, Stiffeniis,’ he said. ‘Try and pretend that you are happy about it. I tell you sincerely, I am glad to be working with you.’

I walked down the lane, and stood before the crowd. What I told them was no lie, though it must have seemed no more than a half-truth. I announced that Ludo Mittner had been savaged to death by a pack of wild dogs. I told them that I would petition the French to send out sharpshooters to massacre the animals, as they had done during the epidemic. No-one seemed particularly convinced. They had seen the spiked corpse of Merson the night before – it was too much of a coincidence for any man to swallow. I asked if there were any questions, and I did my best to answer the few that were raised. When there was nothing left to say, I announced that I would be returning to my business. I advised them to do the same, and I warned them that the French might choose to disperse them if they did not.

As I walked back the way that I had run an hour earlier, heading towards the Procurator’s office, one of the questions that I had been asked was ringing in my head. It had come from the mouth of Daniel Winterhalter, a man from whom I occasionally rent a horse if I am obliged to go out of town about my business.

‘Procurator Stiffeniis,’ the stable-keeper asked, ‘are you still in charge of the investigation into these murders?’

I took refuge in my office.

I stood at the window, looking out on the market square below.

What should I put in my report regarding the murders in Lotingen?

Colonel Claudet had built his career on licking the boots of his superior officers. He had always avoided creating problems, according to Lavedrine. Indeed, he had sought to distinguish him self as an officer who solved problems. He would look to me to solve
his
problems. And three unexplained murders in three days in a small Prussian town under his command was a huge problem. Claudet would be called to account by General Louis-George Malaport, who governed the coastal provinces from Königsberg to Danzig.

There were, I reasoned, two possible lines of approach.

The first would be to make a great deal of what the people in Lotingen believed: that the murders were the work of vampires. I could try to convince Claudet that when the wild fantasies of Prussian folklore take shape in reality, the French would do well to leave the business in the hands of a local magistrate who might know how to deal with such arcane matters.

The alternative would be to persuade him that I held in my hand the connecting thread which would enable me to solve the question of the murders, and put an end to the irrational fears of my fellow citizens by providing a concrete explanation for what was, apparently, super natural.

I could not ignore the fact that Lavedrine was in Lotingen.

As we stood before the corpse of Ludo Mittner, he had said that we were ‘hunting criminals together once more’. Was he being ironic at my expense? I was still unsure what he was really doing in Lotingen. The evening before, he had talked of demonic possession in Rome and vampirism in Prussia as if they were two sides of the same dark coin.

‘I am curious about what ever affects human affairs,’ he had explained.

The truth might well be different. Especially if Claudet had convinced himself that a Prussian magistrate was not the right man to conduct the investigation. Had he sent for Lavedrine? Had he decided that it was easier to trust a French investigator to bring things to a rapid conclusion? And if so, what could I write which would show Claudet that I had discovered more than Lavedrine ever could, and persuade him that I would soon uncover the rest, if left to get on with the job in peace?

The real impediment was Emma Rimmele.

Everything that I knew led in her direction.

Could I tell Claudet that the first victim had been working for her? That the murdered girl had told Kitti Raubel that she had witnessed what she presumed to be incestuous goings-on between Emma and her father? That Erwin Rimmele, whose mind was sinking into a morass of confusion, had suggested to me that Emma was a changeling who had taken the place of his real daughter? If I then informed him that the body of the girl that everyone in Lotingen thought to be a vampire had been discovered at the bottom of the well in her garden, he would have her arrested on the spot.

Which left me with only one possibility. I must tell Claudet what I truthfully believed. That Emma Rimmele was in grave danger. Everyone was speaking openly of her as the cause of every evil in the town. Whoever had killed Lars Merson and murdered Ludo Mittner might well attempt to do the same thing to her.

I sat down at my desk, and I reached for my
nécessaire
.

Helena had bought it from a pedlar as a birthday gift for me. It was an ingenious writing-case: a hard leather tube with a hinged lid in which to store quills, ink, and a bottle of pounce. Attached to the tube was a sheet of softer leather, which could be rolled around it when travelling, or pulled out to form a smooth surface on which to write, or blot what I had written with unsized paper. When ever I went out of town on official business, I took up this leather scroll as if I were a Roman senator, and it were my staff-of-office.

What should I tell them?

I must frighten the life out of Claudet and confound the ambitions of Serge Lavedrine. I would portray the affair in Lotingen as being of such an obscure and mysterious nature that the French would prefer not to touch it. If anyone were to take the blame for failing to get to the bottom of it, I would be the scapegoat.

I heard the door of the outer office click open, then quietly close.

I had not heard a knock. Knutzen must have finished feeding his pigs, I concluded, and decided to present himself for work, per haps having heard the news about Ludo Mittner.

‘You did well to come, Knutzen,’ I called out. ‘I’ll need your help in a while. The French authorities are as nervous as the Prussians over this dreadful business.’

I had heard his footsteps on the creaking boards. Now, all was silent. He would be lingering outside, changing his muddy gardener’s smock for the worn black jacket that he wears when he is in attendance on me. Generally, he makes audible grunting noises as he prepares himself for a morning’s work.

Today, he was silent.

‘Colonel Claudet wants a report regarding the murders, but I will need a second copy, too.’

‘Have you mentioned me in that report?’

I raised my head, and the pen dropped from my fingers.

I struggled to control my racing heart. Sweat broke out on my forehead. I did not recognise my own voice.

‘Fraulein Rimmele?’

I felt like an eel caught in a trap. I glanced towards the door, hoping that Knutzen would follow hard on her heels, so that I would not be forced to remain alone with her.

‘I hoped that you would come to me again, Herr Stiffeniis,’ she said. ‘The French came, instead. A French officer, that is. He said he wished to speak with me, and with my father. My father, as you know, is terrified of the French. Can you imagine what he might say of me to that Frenchman?’

She was wearing the mourning outfit which had shocked the people of Lotingen. And yet, it was not exactly as it had been the day before. If the lower half were a sombre ball-gown with some minor adjustments, the bodice was composed of the most eccentric elements that I had ever seen a bereaved woman wear. Her blouse was a peasant smock of dark red, which formed a V, revealing the dark skin of her throat and the darker cleave of her breasts. Over this she wore a heavy waistcoat of brown wool, which negated any pretence of elegance, and seemed, indeed, the sort of thing that a man might wear for work, or for a stroll through the countryside. And over this, she wore a short black velvet jacket, which clung to the contours of her body, modelling her form and leaving nothing to the imagination. It might have been an old smoking jacket which had once belonged to her father. Her ensemble was, at the same time, strange to behold, yet not without refinement.

‘Please, sit down,’ I said, incapable of saying anything else.

She looked at the chair in which the persons I interrogate usually sit. Then, she shifted it, placing it at the side of my desk, removing in a sense the obstacle between us. We were face to face, as we had been the day before in the kitchen of the Prior’s House, though not so very close as then.

She had piled the mass of curls on top of her head by gathering them up from the neck, and securing them with the large silver clasp that I had already noticed that she favoured. The engraved face of Medusa, the Gorgon, peered out of the forest of her hair as if it meant to turn me to stone.

Was her appearance the result of care less unconcern, or an effect that she aimed at? She gave the impress ion from one moment to the next that she might simply shrug off the clothes in which she happened to have en closed her body, and remain completely naked. Quite at ease, she did not seem to fear the consequences.

I could think of nothing else; my mind was in a whirl.

‘Which French officer were you speaking of?’

I knew the answer before it came.

‘He calls himself Lavedrine, it seems. I was not there. I was walking my father along the canal bank. He’d been very odd all the day, refusing to eat, refusing to drink. Then, suddenly, he wanted to walk. I took his hand, and led him into the garden, but he insisted on walking out beside the water. He walked so far along the Cut, I thought that he would never manage to walk back again. And yet, he did so.’ She shrugged. ‘At a certain point, he said, “We must go home.” I knew
which
home he was referring to…’

She was staring into space, overcome by the heaviness of her thoughts. She was paler than she had seemed the day before. Or was it that her lips were redder?

‘Go on,’ I prompted her.

‘I took it as a good sign,’ she said. ‘His memory was better than it has been for quite some time.’ She looked up, and she smiled. ‘He called me by my name as we were walking back. I dared to hope…He’d been lost in such dark ruminations all the morning, but suddenly, he was himself again.’ Emma sat back and let out a deep sigh. ‘Gurt Schuettler was waiting at the gate. He told me that a French officer had been there, and that he had been asking questions. Schuettler said the soldier would be back. He thought the French man meant to carry us off to town. Father heard every word that he said.’

‘Was Schuettler certain?’ I asked.

‘He wants to be rid of us by any means. Papa was very frightened,’ she said, changing tack. ‘He began to shout and cry. I had to put him to bed, and give him a potion to calm him down. He did not wish to stay there a moment longer. We must recover my mother’s coffin from the tomb, he said, and take her home. You can imagine the fuss.’

‘What did this Frenchman ask Schuettler?’

Emma bit her lip, and shrugged again. A button of her blouse slipped loose. ‘How long had we been living there. What was wrong with my father. Why had we rented that particular house. The same questions that you asked me, Herr Stiffeniis.’ She stared at me for some moments, then a smile appeared on her lips. ‘Can you imagine the tales that Schuettler told him? About us? About me?’

I did not smile. I felt a sense of rage building up within me.

What had Lavedrine been doing there? And why go to the Prior’s House the previous afternoon before he came to visit me? Then again, why had he said nothing to me?

‘Did Schuettler describe him?’

‘Very tall with silver hair. Schuettler was puzzled by the fact that he was not in uniform. And yet he claimed that he was an officer. Schuettler seemed to think that he had taken on the investigation of Angela’s murder. “It is all in French hands now,” he said.’ She leant towards me. As she looked down at the clenched hands in her lap, the silver Medusa stared out at me from the forest of her hair. ‘Is it true?’ she asked. ‘Are the French involved?’

We are hunting criminals together, Stiffeniis.

Was
that
true?

I let out a resounding breath, as if to free my lungs of foul air. ‘I am still in charge of the investigation,’ I said. ‘But I know who the Frenchman is. Herr Schuettler is right in thinking that he will return to question you and your father.’

‘Stop him.’

It was not a request, it was an order. As she spoke, she laid her left hand on the sleeve of my jacket. Suddenly, her fingers caught my wrist and held it tight.

I was stunned by the ease with which she touched me for the second time. She showed no fear, no thought of having gone too far. Was she aware of the reactions that she provoked in me? Was she blind to the dangers of intimacy? The memory of her lips on my neck was so intense that I could barely stand it. A part of me wanted her to do it again. But that is not the dominant part of Hanno Stiffeniis, thank God. Had she tried to do so, I might have risen from my seat and fled.

‘I cannot,’ I said.

‘You are still the magistrate, are you not?’

‘A magistrate who must bow to the French,’ I said.

Her eye fell upon the paper on my desk. ‘You could say nothing about my father and me in what you are writing.’ Her words came in gasps. ‘We just happen to be here in town. By chance. It is the truth, after all.’

‘I have written nothing yet,’ I said, ‘though…well, it is inevitable, you must see that. Everyone in Lotingen knows where Angela Enke’s corpse was found.’

‘At the bottom of a well not mine,’ she protested. ‘Near a house that I chose on account of a father who is ill. To avoid all contact with the French who robbed us of our estate.’ Her voice was taut with anger. ‘A house which is overseen by those two brothers. A house with an unlocked gate on the banks of a canal. Anyone could have entered the garden at night and thrown the corpse of Angela into the well. Indeed, they did!’ she said emphatically. ‘I can understand that you must point an accusing finger at some one. The French expect it, and I am the obvious choice. Is that your reasoning, sir?’

Her fingers let go of my wrist, but she did not pull away. Her hand fell open in supplication, her fingers resting on my hand. They were as light as leaves which had been carried there on a breath of wind.

‘Everyone speaks of me as a vampire. Even my father.’

She smiled ironically and shook her head. Two curls came free and settled lightly on her shoulders. ‘Surely you remember what he said at the cemetery? I am the devil’s daughter, not his own. He’ll say some thing of the sort to anyone who asks him. His mind cannot be relied on. I thought his memory had come back, ’til Schuettler put an end to my hopes.’ She pushed her curls away. ‘You may as well name me in that report of yours, Herr Stiffeniis. Tell the French every thing, and let them close the case.’

Of a sudden, she seemed weary and detached, as if the whole thing bored her.

‘I know Serge Lavedrine,’ I said. ‘He’ll not be impressed by superstitions. And as for vampires, you will not hear that word from his lips.’

Her nails lightly raked the skin on the back of my hand. ‘Serge? Is that his name?’ Her gaze was so attentive, I believed I could guess what was passing through her mind. Was the Frenchman the door by which she might escape from the situation in which she found herself?

She might be right, I thought. Lavedrine would laugh out loud to hear the bizarre tales circulating on her account. He would give no credit to Schuettler, whatever the man might have said to Emma’s detriment. Nor would he pay attention to the scandals voiced by Kitti Raubel, friend and confidante of Angela Enke. To say nothing of the blasphemy of Angela’s mother, who now regarded her daughter as a vampire. Lavedrine might be the only man who
could
rescue Emma from the trap into which she had been dragged. He would only need to speak with her.