HS04 - Unholy Awakening (29 page)

‘Good evening, Hanno,’ she said. ‘Is Lavedrine here?’

‘Helena!’

I heard the surprise in Lavedrine’s voice. He pushed past me, striding across the room in a fit of anxiety and concern. ‘You are well, I hope?’

‘Well enough,’ she replied in measured tones. ‘Edviga woke up in a foul mood this morning, otherwise I would have been here earlier. But once the baby was settled, what was there to stop me?’ She smiled at him, then her glance washed over me. ‘Lotte will be able to look after them for a day or so, I am sure. I caught the public coach from Lotingen after lunch. It isn’t much of a journey.’

‘Did you have any problems at the gate?’

Lavedrine seemed bogged down in practicalities, while one question loomed in my mind:
What was Helena doing in Marienburg?

My wife shook her head. ‘I told the officer of the guard that I had come to speak with Colonel Lavedrine on a matter of importance.’ She smiled at him again, even more warmly than before. ‘Your name works wonders, it seems. They brought me to this room, and they let me wait.’ She pointed to the fireplace. ‘They even lit the logs. They said that you were lodging in this part of the fortress.
Both
of you, I mean.’

She looked in my direction as she added this codicil.

I did not move. My hand had frozen on the cold metal handle of the door. Until that moment, I thought, I might have been invisible to the pair of them. Lavedrine was standing beside Helena, and he was vibrant. She remained seated, looking calmly up at him, as if that room were her own front parlour. He laid his right hand gently on her left shoulder, leaning above her, kissing the air, his lips so close to the mass of curls that she had bundled up on her head with a whale-bone clasp that I recognised too well. Lavedrine had given it to her as a parting gift the day that he left Lotingen two years before. It was a favourite of hers. I had no doubt that she had chosen to wear it, knowing that she was going to meet him.

‘You can’t imagine the pleasure that it gives me,’ he said. ‘And such a surprise! Hanno ran on ahead, while the messenger was informing me that a Prussian lady was waiting for us to return.’

‘I’m sure it was a great surprise for Hanno, too,’ my wife said, her fingers playing with her hair, pushing the curls behind her ears to display the coral earrings dangling from her lobes. ‘Then again,’ she added, gazing into the fire, ‘a Prussian lady? Indeed, I wonder whether
I
am a…disappointment.’ She softened the acidity of this comment with a darting smile in my direction, her eyes bold and challenging.

‘What brings you here?’ I asked, taking three steps into the room. It sounded ruder than I had intended, but there was no helping it.

Helena studied my face, as if deciding how to answer me.

‘Necessity,’ she said at last.

‘What do you mean by that?’ I snapped.

Lavedrine took a step forward, as if he meant to defend her. They might have been a married couple confronting an intruder. A pained smile pulled at Lavedrine’s lips, while my wife’s expression was as calm and impenetrable as the Baltic Sea on one of those rare days when there is no wind to ruffle it.

‘I had no alternative,’ she said. ‘I have learnt something which I think that you should know. Both of you. It concerns Emma Rimmele.’

Did the floor shift beneath my feet? I veered to the right and sat down on the edge of the bed. Had I fallen all the way to the centre of the Earth, I would still have been robbed of the power of speech.

‘Emma Rimmele?’ Lavedrine repeated, as if he, too, was unsure of what he had just heard. ‘Have you found out something about Emma Rimmele?’

‘Helena is not a magistrate,’ I opposed. I did not wish to see my wife drawn into the case. ‘Whatever gossip she may have stumbled on in Lotingen, it cannot change what we know concerning Emma Rimmele in Kirchenfeld.’

I looked at my wife as I spoke, but I could not see her face. The fire in the grate seemed to require all of her attention in that moment.

‘Are you sure of that, Hanno?’ Lavedrine asked, pointing his finger at me like a loaded pistol. ‘Have you forgotten the help which Helena pro vided during the Gottewald case two years ago? Without her, we would never have got to the bottom of the affair. If Helena has taken the trouble to come here, we must hear her out.’

‘Giving evidence,’ I murmured unhappily.

‘Helena’s name will not appear in any report,’ he said. ‘This will be a quiet, informal chat amongst ourselves, and nothing more.’

Helena never took her eyes from the fire. Her composure surprised me somewhat, but I could raise no objection. Not that Lavedrine would have given way, in any case.

‘Excellent!’ he cried, holding out his hands to her, pulling her to her feet as if the band had started up and he had invited her to dance. ‘Come, Helena,’ he encouraged, leading her around the chair, as if they were taking the first walk of the quadrille before he handed her over to me. Though she presented herself before me, she did not curtsey.

Instead, she looked down at the tiled floor.

‘I think that I would prefer to sit,’ she said.

With an able flick of the wrist, Lavedrine turned the chair around and placed it at her back. Thus, as she sat down again, I found myself looking directly into the face of my wife. Lavedrine rested his hand and weight upon the back-rest of the chair. Had it happened accidentally, or had he engineered it? Helena and I would be obliged to look into each other’s eyes; any attempt to avoid doing so would be immediately evident.

Helena looked up at him, and flashed a smile. ‘I am ready,’ she said, the smile fading away as she looked back at me.

‘Hanno and I are eager to hear what you have to say.’

Suddenly, I was reminded of evenings at home, when Lotte came to sit with us in the parlour and the children demanded a story before going up to bed. Helena looked no different than usual, while I was in a far more agitated state.

‘I saw Emma Rimmele,’ she began. ‘It was the day after…the day after Angela Enke’s body had been found. She was coming down the lane which leads towards the Cut and the Prior’s House, while I was going to the cemetery. It did not take very much to see…That is, to understand…’

‘To understand what?’ Lavedrine helped her.

‘That any man who sees her cannot remain…immune.’

‘Immune to
what
, Helena?’

I asked this question. I had no choice. If we were to hear more superstition, I wanted to get it out of the way, and quickly. I studied her hands as I waited for her answer. They were bunched in tight fists upon her knees. I could see the tension in the whiteness of her knuckles, made all the whiter by the black cuffs of her dress, and the red marks left on her wrist where she had tied the bows of the sleeves too tightly. I clutched my hands together, fighting the impulse to lean across, release the bows, and tie them up again more loosely. It seemed to me to be a small, unnecessary torment which Helena had inflicted on herself.

I glanced at her, but she did not look up.

‘Immune to what she is,’ Helena said quietly. ‘There is something so…so unsettling about her. Even the way she dresses, though it is not a question of her clothes. Is it a mourning dress she wears? Transparent tulle and flimsy muslin show more than they can hide. She has such striking hair…’

She closed her eyes, raised her hand to cover her lips. A wave of suppressed emotion sent a shudder through her body. ‘When I saw her, I understood the effect that she must have upon men. All men. She swept through the town like the fever epidemic. Every man who sees her is struck by her, and he is helpless to defend himself. It is another sort of…fever.’

I listened to what she said, and I did not reply. I recalled, instead, a juridical text which I had recently read. It described the state of mind of a man who cannot defend him self against an accusation which is evidently true. Denial gives way to resignation, dull acceptance of an inevitable fate. That was how I felt.

‘Have you seen her again?’ Lavedrine asked quietly. ‘Since that day, I mean.’

Helena slowly shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, looking up at Lavedrine. ‘But I…Well, I made enquiries while Hanno was here with you in Marienburg. I had to know more about her. To satisfy my own curiosity. And now, I know a great deal more than either of you do. Certainly more than Hanno managed to discover on her account.’

‘What
are
you insinuating, Helena?’

The question exploded from my lips.

My wife was accusing me of failing to conduct the investigation as I ought to have done. Was Lavedrine pleased to hear his doubts expressed by my wife? Was he trying to set us at each other’s throats, acting as the wedge to prise us apart and divide us, one from the other?

‘I went to the Prior’s House in the afternoon,’ she said, ignoring my question. ‘She was not there. She has disappeared, it seems.’

I made to stand, but Lavedrine caught my wrist and held me fast.

‘There may be many explanations, Hanno. Not the one that you fear,’ he hissed. He turned once more to Helena. ‘Had something happened at the Prior’s House?’

Helena shook her head. ‘She left there shortly after you and Hanno departed for Marienburg. Within an hour or two, a carriage was being loaded at the gate.’

Helena’s voice was even, unemotional. As sharp as a surgeon’s knife.

In my head, I heard a different voice. A passionate, persuasive voice.
If anyone must hunt for me, Herr Procurator, I hope it will be you
.

Helena had gone in pursuit of Emma Rimmele, instead.

‘Who told you this?’

Although I tried, I could not make this question sound less accusatory.

Helena rested her elbows on her knees, cradling her face in her hands. She stared into my eyes. ‘Who are you defending, Hanno? Yourself? Emma Rimmele? She has fled. Do you understand me? She has gone. Forever. Herr Schuettler was amazed by the speed with which she left. She had always told him that the Prior’s House was the only place where her father would find peace. The next instant, she abandoned it. She is no longer in Lotingen. She took the old man with her.’

‘The Schuettlers wanted money,’ I countered. ‘Emma had nothing more to give them. And she had no authority to gain access to her father’s deposits in the bank. Herr Rimmele was rich, but they might as well have been as poor as mice. He recognises no-one. Not even his own daughter…’

Helena shook her head. ‘I do not think they asked for money. Gurt Schuettler said that he had offered to repay a part of the rent that she had paid already.’

‘The Schuettlers had threatened to throw the Rimmeles out…’

‘Is that what she told you, Hanno?’

Helena turned her face towards the window, as if she could not bear to look at me.

Lavedrine stretched out his hand, and patted my shoulder, shaking his head, warning me to say no more. ‘There is one thing I do not comprehend,’ he said to Helena. ‘You went to the house where Emma Rimmele ought to have been. You did not tell us why you went there.’

‘Curiosity,’ she replied quite calmly. ‘I had learnt something on her account. I had seen the effect that she had had upon my husband. I wanted to know how far she had bewitched him.’

I brushed Lavedrine’s hand aside.

‘What conclusion did you reach?’ I challenged her.

Helena looked at me as she replied. Her stare was so intense, I hardly dared to breathe. I saw no anger in her eyes, yet her lips were trembling. I saw pain, an infinity of pain.

‘I realised how easily she had distracted you, Hanno. You were so partial in your concern for her that you failed in your duty. I am not talking of your duty to your wife and family, I am talking of your duty as a magistrate. You failed to do what was in your power to protect the people in the town. I got my first intuition of it when Serge came to Lotingen. He asked you questions that you could not answer, things you had apparently avoided, things you had purposely set aside, ignoring what you knew, dismissing what you had been told…’

‘What else was there to know?’

She did not answer. She breathed in deeply, and shook her head resignedly.

‘What could
you
find that I did not, Helena?’

She breathed out slowly, audibly, expelling every ounce of air like the final wheeze of an empty bellows. ‘It happened by chance,’ she said. ‘Luck, I suppose you would call it. I had been to see Herr Froberger at the Office of Public Works…’

‘Whatever for?’ I asked her.

Anger blazed up in her eyes. ‘You told me that Anders’ gravestone was ready, that Ulrich Meyer had cut it and taken it to the cemetery. That the stone was there…I wanted to know when it would be erected. And who would do the work. You know how long I’ve waited! I went to insist that it should be done at once. But with Merson dead, and Ludo dead, and you involved in other things, Hanno, I was afraid that it would never be done. I prayed that Froberger would speak with Ulrich Meyer.’

She bowed her head.

‘What did Froberger say?’

‘He nearly had a fit,’ she said. ‘The cemetery is in the hands of the French, and until a new gravedigger could be appointed nothing can be done. He showed me a stack of papers, Hanno. Orders waiting to be carried out. Not just the stone for Anders. He was so insistent, thrusting the documents into my hand. There are priorities, he said. Work is done in order of urgency. Perhaps he feared that I would take my complaint to the mayor. And while he was explaining this, he kept piling papers up in front of me. That was when I saw the name.’

She pressed her right hand to her mouth, crushing her lips with her knuckles.

‘Which name, Helena?’ Lavedrine’s voice was little more than a whisper.

As he spoke, he reached out and laid his hand on hers. I would have liked to do the same thing, to comfort her the way that he was trying to do. But would she have accepted it from me?

‘Gisela Kassel…An order to remove her coffin from the Kassel vault. Merson had placed the body there, while waiting for Emma Rimmele to provide the documents regarding its removal from Marienburg. There was no legal proof that the coffin contained a member of the Kassel family. Merson had pinned a note to the page, saying that he was worried about a coffin being left inside a vault unless it had a right to be there. He used the word
intruder
…’ Helena halted for a second. ‘That is how he spoke of whoever lies inside that coffin, Hanno. He called her an
intruder
. They use the word in Lotingen to speak of vampires. According to Lars Merson, Emma’s mother was an intruder in the cemetery.’