HS04 - Unholy Awakening (3 page)

‘Forced?’

She nodded. ‘Our home was seized not long ago by the French. They lodged the officers of a cavalry regiment there. My father does not notice details; size and scale are every thing to him. If I could find a house of roughly the same layout and dimensions, I thought, it would be for the best. I had to remove him from our home, in any case. The rowdy behaviour of the French intruders made life impossible. And shortly after they arrived, my mother died. It was during the epidemic. Her death and the need to ensure a decent burial have done the rest…’

I stared at her. ‘Your mother?’

She held my gaze, and nodded.

‘I am sorry to hear it,’ I said.

‘How many people died in Lotingen?’ she asked. ‘Was it half the population?’

‘Not half the population,’ I murmured. ‘A third, almost.’

‘In our house, apart from Father and myself, two serfs survived,’ she said. ‘There had been ten of them at the start of the month. But Mother was the first to succumb. In its way, it was a blessing in disguise. She was buried in a solid oak coffin, which was placed inside the family vault. The servants were bundled without much ceremony into holes in the ground. The spectacle drove my father out of his wits entirely.’

‘Where were you living?’ I asked.

She did not reply at once. I put her hesitation down to sorrow. She had lost her mother, her home and, in a certain sense, her father, too.

‘To the north-west. In the country outside Marienburg,’ she said at last.

I imagined that the burials in Marienburg had been like those in Lotingen. Hasty, lacking in religion and respect. Carried out by the employees of the sanitary inspector’s office, whose haste hid fright as much as cruelty. Emma Rimmele must have walked the same dark road. I was tempted to tell her about the death of Anders. I would have liked to tell her about Helena’s reaction to the tragedy, the high wall which had reared up between my wife and myself. It was folly, I realised. I was the investigating magistrate, and Emma Rimmele was a stranger to me. A corpse had been discovered in the garden of the house where she was living. That was all that mattered.

‘Regarding the body in the well,’ I said, seeking refuge in facts. ‘My clerk was able to identify her. She lived not far from here, he says, in the village of Krupeken. Her name was Angela Enke.’

I did not think to ask her if she knew the victim. How long had they been living there? A week? She might recognise a few people from the neighbourhood by sight, perhaps, but she would know far fewer by name.

Emma jumped up. She turned towards the window, freeing her gown, which twirled around her figure. Her naked shins disappeared beneath the folds as if a shutter had been suddenly closed on a window that had been unexpectedly opened.

‘Angela Enke?’ she whispered, catching her breath, her right hand clutching at her throat. Then, she raised both hands to her head, pushing her curls back tightly over her fore head as if they were a troublesome veil. ‘Is it Angela’s body down there?’

‘I’m afraid it is,’ I said, surprised.

The pearls danced furiously in her ear-lobes as she shook her head.

‘Oh, God!’ she muttered softly.

‘Did you know her?’ I asked.

She shook her head uncertainly, then nodded. Her eyes filled with tears, her lips parted, sounds issued from her mouth. Moans of distress, but not one intelligible word.

She turned away, and stared out of the window.

I placed my hands on her shoulders. I felt the involuntary jerking of her frame beneath my palms as she fought to hold back sobs. Then she turned to face me, eyes staring into mine. Impulsively, she stepped towards me, crushing herself against my chest, pressing her hands against my shoulder blades, pulling me towards her.

I held her, and I felt the force of her emotions.

Her hair was in my face, crushing against my nose and mouth. I did not pull away, but breathed it in. I closed my eyes, and smelled the perfume of the woods, wild flowers, damp moss. I might have been walking in the forest after a rain shower.

She leant back in my arms, making no attempt to free herself, staring up into my eyes again. The tears were gone. Her eyes were wide with fear.

‘Why would anyone want to murder her?’ she asked.

‘I do not know,’ I admitted, but I was puzzled.

Why throw a body into a well, then leave a tooth in a bucket on the surface? Why leave the well-cover lying on the grass where it would be noticed? Why not put it back in its place, and hide the secret in the dark below? Had the killer been frightened off before he could finish the deed, or had he left those signs there purposely?

Down on the canal path, I heard the crunch of wheels, the sound of approaching hooves, the cry of the driver calling for the horse to halt. Knutzen had been quick. The men had arrived. I heard the voice of Schuettler calling to them to enter the garden.

I stepped back quickly.

‘You must excuse me,’ I said.

‘For having held me, or for having let me go?’ she murmured.

‘I…I must go down. The body will have to be brought to the surface,’ I explained, adding quietly: ‘It might be better if you stay up here for the moment.’

She nodded her agreement. She seemed distracted as she raised her hands to her hair and began to twist and turn it into a manageable knot, which she fixed in place with the Medusa brooch. ‘Father will call me if he hears them,’ she said. ‘I…I will have to deal with him.’

I felt abashed, the way one feels when leaving the presence of a person with whom we have shared something important, not knowing if we will see them again. Mentally, I cursed myself. What had got into me? I would have to speak with Emma Rimmele again. There was not one question – not one! – that I had asked the woman.

I ran quickly down the stairs and out into the garden.

Four men had returned with Gudjøn Knutzen. One of them had already pulled a black hood over his head and put on a pair of black gloves. With two slits for the eyes, he looked like a highway robber.

As I came upon them, he was leaning into the mouth of the well. He might have been gazing into the mouth of Hell.

‘What if it stops me coming up again?’ he was saying.

Frederick the Great had tried to dignify them many years before with the honorary title of ‘sanitation officers’. Despite the royal decree, the inhabitants of Lotingen persisted in calling them ‘ghouls’.

As I stepped into the garden, I numbered myself as a Lotingener.

Each man was wrapped in a long black canvas cape and wore black leather boots. On their heads, they wore a sort of cap, which could be rolled down as a hood to cover their faces. With black-gloved hands on the rim of the well, heads bent forward, staring down into the darkness, they might have been waiting for the corpse of Angela Enke to come floating up of its own accord. They looked like huge black crows which had gathered in the hope of plundering rotting flesh.

They had frightened off the smaller birds, I noticed.

The Schuettler brothers had automatically relinquished the well, regrouping on the lawn some distance away, as if they might have liked to take them selves off home, remaining in the sunken garden only because I had told them specifically to wait for me there. Knutzen was standing close to them, but not too close.

One of the ghouls turned to meet me, throwing back his mask.

‘What’s all this about, Herr Procurator?’

It was Egon Tost, the senior officer. Black hair grew thickly on his chin and his cheeks like a parasite herb. Only his brow was free of it. His narrow eyes seemed to be peeping out of a thicket. There was such an air of sly mistrust about him that he seemed less menacing when his hood was down. Whatever I decided to tell him, I knew that he would only believe the half of it. And the other three would follow his lead.

‘That man of yours was acting strange,’ said Tost, glancing in the direction of Knutzen. ‘Telling us to get a move on, saying that you had found a corpse, and that it had to be collected right away.’

‘It is no more than the truth,’ I said in Knutzen’s defence.

‘That wasn’t all he said,’ Tost replied. ‘We met a man along the canal bank. A friend of his. I over heard them talking. He was saying something about strange wounds. Wounds to the neck…’

‘Bring the corpse up, Herr Tost. The sooner it is done, the better,’ I said sharply, looking up at the large clouds racing overhead. ‘A down pour will only make the task more troublesome.’

The other ghouls nodded, as if the thought of working in a well with mud and water creeping up around them was a good incentive to get the work finished and done with. They began to pull their masks down over their faces.

Tost’s face remained defiantly uncovered. ‘What’s it doing down there, sir?’

I thought for an instant. ‘That is for me to discover,’ I said. ‘You job is to bring it to the surface.’

‘It’s not fever, then? Nothing contagious?’

‘Not fever,’ I confirmed.

These men, and others like them, had retrieved and buried hundreds of corpses during the epidemic. Some of their fellows had died, no doubt. Now, they seemed to be relieved by my denial, which was repeated, rough and muffled, among themselves.

‘That’s good news,’ said Tost, turning to his men. ‘We know what needs to be done, in that case. Me and Bruno will go down first,’ he announced, pointing to one of his companions, tugging the mask down over his face. ‘Let down the stretcher,’ he instructed the others. ‘Once we have got the body secured, you two haul it up to the top – these people here will give you a hand. Then, lay it out on the cart ready for leaving. Right?’

He waited for the other men to nod in agreement.

Tost was no fool, I realised. His instructions would make sure that they were all equally exposed to the risks. He and Bruno would touch the body when they lifted it onto the stretcher, but the men on the ground would be forced to do the same when they untied it and lifted it onto their cart.

‘Come on! Let’s get cracking,’ he said.

As he and the other man disappeared down the well-shaft, I went to stand beside the men who were letting out the rope. Knutzen drifted across and stood by my side. He did not say a word, and I said nothing to him in return. If he was gathering his courage to speak to me, I would let him stew. As Tost had mentioned, Knutzen had spoken to some one on the canal bank. The ghouls had heard them muttering about ‘strange wounds’. Now, the ghouls would see the wounds, too.

I realised that the investigation was going to be difficult.

I watched the operations, the ropes being paid out slowly, the climbers no longer visible, only their voices and their noisy grunts rising up into the light as they made their way into the darkness.

A cry arose from the bottom of the well. ‘We’re here!’

The loose rope was pulled up again, and a light was sent down to them.

Their voices rumbled to the surface as the light descended. The rope went slack while the lantern was being untied. I heard an oath from one of the men below. They had found the girl’s body at the far end of the cistern, then. Snippets of their discussion drifted up, as if they were making efforts to finish the job without delay.

I leant out over the wall of the well, listening.

Their voices echoed up from the bowels of the earth, like the pronouncements of some mysterious Greek oracle. The depth of the tunnel, and its stone construction, seemed to amplify every sound that was made down below. I heard most of what they said.

‘Better tie her mouth up…’

One of them sighed like a whale spouting water from its blow-hole.

‘Know what we should do before we lift her out?’ This was said in a deep, snarling growl. ‘That stick over there…One blow…That’s all it takes…’

‘That magistrate has seen her, Bruno,’ Egon Tost interrupted. ‘He’d know!’

I stared down into the darkness and I shouted, ‘Get a move on down there.’

‘A couple of minutes, sir,’ Tost’s voice came back. ‘Just making sure that the ropes are tight. Wouldn’t want the lassie falling off now, would we?’

‘Wouldn’t we?’ I heard the other man hiss.

I had to give them points for brazen courage. Still, I turned to Knutzen. ‘You told them about the girl,’ I said quietly.

‘I told them what was necessary,’ he murmured in reply.

‘Concerning your suspicions. Or should I call them superstitions?’

Knutzen stared at me in silence.

‘You told the Schuettlers, too,’ I went on, nodding my head in their direction. The brothers were standing together by the garden wall, shoulder to shoulder, like trees which had been planted too close together. ‘Who else did you tell along the way?’ I was working my self up into a temper. ‘I made myself plain, Knutzen. I instructed you to tell no-one!’

He stepped in front of me, blocking the Schuettlers from my view.

‘I told them that there was a body at the bottom of the well…’

‘You told them how you think she was killed!’ I snapped.

‘I told them what they have a right to know,’ Knutzen repeated stubbornly.

‘A right?’ My anger exploded. ‘What
right
?’

As he began to speak, his voice was quivering, much like mine. At first, I thought that it was fear, but it was not. ‘You ought to have warned every one of the danger, sir. Not kept it a secret.’ His eyes glistened with the passion of self-righteousness. ‘When something like
this
happens, people have a right to know. They have a right to defend them selves, and protect their loved ones.’

He stared away in open defiance.

‘Who else did you tell?’ I insisted.

‘A…a friend,’ he said at last. ‘Selleck the saddler. He lives in the village where the girl was living. He has a wife, and children. They’ll be the first to run the risk. He was going home from the market. I told him that Angela had died. And
how
she had died.’

Knutzen looked me squarely in the eye for the first time in the eleven years that we had worked together. We had never faced off against each other like equals. His head was always slightly bowed when he spoke to me. Now, his eyes blazed.

‘They have the right to protect themselves until you find the killer, sir.’

I was stunned. I had never seen
this
Knutzen before.

‘We’re ready to haul her up, sir,’ one of the ghouls called out.

Knutzen ran to help the man as he began to pull on the rope. I went to help the other fellow, glad of the distraction. It was no easy task. The stretcher bumped against the stone walls – the shaft was only inches wider than the stretcher was long. Once or twice, it stuck fast, and we were obliged to hold the ropes steady until one of the men below was able to release it from whatever was obstructing it.

It took some time before the stretcher came bobbing to the surface.

The corpse had been lashed around with a grey tarpaulin sheet. A hand had slipped from beneath the bindings. The right hand. In the light of day, it was plump, not much larger than the hand of a baby.

Thank God, they had covered the wounds in her neck.

The corpse and stretcher were set down on the grass, while the ghouls sent down the ropes to bring up Tost and Bruno. I did not help them. I could not take my eyes from the body. It might have been a land-mine primed to explode. It would bring terror and destruction if the fuse were lit. I considered the route that the ghouls would have to take with their funeral cart on the way to the medical examiner’s office. They might be stopped by a French patrol before they got there. The French would want to know who had died. They would want to know
how
she had died. They would report the details to Colonel Claudet, who was commander of the garrison, and he would send for me.

What could I tell him, except her name?

If I told him about the puncture holes to her neck, the news would be on everyone’s lips in no time. And they would all reach the same conclusion as Knutzen. A virulent new epidemic would sweep through the town. Provoked not by illness, but by fear.

I needed time.

The corpse of Angela Enke must be kept away from prying eyes. As few people as possible must see her. If I could find some explanation for her death, or lay my hands on the killer, all might yet be well in Lotingen.

‘The body must be taken to the old cemetery,’ I ordered the ghouls.

I ignored the looks of surprise on their faces, overriding their objections.

‘Knutzen, you will go with them. Speak with Lars Merson,’ I stepped close and hissed in his ear. ‘Order him to lock the body in the chapel. You and he must make sure no-one enters. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

‘What about the doctor?’ Egon Tost objected. ‘He should certify the death, sir. That’s been the procedure since the epidemic…’

‘This is
not
a case of fever,’ I stated dogmatically.

Tost raised his chin in the direction of the corpse. He might have been indicating a dead dog lying in the street. ‘What happened to her, anyway?’

‘She is dead,’ I said flatly. ‘Now, do as you are told. Take her to the old cemetery. I will report her death to the French. Do your duty, Herr Tost. I will do mine.’

I watched like a hawk while they loaded the stretcher onto the cart.

Knutzen climbed up behind them, glancing back at me with the reproachful look of a man who had been condemned. With in minutes, the cart pulled away from the gate. I wiped my brow, praying to heaven that they would meet no-one else along the way. Be fore presenting myself to the French authorities, I would need to learn as much as I could about the victim. Where she came from. What she might have been doing in that part of the country. What sort of life she led. The people who had seen her recently. So far, I knew only her name and the name of the village that she came from.

I made my way over to the Schuettlers. They were standing by a stone arch on the far side of the garden. They looked up when they saw me coming, but they did not move. They might have been chained to the spot.

‘Well, sirs,’ I said, ‘will you invite me into your house?’

The brothers exchanged a glance, then stood aside and waved me through the arch.

‘We live in the kitchen garden. To keep the birds and thieves off,’ Gurt Schuettler explained with a wave of his hand which took in cabbages, long beans, rows of green leaves which I thought might be turnips or potatoes, leading me along a path in the direction of a small building in the far corner of the walled compound. It was the only thing with four walls and a roof in that section of the property.

‘This used to be the brother-apothecary’s shop,’ he said, as he slipped the latch and pushed open the door.

A billy-goat burst out through the narrow gap, and scampered off through the vegetable crops. Three hens came next, squawking loudly as they fought their way un ceremoniously out of the door. An aged dog was asleep on the floor, but it did not bother to shift itself as we entered. The cramped room was furnished with a small table, two stools, and a cast-iron stove that was red with rust. The place was lit by a single window and the sun which came shining in through the open door. Two jute sacks stuffed with straw were laid along the wall for sleeping on. Bedroom, kitchen, henhouse, all in one. Was there no more spacious accommodation in what remained of the monastery?

‘Would you like a stool, sir?’

‘We can speak just as well outside,’ I replied, returning the way I had come, opening my shoulder bag, taking out my pad, and the newfangled Faber-Castel wooden pencil which Helena had purchased for me from Durkheim’s Emporium. It was like a sandwich – two slices of wood enclosed a slice of graphite.

‘What is that, sir?’ Schuettler asked me curiously.

I did not bother to answer him, writing down his name with the instrument.

‘Did you hear anything unusual last night? A noise? A cry?’ I began.

Gurt Schuettler turned to his brother, who shook his head.

‘We heard nothing, sir,’ the old man replied. ‘Bit of a wind, that was all.’

‘According to my secretary, the dead girl’s name is Angela Enke. Did either of you know her?’

‘Both of us did,’ Gurt Schuettler said.

‘Did you, now?’ I asked. ‘How come?’

‘Angela was here this week, sir. Needles and buttons was her trade.’

‘In this house?’ I asked.