HS04 - Unholy Awakening (7 page)

She strode ahead, as if she were searching for something. In the determination of the moment, her father was forgotten. She lent no helping hand to steady his less certain steps along the gravel path. I saw how he struggled to keep pace with her, trotting almost, one leg taking longer steps, the other shuffling after it, as if such energetic exercise was not a regular item in his daily round. She did not look back to over see his progress, nor wait to help him when the path turned sharply right.

I thought of Helena, her mourning dress buttoned up to the point of her chin, her veil coming down to meet it, her hair hidden beneath the black box-hat. Black leather gloves encasing the pale white skin of her hands. Not an inch of her flesh visible.

In that instant, her eyes met mine.

She stopped in her tracks, as if to ask herself what I was doing in that place. Her eyes shifted from me to the roses on the grass. Then, she stared at me again. I might have gulped another glass of Bischoff’s cordial, such fire I felt in my stomach, the fumes rising to my head as she veered in my direction. Her father shuddered uncertainly to a halt, like a baby duck that had lost sight of its mother.

‘Is this your child?’ she asked me breathlessly, raising a hand, pushing back a curl that had fallen into her eyes. ‘I will bring some flowers the next time.’

Instinctively, I glanced down at her empty hands.

She shook her head, her eyes fixed on mine. ‘No flowers today,’ she said. ‘We are here to pray.’ She looked back over her shoulder in the direction of her father. ‘He is not at his best today, sir,’ she murmured almost imperceptibly, as if those words were meant for my ears only.

‘I must speak with you, Fraulein Rimmele,’ I said.

She stared at me as if I had just said something odd.

‘Here?’ she murmured.

I looked down at the toes of my boots. There was a sardonic something in her voice, and I was instantly embarrassed by the playfulness of it. ‘I will come to your house some time…’

‘Your office might be better,’ she offered. ‘If it’s all the same to you.’

She surprised me once again. No-one likes to be seen entering the Procurator’s office. Most people fear the building. If any man is forced to enter there, his neighbours think that he has been summoned to appear before me to answer some charge.

‘I’d prefer to leave my father at home first,’ she explained.

‘As you choose,’ I replied. ‘Some time later today, then.’

While we were speaking, her father had taken a step or two forward, as if he meant to reach his daughter. It was a feeble effort, like a child who had barely learnt to walk. He caught at her arm and managed to do little more than hang on awkwardly, almost bending double at her side. Emma turned and pulled him up with one hand by the lapel of his coat. As she did so, the heavy overcoat that she was wearing slipped from her shoulders and slid to the ground, carrying off the delicate modesty cape that had done something to conceal her breasts from public show. Her flesh was of the same amber hue as her legs.

‘Very well,’ she said, caught between holding her father up, and recovering her cape and her overcoat. ‘I’ll come to you the instant I am able.’

I dashed forward, and swept her garments from the ground, hurrying to cover her naked shoulders with the overcoat, while pressing the silk cape into her hands. A flash of static electricity passed between us.

She looked at me for one long silent moment, then slipped her father’s lifeless arm into hers, and said: ‘Come along, Papa. We’ll walk the rest of the way together.’

As they made their way down the path, Lars Merson appeared at my side.

Erwin Rimmele looked back, peering around the protective arm of his daughter. His eyes flashed from Merson to me, and back again. His lips opened, as though he might be about to say something.

‘Where is the Rimmele tomb?’ I asked Merson.

‘There is no Rimmele tomb,’ he snapped. ‘The mother’s maiden name was Kassel. It’s a vault, sir. One of the oldest in the cemetery. Until they returned, it was thought to have been abandoned. The dead lady has no living relatives left in Lotingen. Her daughter came with a coffin, insisting that it had to be buried with her forefathers. That had been Frau Rimmele’s dying wish, the young lady said. She wanted it to be done at once, but these things take a while, sir. Permission had to be asked to have the old vault opened. Fraulein Rimmele was here the whole day to see that the work was properly done.’

‘The whole day?’ I queried.

He grunted audibly. ‘We had her watching over us while we was working. We had to scrape out all the mortar, lever off the cap-stone, wash the dirt off. Then, clear out all the accumulated rubbish to make it fit to receive the coffin.’

‘We, Merson?’ I asked, turning to look at him.

‘Me and my lad, Ludo,’ he replied.

His eyes were fixed on the young woman and her father, as they made their way towards the Kassel family vault. There was nothing in his expression to indicate pity for their bereavement. Indeed, I thought I saw a look of disgust on his weather-worn face.

‘Is there something odious in that?’ I asked, surprised by his attitude. ‘She has a perfect right to see that things are properly done. Is that why you spoke of her as a she-devil?’

‘Ain’t nothing odious in that, sir. But what I
did
find odious,’ he said, repeating himself for emphasis, ‘what I
do
find odious, is that no sooner did I slide the cap-stone on again – the mother was now inside the vault, if you understand me, Herr Stiffeniis – than that there lady went and…well, she wiped the mud off her boots on her mother’s slab!’

‘And you saw all this with your own eyes, I suppose?’

He shook his head, ignoring my sarcasm. ‘Not three minutes after I had done the job. I took up my spade and crowbar, but I’d forgot my trowel and bucket. I had to go back for those, didn’t I, sir? When I got there, she must have thought that she was all alone. I ain’t never seen the like of it in all my days of working here. Would you clean your boots on any man’s grave? On your own mother’s grave, Herr Magistrate? It’s a sacrilege, that’s what it is! If I was looking for a vampire anywhere in Lotingen, sir, I would start in her front garden!’

If Emma Rimmele did not come to me that morning, I would go to her.

I had taken little notice of the fears that she had expressed the day before. The body
had
been found in her garden; men like Merson would say that the corpse ‘belonged’ to her. They would blame her for its being there. Emma Rimmele was a stranger in town. A beautiful and provocative one. She had brought a coffin with her. Her ways were not like ours. In the present circumstances, she was a danger to herself.

Suddenly, a shriek cut through the air.

It was human, loud, though some way off.

Startled rooks in the trees above my head took it up, cawing raucously, spreading their wings and flapping into the air like the circling buzzards I had read about in Africa when carrion is at hand.

I ran towards the sound, following the path that the Rimmeles had taken.

Merson’s boots thumped the ground as he lumbered heavily after me. There was no-one else in that part of the burial-ground. ‘Over there, sir,’ he pointed. The gate of the vault was open, and I plunged down the worn steps, pulling up sharply as I cannoned into a human body. Erwin Rimmele was stumbling out of the dark interior as I charged into him. He fell to his knees before I could stop it from happening. As I bent to help him to his feet, I heard him mumbling. Sounds issued from his mouth in gasps, but I did not understand what he was trying to say.

Emma Rimmele was soon behind him, bending over him, too.

Her attention seemed more taken by her overcoat than by the sight of an old man kneeling on the damp stone floor. She clenched the garment to her throat, as if her whole demeanour might depend on it. Her blouse was torn, I realised. I caught a glimpse of bare flesh as she stretched her right arm out to assist him. Had there been a battle between them? Her hair had also been pulled loose, and it now covered the side of her face. As she pushed it carelessly away, I saw a gash and a drop of blood beneath her left eye.

‘Heave him up, sir,’ she said. ‘He’ll never shift on his own. I have the carriage waiting at the cemetery gate. We must get him home at once.’

It took a moment to make sense of what she had said, and what I must do. My hesitation was too much for her strained nerves. ‘Lord above! Do as I say, Herr Stiffeniis. Can’t you see that he is ill?’

I placed one arm behind the old man’s shoulders, the other behind his knees. I had him up in an instant. Herr Rimmele was as light as a feather. Nor did he fight against me, as I thought he might. Instead, he clasped his arms around my neck, and held on tightly, as if to add what little strength he had to the endeavour.

‘Stand back,’ I ordered Merson, who was blocking the exit, carrying my burden up into the light. I shifted his weight a little, holding the old man in my arms as if he were a child, carrying him quickly back along the narrow path towards the cemetery gates.

Behind me, I heard Emma saying something to Merson. She might have been explaining what had happened as she locked the iron gate to the vault with the key. I was not listening to them. Herr Rimmele’s head was inches from my right ear. I was listening to him. A single sentence, which he repeated, over and over again, in a small and distant voice.

‘She is not my daughter…Not my daughter…’

As I bowed my head closer, urging him to be calm, the words changed, but not the insistent tone with which he pronounced them.

‘A vampire has stolen her. A vampire…’

His head fell heavily on my shoulder, and I realised that he had fainted.

I hurried forward, relieved to hear that monotonous sing-song no more.

I had decided to interrogate Emma Rimmele immediately.

Instead of meeting her in my office, as she had suggested, I found myself sitting in the kitchen of her house, hat in hand, like a serf who had come to deliver fresh eggs. I had been awake all night, and was hungry, but I was obliged to wait while she was up stairs dealing with her father. The chair on which I sat was the only one in that vast room. A sliver of a tree-trunk formed the seat, four knobbly legs held it up, a vertical plank dug into my shoulders. It had been roughly hewn, and not by any skilled carpenter. Had the Schuettler brothers made it, I wondered. Then again, I thought, if Angela Enke had been sewing in the kitchen of the house, this was where she had sat.

I took a deep breath and looked around me.

It was the barest room that I had seen in quite some time. Much too large for a domestic kitchen, it had a high barrel-vaulted ceiling, and was almost unfurnished, except for a small larder cupboard pushed up against the far wall, and the ancient worm-eaten table on which I braced my elbow. The plastered walls had once been washed with lime, but the work had been done so long ago that they were stained uneven brown and yellow with grease and smoke and a century of cooking. Along the walls hung rough wooden frames and empty shelves which matched the rough rustic style of the chair. A range of pots and pans and ladles hung from bent nails driven into the wood. The utensils might once have been shining bronze, but now they were black with age. Would anyone dare to set those pots upon the fire? Had Emma Rimmele done so?

In the corner was a stone sink and a hand-pump. Beside it, another waist-high tree-trunk was bristling with knives of different lengths and sizes. Generations of rabbits and hens had lost their heads on that gnarled block, which was black with ingrained blood. At my back, a huge fireplace took up almost the entire wall – the black metal cowl began at the height of my chin and rose to a point in the ceiling. Short lengths of wood had been stacked along the wall in an untidy pile, though the fire was out. When lit, I imagined, the choice was limited: either you sat in front of the fire and roasted, or you pulled your chair out into the room and you froze.

In that moment, it was so cold that my teeth began to chatter. Three narrow windows set low in the wall provided light. The rays of a pale sun could do nothing to combat the absence of warmth. Why in heaven’s name had she chosen that place for her self and her father? She had mentioned that the Prior’s House reminded him of the house that they had lived in before, the one which had now fallen into the hands of the French. Could the old man really find comfort in such austerity?

Above my head, I heard footsteps. They crossed the ceiling to the windows, then crossed back again. I could hear a voice, but only just – it was Emma, I supposed, though I could not make out what she was saying. She had taken her father up to his room the instant that we arrived. I had offered to help, of course.

‘No, thank you, sir,’ she said firmly, slipping her arm beneath her father’s, carrying him forward. ‘He must use his own legs.’

As his foot came up against the first step, Erwin Rimmele tilted forward, as if he might be about to fall. Emma steadied him, waiting while he raised his foot and searched uncertainly for a firm place on which to set it.

‘You can rest for a little while upstairs, Papa,’ she encouraged him, taking his weight on her hip, nimbly tucking her voluminous gown into her belt to facilitate her movements. ‘Then, I will bring you something to eat.’

I had lunged forward to help her, thinking that he was going to fall.

Her head whipped round at the sound of my boots on the tiles. ‘I know what must be done, Herr Stiffeniis,’ she said. ‘I am used to doing it alone.’

Like a practised nurse, she placed one arm behind her father’s shoulders, and urged him on. Rimmele had no choice but to mount to the next stair. And the next. As I watched their slow progress, I wondered whether the manner in which she took control of him was the true source of the resentment that the old man had whispered in my ear as I was carrying him from the cemetery. Try as he might to fight against her, the force that she applied was irresistible. Herr Rimmele muttered angrily to himself, then turned his head in my direction.

Emma deftly raised her shoulder to prevent him, blocking me from his sight.

‘You must go to bed, Papa. You’ll have an ache in your head if you don’t.’

Having witnessed the scene, I felt a deal of pity for her. How could an attractive young woman face such harrowing domestic duties every day? Alone, and without help. Her beauty would be stolen from her before she could put it to any use in her own cause. Her father might live for another ten or twenty years. And now her troubles had been multiplied by the discovery of the corpse in the well. And in a house not hers, in a town where no-one knew of the difficulties that she had had to face.

‘Wait for me there,’ she said, pointing to a door which led me into the kitchen.

I pressed my fingers hard against my eyelids.

Tiredness was catching up with me, and the kitchen was dim. I had not been home in twenty-four hours, and the little that I had instructed Knutzen to say to my wife would not suffice to reassure her. Anyone could have called to tell Helena that a body had been found, hoping to learn more from the magistrate’s wife. Having discovered that Helena knew nothing, they might well tell her how the girl had been killed. There would be much gossip about the wounds. Word would spread in no time. I silently prayed that Lotte had managed to hold her tongue. If the maid began to speculate on the cause, there would be nothing left for me to tell the mistress. That is, my truth would seem pale and inadequate in comparison with the girl’s imaginings.

I stood up quickly. My limbs were stiff after the labour of the night. I looked out of the kitchen window, resting my forehead against the grimy glass. In front of me was the well in the centre of the lawn. The bucket was in its proper place, as was the well-cover. The Schuettlers had evidently tidied up the garden after the ghouls departed. Over to the left, looking through the gate, I could see a slice of the canal, the stubbly fields beyond, and, farther off, the woods which hid the village of Krupeken.

‘Angela came from over that way.’

Emma Rimmele was standing in the doorway.

She had cast off her overcoat-cum-cloak, but she had not changed her dress. Though partially hidden by her undone hair, I could see that her right arm was bare, the material hanging down in tatters where her father had ripped at it. Her naked arm and bare shoulders seemed to glisten in the half-light. She reminded me of the girls who work out on the Baltic coast collecting amber on the shore in every weather.

‘Why did Angela come here the other night?’ I asked.

Emma Rimmele came towards me slowly, almost languidly. I stepped aside, thinking that she meant to show me something from the window. Instead, she stopped, and stared out at the world beyond my shoulder. A vein pulsed in her temple. Her brow furrowed. The nurse who had forced her father up the forbidding stairs was transformed into another person. The woman standing before me might have been the survivor of some terrible accident from which she had escaped with her life.

‘I do not know,’ she said. A moment later, she continued: ‘Three days ago, the clothes were ready. Having paid Angela off, I never thought to see her again. There was nothing for her here…Except, I suppose, to end up dead at the bottom of our well,’ she added with a sudden flash of irritation.

‘Angela did not kill herself,’ I said. ‘She was murdered. Which is to say that some one killed her.’

While I was speaking, she pulled her hair away and threaded it behind her ear.

‘Anyone could have done it,’ she said. ‘Angela told me that she often passed along the Cut on her way into town, or coming back.’ Suddenly, her eyes flashed into mine. ‘How was she killed, then?’

‘A wound to the neck,’ I said.

She seemed to think on this, twisting and turning her hair, finally raising both her arms to clip it in place with the Medusa brooch that she held in her hand. She tugged gently at the damaged neckline of her dress, attempting to make it sit more comfortably on her shoulders. There was a studied carelessness about her, a reckless disdain for the state in which she found her self, which I had never met in a woman of her station. She was refined, but not affected. Extra ordinarily natural, it seemed to me.

I was not immune to the sensual ambiguity of the situation.

‘The Schuettlers asked me to return the keys,’ she said quietly. ‘I paid them two months’ rent in advance the other week, and they seemed satisfied with the arrangement. Now, they wish to see the back of me, and my father. Something has upset them, and they appear to blame me for it. Why should that be? I suspect…Tell me, sir. How was Angela
really
murdered?’

‘Two deep punctures in the side of the neck,’ I said, offering up my own neck, touching my own vein with the first two fingers of my right hand. ‘They were more like holes than cuts.’

‘God help me!’ she murmured, placing her hands on the window ledge, staring into the garden. Suddenly, she turned to me, her voice low, almost accusatory. ‘So, that was why I saw you at the cemetery so soon after dawn. You were not there to say a prayer for your child.’

I nodded, but she did not appear to see the gesture.

‘There were traces of mud on your jacket and on your boots,’ she continued. ‘I wondered whether you might have been digging. I could not guess why…’ She looked boldly into my face. ‘You buried the seamstress, did you not? In secret, because no-one must know where her body is.’ She nodded slowly to herself. ‘We all know what happens when country people take fright about…well, for certain things. Am I right, sir?’

I answered her quietly. ‘You must help me, Emma.’

She turned to face me. The speed of it surprised me. Like a cat when it hears a noise. One moment, she was staring out into the garden; the next, her face was close to mine.

‘On the contrary, Magistrate Stiffeniis. You must help me,’ she said, and her eyes were ablaze. ‘A body is found with wounds to the neck in the well of a stranger who has recently arrived in town. I know who
I
would blame! So, that is why the Schuettlers have turned against me.’

I did not answer her directly. ‘Tell me what you know about Angela Enke,’ I said. ‘Tell me everything, even things of no apparent importance…’

The words froze on my lips. The concentration on her face was so intense, I seemed to be gazing into her soul.

‘We hardly spoke,’ she said, looking deep into my eyes. ‘My father was in an agitated state of mind. You’ve seen this morning what he can be like. And she was here no more than half an hour on the first occasion. She was sent to me from a tailor’s work shop in the town. She came, looked at the clothes which wanted altering, took some measurements, then went away, saying that she would return the very next day.’

‘Surely you spoke to her the second time?’ I insisted.

Emma shook her head. ‘The only thing that Angela talked about was money. It would cost me more, she said, because I wanted her to come to the house, and she would have to walk to town to buy the materials. I realise that it is out of the way, of course, and I made no objection to her claim.’

‘Did she seem to be afraid of the Schuettlers?’ I asked.

‘Is there anything to fear?’ She shrugged her shoulders dismissively, which emphasised her collarbones. ‘Angela spent two days working in this room. She was alone for all that time. My father takes up every grain of my energy, as you know, sir. I hardly saw her.’

‘Might the Schuettlers have come in while you were busy?’

She smiled and pursed her lips. ‘I doubt it very much. I was upstairs most of the time, or out in the garden with my father. I would have seen them, or she would have called me if they had given her any offence. I left a bell in here for her. All Angela had to do was ring if she needed anything.’

‘Did she ring?’

‘Once or twice,’ she murmured. ‘To double-check a measurement of mine. My father’s jacket, overcoat and hat needed funeral trimming, but nothing more.’

I glanced at her bare shoulders, and the corset which compressed her breasts.

‘Is this the dress that the seamstress worked on?’

Emma looked down, as if to remind herself what she was wearing. She looked up, her head inclined to one side, as if I had just quizzed her. ‘Of course, it is,’ she said. Alarm flared in her eyes. ‘Why do you ask, sir? Is it such an ugly thing?’

‘I…I was wondering how much work she had had to do,’ I said, recovering my self. ‘She made you nothing new, then, working only to alter the clothes that you already had. Is that correct?’

I looked more closely at her dress. It was not black, but very dark blue, and it was made of satin. A floral pattern had been brought up by the fine stitching, though it could hardly be discerned. It was a ball gown, and it had been made by a practised hand. It was certainly not the work of Angela Enke. The shoulders had been pinched and puffed, and the lower hem, though taken up, was still a mite too long. Still, it was the expanse of bare flesh on display which caught and held my gaze.

Helena flashed before my eyes.

Her mourning clothes were plain, opaque, black.

‘This dress is for Anders,’ my wife declared solemnly, as I helped her with the buttons and the clasps, as if to ward off the thought that one of the other children might follow him prematurely to the grave. ‘Until he has a monument, I shall wear this dress.’

Helena was crushed, while Emma Rimmele was not.

She had arrived in town with a coffin, insisting that Lars Merson should prepare an apparently abandoned vault to receive her mother’s remains with out delay. All for the sake of her father’s peace of mind. Emma Rimmele, young and beautiful, a stranger, with a coffin as her baggage.

‘Why did you not leave your mother where she was buried before?’ I asked.

‘I had to take my father away from there.’

‘Eventually, you’ll return to your home.’