The Sensualist

by Barbara Hodgson

  The newspaper gave a short report of the progress of the autopsy on Anselm’s body and the investigation regarding the cause of the fire. It also hinted that the police were reinvolved due to some unusual remains found on the property. She wasn’t sure that she had translated “remains” correctly.

  Bauer had left a message for her to meet with him; she stuffed the note in her pocket, feeling again the piece of braille, so indecipherable that it might as well be blank, and arrived at his office promptly at the designated time, anticipating further reluctance to return her print, determining how to get it back, how to take the next step.

  “A lot has happened in the last week, don’t you think?” he asked her with a touch of jaundice in his voice. She realized suddenly what it was about him that bothered her. She recognized a feature they had in common: they shared the same antipathy towards other people, which included each other. So, this was how it felt to be an acquaintance of hers. Unpleasant. Remarkably unpleasant.

  His office seemed empty without the presence of the ubiquitous scribbling clerk to deflect his aversion. She looked around to assure herself that he wasn’t hiding somewhere. As for herself, her own enmity, well, this had to be the end, the time to be conciliatory. “I haven’t gotten over Herr Anselm’s death. And his collection destroyed. It’s baffling.”

  “We ‘ve been following your progress in Budapest and Munich,” he said.

  She looked at him startled.

  “Not following literally,” he dismissed her concern with a shrug. “We know that you met with Herr Stefan Arany of the Semmelweis and with Frau Sophie Lowe at the Munich Library. Have you uncovered anything of interest?” Helen suddenly realized that she had no idea what Bauer’s first name was.

  Her news that she had irrefutable proof that the woodblocks still existed fell on indifferent ears. “We know that already.”

  “But how?” She gave up trying to be friendly; there was no need to try anymore—her curiosity was inflamed and swept their personalities aside.

  “They were found when the investigators were going through the remains of the burnt house.”

  “All of them?”

  “We don’t know yet but at least two hundred.”

  “Are they intact?”

  “No. This is why the inventory is taking so long to complete. Most of them are burnt beyond identification. They are very difficult to piece together. One thing is certain, the bomb that missed during the raid in 1944 found its target this time.”

  “It was a bomb?”

  “Of sorts.” Bauer was now responding to the timbre of Helen’s voice, its depth and tones expressing the sincerity of her interest, her right to know. His own voice picked up vibrancy and life, a willingness to set the past meetings aside, to share his knowledge. “The woodblocks were heaped into a pile in the center of the study, and then a bottle filled with gasoline was tossed into the middle of the heap. It had the same effect. The books were set on fire separately. I suspect that it took much longer for the books to burn, but the heat provided by the woodblocks would have sped the fire along. The fire chief has still to supply a complete report.”

  “They were cut out of pearwood.” This fact emerged from somewhere.

  “Pardon?”

  “Oh, nothing. Just that they were cut out of pearwood. I don’t know if that makes any difference to how well they would burn.”

  Bauer shrugged, raised his eyebrows, scratched his jaw, but wrote down the detail all the same.

  “And Herr Anselm. What exactly happened to him?” Did she really want to know? He was dead, wasn’t that enough? Yes, she did want to, she did have to.

  “It looks like he set the fire. An expert pyromaniac, judging from the evidence. Whether or not he intended to stay in the room and perish with his collection is another matter. We may never know if he was overcome by the smoke and passed out or if he deliberately chose to remain. Sad, either way.”

  “Was anyone else involved?”

  “Why? Do you know something you aren’t telling me?”

  “No, nothing I can put into words, but I saw the house yesterday, the remains of the house, rather. It seems beyond one person, doesn’t it? I mean, that was a major fire.”

  “Well, perhaps. In any case, there wasn’t anything so convenient as a suicide note. Not like your friend Günther Mann. That was obliging of him, don’t you think?”

  “He wasn’t my friend; he was an acquaintance.” The difference between the words was becoming blurred as the days slid past. Friend, acquaintance, why even bother making a distinction? “I had nothing to do with his death.” At the mention of a suicide note, Helen automatically felt the braille fragment crumbling away in her pocket. She reluctantly dragged it out and placed it on Bauer’s desk.

  “No, of course not.” Bauer was saying, inspecting his knuckles, scratching a cuticle. “Tell me. How is it that you were involved at all?”

  She pushed the burnt paper closer to Bauer’s field of vision. He took it, at first roughly, naturally, and then carefully as bits fell away onto the desk. “What’s this?”

  It’s my gift, you fool. Watch it. Things are going really well. The old Helen back again. He’s not Martin, you know. You have nothing to lose by being patient, nothing except this scrap of Anselm.

  “It’s a scrap that I picked up off the floor yesterday at Herr Anselm’s home. I don’t know what it says; I can’t read braille.”

  Bauer pulled an envelope out of his desk and put the piece of paper into it. He painstakingly labeled one corner. He opened his mouth about to say something, no doubt to chastise her for disturbing an off-limits site. But he too changed his mind, saved his breath. She could see his struggle.

  Helen recounted meeting Günther, leaving out, once more, the more unbelievable aspects. Bauer nodded. “We still haven’t been able to track this Rosa Kovslovsky down. Why didn’t you let us know that she showed up in Budapest and in Munich? Why didn’t you mention her to the Munich police?”

  Helen threw her hands up in a gesture of ignorance. Who knew the correct response? She changed the topic back to Friedrich Anselm’s house. “I read the paper this morning. If I understood correctly, there has been an unusual discovery that involves the police. Is that true?”

  Bauer looked at his watch, straightened his cuffs, picked off a piece of lint and carefully dropped it in the wastebasket. Helen watched him with interest. There was no mistaking a fidgeter.

  “Yes,” he said finally. “Human remains.”

  “Do you know whose?”

  “No, it’s too early.”

  “Can’t you tell me anything else?”

  “I don’t want to unduly alarm you; we haven’t finished the investigation.”

  “You must be able to tell me something else.”

  He sighed. “There have been two bodies discovered so far. We are continuing to dig through the courtyard to see if there are any others. The initial test pits indicate that there may be several more.” He came to a stop, but Helen urged him on. “One of the bodies is that of a young woman. The first hypothesis is that she was about in her early to mid-twenties when she died; this would have been, it seems, around fifty years ago. The second one, another woman, is much more recent, certainly since the beginning of the year. A woman in her eighties or nineties. I’m not even sure if they’ve pin-pointed it further. Say, I shouldn’t be telling you this.” He sat up straight and opened up a drawer. He peered in it, closed it, then picked up the telephone and asked if there were any messages. Satisfied with the response, he hung up the phone.

  While Helen watched him nervously deal with his discomfort, her mind zigzagged back and forth through various cadaverous possibilities. An old woman, murdered? Dead anyway while she, Helen, was at Anselm’s perhaps? Just before, just after? And the young woman? Fifty years ago would have been roughly around when Anselm and Rosa had been medical students, at the end of the war or just after. Of course, the two bodies could belong to women she hadn’t heard about, othe
r players in the works. Or complete strangers; they could be complete strangers.

  “How did they die?” she asked.

  “It’s too early to tell; they haven’t supplied me with that information. Except that there is no evidence that either woman died by obvious causes.”

  “Were they murdered?”

  “We cannot say yet. Another thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Wilhelm Stukmeyer is still missing. Do you know anything about this?”

  “Why would I?” she asked cautiously. Rosa’s pearl in Wihelm’s mouth; Wihelm’s pearl in Rosa’s mouth. God. When was this going to stop?

  “No reason. I just thought I would ask.” He yanked on his earlobe. “Stukmeyer sounds like a phony name.”

  “You haven’t found his body in the courtyard, have you?” She was terrified of his answer.

  “No. No, we haven’t.” The simple no left too much unresolved.

  “May I ask just one more question? Can you tell me if the old woman was missing a finger?”

  Bauer skimmed through the first two pages. “Yes. The third finger of the right hand. How did you know?”

  “Frau Helen Kehl. Friedrich Anselm’s governess. Her obituary was carried in the newspaper the same day that Friedrich’s appeared.”

  Helen winced at her inadvertant slip of the Christian name, but Bauer was writing frantically and hadn’t seemed to have noticed. “Which newspaper? What day? I suppose you realize that this will delay your departure from Vienna?”

  Helen nodded. She hadn’t realized, but it wouldn’t make any difference, would it? Except money, of course. Worry about that later.

  “And the other woman. Do you have any thoughts on her identity?”

  Helen shook her head. It didn’t bear thinking of. But of course she thought. Rosa? Anselm’s revenge? Far worse than either of them had hinted of? She began to shiver. No, it definitely didn’t bear thinking about. She wrapped her arms around her body and hugged herself hard, squeezing some immobility back into her uncontrollable nerves. And the possibility that there were others. And she stayed there, in that house. No, it didn’t bear thinking of. And she had trusted Anselm. No that wasn’t fair, they didn’t know. They didn’t know who did it. They didn’t know who did what. Yet.

  “Now, about your husband,” Bauer consulted a loose sheet on his desk, “Martin Evans.”

  “What about him?” Helen was pulled from the thoughts she was trying to avoid.

  “We’ve had no luck tracking him down. His name is now on the missing persons list. We’ve interviewed the staff at the newspaper, spoken with Mr Singleton, and of course we’ve talked to you. His picture has been telexed to police headquarters in Germany, Italy, Hungary, France. There is nothing else for us to do. But wait.”

  Helen rested her chin on one hand and stared hard at Bauer. He’d been straight with her; she’d return the favor. “I’ve found him.”

  “You what?”

  “I found him. He’s at home. He lost interest in the article and cleared off for a sunny vacation in Tahiti. He called me last night.” They both sat silent, contemplating the open pits in Anselm’s yard. Relieved that Martin was not in one of them; concerned for whoever else might be.

  Bauer scowled. “Well,” he said. “Well.” He rubbed his eyes and yanked on his cuffs. He pulled an envelope out of his top drawer and tossed it across the desk to her. “Here, this is yours,” he said. “Just don’t try to pass it off as the real thing.” He smiled.

  “I guess you’ll call me when you need me?” asked Helen, taking the envelope, disdaining the chance to immediately open it up and see which one it was. “Maybe I could try to sell this? I’m going to run out of money soon. That’s a joke,” she added, seeing the smile disappear. “I hope this can be finished quickly.”

  Bauer shook his head. No, it can’t be rushed? Or no, he didn’t know? Or God, what a screw-up? “We’ll be in touch,” he said at last.

  She stood up. “Thank you, Hauptmann Bauer. I’ll be at the Stadtpark for the next couple of days, and after that, I don’t know. I just don’t know. But I’ll tell you.”

  She walked to the door of his office. “Oh yes,” she waved the envelope. “Thanks for this.”

  CHAPTER 21

  ROSA’ S FAREWELL

  How could Helen wait longer? Her trip to Vienna wasted, her future in shambles; it was time to go. Time to look at time stretching ahead interminably without resolve; time for her to return to her life trapped in the shadows cast off by others. And who knew how far Rosa would follow her and to what end. But what was she thinking of: return to those fettering shadows? How about the reality that she had never freed herself of them. Here she was now, a prisoner to Helen Kehl, a dead woman who had shown off a ring and lost a finger for her efforts. Who had traveled thousands of miles tracing and retracing the same steps to help a man steal history. (Or was it the other way around, he helping her?) Who had abandoned the ring, the very thing that bound her to that same man; passing that very ring to her, binding her almost as irrevocably. They shared a name, her and Helen Kehl. But she, Helen Martin, shared her body with Rosa. (Or was it the other way around?)

  Was Helen Kehl buried in Anselm’s back yard? Bauer said buried very recently, in the last few months. And if Helen Kehl was buried there, who was the other woman? Fifty years ago, he’d said. She’d been buried fifty years ago. And there might be others. But if Helen Kehl? Who was the other woman? Someone else caught up in this crazy web? Someone else altogether? A young woman. Christ, get a grip! You don’t know everything about Anselm’s life. Face it, you don’t know anything about his life. You only know what he, that blind conductor, wanted you to see.

  Still. A young woman.

  Rosa. She was young once. Everybody said so. I never swallowed that garbage about her transformation. Never believed a word of it. But if not Rosa, who? Who lies in the garden? Who lay in the garden for fifty years awaiting the arrival of Helen Kehl?

  And Rosa, the one here, the one now, in spite of her mammoth presence had never seemed quite. Real.

  Anna. Anna with the dog. She was involved. Her dog dug up Helen Kehl’s finger. She traveled on the same trains, following in the footsteps of Rosa, who followed in the footsteps of Helen Kehl and Friedrich Anselm. Anna was Rosa’s sister, at least that’s what she had assumed. Or did someone tell her that outright? And, just as Helen Kehl ensured herself a legacy of identical decadent youths, so did Anna fortify herself with a parade of indistinguishable terriers.

  With the precious woodcut nestled safely in the crook of her arm, her thoughts incoherent but unrepentant, she walked back to her hotel, taking the long detour past Anselm’s house. She had to see it one last time before it was pulled down and completely eradicated. An army of workers was crawling over the ruins, toppling dangerous beams, shoveling out and screening the soot and charcoal into clear plastic sacks. Another industrious team was excavating the courtyard, dividing the narrow patch of land into even squares. A group of bystanders, timidly clustered, stood—barely breathing, scarcely moving—watching the activity. Helen joined them for a few minutes, grateful that she’d had a moment to wander through unhindered.

  Her conversation with Bauer nagged her the rest of the way back to the hotel. He had been worried about telling her about the bodies. Not because he wasn’t permitted to say, but because he didn’t want to “unduly alarm her.” Why would he think she’d be alarmed? He couldn’t know just what not knowing was doing to her. Of course. He meant Martin. He hadn’t known when he said that, that Martin had reappeared. She walked in through the hotel door, picked up her key, and climbed the stairs up to her room. There was something else. Something really obvious. Besides, of course, how odd it was that Helen Kehl appeared to be buried in Anselm’s yard. Something in the back of her mind continued to nag. The obituary! Helen Kehl’s obituary! Newspapers didn’t print obituaries for people who were buried surreptitiously in courtyards. They only carried them for people who were officially dea
d. Unless. Well, unless she was officially dead and then. And then? And then snuck out of the hospital? The mortuary? Like Vesalius in his student days, sneaking bodies. Only his were cut down from the gallows. Was her death so very different? A judgment, a sentence, a punishment?

  She telephoned the newspaper and managed, this time, to reach Herlsberg.

  “Martin called me last night. He’s back in Canada.”

  “Ja? We know.”

  “How long have you known?”

  “Oh, what is today? Tuesday. We’ve known for one week, maybe more.”

  She was silent. What could she say?

  “We didn’t know where you were. We naturally tried to find you.”

  Liars; she’d left her—no, she’d forgotten. She was going to call them. And never did. At least, not until yesterday. Herlsberg was forgiven.

  “Sorry about that. I left Vienna for a week or so.” Then she remembered Bauer. “The police didn’t know.”

  Herlsberg was silent despite traces of faint breathing.

  She continued. “I have a favor to ask you.”

  “Ja?”

  “You ran an obituary of Friedrich Anselm, the art collector. And on the same day another obituary of Frau Helen Kehl.” She fumbled through her papers as she spoke, searching for the date. “Could you tell me who submitted the obituaries? Or would they have been written by staff?”