“Herr Spät,” she said, “my father has always talked about you a lot.”
That surprised me. I looked at her in astonishment. “Always?”
“Ever since he met you in the Du Théâtre.”
“And what did he say about me?” I asked.
“He was worried about your practice,” she answered.
“I didn’t have one yet at the time,” I replied.
“But you have one now,” she observed.
“It’s not exactly successful,” I admitted.
“He has informed me about the job he’s asked you to do,” Hélène continued.
“I know,” I replied.
“And you accept?”
“I’ve decided to.”
“I’ve been filled in on the conditions,” she said. “Here is a check for the advance. Fifteen thousand. And another ten thousand for expenses.”
Hélène handed me the check. I took it, folding the paper once over.
“Your father is generous,” I said.
“It’s very important to him that you carry out his commission,” she declared.
“I’ll try my level best.”
I slipped the check into my wallet. We fell silent. She was no longer smiling. I sensed that she was searching for words.
“Herr Spät,” she falteringly said at last, “I am aware that the commission you’ve undertaken is a strange one.”
“Rather.”
“Herr Förder thinks it strange too.”
“I can believe that.”
“But it must be carried out,” she demanded with conviction, almost fiercely.
“Why is that?” I asked.
She looked at me imploringly. “Herr Spät. I am allowed to see Papa only once a month. At which time he gives me instructions. His enterprises are complicated, but his overview is amazing. What he tells me to do, I do. He is my father, I am his daughter. You do understand, then, that I obey him.”
“Naturally.”
Hélène turned fierce. Her anger was real. “Father’s private secretary and his lawyers want to put him under the control of a guardian,” she confessed. “To my advantage, as they put it. But I know that my father is not mentally ill. And now this commission comes along, the one you’ve accepted. To Förder it’s one more proof. It’s pointless, he says. But I am sure that this commission is not pointless.”
We fell silent again for a while.
“Even if I don’t understand it,” she added softly.
“For a lawyer, Fräulein Kohler,” I then replied, “the job of investigating the murder of Professor Winter on the assumption that your father was not the murderer has a point, in the legal sense, only if your father is not the murderer. But that assumption is impossible. And thus the commission is pointless. Legally pointless, but it does not therefore have to be scientifically pointless.”
She looked at me in astonishment. “How am I to understand that, Herr Spät?” she asked.
“I’ve been looking around this room, Fräulein Kohler. Your father loves his billiards and his books on natural science…”
“Only those things,” she said resolutely.
“Exactly—”
“But that’s precisely why he is incapable of committing a murder,” she interrupted me. “In some terrible way he must have been forced to do it.”
I was silent. I felt that it would have been improper for me to fire off the truth like a cannon. That her father had committed a murder because he loved nothing except his billiards and books on natural science, the abstruse, idiotic truth—I could not have made that clear to her. It was nonsense for me to talk about my vision, it was an intuition, not a fact I could prove.
“I’ve no information, Fräulein Kohler, about the motive for your father’s conviction,” I therefore explained cautiously. “I mean something quite different. Something that does not explain what he did, but the job he expects me to do. With this commission, your father wants to explore the realm of the possible. That is his scientific goal, as he himself asserts. I am to keep strictly to that.”
“No one can believe that!” Hélène cried out heatedly.
I contradicted her.
“It’s up to me to believe it,” I declared, “because I’ve accepted the job. For me it is a game that your father can afford to play. Other people breed racehorses. As a lawyer, I consider your father’s game considerably more exciting.”
She thought about that.
“I’m sure,” she hesitantly replied at last, “that you will find the real murderer, someone who forced Papa to commit murder. I believe in Papa.”
Her despair made me feel sorry for her. I would gladly have helped, but I was powerless.
“Fräulein Kohler,” I replied, “I want to be honest with you. I don’t believe that I’ll find that someone. For the simple reason that the someone doesn’t exist. Your father doesn’t let anyone force him to do anything.”
“You’re being very honest with me,” she said softly.
“I’d like for you to trust me.”
She stared into my face, attentive, somber. I didn’t avoid her gaze.
“I trust you,” she then said.
“I can help you only if you relinquish every hope,” I said. “Your father is a murderer. You can comprehend that only if you don’t go looking in the wrong place. The motive for your father’s crime is to be sought in him, not in someone else. Don’t worry any further about this commission of mine. It’s my business.”
I stood up. She did the same.
“Why have you accepted the job?” Hélène asked.
“Because I need the money, Fräulein Kohler. Don’t have any false conceptions about me. Though your father may see some scientific value in his commission, for me it’s simply a chance to get my practice moving, but you mustn’t let it awaken any false hopes.”
“I understand,” she said.
“I can’t afford to act any differently than I am acting, I have to obey your father’s wishes. But you need to know who it is you’ve put your trust in.”
“And I’m sure it’s you who will help me,” Hélène said and stretched out her hand to me. “I’m happy to have made your acquaintance.”
Outside the park, Lienhard was still waiting in his Porsche, but was sitting shotgun now, still smoking cigarettes, absorbed in thought, lost in himself.
“It’s all set,” I said. “I’ve accepted the job.”
“And the check?” he asked.
“That too.”
“Fine,” Lienhard said.
I moved in behind the wheel. Lienhard offered me a cigarette, lit it. I smoked, ran both hands over the steering wheel, thought about Hélène and was happy. I was looking forward to the future.
“Well?” Lienhard asked.
I was thinking, had not started the motor yet. “There is only one possibility,” I replied. “As far as we’re concerned, Kohler is no longer the murderer. We have to play along.”
“Agreed.”
“Question the witnesses one more time,” I continued. “Investigate Winter’s past, his acquaintances, his foes.”
“Let’s get busy with Dr. Benno,” he answered.
“With Olympic Heinz?” I asked in amazement.
“Winter’s friend,” Lienhard declared. “And with Monika Steiermann.”
Monika Steiermann was the sole heir to the Trög Amelioratory Works, Ltd.
“Why?” I asked.
“Benno’s girlfriend.”
“I’d prefer to leave her out of this,” I said after some thought.
“Okay,” Lienhard replied. Something was not quite kosher.
“Strange,” I said.
“What is?” Lienhard asked.
“Kohler recommended you to me.”
“Coincidence,” Lienhard said.
I started the car and carefully drove off. I had never sat behind the wheel of a Porsche. As we crossed the Train Station Bridge, Lienhard asked, “Do you know Monika Steiermann, Spät?”
“Strange,” Lienhard said.
I asked him to climb out near Talacker, then drove out of the city. Drove nowhere in particular. Aimlessly out into autumn. The image of Monika Steiermann had shoved its way in front of the image of Hélène Kohler, an image I tried in vain to repress.
II
The Start of the Investigation: My better life commenced with élan. The very next day I had my new office and final possession of the Porsche, though the car turned out to be older than I had assumed and its condition such that the price Lienhard had demanded seemed somewhat less philanthropic. The office had once been that of the former Olympic gold medal winner in fencing and Swiss master in pistol-shooting, Dr. Benno, whose business had been going downhill for some time. Our handsome Olympic Heinz stayed out of the negotiations. He was prepared, as Friedli, the architect, explained to me when he led me over at the crack of dawn, to let me have the office for two thousand a month, with four thousand deposit (I had no idea for whose pocket this sum was meant), but I could move in at once and assume not only Benno’s furniture but also his secretary, a somewhat drowsy woman from the Swiss interior with the un-Swiss name of Ilse Freude, who looked like a French barmaid, was forever dyeing her hair a different color, but was amazingly efficient—all in all, a horse trade that was too deep for me. But my new reception room and office on Zeltweg nonetheless befitted my social position, came complete with a view of the obligatory traffic jams, a confidence-inspiring desk, and proper armchairs; facing the courtyard were a kitchen and a room in which I put the couch from my Freiestrasse digs; I couldn’t bring myself to part with the old piece. All at once, business seemed to take off. There were prospects for a lucrative divorce case, a trip to Caracas on behalf of a captain of industry beckoned (Kohler had recommended me), inheritance squabbles needed to be settled, a furniture dealer had to be defended in court, plus profitable tax returns. I was in too good and reckless a mood to think about the detective work that I had set in motion, and I would have to wait for a report before I could pursue the Kohler case. Although Lienhard himself should have made me more mistrustful than I already was: The man had something up his sleeve, some murky intentions, had been recommended to me by Kohler, and was all too eager to join up. He was doing a painstaking job of it. He put Schönbächler, one of his best men, to work in the Du Théâtre. The latter owned an old but quite cozy house on Neumarkt. He had had the attic remodeled as a living room and in it had installed his immense stereo system. Loudspeakers were mounted everywhere. Schönbächler loved symphonies. His theory (he was full of theories): Symphonies demanded the least of your attention, you could yawn, eat, read, sleep, converse, etc., to them, their music canceled itself out, became inaudible, like the music of the spheres. He rejected concert halls as barbaric. He made a cult of music. Symphonies were valid only as background music, he maintained, only as a “fond” were they something humane, otherwise it was like being raped; and so only recently, while eating a pot-au-feu, had he understood Beethoven’s Ninth for the first time; for Brahms he recommended crossword puzzles, though breaded veal cutlets were good too, for Bruckner, pinochle or poker. The best thing, however, was to play two symphonies at the same time. Which he did, or so it was said. Well aware of the racket he unleashed, he had worked out a carefully calculated system for the rents paid for each of the other three floors in the house. The apartment under his living room was the cheapest—the renters did not have to pay a cent, just put up with the music, Bruckner for hours on end, Mahler for hours on end, Shostakovich for hours on end; the apartment on the middle floor went for a normal price; the bottom floor was almost prohibitive. Schönbächler was a sensitive man. There was nothing special about his outward appearance; on the contrary, to the outsider he seemed the model citizen personified. He dressed with care, smelled pleasant enough, was never drunk, and lived on the best of terms with the world in general. As regarded his nationality, he called himself a Liechtensteiner. Admittedly, that didn’t amount to much, it was his custom to add, but at least he needn’t be ashamed of the fact: Liechtenstein bore relatively little guilt for the present state of the world, if one disregarded its printing too many stamps and overlooked its financial improprieties; it was the smallest of countries to live in such a grand style. Nor was a Liechtensteiner easily subject to megalomania, to attributing special worth to himself solely on the basis of his being a Liechtensteiner, as can happen with Americans, Russians, Germans, or the French, who believe a priori that by his very nature a German or a Frenchman is a superior creature. Being a citizen of a great power—and for a Liechtensteiner almost all other countries are necessarily great powers, even Switzerland—carries with it a serious psychological disadvantage: the danger of falling victim to a certain addled sense of proportion. This danger grew, he said, with the size of the nation. He used to elucidate this using the mouse as an example. A mouse, if left all to itself, regards itself as nothing but a mouse, but the moment it finds itself among a million mice, it thinks it’s a cat, and among a hundred million mice, an elephant. The most dangerous, however, were the fifty-million-mouse nations (fifty million being the basic unit of his scale). These were made up of mice that thought they were cats but would like to be elephants. These delusions of grandeur were dangerous not only for the mice afflicted with them but at some point for the whole mouse-world as well. The relationship between the “mouse-count” and the resultant megalomania he called Schönbächler’s Law. He claimed to be a writer by profession. That may seem astounding, since he had never once written, let alone published, anything. He did not deny it. He simply called himself a potential writer. He was never at a loss for an explanation of why he had written nothing. And so he would occasionally claim that writing begins with its “sense for names,” that this was its primary poetic prerequisite, to which you then had to add its no less important moral prerequisite based on the love of truth. When you reflected on these two fundamental prerequisites, it became clear that a title like Poems by Raoul Schönbächler, for instance, was out of the question simply because lyric poetry by anyone named Raoul Prettybrook (since that was what his name meant) necessarily awakened visions of poetic babblings and ripplings. Of course someone might object, “Then substitute another name for Schönbächler,” but that would put you in conflict with the moral principle based on the love of truth. Wherever Schönbächler turned up, people had something to laugh about. He was a good egg, and a major source of livelihood for many people in the restaurant business. He had everything put on his account and the bills sent him once a month. Added together they must have come to a considerable sum. As regarded his income, this was a matter of some confusion. His claims of a generous stipend from the government of Liechtenstein could not be true, of course. Several people asserted that he was the sales rep for certain rubber articles. Nor could one overlook that he was a man of keen, carefully honed discernment. (Perhaps his not writing wasn’t just the laziness it appeared to be, perhaps what lay behind it was the realization that, when you look at the many people who do write, it is better not to write.) He was most famous, however, for his ability to strike up a conversation—particularly since our citizenry is not very good at the art. Whereas Schönbächler was a virtuoso at it. Anecdotes were told, legends arose. There was, for instance, the tale (the commandant swore it was true) that he had once approached a member of the federal cabinet, who was sitting at an adjoining table over four o’clock tea with members of the canton administration, and had got the fellow so entangled in a conversation about our country’s relations with Liechtenstein that the cabinet member missed the express train to Bern. It’s possible. Though in general one shouldn’t give cabinet members all that much credit. On the whole, Schönbächler was considered harmless. No one would have dreamed he was an agent for Lienhard. When that did become known, there was great consternation. Schönbächler left town and now lives with his stereo system in the south of France, much to the distress of our fellow citizens
; only recently one of them threatened me with his fist, fortunately I was with Lucky. And so this odd duck, Schönbächler, showed up one day in the Du Théâtre, to everyone’s astonishment, since usually he was seen there only rarely. He took a table and stayed the whole day. The next morning he arrived once again, did this for a whole week, chatted with everyone, made friends with the maître d’ and the waitresses, but then he disappeared, went back to his old haunts—it had apparently been an intermezzo. In reality, Schönbächler had interrogated the principal witnesses one more time. As far as the rest of the investigation was concerned, however, Lienhard used Feuchting, who was part of the disreputable element that he employed in his detective agency on Talacker, and whom I did not know in those days—I’ve got to know him only recently (at the Monaco Bar). Feuchting is an undependable, nasty fellow, no one can dispute that, even Lienhard doesn’t dispute it, much less the police, who have arrested Feuchting numerous times (heroin) and then turned around and used him for their investigations. Feuchting is a fink, but he knows his job and his underworld. It’s possible he once knew better days, that he even went to university—the wretch that’s left gets through life by running up bills, by swindling and extorting. It’s his rotten luck, or so his commentary (in the Monaco) as he stares gloomily into his glass of Pernod, to have been born a German, not a Russian. You can’t make a profession of being German in this neck of the woods, maybe in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, here you can only do it by being Russian. The life he leads wouldn’t offend anybody in that case; on the contrary, as a Russian he’d be obligated to live as he does: drunk and broke; but there’s no chance whatever that he could do the Russian bit here, because he looks like a German in a French resistance film. On that point he’s telling the truth. For once. That is how he looks. He knows both the heights and the depths of society better than anyone else, is a master of the geography of bars and dives. He can find out everything about every regular in the place. But before Lienhard sent me what Schönbächler and Feuchting had dug up, I ran into Monika Steiermann a second time, and what I had feared or hoped—I’m not sure anymore—happened. It would have been better if we had never met (neither the first or second time).
The Execution of Justice Page 8