The Dark Lady

by Sally Spencer

  The priest led them back into the church, and to the alcove where the Virgin stood. Rutter could see the three holes where the bullets from Johann Schultz’s Luger had burrowed their way into her wooden face. He had been quite prepared for that. But what he had not been prepared for, he thought as he gasped with surprise, was the fact that what remained of the face, and the hands which were clasped together in prayer, were painted black.

  “There are only a few like her in the whole of Europe,” the priest said. “The most famous ones are in Krakow, Poland, and Guadeloupe in Spain, though naturally, we in this village daily commit the sin of pride by preferring our own. In English, I think you call them ‘Black Madonnas’. In German, they are known as Schwarze Jungfrau. But we have a special name for ours, because she has seen so much suffering in her time. We call her the Schwarze Dame.”

  “And what does that mean?” Rutter asked.

  “It means, ‘The Black Lady’.” The priest shook his head. “No, it is not quite that. The translation is too literal.” He turned to Inspector Kohl for help. “Could you think of any other word I could use instead of black?”

  The German policeman shrugged. “Perhaps ‘dark’,” he suggested. “The Dark Lady.”

  Seventeen

  Woodend had left the rain behind him on the edge of Liverpool, and in Westbury Park it had turned into a truly glorious day. The chief inspector strolled leisurely through the park, past the neat houses which were really no more than disguised army barracks, and towards the woods in which he had been attacked, a German called Schultz had met a violent death and a group of Polish refugees had brewed the vodka of their homeland.

  He savoured the walk, knowing that it would be the last one he ever took in this place. He felt the same uneasy mixture of emotions which always assailed him when a case was nearly over – satisfaction at having done his job well; sadness for the people whose lives had accidentally become entangled in the most primitive of human barbarities; a reluctance to leave a world which, for a few days at least, had become his world.

  He reached the edge of the woods and stopped to light up a Capstan Full Strength. Had the German been taken completely by surprise by the man he met on the path to the lake that fatal night? Somehow Woodend didn’t think he had. Schultz, he was beginning to suspect, hadn’t been half as drunk as he’d pretended to be in the club.

  He thought of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities – of Sidney Carton, who so resembles Charles Darney that he was able to take the other man’s place on the guillotine. There were similarities to the great man’s book in this investigation, though here it was more a case of “A Tale of Two Villages” – one of them in rural Cheshire, the other in distant Bavaria.

  He had smoked the Capstan Full Strength so far down that he could feel the heat of the burning ash on his fingers. He dropped the cigarette, and ground it with the heel of his shoe. This was it, then, he thought. He had his solution, and there was no point in putting off what he had to do any longer. Which meant that it was time to go and see Karl Müller.

  Woodend looked from the pale intense face of Karl Müller to the large iron crucifix on the wall, and back again.

  “I had a phone call from my lad Sergeant Rutter an hour ago,” he told the German.

  Müllershrugged. “Why should that be of any possible interest to me?” he asked

  “Because he was callin’ from Germany. From a small town in Bavaria. A town that goes by the name of Karlsbruch.”

  The German nodded, almost fatalistically. “I see.”

  “Yes, I think you do,” Woodend agreed. “Why did you change your name when you left Germany?”

  “I brought my wife and my God with me to England,” Müller said. “I wanted to leave the rest of my old life behind. Does that make any sense to you, Chief Inspector?”

  “Yes. After everythin’ you must have been through durin’ the war, I suppose it does,” Woodend admitted.

  He took his Capstan Full Strength out of his pocket and offered one to Müller. He noticed that, even now, at the moment of truth, the German’s hand was as steady as a rock when he took the cigarette.

  “When I asked you and your wife if you’d killed Gerhard Schultz, you both swore that you hadn’t,” the chief inspector continued.

  “And I am still willing to swear to that.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you are,” Woodend said. “After what I’ve learned this mornin’ I’d be prepared to swear to it myself. But you do know Gerhard really is dead, don’t you?”

  “As much as I am unwilling to believe it, I have to admit that it seems likely,” Müller said.

  “Let me tell you as much of the story of how he died as I’ve managed to piece together,” Woodend said. “At the time Gerhard Schultz was released from the prisoner-of-war camp on the south coast of England, his cousin, Johann Schultz, the SS colonel, was already on the run from the War Crimes Commission. An’ he stayed on the run for well over a year. But in the end, he must have decided that his luck couldn’t last for ever, and that the safest thing for him to do would be to get out of Germany altogether.”

  “I know none of this,” Müller said.

  “I know you don’t. That’s why I’m tellin’ you. Johann stowed away on a boat to Liverpool. Gerhard found out about it. I’m not sure how – presumably he got a letter from a friend tellin’ him what was happenin’. But that really doesn’t matter. The thing is that when Johann arrived, Gerhard was waitin’ at the docks for him. Gerhard’s plan, I’m almost certain, was to kill Johann for what he’d done to his best friend Max, back in 1939. Anyway, as things turned out, it was the other way around. Johann killed Gerhard. Now we come to the important bit. Johann’s standin’ there over Gerhard’s body, an’ he has a brilliant idea. Instead of takin’ on a false identity, he’ll take on a real one – Gerhard’s. An’ in order to leave a confused trail behind him, he’ll make sure the dead body the police find looks as if it belongs to a German who’s just got off one of the boats. So he dresses Gerhard’s body in his German jacket, trousers, shoes an’ socks, an’ takes his cousin’s clothes for himself. Only he can’t exchange shirts an’ vest, because Gerhard’s are already cut an’ stained with his blood. Are you followin’ all this?”

  “Yes, I’m following it,” Müller said.

  “He takes the labels out of Gerhard’s shirt an’ vest, because he doesn’t want the police askin’ why somebody who’s just arrived from abroad is wearin’ clothes made by an English company. I was puzzled by the lack of labels even before I noticed they’d been ripped out – after all, the rest of the clothes were labelled – but I’d probably never have got to the truth if it hadn’t been for the knife.”

  “The knife?” Müller repeated.

  “Aye. There were two knives involved in the fight. One was Gerhard’s, which had been made in Sheffield, an’ the other was Johann’s, which probably came from the Ruhr. Now the one Johann had to leave behind was Gerhard’s. Can you see why, Mr Müller?”

  The other man nodded his head. “He wanted the police to think a German had been attacked by an Englishman, so the knife he left had to be the English one?”

  “Exactly,” Woodend agreed. “So what he does is, he uses Gerhard’s knife to make the slashes in his own coat an’ jacket. An’ a pretty good job he made of it, too. They’re in just the right place to match the slashes in the shirt an’ vest. But then he has a problem. You see, if his knife had had a narrower blade than Gerhard’s, he could have made the cuts in the shirt an’ vest bigger. But it didn’t. His knife was wider, an’ there was no way he could make the rips any smaller, now was there? So all he could hope for was that nobody would think to match up the knife an’ the slashes. An’ nobody had – until I did it this mornin’.”

  “I see,” Müller said.

  “Johann goes through Gerhard’s wallet, and finds a letter which tells him not only Gerhard’s address, but also that he’s got a new job. Of course, there’s one little detail he has to clear up before he
can present himself at BCI as Gerhard, but that’s soon taken care of. Now all he has to do is pick up Gerhard’s belongin’s, which he does in the middle of the night, so no one will see him. Friends might be upset he never said goodbye, but these things happen. The landlord might be surprised he’s moved out before he had to, but he’s left a month’s rent, so who’s goin’ to complain? He takes the new job, and does very well at it, so, as from November 1946, Johann Schultz completely disappears from the face of the earth. And then he comes here. Would you like to carry on from there, sir?”

  Karl Müller nodded. “When I heard that the new manager was called Mr Schultz, I never dreamed it would be someone I knew.”

  “Why not?”

  Müller shrugged. “Why should I have? Schultz is a common enough name in Germany.”

  “Did you recognise him immediately?”

  “Oh yes. I will never forget the face that I saw in our church on that terrible morning in 1939.”

  “But he didn’t recognise you as Max?”

  Müller shook his head. “I had changed a great deal. Six years in a concentration camp will do that to a man. Before the war I used to be overweight, but I was almost a skeleton when I was released, and since then I haven’t been able to put more than a few pounds however much I eat.”

  “Did you confront Schultz with his past right away?”

  “No.”

  “So what did you do?”

  A thin smile came to the German’s face. “What do you think I would have done, Mr Woodend?”

  It didn’t take much to work it out. “I think you would have gone to church and prayed to your God for guidance,” the chief inspector said.

  “That’s exactly what I did do.”

  “And did you get any?”

  “Yes. The Lord told me that if Johann truly repented his sins, I was to forgive him.”

  Woodend recalled the piece of paper which had fallen out of the copy of A Tale of two cities which had once belonged to Schultz.

  “That’s why you sent him that anonymous note about the Dark Lady, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “I sent him several notes to remind him of his terrible crimes. It did no good. He hadn’t changed.”

  “How can you be so sure of that?” Woodend asked, though remembering the atmosphere of evil he had sensed in Schultz’s room back at Westbury Hall, he was already more than half convinced that Müller was right.

  “I am sure because I went to my church every time the priest was taking confession, praying that Johann would be there, ready to unburden his conscience and cleanse his soul. He never appeared.”

  “Perhaps he went to another church?” Woodend pointed out, still in the role of Devil’s Advocate.

  “Then there was the night he died,” Müller continued, dismissing Woodend’s suggestion.

  “What about it?”

  “Schultz was drunk – not as drunk as he pretended to be, but drunk enough. He was bragging to Simon Hailsham about how he was going to save the company lots of money by getting rid of some of the labour force. And, I swear to you, it was exactly as if I were back in the church in Karlsbruch, listening to him telling the Jews what would happen to them – how they would be made to work, how the women would be forced to prostitute themselves and how, in the end, and whatever they did, they would be exterminated.”

  “Why did you follow him into the woods?”

  “I wanted to give him one last chance to change before I denounced him to the authorities.”

  Woodend glanced up at the wall again. “You took your crucifix with you, didn’t you?”

  “When you are intending to meet a demon, it is as well to have the symbol of the Lord with you.”

  “What happened?”

  “I thought I would take him surprise, but it was he who surprised me. He was waiting for me behind a tree. He had a knife in his hand – perhaps the same knife he killed Gerhard with. ‘I knew that whoever was sending me those stupid notes would follow me,’ he said. ‘How do you know who I really am?’ So I told him that I was Max.”

  “An’ what did he say to that?”

  “He said, ‘I should have shot you back in 1939’.”

  “You had no doubt in your mind that he was intendin’ to kill you in the woods?”

  The German shook his head. “None whatsoever. But if I had had any doubts, his next words would have dispelled them.”

  “An’ what were they?”

  “He asked me if I’d told anyone else that he was Johann Schultz. Without thinking, I replied, ‘Only my wife.’ ‘Then she will have to die, too,’ he said. He lunged at me with his knife, but he lost his footing. Before he could regain his balance, I swung at him with my crucifix. The next thing I remember, he was lying on the ground. There was no doubt in my mind that he was dead.”

  “What happened to the knife?”

  “I picked it up and brought it back with me. I don’t know why I did that. I wasn’t thinking very logically. The next day, I threw it into the lake. If you wish, I can show you where it is.”

  “He was the one who attacked you,” Woodend said. “Why didn’t you go to the police and explain the circumstances?”

  “I have confessed what I did to my parish priest, and my true punishment, when it eventually comes, will be at the hands of the Lord my God,” Müller said. “I have already been through six long years of living in a man-made hell and I saw no reason to allow myself to be locked up again. But now that you have discovered the truth, Mr Woodend, I will bow my head and submit to the laws of man without a struggle.”

  Eighteen

  Bob Rutter had not thought that the first person he would see when he cleared customs and excise at London Airport would be his boss. But there Woodend was, reassuringly dressed in one of his hairy sports coats and puffing away enthusiastically at a Capstan Full Strength.

  “Good flight?” the chief inspector asked his sergeant, when they’d shaken hands.

  Rutter shrugged. “Pretty tolerable, I suppose.”

  “You weren’t nervous at all?”

  “Nervous?” Rutter said, with evident derision in his voice. “What on earth would I have to be nervous about? There’s no more to flying than there is to taking a bus.”

  Woodend grinned. “I’m sure you’re right, lad,” he agreed. “An’ maybe one day I’ll even give it a try myself.” His face assumed a more serious expression. “You did a good job out there on your own in Germany, Bob. No, I’m not bein’ fair. It was a better-than-good job. It was an excellent job. We’d never have come up with the right answers if it hadn’t been for all the work you put in, an’ I’m only sorry you’ll not be gettin’ the credit you’re due.”

  Rutter’s jaw dropped. He remembered the first case he worked on with Woodend – the murder in Salton, just a few miles away from Westbury Park – and what the chief inspector had said to the constable who’d been sent to meet them on Maltham station: I’m a bad bugger to work for. I expect results yesterday, an’ I won’t stand for anybody swingin’ the lead. But I’m no glory grabber. If you deserve credit, I’ll see you get it.

  And that had been perfectly true, right up until that moment, but now Cloggin’-it Charlie seemed to be saying that if anyone was going to get the kudos for solving this case, it was going to be him. What had made him change so quickly? Had he suddenly decided that he had to protect his own career, whatever the cost to anybody else’s?

  “I’ve obviously got some explainin’ to do, lad,” the chief inspector said. “An’ the best place to do it is in the bar – with a pint in my right hand.”

  “And a Capstan Full Strength in your left,” Rutter said grimly.

  “Aye,” Woodend agreed, “an’ with a Capstan Full Strength in my left.”

  The drinks had been bought, and Woodend was ready to begin his explanation. “There’s no easy way to break this to you, Bob, so I’ll come straight to the point,” he said. “We’re off the case.”

  “We’re what!” Rutter gasped.

/>   “We’re off the case,” Woodend repeated. “I told the commander this mornin’ that I no longer have the confidence of the chief constable of Cheshire, an’ it would be better if he sent another team up there. I’ve handed all the evidence I’ve collected over to the Cheshire police. Well . . . some of it, anyway.”

  “But how could you do that!” Rutter protested. “We had the bloody thing cracked!”

  “Did we?”

  “Of course we did. It’s obvious from what we’ve learned that Gerhard Schultz was really Johann Schultz—”

  “So you’ve put the Johann an’ Gerhard thing together without even seein’ the clothin’ evidence Chief Inspector Armstrong had saved from oblivion,” Woodend said. “How d’you manage it, lad?”

  “The neighbour I talked to in London hinted – as much as he dared, given the law on such things – that he and Gerhard had what you might call a ‘special’ relationship. When I talked to Gerhard’s father, he looked very sheepish when I asked him about Gerhard’s girlfriends.”

  “So what do you infer from that?”

  “That until November 1946, Gerhard was, at the very least, a latent homosexual. But after that November, he was suddenly chasing everything in a skirt. And not just chasing them. Remember how the prostitute in Hereford told me that he used to dress up in a uniform, then hurl abuse at her in German and follow that with a whipping?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “She didn’t notice anything about his uniform, but I’m prepared to bet it had SS insignia on it.”

  “So am I,” Woodend agreed.

  “So when you add all that up, there’s only one possible explanation. The man calling himself Gerhard before that date and the one calling himself Gerhard after it are not the same people.”

  “Well done, lad,” Woodend said approvingly.

  But Rutter was not looking for praise from his boss at that moment. “And once we know that Max is now calling himself Karl Müller,” he pressed on, “and that’s obvious after what I discovered in Germany, because only Max and the priest knew about the Dark Lady . . .”