HS03 - A Visible Darkness

by Michael Gregorio

  Les Halles shook his head.

  ‘There must be another corpse hidden in the house or the garden,’ he repeated stubbornly, a note of acidity in his voice, as if he did not trust me to search the house properly. I had thrown the name of the murderer at his feet, but that was not enough for Richard les Halles. There was a hitch, and it threatened to distract him from the work that was going on along the shoreline.

  ‘That house must be turned inside out,’ he growled impatiently.

  There was no corpse hidden in Heinrich’s house. He had never bothered to hide the evidence of his crimes. He could have thrown Kati Rodendahl into the sea, but he had left her corpse on the shore where she was bound to be seen. He might easily have buried Ilse Bruen beneath the loose sand of the dunes. Instead, he had abandoned her body carelessly in the pigsty of the only farm in the district. He had left the corpses of Rickert, Gurten and Frau Hummel where he had slaughtered them. If he had ripped the child from Edviga’s womb, he would have left the body for the world to see.

  ‘You won’t need me in Nordcopp,’ I said. ‘I want to look in Edviga’s hut. She may have left some clue behind to tell us what has become of her.’

  I wanted to be alone when I discovered what he had done with Edviga.

  I wanted to be alone when I met Dr Heinrich again.

  36

  EXCEPT FOR A single light, it was dark out on the water.

  Moonlight cut black chasms between the wooden slats as I crossed the pontoon bridge and clattered up the ladder onto the platform. The huts were shrouded in darkness, and they appeared to be deserted.

  An untrimmed lantern guttered in the centre of the space, as if the women had been whisked away by some spirit even more malign than Colonel les Halles. I could make them out, labouring on the shore beneath the flaming braziers to turn the Frenchman’s dream into reality.

  The forgotten lantern gave off a slanting plume of trailing black smoke.

  I raised the glass, adjusted the wick, then went forward, my footsteps beating on the wooden boards like a muffled funeral drum, towards Edviga’s hut. It was on the far side of the compound, looking over the sea; she had pointed it out to me the day les Halles had let me speak to her. The smell of the sea was strong, stagnant, almost rank. I might have been on a seaweed-covered rock at low tide. The wooden cabins reminded me of the lean-to huts where fishermen hang their fish to dry along the northern shore. They were very old—the ancient wood dark, cracked, warped—very different from the new huts where the French had installed themselves, where I myself had slept. Being so close to the sea and the spray, those huts had soaked up more water than the timbers of a sailing-ship.

  I stopped outside her lodging, listening for any sound.

  Waves were breaking gently in a shimmering silver line along the shingle half a quarter-mile out from the shore. Further down the beach came the rude suckling of the coq du mer, the sharp exchange of orders being shouted, the muted murmuring of the women’s voices as they worked together, learning the new task which would render them unemployed the instant they had mastered it.

  The air was fresher than it had been for many a night. The first hint of summer’s imminent end, I thought. The Arctic ice would soon invigorate the wind as autumn came. That gentle breeze would turn into a howling gale, racing down from the north, sweeping away the stale odours of the stagnant sea. It would soon disperse the fetid air of that long summer.

  I pushed the door open, and entered the cabin.

  The air was heavy with the odour of damp clothes, and with the acidic smell of the bodies that had worn them. The lantern lit up four trestle beds, the general clutter of the women who had been living there together. Clothes and clogs lay in great disorder on the floor, as if they had been hastily thrown aside. Earthenware cups, metal spoons and a covered pot set down in a circle in the centre of the room. The other women had run off, leaving everything as it was. Their cots were stripped bare to the bones of their latticed wooden frames. Only the cot in the farthest corner remained untouched, the covers thrown back, exposing crumpled bedding, as Edviga Lornerssen had left it.

  I began to search the room more thoroughly, concentrating my attention on the area around that bed. Apart from the bedclothes, some traces of the girl’s presence remained. A flimsy printed woodcut was fixed to the wall above the spot where her head must have lain. A female saint, I thought at first, wondering whether Edviga might have been a Catholic. I had never asked about her beliefs. And yet, religion of any sort seemed at odds with her desire to bury a piece of amber with Ilse Bruen, and with the superstitious ritual she had performed over the corpse of Kati, covering her nudity with a blanket of fur, surrounding it with a scattering of amber fragments.

  I held the lantern up, and looked more closely at the picture.

  A pretty young woman dressed in a long dark cape with a hood. She might have been another one of the amber-gatherers. The image did not seem to have any religious significance. Nor did the nail on which it had been crudely impaled suggest any sign of reverence.

  Not a saint, then. It was simply a decoration, like the strings of sea-shells which dangled from the ceiling, and the misshapen tangles of driftwood which hung from the walls like stags’ heads in a hunting-lodge.

  Edviga’s amber-gathering gear was draped over another rusty nail. Her stout jerkin and stiff leather trousers dangled in a careless twist, as if the uniform had been peeled off in one piece from her body. Like the shell stripped from a shrimp.

  Beneath, neatly aligned, stood her heavy thigh-length boots.

  As I lifted the lantern, I caught a glimpse of something peeping out from beneath the bed. It was dark and triangular. Bending down, I saw a medium-sized wooden box that was partially hidden in the shadows. I pushed the bed aside, and pulled it out. It was the sort of box that they use for packing roundels of cheese. Two large initial letters had been unevenly burnt with a red-hot iron on the lid.

  E.L.

  It was not locked, and I carefully opened the lid. My fingers hovered in the air for a moment, hardly daring to touch the contents. What did this mean? Were these the clothes that she had arrived in? Were they the clothes that she would have worn if she had left of her own free will? I lifted up a crushed green bonnet, which I set down on the floor. A dress had been carefully folded beneath it. Printed with a pattern of pink flowers, that poor faded frock had seen a good few summers. It was, indeed, little more than a rag. Had Edviga nothing better to show for her labour on the seashore? I saw her in my mind’s eye. Any other woman would have been demeaned by those poor garments.

  Not Edviga.

  I laid my fingers on the dress, shifted it aside, and examined the contents of the box. I was surprised by how little it contained. No bag, no shawl, no vest or stockings, no keepsake from home, no letters. There was nothing except for a pair of cracked leather pumps, one of which had lost a buckle. Having removed the contents, I turned the box over, wondering if something might be hidden under it. A tiny fragment of stone clattered onto the floor. I picked it up between my thumb and finger and held it to the light.

  It was a dense, dark red. Very dark, indeed, but it was amber. A piece of no great value. Of all the valuable amber that had passed through her hands, was this the only fragment she had kept for herself? Had she left it in the box, asking her friends to bury her and it together in the sea if anything should ever happen to her? I replaced the clothes, and the chip of amber, closed the lid, and made to slide the box back into its place beneath the bed.

  Something scraped on the wooden boards.

  I pushed the box aside, fell to my knees, and peered into the darkness. Almost hidden in the corner, an object glinted. I stretched forward, felt cold metal, then pulled it out. I turned it over in my hands, examining it more carefully in the lamplight. It was an implement of some sort. A tool connected with her work, perhaps? Fashioned neatly from an amber-worker’s rake, it had been transformed by a blacksmith. All the teeth had been removed from the rake—with
one exception—leaving a flat grip which fitted snugly into the palm of my hand. That one remaining tooth protruded as a sharp prong about five inches long. When I closed my fingers around it, that prong jutted out from between the closed fingers of my bunched fist. It was an ingenious tool. Or was it a weapon? Did she take it with her when she left the camp at night? Did she carry it to protect herself when she went to Nordcopp?

  She had left it behind when she met Dr Heinrich . . .

  That thought was like a hammer-blow.

  It tolled the death-knell of my hopes of finding the girl alive. In a panic, I dropped to my knees again, thumping the lantern down on the wooden floor. I brought my right eye close to the floorboards, and sighted along the plank. Splinters stood out like the spines on a hedgehog’s back. The crazed grain of warped wood was a maze of rival lanes running away in the same direction. I was looking for blood. For the stains of Edviga’s blood on the soft wood. For darker traces which might have found their way into the grain, distinguishing one anonymous, narrow track from the guilty one next to it.

  But there was nothing. No blood. No sign of violence.

  No clue which might tell me whether the girl was alive, or dead, or where she might have gone.

  I stood up, dropped the metal implement on the bed, then bent again with a sigh, intending to retrieve the lantern from the floor. The flickering light glared brightly in my eyes. Then, a dark shadow moved over me.

  I glanced up.

  There was a silhouette against the canvas of the doorway.

  ‘Edviga?’

  My lips closed in silence as the shadow stepped into the room.

  Wet clothes clung to that body like a second skin. Water formed a shallow pool around the naked white feet. That figure had come upon me silently. Every fibre in my body tensed as I struggled to make sense of it. The night before, he had let me live in Königsberg. Now, it seemed, he had dogged my heels, and followed me to Nordcopp. Had he decided that I must die, as well?

  Dogged my heels?

  Surely not. He must have reached the town before me. The instant I slid down from the saddle, I had gone to Heinrich’s house and discovered the bodies. I had touched the lady’s cold cheek, and clasped the stiff hand of the other corpse, concluding that they had both been dead at least an hour.

  ‘You got here quickly,’ I managed to say.

  ‘Quicker than you think, Herr Magistrate,’ he answered with an enigmatic smile. ‘I am here, there. I am everywhere.’

  It was a strange thing to say, and it jarred with what I knew. He had been in Königsberg the night before. He must have returned to Nordcopp in the early hours of the morning. He had killed Edviga, and now he had come to kill me, too.

  He took three steps into the light, and shook the water from his hair. Some drops touched the hot glass of the lantern, sizzling loudly as they instantly turned to steam. He seemed to shimmer. The effect was unexpected. His face was bright where I expected dark, distorting shadows. The lantern projected a honeyed gold glow on his pale skin. His brow was smooth, as gently curved as a dune of wind-planed sand. His cheeks stood out like perfect halves of the same round apple. The contour of his lips was soft and delicate. His short hair sat stiffly on his head, which glistened with tiny liquid sea-pearls. I recalled the first time I had met him, meditating in the Pietist convent in Nordcopp. Then, too, he had seemed to emanate light.

  ‘You came from the sea.’

  ‘You came by land,’ he answered swiftly

  It hardly mattered where he had sprung from. He had evaded the guards on the landward side of the camp, that was all I needed to know. Edviga had told me how the girls came and went at night, walking along the ancient harbour wall submerged a few feet below the shallow waters of the bay. They went that way to Nordcopp, carrying amber, meaning to avoid the rude attention of the French soldiers on the gate. It came as no surprise that he knew the route. He knew the amber-girls, he knew their secrets.

  He had murdered them.

  He seemed imperturbably calm. Relaxed, but concentrated. Was this the effect of transcendental meditation? Or was the act of murder his Nirvana, joy in the destruction he had wrought in the doctor’s house three miles away?

  It was time to pick up the conversation we had broken off in Königsberg. Now, the questions would be different. Even so, I could not predict whether his replies would clarify the situation, or confound me all the more.

  ‘Why kill Dr Heinrich and his housekeeper?’ I asked.

  My voice was firm. The shock had quite drained out of me. He was the very last person that I had expected to encounter. And yet, I wondered, had some seed of doubt been planted in my heart from our first meeting? Instinctively, I had tried to keep him at a distance. Even so, I should have known. I should have realised who he really was.

  He smiled, his teeth tinged yellow by the flame which flared up from the lantern.

  ‘You disappoint me, Stiffeniis! Is this the dull procedure that they teach in Prussian law schools?’ He made a grimace of disgust, which distorted his handsome mouth. ‘I expected you to start with the other deaths. The ones that you were ordered to investigate by the French. Don’t you want to know what you were really up against?’

  His words flew rattling through my head like a flight of cawing crows. What did he mean? What more remained to be said about the murders that he had not already told me in Königsberg?

  My mind was in a whirl.

  He knew me intimately. What I had told him freely, and what he had extracted from me by force and guile. He probably knew a great deal more, and weighed it more objectively than I could ever do. He knew the darkest secret of my soul. I would have killed him to retrieve it. Surely, he knew that, too.

  I called myself to order. I must concentrate on the one undeniable fact in my possession: Dr Heinrich was not the killer that I had been seeking.

  ‘Let us begin, then, with my error,’ I said. My voice sounded calm enough, but my heart was pumping furiously. ‘I thought that I was on the trail of Dr Heinrich. I believed that he had taken me prisoner in Rickert’s house last night. But then again, I thought I saw your corpse an hour ago in Nordcopp.’

  He threw back his head and laughed.

  The lantern played new shadows over the surface of his face. Dark pits with gleaming needle-points replaced his eyes. His mouth became a black and toothless trough. This ugliness was a revelation. I saw him suddenly for what he was: a sinister creature who had crawled out from the sulphurous pit.

  ‘Do not blame yourself, Herr Stiffeniis. You saw what you were inclined to see. You can blame my ability to produce convincing illusions, if you’re feeling generous.’ Clearly, he was pleased with his own ingenuity. ‘While dressing up the corpse in my jacket, I was moved, believe me. With his face set fast in plaster, and my seal-ring on his finger, Heinrich looked as I would have looked if he had murdered me!’ A gasp of emotion issued from his lips. ‘You know, I actually said a prayer for my soul, while standing over what appeared to be my own body.’

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I used every trick the theatre can inspire. The dark setting, pale moonlight shining in through half-closed shutters. A single, flickering candle. Like a symbolic, flailing soul. I knew you’d be enticed by the open door. Who can resist it? Did you enjoy that moment? You thought that I was there, and that you might be able to prevent whatever was about to happen. It’s fair to say that I outwitted you at every turn, Herr Stiffeniis. Noble thoughts buoyed you up, I know. Your young assistant had been taken prisoner, probably murdered. You couldn’t save him, but you would take revenge for his life. You hoped to wash your own hands clean in the murderer’s blood.’

  Suddenly, as if the slide had changed in a magic lantern, his face was a mask of rage. ‘You sacrificed Gurten, your newly acquired assistant. You offered him up to the killer as final proof of your theory. You knew that he would go to Nordcopp the instant you told him that you, too, suspected Heinrich of the murders. Could he stay in Lotingen,
safe inside a library? Of course he couldn’t! A young man with great ambitions. You knew what he would do. Isn’t that what went through your mind, Herr Magistrate? Is that not what you felt when you saw his—my—corpse?’

  Could I offer a word in my own defence?

  ‘Gurten does not exist,’ I said. ‘He never has.’

  He took no notice.

  ‘Heinrich appeared in Königsberg.’ His voice was raw with excitement. ‘Or so you thought. Exactly as I wanted you to think . . .’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, hardly daring to hope that he would clarify his motives. ‘Why lead me to believe that Heinrich was the murderer?’

  His eyes lit up with surprise, and a smile flashed across his lips. ‘He was perfectly placed to kill the women. How warmly you embraced the notion when you spoke to Erika in the cells! She was terrified. She knew the victims, and she thought that she’d be the next. And she suspected him. Don’t you think a creature such as her might feel and see things that you aren’t able to?’ He fixed me sternly with his gaze. ‘Who knows, Heinrich may well have been a murderer. Why not? I mean to say, the truth could well be this. If that’s the case, then I have done what you lacked courage to do. I stopped him in his tracks.’

  He continued to make light of me for his own perverse amusement.

  ‘You killed the women,’ I stated plainly. ‘You murdered Heinrich, and you slaughtered his housekeeper. Your actions are crystal clear. It is the motive which escapes me.’

  ‘Everything must be plain and simple. Explanation. Justification. Motivation. No ambiguity must remain. Reason is everything. Am I right, Herr Procurator? People are dead; there must be a killer. And if so, what can he say to explain his crimes?’ He laughed again, nodding as he did so. ‘I agree with you. After all, I am your assistant. I’ll give you a valid reason, then. Heinrich wanted amber. At any cost. Like everyone else on the coast, French or Prussian. He’d have committed any outrage to lay his hands on the pieces that he wanted.’ He twisted his lips derisively. ‘Indeed, he has done so heartlessly. In the interests of science, so to speak. He tricked a helpless cripple, promising to cure her in exchange for amber. Can you believe that he possessed those paltry bits he showed to us, and no others?’