by John Burke
“I find that the dead woman was murdered by the man Bruno Heitz, who then, in a fit of remorse, took his own life.”
There was a buzz of approval. The courtroom began to empty. Heitz tried to fight his way through towards Namaroff, but others took a malicious pleasure in impeding him. Namaroff had left and was driving away before the Professor was anywhere near the door.
A youth with vacant eyes and a fixed, revolting grin jostled against Heitz and wagged his head knowingly.
“You’d better watch out. I’m telling you, you’ll be for it.” The local dialect was so thick that the words slurred into one another. “She’ll strike you like she struck the others, eh? She . . .”
An arm grabbed his shoulder, and the drooling, inbred creature of the valley was roughly bundled out of the room.
As Heitz emerged into the open he was faced by a semicircle of mute, waiting men and women. They made no move to attack him: they simply stood and watched, waiting to make sure that he went away.
He was relieved when the carriage arrived for him and the horses began to strain nobly up the hillside away from Vandorf. The very air seemed clearer over the ridge. Yes, he was relieved to be putting Vandorf behind him at this moment—but he had every intention of returning.
The mutterings of that half-imbecilic youth nagged on in his mind. She . . . It could have meant anything or nothing. But it stirred a faint memory. Not of Vandorf itself but of places along a route through Europe—a route leading in from Asia Minor, the track of something strange. Or was he trying to make up a theory before he had checked his facts? Professor Heitz had a voluminous memory and was proud of his ability to select relevant details from it when he needed them; but he was also humble enough to admit that he could not retain everything and that for completeness he needed an equally voluminous library. His library was in Berlin. He had access to no books in Vandorf—if they possessed such things. If he could find some way of studying the sources, letting things fall into place, allowing a suspicion to trigger off one idea and then following it up remorselessly until it combined with others, he might have an answer to what was going on in Vandorf. Yet he would be the first to admit that his speculations were wilder than anything that had been said in that dismal little courtroom today.
His friends—for so, in comparison with the people of the village, his hosts seemed—tactfully asked little about the inquest. They lived close enough to the valley to know what its reputation was. They were glad he had come back unscathed.
Their relief changed to dismay when Heitz announced that he was not returning to Berlin immediately. Bruno had paid rent on the millhouse for some weeks in advance, and Heitz proposed to spend some time there. He wished to carry out some research.
And speaking of research, might he have the privilege of looking up one or two points in his host’s library? As they knew, his special subject was the influence of myth on the aesthetic development of contemporary poets and novelists, and there were one or two complex cross-references which he wished to clear up. Far from his own cherished collection in Berlin, he was rather at a loss.
He spent another night in the house and devoted most of the following day to intensive reading. Then he thanked his host warmly for the generous hospitality, and went back to Vandorf. He chose a circuitous route, approaching from behind Castle Borski and avoiding the village itself so that he could descend unobserved on the millhouse.
Bruno’s paintings were everywhere—a pathetic reminder of his talent and his impulsiveness, and a memorial to the girl his father had never met: a girl living on only in these unfinished sketches and swift portraits, a girl smiling and pouting, stretching out her arms lazily for love and not knowing she was to meet death.
Heitz spent the evening tidying up the place to suit himself and putting away those tragic souvenirs of a shattered happiness.
Next morning he appeared in the village and went to the inn. The innkeeper appeared at the door and said that the place was closed for a few days. He was in mourning—hadn’t the Professor, of all people, got the grace to leave him alone to his sadness?
An old crone spat at him in the street.
He went to the police headquarters set some distance apart from the village, as though keeping its own counsel. It certainly kept it today: Professor Heitz was refused admittance on the grounds that the officers in charge of the case had nothing to add. A verdict had been delivered in Court, and that was the end of it.
In the early afternoon he visited Dr. Namaroff and was shown in to a spacious sitting room, part of self-contained quarters at the back of the Institution. The tense, dark girl who had met him at the door was introduced as Carla Hoffmann and then went away.
“Do sit down, Professor.” Namaroff’s voice was at its most rich and soothing. “I am so sorry about your son. You have my deepest sympathy.”
“Thank you.” Heitz failed to be soothed. When Namaroff offered him a cigarette he shook his head and said bluntly: “I want you to answer a simple question.”
“Please.”
“You were once a guest at my house in Berlin. You met both my sons. I recall that you talked to Bruno in particular at some length.”
“I . . . may have done. Yes, I believe I did.”
“What impression did you form of him?”
Namaroff made a great show of lighting a cigarette for himself. He pondered, as though putting on a special act for a difficult patient.
“I thought he was . . . ah . . .”
“Normal?” snapped Heitz.
“Why, yes, of course.”
“Yet capable of murder?”
“My dear Heitz”—Namaroff managed a dry laugh—“that is hardly a fair question. Given a certain set of circumstances, I believe almost everybody is capable of murder. Naturally you are prejudiced.”
“If prejudice means that I am disturbed by the evasiveness of the people of Vandorf, then I am prejudiced. If it means that I utterly discount the so-called findings of that travesty of a Court, then I’m prejudiced. I listened to those prevarications and I was sickened. And today when I called at police headquarters I was refused admission. That, you must admit, entitles me to feel biased against the operations of this community. Everywhere I go I sense a conspiracy of silence.”
“I’m sure you exaggerate.”
Namaroff leaned back in his chair and looked out into his garden as though to draw attention to the attractive normality of everything.
He certainly did himself very well. The windows opened on to a formal garden in which two or three patients were strolling. The hillside beyond provided a dark line of trees as a backdrop which was striking rather than sinister. The room itself was furnished in excellent taste—from Prague and Vienna rather than from local sources, Heitz guessed. All that it lacked was a feminine touch: not that Namaroff had let a bachelor’s indifference seep in; rather that it was if anything too spartan.
Heitz said doggedly: “There’s an explanation somewhere. Do you know what it is, Doctor? Are you a party to this plot?”
Namaroff looked genuinely startled. “There’s no plot, as you call it. I am a party to nothing.”
“You are, then, as puzzled as everyone else by these unexplained deaths in the Vandorf district?”
“Yes,” said Namaroff reluctantly.
“But you do have some information that doesn’t leak out to the general public?”
Namaroff was silent.
Heitz went on: “My son was branded a murderer because he was human and therefore vulnerable. And he wasn’t alive to answer back. But behind him, behind the whole story, there is something which the people of Vandorf refuse to mention even behind their own closed doors. Doctor, I need your help.”
“I can add nothing to what I said in Court.”
“Let me ask you one more question. Have you heard of Stheno . . . or Euryale . . .” He waited, and then flung the last name at the impassive Namaroff: “Or Medusa?”
“The Gorgons,” said Namaroff. �
�Naturally I have heard of them. I may practise one of the physical sciences, Professor, but my education did cover a fair amount of classical material.”
“Two of the Gorgons were supposedly immortal. The third, Medusa, was mortal. She was the most beautiful of the three—a ravishing woman whose magnificent hair was changed into serpents so that her beauty took on an aspect of horror which turned men to stone.”
“A legend,” said Namaroff.
“On what were legends based if not on some truth?” demanded Heitz. “Distorted they may have been, but somewhere there must have been a foundation for all men’s strangest beliefs.”
“An interesting philosophical conjecture,” Namaroff agreed. “We must debate it some day, Professor. But I fail to see—”
“What happened to Medusa?”
“The figure in fable,” said Namaroff deliberately, “was killed by Perseus. Her head was chopped off.”
“And her spirit?”
“Professor, we have no reason to suppose any such creature ever existed in the flesh.” Namaroff got up as though to indicate that he wished his visitor to terminate the conversation and leave. “That being so, I can hardly bother myself with speculations about her spirit.”
“Strange, isn’t it,” Heitz went on relentlessly, “how the story of the woman with snakes in her hair crops up throughout mythology? There were the Eumenides, also—the inexorable Furies, with serpents wreathing round their heads. And long after the period of classical myth there were tales of such creatures in Asia Minor, gradually encroaching on the Europe we know today. Creatures . . . or one creature?”
“I cannot imagine what—”
“Or one creature?” Heitz insisted. “The two immortals may be slumbering in the gardens of the Hesperides. But the mortal sister—supposing her longing to survive was so great that she wandered from one land to another . . . and her restless, vengeful spirit moved from one body to another? She escaped death by feeding on the lives of others.”
“We are men of science,” said Namaroff. “I don’t believe in ghosts or evil spirits.”
“A most unscientific remark. But, as men of science, might we not believe in the symbolic elements of the story? Some dreadful plague, recurring through the centuries, to which men dare not give a name—a disease which fits in with nothing we know and which must therefore be cloaked in myth and symbolism. We might work on that supposition, you and I—proving that my son was not a murderer and at the same time solving some of your problems.”
Namaroff hesitated, then said: “There is nothing for us to work on.”
“Nothing?” Heitz got up and confronted the Doctor. “Tell me what other symptoms there were—what the condition of those bodies was. All of them, I mean.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Was that girl in the same condition as all the other victims? Answer me.”
Namaroff went to the door and opened it. He stood with his hand on the knob. “There is only one way in which I can help you, Professor Heitz. That is by offering a word of advice. Leave Vandorf before it is too late.”
“What is it you’re afraid of?”
“I’m afraid for you,” said Namaroff. “That is all.”
“Or of what I may discover if I remain?”
The Doctor did not deign to answer this.
5
It took Professor Heitz a week to get the relevant books from various libraries and friends. Even then he took the precaution of having them delivered to a town ten miles away, where he collected them personally.
During the week of waiting he endeavored to conciliate the Vandorf villagers. He went for a drink in the inn and studiously refrained from provoking any argument. He tried to get them used to the idea of seeing him in the streets. There were one or two other visitors, including a couple of hearty students, and it was difficult for the local inhabitants to single him out for their malevolent disfavor. But Heitz knew in his heart of hearts that he was making little progress. As soon as he ventured to ask the most cautious, roundabout question they turned away and he was back where he started. If he ever discovered anything it would be not through personal discussions but by the academic methods to which he was fortunately so accustomed.
The books arrived, and he started to plough through them.
There were several references to Castle Borski, but most of them were conventional stuff involving family curses and haunted corridors. Since the castle had been deserted there were only a few passing mentions. A quite recent one in a geographical and historical study of the entire region strongly advised visitors against the castle and the valley, hinting that a dispiriting atmosphere had fallen on the area and that difficulties would be placed in the way of anyone wanting to make a tour of the castle.
This wasn’t much to go on. He would have to delve deeper. Another batch of older volumes was on its way, brought this time from his own library by Hans Boehm, who had worked for him these past twenty years and could be trusted with all that the Professor held most dear. It would be good to have Hans here to look after him; and perhaps it would be politic to let Hans go into the village to buy all the provisions. With his dour yet amiable manner, Hans might get on speaking terms with the villagers.
On the night of his trusted servant’s arrival, Heitz sat up late. Every reference he looked up seemed to start him off on a new track. He was amazed that there should be such a clear trail across the world, leading inevitably in the direction of Vandorf . . . and then that it should have petered out. But of course it had disappeared for the very good reason that it was now too close in time as well as in space. Those who knew or guessed were unwilling to speak—and so the records were incomplete. They would be completed only when the menace had passed on and gone somewhere else.
Heitz blinked and rubbed his eyes. He was seeing the pages as a blur. And there was a singing in his ears. Time to go to bed. He would pursue his theme in the morning.
Then he realized that the singing was no illusion. Voices surged through the night. Footsteps tramped up to the old millhouse, and now the sound became threatening.
“Get out, Heitz . . .”
“Go home. Get out of Vandorf . . .”
Hans came in, apprehensive. He was not a countryman and his first experience of life away from Berlin was not appealing to him.
“Sir, don’t you think we should—”
He was cut off by a roar from outside. There was the smash of glass, and fragments of the window spattered across the floor towards the table at which Heitz had been sitting. As he got up and turned, a flaming torch twisted in through the jagged hole, scattering sparks as it came.
Hans dashed out of the room and was back in a minute with a broom. As the flames licked towards the old rugs on the floor he beat at them.
Heitz went to the windows and flung them open. More glass was dislodged, tinkling to the floor.
Three men carrying more torches stepped forward.
“Best get out of this house now,” said the leader.
“Get off this land,” snapped Heitz. “Go back where you came from.”
“It’s you as should . . .”
“Let’s go in . . . show him . . .”
They moved forward. There were other shadows behind, spreading out round the house. As Hans went to the door to make sure the fastenings were safe, one man leapt in through the window. Feet pounded along the passage outside, and suddenly the room was filling up. Hans lashed out with his broom. Heitz, pinned against the wall, drove his fist into one seamed, contorted face. But there were too many of them. It would soon be over.
Then someone was cutting a swathe through the intruders. Several of them scrambled out of the window just as they had come, and others scuttled along the walls with their arms up to shield their heads against blows.
Panting, Heitz straightened up. Hans lowered his broom but remained on guard, studying three newcomers mistrustfully.
The first of the three was Inspector Kanof.
Two of his men stood like sentinels at the door.
“I hope you’re not too badly hurt.” Kanof sounded as though he would really have appreciated some signs of serious injury.
“Thank you, no.” Heitz tugged at his jacket, which had been wrenched half off his right shoulder. “It was lucky that you arrived when you did.”
“Next time you may not be so lucky,” said Kanof curtly.
“Inspector, if you think there is likely to be a repetition of this, I shall hold you responsible.”
“My police force is very small.”
“Small or not, it has a duty to protect law-abiding people from the less law-abiding.”
“Its duty is to the local community,” said Kanof, “not to unwelcome visitors. Your business here is over. Why don’t you go?”
“My business is not over,” said Heitz firmly.
“Very well. I’ve warned you. That’s all I can do. If you should change your mind, Professor, I’ll see you have safe conduct out of the village.”
Kanof gave Heitz a sardonic little bow and then jerked a thumb at his two men. They left and went off into the night. The brooding silence of the forest crept in again.
Hans contemplated the chaos in the room with a sad shake of the head.
“Leave it until the morning,” said Heitz. “It may not look so dreadful then.”
His servant’s expression of gloomy foreboding said in effect that it would probably look worse and that even if he tidied it up there was a good chance of the ruffians coming back and starting the whole thing over again.
But for the next few days there was peace. Hans stocked up with provisions and found that Bruno had left behind the larger part of a cask of wine. Heitz ate and drank well, and worked without interruption. He could only hope that the appearance of the police would have been enough to frighten would-be intruders off, at least until he had established what he had to establish.
One afternoon he wrote a telegram to Professor Meister at Leipzig University. His son Paul was working with Meister, and although Heitz was reluctant to disturb either his son or his old friend he needed help—not just help in his investigations, but someone to talk to who would understand and reassure him, someone as strong and reliable as Paul was.