The Riddle of Monte Verita

by Jean-Paul Torok

  ‘Do you know what happened last night?’ he said in a calm, collected voice that conferred an affirmation on the question. ‘I presume that Monsieur Prokosch, with whom you were speaking a while ago, filled you in on all the details? We find ourselves presented with a pretty little problem which I’m supposed to solve, even though nothing remotely similar has ever crossed my path. Not only am I expected to show how a murderer can have escaped without trace from a double-locked site but it turns out the site itself is not your run-of-the-mill locked room: it’s an isolated house with oak shutters secured by solid steel hooks, plus an oak door as well, with a lock that’s absolutely impossible to activate from the outside without a special key. I’ve questioned Agents Mangin and Fantoni at length and they’re absolutely convinced nobody could have got out of that bungalow without passing through the walls.

  ‘Now, if you’ve been imagining something like a trapdoor in the floor or an opening under the roof, you can wave that idea goodbye. Every one of the bungalows is built on a concrete slab and the shingles of each roof are nailed directly to the battens. I’ve checked. And please don’t suggest there are secret passages. You can rest assured there are no hidden exits and yet more than a dozen people are willing to swear nobody was in the bungalow when the door was opened. Do you follow me so far?’

  ‘No,’ said Pierre.

  ‘I see. You have a theory, I suppose?’

  ‘Well, yes. It seems to me that you ruled out the only plausible explanation: that the murderer simply walked out of the door and locked it behind him.’ He preferred to refer to the perpetrator as masculine.

  Brenner shrugged.

  ‘Impossible.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because there were only two keys in existence. That gossip Prokosch must surely have told you that much. We found one in the bungalow. The other –.’

  ‘— was locked in the manager’s office. I know. All the same, you can’t rule out a third key.’

  ‘That would suit you just fine, wouldn’t it? Only I telephoned the workshop where they make the keys just this morning. They only make two originals of each key and they are guaranteed impossible to forge. In any case, even if there were a master key and the killer managed somehow to get hold of it, that still wouldn’t be the answer. In the first place there are no marks of a break-in on the exterior lock. Secondly, the individual in question would never have had time to use it. Nor – and this is going to surprise you – would he have time to lock the door with a duplicate key, supposing by some miracle he’d managed to get hold of one.

  Pierre looked at him wide-eyed.

  ‘In heaven’s name, why not? On the contrary, he would have had plenty of time, from what I understand. The door was out of sight of your agents for quite some time.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong. We performed an experiment with a stop-watch, a sort of reconstruction of the crime. We took as the starting point the instant that Mangin and Fantoni saw the woman lean out of the window to close the shutters. It took them thirty-four seconds to get hold of their flashlight, leave their observation post and run the distance between the two bungalows. Let’s add ten more seconds because of the rain and the darkness.

  ‘Now listen carefully: it turned out that the entrance porch of the second bungalow came into view less than fifteen seconds after they left the first. That’s because the path connecting them isn’t straight but curves at that point. From there they could clearly see, from the light of the streetlamp, the porch and under it the door unquestionably closed. From which we can deduce that the murderess would only have had fifteen seconds – let’s say twenty at most – to finish closing the shutters, to fasten them with hooks, to close the window itself, run to the door, open it, take the time to double lock it and then disappear.

  ‘Agent Fantoni, a very agile fellow, has been timed performing the same sequence in the bungalow next door, which is identical to that of the crime scene. His best time has been twenty-four and six-tenths seconds. Believe me, this business is a real brain-teaser. Whichever way one looks at it, one always runs into a dead end.’

  With a resigned air he lit another cigarette. Pierre looked at him with secret amusement. It was an understatement to say he was relieved. The more Brenner floundered around, the further the danger was removed. Why not try and confuse him even more?

  ‘Superintendent, may I ask you a question?’ he asked, with an air of innocence.

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  ‘You’ve based your findings so far solely on the word of your agents. What makes you think they aren’t lying, at least about some of the details?’

  ‘And why would they do that?’

  ‘Who knows? That’s for you to find out. But in the work they do, lying is second nature, isn’t it? It’s like the woman they imagined they saw.’

  ‘Imagined?’

  ‘How can they be so sure it was a woman? The description they gave – if you can call it that – could just as well apply to a man. A man wearing a raincoat, with a scarf tied around his head. At night, in the rain, tens of metres way….’

  ‘They could have been mistaken, eh? You’re really a great help, Monsieur Garnier. All we have to do now is look for a short, thin man who’s in the habit of wrapping a scarf around his head and wears size thirty-seven shoes.’

  ‘Why thirty-seven?’

  ‘Because they found traces of footprints on the flagstones in front of the door. Prints of a woman’s shoe. The porch protected them from the rain. They went towards the house; there were none coming the other way. These prints – of flat-heeled shoes, by the way, size thirty-seven according to Agent Mangin, who is married – could have helped us identify the murderess. I say murderess because I can’t see a man wearing woman’s shoes to go and kill someone.’

  He raised his glass calmly to his lips, but it was clear he was seething inwardly.

  ‘Dammit, would you believe those two idiots allowed a crowd of onlookers to trample around outside the bungalow. Do you know how many people wear size thirty-seven shoes, Monsieur Garnier? The answer is most women! Yours, for example.’ He gave an apologetic grimace. ‘No offence. I couldn’t help noticing her ankles.’

  He extinguished his cigarette and added casually, as if joking:

  ‘Could you believe that Agent Fantoni – who probably doesn’t have much of a memory for faces – claimed to find a vague likeness between your wife and the woman in the bungalow?’

  He paused to scratch his neck and continued:

  ‘You’ll think I’m being funny: do you know that, if your wife had dark hair and wasn’t quite a bit taller, I might also have asked myself the same question?’

  He looked at Pierre’s glass:

  ‘You’re not drinking, my friend?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ replied Pierre, whose heart had started to beat faster. He took a gulp and the alcohol burned his throat. Brenner kept his eyes on him and he wondered what that strange expression on his face could mean. What exactly did he know? But the policeman made a dismissive gesture and continued, lowering his voice:

  ‘I’ll tell you something in confidence: we’re making a mistake if we allow ourselves to be preoccupied by this business about a disappearance. That’s exactly what this woman wanted: to stop us asking pertinent questions. For example: why did she take the trouble to show us all that hocus-pocus? Why did she stab her victim in plain view, in front of the window, when she knew she was being observed by two men on the other side of the glass, just a couple of dozen metres away?’

  ‘Wait a minute! What makes you think she knew they were there?’

  ‘For three reasons: she wore an outfit that hid her body and her hair; she was careful to keep her face partly covered while she was in the room; she closed the shutters in her spectators’ faces, just as a magician shuts out his audience when he steps into the cabinet from which he’s going to vanish. Believe me, this woman is an artist and she’s given us a performance. I’m beginning to wonder if….’

>   He raised his glass to eye level and studied it dreamily. There was a silence that appeared interminable to Pierre, broken occasionally by the sound of ice cubes swirling in the glass. Then Brenner emptied it in one gulp and placed it back on the table.

  ‘Would you like to know what I think? This is not the first time she’s done it. It’s risky, but she’s done it more than once already. And, so far, she’s got away with it. She likes the challenge; she likes playing with fire. Look at it this way: we have an idea of her height, her weight, and her shoe size. We could easily expose her, and yet… Relax, Monsieur Garnier, I’m simply telling the truth.’

  Pierre had the impression of lying full length on his back, with an enormous pendulum that made a whistling sound as it gradually descended lower and lower as it got closer to his heart. He could already feel the bite of the pendulum’s blade but mustered the strength to respond.

  ‘The fact is your analysis is absurd. You’re trying to get me to accept there’s a killer out there who sets the police impossibly complicated problems for the express purpose of being caught.

  Brenner shook his head.

  ‘You’re not following me. The problem for me is that of the likelihood of prosecution. You think that the culprit, duly identified and brought into court, will inevitably be found guilty. But, in practice, no judge will sentence a criminal if the investigation cannot explain how the crime was committed; a crime, if you will, that the culprit could not have physically committed. In the present case, I’ll bet you anything that any jury would prefer to believe – just like you, a few minutes ago – that the witnesses have either lied or lost their minds, rather than accept that the murderess could have dematerialised before their eyes. We know it and she knows it. The challenge isn’t to arrest her, but to prove how she did it.’

  ‘So when are you going to arrest her?’ asked Pierre, feebly.

  For some time now he had been unable to think of anything else. How warm it was in the room! He could hardly move. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the door opening and a breath of fresh air caressed his neck. He turned to look. A uniformed policeman stood in the doorway. Brenner got up and went to talk to him. Pierre sat motionless, as if anaesthetised, his hands gripping the armrest of his chair.

  He hardly noticed that the superintendent was coming back towards him, shouting something at the man at the door: “Find the manager and tell him to come with the key.” Brenner reached across the table to collect his hat and his briefcase; “The man from Berne is here,” he said to Pierre. “We’re finally going to be able to open the damn bungalow.”

  ‘When are you going to arrest her?’ he repeated, more firmly.

  ‘When? Oh, it’s just a matter of hours. Her description has been sent to the whole district. We’ll get her when she tries to cross the frontier.’

  Brenner was already walking away. Pierre moved his head and blinked his eyes, as if he had suddenly been exposed to a blinding light.

  ‘So who are you talking about?’

  Brenner turned and gave him a puzzled look.

  ‘Who do you think I’m talking about? The NKVD agent who was in contact with Hoenig. She’s one of the Soviet Secret Service’s professional killers. Didn’t Prokosch tell you?’

  ***

  Pierre stayed slumped in his seat, first staring fixedly at the glass that he had barely touched, then emptying it quickly. He should have felt relieved, but he could feel from the tightness in his throat and his accelerated heartbeat that the anxiety was still there. One part of him said that the danger had receded; the other, more visceral and less reasoned, told him that the suspicions which tortured him would not easily go away. He could have sworn that Brenner had toyed cleverly with him, had amused himself, letting Pierre think that he knew more than he was saying; and he couldn’t forget the last look the superintendent gave him as he closed the door: the cunning, insidious, heavily ironic gaze of the predator contemplating the prey it held at its mercy.

  The terrace was deserted under the torrid midday sun and he wondered vaguely where everyone had gone. He hastened to cross it. “I have to stop thinking,” he told himself. He felt utterly confused. His head was bursting with so many questions he couldn’t decide where to begin; moreover he was reluctant to do so because of the shame he would feel in formulating them. “You’ve read too many tales of fantasy. How can you think such monstrous things about the woman you married?” And, anyway, what was there to back up his preposterous assumptions? Everything was based on the exaggerated claims of a half-crazed individual… and also the feeling that Solange had kept certain things from him. (Why hadn’t he asked her to explain?) But that was all.

  All of a sudden, there was but one idea in his head: to find her and hold her in his arms. He needed comforting and, above all, calming. He ran as quickly as he could down the path through the trees, towards the park exit. In the half-light of the overhanging foliage the slightest noise took on a significance of its own: the twittering of a bird, the rustling of a breeze in the branches, the flat sound of his own footsteps in the soggy ground. As he was running he could smell the heavy, wet odour of the lichens and mosses. Passing in front of Hoenig’s bungalow, where the two agents had been posted, he looked up and saw people bustling about, examining the soil and searching in the bushes, to the accompaniment of muffled exclamations.

  He was so eager to see his wife again that he failed to pay attention. In the village, one omnibus passed right in front of his nose, and the wait for the next one seemed interminable. He wondered if Solange had waited for him for lunch. With its window blinds down, its empty lounges, and an empty conference room, the Grand Hotel was taking a siesta. A clinking of cutlery and dirty dishes came from the dining room. He looked through the glazed panels and couldn’t see Solange among the handful of guests. She must be waiting for him in their room. He stood frozen in front of the door and knocked. There was no reply, which he took as an omen.

  The door had been left on the latch. All he had to do was to push it to enter. Streams of light, filtered through the Venetian blinds, illuminated the room. There was no noise except the tick-tock of the travelling clock on her bedside table. The hands pointed to a quarter past one.

  ‘Solange,’ he called out.

  There was no answering voice. With a growing alarm he went into the bathroom. Above the washbasin was the usual disorderly cluster of pots of cream, lipsticks, eye make-up and bottles of perfume. The sweet fragrance of Shalimar was everywhere, wafting up from the silk undergarments thrown hastily at the foot of the bathtub.

  When he went back to their room, he noticed that the mauve robe she had worn that morning had been thrown on the bed. He sat down on the edge and caressed the soft, light material.

  That was when he saw the envelope placed against the pillowcase.

  My Darling,

  I know you’re going to torment yourself but I have to go away. I beg you to trust me, our happiness depends on it.

  You can’t have any idea what’s happening and it’s horribly difficult to explain. I’ll be back tomorrow evening and I hope everything will be clear then. Please don’t get the wrong idea. IT’S NOTHING LIKE WHAT YOU IMAGINE.

  I love you,

  SOLANGE

  P.S. I’m taking YOUR car. I’ve sent the suit you were wearing yesterday Sunday to be cleaned. The maid will bring it to the room. Please don’t wear the polka-dot tie with it. The striped one goes much better. And don’t put too much butter on your toast at breakfast. Think of your figure!

  ***

  On that same Monday, 26 September, an event occurred that was even more extraordinary than anything that had occurred thus far. By virtue of its supernatural nature it put all of Monte Verita’s previous mysteries in the shade. If Pierre Garnier, during his journey across the park, had resisted the mad urge to see his wife and instead had, out of curiosity, approached Hoenig’s bungalow, what he would have found would have plunged him into the same state of bewilderment as those who had witnessed
the drama – described by the police themselves as an abominable piece of devilry.

  Here are the facts, as described in Superintendent Brenner’s report:

  I arrived at 12h 31 in front of the crime scene, accompanied by Superintendent Füssli of the Department of Security, Agents Mangin and Fantoni, and Dr. Calgari, medical examiner for the Tessin district. The bungalow, as seen from the exterior, was in the same condition as the two agents claim to have left it and as I had personally noted at 6.25 a.m: shutters closed, door closed. I unlocked the door with the key given to me by the hotel manager and let in Superintendent Füssli who had asked to be left alone inside. It was my understanding that he needed to be personally responsible for the highly classified documents in Hoenig’s possession.

  A few seconds later the superintendent came out again, in a state of extreme agitation. He asked – and I quote – if this was our idea of a **** joke”. Seeing my evident amazement, he invited me to step inside and I was able to ascertain that the body was no longer in the lounge or any other part of the bungalow.

  Dr. Calgari then drew my attention to a bloodstain on the carpet at the spot where, according to the witnesses, the body had lain. He took a sample which he dispatched immediately to the medical laboratory, along with a pair of broken spectacles found near the body.

  A preliminary inspection of the premises established that the windows and shutters remained locked from the inside, as was the bathroom skylight which was, in any case, too narrow to allow a corpulent individual like Dr. Hoenig through. I can personally testify that the front door was double locked when I inserted the key. The second key, which had found been on the lounge table, had been given to me by Agent Fantoni who had kept it in his possession in order to have fingerprints taken at some point.