The Riddle of Monte Verita

by Jean-Paul Torok

  ***

  A sinister atmosphere permeated the small smoke-filled room. The discussion was going round in circles. One hypothesis succeeded another under the weary eye of Brenner whose gloomy expression was piteous to behold. Pierre was seized with an overwhelming desire to leave and breathe some fresh air. Suddenly he was struck by a thought that sent shivers down his spine. Brenner had just shown them Hoenig’s notes. What had become of the dossier that had been lying on the table next to him, the dossier that was so damning to Solange? Someone had caused it to disappear, and that could only have been… He felt giddy and clung to the back of one of the chairs.

  ‘I don’t feel very well,’ he said. ‘If you don’t need me at the moment, I’ll take a short walk.’

  ‘Feel free to leave. But I must see both you and your wife this afternoon, so don’t go too far.’

  ‘I… I believe my wife was planning to see Madame Hoenig,’ he stammered.

  ‘Quite so. Just make sure she’s back before five o’clock. I’ll wait for you in the Albergo.’

  ‘Right. I’ll tell her.’

  ‘The poor boy doesn’t seem his self today,’ observed Lippi after Pierre had left.

  ‘None of us does,’ said Mestre. ‘We’re all out of sorts, living on our nerves.’

  ‘How much longer is this comedy going to last?’ groused Harvey.

  ‘Well,’ said Brenner, ‘I’m not going to keep you much longer. I have to go to Monte Verita to see how the searches are going.’

  Mestre stubbed his cigarette out in an ashtray that was already overflowing and whispered casually:

  ‘I think I can save you the trouble.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Thinking about what Prokosch said just now: that there’s more truth in a dream… Suppose we took Harvey’s nightmare seriously?’

  Brenner looked furious.

  ‘You’re not going to start that all over again!’

  ‘For the moment,’ continued Mestre, ignoring the outburst, ‘it’s the only clue we have. Suppose Harvey didn’t dream it and he really saw Doctor Hoenig that night. And suppose that the Herr Doktor was well and truly alive….’

  ‘That’s quite a stretch,’ growled Brenner. ‘You heard Dr. Strahler – by the way, where’s he gone?’

  They had to face it: in the heat of the discussion the doctor had slipped out without anyone noticing. Mestre went on:

  ‘You told us, Harvey, that Hoenig was walking along the path that went by your window. Where does that path lead?’

  ‘It leads to the fountain higher up the slope.’ He turned to Brenner with a frown. ‘But why the devil ask me these questions? I keep telling you it was only a nightmare. I didn’t dream that I was dreaming, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘Think about it, Superintendent,’ argued Mestre. ‘What’s the only possible hiding-place in the area? The only place you haven’t even thought to search? You’ll never guess: it’s the grotto. I’m willing to bet that’s where you’ll find Hoenig, dead or alive,’ he concluded calmly.

  ‘In the grotto,’ repeated Brenner, with a condescending smile. ‘My poor friend, the entrance is sealed by an iron grill embedded in the rock and whose bars are the thickness of a man’s arm. You must have a very poor idea of the Swiss police if you think we haven’t checked it out.’

  ‘But suppose –.’

  ‘—Suppose what?’ exclaimed the superintendent, losing his habitual calm and becoming more and more irritated. ‘I’m not crazy enough to suppose,’ he said, mimicking Mestre, ‘ that the corpse could have revived itself, got out of the bungalow, locked the door with a non-existent key, gone to terrorise Mr. Harvey in his sleep and, to cap it all, passed through a barrier that ten strong men with a battering-ram couldn’t breach to hide in a cavity drilled into a rock.’

  ‘All of which suggests that our philosopher is not completely stupid,’ interjected Lippi, serious for once. ‘There could be a secret entrance.’

  ‘Oh, no. You’re not going to bring up that old chestnut,’ barked Brenner, now at the end of his tether. ‘Don’t drag secret passages into all this on top of everything else. It’s beneath you to suggest it.’

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ agreed the Italian. ‘It’s such an unworthy trick that no writer worth his salt would even find it necessary to deny its existence to his readers. But, contrary to what you appear to believe, we are not in a detective story. Mediaeval records are replete with underground passages, hidden doors and concealed staircases. Everyone here is aware of the disappearance of the legendary Rosenkreutz. Remember my row with Hoenig: I defied him to shut himself up in the grotto.’

  ‘It’s true,’ confirmed Mestre. ‘We were there.’

  ‘Well, Hoenig accepted the challenge and I believe he was crafty enough to have solved the problem: how to get in and out of that rat-hole without going through the barred entrance. He wasn’t a man to believe in miracles, so everything points to him having found a passage.’

  ‘Come to think of it,’ observed Harvey, ‘I noticed him several times poking around in that area. I thought he was looking for mushrooms,’ he added.

  Brenner gave a deep sigh.

  ‘So. I don’t believe it for one second, but I’m going to have the grotto opened. Even if it’s only to prove to you the absurdity of what you’re saying. It’s highly improbable –.’

  ‘“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”,’ announced Harvey, pompously. And, when Brenner shot him a hateful look, he added: ‘That’s not mine, it’s from –.’

  ‘— We know!’ they chorused.

  ***

  It needed two hours, two robust workers and several metal saws to cut open the grill barring the entrance to the grotto. A policeman squeezed in, armed with an electric flashlight, and emerged a few minutes later covered in cobwebs, coughing and dusting himself with one hand, the other shaking so much that Brenner had to take the torch. ‘Well?’ he asked contemptuously. The man shook his head silently and, doubled up, made a dash for the bushes.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said the superintendent. He turned to Mestre and Prokosch. ‘You were right, gentlemen. Follow me.’

  ‘Are you coming, Harvey?’ asked Mestre.

  ‘Not on your life. The place must be full of rats.’

  ‘I’ll stay with Harvey,’ said Lippi. ‘I’m not afraid of rats, but I’m claustrophobic.’

  ‘Anyway, it’s full of rats,’ repeated Harvey sharply.

  ‘Undoubtedly, and there must be bats there, too,’ chortled Mestre.

  ‘Well, Gentlemen?’ urged Brenner.

  Inside, the air was heavy and oppressive. The beam of the torch picked out a narrow tunnel in the damp rock, slightly more than head high. After a few metres the tunnel opened out into an oblong cavern, about seven metres long and five wide, which resembled a fantastic junk yard with dust piled high on top of a jumble of old crates, miscellaneous bits of furniture, chairs and moth-eaten sofas. The walls were covered with astrological symbols and impressive effigies of winged demons and other supernatural beings, all eroded by the damp. At the far end of the crypt, a granite plinth decorated with circles, triangles, pentacles and other less familiar symbols supported a rectangular slab on which stood a cobweb-covered cross resembling the primitive Ankh, the crux ansata: the key of life of the ancient Egyptians. On either side of the cross were two five-branched copper candelabra coated with verdigris, one upright and one fallen, and in front of it an oriental vase of alabaster held the lone stem of a withered rose. To cap it all, embedded in the rock above the altar, was a black marble stele on which was carved the figure of a woman with a cow’s head, between whose horns sat a disc.

  Dr. Hoenig was sitting at the foot of the altar, leaning against the plinth as if he were simply asleep: his arms hanging down and his head slumped to his chest. His hair, his face and his dressing-gown were spattered with dust and dirt, and his shoes were hidden under a layer of dried mud. Blood had
trickled from his open mouth to his chest. There was blood on the ground also, forming a viscous brown puddle around the body. He appeared to have died slowly and without a struggle, as if his life had leaked out through the tips of his shoes. His right arm was bent, the elbow leaning on his knees and the fingers clutching the handle of a knife whose sharpened blade, about fifteen centimetres long, was covered with brown streaks. It was a simple kitchen knife and its very banality made the scene even more hideous. Some distance from the corpse lay an extinguished flashlight which rolled with a metallic noise when Prokosch accidentally kicked it, causing the others to jump out of their skins.

  They were silent for a moment, then Brenner’s voice came across loud and clear, reverberating around the grotto.

  ‘Don’t get any closer, please. And be careful where you tread.’

  In fact, it was almost impossible to avoid the blood. The ground, the rocks and the altar had all been splashed before Hoenig had collapsed, his legs having given way under him like a crude straw man.

  ‘Bravo!’ cried the superintendent, with a nonchalance that Mestre felt was forced, ‘I have to admit that you were right. Thanks to you, our problem has been solved. All that remains now, because our client, according to all the evidence, was unable to use the front door, is to find the emergency exit.’

  ‘That’s not so easy,’ sighed Mestre, ‘we’re still in the realm of the fantastic.’

  Brenner turned on him with an infuriated look.

  ‘Here we go again! I know what you’re going to tell me. Nobody could have come in through the windows or doors, for the simple reason there aren’t any windows or doors. I’m telling you that there’s a simple answer. Help me find it instead of arguing about it.’

  He ran his hand through his hair. His normally pleasant face seemed suddenly old and weary.

  ‘There must be a passage,’ he continued gruffly, ‘in the floor or the walls. We’re going to have to examine the place inch by inch. Maybe … I don’t know. But there must be….’

  He moved the flashlight up and down and round in a circle, scanning the rocks that surrounded them. The beam explored the crevices, too narrow and too shallow to serve as passages. It paused for a moment at the niche carved into the rear wall which held, set into the rock, the black marble stele. Then it stopped at the altar and the slab underneath.

  ‘Take the light’, he said to Prokosch, handing him the torch. ‘Come, Monsieur Mestre, you can take one side and I can take the other.’

  ‘It’s damned heavy,’ protested Mestre.

  ‘We’re going to slide it. You pull, I push.’

  With their combined efforts they succeeded in displacing the slab a few centimetres, enough to reveal a crack between the slab and the plinth, at which point they stopped, exhausted. Brenner took back the torch and shone its beam into the fissure.

  ‘Nothing!’ he said, straightening up. ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘In any case,’ noted Mestre philosophically, ‘he would never have been able to lift this mass and place it back where it was.’

  ‘Holy Mother of God!’ exclaimed Prokosch. ‘How did he get in?’

  ‘No need to call upon the heavens,’ said Mestre, wiping his brow. ‘The superintendent is right. Hoenig didn’t get here through a miracle. He must have found another way in.’

  ‘The walls and the ceiling are all made of granite, and the ground is as hard as rock,’ replied Brenner slowly. ‘I imagine Mr. Know-It-All will explain how.’

  ‘Alright, let’s stop talking about it!’ Mestre shot back, with a zest he was far from feeling. ‘We found the body, and that’s the main thing.’

  The superintendent didn’t deign to respond and directed the lamp towards the corpse. His hand was trembling a little and, in the dancing light, the dead man’s face seemed animated: it was as if the blood was continuing to trickle from his mouth. A phrase came to Mestre’s mind and he repeated it out loud: ‘“Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him?”’

  Brenner spun round, surprised by the quotation from Shakespeare, or perhaps by the way it had been said.

  ‘The poor devil must have pulled the knife out and it drained the blood from his body,’ murmured Prokosch, who had joined the others.

  ‘Who says it wasn’t the killer who pulled the knife out,’ mused the policeman, ‘and placed it in the victim’s hand?’

  ‘To make us think it was suicide, no doubt?’ sneered the little Russian.

  ‘It’s happened before,’ replied Brenner, with an obvious lack of conviction.

  He scrutinised the corpse once more, but with such a lack of expression that he appeared not to be seeing it. And then something which had hitherto appeared part of the wool of the dressing-gown came into sharper relief in the light of the lamp. It was on the right shoulder.

  Brenner leant over and, watched closely by his companions, carefully placed the object in an envelope.

  It was a fine hair, clearly a woman’s. And it was a light chestnut colour.

  ***

  Pierre Garnier spent the afternoon in his room. He lay on his bed and tried to sleep. But, even though he was very tired, fear kept him awake. Every ten minutes he looked at the clock, which was relentlessly counting the seconds before the rendezvous arranged by the police. A rendezvous or a summons? Solange would never be there in time and he shouldn’t count on it. He reread the note she had left. It said she would be back in the evening. That could mean the late afternoon. He started to listen to the sounds of the passing vehicles, his pulse racing whenever he thought he recognised the purring of the Delahaye. Several times he got up and rushed to the window.

  He tried to read, then turned on the radio. The latest news bulletin spoke of a conference about to take place in Munich. For a second he wished there would be war. In the worldwide conflagration, this business would be quickly forgotten. They would be left alone, he and his wife. He almost ordered a whisky from room service, then thought better of it.

  Opening the closet where she kept her clothes, he started to inspect them one by one. But they were too numerous. It was impossible to guess what clothes she had taken. And there was no way of telling where she had gone.

  On an impulse he picked up the telephone.

  ‘Miss, can you tell me if my wife made a long-distance call from this room yesterday morning?’

  ‘Just a second, sir, if you please. Yesterday morning?... Yes, at eleven fifty-six to Lausanne.’

  He thanked her and hung up. Who did she know in Lausanne? He searched his memory. For a moment he was tempted to phone the number, but he feared that Solange would think he was spying on her. What could she possibly be doing in Lausanne? He suddenly realised it was very near to France. Suppose she had crossed the border? No, it wasn’t possible, his wife would never do that. But, after all, what did he know? He remembered the bottle of sleeping pills he had found in the drawer. There was no doubt she had given him a dose that night. And in the past, hadn’t she committed other acts far more dreadful?

  He had to stop. He was becoming delirious, in the grip of the sick thoughts that rattled around in his head. Why was he torturing himself like this? He felt disgusted and ashamed. Instinctively he went to take a cigarette from the jewelled box his wife kept on the bedside table and he noticed the time. It was a quarter to five. Brenner would soon be calling to ask why they were late. He might even come over himself or send a henchman. At any moment there was going to be a knock on the door.

  They mustn’t find him at the hotel. He needed to gain time while he waited for Solange to appear. Once she was back they could work things out together. He felt a degree of relief as he put on his jacket, knowing that the fresh air of the lakeside would clear his head of dark thoughts. In the lobby he asked the desk clerk if he’d seen the superintendent. The man shook his head and offered him a light. He realised he still had an unlit cigarette in his mouth and threw it in a nearby ashtray.

  ***

  ‘Just gone half past five,’ s
aid Mestre, having just looked at his watch.

  ‘Hell’s bells!’ exclaimed the superintendent, ‘I’d completely forgotten the Garniers.’

  There had been a lot of other things to think about. They had rigged up a projection light in the grotto which had allowed them to look into every corner. The medical examiner had concluded his work, his assistants had taken photos and fingerprints and the corpse had been trundled off to the morgue. A couple of policemen were still there, using picks on the floor and tapping the walls with crowbars, in a half-hearted and fruitless attempt to uncover the secret. Brenner, unable to hide his disappointment, continued to exhort them to greater efforts.

  Lippi called down from outside:

  ‘You’re wasting your time. Let’s go and have a drink.’

  Receiving no reply, he decided to go and join them, his curiosity getting the better of his phobia. On seeing Lippi, Mestre agreed to his suggestion with relief, and the little Russian signalled his approval as well. The three of them walked towards the grotto’s exit and turned to take in the full scene of the crypt. Shorn of its mystery by the relentless light, the esoteric frescos daubed by amateurs, the cabalistic graffiti sketched roughly with charcoal, and the ritual objects taken from junk shops made the place look like a scene from a low budget horror film.

  ‘It all looks so terribly fake,’ observed the philosopher in his most scornful tone.

  ‘The Egyptian stele is certainly authentic,’ retorted Prokosch, less out of conviction than a desire to show he knew something about antiques.

  ‘Don’t believe it!’ replied Mestre. ‘I’ll bet you it’s a copy.’

  ‘What Egyptian stele?’ asked Lippi.

  ‘The one at the back representing the goddess Isis.’

  The Italian went back to study it more attentively.

  ‘That’s funny, there’s an identical one on the fountain in the park,’ he said, stroking it with his hand. ‘Come and look, Superintendent.’