Her phone rang. Bernhard… She quickly picked up the receiver. No, just her boss. She was to come to his office immediately: the guard had sent news that Mrs. Kusian was in the building. Helga dropped everything and left. When she first saw the nurse face to face, her heart registered nothing. No impression, neither good nor bad. Surely Mrs. Kusian belonged to the group of suspects, but the fact that she had come over of her own free will spoke in her favor. Apart from that, she seemed to be an intelligent woman – and what intelligent person would kill someone who was known to have visited her at home? Not to mention the fact that this woman was by nature a Good Samaritan, someone who saved lives as much as possible, not someone who destroyed them.
Still… Helga, encouraged by her father, had read an article on Women perpetrators in extermination centers and concentration camps. It cited several nurses who had put their patients ‘to sleep’ by giving them pills or injections. A certain Pauline Kneissler for instance, a station nurse at Grafeneck, Hadamar and Kaufbeuren care centers, following a directive of the Ministry of the Interior, had put an end to the lives of thousands of ‘mentally ill’, Germans and foreigners. Any remorse? No. None. Nurse Anna Gastler who had participated in at least 20 killings had written in her log book that she handled the victims with loving care and compassion: ‘During the administration of the narcotic I handled the patient with much compassion… As they drank it down I took them lovingly in my arms and caressed them. If, for instance, they didn’t want to drink down the entire dose … I talked them into it.’
And Elisabeth Kusian…? Could it be that she was infected by the same virus, did she think that there was such a thing as a ‘worthless’ life and that it was a good thing to terminate such a life…? Of course the circumstances in both the Seidelmann and the Merten cases were completely different – but was it possible still that Elisabeth Kusian had considered that both her victims were ‘unworthy’ of life? In Seidelmann’s case for moral reasons: he was married and a father and he wanted to go to bed with her. In Merten’s case maybe because she was too hard hearted to let her have the typewriter that may have been essential to her happiness – without a down payment? ‘They got what they deserved.’ Could she have thought that, could she have whispered those words?
For the time being, all this was empty speculation. In real life what was happening was that Steffen had someone bring a cup of coffee for Elisabeth Kusian and offered her some of the leftover Christmas Stollen. All very cozy – Steffen was all kindness. He let Mrs. Kusian tell how she had bought the machine at Beigang’s in Linkstrasse and how nice Mrs. Merten was.
“The type writer was surely a Christmas present,” he said. “An Erika from Elisabeth…”
“No, it was for me,” Kusian answered. “I quit at the hospital on January 1st and I wanted to find a position as a doctor’s secretary. You need to type for that.”
Helga noticed how Steffen scratched the inside of his right ear with his index. He always did that when he felt he had caught someone lying. And the nurse had lied. Günther Beigang, Merten’s boss, had stated loud and clear that Mrs. Kusian had wanted to buy the typewriter as a present for her fiancé. Helga remembered what they had been told at the hospital: Nurse Kusian was a notorious liar.
But Steffen did not clear up the discrepancy, he went on with his tactic of pretending that the questioning was just a pleasant chat. “So you intend to practice on the machine in your free time…?
“Exactly,” Kusian nodded.
Mm…Helga thought. In that case we would certainly have found the typewriter at her place. But there was none in her room at 154a Kantstrasse. Could it be that the widow Stöhr had borrowed it…? Pretty unlikely. What was much more likely was that she had given the typewriter to someone. Most probably to her friend, the colleague from Homicide West.
“Have you in fact already started practicing on your new typewriter?” Steffen asked.
“Of course. Such a wonderful toy.”
“So, in between Mrs. Merten’s two visits, you got the 50 Mark deposit money, then you gave it to her and finally you accompanied her to Zoo station,” Steffen summed up. “Did you meet anyone that you might know there?”
Elisabeth Kusian shut her eyes and thought back. “No, not that I remember…”
Steffen switched to attack mode. It was slow and deliberate and went straight to the heart of the matter. “That’s too bad for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mrs. Merten was murdered and we must find out if she left your apartment alive.”
Mrs. Kusian jumped up. “That’s laughable. I’m a nurse… That says it all. I’m very willing to help finding the murderer…”
“Great. In that case, please stop lying to us.”
“How dare you!”
The inspector calmly listed her lies. “Why, Mrs. Merten?”
“I’m sorry…” She spoke in a low breath.
“So, the typewriter was for your fiancé?”
“Yes.”
Steffen looked at his notes. “And the gift giving took place on the second day of Christmas?”
“Yes. Yes, exactly.”
“Was your fiancé at your place when Mrs. Merten came by the second time?”
Kusian didn’t hesitate for a second. “I sent him away while we took care of business.”
Steffen’s face brightened. “See… you do have a witness.”
But Elisabeth Kusian dropped her head and sat down to give herself some time. “Well… you know, Chief Inspector… I don’t know if you understand my position, but… I wouldn’t want my friend to be dragged into this. He’s … married.”
Steffen nodded and wrote something on a piece of note-paper and handed it to Helga. She read the two lines he had written: ‘Inspector Muschan, 28th Precinct. Do everything you can to make him come here.’
She stood and left the room to go. A colleague came in to take her place and witness Steffen conduct his detailed examination of E. Kusian. The Wilsnackerstrasse precinct’s phone number was quickly found: 392291.
29.
In her political education classes, Helga had been told again and again that the capitalist system was rotten at the core and she was deeply convinced of the truth of that proposition. Of course one should not take everything that the SED published about the West literally and believe that all was crumbling. As with any propaganda and consciousness raising, one had to leave room for exceptions, but the big picture was correct. It certainly fit into that picture that an Inspector who was married and had several children would have a mistress who was both a nurse and a murderer. And yet, Muschan looked respectable and dull but after all, the people who had carried out the killings in the concentration camps also looked just like that. It didn’t mean a thing. Quite the contrary.
Steffen had left Elisabeth Kusian in the hands of his subordinates and came into the room where Helga had brought their colleague from the West. At least he had come.
“Your assistant asked me to come as a private citizen,” Muschan said.
“Exactly.” They shook hands. “We don’t want to lock you up in a cell for high treason. Let’s sit down. You’ve met Miss Leupahn.”
Muschan nodded as he sat down and stretched his legs. “Yes, but she did not reveal the reason you wanted me to come here.”
“It concerns the dismembered female corpse at Alex… Memhardstrasse… a certain Dorothea Merten.”
Muschan did not have to think long. “I read about that in the paper. M 1/3 is working on it, I have nothing to do with it.”
“Absolutely right. You are here as a private person.”
“I don’t understand…”
Steffen went straight to the point. “Do you know the name Elisabeth Kusian…?”
Muschan jumped. “Was she also…?”
“Murdered? No, no, rest assured.”
“Quite the opposite.” Helga added.
“What am I supposed to understand?”
Steffen stuck a cigarette in h
is mouth. “Mrs. Kusian is suspected of murder.”
“That’s impossible. She’s a nurse, she’s warm hearted, she’s a wonderful woman. It must be a terrible mistake.”
“I hope so too. For your sake. But first things first. You are friends with Mrs. Kusian?”
Muschan turned away a little. “Yes…”
“You have a relationship with her?”
“Is this an interrogation?”
“No, of course not, just a conversation between colleagues. We need some information. I don’t know if adultery is a punishable offense in the West, but no one is going to denounce you… Now, to the point: we are looking for a witness to exonerate Mrs. Kusian – and we have you. Could you please describe what happened at 154a Kantstrasse on the second day of Christmas?”
Muschan tried to collect himself. “Yes… This is a disaster for me… I knew there would be a day of reckoning. But I was almost like a slave, you know what I mean…”
Steffen nodded. “Man to man, of course I do. But out of respect for the lady who is with us, we will not go into details. So you were at her place on Christmas, on the second holy day…?”
“Yes, at about 9:15 PM. She must have heard me coming, in any case she was standing at the entrance downstairs before I even had time to ring the bell. “Darling, she said to me, I have an unexpected visit, you can’t …” I had to go and sit in a restaurant and I waited a long time, almost until 11 PM. Then she came to pick me up. I had to wait in the foyer of the apartment until she had lit the Christmas candles. I was completely overwhelmed when she showed me the typewriter. ‘For you’. It was embarrassing – she was constantly giving me presents. ‘I can’t give you anything like that in return, with my salary…’”
“And where did she, a nurse, find so much money? Didn’t you wonder about that?”
Muschan understood the question but not the policeman’s surprise. “Why should I? She has rich in laws. They have a clinic in Gera and they keep sending her money.”
Steffen had done his homework: he handed his colleague from the West a page of the population registry. “What do you say to this?”
In a low voice, Muschan read out the relevant section: “Kusian, Elisabeth, born Krüger… father Emil Krüger, farm worker… Husband Walter Kusian, waiter, presently assisting in reconstruction, Berlin Wedding, Sternstrasse…” he dropped the page on his knees. “But that’s impossible…”
“Impostors are not always men,” Steffen said. “But in any case, did you notice anything out of the ordinary in your friend’s room?”
“Not really…”
Steffen’s tone changed and he became very businesslike: “I would advise you, sir, to answer my question as a policeman and not as a friend of the suspect. Going down with the woman you love… that only happens in Hollywood films… so…”
Helga could see how conflicted Muschan was and she pitied him. He too was a victim of Kusian in a sense. She hadn’t throttled him or dismembered his body, but she had smothered him with love.
Steffen gave Muschan 30 seconds to think it over, not more: “So… what struck you?”
“There was a lady’s coat,” Muschan whispered, fully aware that what he was saying would seal Elisabeth Kusian’s fate. “Liz… Mrs. Kusian said that her relatives had forgotten it, that they had to leave very suddenly… Oh, yes, there was also a lady’s hat…”
The inspector had Muschan read the description Mrs. Merten’s sister had given of Dorothea’s clothes and then he pressed him: “Are these the clothes that you saw at your girlfriend’s in Kantstrasse?”
“Yes…” Muschan put his elbows on the desk and sat with his face cupped in his hands. His fingers pressed against his temples. “She must be advised of this somehow… Can I talk to her?”
Steffen thanked him for the offer. “Yes, that would be kind of you… Come…”
Muschan walked down the corridor between the inspector and Helga. She had the impression he had suddenly aged. He almost shuffled. The ensuing days and weeks would be terrible. Everything he had kept secret, his double life, would appear in the newspapers. His wife would find out, the whole edifice of his life would come tumbling down like a house of cards.
They reached the room where Elisabeth Kusian was being held. Steffen gave a short knock and he pulled the door open. The couple looked at each other.
“Baby! My baby!” Elisabeth Kusian exclaimed and she rushed up to him. But Muschan took a couple of steps back and Helga held her back. “Baby, you don’t believe that I…”
Muschan managed to compose himself: “You’ve got to tell the truth, Elisabeth! If you don’t you’ll incriminate me too!”
Kusian sobbed. “I can’t tell the truth because I lied to you… No one would believe what I said. So I prefer to say nothing.”
Afterwards though, when Kurt Muschan had left and she had been officially arrested, she did say something.
“I couldn’t say it in front of Kurt, because… There was another man.”
“What?” Helga asked. “You had a relationship with another man at the same time?”
“No, it was long before, but still… So…” Kusian thought hard. “In early 1948 I met a vegetable wholesale dealer at the Old Ballroom, handsome Harry… Harald Henschke.”
“What does that have to do with the murder of Mrs. Merten?”
“A lot, Inspector… In reality Berlin is just a village. When Mrs Merten was at my place on Christmas, we talked about this and that and we looked at some old pictures. All of a sudden, ‘I know that one!’ she exclaims. Well, what can I say: it was Harry Henschke. It so happens that he had been harassing Doris – Mrs. Merten- all this time. He too was a client at the typewriter store, that’s where she had met him. He was crazy about her, he wanted by all means to go to bed with her but she didn’t like him. And he said: ‘If you don’t want to, I’ll force you.’ He stalked her and she was very scared of him.”
They took this down and as soon as Kusian had been led away, Helga called Mr. Beigang at his store to find out about Harry Henschke.
“Yes, that’s correct, he is one of our clients although he lives somewhere in the Eastern sector, near Alex and he wanted Mrs. Merten bad.” Günther Beigang was absolutely certain.
Helga thanked him and informed her superiors. Steffen immediately got on the phone and fifteen minutes later, four armed officers of the People’s Police arrested the vegetable wholesale dealer at his home.
He remained calm and did not protest.
“Because of Merten… I knew something like that would happen.”
“Then why didn’t you come to us of your own initiative?”
“Nobody’s that crazy: hey, let sleeping dogs lie.”
“Thank you…” Helga found the man repulsive. Wholesale dealers, middlemen…it was time that the Party put a stop to these parasites’ games. Why didn’t they just move to the West? Leftovers of the bourgeoisie, that’s what they were, rotting flesh.
“Does the name Elisabeth Kusian ring a bell?”
“Oh, that one…” Henschke made a derogatory gesture. “I had her about two years ago. She pretended to be a medical student and she refused to marry me because I didn’t come from an academic family.”
“And you haven’t seen her since?”
“No.”
“But you saw Mrs. Merten more often?”
“Yes, as often as I could. I was crazy about her.” Henschke didn’t hesitate to admit it.
“So crazy that you threatened to force her…?”
“Oh, so that’s what this is about. No, Inspector, I’m not like that: I get what I want.”
“But not with Mrs. Merten.”
“That’s true, I didn’t get her as quickly as I wanted.”
“And so on the second day of the Christmas holiday, you decided to help it along a bit…?”
“How could I? I was in Oberhof at my brother’s from the 21st until yesterday.”
An hour later it was all cleared up. A local investigation est
ablished with certainty that Harald Henschke had not left Oberhof between the 21st and the 29th of December. He was then taken back to his home.
“I like it better this way,” Steffen said as he played with a bunch of keys. “Do you know who this belongs to?”
Helga did not have to think long. “They probably belong to Kusian?”
“Right. And we are again going to meet in front of 154a Kantstrasse at 11PM tonight.”
“What…?” Helga was scared. “You don’t really intend to…?”
“I don’t intend to go, I must go. And, as a precaution, I need a witness: you.”
“Without a search warrant…in what is, so to speak, enemy territory…?” She just couldn’t accept it.
“Child, do you know what Lenin said about Social Democrats…? No? He said: ‘If they wanted to storm a train station, they would first purchase platform tickets.’” He laughed. Then his laughter turned into a fit of coughing. His laryngitis. “I don’t intend to buy a platform ticket. There will be a big trial with Kusian – and we will be the winners. ‘Markgraf Police beats Stumm Police 3 to nothing.’ It’s all about winning.” He gave her a friendly nod and disappeared towards the cafeteria to buy cigarettes. “See you tonight.”
“I’ll be there and right on time.” She could not help admiring him, even though what they were going to do was illegal. He was right. If you wanted to build Socialism, you couldn’t afford to hesitate, you had to charge ahead full force. But… If only she didn’t have another appointment that evening, an appointment with Bernhard. He had invited her to his house on Fuldastrasse for dinner at 6:30. So she could size up his mother and his aunt. It was too late to go back to Karolinenhof to change. All she could do was freshen up in the precinct bathroom. As she checked her appearance in the mirror, she started wondering whether it was such a good idea to go to Neukölln. She certainly didn’t look like the ideal wife Bernhard’s mother wished for her only son: no plump little woman with a smart little hat, she was a rawboned political commissar with a headscarf and a kalishnikov dangling from her shoulder. Well, maybe she was exaggerating a bit but still, what business did she have with such a bourgeois household? She tried to reason herself. “Come on, you’re not meeting the queen in Buckingham Palace or going to the Krupp villa.”
Cold Angel: Murder in Berlin 1949 Page 20