by Jody Sheilds
Now he can tell she believes she’s said too much. She falls into smiles, pretends confusion, but her eyes are wary.
“I have things to do, will you excuse me?”
No. He’s tired of her self-righteous dodging.
“Frau Zellenka, you’ve been having an affair with Dora’s father for some time now. Isn’t that correct?”
“May I ask why this intrusive question is necessary?”
“I’m investigating a murder.”
“And?”
“You had an illicit relationship with Philipp. Does it not seem remarkable that you were also an intimate friend of his daughter’s?”
“We never discussed her father. I assure you, I was very discreet. The adults all consented to the situation, except for his ignorant wife. Although I suspect she knew about our relationship.”
He can’t believe their intimacy was a secret from Dora. Is this his key to the crime? He’s conscious of his hostility toward Frau Zellenka. And a strange protectiveness toward the dead girl.
She hasn’t removed her cloak, and now she hugs it around her body as she paces around the table, not looking at him.
“I will tell you Dora was jealous of me. She admired me. That’s why she borrowed my clothes. No one else paid her any attention, poor girl, except when she was ill. She was hardly my rival. Objectively, I’d say she conspired with me. She took care of the children so I could spend time with her father. Can you really imagine she didn’t know what was going on between us?”
She looks down at the cloak on the table with a tender expression.
“If I had wanted to obliterate Dora, there are other ways I could have accomplished it. But it was unnecessary. I’m the one who should have been killed, for stealing her father. Maybe it was a mistaken identity? Dora was wearing my cloak.”
He feels himself turning to stone, his jaw stiffening with anger.
“You might be more careful about the statements you make to the police, Frau Zellenka. Jokes are suspect here.”
Her astonished expression is a satisfactory answer.
The manner in which an individual presents himself, looks around, allows himself to be questioned, replies, asks questions in return, in a word the way in which he behaves, ought never, even in the most insignificant affair, be a matter of indifference to the conscientious Investigating Officer.
After Frau Zellenka leaves, he walks to his favorite Tabak-Trafiken and purchases an entire box of Britannicas cigars. He retraces his interview with Frau Zellenka. His permanent self-scrutiny. During their conversation, he twice became emotional. Once when he felt protective of Dora. The second time, curiously, was when Frau Zellenka joked about being the intended murder victim.
Kriminalistik has no strategy for an Inspecting Officer’s passion for a victim.
The Inspector dreamed about Dora in the Volksgarten. Although the face and figure of the murderer weren’t revealed to him, a feeling of dread still remained the next morning, like a scent with a faint, half-recognized memory attached to it.
He adds this dream to the observations in his notebook about the girl’s murder. His dreams, hunches, and impressions are his version of the crime, just as his wife’s nature morte is an arrangement that satisfies some unconscious theory of hers.
Waiting on the Franz-Josefs-Kai, Wally can’t distinguish Erszébet from the other women in the crowd, all of them dressed in broad hats and furs. Their figures blur into a black pattern moving over the cobblestones. There is even less to distinguish the men from each other, since identical bowler hats top each head, and walking sticks extend their arms. Above them, the suspended cables of the tramway are woven into a tense and asymmetrical web.
Erszébet appears and they barely have time to exchange a greeting before the tram arrives. As Wally hoists herself up behind Erszébet into the car, the edge of her fur wrap brushes her mouth.
They sit silently next to each other until the tram reaches the Stubenring, and Erszébet points out the Museum für Kunst Industrie. When they pass Stadtpark, she directs Wally’s eyes to the Kursalon, where military concerts are held on Sundays. On Kolowratring, there’s the Adelige Casino Club, which only noblemen can join.
Wally is drowsy, her mind slipping into English, relaxing into the security of Erszébet’s presence. Even when she was searching Jószef’s room, Wally believed she was safe, moving under Erszébet’s guardianship. She wishes Erszébet gave her the same attention at other times. But it had been gratifying when she saw Erszébet by the fiaker, peering at the Zellenkas’ house, waiting for her. The worried expression on her face vanished when Wally ran through the gate. Erszébet actually embraced Wally until she stopped crying. Jószef had badly frightened her, and she discovered nothing in his room.
As she waited outside Herr Zellenka’s house that day, Erszébet was entirely focused on Wally in a way that is impossible for her when they are together. She was relieved to see Wally after she’d escaped Jószef, but she also resented her anxiety. She had kept a distance in her friendships since she nursed the young woman stricken with cholera. Now she understands that her investigation of Dora — its ruthlessness, hidden rules, unfathomable denouement — has replaced that intimacy. She remembers wandering to the window in the white room while the sick woman slept to watch for harbingers of death. She listened for a dog’s howl. She heard nothing, saw nothing. Her tarot cards — all the signs she relied on — were useless. Prophecy had failed. She was merely a witness as the woman died.
Wally watches their reflections, strangely distorted in the tram window, until the elderly woman sitting behind them leaves. Now they can whisper their theories. Otto’s new information has confused their calculations. Are the boy’s stories about Rosza true? Can they trust him? Was Dora’s father simultaneously conducting an affair with both Rosza and Frau Zellenka? Their vision of Dora has changed. She has gradually become an even more fragile apparition, pushed aside by her father, who forced his way into every relationship the girl had.
Erszébet can still visualize Dora’s face as her brush touched it, but now she craves another face. She wants to see Dora’s father.
They get off the tram near Haarhof. Erszébet wants to try the Hungarian wine at the Esterházy Keller.
In the restaurant, Erszébet shakes her head and turns down the Speiseträger’s offer of a sunny window table, so he scornfully ushers them to a secluded place in the back. After the waiter vanishes with their orders, Erszébet takes a book from her satchel.
“Now I’m going to show you my evidence,” she announces. She removes the paper wrapper from the book, turns it inside out, and lays it open on the table.
Puzzled, Wally leans over to examine the bright patchwork of indecipherable shapes painted on the paper. She senses Erszébet’s triumph, her hunger for praise, but she doesn’t recognize the image. I’m sorry, she whispers, what is it?
My dear child, Erszébet murmurs. This is a man, Dora’s father. I painted a copy of his photograph from the doctor’s files. See what syphilis has done to his genitals.
Wally stares at the image, fascinated by the colors, the unfamiliar swollen shape. Erszébet’s painted judgment.
Frau Zellenka watches from the doorway as the Inspector, Franz, Móricz, and two assistants search Jószef’s room. They don’t tell her what they’re looking for.
The furniture is examined first. Móricz goes over the chair and table with a magnifying glass, looking for suspicious marks. Then he turns both pieces of furniture over and scrapes the bottom of the legs with a knife, looking for holes that might have been drilled there, a hiding place for a slip of paper or some small object. The others slash open the mattress and dump the straw on canvas tarpaulins spread outside on the thin snow. They pick through the straw, a handful at a time.
Móricz digs his knife into the putty around the small window. Franz pulls apart the steps in front of the door. They rapidly finish their search.
Nothing to report, sir.
Don’t dismiss
this place so quickly, the Inspector tells them, seeing they’re too easily satisfied. “Remember, criminals often keep souvenirs of their misdeeds. When I stripped a suspect after his arrest for housebreaking, I found a newspaper clipping about an unsolved murder hidden in his hat. The man broke down and confessed to the crime.” He reminds them of a previous case when Franz discovered a locket and twenty gold coins in a pot of soup boiling on top of a stove. And another time, a search turned up an incriminating letter under the lining of a birdcage.
They turn their attention to Jószef’s bare room. They divide the walls into sections, starting at the right of the door and going clockwise. They remove their jackets and brush down the plaster walls, scattering the thick dust that might conceal a daub of fresh plaster or a hole. The room is cold, and they work in silence, settling into a rhythm. No matter what the circumstances there is always a sense of trespassing about a search, as if they were despoilers of the hearth.
The Inspector looks over his shoulder and is surprised to find Frau Zellenka still standing in the doorway, a bored expression on her face.
As Franz carries the chair out the doorway, he intentionally bumps into her. She doesn’t look at him, doesn’t expect an apology, she simply pulls her coat tighter around her body.
Móricz slowly sifts the ashes from the stove into a box, then methodically works the broom across the floor, pushing a gray tide of dust from corner to corner. He scoops the sweepings into two envelopes and hands them to the Inspector.
“Anything here, Móricz?”
He nods.
Inside the smaller envelope there’s a bone button. A clod of clay. A small silver coin found between stones on the floor. Two pins.
Almost magically, a maid materializes with coffee, milk rolls, and Kipfel. A faint, cloudy smear of heat drifts up from the cups when the coffee is poured, it’s that cold in the room. While the others finish their coffee outside, holding the thin cups in their reddened hands, Frau Zellenka stays next to the Inspector. Her loose silk coat, printed with a geometric pattern, and the elaborate silver coffee service seem strangely festive in this poor room.
His annoyance with her is distracting. Even without her words — for she’s barely spoken since they started work — she gives the impression they are laboring in her service. She is bored and critical at the same time. He remembers a passage from one of Gross’s lectures: “The emotions which are always produced in an important case interfere with and confuse one’s impressions.” That is why it is so necessary to scrupulously describe every object, record every word from a witness, so they can be dispassionately evaluated later. For now, he’s too busy to do the necessary documentation in his notebook.
His assistants follow his orders, working within the structure of the investigation. Hopefully, they’re learning to recognize the disorder that authenticates a piece of evidence. They should also sense when to trust — and not trust — their own perceptions to decipher it. Not trusting is key. Not like falling into faith or love, other revealers.
“Are you nearly finished with your search?” Frau Zellenka asks the Inspector.
“Not yet. We do the floors last. When you’ve finished with your coffee, my men will need mops, sponges, and several buckets of water.”
Puzzled, she gestures to the maid, tells her to help the Inspector with his request.
Now they’re ready for the last step of their work. In the far corner of the room, one of the men tips a bucket and slowly pours a thin line of water directly in front of Franz and Móricz. They kneel and peer closely at the wet floor. Additional buckets are passed hand to hand and gently emptied onto the floor, wetting a quarter of the space. The Inspector joins them, squatting on his heels, carefully examining the edges of the stones. In the deliberate posture of a crab, he makes his way across the room. Nothing catches his eye. Everything is equally gray. There’s an odor, the cold heart of wet stone.
Later, while the buckets are being refilled, he stands outside with Frau Zellenka. It’s in his interest to be patient with her. He’s conscious the others are less skillful at hiding their resentment at her presence. He offers her a cigarette and lights another one for himself.
“Tell me what you’re doing in this room. What is the water for?”
“The water will give us a sign. It reveals whether any stones have been disturbed. If anything’s hidden underneath them.”
“So the stones speak.”
He doesn’t understand her joke and looks at her blankly. She quickly asks him to show her what he means.
Back in the room, she bunches her coat around her waist and crouches next to him. Móricz pours water on the floor near them, careful as a servant, mindful of her fine shoes.
The Inspector points to the crusted edge of cement around a stone. “The water should be equally absorbed by the dirt and mortar here, between the stones. If the water bubbles and sinks quickly, it means the area has been tampered with.”
She nods and stays where she is, watching. Franz joins them, and she reluctantly moves aside for him.
Móricz and the other assistants take turns slowly lapping down more water, trying to distribute it evenly. Each time the Inspector and Franz finish their examination of the floor and move back, the next full bucket is ready. They’ve finished half of the room.
There’s noise outside, the metal jangle of equipment that announces Egon’s arrival with the camera. The Inspector intends to document Jószef’s room as if it had been the scene of a crime. Tell him to wait, the Inspector says without raising his eyes. Finally, he stands up to stretch.
“Here, sir.” Móricz bends over a spot on the floor.
A row of small bubbles — the frailest of beads — slowly rises and breaks in the dirt rimmed around a large stone.
The Inspector takes a magnifying glass from the sabretache looped to his belt and crouches down for a closer look. Then he stands and motions for help. The men move quickly, trying to contain their excitement. Hands set down tools and a pick on the floor. Resentful of Móricz’s discovery, Franz sullenly unwinds a bulky leather roll and unpacks a lancet and pliers.
Picks are inserted at opposite ends of the stone. Móricz forces his tool down and then up, loosening it enough for Franz to wedge a hand under it. They pry the stone from the floor, and a heavy odor of mildew rises behind it. There is black dirt underneath, the texture of velvet.
The Inspector gently loosens the dirt with a trowel, then combs through it with his bare fingers. A box is set down next to him, and he crumbles the dirt into it. He digs deeper. Móricz delicately searches through the dirt in the box. Nothing. He looks at the Inspector, disappointment on his face. The hole is as deep as the Inspector’s elbow. He throws down the trowel.
The stone is laid back into the floor and the Inspector chalks an X on it.
They move over the floor again, leaking fresh waves of water over the stones. The afternoon light is fading. Small electric torches are unpacked from kits and handed around.
Something here.
Franz trains his torch on a spot near the center of the room, parallel to the window. A stone circled with bubbles.
“Look, I’ve found something.” His voice loud, triumphant.
Shrugging off their exasperation and fatigue, they gather around him, bleaching the stone with light from their torches. Frau Zellenka pushes her way between them. The Inspector had forgotten her until he notices her perfume drift over the odor of the wet stone and the men’s bodies.
Again they put their picks into the floor. Franz and the Inspector wrap kerchiefs over their fingers and wedge their hands under the stone. Without a word, they turn it in the same direction, loosening it from the floor’s grip, and pull it up. The smell forces everyone’s head back. After a moment, they spike torchlight into the hole, illuminating a crumpled wad of cloth at the bottom.
The Inspector gestures frantically for them to move away. “Don’t touch it,” he shouts. “Get back. Where is the photographer?”
; His voice breaks their concentration. He lights a cigarette.
Trailed by his assistant, Egon hurries in with his equipment. He works as swiftly as a waiter setting a table, shaking out his black camera cloth while his assistant wipes a glass plate and drops it into the back of the camera. He unscrews the tripod legs and they grow — magically as a bean stalk — until the camera is four feet in the air, its lens pointing down at a precarious angle. The assistant carefully sets a metal ruler next to the object in the hole. Someone brings a ladder, and Egon clambers up to focus the lens.
After a moment, he wriggles his hand out from under the cloth. His assistant strikes an allumette and touches it to a strip of cloth, which instantly erupts into a thin column of flame. There’s an intense chemical smell and a light so bright it obliterates the white object in the hole and turns the rest of the room into a deeply shadowed cave. The camera shutter clicks, slow and deliberate as a book closing.
Egon takes three more photographs and then pulls the cloth off his head. He seems angry his work is finished. When Móricz goes to help him unscrew the tripod, he roughly pulls it away from him. He jerks the camera down to the ground, slamming the legs one at a time into their slots. Everyone watches silently, waiting for this hostile ceremony to finish.
Now their torchlight crosses over the hole on the floor. The Inspector crouches down, scoops the wrapped thing out of the dirt with a gloved hand, and places it on a clean sheet of paper.
The mysterious object is unexpectedly light. Perhaps there’s nothing inside the cloth. He handles it as if it were breakable, gently unwinding the fabric until the edge of something pale gray is visible, then the thing tumbles free. A severed thumb falls on the paper.
CHAPTER 10
Jószef was arrested and taken to the police station. Franz stands quietly outside his cell, squinting into the peephole set in the door. Hearing the Inspector’s footsteps behind him, he waves his hand, cautioning him to approach more quietly. The Inspector leans over his shoulder to peer into the dim cell.