The Rose Gardener

by Charlotte Link

  Beatrice made a wild movement with her hand, the beam of the flashlight wandered just below the face, and now they saw it: someone had cut Helene’s throat and left her to bleed to death on the narrow path that led to Petit Bôt Bay.

  12

  Compared to the normal state of things on Guernsey, where there was practically never any crime — if you left out yacht theft, the regular occurrence of which had been part of the goings-on on the island for decades — it was an enormous police contingent that poured over Le Variouf and the vicinity that night. Forensics officers examined footprints and tire tracks and closed off a large area around the crime scene. Word had spread to the village; people left their beds, hiked up the street and crowded against the barricade. They even came over from St. Martin, eager not to miss out on a second of the sensation. In some mysterious way, word had already gotten around that Helene Feldmann had become the victim of a crime, and shuddering with horror, the people whispered to one another, “They say she had her throat cut! Good God, can you imagine such a thing?”

  Beatrice and Franca sat in the living room, each in a chair, strangely far apart from each other, as if one of them couldn’t bear to be near the other. An officer asked them questions after a doctor had given permission. Franca had been convinced at first that Beatrice had suffered a severe shock. For the first time she had seen the old woman incapable either of moving or acting. She had stood on the path and started shaking, the flashlight had slid out of her hand and fallen to her feet with a crash. Franca had picked up the flashlight and taken Beatrice by the arm. To her astonishment, she wasn’t shaking the slightest bit herself.

  Maybe that will come later, she thought.

  “We have to call the police,” she said then. “Come on, Beatrice, we’ll go back to the house.”

  Unthinking, Beatrice let herself be led by Franca along the path. Franca called the dogs; upset, with the fur at the back of their necks standing up and their heads down, they followed after.

  In the house Franca pressed Beatrice down into a chair and placed a glass of cognac in front of her, then she called the police and explained what had happened to a completely dumbfounded officer, who had probably just been doing the crossword puzzle and dozing off. At first he took the story for a bad joke.

  “You’re sure it’s true, what you’ve just told me?” he asked.

  “Please come here right away,” said Franca, and thought she probably would not have the strength to discuss things with this man much longer.

  “Have you been drinking, ma’am?” He again wanted to make certain.

  “No. Now please send some people here!”

  Finally the officer came to life. “Right away,” he said. “And don’t touch anything at the crime scene.”

  Franca went back into the living room, where Beatrice sat, gray in the face. She hadn’t touched the cognac.

  “Beatrice, please, take a sip,” Franca urged. “You’re just about to faint!”

  Beatrice looked at her. Her eyes had a peculiar, empty look.

  “They slit her throat,” she whispered. “How horrible, how unimaginably horrible.”

  “We shouldn’t think about it right now,” said Franca. She knew she would fall apart herself if she started to go over the details of the crime. The notion that a madman was out there running around, who attacked people and slit their throats, who had lain in wait somewhere in the thicket along the street and then attacked the unsuspecting Helene … It could have happened to anyone, she thought, anyone, including me. How many solitary walks over the cliffs have I gone on these past few days …

  She noticed that nausea was building within her, and quickly repressed these thoughts. Later she could play through every possible horror scenario, but not now. For the moment she had to keep her nerve.

  Two policemen appeared, mistrustful and very obviously still convinced that somebody was either suffering from hallucinations or playing a dumb joke. Franca sent them to the place where it had happened and said they would see the woman with her throat cut lying there on the path. Both went off, and soon afterwards one of them came back, his face deathly pale.

  “Jesus,” he panted. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  And a short time later there were officers everywhere, headlights bathed the whole area in a blaze of light, the curious formed a crowd, and an ambulance raced through the night, siren blaring. Franca explained to the doctor that she was alright, she didn’t need any help, but Beatrice wasn’t doing well, and he should look after her. The doctor looked at her closely.

  “I fear that you’re the type that falls apart later on,” he said. “Here,” he pressed a small bottle filled with small white pills into her hand. “A purely homeopathic remedy. Take five pills if your nerves start to give out.”

  She promised she would and watched as he gave Beatrice a shot, which she submitted to without protest.

  “Just to calm you,” he said.

  Shortly afterwards a small bit of color came back into Beatrice’s cheeks, and she came out of the stupor that had held her in its grips.

  “Ask your questions,” she said to the officer who stepped gingerly towards her. “I’ll answer everything.” Her voice had grown firmer.

  She responded to all the questions the officer posed with astounding calm. She reported that Helene had been at Kevin’s for dinner that evening and that she had set out for home in a taxi around half past ten. The officer wrote it all down eagerly and became very interested when he heard that the driver had let Helene get out a ways below the house.

  “Somewhere on this hundred yard stretch she could have encountered her murderer,” he said.

  “She took the path that goes along the eastern side of our property and leads to the cliff path,” said Beatrice. “So the path where she was …”

  “Yes. The scene of the crime.”

  “Do you think she was killed in the spot where we found her?” Beatrice asked. “Or down below on the street? She could have …”

  The officer shook his head. “Forensics hasn’t finished working yet, but after everything I’ve seen, I think she was killed precisely in the place were she was found. We would have had to have seen traces of blood and signs of dragging.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Beatrice, and her cheeks grew a little more pale once more.

  “I’ll have to know where each of you were tonight,” the officer said and looked at Franca. “Did you spend the evening together?”

  “No,” answered Franca. She gave a report of her having dinner at The Old Bordello.

  “But you’re husband doesn’t live here?” the policeman inquired further.

  Franca shook her head. “He is staying in the Chalet hotel on Fermain Bay.”

  “I see. And he didn’t accompany you back here?”

  “No. I drove back alone.”

  “Mrs. Shaye was home when you arrived?”

  “She was sitting in her car in the driveway.”

  The officer looked at Beatrice.

  “Then had you also just gotten in at this moment? Or were you leaving?”

  “I’d been here for a half hour,” said Beatrice, “I was sitting in the car still, thinking some things over.”

  The policeman looked at her in surprise. “You sat in your car for a half hour and were thinking some things over? Why didn’t you go into the house?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I didn’t feel like it. It didn’t even occur to me. I had completely lost track of time. If Franca hadn’t shown up I’d probably still be sitting there now.”

  “Very strange,” the officer muttered, and noted the testimony, shaking his head.

  Franca found that it was in no way strange for someone to sit in the car, think about things and lose track of time, if that person happened to be preoccupied with serious
problems, but possibly this was hard for a simple policeman’s soul to picture.

  “Could it be that you were already here at the time the murder took place?” the officer asked.

  Beatrice thought about this for a moment, but Franca stepped in at once. “No. I came back here at about twenty past twelve. If Beatrice had already been here for a half hour at that point, she must have come here around quarter of twelve. Helene got in the taxi in Torteval at half past ten …” She thought for a moment. “She was here before eleven then. So at least forty-five minutes before Beatrice.”

  “Maybe the taxi driver can tell us something more about the precise time,” the officer said. “Besides that, I think that Mrs. Shaye can’t be entirely sure that she sat in front of the house for what was actually a half hour. She said herself that she had lost track of time. So she could well have been here for an hour or an hour and a half.”

  “I think I left Pleinmont Point shortly before eleven-thirty,” said Beatrice. “But I could be mistaken, of course.”

  “What where you doing at Pleinmont Point at night?” It was clear to look at the officer that Beatrice was seeming more and more peculiar to him. To his thinking, the things she did were very odd.

  “I was there earlier that evening,” she said in answer to his question. “I went for a bit of a walk. I watched the sun set. And I sat in the car there as well.”

  The policeman raised his eyebrows.

  “So essentially you spent the evening and half the night sitting in your car? First at Pleinmont Point and then here? I find that pretty strange. Are they very serious, these problems of yours?”

  “Yes,” Beatrice said curtly, and the expression on her face added unmistakably: and you won’t find out anything more.

  “So you could have been here already at the time the murder took place.”

  “If that time is determined to be eleven o’clock, I can’t have been here. There’s no way I left Pleinmont Point before eleven o’clock …”

  He scribbled something in his notebook and looked at Beatrice. It seemed as if his bearing, his demeanor had become subtly colder.

  “Is there anyone who can verify your statement?” he asked.

  Beatrice shook her head. “No.”

  He folded his notebook shut. “I have no more questions for now.”

  But please be prepared to cooperate further, thought Franca.

  “But please be prepared to cooperate further,” he said.

  Alan slowly put the phone back on the hook. He stared at the device as if he had never seen it before. He was numb, staggered.

  “Good God,” he murmured.

  He went to the sideboard, uncorked the sherry, poured himself a glass, tipped it back, then opened the whiskey bottle. Sherry wouldn’t cut it after a shock like that. Plus it was past six o’clock in the evening, so you were allowed to turn to the harder stuff. The first sip was just running down his throat, he was greeting that warm burn that made life so much more bearable, when the doorbell rang.

  He considered briefly whether he should even answer it, the fact was he didn’t feel like it, he wanted to be alone with himself and his horror. And with his whiskey.

  I’m not home, simple as that, he thought. It had been a hard, taxing day. A long series of appointments, most of them unpleasant. He’d propped himself up over the hours with gin and a malt whiskey. Since his breakdown three days ago he was again completely drained. He had drunk all day on Monday, again on Tuesday, and then for half of Wednesday. On Wednesday afternoon he had spent hours vomiting and had been horrified by the unshaven man who looked back at him in the mirror. His hands had been shaking.

  A bum, he thought. I look like a bum!

  The phone had rung again and again, but he hadn’t picked up. He hadn’t had the sense that he would be capable of putting together a cohesive, intelligent sentence. By the end he’d even be babbling. In the solitude of his bathroom, he’d thought of giving it a try, to direct a few words at himself, but he was afraid of doing even that. His appearance was enough to leave him profoundly shaken. To hear his voice on top of that — he wouldn’t have been able to bear it.

  Late that evening he had thrown up one last time, and had felt so weak by then that he had crawled out of the bathroom on all fours, shaking. The phone was still ringing. It seemed someone wanted to reach him and it was extremely urgent. Probably Beatrice. He vaguely remembered having spoken to her on Monday. He had been rather drunk, and it was likely that Beatrice was getting herself awfully worked up again because of it. He didn’t feel at all like listening to her reproaches, and he didn’t have the strength to come up with anything to counter her nagging — as he referred to it to himself.

  He got into bed, thinking his exhaustion would allow him to fall immediately into a deep sleep, but to his surprise he was suddenly wide-awake and restless. He turned from side to side, tortured by the thought of a dram of whiskey. The shaking would stop, the racing of his heart, he’d find some rest … But it wouldn’t stop at just one, he knew that much, and that was dangerous. If I want to go to the office tomorrow …, he thought, and despaired. Damn it, I can’t do it. Everything’s starting up all over again. The being alone. The drinking.

  That morning he had still looked horrible, but after he had thoroughly showered, washed and blow-dried his hair, and drunk two cups of strong coffee, he thought he could risk being around people again. He put on a good suit and swallowed two aspirin.

  At the office, his secretary told him there had been problems on account of a few missed meetings in the past three days, and he nodded; he’d thought so, it had always been like that when he’d had a breakdown. So far it hadn’t really meant difficulties for him, but concerning this point, too, he thought, It can’t go on like this.

  “If my mother calls,” he said to his secretary, “then please do not put her through. Tell her I’ve got one meeting after the next.”

  His secretary nodded. She knew it already. When the boss had had a crack-up, he was never available to speak to his mother. The old lady could apparently become unpleasant on such occasions.

  “Your mother has called twice,” she informed him at midday. He had suspected as much. But at least now she knew he was still alive.

  That’s all she needs to know, he thought aggressively.

  Somehow he got through the day, clinging to the goal of being able to drink a glass of whiskey that evening.

  One whiskey can’t hurt, he told himself, but now he already had a second glass in his hand, and he’d had the sherry before that — but sherry didn’t really count, especially when you’d just gotten such a shocking piece of news.

  The doorbell rang again and again, with an insistence that ruled out anything but a salesman wanting to gain entry.

  I’m not here, thought Alan and took a sip of whiskey. At that moment he heard a key turn in the lock. When he stepped into the corridor he found Maya standing before him.

  “Sorry,” she said in place of a greeting, “but since you wouldn’t even answer …”

  “You can’t just come in here!”

  “I still had a key. I was worried about you. I’ve been trying to reach you constantly since the day before yesterday. You weren’t at the office, and no one answered here either. I wanted to check in.”

  He held out his hand. “Give me the key please. And then leave. You know I’m alright now.”

  Her pretty nose — which he found so fragile, so delicate — twitched ever so slightly. As if she was an animal who had picked up on a scent.

  “You’ve been drinking,” she declared.

  He nodded. “One whiskey. That’s allowed, right? And now please give me the key.”

  Ignoring his command, she went past him into the living room. There were bottles and glasses standing all over. A scene that told her everything.

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nbsp; Damn it, he thought, and followed after her.

  She turned around. She seemed upset, her eyes were wider than usual.

  “You’ve heard about Helene?” She asked.

  He took a deep breath. “Just now. Beatrice called me.”

  “Grandmother told me on Tuesday morning. She was crying so much that for a long time I didn’t understand her. I’d actually just called because I wanted to ask her to send me some more money … and then to hear a thing like that! At that point I kept trying to reach you. I wanted to speak to someone who knew Helene, who is as stunned as I am …” She paused. There was real terror in her eyes.

  It was a very odd moment, Alan felt. It was the first time since he’d known her that he was seeing Maya in an authentic state. Her distress wasn’t put on. It was as if a mask had fallen from her face and for the moment she was standing there as the person that she was: a nice, normal girl.

  “It’s terrible,” said Alan, “unbelievable. A crime like that on Guernsey …” He thought of Helene. She had always been an indispensable part of his life. Like an aunt who was always there. Helene had looked after him whenever Beatrice wasn’t home, she’d told him stories, baked cakes for him, read him German fairy tales and consoled him when nightmares woke him up at night. Whenever anything had gone wrong, he had always gone to Helene. Beatrice could be severe, sometimes not understanding, often irritable. Helene had always been even-tempered. Gentle and always friendly, caring and ready to help. To her he had confessed his bad grades and every problem he’d had with teachers or with classmates.

  He couldn’t imagine that Helene could be dead. Still less could he imagine that her life had ended in such a terrible way. How dreadful, he thought, and the horror came over him as a wave of nausea. How she must have suffered!