“Grandmother says her purse was sitting there next to her,” said Maya. “And apparently her money and credit cards were all there … They weren’t trying to rob her.”
“Has a sex crime also been ruled out?” Alan asked. He hadn’t talked to Beatrice long, plus he had been too shaken to ask a single question.
“Definitely,” said Maya. “Who’d want to assault such an old woman?”
“These things happen now and again,” said Alan. “And even worse things happen besides that.”
“They say the police are completely in the dark as far as the motive is concerned,” said Maya. “So a sex crime doesn’t seem to be on the table.”
“I can only imagine that the murderer has to be some mentally depraved person,” Alan said. “A madman who just kills for the sake of killing. Helene had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What was she even doing on the street at night?”
“She was coming back from Kevin’s. The taxi driver let her out a ways away from the house so he could turn around better. On this last stretch of the way …” Maya took a deep breath.
“Could I have some whiskey as well?” she asked in a soft voice.
Alan poured her a glass without speaking and handed it to her. She knocked it back like water.
“Shit,” she said emphatically. “Right now I feel like I’ll never be able to relax again. Do you know what I mean? Somehow everything was alright before, but now it can’t ever be like it was. Not for years and years.”
He knew what she was trying to say. This kind of violence had never been a part of their lives. Violence was something you knew from the news on TV or from the paper. You knew about it but you weren’t ever affected by it yourself. Now the violence had become tangible. The wound from which Helene had bled to death was also an injury to those around her.
Maybe she’s right, Alan thought. Maybe nothing will really ever be like it once was.
“My mother said that they’re releasing the …” He bit his lip. He had been about to say “body.” But the word sounded so horrible in referring to Helene that he couldn’t say it out loud. “The police are releasing Helene next week,” he said. “She’s meant to be buried on Wednesday.”
“Are you going to be there?”
“Of course. Helene is … was a kind of second mother to me. And plus I’ve got to look after Beatrice. She’s going to need help now.”
“I don’t quite believe that,” said Maya. “Beatrice is shocked, I’m sure, just like the rest of us, but her pain has got to be staying within certain bounds.”
Alan looked at her in surprise. “She spent practically her whole life with Helene. Her world must be falling apart.”
“She never liked Helene. There was hardly another person she more wished away from her than Helene.”
“You’re exaggerating. Of course there have been a few sore points between the two of them, but that’s normal. The truth is …”
“The truth is that Helene latched on to Beatrice like a tick, and Beatrice wished her in hell for it,” said Maya. The shock had taken no clarity from her powers of judgment, nor had it hindered her direct way of putting things.
“You should be a bit more careful with what you’re saying,” Alan said angrily. “I don’t think that you …”
She laughed softly, but the laugh didn’t sound joyful or coquettish as it usually did. There was something shrill and hunted in it. “Alan, that’s always been one of the things that’s so delightful about you. You grew up around these women, spent half your life with them. Nevertheless, you obviously don’t know what apart from you half the island does: that for over fifty years the two of them had an awful relationship, and that, deep down, neither got along with the other. Helene never got away from Beatrice because she was completely dependent on her, and Beatrice couldn’t get rid of her, possibly because she took pity on her or …”
“My mother never once took pity on anybody,” Alan corrected her. “That was clearly never her motive for tolerating a person in her house who deep down she didn’t want there. Beatrice isn’t like that. I know her just a little, I should think. If she doesn’t want someone, she tells them so, very clearly, and in a way that’s impossible to misunderstand.”
“Obviously, however, she didn’t do so with Helene.”
“That’s possibly,” said Alan, “because she liked Helene.”
“Mae says …”
“Mae!” Alan creased his brow in anger. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Maya, but, given the chance, your grandmother will spout off all kinds of idiotic things. You shouldn’t set stock in all of it.”
“Not all of it, for sure. But she’s right in what she says about Beatrice and Helene. Because apart from her, hundreds of other people say exactly the same thing. And besides, I always got that sense as well.”
“There’s no point in talking about this,” said Alan. “Helene is dead, and … my God!” He let himself fall into a chair, buried his face in his hands. When he looked up again his eyes were red with sadness, though he had shed no tears.
“What are you even doing here?” he asked flatly.
“I told you.” Maya stood in the middle of the room, the empty whiskey glass in her hands. “I wanted to speak to someone who knew Helene.”
“You could have gone to Edith too.”
“Edith shouldn’t hear about it, she’s too old, it would get her too upset.”
“Ok, fine. You came to see me. We talked. Now you could actually go away again.”
“Yes. I could actually do that.”
“And?”
“Would you like me to go?”
“If you’ve got problems,” said Alan, “you should talk to your boyfriend about them. Comforting you is his responsibility.”
“Oh, him …” Her voice sounded choked.
“Yes?”
“It’s over with him. I’ve got nothing left, no money, nowhere to live, nobody.” She burst into tears. “I’ll have to go back to goddamn St. Peter Port.”
13
“I don’t understand how this officer can be so heartless as to interrogate Beatrice on the same day that Helene gets put in her grave,” said Franca. “They could have given her a little time.”
“It’s not an interrogation,” Alan reminded her. “The officer asked her for a short discussion and left it completely up to her whether she wanted to accept or not. She was immediately willing to do it and even declined having me there. So I think she actually had nothing against it.”
It was a brilliant, beautiful May day, not a single cloud darkened the blue sky. The sun was almost as warm as in midsummer; there was no hint of a breeze. The fields and thickets were in bloom along the cliffs over the sea. The ocean sparkled in a turquoise, shimmering blue. A few sailboats cruised along the coast or listed to and fro in the bays. A hot, quiet, lazy day.
“I’ve just got to go for a bit of a walk,” Franca had said, shortly after the police officer had arrived and had gone off into the living room with Beatrice. “I think my head will explode if I don’t.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll come with you,” said Alan. He too was standing around indecisively in the entrance hall and staring at the door that had swung shut behind his mother and the policeman. “I could stand to stretch my legs a bit, too.”
The funeral ceremony had been an ordeal for him; he had only gotten through it by knocking back a few glasses of cognac beforehand. After the burial, Beatrice had hosted a gathering at the house with a simple buffet, and beer and wine were also served. Alan drank enough to maintain a certain calm. Naturally, he’d noticed that Beatrice was watching him with hawk eyes the whole time, that she counted every glass he drank. But in the presence of the guests she couldn’t say anything about it, and he was careful not to be alone with her at any moment.
And shortly after the last guest had left, the policeman appeared, and with that Beatrice yet again had no opportunity to take him aside and reproach him on account of his drinking.
Now he was next to Franca, walking along the path high above the ocean. Without speaking of it they had agreed to avoid the way on which Helene had been found murdered. They’d gone down into the village and had taken the path that led right behind the Wyatt’s old house in the direction of Petit Bôt Bay. Here there were deep shadows, and a wisp of cool air drifted from the damp grass bordering the path. But then the roof of leaves opened up, and the sun was burning down upon them.
“Maybe we should have changed clothes,” Alan said. He was still wearing the black suit he had worn at the funeral, Franca a black dress and uncomfortable high-heeled shoes. “Can you walk at all in those shoes?”
“If we don’t go too fast …”
The ocean appeared before them, a shining mirror flooded in sunlight. Even on a day like this Franca felt the magic of the landscape. “How beautiful it is here,” she said.
“Yes, isn’t it?” He followed her gaze and thought how she was right. It really was beautiful. Since he had known the landscape from back when he was little, he had taken its wild, painterly beauty as a given. Now he looked at it through Franca’s eyes, and it seemed to him that for the first time he really saw it. The ocean and the cliffs were like a consolation. There had been a connection between Helene and this island.
I’m sure she’s someplace that looks like it does here, he thought, and in so doing he felt a little childish.
“Did you notice the looks we were getting in the village?” Franca asked.
He hadn’t noticed a thing. He’d been completely lost in his thoughts. “No. What looks?”
“A few people from the village. I saw how curtains were being pulled back, and a few people stopped working in their yards and stared at us.”
“That’s normal,” said Alan. “A horrible crime happened to someone in my family. That’s why I got stared at. And you have the misfortune to have been staying in my mother’s house for the past few weeks. And because of it, you got stared at. That’s just how people are.”
She shook her head. “There’s an ugly suspicion going around the island.”
“A suspicion?”
“Beatrice can’t explain where she was that night. That is, of course she can explain it, but for most people it sounds a bit strange. She was sitting on the cliffs at Pleinmont Point for hours, and then again in her car for a half hour in front of the house. Some people are saying it sounds fishy.”
“How do you know what some people are saying?”
“It’s what Mae says.”
“Mae! Mae again!” He brushed the name aside with an angry wave of his hand. “Does everybody here listen only to that old gossip’s hogwash?”
“Who else is there?”
“Maya. She was talking about her a few days ago.”
Franca shrugged her shoulders. “I can only say what I’ve heard. And what I sense myself apart from that. People get a whiff of something sensational and so of course they pounce on it.”
Alan stood still. “People seriously think Beatrice killed Helene?”
“I don’t think anyone is actually imagining that,” said Franca. “But people are whispering all over the place that Beatrice’s explanation for how she spent that evening is just fishy. And since people know how much hatred and …”
“Oh no,” said Alan. “Please don’t you start with all that too! My mother did not hate Helene!”
Franca looked at him. In her eyes he saw neither sensationalism nor any fondness for gossip. He saw warmth, sympathy, and a great deal of sincerity.
“I don’t believe that hatred is the right word,” she said. “But your mother wished Helene as far away from her as humanly possible. And everyone on Guernsey knows it.”
Strange, thought Beatrice, to go through this house and know that Helene isn’t here any more. That she’ll never come back again.
The officer had left fifteen minutes earlier. Once more he had asked a series of questions about the progression of events that night, had wanted to know what Beatrice had done, when, and why.
“You had been invited to dinner at Kevin Hammond’s too. Why didn’t you go?”
“I’ve told you that already. I had problems. I wanted to be alone.”
He had nodded patiently. “Problems with your son, I know. What kind of problems were these?”
“That is my own private matter.”
He hadn’t pursued it further.
“Was there anything in particular that struck you about Helene Feldmann that day? Was she different than usual?”
“She was like she always was. She was looking forward to the evening. Nothing struck me as unusual, no.”
“Was she often a guest at Mr. Hammond’s?”
“Maybe every four or five weeks. On average. Sometimes more frequently, sometimes less. The two of them understood each other well.”
“Strange, isn’t it? This young man and the old woman … a rare pairing.”
“She was his confidant. A kind of motherly friend. And for her he was the son she never had.”
“Did the two of them meet alone often?”
“Yes. Sunday evening, though, as has already been mentioned, Mrs. Palmer and I were supposed to have been there. It was coincidence that it ended up being just the two of them.”
“According to my information Mrs. Palmer met up with her husband, who had arrived unexpectedly from Germany that day.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t Mr. Hammond think to cancel his dinner invitation? If two of three guests aren’t going to show …”
“We were a bit impolite. We neglected to call Kevin. It was only when I dropped Helene off at his house that I told him that neither Franca nor myself would be there for dinner.”
“Was he angry?”
“He wasn’t exactly happy. After all, he had already cooked and gotten everything ready.”
“You agreed that he would take Helene Feldmann home?”
“We didn’t agree to it explicitly. It was just a set thing, so to speak. He always took her home when she had been over for dinner.”
“And so normally she wouldn’t have taken a taxi?”
“No. She’d never done that.”
“Mr. Hammond says he didn’t drive her because he was drunk. Such a thing had never happened before?”
“As far as I can remember, nothing like that had ever happened, no.”
“Why did he drink so much that night?”
“You’ll have to ask him. I don’t know.”
“We have asked him, of course. He reported having been stuck in financial difficulties for some time. He’s apparently stretched himself too thin with the purchase of two greenhouses. He has, he said, been drinking a great deal more lately in order to forget his worries.”
“If that’s what he told you, then that’s how it is.”
“Apparently, he wasn’t even in a state where he would have been capable of calling Mrs. Feldmann a cab. Astounding that you let your guest make the phone call herself, don’t you think? When you spoke to him later that night, was he still very drunk then? Really, he should hardly have been capable of exchanging a coherent word with you.”
She thought about this for a moment. “No … no, I didn’t really have the impression that he was drunk. To me he seemed to be awake and pretty lucid.”
“Hmm. You must admit, that sounds a bit contradictory, doesn’t it? Between ten and ten-thirty in the evening a man is too drunk to pick up the phone and call a taxi for his guest, and at a little past one he can have a perfectly normal conversation. We’ll have to look into this matter further.” He had looked down at his notes. “Th
e taxi driver reported that Helene Feldmann had given him the impression that she was distraught. On the telephone she had spoken so softly that he’d barely been able to understand her. Did Mrs. Feldmann generally speak very quietly on the phone?”
“No. She didn’t speak especially loudly, but you could always understand her well.”
“Additionally, she was already standing at the street corner when the driver arrived. She didn’t wait in the house. This doesn’t seem to me to be typical behavior for an elderly woman either!”
She hadn’t had any explanation. “I have no idea what was wrong with her. I can only say that she was completely normal all throughout that day. Depressed, sure. But she always was on May 1st. Her husband died on that day, fifty-five years ago.”
“Could it be that because of this she — after she had also had a bit to drink — fell into an emotional or even depressive mood that evening? That because of this she spoke so quietly and couldn’t wait for the taxi to arrive?”
“That would be possible. Helene never really got over her husband’s death.”
“The taxi driver says he was followed by another car. It was driving rather close behind him — which apparently also led him, the driver, to use the opportunity to turn around in front and to leave Mrs. Feldmann at the bottom of the drive. An important witness could have been sitting in that car, and it would be very helpful to find him. Naturally the taxi driver didn’t know the license plate number, and he doesn’t even know what kind of car it was. We’ve put a notice out in the papers and on the radio for the driver of that car to contact us, but we haven’t heard anything thus far.” The officer stood up and put his notepad in his pocket. “That was basically all I wanted to know. Just one more question.” He had looked at her very searchingly, as it seemed to her. “What was your relationship to Mrs. Feldmann?”
She was still thinking about her answer later on, while she went through the house searching for a person who was no longer there.
“We knew each other for almost sixty years.”
As expected, he’d said to this, “That doesn’t answer my question.”
The Rose Gardener Page 49