The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries

by The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries (retail) (epub)

  “In a minute, sir, in a minute,” says Pelageya. She rushes out of the hut, and soon afterwards comes back with a bit of candle.

  Yefim’s cheeks are rosy and his eyes are shining, and there is a peculiar keenness in his glance, as though he were seeing right through the hut and the doctor.

  “Come, what is it? What are you thinking about?” says the doctor, bending down to him. “Aha! have you had this long?”

  “What? Dying, your honour, my hour has come….I am not to stay among the living.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense! We will cure you!”

  “That’s as you please, your honour, we humbly thank you, only we understand….Since death has come, there it is.”

  The doctor spends a quarter of an hour over Yefim, then he gets up and says:

  “I can do nothing. You must go into the hospital, there they will operate on you. Go at once….You must go! It’s rather late, they will all be asleep in the hospital, but that doesn’t matter, I will give you a note. Do you hear?”

  “Kind sir, but what can he go in?” says Pelageya. “We have no horse.”

  “Never mind. I’ll ask your master, he’ll let you have a horse.”

  The doctor goes away, the candle goes out, and again there is the sound of “boo—boo—boo.” Half an hour later someone drives up to the hut. A cart has been sent to take Yefim to the hospital. He gets ready and goes….

  But now it is a clear bright morning. Pelageya is not at home; she has gone to the hospital to find what is being done to Yefim. Somewhere there is a baby crying, and Varka hears someone singing with her own voice:

  “Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, I will sing a song to thee.”

  Pelageya comes back; she crosses herself and whispers:

  “They put him to rights in the night, but towards morning he gave up his soul to God….The Kingdom of Heaven be his and peace everlasting….They say he was taken too late….He ought to have gone sooner….”

  Varka goes out into the road and cries there, but all at once someone hits her on the back of her head so hard that her forehead knocks against a birch tree. She raises her eyes, and sees facing her, her master, the shoemaker.

  “What are you about, you scabby slut?” he says. “The child is crying, and you are asleep!”

  He gives her a sharp slap behind the ear, and she shakes her head, rocks the cradle, and murmurs her song. The green patch and the shadows from the trousers and the baby-clothes move up and down, nod to her, and soon take possession of her brain again. Again she sees the high road covered with liquid mud. The people with wallets on their backs and the shadows have lain down and are fast asleep. Looking at them, Varka has a passionate longing for sleep; she would lie down with enjoyment, but her mother Pelageya is walking beside her, hurrying her on. They are hastening together to the town to find situations.

  “Give alms, for Christ’s sake!” her mother begs of the people they meet. “Show us the Divine Mercy, kind-hearted gentlefolk!”

  “Give the baby here!” a familiar voice answers. “Give the baby here!” the same voice repeats, this time harshly and angrily. “Are you asleep, you wretched girl?”

  Varka jumps up, and looking round grasps what is the matter: there is no high road, no Pelageya, no people meeting them, there is only her mistress, who has come to feed the baby, and is standing in the middle of the room. While the stout, broad-shouldered woman nurses the child and soothes it, Varka stands looking at her and waiting till she has done. And outside the windows the air is already turning blue, the shadows and the green patch on the ceiling are visibly growing pale, it will soon be morning.

  “Take him,” says her mistress, buttoning up her chemise over her bosom; “he is crying. He must be bewitched.”

  Varka takes the baby, puts him in the cradle and begins rocking it again. The green patch and the shadows gradually disappear, and now there is nothing to force itself on her eyes and cloud her brain. But she is as sleepy as before, fearfully sleepy! Varka lays her head on the edge of the cradle, and rocks her whole body to overcome her sleepiness, but yet her eyes are glued together, and her head is heavy.

  “Varka, heat the stove!” she hears the master’s voice through the door.

  So it is time to get up and set to work. Varka leaves the cradle, and runs to the shed for firewood. She is glad. When one moves and runs about, one is not so sleepy as when one is sitting down. She brings the wood, heats the stove, and feels that her wooden face is getting supple again, and that her thoughts are growing clearer.

  “Varka, set the samovar!” shouts her mistress.

  Varka splits a piece of wood, but has scarcely time to light the splinters and put them in the samovar, when she hears a fresh order:

  “Varka, clean the master’s goloshes!”

  She sits down on the floor, cleans the goloshes, and thinks how nice it would be to put her head into a big deep golosh, and have a little nap in it….And all at once the golosh grows, swells, fills up the whole room. Varka drops the brush, but at once shakes her head, opens her eyes wide, and tries to look at things so that they may not grow big and move before her eyes.

  “Varka, wash the steps outside; I am ashamed for the customers to see them!”

  Varka washes the steps, sweeps and dusts the rooms, then heats another stove and runs to the shop. There is a great deal of work: she hasn’t one minute free.

  But nothing is so hard as standing in the same place at the kitchen table peeling potatoes. Her head droops over the table, the potatoes dance before her eyes, the knife tumbles out of her hand while her fat, angry mistress is moving about near her with her sleeves tucked up, talking so loud that it makes a ringing in Varka’s ears. It is agonising, too, to wait at dinner, to wash, to sew, there are minutes when she longs to flop on to the floor regardless of everything, and to sleep.

  The day passes. Seeing the windows getting dark, Varka presses her temples that feel as though they were made of wood, and smiles, though she does not know why. The dusk of evening caresses her eyes that will hardly keep open, and promises her sound sleep soon. In the evening visitors come.

  “Varka, set the samovar!” shouts her mistress. The samovar is a little one, and before the visitors have drunk all the tea they want, she has to heat it five times. After tea Varka stands for a whole hour on the same spot, looking at the visitors, and waiting for orders.

  “Varka, run and buy three bottles of beer!”

  She starts off, and tries to run as quickly as she can, to drive away sleep.

  “Varka, fetch some vodka! Varka, where’s the corkscrew? Varka, clean a herring!”

  But now, at last, the visitors have gone; the lights are put out, the master and mistress go to bed.

  “Varka, rock the baby!” she hears the last order.

  The cricket churrs in the stove; the green patch on the ceiling and the shadows from the trousers and the baby-clothes force themselves on Varka’s half-opened eyes again, wink at her and cloud her mind.

  “Hush-a-bye, my baby wee,” she murmurs, “and I will sing a song to thee.”

  And the baby screams, and is worn out with screaming. Again Varka sees the muddy high road, the people with wallets, her mother Pelageya, her father Yefim. She understands everything, she recognizes everyone, but through her half sleep she cannot understand the force which binds her, hand and foot, weighs upon her, and prevents her from living. She looks round, searches for that force that she may escape from it, but she cannot find it. At last, tired to death, she does her very utmost, strains her eyes, looks up at the flickering green patch, and listening to the screaming, finds the foe who will not let her live.

  That foe is the baby.

  She laughs. It seems strange to her that she has failed to grasp such a simple thing before. The green patch, the shadows, and the cricket seem to laugh and wond
er too.

  The hallucination takes possession of Varka. She gets up from her stool, and with a broad smile on her face and wide unblinking eyes, she walks up and down the room. She feels pleased and tickled at the thought that she will be rid directly of the baby that binds her hand and foot….Kill the baby and then sleep, sleep, sleep….

  Laughing and winking and shaking her fingers at the green patch, Varka steals up to the cradle and bends over the baby. When she has strangled him, she quickly lies down on the floor, laughs with delight that she can sleep, and in a minute is sleeping as sound as the dead.

  Well-Woven Evidence

  DIETRICH THEDEN

  The German author Dietrich Theden (1857–1909) appears to have been a minor novelist of the Victorian era with twelve books to his credit. Although his work was translated into several languages, none of his books has ever been translated into English, as nearly as I have been able to discover.

  Only two short stories, “Well-Woven Evidence” and “Christian Lahusen’s Baron,” both crime stories, are available to English-language readers. An audio of the latter may be heard on YouTube.

  “Well-Woven Evidence” was first published in English in The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories, edited by Julian Hawthorne (New York, The Review of Reviews, 1909). This is a multivolume anthology, variously offered in six volumes, seven volumes, and eight volumes. “Well-Woven Evidence” appears, naturally, in the volume dedicated to German stories.

  WELL-WOVEN EVIDENCE

  Dietrich Theden

  Dear Friend: It is but a few weeks since I had the pleasure of meeting you again in the house of your brother, and of realizing that I have still the honor of your friendship. At our last meeting we could spend our time in the pleasure of renewing the memories of our youth and of calling up for ourselves equally pleasant hopes for the future. I come in a different matter to-day; in deep distress of mind, and turn to you, not only as friend, but as chief of police. As my friend I would like to go into the matter more with personal detail, but as I come to you officially to-day, I will limit myself to a short, concise report, and to the request that you may send me a well-tried and capable criminal official to give me his aid in this unfortunate affair. The matter is as follows:

  On Sunday, the 18th of June, the safe in my business office was robbed of the sum of 58,000 marks. As you know, we live here in a small town, and it is not possible for us to take the day’s cash to the bank every evening. We are therefore compelled to care for it ourselves for several days. It has always been my practice, however, to avoid allowing more cash to accumulate than we needed for the week’s work; ten, or at the most, fifteen thousand marks were usually all that we had in our safe. This Sunday in question, however, there had been an unusual number of large payments the day before, which had been sent to us direct, instead of, as usual, to our bank in Hamburg. The cause for this had been a private exhibition in our building of a number of new wares, new designs and textures, for the inspection of which representatives of our most important clients had come in person. They had taken this opportunity to pay off bills which had been allowed to run on for some time. The gentlemen all left us by Saturday evening, and on Sunday morning my cashier and myself went over the money in the safe and checked off the amounts again. Therefore the theft must have occurred either on Sunday afternoon or during the night from Sunday to Monday; of course I cannot tell which; but when I entered my office on Monday morning I found my clerks in great excitement. The window panes had been smeared with soap and broken in from the outside, the large safe had been moved from the wall and the back broken in. All the gold and paper money, to the amount above mentioned, was gone, but the envelopes with drafts had been untouched.

  There were no other strangers present when the payments were made. There remains, therefore, only the, to me, very sad explanation that some member of my business force must have thus ill repaid my confidence. I could easily lose the actual amount of money, but my relations with my employees are such that the thought that I might find the thief among them would depress me most terribly. There is nothing proven as yet, and I can still hope that some outsider may have committed this crime—indeed I wish from the bottom of my heart that it may be so. But our researches hitherto have proved absolutely nothing. If you can send me one of your men I will be very grateful for it. And I would be particularly grateful to you if you could telegraph me at once if I may expect anyone and whom. In old friendship,

  Johann Heinrich Behrend.

  P.S.—Simply to complete my report, not because I believe it to be of any importance, I would add that the thief took also a large package of lace curtains which lay in my own private office.

  J. H. B.

  Commissioner Wolff dropped the letter and sat in deep thought. Then he turned his cold gray eyes on his chief and asked in a business-like tone:

  “You’ll allow me a few questions, sir?”

  Police-senator Lachmann nodded.

  “Mr. Behrend has been a friend of yours from your youth?”

  “We were at school together and have been friends ever since.”

  “May I ask what is meant by the pleasant hopes for the future of which Mr. Behrend speaks?”

  The senator was silent a moment. Then he said, “Why, yes, of course. I know you so long and have given you so much confidence already that I feel sure of your discretion in what is purely a personal family matter. I have, as you know, an only daughter. It is the heartfelt wish of the parents in both families that my child and my friend’s son should be united in a bond that will bring us all still closer together.”

  “Thank you, sir. When will you send the answer to Mr. Behrend?”

  “At once, I thought.”

  “May I ask that you do not telegraph?”

  “Certainly. I will send a letter if you prefer, and you may dictate it yourself. I will send it with a personal letter of my own.”

  The commissioner took Behrend’s letter and the newspaper and went out. He returned in fifteen minutes and handed his chief the following letter to be signed:

  Mr. Johann Heinrich Behrend, Sr.,

  Neuenfelde, Holstein:

  Sir: Permit me to inform you herewith that I have given our Criminal Commissioner Wolff the necessary leave to make researches into the affair of the robbery from your office. I am sorry to say, however, that the commissioner is still occupied in the investigation of another crime, and that it will be several days before he is able to leave here. At the latest you may expect him in four days, however, and his work for you will begin at once after his arrival. As you are still continuing your own researches I hope that the small delay will not be of any importance. The unavoidable delay before our office was notified at all has already given the thief an opportunity to put himself and his loot in safety. The commissioner has his orders to report to you personally at once on his arrival.

  Chief of Police Lachmann.

  Senator Lachmann could not control a slight smile. “To-day is Friday—hm—according to this they will not expect you before Monday—hm.” He signed the letter. “When do you start?”

  “In an hour, sir.”

  “And when will you be in Neuenfelde?”

  “This evening, sir.”

  * * *

  —

  A single passenger descended from the ten o’clock train of the same evening in Neuenfelde, a gentleman of military bearing, in clothes of fashionable cut, with a sharply marked face and cold gray eyes.

  He proceeded to the office of the firm of Johann Heinrich Behrend & Son.

  A servant in a quiet gray livery took his card and handed it to the chief of the firm. Mr. Behrend, Sr., read the card carefully: george engel, representing harry s. egger & son, london and berlin.

  “Take the gentleman to Mr. Juritz, Franz,” he said. “I will be glad when my son is at home
again. This affair has made me so nervous that I dislike to see anybody new.”

  “Just as you say, sir.” Franz threw an anxious glance at his master and went out.

  Bernhard Juritz’s office lay next to that of his employer, another door leading from it into the room where the safe stood. The cashier sat in a comfortable armchair, and pressed his hand to his forehead when the servant brought him the card, as if he had first to collect his thoughts, and bring himself back to the affairs of everyday life.

  “Send for Detlev.” When the clerk had entered Juritz asked, reading aloud the name and the firm on the card, “Has this gentleman been announced to us?”

  “No, Mr. Juritz.”

  “Thank you.” He dismissed the clerk with a wave of his hand.

  “Mr. Behrend told me to send him to you,” remarked the servant.

  “All right, send him in.”

  He turned over some letters but rose from his chair as Engel entered. The latter’s manner was so decided in his firm politeness that he compelled an equal attitude.

  “What can I do for you?”

  When they had both seated themselves, Engel told his errand in a few words. The London firm which he represented was to open a branch shop in Berlin, and he had been appointed manager. The Berlin branch desired to accord all honor to any German national sentiments and to acquire a good stock of home-made wares, as well as those of foreign make. It was his duty to seek out the most important manufacturers of the country, and eventually to sign for the orders. The firm of Behrend & Son had such an excellent reputation that it was to them at first that he had come, to examine the factory and the specimens of their work, and to place his orders at once if all should be as he expected.

  While Engel was speaking, Juritz had taken up a paper-knife with which his fingers played mechanically. Engel’s sharp gray eyes glanced keenly at the man opposite him.

  Juritz’s sharp-featured face showed energy, but the dull glance of his eyes and the foolish play with the evidently unheeded instrument in his hands showed a physical and mental weakening, for the moment at least. His low forehead and broad, full-lipped mouth pointed to strong animal desires, and the dark rings about his eyes were evidence of dissipation.