Borrower of the Night: The First Vicky Bliss Mystery (12 page)

One particularly charming dress, which had a laced black velvet bodice embroidered with tiny white rosebuds and green leaves, made my mouth water. I showed it to Irma.

“Why don’t you try it on? It would look gorgeous on you.”

Irma and I had gotten quite matey by then—two girls together, and all that. It was nice to see the kid smile for a change. At my question the smile disappeared, and she shook her head.

“No, no, this is for tourists. The money is far too much.”

Tactfully I dropped the subject and we made our way toward the restaurant. The rest of Irma’s wardrobe was as hideous as her nightgowns; that day she was wearing another high-necked dark print that hung like a burlap bag from her shoulders. I had never seen her in one of the pretty peasant dresses of the region, which are common street wear in southern Germany, and which would have suited her petite beauty.

As Irma sparkled and giggled at Blankenhagen, I continued to wonder why she was so broke. The hotel was making money. The prices were outrageous, as I had cause to know. The countess had spoken of selling books; Irma said furniture and objects d’art, even the iron gates, had gone under the dealer’s hammer. Were taxes and running expenses so high that two women, living frugally, could barely eke out a living? Judging from the objects I had seen—most of them in Elfrida’s quarters—the stuff that had been sold was of prime quality, worth a considerable amount.

As the time wore on and no Tony came loping into the courtyard dining room, with its vine-hung balconies, worry replaced my curiosity about the Drachenstein finances. I kept telling myself it was absurd to worry; what could happen to him in broad daylight, in the law-abiding streets of Rothenburg? But it wasn’t like him to forget an appointment. I was increasingly silent and distracted, and Blankenhagen started casting me significant glances, raising and lowering his eyebrows and making other signals. He didn’t care whether Tony was missing or not, he just wanted to entertain Irma.

Finally, as we were leaving, I saw Tony in the doorway. My whole body sagged with relief. I hadn’t realized how uptight I was. So, naturally, I was furious with him.

“Where the—” I began, as we went toward him. And then I shut up, because I had gotten a good look at his face.

“Sorry for being late,” Tony mumbled. “I got…I got interested”—he choked oddly—“in something. I forgot the time. No, thanks, I’ll grab a sandwich someplace. I’m…not hungry.”

“The scholarly habit,” said Irma, smiling at him. “It must be very difficult for a wife.”

She was pretty obtuse, that girl. There was Tony, looking like a sick dog, and she thought he was just an absentminded professor. But when she blushed and batted those long lashes at him, he revived enough to blush back. Irma was certainly responding nicely to treatment, I thought. Maybe a girl that resilient didn’t need quite as much TLC as she had been getting lately.

We got back to the
Schloss
without incident, except for Tony running into trees and buildings and knocking down an occasional pedestrian. Irma decided he was faint with hunger, and after she had deposited him tenderly in a chair in the garden, she bustled off to get him sandwiches and beer.

When she had gone, Blankenhagen turned on Tony.

“Now what is bothering you? You behave like a creature from a horror film. Is it so hard for you to be normal, for that child’s sake?”

“Sorry.” Tony stared dismally at us. “I’m stunned. I just found out what happened to the Countess Konstanze.”

“Well?” the doctor said, less angrily.

“She was burned to death as a witch. Down there in the main square of Rothenburg, on the afternoon of October twenty-third, fifteen hundred twenty-five.”

“
Herr Gott
.” Blankenhagen dropped into a chair.

I decided I might as well sit down, since everyone else was. I shared the general feeling of shock. The damned woman had become too real; it was like hearing of the ghastly death of an old acquaintance.

“The trial records are in the town archives.” Tony produced the notebook without which no aspiring scholar goes anywhere. “The evidence was conclusive—if you believe in witchcraft.”

“But…witchcraft!” Blankenhagen shouted. “This was the beginning of the Renaissance…”

“The persecutions were at their height just then. Five years after the countess was killed they burned thirty-five witches in a single day, in Cologne. The mania gripped every country in Europe. By the time America was settled, the worst was over, but we had our Salem trials, and that was a century after Konstanze.”

Blankenhagen muttered something in a language that was neither German nor English. Tony gave him a surprised look, and translated.

“‘It is setting a high value upon our opinions to roast men alive on account of them.’ Nobody ever said a truer word. But Montaigne came along too late for Konstanze, and the
Essays
were only the opening wedge of rationalism. If you think people are ever rational.”

“So that is why she is not in the crypt with her husband.”

“You bet your sweet life that’s why. She was accused of murdering him.”

“You said witchcraft….”

“Same thing.” Tony turned pages. “She cursed him to death. The count fell ill the day after he got back from Würzburg. At first they thought he had the plague or something. Here’s part of the testimony of the old woman who had nursed the count in infancy, and who tended him during his illness.

“‘On the Friday my lord was stronger and we dared hope for his life. My lady shed tears of joy. She had watched by his bed day and night, allowing no one else to take her place….’”

“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.

“Wait. It gets worse. She goes on: ‘On the Friday at night I sat with my lord again. I was afflicted with a strange heaviness of the eyes.’”

“So she was tired,” I said. “An old woman, sitting up night after night…”

“Sure, sure. But the judge said it was undoubtedly the countess’s black magic at work. Then, says the nurse, ‘When I woke I saw my lord standing by the bed. His face was strangely colored and his eyes turned in his head. He was dressed in hose and shirt only, with the embroidered belt my lady had made for him. When in my affright I spoke to him, he laughed a fearful laugh and looked not to know me. I ran to fetch my lady and she came from her room all heavy with sleep, her black hair about her face. When he saw her, my lord went mad. He felt at his belt as if for his dagger, but it was lacking, and when he so found, he threw himself at her throat and would have strangled her. I could not move him, but my cries brought the two men-at-arms who slept in the next chamber, and together we dragged my lord from his lady’s throat and put him into his bed, where he fell into a swoon. The next day he was in great pain and took no nourishment save a cup of broth. In the evening the painful torments of the first days suddenly returned. He lay in agony, his body torn by spasms, until at midnight his soul left him.’”

“How ignorant they were!” exclaimed Blankenhagen.

“What do you suppose was wrong with him?” I asked.

Blankenhagen shrugged.

“It might be any number of natural illnesses.”

“That wasn’t all,” said Tony, turning to another page of his notebook. “The countess’s maid, or tiring woman, tied the noose around her neck. She was even more verbose than the other witness, so I’ll synopsize. It seems that the week before the count returned she had to obey a call of nature in the middle of the night, and went to the privy—oh, yes, Doctor, they had them—near her mistress’s room. She was still in the darkness of the hall when she saw the countess’s door open and Konstanze standing there with a candle in her hand. Then—I’ll have to give you her own words, or you’ll lose the atmosphere—‘There appeared from nothingness a Tall Man clothed all in black, with only darkness where his face should be. He went to my lady and caught her in his arms, and the folds of his black cloak wrapped her round like two great wings. He was seven feet tall, my Lord Bishop, and I heard the click of his hooves upon the floor of the hall….’”

Tony closed his notebook.

“At that point the wench fell down in a fit, frothing at the mouth.”

“No doubt.” Blankenhagen shook his head disgustedly. “The superstitions of the time encouraged hysteria.”

“Oh, God,” I said, suddenly sick. “Remember what Irma said at the séance?
Das Feuer
…”

Blankenhagen surged to his feet with an angry exclamation.

“Enough of this morbidity! If that poor girl hears a word of this frightful story—”

“She already knows it,” I said. “At least I would prefer to think that, rather than admit the alternative.”

I was right, of course, but it wasn’t the most tactful thing I could have said. Blankenhagen cursed splendidly in German, using a few expressions I had never encountered before, and went storming off through the shrubbery.

“I don’t blame him,” I groaned. “I’m beginning to lose my nerve too. You know something, Tony? This isn’t fun anymore.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m just trying to sound like a heroine,” I said meekly. “I know I’m the wrong size, but I figured. I could try to sound sort of imbecilic and clinging and scared….”

“Ho ho,” said Tony, baring his teeth. “Who says you’re the heroine?”

“All right, I’ll let Irma be the heroine. But there are times when I think she qualifies for another role.”

It was Tony’s turn to swear. He wasn’t as inventive as Blankenhagen, but he was louder, and finally he stalked off, leaving me alone with my thoughts—which were not good company.

I was beginning to look forward to mealtime at the
Schloss
. A girl my size needs her nourishment, but that wasn’t the only reason. In the dining room I met friends and enemies and assorted suspects; I could study Irma to see how far she was from a nervous breakdown. Mealtime was when the
Gräfin
sent forth her invitations. Oh, yes, mealtime was fun time, all right.

Dinner that night was comparatively dull. Irma looked pretty good, and there was no word from the
Gräfin
, not even an invitation to a small intimate exorcism. Blankenhagen was still sulking; he practically bit my head off when I made a casual remark about the weather. Tony was just as mean. He was seething about something, and I gathered that the something involved George Nolan, from the way Tony ignored him. George was in a splendid mood. He babbled on, quite entertainingly, about Veit Stoss and Tilman Riemenschneider and other German sculptors. I got to the point where I thought if I heard Riemenschneider’s name pronounced just once more I would rise up and smite George over the head with my plate. To make the gloom complete, it started to rain, which ended my plans for a stroll through the quaint old streets of Rothenburg after dark.

When we adjourned to the lounge, I managed to take Tony aside.

“What ails you? Somebody hurt your feelings?”

“It’s that Nolan,” said Tony, adding a few qualifying adjectives. “Do you know what that rat said to me today? This afternoon I met him in the Hall, and do you know what he said?”

“No,” I said. “But maybe you will tell me what he said.”

“He said—” Tony choked. “He said he didn’t like the way things were going around here. He said he suspected there was dirty work afoot. He said”—I really thought for a minute Tony was strangling—“he said he was willing to forget our differences and combine forces, because I needed—I needed a man of action in on this caper!”

“Well, now, that was thoughtful,” I said; and then, because Tony really was mad, I changed the subject. “I talked to Irma today. Guess what she said to me. She said—”

“Cut it out,” Tony growled.

“She’s the Drachenstein heir,” I said. “The castle and its contents belong to her. The old lady has the right to live here as long as she likes, but the place is Irma’s.”

“It sure is, from the kitchen to the scullery.” As I hoped, Tony was sufficiently distracted by this information to forget his wrath. “Oh ho and aha. That is interesting.”

“I thought so,” I said. And then George turned back, with a jovial question about our plans for the evening, and I led Tony away before he lost his temper again.

To my relief, Miss Burton wasn’t in the lounge that night. I couldn’t have faced her. Tony went to the piano and started to pound out a weird medley of tunes, from rock and roll to Gilbert and Sullivan. He plays by ear, and he doesn’t play too badly; but the piano almost defeated him. I don’t know when, if ever, it had been tuned.

Seeing Schmidt reading a newspaper on the sofa, I headed for him. My attempts to pump him were singularly unsuccessful.

“I took my degree at Leipzig,” he admitted finally. “But that was many years ago, my child, long before you were born. Ah, how charmingly the professor plays Beethoven. A friendly tribute to Germany.”

The sounds coming from the piano would have made Beethoven spin in his crypt, but I didn’t have the heart to hassle Schmidt anymore. There was a pinched gray look around his mouth, and when I asked after his health, as tactfully as possible—I can be tactful when I feel like it—he shook his head.

“I have, they tell me, a slight condition of the heart. It is not serious; but the events of these last days have not been soothing for me. If you will excuse me, I think I will seek my bed.”

Tony made his excuses not long after that. I eluded George, who wanted to chat about our mutual friend Tilman R., and followed Tony. When he said good-night, at the door of his room, my suspicions were confirmed. I knew that sweet innocent smile of his. We had agreed to share information, but only up to a point.

Sure enough, a couple of hours later I heard his door open. I almost didn’t hear it. After everyone else had gone to bed I turned out my light, propped my door open about half an inch, and sat down on the floor next to the crack.

The rain had stopped by that time, and the moon poured cold silver light through the open window. The slow drip of moisture from the leaves was as soothing as a lullaby. My eyelids got heavy….

What with sleepiness and stiffness, it took me a couple of minutes to get limbered up and follow Tony. I had planned to bounce out at him, figuring I owed him a scare or two, but on second thought I decided I would follow the sneaky little rascal and see what he was up to.