Fever (12 page)

As he made his report, the young policeman stood to attention with perfect posture, heels together and the middle fingers of his hands pressed against the blue piping of his uniform trousers.

Gisler just said, “Dismiss,” but Studer stood up. At the door he said, “You sort things out with the Old Man, Gisler. Tell him I'd like to speak to him tomorrow morning, I've still got lots more to do today. Then see that your superintendent lets me have his office and his telephone at six o'clock, I've got an hour's telephoning to do. You get on well with him.”

Then the door closed. The chief inspector of the city police stared at his feet, turning what the sergeant had just said over and over in his mind. It was the first time the sergeant had used the familiar
du
to him and Gisler was wondering whether to take it as a compliment or an insult. He decided on the former. Sergeant Studer's familiarity was surely a token of recognition for his diplomatic skills. But, still, the fact that the
hero of the “Big Case” should address him as an old friend filled Gisler's heart with pride, displacing for five minutes his other pride, his pride in his delicate aristocratic feet.

Clearing the decks

“
Sicuro
,” said Dr Malapelle of the Institute for Forensic Medicine. “Barbituric acid. No doubt about it. A massive dose. Somnifen. The stomach contents seemed to have a strong smell of aniseed and since I don't know of any sedative derived from barbituric acid with an aniseed smell apart from Somnifen, I think we can conclude that's what it was. The woman didn't have long to live, anyway. Terminal endocarditis. Or, to put it more plainly for the lay mind, Inspector, the old lady had a weak heart, a very weak heart. Too much excitement –
e poi
. . . Yes . . . Could she have taken it of her own accord? Perhaps. Probably. One really cannot exclude the possibility of suicide. But you think it murder? You're an old romantic, but if that's what you enjoy . . .”

So Studer told him about the string and the traces of fibres on the edge of the keyhole.

“
Fantasmagoria
!” said Dr Malapelle irritatedly. “You have a vivid imagination and you're letting it run away with you. Pull yourself together.”

Then Studer took out the temperature chart – he'd left the will with Gisler – and showed it to the doctor. Malapelle frowned and said, “What's this? Either the diagnosis is wrong, or . . . That isn't a malarial chart. Neither tertiary nor . . . And then –
vedi, ispettore,
either the nurse didn't take the temperature properly or . . . Instead of giving it in tenths of a degree, she's marked it in quarter, half or whole degrees. See for yourself:
36.75, 39.5, 38.0. Impossible! Even taking into account the fact that this chart comes from a colonial hospital, and one run by French doctors at that . . . And anyway . . . It's odd,
singolare
, it's no more work recording the temperature in tenths of a degree . . .”

A furtive smile played around the corners of the sergeant's mouth.

“Thank you,
dottore
,” he said, “
mille grazie
. . . Could I see the body of Sophie Hornuss?”

A wrinkled face, with a look of horror on it. It was puffy – and there was no wart beside the left nostril.

At the Hotel zum Wilden Mann Studer asked at the desk if he could speak to Father Matthias. His Reverence had not come back yet, he was told. It just went to show how polite hotel receptionists were. Of course! A priest was “Your Reverence”. But Hedy had simply called him “Friar”!

Could he have a look at the priest's room, Studer asked. He took out his warrant card, which proved to be unnecessary. He was known there. The
chef de réception
, who was busy doing nothing in the lobby, had no objection to Studer taking a look at Father Matthias's room.

First floor, second floor, third floor . . . lifts were certainly convenient. You didn't have to waste energy and breath climbing the stairs.

Room 63. The lift boy came with him and waited when Studer really wanted to be alone. But a two-franc piece worked wonders. The little lad vanished in a trice.

There was a lonely toothbrush in the tumbler on the glass shelf over the wash-basin. Beside it a cake of cheap soap. One of the towels had been used. And on a chair was a fairly large, brown vulcanite suitcase.
When Studer opened it, he found in it, carefully folded: one blue raincoat; an ordinary grey off-the-peg suit; a white shirt, worn; a cheap tie and a pair of black shoes.

Spread out on the bed was a pair of blue pyjamas, the kind you could get for five francs in any chain store.

Studer whistled softly to himself, the Bern March. Then he left, but as he went out he glanced back and noticed something, something brown that was sticking out from between the arm and the seat of the armchair. He went over. It was firmly wedged in and took some effort to pull out.

A small bottle. Somnifen. Empty. He popped it in his coat pocket.

“When did Father Matthias arrive?”

The receptionist could not tell him. Probably during the night, his colleague would know, but at the moment he was sleeping. Couldn't it wait?

Studer nodded and left the hotel, ushered out by the solicitous
chef de réception
beseeching him to keep things quiet should the hotel be involved in any criminal affair. He would be very grateful, said the
chef de réception
, who gave off a strong scent of brilliantine, the sergeant must understand how damaging something like that could be to the hotel . . .

Studer cut short the flow of words by turning back and demanding to see the hotel register.

Koller, Max Wilhelm, b. 13 March 1876, missionary.

Missionary . . . Studer stood there, his raincoat pushed back, hands on hips, staring at the name he had already seen that day, in a passport.

Father Matthias, alias Max Wilhelm Koller, had had a brother, Victor Alois Cleman, who had been active as a geologist and informer; he was Swiss as well, and he'd died in Fez of an acute tropical fever and been
buried in a mass grave. And, according to his brother, this Cleman was now active as a ghost, speaking through the mouth of a clairvoyant corporal, threatening, three months in advance, to kill his two wives and going through with the murders. Hissing murders, if you could put it like that. The gas hissed as it came out of the burners and the mains tap was half open, sloping at an angle of forty-five degrees.

One old woman in Basel, one old woman in Bern. Sophie had been well off. Why had the geologist given his ex more money than his lawful wedded wife? Why had his wife had to live in poverty with her daughter in a bedsitter with a tiny kitchen that wasn't really a kitchen, more of a corridor, while the ex lived in comfort: two-room apartment, ornate furniture, gas stove with grill and oven?

All there had been in Basel was a little portable stove with two rings and above it a lopsided shelf with old chipped enamel containers: “Salt”, “Coffee”, “Flour”. Good-natured people had a hard time of it down here on earth, they always got the worst deal, while the others, the ones with the thin lips, the mocking eyes, exploited their knowledge.

Josepha had never nagged her husband, of that he was sure. But Sophie? Why the divorce after only a year? Knowledge was not only power, as the popular saying had it, knowledge could also bring in the money. Knowledge was the basis for a cleverly planned piece of blackmail.
Could
be the basis . . .

Every action could be explained, and if the explanation was not in the conscious mind, then you had to look for it in the unconscious. The simple detective sergeant from Bern had learnt that in the course of a case he had had to investigate in a lunatic asylum. A psychiatrist had taken it upon himself to hammer
home the difference between the conscious and the unconscious mind in rather graphic detail.

The
chef de réception
did not know what to make of the silent detective who seemed hypnotized by the hotel register.

Koller, Max Wilhelm, b. 13 March 1876, Fribourg, missionary, arriving from Paris, returning to Paris
. . .

Born 13 March 1876. That meant he was fifty-six. He looked older, did Father Matthias with his sparse goatee. On 13 March. Unlucky thirteen. At the age of eighteen he'd joined the Order of the White Fathers, an order founded by Cardinal Lavigerie to convert the Mohammedans. A hopeless task, as the priest himself had admitted. In 1917 he had been forty-one. And he came from Fribourg . . .

Fribourg . . . Ulrike Neumann had lived in Fribourg. The Ulrike Neumann who had had an affair with an unknown man in Bern and had died after taking KCN, potassium cyanide. And she'd met her lover in the Hotel zum Wilden Mann . . .

The
chef de réception
with the perfectly groomed hair, which smelt so strongly of brilliantine, started when the silent man suddenly opened his mouth and ordered, in a slightly hoarse voice, “Call the manager.”

“I'm not sure whether just at the moment the manager is —”

“Call the manager!” It was a tone that brooked no argument.

“I'll just go and see whether —”

“I expect to see him in three minutes. Take me to his office.” The order was delivered in formal German. The receptionist disappeared and Studer marched over to a door, the upper half of which consisted of a pane of frosted glass on which was written in black letters: MANAGER.

Two minutes thirty seconds. A little man with bandy legs and a pot belly appeared before him, continually rubbing his hands.

“I would like,” said Studer, returning his friendly greeting with an absent-minded nod, “to see the hotel registers for the years 1902 and 1903.”

“I don't know whether that will be possible,” the pot belly replied. “I only took over the hotel in 1920, so it will —”

That was as far as he got.

“If the required books are not here on this table in fifteen minutes,” said Studer, patting the red velvet cloth covering the table in the middle of the manager's office, “I'll telephone the city police and they'll send six detectives to carry out the search. I guarantee my men
will
find the books, only they'll make a bit of a fuss and it will be impossible to keep it from the hotel guests that the police are searching the premises. I leave it to you,” he went on, “to decide whether that will enhance or harm your reputation. Perhaps it will be excellent publicity for your hotel . . .”

The bandy-legged little man's lamentations would have melted a heart of stone, but Studer just placed his fat silver pocket watch on the table. After a while he said, “Ten minutes left.” The little man started to swear and curse and threaten Studer with city councillors and federal councillors and members of the national council and members of the upper house.

“Seven minutes,” Studer said. The glass door was slammed shut as the bandy-legged little man disappeared.

Five minutes later three dusty tomes were on the table in front of Studer. He pulled up a chair and started to leaf through them. January 1902 – nothing. February – nothing. March – nothing on the first,
second, third . . . On the tenth:
Neumann, Ulrike, b. 21 June 1883, Fribourg . . . one night
. No man's name to go with it.

And in April the name Ulrike Neumann appeared again, in May, June, July . . . Always alone.

At last! Underneath the entry for Ulrike Neumann on 23 September 1902 was a man's name:
Koller, Victor Alois, b. 27 July 1880, Fribourg, philosophy student
. . .

The same for October, and for November. In December there were three names between those of Ulrike Neumann and Victor Alois Koller. The same handwriting appeared in January 1903.

But in the following months the man's name was missing. It did not appear again. Nor his handwriting, a rather individual style with curling flourishes. It was absent for the rest of 1903. But the name Ulrike Neumann continued to appear regularly, every two weeks. For the last time on 27 June.

Victor Alois Koller. You didn't have to be a graphologist to see that the man who had written his name in the hotel register was the same as the man who had written the will – the will that left several millions jointly to the Canton of Bern and Marie Cleman . . .

But – and this was the most remarkable thing about it – neither the handwriting on the will nor the handwriting in the register bore the least resemblance to the writing on the letter addressed to Madame Josepha Cleman-Hornuss, 12 Spalenberg, Bâle.

The individual script with the self-proclaiming flourishes was closer to the hand that had written in the register:
Koller, Max Wilhelm, b. 13 March 1876, Fribourg, arriving from Paris, returning to Paris
.

Father Matthias's handwriting!

In addition to the similarity of the handwriting, there was the brown vulcanite suitcase containing: one
blue raincoat; one cheap, grey, off-the-peg suit; one white shirt, worn; one tasteless tie; one pair of socks; one pair of black shoes . . .

Father Matthias, alias Max Wilhelm Koller, had disappeared. He had got over his bout of fever and vanished into thin air.

The sergeant's fat silver pocket watch was still on the red velvet tablecloth. It said half past four. On the desk by the window was a telephone. And in a corner of the room, silent, cowed, was the manager of the Hotel zum Wilden Mann.