Fever (5 page)

Studer introduced himself, introduced Marie.

The dead woman in the armchair looked as if she were smiling. The sergeant had another look at her face. There was a wart beside her left nostril . . .

The body was taken away – out through the little door Studer had seen in the garden wall. It took a long time before they could get a key for the gate; there wasn't a single key to be found in the dead woman's apartment. One of the tenants, lured by the noise, supplied his.

Studer was tired. He felt no desire to tell his uniformed colleague all the odd aspects of the case: the half-open tap on the gas meter, the old woman wearing outdoor shoes with a dressing gown . . . The sergeant stood up and stared at the brass plate: Josepha Cleman-Hornuss, Widow.

Then he invited Marie to have a coffee with him. It seemed the most sensible thing to do.

The first wife

Not long after Olten it started to snow. Studer sat in the restaurant car staring out of the window. The hills gliding past were soft shapes behind the curtain of white, which was falling with such uninterrupted regularity, it looked motionless.

On the table in front of the sergeant was a blue coffee set and beside it, within easy reach, a carafe of kirsch. Studer drew his gaze away from the window and turned his attention to his new ring binder, which lay open in front of him. Holding his pencil between index and middle finger, he wrote in his tiny handwriting with the letters printed separately, as in Greek:

Cleman-Hornuss, Josepha: widow, 55. Gassed. Suicide?

Against: half-open tap on gas meter; keys to apartment door and garden gate missing; drawer broken into on desk – and the telephone call.

The telephone call! Sitting in the restaurant car of the Basel–Bern express, Studer heard the voice again. And, as in Josepha Cleman-Hornuss's living room, it sounded familiar. It reminded him of another voice he had heard only a few days before, in a little bistro by Les Halles in Paris – that is, the
tone
of voice was the same, the register similar.

And the voice had sounded drunk. Breathless, as if the man had just tossed down a few glasses of brandy, one after the other. Question one: what did the drunk
expect to achieve with his call? And question two: where had Father Matthias of the Order of White Fathers been at that point? In which church had he celebrated his morning mass? In that cement church the Baslers had christened the “soul silo”?

Staring out of the window, lost in thought, Studer stretched out his hand, picked up the carafe of kirsch instead of the coffee pot, filled his cup, raised it to his lips and only noticed his mistake after he'd emptied it. Looking up, he saw the waiter grinning at him. He grinned back, shrugged his shoulders, picked up the carafe again, defiantly emptied the rest of the schnapps into his cup and started to write busily:

Cleman, Victor Alois: geologist working for Mannesmann brothers; prospecting for lead, silver, copper. His employers executed by firing squad in Casablanca, 1915, for helping a few Germans to desert from the Foreign Legion. Cleman as informer! Returns to Switzerland in 1916, but goes back to Morocco later in same year, working for the French government. Inspects the lead-smelting furnaces installed by Mannesmann brothers in the south of the country. Falls seriously ill in 1917 and flown to Fez. Dies there – according to daughter, based on telegram that has disappeared – on 20 July. Leaves very little. Married twice. First wife lives in Bern, see Father Matthias's statement. Seems to be well-off. Sister of Joespha Cleman, who died in Basel.

. . . Herzogenbuchsee . . . It had stopped snowing. The dry heat in the train was soporific and Studer fell into a daydream.

The Foreign Legion! Morocco! Now the longing for foreign lands and exotic places, which had tugged at him shyly when Father Matthias had told his story, was swelling in Studer's breast. Yes, in his breast. It was a strange feeling, more of an ache. Unknown worlds
beckoned, images appeared, he was dreaming of them yet still wide awake. The desert stretched on for ever, camels trotted over the golden sand, brown-skinned people in billowing robes strode majestically through dazzling white towns. Marie had been kidnapped by a robber band – how had Marie suddenly got into his dream? – she had been kidnapped and he was the one who freed her. “Thank you, Cousin Jakob,” she said. Happiness! That was different from writing interminable reports in the police station in Bern, in the tiny office that smelt of dust and floor polish. There were different smells down there, unknown smells, foreign. And memories came back to mind:
The Song of Solomon, The Arabian Nights
. . .

Perhaps this really was his big case.

Perhaps he would be sent officially to Morocco. Perhaps . . .

In any case, it would be a good idea to go to 44 Gerechtigkeitsgasse first thing in the morning to question the geologist's divorced wife.

. . . Burgdorf . . . Studer poured the rest of the cold coffee into his cup, drank the mixture – it tasted horrible – and called out, “Bill.” The waiter gave him another sly grin, but Studer no longer felt like smiling. He could not get Marie out of his mind, Marie who had gone off to Paris with Koller, her father's former secretary – fur jacket, silk stockings, suede shoes! He'd grown fond of Marie, there was no denying it. As if he'd got a daughter back. A year ago his own daughter had married a country policeman from Thurgau. Now she was a mother and the sergeant felt he had finally lost her. All these confused emotions presumably explained why he only gave the grinning waiter twenty
rappen
as a tip.

His mood did not improve once he had arrived in
Bern. His apartment in Kirchenfeld was empty and Studer could not be bothered to try to light the stove. He went to the café for a game of billiards, then to a cinema, where he got irritated at the film. Later on he had a couple of beers somewhere – and they disagreed with him too. The result was that when he went to bed at eleven o'clock he had a raging headache. It took him a long time to get to sleep.

In the darkness he was visited by the old woman with the wart by her left nostril who had sat in her green armchair beside the two-ring gas stove, so calm and relaxed . . . Marie appeared and disappeared. Then it was New Year's Eve, Commissaire Madelin and Godofrey, the encyclopedia, were there. Godofrey – with his horn-rimmed spectacles he looked like an unfledged owl – proved particularly difficult to get rid of. “
Pour madame,
” said Godofrey as he handed a terrine of
pâté de foie gras
in through the carriage window. But the terrine swelled up until it was sitting there on a shelf, green and solid and sneering – it had turned into a gas meter, which was a head, a dream monster signalling with its one arm . . . vertical, horizontal, sloping at an angle . . . and Marie was arm-in-arm with Father Matthias, only it wasn't Father Matthias, it was Koller, her father's former secretary, who was the sergeant's double . . .

Still half awake, Studer heard himself say, “
Chabis
! What a load of nonsense!”

His voice echoed through the empty apartment. In desperation, Studer felt the bed beside him. But Hedy was still in Thurgau, looking after the new Jakobli. Groaning, he pulled his arm back, it was freezing. Then all at once he fell asleep.

*

Had he had a nice time in Paris? Detective Constable Murmann, who shared the office with him, asked at nine o'clock the next morning. Studer was still in a bad mood; he grunted something incomprehensible and continued to thump away at the keys of his typewriter. Inside the room it smelt of cold tobacco smoke, dust and floor polish; a chill north wind was whistling at the windows and the steam made the radiators clunk.

Murmann sat down opposite his colleague, took the
Bund
out of his pocket and started to read. His powerful biceps had formed bulges in the sleeves of his jacket.

“Hey, Köbu, listen to this” he said after a while.

“What?” said Studer impatiently. He had to write a report on a theft that had taken place in an attic apartment ages ago; the investigating magistrate had been on the telephone screaming for it.

“A woman killed herself in Basel,” Murmann went on, unperturbed. “With gas.”

He knew that already, was Studer's irritated reply.

Murmann was not to be put off. “Committing suicide with gas must be catching,” he said. “I was called out to Gerechtigkeitsgasse at six o'clock this morning with Reinhard of the city police – there's no one else there at the moment, they're all still on holiday . . . Anyway, the woman in Gerechtigkeitsgasse had killed herself with gas.”

“In Gerechtigkeitsgasse? What number?” Studer asked.

“Forty-four,” Murmann mumbled, chewing on his cigar. He scratched his neck, gave the
Bund
a good shake and went back to reading the editorial.

Suddenly he looked up with a start. A chair had fallen over and Studer was leaning across the desk, breathing heavily. His normally pale face was red.

“What was the woman called?”

“Köbu,” said Murmann calmly, “are you hearing voices?”

No he was not, Studer growled, with a violent shake of the head at the suggestion, he just wanted to know the dead woman's name.

“A divorcee, a fortune teller – cards,” said Murmann. “Hornuss, Sophie Hornuss. The body's with Forensics already.”

“Is that so?” said Studer, hammered out one more sentence, ripped the sheet out of the typewriter, scribbled his signature, went over to the coat hook, put on his raincoat and slammed the door behind him.

Murmann nodded. “That's our Köbu for you,” he said to no one in particular, relighting his cigar. Then he finished the editorial, a smug grin on his face. It was about the growth of the Red Peril and Murmann, being a Liberal, believed in the Red Peril . . .

Forty-four Gerechtigkeitsgasse. Beside the front door the name plate of a dance school. Wooden stairs. Very clean, not like that other house, on Spalenberg. A yellow door on the third floor was open; there was a visiting card pinned to it:

Sophie Hornuss

So this woman hadn't been a professional widow! Studer went in.

When the door had been forced open the lock had fallen off and was lying on the floor.

Silence . . .

The hall was spacious and dark. On the left was a glass door into the kitchen. Studer sniffed. A smell of
gas here, too; the kitchen window was open. The lamp hanging from the ceiling had a china shade covered by a square of purple silk with brown wooden balls hanging from the corners. It was swinging to and fro.

By the window was a solid gas stove with four rings, oven and grill. And beside the stove was a comfortable leather armchair, which looked rather odd in the kitchen. Who had dragged it out of the living room into the kitchen? The old woman?

Cards were laid out on the oilcloth over the kitchen table, four rows of eight cards. The first card in the top row was the jack of spades.

Hands clasped behind his back, Studer paced up and down the kitchen, opened the cupboard, closed it, took a pan down off the wall, lifted a lid . . .

In the sink was a cup with a black deposit on the bottom. Studer smelt it: a faint smell of aniseed. He tasted it.

That bitter aftertaste that stayed on the tongue! That smell! It was mere chance that Studer recognized both. Two years ago the doctor had prescribed Somnifen to help him sleep.

Somnifen! That acid taste, that smell of aniseed . . . Had the old woman suffered from insomnia?

But why the devil had she taken sleeping pills, then dragged an armchair into the kitchen and opened the taps on the gas stove? Why?

One dead woman in Basel, one dead woman in Bern. And the link between the two their husband, Victor Alois, a Swiss geologist who had died in the military hospital in Fez during the Great War. Why should Cleman's two wives commit suicide fifteen years later? One today, the other yesterday? And commit suicide in what was, to put it mildly, an odd way?

Was this perhaps the “Big Case” every detective dreamt of, even if he was only a simple sergeant?

“Simple”! The word just didn't fit the sergeant. If Studer had been “simple”, then his colleagues, from the chief of police down, would not have said he had “the odd screw loose”.

Part of the reason for this was the business with the bank that had cost him his comfortable job as chief inspector with the city police. He'd been forced to resign and had had to start again from the bottom with the cantonal police. He'd quickly risen to the rank of sergeant – he could speak French, Italian and German; he could read English; he'd worked with Gross in Graz and Locard in Lyon. He had good contacts in Berlin, London, Vienna and, above all, in Paris. He was usually the one who was sent to conferences on criminology. When his colleagues maintained he had the odd screw loose, what they probably meant was that he had a bit too much imagination for someone from Bern. But that wasn't quite true. It was probably just that he could see a bit further than the end of his nose, which was long, thin and pointed and didn't really go with his bulky body.

Studer remembered that he knew one of the assistant doctors at the Institute for Forensic Medicine from an earlier case. He went round the apartment looking for the telephone. It was in the sitting room – red velvet armchairs with antimacassars, ornate table, escritoire – fixed to the wall.