Fever (9 page)

“How had the girl managed to obtain the poison? A mystery. Her parents found her dead in her bed one morning at eight and immediately called the police. At that time the superintendent of the Fribourg police was a man who had heard something of the latest methods of detection. On the glass – it was a straight-sided glass, such as people use to keep their toothbrush in – he noticed a clear fingerprint. So he wrapped the glass up in tissue paper and, since in those days there was only one man in Switzerland who knew anything about this new science of dactyloscopy, he rang me up.

“I happened to be fairly free – in July there's nothing much for an lawyer to do – so I went to Fribourg, taking my camera with me, some powdered cerussite and powdered graphite.

“I won't bore you with details. I got a nice clean photo of the fingerprint, developed it, took the dead girl's fingerprints, her parents', the superintendent's. And then I compared them. It was a tedious business, comparing all the fingerprints, but soon I was sure that some other person had been in the girl's room and put the glass with the potassium cyanide on her bedside table. And that person had murdered her.”

Herr Rosenzweig, who, despite his name, did not look at all Jewish, got a piece of cotton wool and put it in his ear.

“My teeth,” he said apologetically. “They ache. What can one do, Sergeant? It's old age.”

He didn't use the Bernese dialect but the standard Swiss German all educated people spoke by then . . .

“Yes, someone from outside had put the glass with potassium cyanide on the girl's bedside table. When the autopsy revealed that she was pregnant, it seemed clear the girl had been murdered – and by a very cunning killer, since the only clue he had left was a thumbprint on the glass.

“You must remember, Sergeant, in those days criminals were not as well informed as they are today; they didn't know that a fingerprint could give them away. They didn't go about their business in surgeon's gloves. And it was chance, pure chance that the superintendent in Fribourg thought of me and rang up. Chance, too, that I had time . . .

“That's how I came to have this photograph. I've looked at it a lot – I enlarged it, but the enlargements weren't a success. I compare it with every new fingerprint I get for my collection, in the hope I'll eventually find the man with that thumbprint.

“To complete the story I was telling you, the 1903 investigation got nowhere and fizzled out. The girl was allowed a lot of freedom, by the standards of the time. She came to Bern twice a week – she had piano lessons here – and sometimes she stayed overnight. With a girlfriend, she said.

“The superintendent in Fribourg contacted the Bern police and they established that the girl had stayed in the Hotel zum Wilden Mann several times, each time accompanied by a young man. But the young man
could not be found. The police, as the saying goes, were baffled. The hotel porter did give a description of him, but it was so sketchy it was no use.

“A student? Someone studying in Bern? Chemistry? Medicine?

“That left the mystery as to why he had travelled to Fribourg. He could just as well have given the girl the potassium cyanide tablet and told her it was very good for headaches. But no, he'd gone to Fribourg, got into the girl's room, dissolved the poison in water and got her to drink it. It wasn't too difficult. Ulrike – the girl was called Ulrike Neumann – had an attic room and the front door stayed open until ten o'clock. There were three families living in the building . . . Who could check all the comings and goings?

“And now, Sergeant, you turn up with my long-sought-after fingerprint! At least I think it is the same. I couldn't swear to it, of course, just see how yellowed the photo is, despite all my care. But that scar . . . You can see the scar, can't you? The cut across the skin, slicing through the loops? Where did you find the print?”

Studer cleared his throat; he wasn't used to staying silent for so long. Then he told Herr Rosenzweig about the two dead women, the cup in the sink, how it had been rinsed out while he was looking round the apartment.

“It sounds like my man,” said Herr Rosenzweig. “Twenty years on, but the same modus operandi, I'd say. You haven't taken the priest's fingerprints?” Studer shook his head. “Pity.”

Silence. Then Herr Rosenzweig stood up and said, “Leave the cup with me, Sergeant, I'll make an enlargement of the print.” He looked at his watch. “If you want, you can have a copy at four o'clock.”

Studer stood up as well. His hand automatically went to his breast pocket. Automatically because he intended to light a Brissago the moment he was out of Herr Rosenzweig's sanctum. So he put his hand in his pocket, and as he did he felt something rustle. When he took out the piece of paper, the long, slim cigar case was completely forgotten, for what he had in his hand was the temperature chart.

The temperature chart. He unfolded it and looked at it, knitting his brows with concentration. Suddenly he was far away: the whitewashed room that still smelt of gas, the gables with hoar-frost on them and a pale winter sun edging over the roof ridge opposite . . .

But Marie was standing at the window. She was wearing an expensive fur jacket, her breath was making a cloudy patch on the glass, drops were forming . . .

“What's that treasure you have there, Sergeant?”

“A temperature chart . . .” And Studer told him about the document.

“Leave it with me,” said Herr Rosenzweig. “I'll treat it with iodine vapour, perhaps I'll be able to get a fingerprint from it. Whether I'm successful or not, I'll certainly be able to tell you where it was sent from. You know that the impression of a postmark through the envelope can still be made out years later.”

Studer thanked him and promised he'd be back around four.

“No need,” said Herr Rosenzweig, “no need at all. I'm coming into town anyway, we can meet somewhere, if you like. How about a game of billiards?”

“I don't know if I'll have the time,” said Studer. “
Merci
all the same.”

*

Father Matthias was sitting in the leather armchair reading a little book in a black binding. He had a bent pair of steel-rimmed spectacles on his nose and his lips moved silently.

After a curt greeting Studer demanded to see the priest's thumbs. They were smooth, no scar cutting through the loops.

That meant? That meant that in the few minutes Studer had been out of the kitchen someone apart from the priest must have come in and rinsed out the cup. Which seemed highly unlikely. More likely was the alternative theory, namely that the thumbprint Studer's retired lawyer friend had found on the cup had been left there by the murderer the previous evening. And Father Matthias had, for reasons that were as yet unclear, rinsed the cup out and thus helped the murderer. Why? Everything pointed to Father Matthias knowing who the murderer was and yet wanting to cover up for him . . . Suddenly the sun burst in through the window and Studer came to a halt, dazzled, in the middle of the kitchen.

Koller . . . He knew that name. He'd heard it before . . . connected with a Christian name that sounded like his . . . Yes, “greetings from young jakobli to old jakob”. But . . .

The secretary! The late geologist's former secretary, the secretary who had taken Marie Cleman to Paris, bought her a fur jacket and silk stockings, the secretary who had disappeared three months ago and whose disappearance was being investigated by Commissaire Madelin of the French Sûreté. The man was called Koller.

Koller was a fairly common name, true, but still . . .

Sergeant Studer stood there, in the middle of the kitchen where the divorced Sophie Hornuss had died,
with such a faraway look in his eyes that they looked like those of an ox chewing the cud.

And again the silence in the little kitchen grew oppressive, until Studer took his watch out of his waistcoat pocket and pointed out that it was half past one. What did Herr Koller intend to do now? “Herr Koller!” the sergeant said.

“May I accompany you, Inspector?” Father Matthias asked shyly. He seemed to be afraid of being alone.

“If you like.”

Contradictory. That wasn't an explanation, it was simply the way the White Father was. And it was to get closer to an explanation for this contradictory character that a police sergeant put up with the embarrassment of walking through the town alongside a man in a white habit.

“Come on then,” he said. “We can go and eat somewhere. But first I have to go to my apartment, there may be a message from my wife. You know,” he added suddenly reverting to the polite “
Sie
”, “that I've just become a grandfather.”

They had reached the street and were walking slowly along through the arcades.

“A grandfather,” the priest said in a choked voice, so that the sergeant was afraid the skinny man was about to burst into tears again.

He quickly carried on. “Yes, it's a strange feeling, as if you've lost a daughter. She married a country policeman in Thurgau – my wife sent me a telegram to Paris to say they were both doing fine. But I've already told you that.”

“Congratulations . . . Once more, heartiest congratulations.”

“Why congratulate me?” Studer asked in irritation. “I've nothing to do with it. It's my daughter who's had
the child, I'm just the grandfather . . . Congratulations!” He shrugged his broad shoulders. A foreign fashion, these kind of compliments.

The sergeant was so irritated he stopped abruptly and asked, “Now listen, Herr Koller, are you related to your brother's former secretary who disappeared a few months ago and is now being sought by the Paris police?”

“I . . . What do you mean, related? Related to whom?”

“To a certain Jakob Koller who went to Morocco with your stepbrother Victor Cleman. Afterwards he started up a business in Paris and took on Marie . . . as his secretary . . . his secretary!”

Silence. It seemed as if the sergeant had expected no other answer to his question. The priest was taking long, ranging strides; his chin was down on his chest and his hands tucked well into his sleeves, like a muff.

A wintry sun shone down. The hoar-frost on the pavements looked like a thin layer of glittering dust. The two unequal figures were crossing Kirchenfeld Bridge when the priest suddenly stopped, leant over the balustrade and stared for a long time down at the Aare. Its waters were pale, almost colourless. The north wind was blowing.

“Everything is so different here,” said Father Matthias. “Beautiful too, of course, but I long for the red hills and the wide plains.” He spoke very calmly. Studer rested his elbows on the balustrade and looked down. Then the priest turned round. Studer heard a car drive past and then, hardly had the hum of the engine passed, an exclamation from his companion. “Inspector! Look!”

Studer looked round, but all he saw was the rear of a car and its number, which he automatically read: BS 3437 – a Basel number . . .

“What is it?” he asked.

“If I didn't know it was impossible . . .” said the priest, rubbing his eyes.

“If what was impossible?”

“I think Collani was in the car, with my niece Marie.”

“Marie? Marie Cleman?
Chabis
!” Studer was beginning to lose his temper. Was this spindleshanks having him on? Marie together with the clairvoyant corporal? In a car with a Basel number plate?

“He was wearing a blue raincoat,” said the priest, more to himself.

Studer said nothing. What would be the point of asking questions? He felt as if he were being sucked down into a whirlpool: he could not longer tell what was truth, what lies. At times the man in the white habit struck him as sinister, at times as ridiculous. What he really ought to do would be to cross-examine the priest: Why did you rinse out the cup with the remains of the Somnifen? Why did you come to Switzerland? Why did you leave Marie in Basel? . . . Above all, he ought to check whether the man really was a priest. Didn't Catholic priests have to say mass every morning? thought Studer, remembering what Marie had told him.

“When precisely did you arrive in Bern?” Studer asked. He'd already asked the question once, but he asked it again – not actually expecting to get a reply. He was right. The priest said, “I had dinner with my niece, then I set off.”

“By train?”

“I've already told you I took a taxi.”

“And where are you staying? Where've you left your luggage?”

“In the Hotel zum Wilden Mann.”

“Where?” Studer almost screamed. He halted in the middle of the pavement.

“In the Hotel zum Wilden Mann . . .” said Father Matthias, and a helpless, tormented look appeared in his eyes, as it had before, a look that could all too easily dissolve into tears.

“The Hotel zum Wilden Mann!” Studer repeated, setting off again. “Zum Wilden Mann!”

“Why does that surprise you, Inspector?” the priest asked shyly. His voice was strangely hoarse. “It was strongly recommended. Has it got a dubious reputation?”

“Recommended, was it? By whom?”