HS02 - Days of Atonement (11 page)

‘Where is she?’ Lavedrine asked gently. ‘Where have you hidden her?’

Would he tell Lavedrine what he had done, believing himself safe in the hands of the enemy? Immune from the authority that I represented? A wave of anger swept over me. I would give him a better reason to speak.

‘We’ve seen your abode,’ I snapped. ‘The animals in cages.’

I leaned closer, staring into his face.

‘We’ll kill them. Every single one of them. We’ll cut their heads off, and impale them all on sticks. Or burn them alive. That’s what we’ll do, Durskeitner. Unless you tell us the truth.’

I saw the horrified stare that appeared on his face.

‘Can you imagine that, Franz?’ I hissed. ‘Can you see them sizzling? Can you hear them? They are babies. They’ll scream as their fur catches fire. They’ll howl as their flesh begins to shrivel in the roaring flames!’

That
was the power I wanted him to feel. Fear of Prussian might, not the ambiguous hope of a French pardon. I heard Lavedrine clear his throat, and realised that he was looking incredulously at me.

Durskeitner opened his mouth and let out a roar. He hugged himself tightly inside the cloak. Every fibre of his body seemed to rebel against my threats. Despite his size, the man’s strength was clearly immense.

‘I did not touch them!’ he shouted. ‘I heard the shutters banging in the wind. I went to see, but they were dead. They were all dead.’ He began to sob in wrenching cries. ‘But I did not kill them!’

‘You know how they died,’ I insisted. ‘You saw the bodies. After slitting their throats, you hacked off the sex of those two boys. That’s what you do to animals, is it not?’

Durskeitner’s face was a mask of incomprehension. I might have been talking French to him.

‘Why did you mutilate the children?’ I pressed.

‘I did not!’

‘We have seen those skeletons hanging in your hut,’ I said. ‘The meat outside. You can’t deny the truth. You
enjoy
cutting flesh.’

The man’s brow was a furrowed field. He mumbled incoherently, stuttered helplessly, searching for words that would never come, words that would prove his innocence of every accusation.

I glanced at Lavedrine, but he stood like a marble statue.

‘Press him for intimate knowledge of the woman,’ he hissed in French from the corner of his mouth.

‘Did you sell Frau Gottewald meat?’ I asked.

‘A rabbit, a hare,’ he said. ‘But I never asked for money. I left them hanging on the door. As a gift for the children.’

‘What was the woman like? Was she tall, or short? Blonde, or dark?’

Sweat and blood trickled off his brow, running down his face and neck in rivulets, but he did not heed my question.

‘Well, Durskeitner?’ I needled. ‘What was she like?’

‘Small,’ he murmured at last. ‘Small and black.’

It seemed to cost him a great deal, for he fell silent again.

‘Black?’ I echoed sarcastically. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Are you talking of the woman’s hair, or her complexion?’ Lavedrine intervened. Just as quickly, he qualified the question. ‘Her skin, I mean.’

Durskeitner raised his eyes as if to thank Lavedrine. ‘The hair,’ he said.

‘Describe Frau Gottewald’s face,’ I pressed on. ‘Was she pretty?’

‘Pretty?’ he echoed, as if the concept was unknown to him.

I groaned with impatience. If the woman had been left alone in the forest,
anything might happen to her. But suddenly, without any prompting, the prisoner spoke up.

‘She was a good woman, that mother. Good to them babies.’

‘What do you mean?’ Lavedrine asked quietly. ‘Did she keep her little ones safe?’

Durskeitner nodded vigorously.

‘Who was she protecting them
from
?’ Lavedrine coaxed. ‘Was someone trying to hurt them? Can you tell us that? If you help us, we will try to help you.’

There it was again. That wheedling complicity grated on my nerves, as much as the reticence of the only witness we had. A witness, I reminded myself, who might well be the killer.

‘That house was empty,’ the prisoner said, staring up at Lavedrine with wide, unblinking eyes. ‘Then, a family came. A soldier, a woman, three little babies.’

‘Did anyone visit them?’ I snapped. ‘A stranger, or someone that you knew?’

‘No one,’ he muttered. ‘Only them . . .’

He did not look at me. His eyes never shifted from Lavedrine.

‘But the man went away, sir,’ he continued. ‘That mother was alone. There was no one to hunt for her. It isn’t easy to feed so many cubs. That’s why I left meat on the doorstep. But I never spoke to her. Not once! I’d creep up late at night, or very early in the morning, and leave a quail, or a cut of venison. She kept those babies safe from harm. She was a good mother.’

I let out a loud sigh at this prattling idiocy. The Gottewald family had been living in that cottage for months. The husband, too, until he was posted to Kamenetz. The woman had remained alone with the children after he left. Yet all that Durskeitner could decribe of this domestic scene was a mother feeding her young. She might have been a swallow carrying grubs to the chicks in her nest.

‘So, you took it upon yourself to give them food,’ I summarised.

‘Yes, sir,’ he replied, as if it were a fact requiring no explanation.

Silence followed, broken only by the irregular rasps of Durskeitner’s breathing.

Throughout the interrogation, he had been seized by fits of shivering. There were pools of blood and water on the floor. Probably the soldiers had stripped him off, then thrown buckets of water on him. To wash him off, perhaps, or stop the bleeding. But also to intensify his suffering. The air was icy cold.

‘You have hidden her somewhere, haven’t you?’ I said sternly.

Durskeitner did not move an inch. He might have turned to stone.

‘Where is she?’ I insisted.

The man looked back at me like a cornered deer.

‘We can consider this interrogation over, I think.’ Lavedrine spoke slowly, as if to make his meaning clear. I was not certain whether he was talking to Durskeitner, or to me.

‘What do you mean?’ I hissed.

I was confused. Was this another French trick?

Lavedrine did not answer. He stepped across to the door, and called for the guards.

‘We have finished here,’ he told the sergeant, adding that Durskeitner should be kept there in case we needed him again. ‘Find him some clothes and a blanket. He has been treated harshly enough. I shouldn’t wonder if he’s dying of cold.’

Then, he walked out of the room without a backward glance.

I followed him, furious.

‘I played the part you gave me,’ I snapped at his back. ‘That man has seen the woman. He knows what she looks like. Why stop now? He hasn’t told us one single useful thing!’

Lavedrine turned to me with a show of amazement.

‘That man kills animals,’ he said. ‘He skins them, cuts off their heads and hangs them up on poles. He may be a savage, but he would never hurt the young. He wouldn’t drown a motherless kitten. Why waste time? Durskeitner has told us what he knows. It may not be what we hoped for, but that is it. He knows more about animals. He’d have trouble describing any human being. Frau Gottewald is small and dark, and she protects her children. He has told us quite a lot.’

Lavedrine looked down his nose at me.

‘If you think that a cabin in the woods is enough to condemn him,’ he continued, ‘go ahead, declare the case solved. Similar evidence might be found in your house. Or in mine, if you prefer. Is this how you go about solving crimes in Prussia, Herr Procurator? If so, I thank the Lord that I am French!’

‘Facing trumped-up charges from the Committee of Social Health?’ I parried, unable to restrain my sarcasm.

Lavedrine stared coldly at me. ‘I was tried by just such a parody during the Terror, Herr Procurator. Not even a Prussian should be subjected to a travesty of that sort. I am amazed that you would even suggest it.’

We stood face to face. My fists were bunched angrily at my sides. His arms were stiffly crossed. For the second time, we both came close to issuing
a challenge that the other could not have honourably refused. And suddenly, I realised the idiocy of it. He, a Frenchman, was bent on defending a Prussian subject from summary justice, while I, a Prussian magistrate, could see no better way out of the impasse.

‘That cabin means little, unless we find the woman,’ Lavedrine went on more soberly, letting his arms fall. ‘This interrogation alters nothing, Stiffeniis. Our enquiries must go ahead. With you to Kamenetz, while I stay here to search out Frau Gottewald. Or her corpse.’

He said all this without a trace of irony. I had the impression that he was taking my measure, drawing his own conclusions.

‘My duty is to charge off like a messenger,’ I said, tasting acid on my tongue, ‘while you stay here, solve the case, and take the glory for yourself. Is that your plan?’

I felt sure that Dittersdorf had overstated the necessity for me to make the journey alone. What could Kamenetz contain which was unfit for foreign consumption? Would the might of Napoleon be intimidated by a fortress full of defeated Prussians in the middle of nowhere?

‘My plan?’ he echoed.

‘To see me out of Lotingen as rapidly as possible,’ I snapped.

‘You surprise me, sir,’ he said, eyeing me curiously. ‘I had the distinct impression that you were scheming with Dittersdorf to get rid of
me
.’

We stood in silence for a moment.

‘I did have a plan,’ he said with a sudden smile. ‘A more innocent one. I meant to take you home. Your wife will have passed a sleepless night. I wouldn’t want her to think that you’ve been brutalised by the occupying army.’

‘Do not trouble yourself on Helena’s account,’ I began to say.

‘It is my sacred duty,’ he interrupted, his sarcasm as finely grained as the crystals in a slab of porphyry. ‘As an officer and a gentleman. Frau Stiffeniis must be told that we cannot get along without your help.’

 9 

A
S
I
WALKED
through the town with Lavedrine, one thought weighed on my mind.

How could I shield Helena from the truth?

I did not want to tell her of the murders, then announce that I must set off on a long, dangerous journey to the East. And yet, if she did not hear the truth from my lips, someone else might tell her. I would be away for four or five nights at the most. With Lotte’s help, the secret might be kept until I returned. The maid would need to watch her tongue, but she could manage that. The most immediate problem was the Frenchman at my side.

Could I persuade Lavedrine to go along with my scheme?

He was in the best of humours. It was as if the corpses of those children had ceased to exist, as if they had melted away with the morning mist. He seemed disposed to chatter about every single thing that he saw. We stopped to watch a herd of cows pass by on their way to the slaughterhouse. Shopkeepers in white aprons were taking down their shutters, exchanging greetings. Their boys were washing the cobbles, shovelling up the warm droppings of the animals. He was delighted with them all.

‘It’s just like any other morning,’ he said. ‘No one knows yet.’

I did not reply.

Once the news got out, Lotingen would never be the same again.

‘I love to watch a town wake up,’ he declared, dragging me from my leaden thoughts. ‘It tells you more about the place than any other time. More than the night, certainly. Darkness is the same wherever you go, but morning has a distinctive character. It’s the same with passion. In the light of dawn, you discover who your companion of the night truly is. The ‘sacred unmasking’ is what I call it. Beneath the veil you may find ugliness or beauty, and sometimes both parts, equally mixed. Take Prussia, Stiffeniis. She is a slow-blooded peasant girl wrapped up in a military greatcoat. Not unlike my native Normandy, if I am honest. Look about you, this is the real Prussia.’

I looked without answering.

The real Prussia was standing on every corner. French dragoons with waxed moustaches, infantrymen with hair tied up in greasy pigtails, all clutching muskets and eyeing the people of Lotingen with suspicion.