HS02 - Days of Atonement (12 page)

‘Frenchmen are in a privileged position,’ he went on, seemingly oblivious to the fact that I was Prussian. ‘We are free to travel, to know men and explore the world. And I am luckier than most. I know those men and see those places from a unique standpoint.’

He halted, as if he were intent on drawing me out of my silence.

‘Which point of view is that?’ I asked.

‘Crime, Stiffeniis!’ he enthused. ‘We plumb the depths of human depravity, and set the upturned world to rights. We go exploring in a strange and secret terrain.’

In this rapturous mood, I found no opportunity to confide in him.

Shortly afterwards, we stopped at the administrative building next door to the town hall. The French had requisitioned it as their general quarters. Mutiez was comfortably set up in a large, bright office with an immense open fire on the first floor. His windows looked out on the tiny courthouse on the far side of the square, where I worked in the shadow of the oppressor.

The French
laissez-passer
had been prepared for my journey to the East, though Mutiez seemed tense when he handed it to me. ‘The city seems quiet for the moment,’ he said, a worried smile on his handsome face. ‘God knows how long the peace will last. Our troops will be suspected of the massacre, I do not doubt. As you requested, the house is being guarded, the bodies have been removed. When are you leaving, Herr Procurator?’

‘Stiffeniis is on his way home, Henri. To say goodbye to his wife, and collect his laundry,’ Lavedrine put in, resting his hand on my shoulder as if we were long-standing friends. ‘The most tiresome task falls to him. Speaking for myself, I am grateful.’

We left the building, and stopped next at the Old Temple Inn, an ancient and dilapidated edifice which had once been the courthouse of Lotingen. Hidden away in a dark and cluttered cupboard of a room, we found the district governor in all his tattered glory. The room to the left of the derelict entrance hall contained the only stove in the building that was functioning, and Count Dittersdorf had wisely reserved it for his own use. With a pile of logs in one corner, and stacks of papers and files in another, there was hardly room for the three of us. The smell in there was musty and foul, as if dead rats were rotting beneath the ancient floorboards, which was most likely.

Aldebrand Dittersdorf seemed put out when he found me in the presence of Lavedrine. We stayed no more than five minutes, as I took possession of a
sum of money for the journey, and a Prussian letter-of-embassy which he had hurriedly prepared, signed, and stamped for me. His hand was shaking slightly, I noticed.

‘I sincerely hope that this misfortune will not destroy our good relations, Colonel Lavedrine,’ Count Dittersdorf said, choosing his words very carefully. He appeared to be intimidated, though whether on account of being discovered in such squalid surroundings, or the necessity of having to eat humble pie before the Frenchman, I could not tell.

Lavedrine replied with an ironic smile. ‘In spite of what has happened . . . Because of it, indeed, all three of us may yet sit down to drink a glass of wine and celebrate the capture of the murderer. And very soon, I hope.’

While Lavedrine played the courtier, I looked quickly through the contents of the envelope that Dittersdorf had handed to me. He had barely said a word, but there was no mistaking his glance. Inside the letter of passport, I found a folded note.
For your eyes only
was scribbled on the paper. With a furtive flick of my forefinger, I read the contents.
May the Lord be your guide! In His infinite wisdom, may He open the gates of Kamenetz to no one but yourself.
He was still more concerned with Kamenetz and its secrets than he was about what had happened to the Gottewald family.

I slid the note back into the envelope as Lavedrine prepared to leave.

As we emerged into the street, he stepped straight up into a coach standing next to the kerb, a familiar coat-of-arms emblazoned on the door. ‘This will do,’ he declared. ‘Give the coachman directions to your house.’

Count Dittersdorf’s driver was shocked, but did not dare to challenge the Frenchman’s rude requisitioning of his vehicle. He looked at me, clearly hoping that I, a fellow Prussian and the town magistrate, would spring to his defence.

‘You know the road, Paulus,’ I said. ‘Your master will understand.’

Lavedrine settled back comfortably against the leather seat.

‘Poor Dittersdorf,’ he said. ‘How will he bear up? The sky has fallen on his head. All the fine dinners in the world won’t save him. He’ll have his work cut out to keep the French and the Prussians from each other’s throats. All his good offices have disappeared into thin air.’

The persistent good humour of my French colleague began to grate on my nerves.

‘Before we arrive,’ I began, my tongue as heavy as a stone, ‘I must discuss a personal matter with you. I do not want my wife to know the truth. Not yet, I mean. Not while I am forced to travel. She has been through hell in the past year. I’m not sure how she may react to the news of children slaughtered in their beds, and a mother who has disappeared. I’ll tell her everything the instant I return.’

For some moments, Lavedrine continued to gaze out of the carriage window.

‘Do you think that’s wise?’ he asked quietly. ‘I mean to say, in a town as small as this, it won’t be long before the people talk of nothing else. Your wife will hear of it. It is a startlingly brutal crime. I don’t see how you can hide the news from her.’

‘I would prefer to tell her myself,’ I insisted. ‘But not today. Not now. She’ll have spent a bad night, believing that I’ve been abducted. And like the Gottewalds, we have three young children. The youngest was born two months ago. It has not been easy. And now, I am obliged to go away.’

He turned to face me. His brows creased into a frown as he brushed the shock of grey curls from his forehead.

‘What am I to say?’ he asked.

I had thought it through, and I told him exactly what I planned. The tale was plausible enough; it would explain the involvement of the French and the Prussians, and also the need for me to go to Kamenetz. I intended to tell her that a messenger from the fortress had been killed in Lotingen, and that a local magistrate would be obliged to look into the Prussian side of the case.

‘Half lies, half truth,’ Lavedrine observed caustically. ‘I will tell the truthful half, if that is what you want.’

I felt relieved. At least in part.

Lavedrine looked out of the window, but the discussion was not over. With careless ease, he managed to penetrate to the heart of the matter. That is, the part which was still troubling me. ‘What will happen if Frau Stiffeniis goes to visit friends?’ he asked. ‘Or shopping in the market square with her children?’

‘Helena will not leave the house. Except with me,’ I said. ‘Since the invasion, my wife has . . . changed. It is as if she is plagued by all that has happened, by all that may yet occur. She put on a show of bravery last night when she thought that Mutiez had come to arrest me, but God knows what was going through her mind.’

Lavedrine sat back and let out a sort of groaning sigh.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘Times like these are hard on women. War is worse for them, I think, than it is for us. Men skate nimbly over the surface of things; women do not. I have always held that opinion. And if I had not, there was a person who would have brought the matter to my attention. I was married once myself. Though not for long . . .’

I had no desire to trade information from his private life for details of my own. I cared not who Madame Lavedrine might have been, nor what had come between them. Helena was my only concern.

Paulus brought the coach around the final corner, the horses began to canter down the gentle slope towards my house, and I looked anxiously out of the window. The sight that greeted my eyes was a balm to my spirit. Lotte had washed the linen and hung it out to dry in the garden, as she always did on a Tuesday. White sheets and shirts billowed in the wind like bunting to welcome me home.

But as the carriage rattled to a halt on the gravel in front of my gate, the exact spot where Mutiez had parked his vehicle the night before, I was obliged to think again. The door flew open, as if Helena had remained on guard behind the peephole all night long, and she came running madly down the path to meet me. She had replaced her nightgown with the light-grey worsted dress and brown apron that she wore about the house, but she was not herself. Her hair was her ensign. The fact that she had not troubled to tame her wild locks and tie them up tightly at her neck, as she always did, spoke louder than any declaration of her true state of mind. She would never allow herself to be seen by any person, except myself, in such an unkempt manner. That tormented, angry bramble of bouncing chestnut curls flew from side to side as she ran towards me.

‘Hanno! Is it really you?’ she cried with almighty sobs.

As she pronounced the final word, she threw herself into my open arms, nearly knocking me to the ground. I felt her warm tears on my neck, her lips hot and trembling against my cheek. Murmuring half-finished words of thanks to God, and words of hate for all the French, she kissed me wildly on the nose, the mouth and eyes. The thought that Lavedrine was watching hampered my responses, and I drew up stiffly, catching her wrists, struggling to hold her still, while trying to calm her.

Suddenly, glancing over my shoulder, Helena froze.

‘Not alone?’ she whispered, her eyes bright with terror.

Before I could reply, Lavedrine stepped down from the coach.

‘I hope you will excuse this intrusion, Frau Stiffeniis,’ he said. ‘Do you remember me, I wonder? We met at Count Dittersdorf’s.’

Helena stared at him, catching at her lower lip with her teeth. In the sullen silence, her questioning glare turning into a troubled frown. I knew that look too well. I had seen it often. Since the day when news of Jena had reached town, and we began to prepare for flight, that dour expression had become habitual. Those dark chasms appeared on either side of her mouth again, scarring her cheeks. It must have been clear to any man that she was frightened of him.

‘I came to offer my apologies,
madame
,’ Lavedrine said quickly. ‘I was carried off last night in the same rough manner as your husband. I thought my hour had come. But as you can see, we are both safe and in the best of spirits.’

Helena swelled up.

‘I doubt that you were half so frightened,’ she answered sharply. ‘You are French, sir. You have not suffered what we have been obliged to suffer.’

Lavedrine smiled and spread his arms in apology.

‘Could I ever hope to deny that you are right? But here is your husband, Frau Stiffeniis. Living proof of what I say. He is well, as I told you, and stronger than he has ever been before. If he was precious to Prussia alone, he is now worth his weight in gold to France.’

Helena turned her gaze on me, her eyes wide and questioning, and I wondered whether Lavedrine had gone too far. What did such flattery mean, she seemed to ask. I guessed how little disposed she was to talk to any Frenchman after the terror of the night and I knew how dangerous she considered Lavedrine to be after our public wrangle at the Dittersdorf feast. Now, I was obliged to inform her that he and I would be working in close liaison, that there would be many more meetings with the Frenchman, whether she liked it or not.

‘What has happened, Hanno?’ she asked. Her eyes looked deep into mine. They expressed an intensity of feeling that was wholly absent from her voice. ‘Where did they take you? No one seemed to know at the police station.’

Lavedrine cleared his throat, as if to reply, but I spoke first.

‘There has been a killing. French and Prussian troopers were involved. Colonel Lavedrine and I have been ordered to look into the matter,’ I said, raising my hands to the heavens in a gesture of mock despair. ‘No more than that.’

My greatest fear was that she would see through this protective wall of lies. How often in recent times had she caught me out with a penetrating stare, forcing me to tell her everything, no matter how cruel the truth was.

‘No more?’ she echoed, catching my tone exactly. ‘How many men are dead?’

‘Three,’ I said. My chest felt heavy and strained, as if I had been forced to run. ‘Two of them were Prussian,’ I clarified. ‘There’s some confusion about how the fight broke out. I must speak to our men; Colonel Lavedrine will question their soldiers. As the laws of both our nations require. The matter should be settled within a few days.’

I was afraid that Helena would latch on to my embarrassment. I looked up at the sky, down at the ground, then at Lavedrine, as I told my tale. I scanned the far horizon, glanced at my pocket-watch, and straightened my cuffs, rather than look into her eyes. My son was four years old, yet even Manni was better at the business of lying. He would wolf down a piece of cake, then tell you doe-eyed—the crumbs and cream spattered all over his face and mouth—that he had not had
his
slice yet.

‘
Bien sûr, madame
!’ Lavedrine came to my aid. ‘A few days. I only hope that there will be sufficient time for us all to become good friends,’ he said jovially, clapping one hand on my shoulder, the other on my arm. ‘I am greatly interested in the working methods of Procurator Stiffeniis. Who knows, your husband may even learn something useful from me in exchange.’

He turned in my direction, a sweet and amicable smile illuminating his face. We might have been two old friends recently reacquainted after a silly dispute, eager to put the past behind us. I glanced at the Frenchman, warning him not to go too far, smiling for Helena’s benefit. I knew him well enough to fear his irony and incisive tongue. Even so, I had to appreciate the skill with which he played his part in placating my wife’s fears.

Helena’s hand reached for mine and gently pressed upon my fingers. It was a natural, assured gesture, apparently free of tension, and this impression was reinforced by the show of charm with which she turned and spoke to Lavedrine.

‘Do you intend to step into our house, sir?’ she asked.