HS02 - Days of Atonement (47 page)

Without any hesitation or prompting, she took a pace to the right and stood before a tall wooden cupboard. Reaching out her hands, she pulled open the drawer. She did not look inside, but felt about with her fingers. A moment or two later, apparently satisfied, she glanced at the contents, and nodded, as if some intuition had been confirmed. She lifted out a breadknife and a cutting-board, turned around and laid them deftly on the edge of the table. Then, she touched the chair on her left.

‘This is where
she
sat,’ she said quietly.

She turned back and opened the upper half of the cupboard. Crockery and glass were stored in good order on the shelves, but Helena did not close the cupboard door. Instead, her hands ranged along the shelves, moving something here or there, setting it carefully back in its place. Then she ran her hands along the undersides of the shelving, as if she thought to find something hidden or secret. And all the while, her gaze was lost, far away, ranging over the woodland scene beyond the glass of the window. A curtain of trees and juniper bushes enclosed the garden and separated it from the wilderness. In the centre, a clump of saplings, two knee-high oaks, and three smaller evergreen plants, were surrounded by a circle of stones.

Suddenly, a sigh escaped from her lips.

She might have been Sybille Gottewald alone, working in her kitchen.

‘She wanted to stay,’ she whispered. ‘She planted trees . . .’

I glanced out of the window. A cream-coloured deer was standing frozen in the far corner of the enclosure. Helena had seen it. The animal had spotted her.

Lavedrine relaxed his hold on my arm. ‘Good. Very good,’ he murmured to me. ‘She is playing the part exceptionally well.’ His eyes followed Helena’s every move, gleaming with tender hope, like the eyes of a music master watching his prize pupil perform exactly as he hoped she would.

The sharp blade of jealousy jabbed at my heart, twisting this way and that as it sought out the most painful, vulnerable spot. My wife appeared as a sort of automaton, moving and behaving precisely as her
maestro
indicated. What unseen wires and hidden springs were being worked between the pair of them, I asked myself.

‘It did not happen here.’

Helena’s voice was low, but it was firm. As she spoke, her eyes ran quickly over the table and the plates again, and ranged once more across the sink and beyond to the view of the garden through the kitchen window. The deer had disappeared as silently as it had materialised.

‘Am I right?’

That question was not addressed to me.

‘You are,’ he answered. ‘This is where they ate. Durskeitner, the hunter, often saw them when he passed this way. Earlier that day, he saw the table laid for lunch. And he found the room in this state, the lamp lit, when he entered the house that night and discovered the bodies.’

‘Frau Gottewald had just put the cutting-board and breadknife away. But she had not time enough to wash up the plates and put them away again when the killer entered. Were they found upstairs?’

Lavedrine silently nodded.

‘I’d like to go up there now,’ she said, glancing at the ceiling. ‘That ramp leads to the bedroom, I suppose.’

I felt a protest rising to my lips, but Lavedrine spoke out before me.

‘It does,’ he said.

She turned without a word, placed her hands on the rail, and began to climb.

I made a move to follow, but Lavedrine’s restraining hand came up and held me back again. ‘Give her time,’ he whispered, his eyes on Helena as she climbed upwards, moving slowly, as if fearful that the creaking of the ancient wood might awaken someone sleeping in the bedroom. ‘We must leave her alone for some moments,’ he added.

I took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

‘What do you expect from her?’ I hissed angrily.

‘Expect?’ he echoed faintly. ‘I hope that Helena will see what you and I have
not
been able to see, Herr Procurator. That’s what I want! A woman lived in this house for months, alone, except for her children. No man has been present for any extended period of time. Everything is positioned—
organised—in the manner that the housewife left it. This house speaks of Sybille Gottewald. You and I are deaf to that woman’s voice, but Helena’s hearing is more acute, I’ll be bound.’

We remained where we were.

Above our heads, we could hear the footsteps of my wife. She moved across the room, the ancient wooden floorboards creaking and shifting beneath her weight. Each step she took seemed to provoke an echoing thump from my heart. Ever so slowly, she made her way over to the bed. For some moments, no sound was heard. I held my breath for longer than was good for me. Then, her position shifted, back and forth, as if she had moved her weight from one foot to the other, then back again. Was she hesitating? Had fright clasped her in its grip? Even as I made to lunge for the stairs, the wood shifted above my head. She was walking to the window. She stood there for quite some time, looking out, I imagined, at the garden at the rear of the cottage. Suddenly, the boards creaked, and she moved again, following the line of the wall to the tiny adjoining closet-room. I heard the sound of sliding wood, and realised that she was opening a drawer, then silence as she examined the contents. This sequence was repeated three times. Lavedrine and I were standing side by side, our eyes fixed upon the wooden ceiling, as if it were made of glass and we could see what Helena was doing up there. Then, a drawer closed with a rumble, and her footsteps began to move again, crossing the bedroom, skirting around the end of the bed, and coming to rest in the darkest corner of the room, which was the furthest removed from the bed, the window, and the staircase. There, she stopped again.

I cannot say how long we stood in silence. Helena above, Lavedrine and I below.

I prayed that she would stop what she was doing, leave that place at once, and ask me to take her home. Lavedrine, no doubt, was doing the opposite: urging Helena on, hoping that she would manage to see whatever it was that he wished her to see.

‘Come up,’ she called.

Lavedrine and I sprang forward like unleashed greyhounds after a bolting hare. My hands grasped at the rail leading up to the bedroom, as did his, but I was the first. I edged him back with my shoulder, blocking the way, fixing him with my eye, as if to say that I was ready and able to meet any challenge.

He smiled coldly, lowered his eyes, and stood back.

‘This is not a race, Stiffeniis,’ he said. ‘After you, naturally.’

I did not linger, but scurried to the upper floor. The room was lit by sunlight, a pale-yellow aura, and it was surprisingly warm. I had not expected that, but then again, what was I to expect? Instinctively, I looked towards the bed, as if those three corpses might still be laid out there. The bodies of the
children had been buried, of course, but the evidence of their murder had not. Mutiez had done his duty well. The pillows and the sheets were marked with blood, as I remembered them, and they were arranged more or less as I had seen them. In such bright light, however, the effect was weak, pale, like a watercolour painting. The spattered trails of bloodspots, on the wall behind the bed and on the ceiling, had faded to a dullish brown, where I had seen them black, wet, fresh.

‘Has the room been cleaned, Hanno?’

I was shocked by the bluntness of the question, and took a deep breath.

‘This is how we found it. Only the bodies have been removed,’ I said.

‘There should be blood . . .’ Helena murmured, taking a step closer to the bed. ‘Here on the floor,’ she said, pointing with her finger. ‘There ought to be stains. Though many days have passed, a pool of blood would leave a mark on a wooden floor.’

‘They have faded,’ I assured her, taking a step forward, then stopping. I did not wish her to imagine the horror that we had seen. ‘It may
look
as if someone has made an attempt to clean the place, but . . .’

‘You are correct, Helena,’ Lavedrine growled from behind my back. He went on in a more determined manner: ‘There is very little blood, given what happened here.’

‘What reason could there be for anyone to clean it up?’

Helena’s hands were tightly clasped together, her knuckles white, as if she were praying for a miracle to happen. I could see that the thought of someone cleaning up the blood perplexed her terribly. Suddenly, her eyes opened wide with fright.

‘Is this what those rumours were talking of?’ she asked, her gaze shifting from me to Lavedrine.

‘Which rumours?’ I asked her gently.

‘That what the killers wanted was the children’s blood. That the Jews might be involved.’

I shook my head. ‘We have no . . .’

‘The babies were butchered,’ Lavedrine spoke out, drowning my voice. ‘Two of them were mutilated. And there is, indeed, very little blood. These are facts. Can you tell us nothing new?’ he implored her.

I was surprised by the tone of his voice. He had lost all hope of interpreting the mystery of that house. What could he possibly hope to learn from her?

Helena looked around slowly.

She crossed her arms over her breasts and shivered, as if she suddenly felt the cold. She seemed smaller, even more defenceless without her cloak. Suddenly, her head lifted sharply, and her eyes darted towards Lavedrine.

‘Frau Gottewald lived here,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Alone with her children.’

‘Does something surprise you?’ Lavedrine enquired.

I could see that she was tense. A vein was throbbing visibly in her temple.

‘What is here does not surprise me,’ she replied. ‘I am more surprised by what is
not
here.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

She looked around as if to convince herself of what she was about to say.

‘There is very little sign of a woman in this house,’ she said.

 33 

‘C
LOTHS
?’

Our mouths hung open, our eyes gaped wide. We might both have been punched in the stomach, as Helena explained what she meant.

‘I have searched all the drawers,’ she went on, pressing her lips to the tips of her fingers like a priestess praying. ‘Down in the kitchen, up here in the bedroom. In that tiny box-room behind the bed as well. There is a trunk and a small cupboard, containing some clothes. Not many. A few dresses, a worn-out pair of shoes. The children’s things . . . They were only here a short time, I know, but, well, there are some things that a woman simply cannot do without.’

Lavedrine darted a look at me.

If he thought that Helena was speaking some strange language that only a married man could comprehend, a common logic of shared domesticity that was wholly alien to him, he was wrong.

‘Helena, be more precise,’ I urged, equally puzzled.

She stared at me before she spoke. It was a look that I recognised. An expression she adopted when the little ones failed to behave as they ought, or failed to understand something obvious that she had told them more than once. ‘Just think of our home. Think of our kitchen. What sort of things do you always find there?’

I shrugged uncertainly. ‘Apart from the furniture . . . We have more, of course.’

‘Go on,’ she urged me.

‘Well, there are plates, pots, pans. Shelves where we keep them. The row of cups on hooks. The cupboard, the larder. Onions hanging near the fireplace. Oh, and jars of spices, honey, and preserves,’ I blurted out, as if suddenly inspired.

‘What else?’ she insisted.

I thought for a moment, finding it difficult to recall details, though we had been living in the house for many years, and every day I entered the
kitchen frequently. ‘The sieves hanging on the wall,’ I added, ‘for straining flour and making cheese. The flour bin, of course. But . . . what?’ I was growing desperate. ‘The bread sack dangling from the shelf, so the mice won’t get at it. Ah yes, I remember now. Aprons hanging up behind the door. The mop and bucket that Lotte uses when she does the housework . . .’ I stopped, but I had not finished. There was more to our kitchen than I had thought. More again that I still had not described. I began to see what Helena was getting at.

‘You were in the kitchen just last night,’ she coaxed, ‘preparing something for today. You told me that it was messy.’