The Ludwig Conspiracy (23 page)

“What, by arriving in a car?” Steven raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Let’s say he’d probably rather see us arrive in a horse-drawn cab. But you’ll pass nicely as a gentleman of the old school.”

The art detective smiled, while Steven looked critically down at himself. He had decided to keep his evening suit from yesterday on; he liked it much better than Sara’s ex-boyfriend’s casual, loose-fitting garments. Over it he wore a close-fitting black coat that they had also bought yesterday afternoon. In fact the bookseller did look a little like a nineteenth-century gentleman on the verge of middle age.

All I need is a top hat and a walking stick,
he thought,
and my grandfather would be proud of me.

Sara had changed her clothes. Her green woolen dress and hooded jacket were slightly creased, mainly because she and Steven had spent the last few hours sleeping in the car at a roadside picnic area. However, after two cigarettes and a cardboard cup of coffee from a gas station in the Allgäu, the art detective now made a remarkably fresh impression.

“Are you really sure we ought to let this Zöller in on our secrets?” Steven asked as he parked the Mini under the colorful fall leaves of the oak tree. “I mean, I’m still wanted by the police.”

“I don’t think Uncle Lu would turn us in. And even if he did, we have to take the risk. If we must, we’ll just go back on the run.” Sara got out and went toward the crooked little house. She pushed the garden gate, which opened on squealing hinges. “If we want to crack the cipher, then we need the help of Albert Zöller. He and my uncle have known each other for decades, and they were always in touch about Ludwig. As far as I know, before he retired, Zöller was an engine driver for German Railways, but the Fairy-tale King has always been his passion. Paul thought that Uncle Lu was way ahead of the experts in his knowledge of the king’s last years. He’s drawn up a precise account of every day of Ludwig’s life.”

“Why ‘Uncle Lu’?” Steven asked as he followed Sara through the front garden, with its harvested vegetable and herb beds. “His name’s Albert, right?”

Sara turned with a twinkle in her eye. “Can’t you work that out for yourself?”

She pulled a rusty chain near the entrance, and a bell rang. After a while they heard heavy, dragging footsteps. When the door finally opened, Steven instinctively took a step back. The man standing in front of them in a crumpled shirt and stained pants was nearly six feet tall. He was broadly built, not to say stout, with fleshy cheeks through which little red veins ran. His full head of hair was salt-and-pepper colored and as untidy as if he had just got out of bed. Steven guessed Albert Zöller’s age as at least seventy. It was clear to the bookseller at once why Sara called him Uncle Lu.

If the Fairy-tale King had lived a few decades longer, he’d have looked just like Zöller.
The thought, unbidden, shot through his mind.
Well, he’d probably have died of gout and heart disease first. This man must have a remarkable constitution.

“Yes?” the bear in front of them growled. He wore rimless reading glasses that looked ridiculously small on his broad face. Despite the early hour, Sara and Steven had obviously disturbed his studies. “If you’re Jehovah’s Witnesses, go to hell. I’m the Antichrist.”

Sara bobbed an old-fashioned curtsey. “Forgive us for calling on you so early, Herr Zöller. I’m Professor Paul Liebermann’s niece, and . . .”

“Liebermann?” The gruff old man’s face instantly became friendlier. He looked at Sara with concern. “My God, I read about that gruesome murder in the newspaper. Dear old Paul. I . . . I’m so sorry.” His voice had a pleasantly Bavarian note to it, almost like the voice of a kindly fairy-tale uncle.

“Thank you, Herr Zöller. Uncle Paul often talked about you.” The art detective took a deep breath before going on. “To be frank, we’re here because we want to find out more about his death. We think the murder had something to do with the mysteries surrounding King Ludwig the Second.” She pointed to Steven beside her. “My friend here, an antiquarian bookseller from Munich, was the last person to see my uncle alive. Paul left something behind with him. Something mysterious, and we need your help.”

“Just a moment.” Uncle Lu frowned, which made him look like an angry bison. He scrutinized Steven without moving. What felt like an eternity passed before Zöller finally moved again.

“Aren’t you the fellow the police are looking for in connection with Paul’s murder?” he finally asked.

“Herr Zöller, I give you my word that Herr Lukas has nothing to do with it,” Sara said soothingly. “It’s all a big misunderstanding. If you’ll let us in, I can explain everything to you.”

“Your word of honor, eh?” Uncle Lu shook his broad head thoughtfully, as if he were x-raying the bookseller through his reading glasses. “Very well,” he said at last, “but only because you’re Paul’s niece.”

The old man abruptly turned to the house, almost bumping into the door frame. Sara and Steven followed him into a little room that seemed to be both kitchen and living room.

There was an old-fashioned white enamel stove against the back wall. A scratched table with several books open on it stood in one corner. In another, they saw a sofa and a TV set; Steven thought it was probably still a black-and-white one. A door with flowered wallpaper over it led to a backroom.

“I was just going to make myself tea and work on my book,” Uncle Lu said. “Would you like some tea yourselves?”

Steven nodded. “Thank you, yes. What kind of book are you writing?”

“It’s on Ludwig’s connection with Edgar Allan Poe.” Zöller shrugged his shoulders and filled three cracked cups with a steaming-hot brown brew. “Not that I expect any publishing house to take an interest in it. Just like my last five books. All the same, plenty of journalists come knocking at my door. Good God, what are you gawking at in that stupid way?”

Steven jumped. He had been staring at the stout old man. His likeness to Ludwig II was indeed striking.

“It’s only because . . . er . . .” he began carefully. But Uncle Lu interrupted him with an impatient gesture.

“Yes, yes, I know that I look like him,” he growled. “I was often invited to act as his double at meetings of those loyal to the king’s memory. But I won’t have any more to do with those demented royalists. Too many nut cases, not a serious scholar among them.” Zöller slurped his tea with relish. “Well, never mind that. You’re here because of Paul. So how can I help you?”

Sara quickly cleared her throat, and then she began telling him their story—about her uncle’s murder, the find of the little treasure chest, the mysterious diary, and their search for the crucial keyword. She left out only their pursuit at Linderhof and the Cowled Men. As she told her tale, Uncle Lu sat there as if turned to stone. He seemed to have forgotten his tea entirely. When Sara came to the end of the story at last, he said nothing for some time. Then he spoke up.

“This little chest with the diary,” he began quietly. “Could I have a look at it?”

“Of course.” Steven unzipped his backpack and took the container out. Reverently, as if he were in a church, Zöller stroked the lacquered wood; then he lifted the lid and took out the photographs, the lock of hair, and the book. He arranged them on the table as if they were magical artifacts.

“Can it be possible?” he whispered. “Did he really write it all down?”

“What do you mean?” Sara asked, looking attentively at the old man. “Have you heard about this book before?”

“There have been . . . theories,” Uncle Lu replied hesitantly. “Nothing precise. Shortly after the king’s death, Dr. Schleiss von Loewenfeld and Theodor Marot expressed their opinions to a small circle of friends. But the sources are vague. And now this . . .”

He carefully opened the diary and looked surprised to see the secret writing.

“It’s the Shelton’s shorthand that I told you about,” Sara said, and pointed to Steven. “Herr Lukas has managed to decipher it. We’ve also deciphered part of a Vigenère code. But as for the titles of those poems . . .” She sighed. “To be honest, we’re at a loss.”

“Ludwig and very likely Theodor Marot, too, were profoundly romantic characters.” Uncle Lu leafed thoughtfully through the yellowed pages of the diary. “So it’s not surprising if the assistant physician used those poems as a code. More interesting is
what
he wanted to encode. And above all, why Paul was killed for getting involved.” He looked deep into Steven’s eyes. “I’ll believe that you had nothing to do with his murder, Herr Lukas. But if you’re lying to me, I’ll deal with you in exactly the same way as those deranged men dealt with Paul. Understand?”

“On my word of honor, I really had nothing to do with . . .” Steven began, but Sara interrupted him.

“You haven’t told us yet what you know about the book,” she said in a loud voice, changing the subject. “Obviously it’s far more than we’ve managed to find out.”

“Very well.” Breathing heavily, Uncle Lu rose from his chair and adjusted his pants. His stomach hung over his belt like a squashed medicine ball. “It’s about time I let you into my holy of holies. And bring that with you, for heaven’s sake.” He pointed to the little box containing the diary. “It mustn’t fall into the wrong hands no matter what.”

Without another word, he shuffled toward the door at the back of the room.

“Y
OU’RE . . . ER,
renovating?”

Disappointed, Steven looked around the room on the other side of the door. He had expected a library, a study, at least a desk covered by documents. But what he saw was a combination of a living room and a temporary toolshed. Newspapers were stacked on a shabby armchair; an old Bakelite telephone stood on an otherwise-empty bookcase along the back wall. To the left was a row of old crates that had once held fruit, with assorted drills, screwdrivers, and a sledgehammer sticking out of them.

“Forgive the mess, but I have to extend the place again,” Uncle Lu said. “And since my wife died—God rest her soul—my housekeeping here has left something to be desired. You get to feel increasingly lonely.”

Steven nodded sympathetically, although most of his sympathy was for the dead woman who had put up with this eccentric for so long. He also wondered where Zöller was planning to build an extension in this little house with all its nooks and crannies. At a loss, the bookseller looked at Sara, who merely shrugged.

“What’s the point of this?” Steven whispered to her. “The man’s a compulsive hoarder. How is he going to help us?”

“Shut up,” Sara hissed. “Look over there.”

Steven turned back to Uncle Lu, who now stood by the empty bookcase and pushed it aside, breathing heavily. Behind it, an opening came into view, with a flight of stairs leading down beyond it.

“Careful, the stairs are very steep,” Zöller said, going ahead. In surprise, Sara and Steven followed him along the narrow downward climb, and finally reached a dark cellar. When Zöller switched on the light, the bookseller gasped.

The room was at least as large as the entire ground floor of the house above them. Shelves of the finest grained cherrywood reached to the ceiling on all sides and were crammed with books, folios, and files. In the middle of the cellar stood an old mahogany table, with a brand-new computer, a laser printer, and a scanner on it. Halogen lamps fixed to steel cables bathed the scene in muted light.

“My cabinet of curiosities,” Uncle Lu announced. “It contains everything that has been written about King Ludwig.” He pointed to the opposite wall. “And there’s another room behind one of the bookcases; I’m extending it at the moment. The torrent of rumors and information about the Fairy-tale King never dries up.”

Steven stared, open-mouthed, at the vast archive. He knew several large private collections, but this exceeded anything he could have imagined.

“How . . . how many books do you have here?” he asked reverently.

“Exactly three thousand one hundred fifty-seven,” Uncle Lu proudly replied. “Some of them are in Japanese. Some are even in Finnish. As well as countless files, newspaper reports, and much other information that I’ve scanned onto my hard drive. It’s astonishing what an echo a single man can set going all over the world. But here we have the most valuable item.”

Zöller went up to a framed oil painting of the king hung between two bookcases. When he took it down, a safe came into view. The old man laboriously entered the combination and finally took out a bundle that he placed reverently on the desk.

Only at a second glance did Steven realize that he was looking at a torn, pale summer coat. On the back there were two black-rimmed holes the size of marbles. The entire garment was flecked with bloodstains.

“The king’s coat,” Albert Zöller whispered. “The coat he was wearing on the night of the murder.”

Sara stuck her finger into one of the frayed black holes. “They really were made by gunshots,” she said. She turned to Zöller. “But how do you know that this is really the coat the king was wearing at the time of his death? It could have belonged to anyone.”

Uncle Lu shook his head vigorously. “The coat comes from the estate of an old countess who credibly convinced several people in the 1950s that it had belonged to the king. She herself always insisted that Ludwig had been shot and the coat exchanged at the scene of the crime.”

“What became of this countess?” Steven asked.

“She died in an unexplained fire in her apartment. Luckily the coat was saved from the flames.”

Sara frowned. “Do you really mean she was killed because she knew the truth about the king’s death?”

“I don’t mean anything.” Uncle Lu shrugged. “All the same, I think it’s better for as few people as possible to know that this coat is in my hands.”

“But what does all this have to do with Marot’s diary?” interrupted Steven impatiently.

“Wait a minute,” Zöller snapped. “You’ll see soon enough.”

Once again he went to the little safe, and this time he came back with three notebook-sized portrait sketches mounted on a piece of cardboard. They looked old and were stained. Steven thought he saw the marks left by water when it dried.