The Ludwig Conspiracy (24 page)

“These drawings are by the portrait painter Hermann Kaulbach, who carried out many commissions for Ludwig the Second,” Uncle Lu said. With his fat fingers, he pointed to the two outer pictures. “These two are the personal physician, Max Schleiss von Loewenfeld, and the king’s equerry, Richard Hornig. There are rumors that they were on Lake Starnberg, with Marot and Kaulbach, on the night of the murder. The sketches were done in the rain, very fast, probably on that ill-omened day, the thirteenth of June 1886. You ought to recognize the man in the central picture for yourselves.” Zöller paused while Steven and Sara stared at the portrait of a stout middle-aged gentleman with a beard. His eyes were closed, his mouth open in a silent scream. Dark blood flowed from the left corner of his mouth.

It was the face of the king.

“Some people claim that Kaulbach sketched Ludwig the Second only minutes after his death,” Zöller said in a low voice. “Loewenfeld and Marot are said to have been there, and were, so to speak, the first eyewitnesses. The physician’s assistant spoke of murder later, and so did Hornig, the equerry. And Loewenfeld was silenced.” He heaved a deep sigh. “I haven’t been able to prove all this yet. But now here you are, with this diary . . .”

“Can you explain why Uncle Paul had to die for the sake of that little box?” Sara asked. “Obviously someone still cares a lot about this little book, even after more than a century.”

Uncle Lu scratched his unshaven, fleshy face and looked up at the ceiling.

“Let me think. A scholar perhaps, wanting to grab the glory for himself? Or maybe the Wittelsbachs. Large parts of the archive of the royal house are still not accessible to the public. The family is very anxious for Ludwig’s death to remain a mystery.”

“Do you think they would kill for it?” Steven asked skeptically.

Zöller shook his head. “Not really. Although I’m sure the Wittelsbachs would very much like to know what’s in the book. But they have barred all access to any form of enlightenment about the matter for decades. If it were finally possible to examine Ludwig’s body in St. Michael’s Church in Munich, then the cause of his death could surely be established.” He sighed deeply. “But you might as well ask them to sell Neuschwanstein to the Japanese. The Wittelsbachs don’t play games, especially when it’s about Ludwig, a member of their family.”

“How about the Cowled Men?” Sara asked.” Could they have anything to do with it?”

Uncle Lu laughed so much that his cheeks shook like a fat dog’s jowls. “Those crazy bastards? The last time I heard anything of them, they wanted to mint euros with Ludwig on them, because they don’t like the Prussian eagle.” He leaned over to Sara. “Did you know there’s a theory that the Cowled Men are just the invention of a Cologne advertising agency? An interesting idea.”

Steven was tempted for a moment to tell Albert Zöller that that crazy bunch had lain in wait for him twice already, but he decided against it. They wanted Uncle Lu to help them. It would be better not to alarm the old man unnecessarily, not that he looked afraid of very much.

Sara changed the subject. “If your story is true, and Loewenfeld and Marot really were eyewitnesses, then it will certainly say so in the book,” she began. “And someone or other wants to prevent its coming to light. Only who, and why? And what about those coded words? Obviously there’s some far greater secret they don’t want aired.” Wearily, she rubbed her eyes. “I suppose there’s no other option—we must decipher the rest of the diary. Maybe we’ll discover the murderer that way.” She pointed to Steven’s backpack, which held the diary. “Herr Lukas and I think the next keyword is hidden at Herrenchiemsee.”

“Herrenchiemsee?” Zöller asked, astonished.

Steven nodded. “It’s the next word written in capitals in Marot’s account. Like Linderhof before it. And Marot left us another clue by adding the word KOENIG, king, in capitals. But I rather doubt that we’ll find anything at Herrenchiemsee. After all, the island there is much larger than the castle grounds of Linderhof.”

Uncle Lu’s eyes lit up. “So there’s a puzzle to be solved,” he whispered. “Am I right in assuming that you want me to help you?”

Sara smiled. “Would you do that?”

“Would I do that?” Once again Zöller burst out laughing, so that his big belly hopped up and down like a being with a life of its own. “You’d have to tie me up and leave me here to make sure I
don’t
help you.” Suddenly he was serious again. Puffing as he rose from his chair, he went over to the bookshelves and picked out a stack of thick folios. “Better begin right away,” he murmured, lost in thought. “There are about a hundred books on Herrenchiemsee here. Do you think we can fit them all in your car?”

S
OMETHING IN THE CAR
beeped, but Steven couldn’t make out what it was. He twiddled the radio, checked the air conditioning, and tapped the instrument panel, but the beeping went on.

“What the hell is that?” he asked, looking helplessly at Sara, who was now behind the wheel again. “Is your Mini by any chance giving up the ghost?”

“If so it’s because we’re overloaded.” Sara pointed behind her to where Uncle Lu sat on the rear seat like a fat giant in a toy car. Zöller’s massive head brushed against the roof, and his knees poked Steven’s back through the upholstery. All the same, the old man seemed to be pleased with life, mainly on account of the laundry basket that was slipping back and forth beside him at every bend in the road. It was crammed with books. Now and then Uncle Lu picked up one of these large tomes, leafed through it, and made notes on a greasy little writing pad.

“The Herreninsel in the Chiemsee covers almost five hundred seventy acres, and the lake has a circumference of more than four miles,” he growled without looking up. “A small world unto itself. Ludwig even wanted to build a little railroad on it, like the one on the fictional island of Lummerland in Michael Ende’s book. You know
Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver,
don’t you? Ever heard of that children’s book?”

“Herr Zöller, all I can hear right now is beeping,” Steven said, his nerves on edge. “And it’s driving me crazy.”

“Oh, sorry.” Uncle Lu put his hand to his right ear and fiddled with something. The beeping stopped. “My hearing aid. Must have misadjusted it.”

“Oh.” Wearily, Steven closed his eyes and tried to get a bit of rest. They had been on the road for almost three hours, and the car smelled of male sweat, cow dung, and the smoke of Sara’s menthol cigarettes. It was making him feel slightly unwell. The drive had taken them along small, winding country roads, through quiet villages, past chapels, and into the Chiemgau district. They had twice had to wait as a farmer drove his herd of cows across the road at a leisurely pace, and once they lost their way so badly that the Mini almost got stuck in a stinking manure heap in a blind alley. Now, at last, the blue waters of the Chiemsee opened out before them, looking near enough to touch and apparently going all the way to the first mountains of the Alps. All around, green hills and meadows lay in the fall sunlight like something out of a glossy brochure from the Upper Bavaria Tourist Board.

“Damn bleak around here,” Sara muttered, lighting herself a new cigarette. “I really don’t know why so many city dwellers want to move to the country. It stinks of cow shit.”

“Ludwig loved these lonely places,” came Uncle Lu’s deep voice from the back seat. “He disliked Munich. If he’d had his way, he would probably have lived in a remote Alpine valley with a few mountain farmers.”

Steven caught himself thinking that he could nurture such dreams himself, although in his case they didn’t feature stinking manure heaps, another of which had just appeared by the side of the road.

He rubbed his eyes and stared yet again at the list he had made after decoding the puzzle words in Marot’s diary. So far they had deciphered thirteen words with the keyword MARIA. All were clearly the titles, or partial titles, of poems, although some of them meant nothing at all to Steven. Others, however, could be found in any school textbook. He had written down all the poems in order, with the names of their authors if he knew them. But he could still make nothing of them
.

“Erlkönig”
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe), “The Erl-King”

“Belsazar”
(Heinrich Heine), “Belshazzar”

“Thal”
?

“Zauberin”
?

“Lorelei”
(Heinrich Heine), “The Lorelei”

“Winsperg”
?

“Fluch”
? (perhaps
“Des Sängers Fluch,”
Ludwig Uhland?), “The Singer’s Curse”

“Ring”
? (perhaps
“Der Ring des Polykrates,”
Friedrich Schiller), “The Ring of Polycrates”

“Siegerich”?

“Taucher”
(Friedrich Schiller), “The Diver”

“Der Fischer”
(Goethe), “The Angler”

“Legende”
?

“Ballade”
?

“I really don’t know what Theodor Marot was trying to tell us with these poems,” he mused. “The ones I know are all from the German Romantic and Classical periods. And they look back at the Middle Ages or other distant times. But apart from that, I can’t see anything in common among them.”

“Presumably Ludwig would have liked to live in a poem like those,” Sara said. “Or in a booming opera by Richard Wagner. We can only hope we find another clue soon.” She pointed to the laptop, which was now in a lady’s purse between Steven’s feet. “By the way, I transferred all the other puzzle words in the diary to my laptop last night. See for yourself.”

IDT, G, NFTQM, WFIFBTQT, GQT, 1DT, WQI, ID, WFIFBGQTP, WFT, IFGQMT, IFI, IQT, J, JG, JT , W, JTI, JG, JG, J, JG, JG, JG, IT

“There’s one interesting thing,” she said thoughtfully. “The words get shorter and shorter. At the end of the diary, most of them consist of just one or two letters.”

“Why don’t we simply try KOENIG as the key?” Steven suggested, but Sara dismissed the idea.

“I’ve already tried that. Along with the other usual suspects such as LUDWIG, REX, or ROI. No luck. Nothing comes up. It must be something less obvious.”

Steven sighed and looked ahead to where the lake now clearly shone among the hills. At close quarters, it almost looked like an Alpine inland sea.

“Look, we can already see the Herreninsel!” Uncle Lu bellowed in his ear from the back seat. “And the smaller one beyond is the Fraueninsel with its convent of Benedictine nuns. What a picturesque place for a castle.”

“And what a terrific tourist magnet.” Sara pointed to a ferry, small but crammed with passengers. It plied between the islands and a harbor on the mainland. “Let’s hope we don’t have to stand around too long. Your books had better stay in the car. I guess you don’t want to drag them all over the island.”

Albert Zöller gave her a conspiratorial wink. “You just leave that to me. You won’t be sorry you brought good old uncle Lu along on this mysterious trip.”

A
QUARTER OF AN
hour later, they had parked the Mini down by the harbor.

Little rowboats in which fishermen mended their nets gently rocked on the water, tied up to countless landing stages. On the right there was a jetty bleached by rain, where a paddle steamer whistled as it waited to put out. Somewhere a horn hooted. When Steven looked around, he saw a puffing steam locomotive pulling green cars trundling along behind the boathouses, looking as if it had come straight from the nineteenth century.

“Pinch me, Herr Lukas,” Sara said, looking at the locomotive in amazement. “We haven’t by any chance just time traveled back into Marot’s diary, have we?”

“The paddle steamer dates from 1926, and the steam locomotive made its maiden trip just after Ludwig’s death,” said Albert Zöller behind them. “So you’re right to some extent, Frau Lengfeld. The people here like it when the world changes as little as possible. And so do the tourists.” He pointed to the jetty, where Steven only now saw the noisy crowd of tourists waiting for the next steamer trip. They seemed to come from all over the world and were happily snapping photos, from all possible angles, of the locomotive, the steamer, and the fishermen mending their nets.

“Well, I’ll see what can be done,” Uncle Lu said. Puffing, he heaved the laundry basket full of books out of the car and went, without further comment, toward the rather dilapidated boathouses to their right. Sara and Steven followed a little way behind him.

“Do you know what he’s planning to do?” the bookseller asked.

Sara shrugged. “Maybe he’s looking for some other way to get to the island. That could only be a good thing for us. See that green Bentley over there?”

Steven turned to look and saw an elegant vehicle, polished until it shone, with darkened windows. It was parked inconspicuously beyond the locomotive with its engine running. “What about it?”

“I may be wrong, but I think it’s been following us,” Sara whispered. “I’ve seen it behind us at least twice in the last few hours. And now here it is at the harbor.”

“Oh my God. Do you think it’s the police?”

The art detective shrugged again. “I don’t know how they could have found us. And the police probably don’t drive green Bentleys, even when they’re out of uniform. Although I bet they’d like to.”

Steven glanced back at the car, which could be only vaguely made out through the steam from the locomotive. Now the driver stepped on the gas, and the Bentley disappeared, tires squealing, into a narrow alley leading up to the town.

“We ought not to say anything about this to Albert,” Steven said quietly. “Two of us worrying are quite enough.”

By now they had reached the boathouses. A wiry man with a wrinkled, weathered face was sitting on a crumbling landing stage, dangling his legs over the planks. He wore green oilskins and was morosely chewing the stem of a pipe; below him, a decrepit boat in urgent need of a fresh coat of paint rocked on the water. As Uncle Lu approached the fisherman, the latter glanced up and uttered an exclamation of surprise. He spat noisily in the water.