The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge (9 page)

The Judge pattered up towards him, steadying her glasses and buttoning her coat. They stood, side by side, gazing at the gleaming stars. There was the sign, the same one that the Swiss police had pulled ruthlessly from the kitchen noticeboard, tearing at the edges, as they rushed to eliminate all the unintelligible symbols that only augmented their fears and the apparent complexity of the case. Schweigen had the creeps; it was like entering a pharaoh’s tomb.

‘Well, what’s the matter, André?’

She lowered her voice. He was reassured by her steadiness and her immediate perception of his unease. He no longer felt the jubilant flush of adrenalin; the horror of the massacre on the forest floor pressed against his back, with the stealthy weight of an animal, hunting him down.

‘It’s the children. The toys. I don’t know –’ He petered out. She peeled off her right red glove, reached up towards him, and gently touched his face.

‘They’ll never come home. All their things are here. My boy’s got the same things. And they’ll never come home.’

The Judge put her arms around him, and rocked him close to her warmth. He looked into her magnified eyes, illuminated by the fraudulent night sky above them, and flung away the strange unease, which padded back into the children’s room and coiled around the bunk beds.

‘Shhhh, André, don’t take on so. Their parents believed they were going home for ever. To their real home.’

‘But the sky was overcast last night,’ Schweigen declared bitterly, ‘for most of the night. The temperature rose. It snowed after midnight. They never saw those stars.’

‘But they knew they were there,’ whispered the Judge.

_{*  *  *}

One of the forensic team emerged from a bedroom across the corridor.

‘Madame le Juge? We’ve just found this.’ She held out a book bound in leather covers, like an accounts book or a family Bible. The thing was massive, and resembled a Grimoire, a gigantic book of spells. A curious clasp sealed the pages and a gold inlaid pattern, worn away in places, circled the rim. No title marked the spine, just three worn gold crests.

‘Where did you find it?’ Dominique Carpentier replaced her white surgical gloves and reached for the evidence.

‘In Madame Laval’s bedroom. Under her pillow. I thought it might be a diary, but it isn’t. It’s too big. We did look. It is printed, but we can’t understand the languages.’

They retreated downstairs. The Judge set aside her Christmas wrapping paper and holiday snaps and began to study the book.

‘André, is there anyone in this departure who has the initials R.B. or F.G.?’

There was a pause as Schweigen scanned the list.

‘No. Neither.’

‘Or anyone in the Swiss departure?’

‘God knows. All those papers are back in my office. And yours.’

‘No. The details are all in my computer now. Gaëlle has scanned everything. And that’s in the car. Can you fetch it for me? We can check.’

_{*  *  *}

At first, as she turned the pages, she sat startled by the enigma before her. The book was indeed written in no immediately recognisable language. A blocked-out code, which resembled unaccented Hebrew, filled the entire page. She tried to decipher a pattern, but could see none. Then she began to notice a sequence of recurring signs in Greek, which did not form part of the code. And she recognised these:
Ursa Minoris, Ursa Majoris, Centauri, Tauri, Cygni
, the unknown language addressed the stars. The Judge sat very still, frowning. Strange diagrams, carefully drawn, finely marked, printed on plates and protected by soft interleaved sheets, fine as muslin, were interspersed throughout the blocked-out sheets of opaque printed code. She ruffled the pages, and suddenly saw a language that she knew.
Wir sind auf einer Mission: zur Bildung der Erde sind wir berufen
. She turned to the man who was working through the bookshelves, borrowed a pencil and set to work.
We are here on a mission; we are called to educate the earth
. The German sentences lay scattered, like fallen columns amidst the code. Beside both languages, crouched in the margins, were two sets of handwritten annotations, the initials added carefully after each comment or interpretation: R.B. and F.G. The manuscript interpretations by one of the scribes also appeared to be written in German, but the minute, flattened Gothic script defeated the Judge. The observations signed by F.G. were all handwritten in the obscure code. Nevertheless, she noted each page where the marks occurred for the university philologist who helped them in their investigations, and then translated each printed German phrase carefully, pausing over the sentence structures, brooding on the verbs. The unintelligible language appeared to be a commentary upon the German or vice versa, but the German sections, taken together, suggested something of great constancy.

Leben ist der Anfang des Todes. Das Leben ist um des Todes willen. Der Tod ist Endigung und Anfang zugleich, Scheidung und nähere Selbstverbindung zugleich. Durch den Tod wird die Reduktion vollendet.

Life is the beginning of death. Death is the purpose of life. Death is at once an ending and a beginning, a separation from the self and at the same time a closer bonding with the self. That gap is made perfect in death.

Wir träumen von Reisen durch das Weltall: ist denn das Weltall nicht in uns? Die Tiefen unsers Geistes kennen wir nicht. Nach innen geht der geheimnisvolle Weg. In uns oder nirgends ist die Ewigkeit mit ihren Welten, die Vergangenheit und Zukunft.

We dream of travelling through the universe: but does the universe not lie within us? We know nothing about the depths of our souls. The secret path leads inwards. Eternity with all her worlds, past and to come, lies within us or nowhere.

Suddenly she stumbled over a sentence in English.
If you have no faith in yourself or your own judgement, find your faith in the Guide, who reaches for your hand, ready to lead you into the Kingdom
. They had never located the Guide, whoever he might be. Or was this book itself the Guide? The Judge began a separate column of references to the Guide, as if he were a burglar, still at large. She began to underline passages in her own pencil translation. Schweigen came back into the chalet clutching her computer. He stood beside her and peered at the text.

‘But some of it’s in German! We can read that.’

She was defeated by an entire verse of poetry.

Getrost, das Leben schreitet

       
Zum ewgen Leben hin,

   
Von innrer Glut geweitet

       
Verklärt sich unser Sinn.

Die Sternwelt wird zerfließen

   
Zum goldnen Lebenswein,

       
Wir werden sie genießen

       
Und lichte Sterne sein.

Schweigen stood over her and pointed to the words, translating on sight.

‘Comforted, life strides towards eternal life – clothed, or consecrated, I’m not sure which, by an inner fire, our senses are transfigured. The world of stars will melt into the golden wine of life, which we will savour and become illuminated stars. There you are, Dominique, it’s madness. That’s a hymn. It’s supposed to be sung. They all spent too much time with their eyes fixed on heaven.’

‘You have no grasp of mysticism, André. Stars are metaphors. And I think they did sing this. Listen.
Die Außenwelt ist die Schattenwelt: sie wirft ihren Schatten in das Lichtreich
. The external world is a world of shadows, which casts its shadows in the Kingdom of Light. Reality is like the veil of Maya, which hides the truth. This world is an illusion.’

Schweigen shrugged. ‘I sometimes wish it was.’

So this was the core, a cult of death as the gateway and the threshold. Their eyes were turned inwards, towards darkness. Death signalled the ultimate union with the soul, the end of all yearning and separation. It was that anticipation of blessedness, which had filled their hearts. For now she saw them, swinging up the mountain into darkness, carrying their children in their arms, the promise of the Faith pouring from their lips in exultation, ringing in their ears through the silence of the snowy forest. They were stepping through the wall of shadows into the brilliance of their Kingdom.

‘That’s where they’ve gone, André – they’ve departed, to their Kingdom of Light, and their Guide is somewhere among the stars.’

‘They’re all on the slab in the Institut médico-légal in Strasbourg,’ snapped Schweigen gloomily, looking up from the computer. ‘But I think I’ve found our F.G.’

The Judge slapped down her pencil.

‘Well? Who is he?’

Schweigen scrolled down.

‘Guess. No surprises here. But he isn’t one of the dead. Do you remember Gerhart Liebmann, the opera director? A great friend of his. And of Anton Laval. I’m willing to bet F.G. is the famous Composer with his own orchestra who spoke at the funeral. His name is Friedrich Grosz – F.G.’

And into the doomed chalet with its polished wooden walls and floors, its Christmas-candle arrangements and untouched boxes of chocolates, fruits confits and marrons glacés, rolled a name from the past, the man who had refused to be interviewed, refused to cooperate either with the Swiss or with Schweigen. This was the Composer with the irreproachable alibi, the man who had been conducting a concert in Berlin on the night of the Swiss departure, the man who had been seen by three thousand people, who had denied all prior knowledge of the mass suicide and yet had known every single one of the dead. How dare you question me, he snapped at Schweigen. I accepted their decision to depart. Leave me alone with my grief. His high-handed arrogant face, all lines and shadows, the dramatic white hair, which stood on end when he conducted or rehearsed his orchestra, materialised before her; there he stood like a figure conjured up in ectoplasm at a séance. There he was, a man in his mid-sixties, powerful, unpleasant, enraged. And now she could hear his voice, vivid on the video of the funeral, speaking with absolute conviction:
In the midst of life we are in death, but that life is ours for ever; it is that eternal life which awaits us beyond death, the glory of an eternal union with all that we have ever loved
. He cannot have been speaking on behalf of his dead friend. He was speaking for himself.

The Judge looked at André over the top of her glasses. All the scratching and sifting around them suddenly ceased. Everyone stared at the Judge.

‘But wait, listen,’ said Schweigen, ‘it gets better. The voice on the tape – that’s his voice. I’ve traced the mobile. He was ringing this chalet repeatedly last night. After they’d all trooped off up the mountain.’

The forensic team began to murmur, pleased. The Judge weighed her words carefully. She tapped the great book on the table before her.

‘Large chunks of whatever this is are written in German. If he is F.G. and this is his handwriting, then at last we have some hard evidence of his involvement.’

Her thoughts were less careful. Someone walked away from both of these massacres, carrying a gun. I don’t believe in his innocence or any of his protestations. He knew about the Faith, and he knew about the first mass suicide. He probably knew about this one. She looked down. At the bottom of the open page was a simple handwritten sentence in ordinary German, followed by a small set of initials:
Gelobt sei uns die ew’ge Nacht. Let us praise eternal night. F.G.
This book belongs to him.

4

NOT DEATH, BUT JUDGEMENT

Gaëlle stood waiting beside the Air France check-in desk at Montpellier airport, banging the tickets and her carte d’identité against the handle of her suitcase. The giant metallic hangar with marble floors gleamed in the early light, substantially cooler than the outside world, where the phoenix palms, now free of winter plastic, erupted into fresh green. Midweek, and the first flight fully booked; everybody else had already clambered up the escalator, passed through security, grappling with their computers, and sailed onwards towards the gates, bound for Paris. No sign of the Judge.