A Visible Darkness Part 50

Edviga did not speak, she merely nodded her head.

'Then Gurten arrived,' I cut in quickly.

Edviga stared at me. Surprise traced furrows in her brow and seemed to etch the livid scar more deeply in her cheek. 'It was a good while later, sir. Frau Helena's labour was long and very hard,' she replied obliquely, as if she would not be deflected from her tale. 'The child would not come out . . .'

'But out it came at last,' I countered brusquely. 'Who delivered it?'

Edviga stared at me, her eyebrows arching.

'What a question, Herr Magistrate!' she said, caressing the scar on her cheek. 'I delivered the child, and cut the cord.'

'It was a boy.'

Again, she stared at me transfixed.

'A girl, sir.'

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came.

I lurched forward, crushing her forehead with my own.

'But Gurten knew. He knew, did he not?'

Her brow was moist, her skin was cool. I felt the corrugation of her forehead.

'Herr Gurten, sir? Why should he know? What difference would it make?'

My hands closed round her throat.

'He told me that the baby was a boy,' I managed to say.

'Herr Gurten?' she echoed hoa.r.s.ely, her voice rising, fingers scrabbling desperately to prise my straining hands away from her gullet.

In that instant, a sharp cry sounded in the house.

I looked towards the stairs.

'Please, sir. Let go of me,' she shouted, pushing hard against my chest.

Her strength, as I have remarked more than once, was equal to a man's. She threw me effortlessly off, and was gone in an instant, darting across the hall, dancing up the stairs. Her feet made the slithering sound that Lotte's generally made. It was as if she had stepped quite literally into Lotte's slippers.

Then, I heard that cry again.

I darted after her, my nostrils filling with the odours of my home: the lingering sweetness of honey, the sharper smell of burning camphor to ward off flies and insects. My eye fell on a basket on the landing. It was billowing with sheets. They were spotted with blood. I stopped abruptly, closing my eyes for fear of what I would find, bracing my hands against the bedroom doorway.

'You did not keep your promise, Hanno.'

The voice that spoke to me was calm, amused. I had heard that mocking note whenever the children did not do as they had been told. Apparently severe, there was a lingering, ironic undertone to it.

'Husband, you have come too late!'

Helena was pale, thin. Like a swimmer struggling against high seas, it seemed that she might disappear beneath the rolling ocean of pillows, sheets and bolsters that covered the bed. Close beside her, Edviga was bending over an empty cot, straightening pillows, the parody of a fairy G.o.dmother in some cautionary children's tale.

Helena had loosened one of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s from her smock.

I could not see the infant, but I could hear the sound of feeding. Regular, insistent, soothing. Like tiny waves rippling gently on a sandy sh.o.r.e.

'She is so impatient,' Helena chided with a broad smile. 'Don't you want to see her?'

I seemed to float towards the bed in a dream. My hand reached out like a disembodied thing, and shifted back the coverlet. A tiny face, shiny and red. Eyes tight closed, dark curling lashes. A close pelt of dark hair covering her scalp. Two plump cheeks that seemed to have a life of their own. Two bunched fists that moved in tandem as she sucked contentedly. I placed my hand on Helena's brow, which was hot, slightly damp. Her hair was wild, uncombed, a rambling thorn-bush. Her eyes were two bright pinpoints of feverish light. Her cheeks, slightly sunken, made her face seem gaunt and angular. Yet still she smiled. Clearly exhausted, she was recovering with Edviga's help.

'Your daughter could not wait to see the world, sir,' she whispered, casting down her eyes upon the infant at her breast. 'She almost wore me out, I think it's fair to say. I prayed that you would come in time. Of course, you did not. But you did the very next best thing. Edviga.'

She held out her hand, which Edviga took at once and fondled warmly.

'You gave to her the same task I had given to you. Don't you remember? Save the lives of the women on the coast, I said. You have done just that, she swears. And she has saved my life in return, together with the life of our new daughter. Why, she would not even let that young a.s.sistant magistrate of yours . . .'

She looked at me enquiringly.

'What was his name again?'

Edviga and I replied in chorus: 'Gurten.'

'Goodness knows what use he would have been to me!' my wife exclaimed. 'And yet, he was most insistent, Hanno. I think he was afraid of your reaction. He'd come too late to help. Edviga would not let him in to see the child, though she did consent to take your letter from him. Oh, it all went off so perfectly. She whispered words of comfort in my ear as the little one came into the world.'

Helena caught the girl's eye.

'She was born before her time, Hanno, yet she is beautifully, perfectly healthy.'

She patted the coverlet, indicating that I should sit beside her.

'Don't you want to tell me what you've been up to on the coast?'

39.

I TOLD HELENA very little of what had truly happened on the coast. But later that morning, I was obliged to admit a great deal more to Colonel les Halles. He arrived outside the house at about half past ten in an open-topped barouche with four armed troopers. Sergeant Tessier jumped out first, kicking down the folding step, eyeing me suspiciously, as if he believed that they had come to arrest me.

Les Halles's lined face bore smudged traces of oil and dirt. He still wore the filthy overalls he had been wearing while conducting the operations down on Nordcopp sh.o.r.e the night before. With his bib and braces, trousers stuffed into his boots, he might have been a fisherman. Certainly, he gave no impression of being a high-ranking French officer. He looked to be what he was: a worker, who had gone without food or rest, and had not seen soap and water in a long while.

'What's all this about, Stiffeniis?' he said, marching to the gate, his manner stern, reproving. 'Given the circ.u.mstances, I made all the haste that I could.'

I apologised quickly, and told him that the fears I had expressed on Nordcopp sh.o.r.e had proved unfounded.

'Do I take it that your family is safe?'

His eyes were veined and red with lack of sleep. They might have been cartographer's maps.

'Safe, well, and greater in number than the last time that I was home,' I replied.

A expression of joy lit up his rugged face, and his hand reached naturally for mine. He shook it for longer than I might have expected. His skin was rough, dry, calloused, his grip firm and strong.

'That's the best news I've heard in a long time,' he said. To my surprise, he winked. 'Almost as good as the fact that the coq du mer has tripled production in a single night.' But then his gaze took on a more stern and guarded look. 'Now, tell me, what exactly happened on the coast last night. The message you sent to Nordcopp was garbled by the man who brought it. I came here expecting to find . . . well, I know not what!'

I invited him to enter the house, asking the soldiers to wait beyond the gate. I did not wish that Helena should see or hear them.

Tessier bridled, but les Halles quickly put him in his place.

'There's not the slightest risk, Sergeant,' he said. 'In any case, I wish to speak with Magistrate Stiffeniis alone.'

I led him through to the kitchen, sat him down at the table, then heated a jug of Lotte's cider-and-apples with the poker from the cooking-fire. In summer, we put out the fire after breakfast, but that morning was the first real day of autumn. Edviga had left the fire burning, and she had closed the doors at the front and back of the house. A cold wind was blowing in from the coast, sweeping away the warm, humid air of summer.

'Your good health!' he said, emptying half the beverage at a single draught, as if he had eaten nothing for a week and drunk less for a month, fishing with his fingers in the cup for the bits of apple that were resting on the bottom.

'We found no third corpse at the house of Dr Heinrich,' he announced with a sigh. 'Nor anywhere else in Nordcopp. Did you squeeze that out of him? Whether he had killed that girl, and where he might have hidden the body, I mean to say, before you . . .'

An hour earlier, I had watched Edviga close the garden gate.

She had been wearing that gown of Helena's, though it was a trifle short and unseemly, showing off her shapely ankles to all the world. Over her shoulder she carried a bag, which was filled with food for the journey and clothes that Helena insisted she should carry away with her.

'Can't she stay with us a little while longer, Hanno?'

Helena had asked this question in front of Edviga, as if I alone had the power to decide the question.

Edviga and I exchanged looks.

She knew the French would come to Lotingen. She realised that she would have to explain why she had left the camp without saying anything to anyone. She knew what les Halles would ask. Had she carried any amber off with her? If he suspected that there was amber in her bag-Ilse Bruen's treasure was hidden there, I knew, together with my own gift, the piece of amber that I had removed from the corpse of Kati Rodendahl-she would be subjected to a search with inevitable results: seizure of the goods, and a spell in prison. If she were arrested in my house, it would be a source of embarra.s.sment not only to myself, but to Helena as well.

'I think Edviga would prefer to leave,' I murmured.

Edviga did not speak, though she seemed to acquiesce.

'Our little girl will bear her name. Do you agree to that, Hanno?'

I turned to Helena. She held my gaze. She would accept no less.

'It sounds very fine,' I said. 'Edviga Stiffeniis.'

Edviga glowed with transparent joy, like the most luminous piece of amber ever found on the Baltic sh.o.r.e . . .

Les Halles was staring hard at me.

I looked fixedly into the depths of my cup. I could only pray that he would not guess what was pa.s.sing through my mind, hoping that he would interpret my silence as a natural timidity to admit what I had done the night before.

'Gurten and I had little time for talking, Colonel,' I said at last. 'He did admit that he had murdered Heinrich and the doctor's housekeeper, but he would not say why. He also said that he had followed me. His intention, as you know, was to show me that . . .' I could not find a suitable word. 'He told me that it was the unborn corpse of my son that he had torn from Helena's womb.' I swallowed hard, remembering the pit of despair into which I had been pitched when I saw that gory bundle in his hands. 'I struck him then. It was instinctive. I was certainly not thinking of Edviga Lornerssen's fate in that moment.'

The Frenchman placed his elbows on the table, and settled his face in his hands.

'Why do you think he set his sights on you?' he asked.

I shrugged.

'I was hunting him on your account,' I said. 'By order of the French.'

He plunged his fingers into the cup, chasing the last bit of apple. 'I am not convinced,' he said slowly, raising the sodden triangle of fruit to his lips. 'I mean to say, even if he thought of you as a traitor, I have never seen such ferocity directed against another man.' He chewed, staring at me as he did so. He shook his head. 'To rip an unborn child from a mother's womb! As if he thought that death itself were hardly a sufficient punishment for you.'

There, he had said it.

He sighed again. 'We did not find his body. My men searched the water. Some swimming, some throwing grappling-irons from boats. They covered pretty much the whole of the bay, but they did not find a trace of him.'

'I saw his body in the water,' I insisted, remembering that wicked tool of Edviga's firmly planted in his chest. 'Then, I lost sight of him, and saw him no more. It was dark, the water was deep, the current strong.'

Les Halles raised his hand to stop me. 'I was puzzled when the soldier brought me news last night that you had galloped off to Lotingen, Stiffeniis. He told me that you had killed the a.s.sa.s.sin. Then, he said that you feared for your family. It all seemed a sight too convenient. The murders solved, the killer killed, though not the mystery of why he chose to mutilate them. The bodies of Dr Heinrich and his housekeeper, but not the corpse of the murderer himself.'

I sat up stiffly in my seat.

'You think that I let him get away. Is that it? And that I told you a neat tale to put an end to the affair! Why would I do such a thing, les Halles?'

'Because you are afraid to hand a guilty Prussian over to the French authorities. Has that not been your greatest fear from the very start, monsieur?'

'Last night on the beach,' I said, 'I failed to tell you something. Not from any reticence, but to avoid wasting precious time. Regarding something that I saw in Konigsberg, something which explains the motive behind the murders, as well as the mutilations to which the victims were subjected.'

I told him of my investigation in the city. I described the statue that Gurten-Vulpius had been working on. I also told him how I had led myself to believe that the true ident.i.ty of the man that I was seeking was that of Dr Heinrich of Nordcopp.

'Everything seemed to fit,' I said. 'Vulpius's medical and scientific interests matched everything that I had seen in Heinrich's house in Nordcopp. His landlady in Konigsberg described a man who might have been Dr Heinrich's brother. Even the smell of wax and plaster of Paris was the same.'

'Tell me more about this strange wax figure,' les Halles interjected.

I recounted what I had seen: the ecorche modelled on the body parts that Gurten had stolen from the corpses; the fact that features still to be added corresponded exactly with the anatomical pieces which had been removed from the bodies of Kati Rodendahl and Ilse Bruen.

'There was a gaping hole in the centre of the statue.' I swallowed hard. 'That was what he was after. I thought I knew where he might try to procure a pregnant womb. In Nordcopp, from Edviga. But I was wrong. Helena was his real object.'

'Amber did not come into the equation, then?' les Halles enquired, rubbing his knuckles hard against his brow.

'Not directly,' I replied. 'Gurten believed that he was creating a prototype of a Prussian woman that our scientists and doctors would one day manage to produce. He thought that the human species could be improved-like cows, or horses-by selective breeding. His female ideal was based on the women of the coast. Physically strong, and fiercely independent. "As beautiful as any G.o.ddess," he said. Now, this is where amber comes into it. He saw a potent symbol: the repulsive insect at the heart of the beautiful amber nugget. If an implacable, primitive heart could be implanted in a well-developed Prussian body, who could hope to oppose or stop them? Gurten's nationalism outstrips any other brand of fanaticism.' I thought for a moment, then I added: 'It was the most dangerous brand of all. According to him, amber offers us a vision of a long-lost Paradise on Earth. The Garden of Eden, it is widely believed by amber collectors, once existed on these sh.o.r.es. The creatures living in that Paradise were fierce, aggressive. They were not influenced by vague ideas of Good and Evil. The only thing that interested them was life, survival. That was the lesson that Gurten drew from amber.'

Les Halles sat in silence.

Then he began to rub his nose, as if some doubt had struck him.

'That's all well and good,' he said at last, 'but why did he focus on you? Why try to steal your unborn child, Herr Stiffeniis, rather than anyone else's? I do not think I am far from the truth if I a.s.sert that you must have represented something very particular to him. Now, what do you think that could have been?'

I had told the Frenchman more than he needed to know. I had served Johannes Gurten up on a plate. I did not mention the Kantstudiensaal. Nor did I hint what Kant might represent for our Prussian nationalists. Of pages stolen from the university library, speaking of the monstrosity of those primitive creatures trapped in amber, I said not a word. Nor did I tell him of the parallels that the philosopher had made with the black heart pulsing beneath my outward show of moral principles. I told him that I had been taken prisoner in Rickert's house, but not what Gurten-Vulpius and I had said to one another.