HS02 - Days of Atonement (54 page)

He stared at me in silence, as if challenging me to react to the provocation.

Again, I avoided his scrutiny, looking out of the window at the distant hills, the bare trees, the endless snow.

‘You would make a most intriguing subject for my studies,’ he probed again.

‘Really?’ I laughed without humour, never shifting my eyes from the scene beyond the window-glass. ‘You are a criminologist,’ I said. ‘I have committed no crime.’

Lavedrine laughed in his turn, but his laughter was genuine.

‘Now, you are making connections that are mechanistic,’ he said. ‘That thin smile of yours gives nothing away. Those dark-brown eyes never betray what is passing through your mind. Did Kant see something there that no one else had seen? Not even you, perhaps? There is a strange ambivalence between the hunter and the hunted, the criminal and the magistrate. They share a set of common values, they move in the same shadowy world.’ He looked thoughtfully at me. ‘Is that what Helena finds so fascinating? You are a man of dark secrets and violent passions, I think, though you hide them deep beneath a glacial outer crust. I’d love to know what attracts you to crime. I’ll ferret it out, I promise you. Sooner or later. The enigma is enthralling, Stiffeniis.’

I did not rise to the fly. He will talk himself out, I thought.

To my immense relief, the coach lurched to a halt twenty minutes later.

We had passed through Svetloye the previous day. I had taken little notice of the place then, but I looked around me more carefully as we jumped down into the road. It was eight o’clock. Not much more. Snow lay thick on the frozen earth, giving the small straggling hamlet an aspect of gleaming purity that it would not have had in more muddy circumstances. The houses along the road were mean straw-thatched cottages, though they were picturesque enough beneath a blanket of snow. On a hill to the north stood a larger house, the von Mandel mansion, as we were told by a group of boys throwing snowballs at each other and at the departing post-coach, much to the anger of the driver cracking his whip on his box, and the red-faced postillion riding the lead-horse.

‘There isn’t anyone up there now, sir.’

‘But there is a church, I believe?’

The boys pointed us in the direction of a pine wood on the western slope of the hill, and Lavedrine tossed them a
Pfennig
or two.

‘Are you in the mood for walking?’ he asked.

‘We have little choice,’ I replied.

I slipped and fell down once, but otherwise we proceeded without mishap, emerging from a thick stand of trees to find the small stone chapel and silent churchyard bordering the von Mandel estate. The church was small and squat, little more than a large single room or prayer-hall, with a stone bell tower, but there was a twirl of smoke rising from the chimney of a clapperboard barn that had been built onto the side of the building.

‘The priest is at home,’ said Lavedrine, stepping up to knock.

But the old man who answered the door was not a priest. He was dressed in the clothes of a countryman, his ancient overcoat tied tight with string at the waist, his legs clad with canvas leggings secured above the knee. He was
the estate guardian—‘living in the pastor’s cottage’, he explained, ‘for it is warmer and drier than the house up there on the hill’.

‘Where is the owner of the estate?’ I asked.

The man ran his gnarled hand through the straggling grey hairs of his long beard.

‘Over there, sir,’ he said, pointing to a funeral monument shaped like a pyramid that stood out from the snow like a soaring Alpine peak. ‘Died last year, he did. Them lawyers do take their time to settle things. An’ gets paid for doing so. I am a-waiting on them. They’ll get shut of me, no doubt. One of these days. Till then, I just keeps the place tidy, and safe from tinkering thieves.’

That word seemed to strike a violent discord in his head.

‘What can I do for you gentlemen?’ he asked warily.

Lavedrine told him who we were and why we had come. Not in detail, of course, but in a general sort of way. ‘Who is buried beneath the pyramid?’ he asked.

‘Henry Ffinch, sir, a retired, English seafaring gentleman what bought up the old property many years ago.’

‘What about the von Mandels?’

‘Over there, sir,’ the man said, shading his eyes against the harsh glare of light reflecting off the snow, pointing to another part of the cemetery.

‘Is there a sexton or a gravedigger?’ Lavedrine asked the man.

‘There’s Pieter Sweiten, sir,’ the man replied quickly enough.

‘Who is he, and where might he be found?’ I asked.

A crack appeared in the old man’s funeral slab of a face.

‘Why, sir, right here,’ he said, tapping his forefinger on his chest. ‘I am he.’

Lavedrine pulled out his purse and shook it, noisily rattling the coins. ‘We need you to do a little job for us, Herr Sweiten.’

‘What’s that, Herr Magistrate?’ he said, turning back to me, apparently more impressed by my title than that of a colonel in an occupying army, even if the foreigner was the one with the clinking purse in his hand.

‘Where lies the grave of Georg-Albert von Mandel?’

‘There ain’t no grave,’ he said.

‘No grave?’ I echoed.

‘No, sir,’ the old man replied, his voice a vibrating country burr. ‘Not for family. That babe was laid to rest in the von Mandel vault. ’Tain’t a grave, if you see what I mean.’

‘Can you open it?’ I asked, the words out of my mouth before I realised the enormity of the proposal and how it must have sounded to Pieter Sweiten.

The man did not so much as blink. ‘That’s done easy, sir. Digging would
have been a bit of a job with this hard frost,’ he said with a smile that seemed to light up his face. He chewed on the proposition for a moment, before adding: ‘I have the key, sir.’

Lavedrine pulled out some of the coins and thrust them at the man. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘What are you waiting for?’

Five minutes later, we stood watching while Pieter Sweiten fumbled with the keys on a large keyring, looking for the one that would unlock the perforated metal grating that gave access to the von Mandel family tomb. In comparison with the more recent and fashionable pyramid, it was an unimpressive block of weathered stonemasonry, laid over the interred chamber of the burial crypt, which was reached by means of a short flight of five or six steps. Covered with snow, the pediment dripping icicles, the broad rim of the capstone of the funeral chamber bore a carved legend:
Eccoci, mortali. Qui riposiamo per sempre. Lasciateci dormie in pace
.

‘It is Italian,’ Lavedrine said with a dismissive shrug. ‘Leave us alone is what it says. More or less.’

‘There!’ the estate caretaker exclaimed. Having found the key, he had released the lock and given the iron grating a resounding kick with his boot which set the air clanging. ‘All that rust and ice,’ he said by way of exclamation.

‘Do you have a lamp in the house?’ Lavedrine asked him.

‘I do, sir,’ the man replied, though he did not move.

‘Would you mind getting it?’

‘Not at all,’ he said, carefully climbing the steps, which were treacherously slippery on account of the snow that had gathered down there in the stairwell.

‘We may be home in time for dinner,’ Lavedrine murmured in the interval of loitering, though it was clear that dinner was the furthest thing from his mind. ‘If Kant was right, the question may be quickly settled.’

The old man returned, his oil-lamp already lit, and we made our way down into the tomb: Pieter Sweiten going first, Lavedrine following, while I came last.

‘No one’s been down here since the old Duke died. That’s twenty-odd year ago, as I do recall it.’

The chamber was cold, dark, damp, musty. The four walls were dressed unevenly in stones of the same material as the exterior, but these were stained brown and green with mildew and rot. Tangled black weeds, which had flourished in the summer, were lank and odorous. The air was heavy, unclean, lacking in phlogiston, and it caused the lantern flame to gutter and fade.

‘Here we are, now,’ said Pieter Sweiten, dropping down on one knee, rubbing at the stone with the elbow of his coat, spitting and trying again when
his first attempt to clean the stone failed. ‘This here’s the resting-place of Humbert-Arthur von Mandel, 6th Duke of Albemarle and Svetloye. That were my master. I helped to carry him down. It took six of us.’

‘Which stone covers the tomb of the child, Georg-Albert?’ Lavedrine cut him off, his hand falling heavily on the shoulder of the kneeling man.

Pieter Sweiten looked up, his face as dark and grey as his beard in the poor light. ‘Now, that I don’t know, sir. He died afore I came here, that child, I mean. You can probably read them things better than me,’ he added, which meant, not surprisingly, that our guide was unable to read for himself.

‘Give me the lamp,’ I said, and almost snatched it from his hand. Apart from the freezing cold, a numbness had begun to creep into my bones at the thought of what we were about to do. I wanted to get it over with. Moving close to the wall, I held up the lantern, and peered at the next stone.

‘
Dorothea-Ann Lundstadt, Duchess & Wife, 1741–1770
,’ I read, bringing the lamp nearer to the stone as I struggled to read the rough, old-fashioned lettering. ‘And here is the little one.
Georg-Albert von Mandel, Aged 8 months, Stolen in his Sleep. Slain by a Foul Hand, 2nd December, 1765.’

‘Sweiten, can you pull that stone out from the wall?’ asked Lavedrine, as if it were the most natural thing to do when entering a funeral crypt.

‘I can do it, sir,’ the man replied, ‘but I ain’t so sure I want to.’

‘This is a criminal investigation,’ I reminded him. ‘When we have finished our work, I will write you a note in the cemetery register, in case it is ever needed.’

With a great deal of hesitation, and no lack of grumbling, Sweiten put his shoulder to the work, wedging an iron spike with a flattened end between the stones, then pushing and twisting and grunting until the slab came suddenly free with a sickening wrench of stone on grating stone.

‘Are you sure about this, Herr Magistrate?’ he said, his eyes holding on to mine in the earthy gloom. ‘I would not want to get myself in trouble, now.’

‘This gentleman is a French investigator, I am a Prussian magistrate. This child was murdered forty-three years ago and we have found new evidence which may reveal who killed him. And why.’

Pieter Sweiten stared from one to the other. ‘Who killed him, sir? They hanged the murderer forty years ago. And knowing won’t do
him
no good,’ he objected. ‘Will looking at his coffin tell you who murdered him?’

‘No, it won’t,’ said Lavedrine. ‘But looking
in
his coffin may.’

‘Oh, Lord help us!’ the old man cried, jumping to his feet, pulling back from the violated tomb, the dark shape of the coffin still inside the hole, the faint odour of organic decay, a life corrupted by worms and damp, creeping out.

‘You can wait outside if you wish,’ Lavedrine added, putting himself between the man and the open tomb, edging him towards the door, the steps, the fresh air, and the daylight. ‘We won’t be long.’

Pieter Sweiten seemed to suck air into his lungs as he turned and fled. He slipped and fell on the steps going up, but no cry escaped from his lips. Pain told him that he was living, while the child down in the burial chamber was not.

‘Give me a hand,’ said Lavedrine, throwing off his cloak.

With some misgivings, I bent forward to help him.

Together we reached into the damp, cold niche, and dragged out the coffin. Then, we laid it flat on the frozen earth. The wood was soft in places. It seemed to give like flesh, to yield and fold itself around my fingers. But Lavedrine was immune to any shuddering sensation of revulsion. He picked up the iron spike, then looked at me.

‘Shall I do it?’ he asked. ‘Or will you? You are the magistrate, after all.’

‘This was your idea,’ I replied. ‘Get on with it’.

He wedged the thin edge between the wooden top and the deeper basin of the small black funeral casket, then suddenly he stopped. ‘These are winged nuts, I think. The box may be easier to open than I thought.’

He dropped down on his knees and began to exert pressure. His body seemed to quiver, the veins standing out like snakes on his temples, as he twisted hard against the incrustation and the rust of so many years in the corrosive ground.

He let out a grunt as the first nut gave. The second came away more easily. And the third, with no more than reasonable pressure. ‘This one won’t budge,’ he said, labouring hard to no avail on the fourth and final nut. He reached for the iron spike again, wedged it into the gap, edged the point as close to the nut as he could force it to go, then dropped all his weight on the lever. ‘Archimedes has a lot to be thanked for,’ he said, as the wood gave with a loud snap, and the lid of the coffin flew up and fell away, exposing the contents of the casket.

‘Are ye all right, sirs?’ Pieter Sweiten called from above.

‘Aye,’ answered Lavedrine, muttering to me, ‘as right as we’ll ever be.’

‘
As I am now
,’ I whispered, looking into the coffin, remembering something I had read on a gravestone, ‘
So shall ye be
.’

‘But you will take up a lot more room,’ Lavedrine warned darkly. Clearly, the situation itself did not amuse him, but something in my hesitation did.

Inside the rotten wooden box, the body of Georg-Albert von Mandel had been reduced, but not to dust, as is commonly supposed. The skeleton had fallen in upon itself, or perhaps it had exploded, then settled back in a
disorganised stark blackened shell, the remains of the blood a fine brown powder beneath the tangle of the bones. Rags, which might once have been a white burial gown or a winding-cloth, had faded to grey, stained green and brown, slick with snail and worm trails. The material had split and stretched, then rotted like a stark spidery web.

‘The skull,’ said Lavedrine, recalling me to my duty. ‘That is all that concerns us, Stiffeniis. Don’t let your imagination run away with your faculties.’