HS04 - Unholy Awakening (16 page)

In my mind, I saw them standing toe to toe. They might have been in the room before me, the impression was so vivid. In that instant, I understood how similar they were. Even physically. They were matching eccentrics, quick in their enthusiasms, equal in their unpredictability. Both were sensual. Both were narcissists, careless of the effect that they had on other people, so taken up with them selves that they did not see how easily they shocked the world around them. Like Emma Rimmele, Lavedrine could enter easily into intimate proximity with strangers. His frank ness left the object of his interest bedazzled.

He had often laid his hand on my shoulder, or taken me by the arm and gazed into my eyes. And then there was the famous ‘kiss’ – the mad impulse with which he had embraced my wife the day he left for Bialystok two years before. He had almost knocked Helena off her feet as he planted his lips on hers – there, before her husband’s eyes! – and then, a moment later, he had stepped into a carriage, where the androgynous Neapolitan creature of whom he was enamoured was waiting to carry him off forever.

In that instant, I felt the sting of jealousy.

I did not want him ever to meet Emma Rimmele. What impudent questions he would ask – about herself, her family, and her history. I would set him loose on Frau Enke or Kitti Raubel, but I would not let Emma be subjected to the insinuations and the gossip that he would throw in her face. Nor would I constrain her to submit to his French arrogance, no matter how much she might yearn to escape from her present difficulties. I knew how easily Lavedrine could draw people out. He must not trifle rudely with her thoughts, sensations and fears.

‘Two years ago, there was a massacre in Lotingen,’ I said distractedly. ‘Lavedrine and I were forced to work together. The authorities were frightened. On both the French and Prussian sides. If he is here, it is because the French have sent for him.’

‘Everyone is frightened,’ Emma murmured, bowing her head dejectedly.

I was reminded uncomfortably of a picture I had seen while still a boy. Perhaps the delicate curve of her neck and the twisting ringlet of hair which fell on her breast brought the memory back. My father had an edition of Shakespeare with exquisite steel engravings, which I was permitted to look at. A languorous image of the Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, with a coiled serpent nipping at her naked breast, had provoked my first sexual awakening.

And in that instant, as I was fighting to suppress the embarrassing recollection of my youthful indiscretion, she arched her spine and inclined herself towards me. Like a cat stretching. I could see nothing beyond her face. I sat back as far as the confines of my chair would allow. Her lips were on a level with the point of my chin. She raised her eyes, stared at me, and a gentle sigh issued from her parted lips.

‘Despite everything,’ she said, ‘today has brought me one ray of hope. It may be possible to redeem my father and myself, Herr Procurator Stiffeniis.’

‘Do not trust Lavedrine,’ I protested.

The point of her finger rested on my lip.

‘This Frenchman may have come too late,’ she said.

‘What…what makes you say that?’

She purred with amusement.

‘I began to tell you,’ she said shyly. ‘My father called me by my name. For the very first time in, oh, I dare not say how long. And then, you’ll never guess! He produced a note from the bank in which our funds are kept. That really was a miracle, believe me. At last I know where it is! God has lit a lamp, I told myself. He will lead us out of this wilderness. Money is a wondrous thing. I can pay the Schuettlers off. We can stay in Lotingen. I can send for a physician who may help my father. We can eat as we used to, and not depend on the vegetables and eggs that those abominable Schuettler brothers charge the earth for. I can…well, my clothes, you see…’

She stopped and ran her hand over her forehead.

‘I was doomed to disappointment. My father cannot take the final, all-important step. He cannot confer on me the power of attorney. He would have done it, too. I wrote it out, and I asked if he could copy it, but his hand shakes so. He tires before he can even manage to write two words. He must declare that I am Emma Rimmele, his only heir and daughter, and that I have the authority to manage his funds. I put the pen in his hand, then took his hand in mine, intending to help him, then, suddenly, I realised what I was doing. It would not be legal, would it?’ Her voice broke for a moment, and when she spoke again, she seemed to be drained of strength. ‘If only the French would leave him alone, and let him live out the rest of his days in peace! If only he could regain the strength to sign the affidavit.’

She was whispering close beside my ear like a penitent Catholic sinner in the confession al. As if the fact of being near to me gave her the strength to say what had to be said. Her final gasping declaration spilled with intimate warmth upon my ear – so warm that I felt my left ear burn with blushing. No woman had ever pressed herself so forcefully upon me since my marriage.

Emma Rimmele wished to share these thoughts with me.

I could understand why she was afraid of Lavedrine, intimidated by the possibility that he would appear at the house and upset her father. Erwin Rimmele had found the needed document, he had shown it to her, and then he had frustrated the hopes that he had raised, by his incapacity to write.

What delusion she had suffered!

I suppose I had been conscious of it from the first moment that I saw her. That morning at the Prior’s House, as she stood staring down into the depths of the well. Her preoccupations went beyond the normal cares of a woman. Her hair and clothes revealed that she was careless of all formal considerations. She wore her passions on her sleeve, so to speak. She was a creature of light and shade, mutable beneath the pressure of circumstances. And yet, there was one constant which she could never throw off. She was unashamedly herself. Her spirit permeated the atmosphere around her. Like blood flowing from an open wound.

‘A signature would save me from disaster,’ she announced.

‘Does no-one know you at the bank?’ I asked. ‘Can no-one testify to the fact that you are his legitimate daughter?’

She closed her eyes, bowed and shook her head. The face of the Medusa seemed more tragic than before. ‘My father was always secretive. The tendency grew worse as he grew older. He never told my mother of his business, nor did he mention it to me. I have the document upon my person, but what use is it now? What can I do with it?’

‘A doctor could examine your father and certify his state of…’

‘A magistrate,’ she gasped, her eyes wide open now. ‘If only you would do it.’

‘I?’

A sad smile impressed itself upon her face. ‘You do not wish to help me. Is that not so, Herr Procurator Stiffeniis?’

‘I am not qualified to assess your father’s state of mind…’

Her finger touched my lips, and stopped my voice.

She nodded slowly. ‘There’s no need to explain. I may be a vampire, after all, as everyone here in Lotingen has told you. You know of the suspicion hanging over me, and that the money would allow me to flee, even before this Colonel Serge Lavedrine decides to arrest me. And my father, too. The Schuettler brothers will stand witness to whatever the Frenchman decides to accuse me of.’

Her lips trembled, as if each word had burnt her tongue.

‘I’ll not ask you to put your signature to the document,’ she said.

Here was another turn-about. I looked at her in confusion. Her fingers no longer touched my lips, but gently rubbed against the point of my chin. They seemed far colder than before. ‘I thought you needed me to testify that you are Emma Rimmele,’ I said, wondering what had caused this change of heart. ‘That, I
can
do. Why refuse the little help that I am able to offer?’

‘It is better that I never see the money,’ she said.

‘I do not understand…’

Her hand began to stroke my cheek, the expression in her eyes tender and ironic in the same instant. ‘Why must you always play the magistrate with me?’ she said softly. ‘Things can never stay the same. Circumstances alter everything in a trice. Some roads divide, while other roads unite. The future cannot always be what we would wish it to be. A few days ago, I would have given anything to lay my hands upon the money. But now…I might…well, having money, I might be tempted to leave Lotingen forever. And that is not what I want to do. Not now. Don’t you understand me, Hanno Stiffeniis? Do I have to say it?’

‘Say…what?’

She looked down, and spoke like a priest pronouncing a litany.

‘Not an instant passes, but I feel your mouth against my flesh. I taste your skin upon my tongue, sir. I try to crush the memory, but I cannot. An instant later, it possesses me again. It is like the urge to drink when we are far from water. I think of nothing else. Water, water, water. Ah, it is intolerable!’ A stifled moan escaped from her lips. ‘I know that this is not what one should think of a man one hardly knows. A magistrate who is investigating murder. A man who belongs to another. But this is what I think when I am with you. And when I am far away, I can do nothing to help myself. I need you, Hanno. My need is…It is greater even than my need to help my father. Or myself. In time, the cruel things they say of me will be forgotten. You’ll solve the case, and rescue my good name. I believe in justice, and am not afraid to wait. I’m not afraid to work by the sweat of my brow. I’ll earn the money I need. I’ll pay the Schuettlers for their complaisance. A doctor will be engaged to cure my father. If Father sees a change in me, it may bring him the tranquillity he craves. Then, perhaps, he will recognise me as the daughter that he has forgotten.’

My gaze wandered over the table, noting my writing-case, my pen, the inkwell. I looked around the room, where everything was known to me. My books, law codes and registers, my jacket hanging on its hook behind the door. I stared at it all, and it all looked strangely unfamiliar.

‘What a pretty object!’ Emma murmured, her fingers shifting my writing-case aside.

I was searching for something to hang on to.

I was the Procurator of Lotingen. I was married to Helena Jordaenssen, with whom I had had four children. The younger of my two boys, Anders, had died of the fever just a short while before. Helena’s heart had been broken, and so had my own.

I was all of
this
.

I did not recognise the man who was listening to this stranger, quaking with excitement at the bewitching words she spoke. And yet, I wished to hear her say those things. Again and again. Over and over.

‘Emma, I do not know…’

‘I do,’ she interrupted gently, laying her hand on mine, pressing her forehead against my cheek. ‘Is it not strange how quickly the world may change? I came here, wanting only to be certain of my father’s money. Now, I wonder, what use would money be, if it divided me from you? I have a confession to make. I am in a turmoil. When you came to the house and found that girl at the bottom of the well, I…that is, I believe I may have fallen into quite another sort of bottomless pit myself. I would have done any thing to climb out of it at first. But now, having fallen down, I do not
wish
to escape. I want to remain in Lotingen. With you. In spite of Serge Lavedrine!’

Her hand let go of mine. With tantalising slowness, I felt it sliding over the cotton of my shirt, until it reached the topmost button at my neck. Her fingers eased it open, then slid downwards, opening the next, and the next, while I continued to cast my eye around the room like a shipwrecked sailor in the middle of the ocean, searching for the tiniest bit of flotsam which might save my life.

I closed my eyes. The sensations were too strong. Those searching fingers slipped between the partings of my shirt, and began to play upon my flesh with the lightness of a spider. And then her lips, which had briefly grazed my neck, slid slowly down the vein, and caressingly kissed my chest, stopping every moment to whisper my name. Spasms began to envelop my body like the widening circles when a stone is thrown into a pond. Emma paused for a moment, pushing aside my shirt in a more determined fashion, then planted her lips upon the spot where my heart was beating.

It beat so furiously, it threatened to burst out from my body.

She spoke directly to the heart that sought to flee, her voice so low and vibrant that I had to strain to catch it.

‘If anyone must hunt for me, Herr Procurator, I hope it will be you.’

The air was foul inside the courtyard.

The building towered above on all four sides, cutting out the sunlight.

The yard was empty, except for a black calash which was standing in a corner with two black horses munching in their nosebags. There were fresh horse-droppings on the cobbles, but that was not the cause of the stench.

As I passed beneath the low arch, my stomach surged up towards my throat.

There was no under standing the French. This was the main administration building, the General Quarters, where the commanding officer lived and worked, and the officers’ mess was situated, yet a heap of rotting meat had been dumped against the walls in one of the corners. Blood trickled in a sticky stream towards an iron grid in the centre of the courtyard, the cobbles sloping down in four triangular segments to converge on it.

Had someone left a cold room open, I wondered, and had the beef gone off?

Just then, a soldier came into the yard, trundling a wheelbarrow. His nose and his mouth were covered with a grey neckerchief. Despite the mask, he was whistling a tune to himself. There were bloody tails hanging out over the side of his cart. He reached the pile, and tipped the carcases of four or five dogs onto the cobbles along with the rest.

As he turned away, he spotted me.

I was standing at the foot of the staircase, watching silently, one hand covering my nose and mouth. The heads, legs and tails of the animals were covered in fur, though the bodies had been rigorously skinned from the ears to the hind quarters, the pelts peeled a way, revealing raw blue muscles. Dead eyes glistened like wet glass. Jaws hung open, revealing long teeth and drooping, pink-grey tongues.

Even dead, those dogs looked menacing.

‘Bet you won’t find a live hound within ten leagues of town,’ the soldier called to me. He spoke French, of course. Anyone who entered the General Quarters was obliged to do so. We were, so to speak, in France, not Prussia. He lowered his neckerchief and spat theatrically on the heap of bloody corpses. ‘This should stop the Prussians shitting them selves every time they hear a barking stray. Our lads are still out hunting, though game is thin on the ground now. Jesus Christ, the folks in this town are more afraid of a few starving dogs than they are of us! God knows why we had to do the hunting. I’d have left the killing to the locals.’

He let out a string of curses on the heads of the Prussian people.

‘What would the Prussians kill them with?’ The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. ‘They have no weapons.’

‘They got vampires,’ he said and smirked. ‘Vampires got teeth.’

He must have taken me for a Frenchman. Certainly, my French was grammatically more correct than his. My hand still covered my mouth and nose, which did something to distort my German intonation.

I nodded towards the dogs. ‘Why skin them?’

‘The pelts have gone to the company tanner. Be a waste to throw the good ones out, monsieur. Winter’s cold in this damned country. It’ll soon be on us. Make good mittens, these will,’ he said, aiming a kick at the nearest carcase, raising a skittering spray of blood with his boot. ‘Many a trooper will pay well for a decent pair of gloves. You got to stand guard all bleeding night in this town! This should be the last lot. I’ll give it half an hour, then burn the meat before the rats get wind of the feast.’

I turned away, making for the stairs which would take me to the first floor, and the offices of Colonel Claudet. I met no-one as I mounted the stairs. Were all the officers out hunting? Nor did I meet any person as I made way along the wide corridor of the
piano nobile
with its ivy-frescoed ceilings and coats of arms of all the Prussian families who had offered up their services to the State and the town in the last three hundred years. All the office doors were closed. Perhaps the French officers were huddled there together, plotting further campaigns against the packs of strays which were creating problems for the garrison?

Was that the best way for us to defeat Napoleon and the
Grande Armée
? Not with weapons and rebellions which were destined to fail, but with the wildest fantasies of our lugubrious tradition? Vampires and wild dogs had done more to upset French dominance in recent days than any Prussian plot or uprising had ever managed to do.

I stopped at the door of Colonel Claudet’s office.

Had Lavedrine got there before me? I was curious to see how far Antoine Claudet, the commanding officer in Lotingen, was pre pared to bend to a man who was his superior in wit and intelligence, though his equal in rank. Equally, I wondered how Lavedrine would react to a man that he would consider hardly fit to lick the Prussian mud from the hand-stitched boots that he had recently brought back from Italy.

I knocked.

‘
Entrez!
’

I recognised the voice of Lavedrine.

I opened the door, advanced, and my eyes fell on the bald pate of Colonel Claudet. He was sitting behind a massive writing-desk, reading a sheet of paper, the mud-and-blood-stained standard of the regiment draped like an ornamental tapestry on the wall behind him. Lavedrine was standing by the window, silver hair cascading over his fore head, arms folded, shoulders square to the glass, blocking out the light that ought to have fallen directly onto the city governor’s desk. For once, I was on Lavedrine’s side.

Claudet glanced up.

‘Is it you, Herr Procurator Stiffeniis?’

Clearly, he was not expecting me. Had Lavedrine forgotten to mention that I would be bringing my report? This idea was confirmed by the fact that Claudet held out his hand uncertainly, as if to shake mine. Awkward and aggressive as he generally was, I seemed to have caught him in an unguarded moment.

I glanced towards Lavedrine.

No word of welcome escaped from his lips, no show of interest. His gaze was fixed on something that only he could see. It was as if the person standing by the window was some lookalike that I had never met before.

‘I have come to submit my report, Colonel Claudet,’ I began. ‘Regarding the murders.’

He glanced in the direction of Lavedrine, who was now staring fixedly at the sharp toe of his Italian boots. ‘Colonel Lavedrine mentioned something of the sort.’ He picked up a piece of paper, shook it out, laid it flat on the desk, smoothing it out with the palm of his right hand. He glanced again at Lavedrine, then looked at me. ‘Sit down, Stiffeniis,’ he said with a loud sigh, pointing to the visitor’s chair as if he had no alternative.

Still, Lavedrine remained in silence.

‘Have you any idea what’s going on?’ Claudet asked me at last.

I opened my shoulder bag and took out my
nécessaire
, slipping the bow, rolling out the leather writing-mat on my knee to reveal the report.

‘A handsome object, Hanno. Too pretty for the horror story you have to tell us.’

Though Lavedrine spoke, his comment was said for the want of saying something, I thought. I had never seen him so lacking in animation. In that moment, from my point of view, this sullen humour was totally unexpected.

‘I know your skill as an artist,’ he said. ‘I remember the drawings that you made during the Gottewald investigation. Do you still use that method of recording facts?’

‘I do.’ I stopped short. ‘I did not think to bring my album and drawings.’

Lavedrine raised his hand. ‘Words will do for now,’ he said sharply. ‘Well? Go on, read it.’ Suddenly, he seemed impatient. Not to hear what I had to say, but rather to get it over with, and out of the way.

I began to read what I had written, occasionally commenting on a passage which needed clarification. Neither man said anything. There seemed to be no way that Claudet could be drawn into the argument, no way of shifting Lavedrine from the leaden humour which had laid its hand on him.

I spoke of the well, the tooth, the recovery of Angela Enke’s corpse. I described the Prior’s House, and reported what Gurt Schuettler had told me, being careful to limit my self to what I imagined he had told Lavedrine, placing emphasis on the fact that the dead seamstress had been working at the house for a short time only, altering the mourning clothes of Fraulein Emma Rimmele and her father, both of whom had recently arrived in town.

I spoke briefly of Emma and Erwin Rimmele. A sick old man, a loving daughter, who was caught up in duties which must have been distressing. I stated unequivocally that almost every person with whom I had spoken had voiced suspicions regarding Emma Rimmele and her father.

‘It always happens when irrational fear gives way to superstition,’ I was careful to specify, looking from Claudet to Lavedrine. ‘The blame is inevitably thrown onto the shoulders of innocent strangers.’

As I explained each aspect of the affair to the Frenchmen, it became another solid brick in the high wall of prejudice which had been constructed against her. Add to which, I conceded, there was the question of her character, her dress, her eccentric mode of doing things, and the way these elements were interpreted by her neighbours and those who had been thrown into contact with her.

‘She would appear to be a most unusual woman,’ murmured Lavedrine.

I gave him no opportunity to ask more questions on her account, but continued by speaking of the victims. Angela Enke, Lars Merson, Ludo Mittner. I went into detail in the first two cases, which Lavedrine had not seen for himself, describing their lives and characters, the nature of their work, the manner of their deaths. In particular, I dwelt on the specific circum stances in which the two corpses had been found at the cemetery. The similarities, and the differences.

At this point, I began to quote the edict of Maria Theresa of Austria aimed at curbing the profanation of tombs and cemeteries which had taken place on so many other occasions in other towns and cities, not in Austria alone, but also in Prussia half a century before.

‘The royal edict did not put an end to the gruesome practice of what is generally known as the
magia postuma
,’ I admitted, ‘given that almost any Prussian of my own age would be in a position to recall at least one episode of vampire-hunting from his own youth.’

Neither man interrupted me.

Claudet listened with his head bent over his papers, hands clasped tightly together as if to hold the documents in place on the table-top in case a sudden wind should come along and carry them off.

Lavedrine remained by the window, never changing his position, or his stance.

I came to my conclusion by reading out the date which I had affixed to the bottom of the report. Then, I shuffled the sheets, lined up the edges, placed the manuscript on the desk-top, and pushed it towards Colonel Claudet. This was my official version of the events in town. Facts as they had happened. The names of the victims. A description of the bodies. No-one had, as yet, been arrested. For the simple fact that all my conclusions led to what everyone else in Lotingen was saying.

A vampire…

Claudet looked up at me as if I had just that minute entered the room. Had he heard a word that I had said? And then there was the silence of Lavedrine. He had said nothing then. He said nothing now.

What was wrong with the pair of them?

Suddenly, the voice of Lavedrine broke the uncomfortable silence. ‘You say that the Schuettler brothers spied on Angela Enke while she was sewing in the kitchen of the Rimmeles?’

I had made more of this point than it merited, noting that it was a distance of less than fifty paces from the front door of the Schuettlers’ cottage to the garden door of the kitchen where Angela was working, and that the well was just a short distance away in the sunken garden.

‘Do you think they may know more than they have told you?’

‘They may know more than they’ve admitted to either of us, Colonel Lavedrine.’

I wanted him to understand that I was aware that he had been to the Prior’s House the day before and that he had spoken to the brothers. ‘It is a fact that the Schuettlers are curious. And equally, it may be significant that they were watching Angela Enke.’

‘No-one was watching when she was pitched into the well,’ he countered.

‘If it happened at night, or shortly before dawn, the fact that no-one saw her is not surprising. Equally, the fact that no-one heard a thing. The walls of the house are thick, and the bedrooms are situated on the other side from the garden where the well stands. It is probable that she was murdered while the house was sleeping.’

Claudet seemed to be watching the movement of my lips.

Did he know what Lavedrine and I were talking about? He was miles away. At the same time, there was something odd about the voice of Lavedrine, something that was flat and mechanical. What had happened to the energy which had galvanised him earlier that morning as we stood before the massacred corpse of Ludo Mittner?

The Frenchmen were tensed and strained, like archers as they flex their bows in the instant before they release the string. Were their arrows already pointing in the direction of Emma Rimmele?

Like a desperate man, I stepped onto thin ice and named the thing I feared.

‘Emma Rimmele reports that the Schuettlers spy on herself and her father, too.’

I studied Lavedrine as I said this, hoping to read the expression on his face when I pronounced her name. At the same time, I did not wish to lose sight of Claudet. The fixed expression of perplexity on his face must refer to something, after all.

Lavedrine relieved me of my uncertainty. He shrugged his shoulders and waved his hand, as if to say that the matter was of little interest so far as he was concerned. ‘It is not so surprising, Stiffeniis. A single woman – a beautiful woman, I believe – and an aged father whose mind is disturbed. They are bound to provoke a degree of prying malevolence wherever they go. Especially if they decide to live in a run-down country house where the body of a girl is found in a well a short time after they arrive.’

I sat back in my chair, and the tension drained out of me.

The worst was past.

‘One thing remains unclear to me, Stiffeniis, despite our little talk this morning. These three murders. Are they all so similar as you make out in your report?’