In Matto's Realm: A Sergeant Studer Mystery (11 page)

"That's only one part of it, and I can well understand
why you find it funny. They try to keep the patients
occupied. My husband is very gifted in practical matters, he literally invented occupational exercises himself. He put on courses for the warders - in those days
we still called them warders - and he used to visit all
the wards five, six, ten times a day. He's a man who
usually swears and curses when something goes wrong,
but he was patient ... And every evening the Director
went off to the Bear for his half pint of wine, married
his cook and was a father again at sixty ... Then when
everything was working, when the clinic was running
smoothly and people came to see it, when the patients
were quiet at night and the wards, which used to look
like a madhouse, were just workshops where paper
bags were stuck together, mats woven - when patients
who had been considered incurable could be discharged, who was it who got all the glory? ... I once
happened to see a letter in the office. Some German
professor had written to tell the Director how surprised he had been at the modern way the clinic was
run and congratulated the Director on introducing
recent advances in psychotherapy into his
establishment."

Frau Laduner had become quite heated. Now she
fell silent. Her hands were resting in her lap and her
linen skirt had rucked up almost to her knees. Frau
Laduner's feet looked good-natured, Studer thought.
Good-natured and energetic.

He thought, "Battalion - you will take - your orders
- from me," and concealed a smile under his
moustache.

"And now the Director's dead!" said Frau Laduner. She breathed in deeply and the material of her blouse
stretched tight over her breasts. It was the same kind of
deep breath that Dr Laduner had taken, in the avenue
under the apple trees with the tiny, grass-green apples
hanging from their branches, apples as sharp as the
bell that rang the hours from the turret on Randlingen
Clinic.

A door-handle was thrust down, a door flung
open.

"Fran Doktor, I think Herr Dr Laduner is back," said
Studer, standing up.

Somewhere in the apartment a door was slammed
shut. She'd go and have a look, said Fran Laduner, and
with that she took her leave of the sergeant.

On the doorpost of the first-floor apartment was a tin
nameplate, the kind you could emboss yourself on
those machines that had sprung up on all the railway
stations at one time: Dr Ulrich Borstli MD.

Cautiously, Studer tried the door. It was not locked
and he found himself in a corridor similar to the
one in Dr Laduner's apartment. He felt slightly
uncomfortable but, he thought, it was after all his job
to investigate any link there might be between the
disappearing patient and the death of the Director.

He called out in a loud voice, "Hello," and "Anyone
at home?". . . Silence. It smelt of stale cigar smoke.

Studer went into the first room. A grand piano, a
music stand, a small table with a full ashtray. Chairs, a
dilapidated leather armchair drawn up in front of the
fireplace. On the wall above the piano was the
enlarged photograph of a woman. Studer went over to it. A thin face, big eyes, heavy plaits piled up elaborately on the back of her head ... An old picture ... His
first wife?

The piano was locked and covered in dust. There
were red velvet curtains hanging at either side of the
windows and through the glass the pale trunk of a
silver birch shone. Withered leaves quivered on the
slender branches.

In the next room was a desk and on the desk a bottle
of brandy with a dirty glass beside it. Studer remembered that it was the Director who wrote the reports on
the chronic alcoholics and could not repress a quiet
laugh. Beside the glass a book lay open. Studer turned
to the title page: The Memoirs of Casanova.

An odd choice of reading! Still ... But he must
search the desk drawers. They weren't locked. No
money in them. The 1,200 francs the Director had
received the previous day were nowhere to be seen ...
So he'd had them on him? But his pockets were empty
... And what about that cosh?

The bedroom. Two beds; one had no sheets or blankets, the other had not been slept in - there was no
depression made by a head in the pillow. The coverlet
was smoothed out.

There was something about the whole apartment,
though he couldn't quite put his finger on it. It wasn't
just the stale cigar smoke, nor was it the faint smell of
brandy, although both were part of its essential atmosphere. It wasn't just the open volume of Casanova or
the unmade-up bed or the dust or the locked piano or
the velvet curtains or the silver birch with the withered
leaves...

Studer stood in the middle of the apartment, by the
open bookcase with just a few books lying haphazardly
on the shelves. On the desk was a triple photograph frame: girls, men, newly weds, children ... The
Director's grandchildren?

"Aha!" exclaimed Studer out loud. Now he could see
what it was that filled the whole apartment.

Loneliness.

An old man who escaped to the Bear because he
couldn't stand the loneliness any more. Two wives
dead, the children far away, the grandchildren only
coming during the holidays ... And the young nurses
he went for walks with? An old man fighting against his
loneliness, and it was a hopeless struggle.

Studer slipped out of the apartment, hurried up the
stairs and into the second-floor apartment. Fran
Laduner came to meet him. A nurse was asking for
him, she'd taken him to the guest room.

When Studer opened the door he saw Gilgen
sitting on the edge of a chair. He looked pale and
anxious.

Gilgen scratched his bald head. He was wearing a
jacket that had been patched several times. Out of one
of the pockets he took a sheet of paper, folded in four,
and handed it to Studer. The title was written in a
beautiful hand; it was a dedication.

Dedicated to the very respected, very kind and very wise
InspectorJakob Studer by a great war invalid on behalf of
Matto, the great spirit whose realm is spreading ever wider
over the world.

There followed the strange passage of prose Studer
had read that morning, only the beginning was a little different: When the mist spins the rain into thin threads ...
and so on, and so on. Then came the passage about the
coloured streamers fluttering all over the world and
war flaring up and the bit about the red balls and revolution blazing up to the heavens ... It was similar and
yet different. This time Studer found it strangely moving, and he shivered. So much had happened in the
meantime. He had found the Director at the bottom of
the iron ladder, he'd seen his apartment and understood the loneliness of an old man. He had seen
Laduner breathe a sigh of relief, he'd seen his wife
breathe a sigh of relief ...

And Sergeant Studer read the last section of Schul's
unrhymed poem:

Matto! He is powerful. He can take on all shapes, now he is
short and fat, now slim and tall, and the world is his puppet
theatre. Men do not realize that he is playing with them, like a
puppeteer with his marionettes ... And his fingernails are as
long as those of a Chinese scholar, glassy and green ...

Poor old Schi l! He certainly had a thing about
Matto's fingernails ... But what was that? Studer
felt uneasy, but it wasn't Schi l's "poem" now, it was
something else ...

"Who's that playing the accordion?" he asked in irritation. It was impossible to work out where the music
was coming from. He'd heard it already, down in the
doctors' room, far off and quiet; up here it was louder,
it seemed to be coming out of the walls, or dripping
down from the ceiling.

He glanced at the red-haired nurse and saw that the
little man had turned pale. It looked odd, the freckles
stood out so clearly, like spots of rust on dull steel.

"What's wrong, Gilgen?" Studer asked.

"Nothing, Sergeant ... Do you really need to know
who's playing? It'll be impossible to tell, there's so
many in the clinic who play the accordion, it could be
coming from any of the wards."

Studer acquiesced, though the accordion playing
still irritated him. He couldn't have said why. He was
trying to remember something that had struck him
that morning. It was something connected with
accordion playing, but he couldn't quite bring it back
to mind.

"Sergeant," said Gilgen, then paused. Only when
Studer had given him a nod of encouragement did he
continue with a request that Studer should ask Dr
Laduner not to dismiss him.

"Dismiss you? Why should he dismiss you?"

It was a sad story Gilgen had to tell. He'd bought a
little house, four years ago ... 18,000 francs. He'd
made a down payment of 7,000 francs, the rest was a
mortgage. At first it had gone well, but now his wife was
ill. She was up in Heiligenschwendi, it was her chest.
And they were in debt! On his days off he'd always
stood in for Jutzeler, and a few times he'd had to speak
sharply to the young nurses to get them to treat him
with due respect, so they'd become a bit obstreperous.
They'd made an official complaint, claimed he was
wearing underwear and boots belonging to patients.
The Director had investigated the matter and had
believed the others. He'd been going to sack Gilgen,
but Staff Nurse Jutzeler had threatened to call a strike
if Gilgen was dismissed. The Director had just laughed,
and he'd been right to laugh, there wasn't much unity
among the nurses, hardly a dozen of them were in the
union. The rest were glad just to have a job nowadays,
when things were so difficult ...

"So what's the problem now?" Studer asked. He felt
sorry for him.

He'd been home at lunchtime, Gilgen said, and
found the final demand from the building society.
Now if they got his wages paid straight to them, he'd be
in a complete mess. His wife didn't belong to any
insurance scheme ... He'd tried everything, he went
on, he'd done tailoring work for colleagues in his free
time, even though it was officially forbidden to earn a
double income. At least it was forbidden to the nurses.
The fact that Dr Blumenstein's wife taught at the village school while her husband had his salary from the
clinic didn't count, of course ...

Studer nodded. The world was an unjust place. He
could have told Gilgen about the 1,200 francs the
Director had received from the insurance company,
but he didn't want to stir things up even more.

Still, it was remarkable how the little man trusted
him. Gilgen, a nurse he hadn't even known the
previous day.

He'd played jass once with him, that morning, and it
was probably pure chance that Dr Laduner had got
him to show Studer round 0 Ward.

Studer offered what sympathy he could, promising
he'd do his best. For the moment Dr Laduner was
running the clinic so he'd put in a good word for
Gilgen with him.

Gilgen left feeling a little more hopeful.

Studer noticed that as he did so he shot an anxious
glance at the ceiling - but immediately forgot about it.
The accordion had stopped ...

He accompanied Gilgen to the apartment door and
stopped outside the study on his way back along the
corridor. He remembered he'd been going to phone
his wife.

He gave a firm knock, opened the door and started
back.

Lying on a couch, facing the door, was a young man,
eyes wide with fear. He had his hands clasped behind
his head and tears were running down his cheeks. At
his head Dr Laduner was sitting in a comfortable armchair, smoking. When he saw Studer, he leapt up, came
over to the door and said, in an agitated whisper, "In
half an hour, I'm busy just at the moment," then closed
the door.

Studer stood there for a while, thinking. The young
man on the couch was Herbert Caplaun, the colonel's
son.

Why was Herbert lying on a couch, crying?

Frau Laduner came rushing along the corridor. Her
husband was not to be disturbed just at the moment,
he had a private patient in analysis.

Analysis? What was that? he asked.

Frau Laduner waved the question away. It was difficult to explain.

Just as difficult, Studer thought, as the expression
anxiety neurosis.

He went quietly back to his room and started to
empty out his pockets. His dilapidated old leather suitcase had been brought and was on the table. In it,
beneath his underwear, he put the little sandbag, the
envelope with the dust he'd combed out of the
Director's hair and the piece of coarse cloth he'd
found beneath Pieterlen's mattress.

Then he took out his notebook, opened it at the
page with the names and started to learn them off by
heart, like a schoolboy learning his Latin vocabulary.

"Jutzeler, Max: staff nurse; Weyrauch, Karl: senior
nurse; Wasem, Irma: nurse, 22 years old. . ."

Then it occurred to him that he'd forgotten to put Gilgen in, and Schiil, Matto's friend, nor was Fraulein
Kolla from the kitchen in his notebook. But he left
those three out, they didn't seem to be involved in the
case.

He whispered softly a few times, "Pieterlen, Pierre:
child murderer," and, "Caplaun, Herbert: anxiety
neurosis."

Then he shut his notebook, folded his arms across
his chest and closed his eyes. He was still memorizing
while he was half asleep "Dr Blumenstein, consultant,
performing the autopsy, the brother-in-law of the Director,
husband of the sister of the second wife of the Director ..."

But all the "ofs" were irritating him, like a fly buzzing round, about to settle on his nose, and he shook
his head to chase it away. Then he fell asleep.

He dreamt that Dr Laduner was forcing him to write
down the names of all the patients, all the nurses, all
the kitchen maids, maintenance and office staff and all
the doctors in a huge book.

"When you know all the names off by heart," Dr
Laduner said, "then you can be Director instead of me.
Sure-ly. ..."