In Matto's Realm: A Sergeant Studer Mystery (12 page)

In his dream Studer broke out in a sweat.

"Read that," said Dr Laduner, handing Studer a sheet
of paper across the round table. Then he leant back,
his elbows resting on the arms of his chair, his chin on
his knuckles.

The lamp had a parchment shade painted with
transparent, coloured flowers. Studer leant forward
and read out loud.

"Ld: Not a single look to interrupt the police
officer's questioning; when we look at him, an oddly
unmotivated smile flits across his face. Asked what day
it is, he ponders, then says, looking past us strangely,
`Thursday,' and apologizes, saying he had to think
about it first, he'd been in prison since February and
he quite often had a fever. To the question `Since
when?' he replied, again with that strange look that
went right past us, `Four years,' by which he meant that
for the last four years he had suffered from high temperatures in the spring. He had come, he added,
because of a murder. Here, too, he smiled, quite
unmoved and certainly completely uninvolved. He
also shook hands with the policeman when he took his
leave. Pupils normal, tongue coated, hands steady,
patellar reflex brisk. . ."

"Until then," said Dr Laduner, taking back the sheet.
"Just a minute, have a look at the date."

"16. 5. 1923."

Laduner was silent for a while, then he said, "That
was when I got my first dressing-down from my boss. He said my initial assessment was poetic instead of factual and scientific. You saw the two letters at the beginning of the paragraph? Ld? That was Ernst Laduner,
thirty years old at the time. Old? He was young, very
young. That was when young Laduner first met Pierre
Pieterlen. It was his first report. . ."

Laduner lit a cigarette, then held the flat, red match
between his thumb and index finger, like a tiny, coloured conductor's baton. "Pierre Pieterlen, twenty-six
years old at the time, accused of murder because he
had suffocated his baby at birth. I can still repeat by
heart the questions the district prosecutor's office
asked, even with their abstruse German.

"I. Was the mental condition of the accused at the
time of committing the act disturbed to such an extent
that he was not in possession of the ability to control
his actions, or of the judgement necessary to understand the criminal nature of the act he was
committing?

"2. If question 1 is answered in the negative, please
state whether the accused committed the act in a state
of diminished responsibility and, if so, to what degree?

"Two splendid questions. Would you believe it if I
told you I once sat there from ten o'clock at night until
one o'clock in the morning thinking about them, trying to work out exactly what the legal gentlemen
meant? That's how stupid I was in those days, so stupid
that after that case I was ready to abandon psychiatry.
But it seems there are certain arguments one cannot
avoid. I was to meet Pieterlen again.

"`Diminished responsibility, and to what degree?'

"How can one know that, Studer? Do I know
whether you possess `judgement'? I can observe how
you work when you're investigating a crime, I might
even be able to form an opinion as to whether you think logically, see how you establish facts and fit them
together. But your `judgement'? Just imagine, for the
legal eagles you have to express the possession of
judgement, or the lack of it, in percentages! `His
judgement was fifty per cent, or thirty per cent.' Just as
we say Standard Oil stands at twenty or thirty per cent
below or above par. It's a funny old world we live in."

Silence. Then the clatter of plates from the kitchen.
Out in the corridor Kasperli asked in a loud voice
whether he could say good night to Daddy; Fran
Laduner answered that he should wait a while longer.
Laduner took another sheet of paper out of the file
and handed it across the table.

"Look at the date first."

Studer did so. "2. 9. 26. The second of September
nineteen hundred and twenty-six."

Then he read on.

"TW: Initial assessment. Bearded and in prison
dress, holding his cap behind his back, he stood there
stiffly, but he was concerned about his possessions,
particularly his pencils, he wouldn't like to lose them,
he said. The Governor of R. Prison could keep the
money, he added with a forced smile. When asked, he
said he had no complaints, though he had written a
letter to his legal guardian, Dr L. He didn't want to say
any more about it. Stiff, inhibited, he refused to shake
hands with the doctor from R. Prison when he left.
Asked why, he said that in his opinion that wasn't a
doctor, though such things could be a matter of personal feeling."

Studer put the sheet of paper on the table. He
waited. Laduner didn't speak, didn't move; his face
was in shadow.

"It all revolves round the second of September," he
said eventually. "It's strange. Pieterlen's baby died on the second of September; the next year Pieterlen was
convicted of murder and sentenced to ten years in
prison on the second of September. Despite the fact
that our, that is my, report was favourable; simply
because the district prosecutor thought his behaviour
was insolent.

"I did try to get the prosecutor in charge of the
investigation to understand my conclusions, namely
that Pieterlen was suffering from a latent mental disorder. We have decent public prosecutors here in Switzerland, and we have others for whom, if I had to write
a report on them, my- perfectly objective - conclusion
would be: moral debility. They are people who, it is
quite obvious, only deal with crime professionally so as
not to become criminals themselves. An abreaction, we
psychologists call it. Perhaps you've come across
people like that yourself. Anyway, the public prosecutor in that town was one of that type. Fat, with curly
hair on a pointed skull, plenty of hair cream - I can
still smell the brilliantine - a collector of copper
engravings, more active in his erotic than his professional affairs. With every person who came before him,
no matter what they were accused of - a thief, a woman
who'd been shoplifting, a pickpocket, an embezzler -
his first question was about their sexual experiences.
Fat lips, permanently moist.

"If anyone had expressed surprise at the interest he
showed in what went on between the sheets, he would
have replied that it was purely psychological. All kinds
of things have seeped through to the general public
from one of the modern schools of psychological
thought. Nowadays lawyers go to lectures on psychiatry
as well - you can easily imagine with what results. A
public prosecutor like that, for example.

"I realized straight away that he was ill-disposed towards Pieterlen because he had refused to answer
any of his bedroom questions. His wife, on the other
hand, was in the prosecutor's good books - she was
presumably intimidated, put up less resistance and
divulged all sorts of things he found more interesting
than her husband's snub. `What do you expect, Herr
Doktor,' he said to me, `this Pieterlen's an insolent
fellow, but we'll wear him down. You should have seen
the merry dance he led us at first. And you fell for it
too, of course.' What could I say? I tried to explain that
Pieterlen was sick, that my honest opinion was that in
this particular case a custodial sentence with hard
labour would have a detrimental effect. A complete
waste of breath. The prosecutor just laughed at me.
He'd show Pieterlen what's what, he said, and immediately went on to tell me about a particularly pretty
waitress in the second-class station buffet and a collection of risque engravings from the end of the eighteenth century he'd got for a song. Then he spoke
about an illustrated edition of the memoirs of the
Marquis de Sade. That tallied ... I don't want to generalize, there are some very decent men among the
public prosecutors, but sometime they are like that.
What was it my old boss always used to say? `Don't go
holding me responsible for the fact that the world is
full of nonsense. Believe me, even if you can manage to
understand different points of view, that won't get rid
of them.' He was a wise old bird, was my boss.

"As I told you, it all revolves round the second of
September. Three years later to the day, on the second
of September, Pieterlen was sent, as insane, from the
prison to the psychiatric clinic of the canton where he
had been sentenced. Before the trial he had told me
he hoped to get away with three years, and I hoped so
too. The conclusion in my report was manslaughter committed while emotionally disturbed. And three
years later ... Another doctor wrote the initial assessment, but I was still involved. Yes, I had become Pierre
Pieterlen's legal guardian, I was the Dr L. he had
written to from R. Prison."

"And today is the second of September," said Studer.

"Five and three is eight plus one year on remand.
He's been locked up for nine years."

Studer sat there, leaning forward, his forearms on
his thighs. He glanced up at Laduner's face and was
surprised to see that the mask had fallen. Sitting in the
chair was a youthful-looking man with soft lips and a
voice that neither sounded like "Battalion - you will
take your orders from me," nor recalled the tone of
"My dear girl". The look on his face was gentle, the
curve of his lips soft, his voice warm.

The change was even more pronounced when the
door opened and Kasperli came in to say good night.
He shook hands with Studer as well.

Then it was quiet in the room again. The cigarette
smoke curled up under the parchment shade and billowed out of the top, like smoke from a chimney.

Laduner said, "At first Pieterlen had to work as a
carpenter in the prison; he made coffins in his cell.
Don't imagine I'm making all this up, I can show it you
in the files. After he had spent a year all alone in his
cell making coffins, he was allowed to sew buttons
and buttonholes on army coats. For two whole years.
Then. . ."

Laduner searched in the file for a document, then
read it out in the same gentle voice: "Prison report no.
76: Pieterlen ... striking changes in his behaviour: he
has suddenly started carrying out tasks, which he has
previously performed satisfactorily, in a negligent
manner, the results being unusable, for example, he sewed buttonholes on the right-hand side of coats,
instead of the left, and made parts of articles of clothing with the reverse side of the cloth, which is clearly
different, on the outside. In response to complaints,
he said he would alter the clothes, but did them again
with the same mistakes. In the evening he made his
bed underneath the table where he worked and slept
there. . ."

A rustle of paper. Laduner lit a cigarette from the
one he had just finished, stood up, went over to the
window and looked out into the night, which lay, heavy
and sultry, over the land.

"He crawled away to hide, he sewed buttonholes in
the wrong place ... after three years - the second of
September again. Believe me, Studer, I'm not particularly soft-hearted, but this Pierre Pieterlen he's ... he's
a classic case." Laduner made an unsuccessful attempt
at a laugh.

Studer listened, listened carefully. If he were honest,
it wasn't the story of Pierre Pieterlen that interested
him so much as the tone in which it was told.

"How long have you been in harness, Studer? Twenty
years? Yes? Well, you'll be looking forward to your pension soon. But in those twenty years you'll have read
lots of files, won't you? Written lots of reports? And all
this time you'll have been wondering, Studer, wondering why I'm being so open with you, wondering why I
invited you to stay with us. Admit it, you found it rather
odd, didn't you? But I've followed your career, I've
heard about the struggle you had with Colonel
Caplaun, and I've also read five of your reports, all on
the same case. The case is neither here nor there, but I
was struck by the reports, by their tone, it was different
from that of your colleagues. There was something
that crept in between the set formulae of official phraseology. It sounded as if you were always trying to
understand, and once you'd understood, you wanted
the reader to understand. Am I making myself clear?
That's why I'm telling you about Pierre Pieterlen,
because I think he's a classic case, and because I know
you won't laugh at me. Years ago people could quite
justifiably laugh at me, and my old boss did so, he
laughed me to scorn when I wrote that first report.
And he was right. You see, I had this idea I could get
the gentlemen who sit in judgement to understand
something, but all that counts for them is ..."

Laduner picked up a sheet of paper and read out,
"The accused has been found guilty of murder as
defined in paragraph 130 of the Swiss Penal Code in
that on the second of September 1923 in his apartment in Wulflingen he did, wilfully and with malice
aforethought, unlawfully kill his child, that had been
born live to his spouse, Klara Pieterlen, by placing a
towel over its face, pressing it down with his hand and
strangling it with his hands, thereby causing it to die of
asphyxiation ..."

The document fluttered to the floor. Studer picked
it up and put it on the table. Laduner went out and
spoke to his wife, then came back and asked, standing
in the doorway, "Red or white?"

"White," Studer growled without looking up. He
knew he was being impolite, but he couldn't help it.

"Getting sleepy, Studer?" Laduner asked as he
poured the wine. He clinked glasses with the sergeant,
his thoughts clearly elsewhere. He didn't wait for
Studer to reply, but started walking up and down
between the plain desk and the other corner of the
room, where the bookcase was.

"Pieterlen was a conductor on the LOtscher mountain railway, his wife a waitress in Sitten. They'd known each other for four years when they decided to get
married. But Pieterlen lost his job. He'd had the flu.
When he felt better, he went out dancing with his
fiancee, was seen by some of his workmates, they told
on him and he was fired. He wasn't popular with his
colleagues, Pieterlen, they said he was arrogant. After
that he went to an industrial town in eastern Switzerland and worked as a labourer in an engineering
works. They got married four weeks before the child
was born ...