In Matto's Realm: A Sergeant Studer Mystery (21 page)

On the one hand, he could abandon the investigation, hand over the wallet (pity he no longer had the
cosh) together with what he had learnt about Pieterlen
and Dr Laduner's night-time excursion in the basement of P Ward to the man who took over, and concentrate on finding Herbert Caplaun. In that case he
would be covered - yes, covered. Then in five years at
most he could retire with the rank of inspector. All very
nice, and his wife would be pleased. No one would ever
get the Colonel sent to Thorberg Prison, despite the
pious hopes of the chief of police. On the other
hand, he could help Dr Laduner. He would get nothing out of it, indeed, he could end up in one hell of a
mess, since he would have the Colonel out for his
blood.

"Well?" Caplaun repeated his question.

Inspector ... pension ... ex gratia payment - an ex
gratia payment! The Colonel was rich.

But then there was the way he had been addressed.
"You there ... yes, I mean you." And the business with
the bank. And there was a song that began "Plaisir
d'amour', and another that had been sung by the same
voice: "Si le roi m'avait donne Paris sa grand' ville". Why
was it the two songs that tipped the balance? Or the woman who had sung them? There was never a logical
explanation for a decision.

"Enough!" Studer suddenly said and, turning to Dr
Laduner, "Do you know where Herbert is?"

Laduner nodded silently.

"In that case," said Studer, standing up and stretching, "in that case I must unfortunately decline the
Colonel's kind offer."

"You must? ... Well, then ... I see ... In that case I
know what I must do."

Studer would most of all have liked to tell the Colonel to go and take a running jump. But that wouldn't
do, so he just bowed. Dr Laduner stood up and opened
the door.

What a small man the Colonel was! He had short
legs, which were slightly bowed. Outside he put on a
panama with a red hatband, hung his umbrella over
his arm and went out without a word of farewell. The
panama hat and the umbrella! thought Studer. They
put the finishing touch to his image of the man.

"Has he gone?" asked Fran Laduner. She was pale.
And was the sergeant going to stay? she added. It
looked as if she had been listening.

"Studer's staying with us," said Laduner curtly, staring into a corner of the room. "I'll send him back up
for tea. You can sing him a song, Greti, he's earned it."

Studer stared at him open mouthed. Was it coincidence or could the psychiatrist read thoughts?

Laduner took off his jacket and went out to get his
white coat. "Come with me, Studer, I've got something
to show you."

As they were crossing the courtyard, Studer suddenly felt Laduner put his hand on his upper arm and
give it a squeeze. Then the pressure slackened, though
the hand remained. Thus Studer was gently led back to the door of D1. He no longer felt a shiver of fear at the
insect eyes, nor did he bow his head as he passed
beneath the window at which, according to Schul,
Matto darted out and in. Studer was content. After all,
thanks do not always have to be expressed in words.
There are other means of communication.

"So this is where I murder my patients," said Dr
Laduner as he opened the door to D1. "But it's not my
victims I want to show you. There's something else. . ."

A bare room. Wooden tables, old, rough, greasy.
Low benches with no backrests. A door leading into
the garden. They were in the basement.

Sitting at the tables were men plucking at matted
horsehair. Their eyes were empty of expression. At
times one would leap up, as if trying to catch a fly,
jump high in the air, squeal and fall down. Another
crept round Studer, came close, with a fixed stare, and
started to whisper in the most matter-of-fact tone such
incredible obscenities that Studer automatically drew
back. Some jabbered. A minor brawl was calmed down
by a man in a white apron.

"Schwertfeger!" Dr Laduner called. The man in
the white apron came over. He was short, with
well-developed biceps. He looked like a dairyman.

Laduner introduced them. "This is the staff nurse in
charge of Dl. And you'll already have heard about
Sergeant Studer, won't you, Schwertfeger? Bring
Leibundgut to me."

He drew Studer to the door into the garden and
went out.

"That's going to be changed," he said, pointing back
into the room. "Fresh paint, brightly coloured
benches, pictures on the wall. But you can't get everything done at once ... Anyway, I'm going to introduce you to Leibundgut, but it's just to help make the
Caplaun case clear. You'll understand. I trust you,
Studer ... Leibundgut - in dialect it comes out as lieb
and gut, kind and good. . . "

They walked round a trampled patch of lawn until
they came to a spluttering fountain. The leaves on the
maples were drooping and the sun, when it appeared
between the clouds, was very hot ...

Schwertfeger came back with a man with a twisted
mouth. There was such a terrible expression of fear in
his eyes, it sent a shiver down Studer's spine.

"Hi, Leibundgut," said Laduner in a friendly voice.
"How's things?" You could see the man was making an
effort to answer. His eyelids fluttered up and down, his
lips moved, but all that came out was a hoarse
stammer.

He took Laduner's hand, then let go of it again.
Suddenly he bent down and put his hands flat on the
gravel. In that posture, on all fours, he spoke, directing
his words at the ground.

"Much better, thank you, Doctor," he said. His voice
was hoarse but clear. "Can I go home soon?" He
pushed off the ground with his hands and straightened
up, looking at Dr Laduner expectantly.

"Aren't you better off here than at home with your
brothers?" Laduner asked.

The man thought, went back down on all fours and
in that posture said, in the same hoarse voice, that he
wanted to be freed, he had to go and work in the
cowshed.

"You'll have to be patient for a little while longer,
Leibundgut," said Laduner. "First of all you have to
get well again and be able to speak like other
people."

A sad shake of the head. Then the answer, again on all fours, directed at the ground. "I'll never be able to
do that."

"Go back to your work," said Laduner in a friendly
voice. And the man went, head bowed.

Laduner looked sad. He took Studer by the arm
again and drew him to a bench.

"Fritz Leibundgut, from Gerzenstein, twenty-three
years old. Runs a middle-sized family farm together
with his three brothers. He's the weakest, not very
bright. But good-natured. The parents are dead, the
four men are still bachelors. Fritz had to work. He's
not lazy, but he's so good-natured he never asked for
money, never went to the inn, always stayed at home.
I'm sure he never had a girlfriend. The brothers are
odd. They didn't actually torment him, but they bullied him. He accepted everything. One winter's night
seven months ago the three came home, somewhat the
worse for drink. Fritz hadn't cleaned the cowshed
properly, so they dragged him out of his bed, thrashed
him, threw him in the trough, pulled him out, beat
him up again and left him lying there. Later on, when
he tried to crawl back into the house, the door was
locked. He spent the whole night outside. As he was
robust, he didn't get ill, but since that day he has been
unable to speak to anyone if he's standing upright, on
two feet. He can only speak when he gets down on all
fours. There are no other signs of mental illness, it's
just that he cannot speak if he's standing up. It's obvious what the man is trying to say with his simple image:
you treated me like a dog, so I'll stay a dog ... I'll only
talk when I'm on all fours. Obvious, don't you think?
And the remarkable thing is that we are going to discharge the man in the next few days. Without having
cured him, of course. His brothers refuse to go on paying for him. The eldest said he couldn't care less if Fritz couldn't speak standing up, as long as he did his
work. And Fritz Leibundgut is hard-working. He has
no objection to going back to his brothers. Being free
is more important to him than a nice bed and decent
treatment. His brothers, you see, are human beings,
not lunatics. And human beings, well, you know what
human beings are like" - and Laduner repeated his
pun on their name - "human beings are kind and
good."

Silence. Laduner twirled a yellow maple leaf
between his thumb and index finger. He stared at the
wooden fence round the D1 garden.

"It's not only the body that can get deformed, the
mind can too. I'm supposed to twist Herbert Caplaun
back into shape as well. He can only think, feel, decide,
act on all fours. One punishment in the old days was to
lock people up bent. In his childhood, Herbert
Caplaun's mind was locked up bent. I can't say any
more, but you've seen the Colonel ... After that the
rest isn't difficult to understand. I'm taking pains with
Herbert Caplaun because I genuinely believe I can put
something right. By taking an objective approach. I
can't change Leibundgut. The danger is to try to make
too many changes. Lots of the minds that are sent to us
are like crumpled clothes. I've often thought of the
clinic," said Laduner with a weak attempt at a joke, "as
a huge steam laundry. We moisten the minds with
steam, then iron them out. . ."

Silence. The fountain gave a loud splutter.

"Herbert Caplaun," said Laduner in concerned
tones.

Studer felt as if a book lay open on his knees. He had
no trouble reading it: ... emotionally involved in what
happens to his patient; that can lead to the danger of too
intense a reciprocal emotional bond with the patient ...

Put in scientific terms. It sounded convincing.

But how did it work in practice?

A reciprocal emotional bond! A fine phrase! ...

But how could you rule feeling out?

Studer did not ask, instead he stared at the gravelly
path in the sunlight. Yet there were many things he
would have liked to ask: What were you doing in the
corridor in P Ward on Wednesday night? What do you
know of the whereabouts of Pieterlen, your classic
case? And where have you hidden Herbert Caplaun?

But the sergeant remained silent. He felt like a bank
manager who, with a heavy heart and only out of pity,
has granted a close friend a large overdraft and now
can't sleep at night because he doesn't know whether
his friend is solvent or about to declare himself
bankrupt.

Later Studer would think that there is nothing more
confusing than becoming personally involved in a
case. Had he not, during his discussion with Colonel
Caplaun, spent the whole time thinking about the
decision he would have to make, then there was one
thing that would have struck him. The Colonel had
mentioned it in passing, but it was so obviously the key
to the whole business that Studer must have been
really blind not to see that it was a passkey he could
use.

So Studer spent a sleepless night. He had decided to
give himself time, but his thoughts would not leave
him in peace. Thoughts! Rather they were images that
passed before his eyes, confused and without any obvious connection, like one of those modern French
films. What tormented him most, however, was the
accordion playing. It started, in muted tones, at
around eleven o'clock, and he could not tell where it
came from. One minute it was playing, quietly and
almost without any bass, "The Roses Are Blooming in
Sans Souci", an old tango, and then "Somewhere in
the world there's a little happiness, somewhere, some
when, somehow" ... a sentimental ballad. Then
sometimes Studer was convinced the invisible musician must be playing above his room. He decided to
get up to go and see, but in the end he stayed in bed.
He kept feeling that nothing could be achieved with
normal detective methods in this case, that he just had to sit still and wait for chance to do the work for
him.

So Studer listened to the mysterious accordion playing - what with the sleepless night and all the strange
new experiences, he was overtired - and it was inevitable that eventually Pieterlen should come to mind;
Pieterlen, who had played at the harvest festival and
then disappeared, together with his instrument.

And there was another thing that bothered Studer.
He had gone to see Gilgen in the afternoon, but it had
been the nurse's day off.

Finally morning came, an early autumn morning
with drizzle, grey and misty, cold and damp. Studer
could not bring himself to leave the Laduners' apartment. It was the day of the Director's funeral and the
central block was alive with people, though that probably wasn't the appropriate word. When Studer did
eventually attempt to go down the stairs, he stopped
on the landing above the first floor. There were
women in black veils standing in the open doorway of
the apartment in which an old man had dwelt with
his loneliness, men in black frock coats were bustling
to and fro, there was the flowery smell of wreaths.
Studer beat a retreat. When he met Frau Laduner in
the corridor, she looked as if she had been crying.
Had she taken the death of the Director that much
to heart? Studer didn't have the courage to ask ...
He stayed in his room, looking out over the grey
courtyard and cursing his own pigheadedness, which
had prevented him from accepting the Colonel's
offer ...

In the study in the afternoon he still hadn't found
the courage to ask Frau Laduner why she had been
crying that morning. Dr Laduner had gone to the
funeral and it was roughly a quarter to three; ten minutes earlier the funeral procession had gathered
outside the entrance. A lot of cars had driven up.

Then the hearse had set off. The mourners formed a
long, black line, which wound its way beneath a
clouded sky as dazzling as molten iron. After the
mourners on foot came the cars, crawling along like
huge, exhausted bugs.