In Matto's Realm: A Sergeant Studer Mystery (26 page)

Had the lecture on Matto's realm been nothing
more than a diversionary tactic, like the lecture on
Pieterlen?

His leather slippers. A quick glance at the time: two o'clock. A quick glance out into the courtyard: a figure
was cautiously crossing, heading for the corner
between T Ward and P.

What was it Dr Laduner had said? Contact with
people who were mentally ill was contagious ...

There was no accordion music trickling down
through the ceiling this time. Where could Pieterlen
be? He really ought to have had a look at that attic by
now, the one with the window from which, according
to Schiil, Matto's head darted out and in, out and in.
Perhaps Schiil really had seen something, perhaps
he'd just dressed up what he'd seen as an image? The
chief of police, whom he had rung up immediately
after his conversation with Fran Laduner, had told him
there was still no trace of Pieterlen.

Studer slipped across the silent courtyard and went
down to the basement of P Ward. The door to the
heating plant was open, the light on.

At the foot of the ladder, in the same place as Studer
had found the Director, lay Dr Laduner. The furnace
door was wide open.

Dr Laduner was not dead, just unconscious. For the
moment Studer left him where he was. He shone his
pocket torch inside the furnace. A leather briefcase,
beside it half-burnt papers. Carefully Studer pulled
them out.

On the unburnt part of one of the documents he
read: Nurse Knuchel claims he was told by Nurse Blaser that
Gilgen had a pair of underpants in his cupboard ...

The rest was missing.

On another sheet was:

Schafer, Arnold t 25. 8. Embolism. D1.

Vuillemin, Maurice t 26. 8. Exanthematic typhus. D1.

Mosimann, Fritz t 26. 8. General debility, heart failure. U1.

The list of patients who had died that the Director
had had drawn up. And there was another sheet,
scarcely singed:

Dear Colonel,

In response to your letter of 28 August, I have the pleasure to inform you that I have carried out the enquiries you
requested. Recently your son has been indulging in alcohol
again; I myself encountered him twice on licensed premises
in a state of semi-inebriation. It is my opinion that the
course of treatment undertaken by Dr Laduner has been
ineffective and I therefore humbly suggest you take the necessary steps to have the aforementioned course of treatment
terminated ...

"Thank you," said a voice beside Studer. The sergeant turned round. Dr Laduner was standing beside
him, a smile on his face. He took the documents out of
Studer's hand and put them back in the furnace. Then
he lit a match. The papers flared up. Dr Laduner
fetched a bundle of firewood and put it, thinnest
pieces first, on the papers. Finally he placed the
leather briefcase on top.

"Let's burn the past," he said.

For a moment Studer imagined he was still dreaming, but then he saw the colour drain from Laduner's
usually bronzed face. The doctor started to sway.
Studer caught him. The man was heavy.

"Who knocked you down, Doctor?"

Laduner closed his eyes. He was refusing to answer.

"And," Studer went on, "it wasn't right to put a sedative in my liqueur. Why did you do that? After all, I'm
supposed to be here to protect you. I can't do that if
you put me to sleep."

Laduner opened his eyes. "You'll come to under stand everything, eventually. Perhaps I should have
trusted you more, but it just wasn't possible."

Dr Laduner had a lump on the back of his head,
visible under the strand of hair that stuck up like a
heron's crest. Blood was trickling down.

"I need to sit down for a bit," said Dr Laduner in a
weary voice. "A little water - if you would be so good,"
he added with a smile, parodying the senior nurse,
Weyrauch.

Studer left the boiler room and went over to 0, the
only ward he was familiar with. There he broke into
the ground-floor kitchen, found a large milk jug, filled
it with water and set off back. On the way, in the basement, he met a man creeping along in the darkness.
The man stopped. He was short and muscular, perhaps
a nurse returning from an assignation.

What was wrong? the stocky man wanted to know.

Nothing to do with him, Studer replied grumpily.

Had something happened to Dr Laduner?

No, he'd just had a bit of a dizzy spell, that was all.

The man breathed what sounded like a sigh of relief,
but when Studer tried to grab him, in order to question him, he vanished down a dark side corridor. No
steps could be heard - he must have been wearing
slippers too.

Studer washed Dr Laduner's wound and bandaged
it with his clean handkerchief. Then he carefully led
him across the courtyard and up the stairs.

It was a good job the nightwatchman had already
done his rounds.

In the bell turret of the clinic the hammer struck
four times, then came three more strokes, hardly any
sweeter. The last had a tinny echo.

"Oh, Ernst!" Fran Laduner exclaimed reproachfully.
She was wearing her red dressing-gown. Studer helped her put Laduner to bed. Then he said goodnight and
left. Fran Laduner gave him a look of gratitude, which
pleased him.

Back in his room, he was suddenly reminded of the
scene in Eichhorn's reformatory in Oberhollabrunn.
Letting resentment play itself out was sometimes not
without its dangers, he thought. And hazily he saw for
the first time something that was like the end of a
thread, a symbolic thread you have to pull to unravel a
tangle. But he couldn't quite grasp it ... He could see
the colour, that was all. Perhaps the reason he couldn't
grasp it was that his head was dizzy with sleep.

It was good that Dr Laduner was not on duty that Sunday. It meant he could stay in bed and rest his sore
head. Studer's head was throbbing too, but the suspense, his interest in what was happening in Randlingen, was stronger than his headache. Thursday, Friday,
Saturday - three days. He would have to get this finished, or he'd be ending up in Matto's realm himself.

As he was wandering round the wards at about ten
o'clock that morning, he thought about his dream the
previous night. The doctor's rounds were over, he was
told. The lady from the Baltic had sprinted round the
wards. Studer had seen her coming back, galloping
across the courtyard, alone, white coat fluttering, and
into the central block.

Now he was in T, the ward for those whose bodies
were ill as well as their minds. He was looking for
Knuchel, the conductor of the Randlingen brass band,
who ought to be on duty in T Ward. He had no idea
why he was looking for him, why he wanted to see him,
but he sensed that he needed to speak to the man as a
way of sharing the guilt he felt at the death of the little
red-haired nurse.

The patients in the beds were mostly very quiet, staring blankly at the ceiling with large eyes. There was just
one, in a corner, who kept repeating the same words
over and over again. "Two hundred thousand cows,
two hundred thousand sheep, two hundred thousand
horses, two hundred thousand francs ..."

That number: two hundred thousand.

Studer heard a voice saying, "Two hundred thousand men and women ..." It made him feel
uncomfortable.

Just as the sergeant was about to go over to Knuchel
(he remembered now that he had seen him when he
had accompanied Laduner on his rounds; he was the
nurse the doctor had given a ticking off), there was a
noise and shuffling of feet out in the corridor. Throats
were cleared, then women's voices started to sing a
hymn.

Studer went out into the corridor. There were
three old women with a fourth, who was younger and
carrying a guitar on which she played a simple
accompaniment.

In slow, dragging voices they sang of the kingdom of
heaven and its glory, where sinners would know bliss.
Nurse Knuchel, with his broad chin, was standing in
the doorway, a vacuous smile on his thick lips. Or perhaps it was a pious smile. The younger woman tuned
her guitar, played a few chords and they burst into a
cheerful melody, which sounded very strange coming
from those withered lips: "The cause is thine, Lord
Jesus Christ. . ."

After they had finished, one of the old women
turned to Studer and said, "The poor patients, they're
ill and we must do something to cheer them up.
Otherwise there's nothing for them."

The patient in the corner at the end of the ward was
still counting his herds of cows, sheep and horses. He
hadn't been listening to the singing. And the others
were staring at the ceiling, slobbering on their sheets.
The women transferred their attentions to the next
ward, to refresh other souls.

"That is practical Christianity," said Nurse Knuchel. You could see the brass top of the stud holding his
collar together. "Doctors and their science!" he said
scornfully. "Nothing for the soul, nothing for the spirit
... Occupational therapy! I once tried to start regular
Bible study in the evenings, but I got short shrift from
Dr Laduner. He'd nothing against religion, he said,
but here in the clinic it was important for the patients
to learn to face up to reality without fear."

Knuchel spoke like a revivalist preacher. Studer had
once gone to one of their meetings - for professional
reasons: a swindler, who was wanted in five cantons for
fraud and theft, had wormed his way into their confidence. Studer knew the words of the hymn, he knew
the tune. They were harmless, the people who went
to these meetings, proud of what they called their
Christianity, and it allowed them to look down
self-righteously on others.

"But what about Gilgen?" said Studer. "You didn't
behave very well towards him, not even like a good
Christian."

The expression on Knuchel's face froze. "Worldliness must be rooted out, wherever it appears," he
replied. "I came not to bring peace, but a sword."
Studer wondered if you could really call tale-telling a
sword.

Again the expression on Knuchel's face changed. A
sugary smile, presumably intended as kindly, appeared
on his lips. "Those who have not ears to hear, must be
made to hear," he said. "Only through religion can the
world be made whole again. I preach reconciliation,
but," he went on with a frown, "if they mock my
Saviour, then they must be chastised with a rod of
iron."

Poor little Gilgen with his sick wife and his debts and
his sad life. A man who had believed in something, who had given comfort to the patients, who had told
stories to an overexcited catatonic, stories the patient
didn't understand, but which calmed him down ...
Now don't start getting sentimental, he told himself.
But there was no way round the fact that he had liked
little Gilgen, who passed with a run of four to the ace,
from the very start, and that he was partly to blame for
his death.

That made him think. Why did he throw himself out
of the window? Because of the theft? Chabis! There was
no proof that Gilgen had stolen anything from the
manager's office. There was something else behind it
... Why did he have this vague feeling Gilgen was trying to shield someone else, that he was afraid he'd
betray someone and that was the reason he'd jumped
out of the window? It looked like his suicide was a
heroic gesture. Perhaps there was fear behind it, fear
of giving something away under cross-examination.
People generally went in fear and trembling of the
investigating magistrate. And they were right to, they
were right!

Who had he been trying to shield? Pieterlen? That
was the most obvious answer. He had gone out for
walks with Pieterlen every Sunday, they'd chatted
together. Gilgen had talked about his debts, Pieterlen
about his monstrous crime. Though after what Dr
Laduner had told him, it was difficult to regard the
murder of his child as monstrous ... Still ... Pieterlen
had disappeared at a critical moment, his escape
coinciding with the death of the Director, although he
had proof that the sandbag had played no part in the
Director's death. The slides he had prepared with
Neuville's help confirmed that. But someone had
pushed Borstli down the ladder.

Jutzeler? There was much that spoke against him as a suspect. His calm, his detachment, for example. But
his job had been at risk. Being blacklisted was no joke
for anyone, including those who worked in hospitals. It
could mean the end, even for the most competent of
men. Things hadn't got to the point where professional competence was more important than political
convictions. It would be a long time before they did.

But Jutzeler couldn't have made that telephone call.
Who in the clinic had telephoned, and why? Everything he had turned up in the course of his investigation pointed so clearly to the fact that it was the telephone call that had taken the Director to the corner of
the clinic, from which a cry had been heard at half past
one, that it would be a waste of time looking for
another solution. But who was it who had cried out?
The Director? His attacker? ... Attacker? ... . The
word came almost automatically, but who could say it
was an "attacker"?

Pieterlen had played the accordion at the harvest
festival. Pieterlen, who had disappeared, together with
his accordion. Pieterlen had had good reason to waylay the Director, given that he believed the machinations of the Director had prevented his release.
Against that was the fact that Dr Laduner had also
been hit on the head in the boiler room ... And that
Dr Laduner had known that the briefcase and its contents had been hidden in the furnace ...

And what about the wallet he had found behind the
books in Dr Laduner's apartment shortly after Gilgen
had been there?

The accordion! ... Studer remembered the tunes
that had trickled down through the ceiling of his
room, remembered Matto darting out and in of the
window above his room.