The Ludwig Conspiracy (7 page)

“Herr Lukas,” Sara interrupted, “what exactly do you know about King Ludwig the Second?”

Steven shrugged. “He was a cranky Bavarian king who slowly lost himself in a dream world, built some fairy-tale castles, and was finally certified insane and deposed. Soon after that, he died in a way that’s unexplained to this day.”

“A rather abbreviated account, but generally speaking correct. Though you could say that Ludwig the Second wasn’t just any Bavarian king. He was
the
Bavarian king. At least as far as his popularity was concerned.” Sara took one of the black-and-white photographs out of the little chest and held it in front of Steven’s nose. He noticed that the art detective had painted her fingernails green.

“There’s no other German monarch as well-known as this man,” she said, smiling. “The perfect mirror to reflect our hopes and imagination. A dreamer who actually had the money to put those dreams into practice.”

“But politically he . . .” Steven began to object.

“Was a total failure. Yes, I know.” The art historian sighed. “If we judged Ludwig the Second solely by his political achievements, no one would give a damn about him now. But what are politics compared to the fairy-tale castle that you see at the beginning of every Disney movie? And then there was his death.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, mysteries are always intriguing,” she replied, carefully returning the photograph to the little chest. “I’m sure you have your own ideas about his death.”

“My own ideas? All I know is the official version,” Steven said. “As best I remember, after he was declared insane and deposed, the king was taken to Berg Castle on Lake Starnberg. While he was there, he gave his psychiatrist the slip. The psychiatrist ran after him and finally caught up with him on the banks of the lake. They fought and Ludwig drowned the doctor, then committed suicide in the lake.”

“In waist-high water?”

Steven frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The water King Ludwig is supposed to have drowned himself in would have only come up to his waist,” the art detective replied. “Ludwig was an excellent swimmer. Not to mention that no water was found in his lungs.”

“You mean . . .”

“I don’t mean anything at all,” Sara went on. “I’m just stating the facts. And those are only a couple of the inconsistencies surrounding Ludwig’s death. They all nurture his legend. Did you know that the doctors who came to the scene weren’t allowed to examine the two bodies? And that the pocket watch belonging to the psychiatrist—Bernard von Gudden—didn’t stop until an hour later than the king’s? Then a bunch of witnesses either died in strange ways, or went missing, or suddenly became rich overnight. And, and, and . . .” She waved the subject away. “Whole libraries could be filled with the books that have been written about the strange events of the thirteenth of June 1886.”

“I had no idea that qualified art historians went in for conspiracy theories,” Steven said. “Clearly, you’ve inherited a taste for your uncle’s unusual hobby. But I guess that would suit a detective.”

Sara gave him an icy stare from her gray eyes. “Herr Lukas, if you take me for a fool, you’re mistaken. I do indeed specialize in nineteenth-century art, but aside from that, I couldn’t care less how Ludwig the Second died. As far as I’m concerned, he could have drowned in a cream pie, heavily made up and wearing high heels. What I do care about is my uncle’s death. And that’s what it’s all about here, right?”

“Sorry,” Steven murmured. “That was really tactless of me.”

Sara waved his apology aside. “That’s okay.” She took out a crumpled pack of menthol cigarettes and lit herself one. Only when she had twice inhaled deeply did she go on.

“Over the last few years, Uncle Paul discovered the Internet. That’s presumably how he heard about a small auction near Nuremberg. An apartment was being cleared, and this curious object was one of the pieces on sale.” She picked up the wooden box and gently rattled it. “Paul was more interested in the diary than the box, because of the name of the man who kept it, Theodor Marot.”

“Assistant to the king’s personal physician, Max Schleiss von Loewenfeld,” Steven put in.

She nodded. “Marot was an ambitious young man from Strasbourg. He’d been working in the surgical hospital in Munich since 1872. That was probably where Loewenfeld got to know him and appointed him his assistant.” She drew deeply on her cigarette again. The smell of burned tobacco and menthol made Steven feel dizzy. And he couldn’t take his eyes off Sara’s green-painted fingernails.

“What makes Marot so interesting for research into Ludwig,” Sara went on, “is that Loewenfeld’s assistant was not only ambitious and clever; he was also extremely handsome. A genuine French dandy with a weak spot for fine art. Ludwig must have fallen for him. Anyway, he appears in the king’s letters over and over after 1875. Some of the chronicles even call him Ludwig’s favorite playmate. And . . .” She paused for dramatic effect, smiling. “Marot was with him in Schloss Berg until the end. There were several witnesses who say that after Ludwig’s death, Marot claimed it was murder.”

Steven gave a low whistle. “When I saw the old photos and the lock of hair, my first thought was that it showed that the king had some kind of homosexual relationship,” he murmured. “But if I understand what you’re saying, there’s far more than that in the diary. Your uncle really believed that it could solve the mystery about Ludwig the Second?”

“He certainly hoped so,” Sara replied. “He bought the chest with the book in it for a few hundred euros in an Internet auction. But when he finally got the package, he realized that the diary had been written in some kind of secret code that he couldn’t read. So he came to Munich to ask for my help.” She ground out her cigarette so energetically that Steven feared she might push it right through the ashtray.

“As an art historian, I know a couple people involved with that kind of thing,” she went on. “But it turned out there was someone else after the book. I’d arranged to meet my uncle yesterday, but he didn’t show up. First, I tried calling him on his cell phone. Finally, I went to his hotel this afternoon, and all hell had broken loose there. Police, a forensic unit, the works. I called a friend in the state investigation bureau, and he told me what had happened.” Lost in thought, she lit another cigarette and stared at a painting of a stack of brightly colored rectangles on the opposite wall. “I never knew Uncle Paul really well, but that threw me for a loop,” she murmured at last. “Tortured and executed just for some damn book.”

“Can I ask how you found me?” Steven asked hesitantly.

A thin smile appeared on Sara’s lips. “Once the police left, I went back to the hotel,” she explained. “I knew that even though Uncle Paul didn’t own a laptop, he liked to surf the Net for old books. And sure enough, the guy at reception remembered an elderly gentleman who’d been using the hotel computer the previous afternoon. So I checked the history, and guess what popped up? Your secondhand bookshop. In connection with none other than Samuel Pepys.”

“You know about Pepys?” Steven asked, surprised.

Sara cast him a mocking glance. “Herr Lukas, I’m a qualified art historian. The fact that I do some detective work on the side doesn’t mean I’m some thick-headed Philistine.”

Steven smiled. He liked this woman’s style, even if he still couldn’t really get a handle on her.

“Pepys,” he summed up, “kept a diary in the seventeenth century that gives an unparalleled view of life in England in the early modern period. So the professor was looking at my website for it. I guess that was why he came to my bookshop. But then why did he leave the box there?”

“Maybe he knew that he was being followed,” Sara said. “Someone was close on his heels. He came to your shop and . . .”

“And exchanged his book for one of mine.” Steven snapped his fingers. “That must be it. A collection of German ballads was missing from my shelves after he left. Not bad thinking on your uncle’s part.”

Sara rubbed her eyes; they were reddened by weariness and the smoke from her cigarette. Her mascara was running, but she didn’t seem to notice. “It didn’t do him any good,” she whispered. “They caught him, tortured him, and killed him. And somewhere along the line he must also have given up your name, so now the same people are after you. And it seems pretty clear that these guys won’t pull their punches.”

Steven shook his head. “All this because of a book that
might
explain the death of a king from a hundred and something years ago? That’s absurd!”

“Believe me, I know the collectors’ scene. Some of them would feed their own mothers to piranhas for a rare-enough work.”

“I’m afraid it wasn’t the first time they tried getting at me,” Steven replied after a pause.

The art detective frowned. “What do you mean?”

Steven told her about the odd stranger in the traditional Bavarian suit, and the subsequent mysterious encounter on the Theresienwiese.

“The men were wearing black hoods?” Sara asked. Suddenly she was very agitated. Her face went paler.

Steven nodded. “Black hoods, and they were carrying torches. Why? Do you know who they were?”

With her cigarette in the corner of her mouth, Sara Lengfeld went over to the computer and clicked away for a few minutes. She beckoned to Steven to come and look at something on the screen.

“I don’t know if I’m right,” Sara said, pointing to the monitor. “You’d better look at this for yourself.”

Steven stared at the computer. He saw three figures in black capes and pointed hoods standing in front of a wooden cross sticking up from a shallow lake surrounded by reeds. Each of them held two burning torches making the shape of an X. Their eyes were narrow slits.

The bookseller held his breath. The men who had been following him on the Theresienwiese yesterday had looked just like that.

“If
those
were the men,” Sara Lengfeld said, stubbing her second cigarette out in a coffee cup, “then we’ve really got a problem on our hands.”

T
HE KING WAS CROSSING
a lake that reflected green and blue light. Stalactites hung from the roof like frozen tentacles. Frescoes of angry knights covered the rocky walls, their swords raised in battle, their mouths open in a soundless cry.

The boat silently glided in toward the bank where two paladins were waiting. With their dark green tracksuit jackets and precise crewcuts, they looked like travelers from some bizarre future in this underground world.

“Well? Erec, Bors?” the king said over a rendition of Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” that boomed through the grotto from sinfully expensive Dolby loudspeakers hidden in the rock. “Have you found what I’m waiting for so eagerly?”

“It . . . it’s not easy, Your Excellency,” began the taller of the two men, whom the king had addressed as Erec. “We turned the whole place upside down, but the book wasn’t there.”

“It wasn’t there?” the king said quietly. “What does that mean? Did you question that bookseller?”

“We couldn’t during the day,” said Bors, the other bodyguard, a wiry little man with pockmarks and a squashed boxer’s nose. “The police were all over because of the break-in. But we paid the guy a visit in the evening. We’re more or less sure he had the book with him then.”

“Had?”

“Well, yes.” Bors looked nervously up at the roof, as if afraid that one of the stalactites might break off and skewer him. Which was a manner of death preferable to what he faced if that damn book didn’t turn up soon. “He . . . he was there with some woman, no idea who she was,” he continued, stammering. “They made off together, I guess with the book. We took a couple of photos of her when she was standing outside the bookshop. They talked for a few minutes and . . .”

“Of course we checked where this Lukas lives right away,” Erec chimed in. “We searched the whole place, but there was nothing there. Not the guy, not the woman, not the book.”

“And where are they now?” The king’s voice was still low, but it took on a threatening undertone that the henchmen knew only too well.

“We left men watching his apartment and the bookshop,” Erec murmured, his broad shoulders drooping like injured wings. “Gareth, Ywain, and Tristan. He can’t get away from us. Sooner or later he has to turn up.”

The king adjusted the royal signet ring and blinked very slowly. Little beads of sweat ran down the foreheads of the two bodyguards. The grotto was as hot as a sauna. To reach this place they had had to pass two security barriers. They had descended into the depths in an elevator, then hurried through the throne room with its mighty Bohemian glass chandeliers, and passed countless windows that looked out on a painted scene of a mountainous landscape in bright daylight. Neither of the men could have said how much their boss’s eccentric hobby had cost to date. Behind the king’s back, they sometimes joked about The Royal Highness’s crazy notions, which had recently been getting even crazier. But no matter how deranged the king was, they took care that none of their comments ever reached the royal ears. The pay was too good for that.

And the king was far too unpredictable.

“That . . . is not good,” The Excellency murmered after a few minutes of silence. “Not good. We were so close to it, so close. And now this!”

The last words were a shout, the sound of the king’s voice echoing around the grotto. But seconds later, the king was composed again.

“I want you to do everything possible to find this antiquarian bookseller,” The Royal Highness whispered. “Everything. I’m sure he has the book in his possession. I can
feel
it. If anyone solves the riddle, all is lost.”

One of the gorillas muttered something unintelligible. The king raised an eyebrow.

“What did you say?”

“I’m just wondering what we’re supposed to do if this guy takes the book to the police. Not that I think he will, but well, if he did, then we would have a problem.”

“We would indeed.” The Excellency breathed slowly and deeply, eyes closed, as if suffering from a migraine. “That would most definitely be a problem. One hell of a problem.”