When the Devil's Idle (7 page)

“
Yes,
it was the third,” she said, nodding.

“
So
you’ve been here about five weeks?” Patronas asked her.

“
That
is correct, yes,” she said. “I go to the beach in Campos, sunbathe
and read books there. See to the children. The days pass. Until
yesterday, it was pleasant.”

“
And
you, when did you come?” Patronas asked, returning to her
husband.

“
The
day before yesterday. I had work to finish in Darfur.”

Patronas wrote
the date down and circled it. “I noticed there’s no security system
here. Who has keys to the house?”

“
The
housekeeper. As far as I know, she’s the only one.”

The wife jumped
in. “The gardener has a key, too, Gunther. There are many keys to
the house. Both the children have one. I have one, the
Bauers.”

Her husband
didn’t like being corrected. “So, how many keys?” he asked his wife
sharply.

“
Eight, I think. We have four, the Bauers have two and the
gardener and the woman who cleans each have one.”

Patronas cut off
the discussion, thinking there were so many keys, they would be of
no use in the investigation. “Does the housekeeper live here with
you?”

“
No,”
Gunther Bechtel said. “I believe she has an apartment in
town.”

The German hadn’t
referred to the woman by name, probably didn’t know it. As with the
keys, he did not appear to be aware of what went on in the house or
care much.

“
She
works for our friends,” Bechtel hastened to add. “They are the ones
who deal with her.”

“
Does
she speak German?”

“
Only
a few words.”

Patronas frowned.
“But this is a German household. How does she manage?”

The wife spoke up
again. “Our friend’s wife tells her
sauber,
clean, and hands
her a mop and she mops. Tells her
schmutzige Wäsche,
dirty
clothes, gives her the hamper and she does the laundry.”

Patronas was
liking them less and less. “Where is she now?”

“
The
housekeeper? I sent her home.”

“
Was
she here on the day of the murder?”

“
Yes,”
said Gerta Bechtel. “She came in the afternoon and stayed on to
prepare our dinner.”

“
Let’s
go back to the deceased,” Patronas said. “Did he have friends on
Patmos? People he visited?”

“
No,
he rarely left the house.” Gunther Bechtel was very emphatic on
this point. “Once he got here, he remained, except for a few times
when he joined us for the day at Campos. He loved the garden and
liked to sit outside under the trees.”

“
So he
came with you from Germany, and except for two or three trips to
the beach, stayed within these walls?”

“
That
is correct.”

Patronas felt a
touch of pity for the old man. Confined to this hillside, he must
have been very lonely. Maybe he’d been afraid to venture off the
estate, afraid he’d fall and break his hip. After all, he’d been
over ninety. Still, it seemed wrong. Everyone in the family had
been occupied elsewhere: his nephew in Africa and his grandchildren
and their mother at the beach, their hosts in Turkey. Aside from
the housekeeper, he would have spent most of his time alone, and
she didn’t speak or understand German. If he’d wanted to
communicate with her, he would have had to use sign
language.

“
He
had everything he needed,” Gunter Bechtel insisted stubbornly. “My
friends arranged to import food, German beer, newspapers, books,
and videos for him. It was just like at home, only warm and sunny.
He thanked us many times for bringing him here. He was
happy.”

“
How
did he pass the time?” Patronas asked.

“
He
gardened a little. He was an old man, Chief Officer. Mostly, he
napped.”

“
What
was his relationship with the neighbors?”

“
We
are summer people living in a borrowed house. We have no
relationship with the neighbors.”

“
What
about the Germans who live on Patmos?”

“
We do
not know people on Patmos, German or otherwise.” Again, Bechtel was
emphatic.

“
Did
your father know the people who gave you the house?”

“
Of
course he knew the Bauers.” His tone was hostile. “They are our
friends. Surely you don’t think they had a hand in
this?”

“
It
appears unlikely, but we will still have to check.” Patronas
continued to write. “What was your father’s relationship with his
grandchildren?”

“
His
relationship with the children was good. They played cards.
Especially my son, Walter. My daughter, as you saw, is a teenager,
not so interested in adults.”

“
Was
your father a veteran? Did he serve in the war?”

“
What
possible relevance does that have?”

“
There
was a swastika carved on his forehead. Why would someone do
something like that?”

“
I
have no idea.” Bechtel bit off the words.

“
I’m
sorry if I upset you. I’m just trying to get a sense of who he
was.”

“
I’ll
tell you who he was. He was an old man with arthritis who liked to
sleep in the sun, who liked to drink Lowenbrau in the afternoon and
listen to the music of Mahler on an old-fashioned phonograph. He
loved the smell of lilies because they reminded him of his mother.
He especially loved pickles.” For the first time, there was a hint
of emotion in the man’s voice. Sadness. “He never bothered
anybody.”

“
Do
you have any idea who might have killed him?” Evangelos
asked.

He shook his
head. “Perhaps it was a random event, someone attacking him because
he was German. Germans are not so popular now in
Greece.”

Patronas drummed
his pencil on his notebook. “What about the scars on his face? The
old ones. Where did they come from?”

“
Oh,
you mean his
Mensur
scars,” Bechtel said, visibly relaxing.
“They are from dueling. The sport was very popular in the
universities of my country when my papa was young. They called the
participants
Paukanten
and a scar was a smite. To have one
on your face was a badge of honor then, a mark of your class. It
meant you were brave and had stood your ground and not
flinched.”

He smiled for the
first time. “Otto Bismarck once remarked that a man’s courage could
be judged by the number of scars on his cheeks.”

Again, everything
was generic, nothing specific to the dead man.

“
Your
papa had three scars, so he must have been a very brave
man.”

“
He
was.”

“
Where
in Germany was he from?”

“
He
lived with us in Stuttgart. It worked very well for everyone. My
wife had company when I was away in Africa and he had someone to
look after him.”

Another
evasion.

He’d have to
enter the decedent’s name and search the Internet. Maybe send his
photograph to Interpol, see what came back.

He returned to
the war. “Was he in the army?”

“
Everyone in Germany served in the military during the war, the
Wehrmacht predominantly. You know the word, Chief Officer. No need
for me to translate.”

“
Where
did he fight?”

“
I
don’t know. We never spoke of that time.”

“
Surely you must have some idea.”

“
What
are you asking? If he was a war criminal, my papa? If he killed
Jews?” His voice grew shrill. “You think the agents of Mossad left
their headquarters in Tel Aviv and came to Patmos, broke into this
place and killed a ninety-year-old man in a garden?”

Said like that,
it sounded preposterous.

Bechtel began
pacing back and forth.“You people are all the same,” he said
angrily. “You assume if a man is a certain age and has a German
accent, he was in Auschwitz running a crematorium. There were
nearly seventy million of us at the beginning of the war. Not all
of us were in the Gestapo, Chief Officer! Not all of us were SS
men, no matter what you think, loading people onto trains and
sending them off to be gassed. Most of us were ordinary people
caught up in events beyond our control. Certainly my papa was that,
just an ordinary man.” There were tears in his eyes. Tears of
anger, tears of grief, perhaps both.

“
I
meant no disrespect,” Patronas said softly.

“
Chief
Inspector, you’ve been asking that question in one form or another
for the last five minutes. As I told you, you are not alone in your
prejudice. Everywhere, people see Germans—my papa in this instance,
my murdered adopted father—and they wonder. You can see it on their
faces. The more impolite among them, they ask.”

Patronas nodded,
recognizing the truth in what he said. He wondered how it worked in
families, when a son asked a father, ‘Where were you in the war?’
If you were German and the answer was Poland, how did the
conversation go?

G
erta Bechtel wept silently, twirling a strand of
blonde hair around her finger. At least fifteen years younger than
her husband, she carried herself like a dancer. Her face was
lovely, reminiscent of Heidi Klum’s, and her blue eyes were
carefully made up, her hair tousled in an artful way. She was
wearing jeans and an embroidered tunic, sandals with little tassels
that jangled when she crossed her legs. Like the rest of her
family, she was very tan, her hair streaked in places by the sun.
Even now, with tears running down her cheeks, she was one of the
most beautiful women Patronas had ever seen—gazelle-like in her
movements, soft in the way women should be.

She was wearing a
musky scent that seemed to envelop him as he sat there, make him
forget why he’d come.

He and Gerta
Bechtel were alone in a room at the back of the house. It was his
friend Bauer’s study, her husband had informed him, and Patronas
and his colleagues on the police force were welcome to use it, the
computer and Internet, whatever they needed.

Patronas had
demurred. Thanking Bechtel, he said he’d prefer to work at the
police station downtown, leave him and his family in peace when he
was done speaking with them.

The windows in
the room were large and faced the garden, and the room was full of
sunlight. Although Gunther Bechtel had objected, Patronas had
insisted on interviewing his wife separately.

“
Let’s
start at the beginning,” he said, seeking to put her at ease.
“Where are you from?”

“
Tübingen. There I meet my husband. I was in university and he
was, how do you say, an instructor.” She hesitated. “Have you a
cigarette? Is hard, this.”

He handed her a
cigarette and took one for himself. They smoked in companionable
silence for a few minutes.

“
Gunther, he hates the smoking, but sometimes I must. Is hard,
like I say. We were always together, Gunther’s uncle and me, many
years, always together.”

Tears filled her
eyes. “At first, I go with my husband, but later Gunther said it
was too dangerous. Too much war in Africa, he said. Look at Rwanda.
No good for me.”

“
Did
the children go with you?”

“
No,
they stayed in Stuttgart. We had a woman and Gunther’s uncle was
there. I was never away for long, two weeks, three. No more. They
were happy in Germany, our children, happy and safe.”

Pushing her chair
back, she got up and walked over to the window, cigarette in hand.
Her tunic was heavily beaded and it shimmered when she
moved.

“
I
always wanted to see Greece,” she said with her back toward him.
“When our friends invited us, I told Gunther we must go.” She spoke
in a very precise way, taking care to enunciate her words so that
he could understand, nodding a little as she did so. “I am good.
You understand my English, no?”

Patronas nodded.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“
I
said, ‘Gunther, is only two months. Let me have
this.’ ”

Silhouetted
against the window, she seemed to glow, her hair, her clothes,
everything about her bathed in golden light. “Patmos, it is good.
Every day I go to the beach with the children and we swim together.
Eat lunch sometimes. Have fun. My son learns to wind-surf. It is
good for him and Hannelore to be here and go to the beach. Fun in
the sun.”

He studied her,
puzzled by what he was hearing. Her words didn’t match the anguish
he’d seen in her eyes; they sounded counterfeit somehow. She was
holding something back, he was sure of it. Maybe out of fear of
making a mistake, like the smoking, revealing something that satrap
of a husband didn’t want him to know. Or maybe that stolid
cheerfulness was just another manifestation of grief, an effort to
convince herself that the trip to Patmos hadn’t been a tragic
mistake.