Fever (6 page)

He lifted the receiver, dialled.

“I'd like to speak to Dr Malapelle . . . Yes? . . . Is that you,
Dottore
? Have you done the autopsy already? . . . Yes, the ‘gas corpse' as you call it . . .
Senti, Dottore
. . .” And Studer continued in Italian, telling the doctor of his suspicions about Somnifen. Malapelle promised his report by the afternoon.

Then Studer leafed through the telephone directory. No, no temperature chart hidden there. The room did not look as if it had been searched. Studer tried the drawers in the escritoire. They were locked.

The bedroom . . . A huge bed and red velvet curtains. They made the room dark and Studer opened them.

Over the bed was the portrait of a man.

A lonely woman in Bern, a lonely woman in Basel. The one in Bern was a bit better off: a two-room apartment with kitchen, while Josepha in Basel used the corridor to her bedsitting room as a kitchen. But they'd both been lonely. Studer found himself using the women's Christian names: Josepha in Basel, Sophie in Bern. They'd both shuffled round their apartments in slippers, they'd probably “just popped out to the shops” in slippers too . . .

Odd that there was no picture of the late geologist in Josepha's flat in Basel. Josepha had been his wife, while Sophie was just a divorcee. But it was over her bed that the enlarged photo of Victor Alois Cleman hung in its elaborate wooden frame.

In the picture he had a dark, curly beard that covered his shirt front so completely you couldn't tell what kind of tie he was wearing. A beard! A sign of masculinity before the war.

The beard must have made him hot, the Swiss geologist, down there in Morocco digging for silver, lead and copper. He wore spectacles as well, with oval lenses that hid his eyes. Hid? No, that wasn't the right word. They just gave him a dull, uninvolved look – impersonal. They made his whole face expressionless.

A handsome man. At least what was considered a handsome man in those antediluvian times.

Studer stared at the portrait. He seemed to be hoping the man with the two wives would tell him something.
But the well-travelled geologist just looked back with the indifferent stare only scientists can achieve. Eventually the sergeant turned his back on him in irritation.

When he went back into the kitchen, the leather armchair was no longer empty.

A man was sitting in it playing a strange game. He'd taken off his hat, which looked like a flowerpot made by an incompetent potter, and hung it over the index finger of his right hand. With his left hand he kept prodding the lopsided object, making it spin round slowly.

The man, who was wearing a white monk's habit, looked up. “
Bonjour, Inspecteur
,” he said, adding in his foreign-sounding Swiss German, “A happy New Year.”

“And the same to you,” Studer replied. He stayed in the doorway, leaning against the jamb.

Father Matthias

“Our great cardinal, Cardinal Lavigerie, the founder of our order,” Father Matthias said, as he continued to prod his misshapen flowerpot, which in Africa is called a
sheshia
, “once said, ‘A true Christian is never late.' I am sure that can only be understood in a metaphorical sense, it cannot be true of our life here on earth, since in that we are dependent on human agencies such as railway trains, steamships, motor cars . . . My niece, Marie, whom I saw yesterday evening, told me what had happened in Basel. I immediately hired a taxi to take me to Bern, since there were no more trains. It broke down on the way – these things happen. That is why I have only just arrived. The door had been broken open, the lock was on the floor, there was a faint smell of gas . . . Then I heard footsteps in the apartment. ‘Could it be,' I thought to myself, ‘that nice inspector I had the honour and the pleasure of meeting in Paris? That would truly be divine providence.' And it was . . .”

At first Studer hadn't listened to what the priest was saying. Instead he had concentrated on the tone of Father Matthias's little speech, comparing it with the voice that had mocked him on the telephone. The priest spoke excellent German, though just occasionally the Swiss German could be heard in the thick sound of the “ch” formed on the back of the palate. It was a real preacher's voice, deep and sonorous, which did not really go with his scrawny body. But voices
could be disguised, couldn't they? In the bistro in Paris his voice had sounded slightly different, a little higher perhaps. Was it the French the priest had been speaking that had caused the difference?

Studer suddenly bent down and picked the lock up off the floor. He examined it closely, then looked up. Where was the gas meter? It wasn't in the kitchen. It was sitting on a shelf right over the door in the hall and it had exactly the same podgy, green, sneering face as its brother in Basel.

And the lever that served as the mains tap was sloping. At an angle of forty-five degrees . . .

Studer looked again at the lock in his hand. Then he heard the preacher's voice say, “If you should happen to need a magnifying glass, Inspector, I can provide one. Botany and geology are hobbies of mine, so I always carry a magnifying glass in my pocket.”

The sergeant did not look up. He heard the springs of the leather armchair groan, then something was pushed into his hand. He held the magnifying glass up to his eye.

No doubt about it, there were grey fibres to be seen all round the keyhole, especially on the upper part, where it protruded. It looked as if a piece of string had rubbed against the sharp edge.

. . . And the mains tap was at an angle of forty-five degrees . . .

Crazy! Even assuming the old woman had taken a sleeping pill and dropped off in her leather armchair, wouldn't it have been easier for the presumed murderer to have opened the mains tap as he passed and then quietly slip away? Always supposing it had been murder . . . Why complicate things unnecessarily? Tie a string to the mains tap, pass it over the gas pipe above, push the end of the string through the keyhole,
then pull it from outside until the loop slipped off the lever and the string could be pulled out?

“Old women are light sleepers,” said Father Matthias. Was he smiling? It was difficult to tell, despite the sparseness of the moustache that fell over his lips like a finely woven net curtain. Anyway, he was keeping his head bowed, spinning his red cap round and round. A ray of sun shone in through the kitchen window, making the short hairs round the tonsure on the top of his head glisten like hoar-frost.

“Thank you,” said Studer, handing back the magnifying glass. The priest stowed it in the apparently bottomless pocket of his habit, produced his snuff box, took a substantial pinch and said, “In Paris, when I had the honour of making your acquaintance, I had to depart so abruptly I did not have the opportunity to give you other important details . . .” he hesitated “ . . . about my brother, my brother who died in Fez.”

“Important details?” Studer asked, holding a lighted straw under his Brissago.

“It all depends on your point of view.” The priest fell silent, playing with his
sheshia
. Then he suddenly seemed to come to a decision. He stood up, leaving the lopsided cap on the chair, and said, “I'll make you a coffee.”

“If you must,” Studer muttered. He was sitting by the door on a kitchen stool that had been scrubbed so often it had gone white, his eyes almost closed. Don't let him see how surprised you are, he thought, and especially not how curious. The man was trying to confuse him. The fact was that only a few hours ago an old woman had died in this room, yet the priest seemed to be ignoring that completely. He picked up a pan, filled it with water and put it on the gas ring. Then he shooed the sergeant off his stool and climbed on to it
to switch on the mains tap fully, straightened up, climbed down and said absentmindedly, “Now where can the coffee be?”

In his mind's eye Studer saw the wooden shelf over the gas stove in the Basel apartment with the chipped enamel containers: “Coffee”, “Salt”, “Flour”. There was nothing like that here, just a red paper bag in the kitchen cupboard with ground coffee.

A gentle “pop” – the priest had lit the gas under the pan. Now he started striding up and down the kitchen. The folds of his habit dissolved, then formed again and sometimes, just for a second, a sunbeam struck the white cloth, making it shine like a newly minted silver piece.

“He foresaw it all, did my clairvoyant corporal,” said Father Matthias. “He knew: first the one in Basel, then the one in Bern. And neither of us was able to save the two old women. Not me, because I arrived too late both times. Nor you, Inspector, because you lacked belief.”

Silence. The gas flame blew back with a strangely dull, mocking hiss; Father Matthias got it burning properly again.

“I had written to both women, warning them of the danger, telling them to be on their guard. I went to see Josepha in Basel, immediately after I arrived – the day before yesterday that was, in the morning. I was going to go and see her again in the evening, but by the time I got there it was late, eleven o'clock. I rang the bell, but the flat was dark and no one came to the door.”

“Was there a smell of gas?” Studer asked. He too was speaking formal German.

“No.” Father Matthias had his back to the sergeant. He was busying himself with the pan on the stove: the water boiled, Father Matthias tipped the ground
coffee in, let it boil up, turned the gas off, poured a little cold water from a ladle into the mixture. Then he took out two cups, muttering, “Now where would the old woman keep her schnapps? Where else but in the bottom of the kitchen cupboard. What do you bet it's in the bottom of the kitchen cupboard, Inspector? . . . There you are, see!”

He filled the cups and bustled about – “No, don't get up, just stay where you are” – bringing the coffee, which he had generously laced with kirsch, over to the sergeant. It was eerie, Studer thought, drinking coffee at ten in the morning in the empty apartment. He felt as if the old woman – he didn't even know what she looked like – were sitting in the leather armchair saying, “Do help yourself, Sergeant, but then go and find my murderer.”

So he asked, as if to flesh out his vision, “What did she look like, this Sophie Hornuss?”

Father Matthias, who had resumed his pacing up and down the kitchen, stopped. His hand disappeared into the bottomless pocket of his habit and brought out a small object made of red leather. It looked like a pocket mirror, but when he opened it Studer saw not a mirror but two photographs.

He looked at the pictures. One of them was Josepha, the wart beside her left nostril was unmistakable, only it had been taken when she was still young. There was a kindness in the eyes, round the mouth . . .

The other picture – without being aware of what he was doing, Studer cleared his throat and stared and stared. The eyes above all, that sly, piercing look. And thin lips, no more than a line in the youthful face. Youthful? You could say that. The photo showed a woman in her mid-twenties, but it was one of those faces that never seem to age – or are never young. Both
applied. And there was something else the photo told him: why Victor Alois Cleman had wanted a divorce. It would be no fun living with a woman like that. A blouse buttoned up to the neck, a pointed chin resting on a stand-up collar with stiffeners . . . Studer couldn't help it, it sent a shiver down his spine.

Those eyes! They were loaded with scorn, with scornful knowledge. They screamed at you, “I know! I know a lot. But I'm not saying anything.”

What was it the woman knew?

“When did your brother get his divorce?” Studer asked; his voice was slightly hoarse.

“In 1908. And he got married again the next year. Marie was born in 1910.”

“And your brother died in 1917?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

Father Matthias stood there, looking at the floor, then he started pacing up and down again.

“There is one strange fact I forgot to tell you. Collani, my clairvoyant corporal, was recruited in Oran in 1920; that in itself is unusual, to enlist in Africa. And according to documents in his personal file, he spent the Great War as a nurse in Morocco – in Fez. Now as you know, Inspector, it was in Fez that my brother died. I was in the country too at that time, in the Rabat area, and I had no idea Victor was dying.”

So he admits he was in the country, Studer thought. And he has a beard. Not a curly beard, a straggly goatee. But the similarity to the picture over Sophie's bed is unmistakable. What's put this crazy idea in my head? The geologist and the priest one and the same person? He stared at the portraits of the two women, which were lying on his knee.

“I didn't even make it to my brother's funeral. When
I got to Fez a month later, Victor was already dead and buried. I couldn't even visit his grave. I was told he'd been dumped in a mass grave, there was a smallpox epidemic at the time . . .”

Studer took out his ring binder to add a note to the entry on “Cleman, Victor Alois”. As he did so, a folded piece of paper fluttered to the floor. The priest was more nimble; he picked it up and handed it back to the sergeant, though as he did so he kept hold of it for a moment and gave it a close look.

“Thanks,” said Studer, observing the White Father from beneath his eyelashes. Just at that moment he did not merit the name. His sunburnt complexion had grey blotches. The sergeant would have bet anything the man with the straggly goatee had gone pale.