Deadly Communion (16 page)

‘Frau Schuschnig?’

‘The proprietor of the hat shop where Babel worked. Frece gave a similar description, and also remarked on the man’s
hospital
smell. That cannot be a coincidence. One must assume that the man who called himself Griesser and the flirtatious customer were the same individual. Taken together with previous reports, a clear picture is emerging: a young gentleman, educated, well dressed, with black hair and blue or blue-grey eyes. A professional man with a knowledge of human anatomy …’

‘Frece saw this gentleman in Frau Schuschnig’s hat shop. What was he doing there?’

‘Buying a hatpin. He must have made the purchase before Fräulein Babel’s sharp fingernails forced him to reconsider his procedures.’

Liebermann acknowledged the point with a curt nod and sat down on one of the sofas. Selma Wirth’s face was deeply lined. Yet the height of her cheekbones and her well-defined chin suggested that she must have been beautiful once.

‘Did the landlord’s agent tell you anything about her history?’

‘No. He didn’t know her very well — and I haven’t been able to glean much from her documents. He advised me to speak to her neighbour, Frau Lachkovics. She lives downstairs with her daughter. Apparently Frau Lachkovics and Fräulein Wirth were good friends.’

‘She’s not in yet — Frau Lachkovics?’

Rheinhardt shook his head.

There was a knock and both men turned to see Haussmann’s head craning round the door.

‘Sir. The mortuary van has arrived.’

‘Very well — tell them to come up. Have we had a reply from Professor Mathias yet?’

‘We have, sir. He said he was going to dine at Café Landtmann but would be back at the Institute by eight o’ clock. He also said that he wasn’t feeling very well and might need an assistant. He requested Miss Lydgate.’

Rheinhardt raised his eyebrows and addressed Liebermann: ‘Do you think Miss Lydgate would be willing to join us at this late hour?’

‘Such is her nature,’ said Liebermann, sighing, ‘I suspect that nothing in the world would please her more.’

T
HE MORGUE WAS PARTICULARLY
cold at night. Liebermann and Rheinhardt had kept their coats on, but Professor Mathias seemed comfortable in his shirtsleeves. The electric light suspended above the autopsy table shone down on the mortuary sheets, making them glow vividly. This artificial landscape of luminous hills and hollows was disturbed by a central peak, the summit of which was, by contrast, unnaturally sharp.

Liebermann was sitting on a stool, contemplating the mysterious contents of a jar filled with formalin. The preserved organ, which looked vaguely like a sea horse, was magnified by the curvature of the glass. It was pink with yellow pleats down one side, creating the illusion of a spine which curled to form a hooked tail. The young doctor thought it might be an unusually proportioned vermiform appendix.

Rheinhardt was pacing around the autopsy table and Professor Mathias, muttering softly to himself, was engrossed by the organisational possibilities of his trolley.

A knock roused the men from their respective states of self-absorption.

‘Enter!’ cried Professor Mathias.

The door opened and Amelia’s voice floated out of the darkness.

‘Good evening, gentlemen.’

She emerged from the shadows, her pale face and hands preceding the rest of her body like a ghost at a seance.

‘Ah, Miss Lydgate,’ said Rheinhardt, ‘I would offer to take your coat, but the temperature in here is so low I would suggest you continue to take advantage of its benefit.’

Liebermann stood and inclined his head. As she approached, her hair drew the hard brilliance of the light and transmuted it into a ruddy haze. She glanced down at the mortuary sheets and a vertical crease appeared on her brow.

‘So, he has struck again.’

‘He has indeed,’ said Rheinhardt, coming forward. ‘This unfortunate lady,’ he swept his hand over the covered body with its conspicuous peak, ‘is his third victim.’ Amelia stared at the salient irregularity that destroyed the gentle geography of the sheets. ‘The hilt of a knife,’ Rheinhardt explained. The inspector was about to say more but was cut short by Professor Mathias, who was tutting loudly.

‘Miss Lydgate?’ The professor looked up and beckoned. ‘Would you be so kind as to arrange my instruments?’ His voice sounded nasal and he took a handkerchief from his pocket. ‘I have a head cold,’ he added, as if this constituted sufficient explanation for his inability to complete his preparations.

‘With pleasure,’ Amelia replied.

Liebermann caught Rheinhardt’s eye and their shared amazement brought them perilously close to laughter. Such an invitation was unprecedented.

Professor Mathias blew his nose and observed the Englishwoman’s deft movements. When she was finished, she stepped back from the trolley and Mathias inspected her handiwork. His palpable relief was evident in the softening of his features.

‘Very good,’ he said, as if nothing remarkable had transpired.

He turned to face the autopsy table and folded the upper sheet back, revealing the corpse’s face. He placed a finger on the dead
woman’s cheek and traced one of the lines that curved out from her nostrils and arced around her lips.

‘Only distant death can heal the presence of such suffering; where the portals shall open, there shall I be healed again …’

Then he removed the sheets, exposing the dead woman completely.

‘What is her name?’

‘Selma Wirth,’ Rheinhardt replied.

‘And where was she discovered?’

‘Neubau. In her apartment — lying on the parlour floor.’

‘Was she found lying on her back?’

‘Yes.’

Mathias picked up a large pair of scissors and cut vertically from the hem of the dress to the cinched waist.

‘No undergarments?’

‘Her drawers had been removed — voluntarily, so it would seem. We found them in the parlour beside her.’

Mathias examined the material that was bunched up directly underneath the woman’s genitals. He pressed out the creases with the palm of his hand.

‘I cannot see any traces. And there are no indications to suggest forced ingress.’ Then he leaned forward, prised the woman’s labia apart with his fingers and inhaled. The subsequent noise he produced was stertorous. The old man looked round at his companions. ‘My nose is congested: I can’t smell a thing.’ His words were as much an appeal for assistance as a statement of fact.

While Rheinhardt and Liebermann were exchanging looks of alarm, Amelia took Professor Mathias’s place between Selma Wirth’s legs and breathed in deeply. She did so with the serious determination of a convalescent eager to experience the invigorating tang of a coastal breeze.

‘I cannot detect anything …’ she paused before adding
‘distinctive.’
Then, addressing Professor Mathias, she said: ‘Be that as it may, the question of her violation could be resolved — definitively — with the aid of a microscope.’ Mathias gestured towards a hefty optical device that stood next to the jar containing the mysterious organ. The tube was made of brass and it stood on three heavy iron legs. Amelia raised an inquisitive eyebrow and asked: ‘Do you have any hematoxylin, Herr professor?’

Mathias shuffled over to a cupboard and returned with a flask of blue-purple liquid and a tray of glass slides and cover slips. He placed them by the microscope.

‘I am happy for you to prepare the slide, Miss Lydgate,’ said Mathias. ‘Please proceed.’

The Englishwoman stood at the end of the autopsy table, folded her coat sleeve back, and insinuated her right forefinger into the dead woman’s vagina. Her first metacarpal began to move from side to side, suggesting that the hidden digit was rotating. This image of Amelia Lydgate — so prim and controlled — exploring the internal anatomy of another woman (albeit a dead woman) aroused shameful feelings in Liebermann which he tried to suppress. He lowered his eyes and garnered some consolation from the sound of Rheinhardt nervously coughing into his hand and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Curiously, Amelia showed no sign of embarrassment or discomfort, only the focused resolve of an individual utterly engaged in an important task.

Amelia withdrew her finger and turned it beneath the electric light. The cast of her face altered slightly — suggesting satisfaction — as the semi-transparent film covering her white skin glistened. Taking a glass slide from the tray, she rolled her finger over its surface, leaving a grey mucoid smear. She then dipped the slide into the hematoxylin, shook off the excess liquid and fixed the slide on the stage of the microscope. Finally, she wiped her finger on a grubby towel that was hanging from a hook under the bench and sat down on the stool.

With practised ease she altered the angle of the mirror, changed the objectives, and made coarse and fine adjustments.

‘She was most definitely violated,’ said Amelia.

The Englishwoman moved aside and let Professor Mathias look into the eyepiece.

‘Come over here and see for yourself, inspector,’ said the professor.

When Rheinhardt peered into the microscope he saw a luminous blue world populated by a swarm of bullet-headed creatures with long tails.

‘Sperm cells,’ said Mathias. He returned to the autopsy table where he completed the task of cutting off and removing Selma Wirth’s clothes.

Her nakedness, brilliantly pale beneath the electric light, produced in the onlookers a respectful silence. In due course, the hilt of the dagger commanded their attention. It seemed monstrously large. An annulus of dark crystals had collected around the blade and the dead woman’s breasts were marbled with blood. Professor Mathias filled a bucket with water and cleaned the body with a sponge.

‘I do not see any bruises,’ said the professor. ‘But you will notice that her arms and hands are quite red — the skin is dry and cracked. What do you make of that, Miss Lydgate?’

‘Did this lady suffer from a dermatological complaint?’

Mathias tilted his hand in the air and then reversed the movement. His expression communicated that although this was an acceptable answer, it was not the right one.

‘The inflammation does not proceed up the arm,’ said Mathias. ‘Notice how it stops rather abruptly at the elbow.’ Amelia frowned. ‘Such an unusual pattern strongly suggests that Fräulein Wirth was a laundry worker. Am I right, inspector?’

‘Yes,’ said Rheinhardt. ‘You are.’

The old man allowed himself a self-congratulatory half-smile.
Mathias dropped the sponge into the bucket and then grasped the hilt of the dagger. He pulled — but the weapon resisted. He pulled harder and it came out, producing a slight rasp. The old man looked at Rheinhardt: ‘You don’t need a pathologist to tell you how she died, inspector.’

I
T WAS EARLY MORNING
and a weightless sun hovered behind a screen of diaphanous cloud. Rheinhardt was making a wary descent down a slippery cobbled road towards a square-fronted building with a flat roof on which four cylindrical water tanks were clearly visible. A second storey, rising behind these tanks, presented an exterior comprised almost entirely of slatted shutters.

The drying room,
thought Rheinhardt.

His speculation was confirmed when one of the shutters opened, revealing row after row of suspended undergarments.

A waste pipe, positioned next to the tanks, was expelling steam in sharp bursts. The sound it produced was oppressive and industrial, a repetitive mechanical cough, the unrelieved regularity of which had the potential, so Rheinhardt supposed, to induce a very bad headache. He watched the steam rise and wondered how the occupants of the building preserved their mental equilibrium. Perhaps they didn’t …

When Rheinhardt arrived at the entrance he stopped and listened to the cacophony coming from inside: raucous laughter, shrieks, whistles, a peculiar rasping noise, and snatches of popular songs issuing from the throats of brassy untrained contraltos. Rheinhardt advanced across a flagstone floor covered in shallow puddles. All around he could see soap bars, packets of soda and jars of bleach. He discovered an office, little more than a cubicle, created by the erection of flimsy partition walls. Peering through the tiny window, Rheinhardt caught
sight of a woman sitting behind a desk piled high with ledgers. He rapped on the glass and the woman looked up from her paperwork. She had grey hair, tied back in a bun, and wore small half-moon spectacles. Indicating by a sign that she would come out, she rose from her chair and, emerging from a side door, introduced herself as the manageress, Frau Aehrenthal.

‘Detective Inspector Rheinhardt: security office,’ said Rheinhardt, bowing respectfully. ‘I am looking for a laundry worker called Lachkovics.’

‘That would be Viki Lachkovics? Not Jana, her daughter?’

‘They both work here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I may need to speak to both of them, actually.’

Frau Aehrenthal gave Rheinhardt a curious, doubtful look, the meaning of which escaped him.

‘This way, inspector.’

The interior of the building was like an enormous shed, with cast-iron pillars supporting exposed beams that ran across the ceiling. Rheinhardt could not see very far ahead because of a white mist that seemed to become more opaque as they progressed. Droplets of water fell from above like gentle rain, and the dank air contained a chemical sharpness that made his eyes prickle. The din that had first greeted him was now very loud.

Quite suddenly the fog lifted, and Rheinhardt found himself walking between two rows of washboards and washtubs. Each bay was occupied by a laundry worker. They were all female: sleeves rolled up, skirts hitched high enough to reveal coloured stockings and big thick-soled boots. Scrubbing, sloshing, shouting — the racket they were making was quite extraordinary. Yet Rheinhardt could still hear the unremitting cough of the waste pipe on the roof.

Halting at one of the bays, the manageress introduced Frau
Lachkovics and left. She was evidently not interested in discovering the purpose of Rheinhardt’s visit. Frau Lachkovics — a mousy woman whose hair was concealed by a waterproof bonnet — looked up at Rheinhardt nervously. He was considering how to proceed when a plump pink-faced woman with the collar of her dress pulled down to create a shockingly low décolleté plunged her hands into a tub, splashing everyone and everything around her.