In Matto's Realm: A Sergeant Studer Mystery (16 page)

"Come on, man," said Studer in a friendly voice.
Then he was just in time to catch Bohnenblust's hand,
which was getting ominously close to a row of bellpushes. He was about to sound the alarm! "It's me,
Sergeant Studer."

"Er ... Yes ... Herr ... Doktor ... Herr ... Sergeant
... Herr. . ."

"It's all right to call me Studer."

"Have you come to arrest me, Herr Studer? Because
- because it was my fault Pieterlen escaped and murdered the Director?"

Studer was silent. He sat down beside the fat
man and gave him a few reassuring pats on the sleeve
of his woolly sweater. After a while he said he had no
intention of arresting anyone. As far as he knew, the
Director's death had been an accident.

"You're only saying that," said Bohnenblust as the
purple slowly cleared from his face. "Surely Pieterlen
killed the Director, everyone in the clinic says so."

"Who, for example?"

"Weyrauch and Jutzeler and the others on P, T and D
wards. And Jutzeler said it was my fault ..."

Aha, so that was the version going round the clinic,
was it? Interesting.

It looked as if old Bohnenblust was going to cry. His
eyes went moist, he screwed up his face ... But the last
thing Studer needed was another man in tears; he still
couldn't get the fair-haired man on the couch in Dr
Laduner's study out of his mind.

"How come it was your fault?"

"I only did what I did all the other nights. Pieterlen
slept badly and when he got too restless he came out
here and read the newspaper, at this table, with me."

Studer saw that there was a lamp at head height
fixed on the wall of the cubby-hole. Its metal shade was
arranged in such a way that the light fell only on the
table. The rest of the dormitory was bathed in blue
murk.

"And then?"

"And then he said, as he did almost every night,
`Hey, Bohnenblust, let me into the day room, I fancy a
cigarette.' He liked a smoke, did Pieterlen, and it's
forbidden here in the dormitory. So I let him out by that door there; I even gave him a light. Then I locked
the door again. Usually he knocked when he'd finished his cigarette; sometimes he smoked another and
walked around a bit in the day room. Yesterday it was
longer, so I went to see what was going on, and there
was no one there."

"And your bruise?" Studer's grin was broad.

"I bashed into something while I was stumbling
around in the dark, a door or a wall, I don't know. So
that gave me an excuse to say I'd been hit on the head
in the side room. The other occupant, Schmocker, had
taken a strong sedative; I gave it him at half past
eleven."

"But why did you keep quiet about it for so long?"

It was fear of dismissal that had sealed the nightwatchman's lips. His fear was understandable, even
though it was groundless. As he explained in a whisper
interrupted by the wheezing of his lungs, he had been
working at the clinic for almost twenty-five years. As
nightwatchman he was better off than the others
because he was paid in lieu of board and that made
900 francs a year, which was not to be sneezed at. All
the other staff, even those who were married, had to
take their meals in the clinic. He didn't have any rent
to pay, either, since he was also employed as caretaker
at the school in Randlingen.

And yet...

Bohnenblust was one of those anxious types who
have been on the breadline at some point in their lives
- "I started off with sixteen francs a month, and we
only got half a day off per week in those days. I once
even heard my lad ask his mother who the man was
who came to visit now and then" - and are scared the
bad times might return. "Now that things are better and I've got something put away in the savings bank,
10,000 francs, Sergeant" - it was certainly more - "I
wouldn't want to go back to the old days."

At the same time Bohnenblust was a man with a soft
heart who found it impossible to refuse anyone -
Pieterlen, for example - anything, all the while living
in constant fear of a reprimand, for to him a reprimand spelt disaster. It showed in the way he suddenly
started, then sat up, whispered, "I have to clock in,"
inserted a thin brass rod into the time clock, turned it
round, once, twice, five times, shook the clock, held it
to his ear to make sure it was going - and the fear, the
flicker of fear in his eyes ...

A man with a soft heart. It always happened when
certain men were delegated to guard others. It was
impossible to prevent purely human relationships
developing between the guards and those they
watched over, to stop them addressing each other with
the familiar du as long as no superior was around, giving each other a helping hand, cigarettes, chocolate. It
happened in Thorberg Prison, it happened in Witzwil
Labour Camp, it happened in the police cells in Bern,
too. And actually it was good that it happened, thought
Studer, who had no great opinion of excessive discipline. He had no objection to buying a beer at the station buffet for a convicted criminal he was escorting to
prison; one last pleasure, so to speak, before the long
loneliness of the cell.

"So you let Pieterlen into the day room. What time
was that?"

"Say half past twelve, a quarter to one ..."

Studer went through the times. At half past twelve
the Director had returned from his amorous walk and
had gone to his office with Staff Nurse Jutzeler, while
Irma Wasem waited in the courtyard. At a quarter past one the Director had come down from his apartment
with a folder under his arm. So the folder had been in
his apartment. What had it contained? It had disappeared, as had his wallet. That left the devastation in
the office. Where did that fit in with everything?

Two women had seen the Director come out of the
central block at a quarter past one. Two women and
one man - the man was a patient, true, but in this
respect certainly a reliable witness - had heard the cry,
shortly before half past one.

Had the Director gone back to his office? Had some
unknown person attacked and killed him, then
dragged the body to the boiler room and thrown it
down the ladder? Chabis! That couldn't be right. And
yet, strangely enough, it was the devastation in the
office that had caused Dr Laduner to request a police
presence in the person of Sergeant Studer.

Pieterlen disappears at a quarter to one and the cry
comes at half past ... time enough. But how had
Pieterlen got out of the Observation Ward? The fact
that he had been let into the day room explained nothing; there was the door into the corridor, and both the
passkey and the triangular key were needed for that.
And that still left the door from 0 Ward out into the
courtyard ...

Bohnenblust gave a deep, wheezing sigh, then stood
up and crept quietly round the dormitory. In one of
the far corners a man was moaning as he dreamt.
Studer watched Bohnenblust pick up the blanket that
had fallen to the floor, cover the restless sleeper with it
and whisper something to him. A man with a soft heart.

The dormitory had twenty-two beds. In each bed a
man. The blue light from the ceiling etched patches of
black on the stubbly faces. Twenty-two men ... Presumably most of them had families, a wife at home, children or a mother, a brother, sisters ... Their
breathing was laboured, some were snoring, and the
air was stuffy, rank with the pungency of human
bodies. It made no difference that there was a window
open, the window with the narrow bars that looked out
onto D1.

Twenty-two men!

Suddenly Randlingen Clinic seemed to Studer like a
huge spider stretching its web out over all the land
around, and the inmates' nearest and dearest were
caught in its threads, wriggling but unable to free
themselves.

"Where's Father?" - "Father's ill." - "Where's Father
ill?" - "In the hospital." And the whispering in the little
villages when the wife went to do her shopping: "Her
husband's a loony." It was almost worse than if they
said, "Her husband's inside."

Twenty-two men! And they were just one small part.

"How many patients are there in the clinic?" Studer
asked.

"Eight hundred," Bohnenblust replied. His head
was resting against the wall again, on the large greasy
mark that bore witness to the strenuous hours of the
night shift.

Eight hundred patients! Doctors and nurses were
mobilized to care for the sick ... The sick! Outside
they weren't thought of as sick. If you were sick, you
went into hospital. The lunatic asylum was for mad
people. And in the eyes of the vast majority, to be
mad was just as compromising as belonging to the
Communist Party.

He was paying a visit to the subconscious, said Dr
Laduner. He was in Matto's realm, said Schiil ...

Studer stared into space, across the beds towards
one of the large windows that broke up the wall on the long side of the dormitory. Sometimes a bright light
went past outside, followed by another, then a short
pause, another light, and another. Studer remembered that the main road must go past on that side.
The flashes of light were the car headlights.

The flashing set off two lines of thought in Studer's
mind. One was easily explained: it concerned the light
he had seen from the window of his room. The light
had approached across the courtyard: a man in a white
apron carrying a stable lantern. He estimated it would
have been at about a quarter to two.

Presumably the nightwatchman would also have
done his rounds on the night the Director disappeared. It would certainly be advisable to have a word
with him.

There was only a symbolic explanation for the second train of thought, but Studer did not let that worry
him. It seemed like a ray of light in the surrounding
darkness, and that was sufficient. It concerned the
asthmatic nightwatchman. Bohnenblust's reaction
when the sergeant suddenly appeared had been completely out of proportion to the trivial nature of his
offence. Was there something else behind it? Studer
decided to do some probing.

After a lot of questions, after much moaning and
groaning, the following facts finally emerged:
Bohnenblust had had two passkeys in his possession,
one of which he had lost. And he couldn't remember
where he had lost it. Nothing like that had ever happened to him in the twenty-five years he had worked at
the clinic.

"But even if Pieterlen had found the passkey,"
Bohnenblust said, "it wouldn't have been any use to
him. He'd have to have had the triangular key as
well."

Studer knew that.

"And if a triangular key had been lost, it would have
been reported."

"But you didn't report the loss of your passkey,"
Studer objected.

"Well, yes, but that's different. And it's just not possible that one of the young warders would have let him
have a triangular key. Unless, that is, the warder was in
cahoots with Pieterlen." (The fat nightwatchman said
"warder" instead of "nurse"; he obviously belonged to
the old school.)

"Which of the warders did Pieterlen get on well
with?"

"Gilgen! The two of them were always together."

Gilgen! The red-haired nurse who had told the sergeant his troubles. "And you can't remember where
you left your passkey?"

The nightwatchman spent so long tugging at his
moustache anyone would have thought he was trying
to straighten out each hair individually. Eventually he
grunted that Schmocker might have something to do
with it.

"Schmocker?"

Who was this Schmocker? Oh yes, the man who had
threatened to murder a member of the Federal
Council. The man who shared a room with Pieterlen.

"And why do you think Schmocker might have
something to do with it?"

"You hear things," Bohnenblust said. "The pair of
them used to spend half the night in the side room
talking. At least, Schmocker did most of the talking.
He told Pieterlen that the patients' poor condition was
all the Director's fault, and got Pieterlen stirred up. He
would have been freed ages ago, Schmocker said, if the
Director hadn't been against it. In the end even Dr Laduner couldn't do anything about it, Pieterlen
was convinced the Director was his enemy. And the
business with Irma Wasem didn't improve things one
bit."

Studer stood up, squeezed his way out from behind the
table and went across to the door to the side room.
Seeing a light switch on the outside doorpost, he
flicked it; the light went on inside.

He went in.

The would-be assassin's sparse hair was sticking out
in all directions and his pink scalp shone through.
There were heavy bags under his eyes that hung down
almost to the corners of his mouth. They seemed to be
filled with poison.

"Herr Schmocker," said Studer in a friendly voice,
sitting down on the side of the bed, "could you tell
me-"

That was as far as he got. In shrill tones the man
screeched, "Get off my bed!"

Obediently Studer stood up. You shouldn't provoke
a madman, he thought. Then he waited until the little
man had calmed down. "I'd just like to know if it was
you who found the nightwatchman's passkey, Herr
Schmocker."

"One of those sneaky damn cops, that's what you
are. See that you get out of my room, you've no business here. D'you hear?" As he delivered this tirade in
his thick Swiss dialect he got up menacingly and stood
there, supporting himself with the backs of his knees
against the edge of the bed.

"Come now, Herr Schmocker," said Studer, still in
friendly tones. The only disturbing thing about this was that he was starting to speak formal German; at
least anyone who had ever encountered Studer would
have found it a disturbing sign. "I just want to ask you a
simple question."

But the would-be assassin continued his vituperation, waving his little clenched fist under Studer's
nose, his whitish lips pouring a flood or, rather, a
whole cesspit of foul language over the sergeant.