In Matto's Realm: A Sergeant Studer Mystery (23 page)

"Then I'll have to take you in," said Studer, "so you'd
better think it over first. The charge might not be just
theft, it might be murder."

A look of horrified amazement.

"But the Director's death was an accident."

"That hasn't been established yet. Stand up."

Studer went up to the man, patted him all over, took
his purse out of one pocket, his keyring out of the
other, all the while wondering how to carry out the
arrest without attracting too much attention. He could
telephone the local policeman from the porter's
lodge. Yes, that would be best.

"Apron off! Coat on!" ordered Studer. The rest
would sort itself out.

Obediently Gilgen went to the wardrobe and put on
his coat, without rolling his shirtsleeves down. It was a
pretty wretched coat; it must have been his wife who
mended it, before she fell ill ...

"In the bedside table," said Gilgen shyly, "there are
the photos of my wife and the two children. Can I take
them with me?"

Studer nodded. The table was jammed in between
the window and the bed. Gilgen went round the bed,
took a wallet out of the drawer, pulled out a picture
and looked at it for a long time before handing it
across the bed to the sergeant.

"Have a look, Studer," he said. The sergeant took the
photo and turned away to get a better light on the
picture. The woman in it had a thin face with a goodnatured smile. She was holding a child with each hand.
As Studer looked at the picture, he suddenly felt that
something in the room had changed. He looked
round. Gilgen had vanished.

The open window! Studer pushed the bed aside and
leant out as far as he could.

Down below, Gilgen lay on the ground in almost the
same position as the Director at the bottom of the ladder. But his fringe of copper-coloured hair shone in
the sun. The courtyard was empty. Studer slowly went
out of the room, through the glass door, down the
stairs and out into the courtyard. There he gently picked up Gilgen's body - he hardly weighed anything
- and carried it back up the stairs to the first floor with
slow, heavy steps.

Back in the room, he covered the body with the red
counterpane and stood there looking at it. His head
seethed with unfocused fury.

Then he suddenly started. In the day room a
schmaltzy voice began to sing:

Who was trying to make a fool of him?

What Studer could not know was that at that
moment the porter, Dreyer, had switched on the clinic
receiver because it was four o'clock and it was one of
his duties to provide all the wards with radio music. He
had been a little late, which was why it had started in
the middle of a song. Thus it was that the loudspeaker
on the wall of 0 Ward day room quite innocently sang
a grotesque dirge for little Gilgen.

Studer, though, had no idea where the song was
coming from. He just flew into a rage. He went into the
day room and glared round furiously, looking for the
voice that seemed to be mocking him. Eventually he
found the loudspeaker up on the wall. It was just a
huge mouth covered in cloth and was a good ten feet
from the floor. Studer grabbed one of the chairs by the
backrest, swung it in the air and scored such a direct
hit on the speaker that the voice just sang one
more "Some-" before it disintegrated in a crash of
splintering wood.

Having recovered his calm, Studer went back into
the small room. He closed Gilgen's eyes. As he was
doing so, his eye was caught by something in the drawer of the bedside table which was still open. A
photograph.

An amateur snapshot showing Dr Laduner in his
white doctor's coat and smiling mask standing beside
his wife. Behind him the entrance to the clinic could
be seen.

On the back was written: A memento for Nurse Gilgen,
Dr Laduner

How did the doctor come to be giving a photograph
with a personal dedication to a nurse? Studer stood
there studying it. Finally he decided to go and look for
Staff Nurse Jutzeler. He was desperate for some expert
advice.

It was clear that the appearance of Sergeant Studer was
unwelcome to Jutzeler, the staff nurse with the brown
doe-eyes. He was standing in the garden, still flushed
from the wrestling, but he had put his white coat back
on, the nurse's badge a red glow on the lapel.

"Can you come with me for a minute?" Studer asked,
fixing him with such an earnest, urgent expression
that Jutzeler nodded.

"Has something happened?" he asked.

"Gilgen threw himself out of the window. His body's
upstairs," Studer told him in a matter-of-fact voice and
asked how they could avoid attracting too much
attention.

"Gilgen." Jutzeler nodded. "Dead!" Then he shook
his head.

They went to the room off the day room. For a brief
while Jutzeler stood silently by the dead man, then he
drew up a chair and gestured to it. Studer sat down.
Jutzeler set his slim frame down on the edge of the
bed, beside the body, and said it was perhaps better it
had happened this way.

One thing seemed certain: people at Randlingen
Clinic were fatalistic ...

"Why?" Studer asked.

Jutzeler sighed. "You don't know what things are like
in a place like this, Sergeant."

He seemed to be wondering whether to say more
when Studer interrupted him. He'd long meant to ask Jutzeler, he said, why he'd had an argument with the
Director on Wednesday evening.

Jutzeler asked who had told him that.

That didn't matter, Studer replied, and, anyway, he
knew the argument was Gilgen's fault.

Jutzeler had leant back and folded his hands. He
subjected the sergeant to a long look of assessment
and Studer did not lower his eyes. He knew what the
result of the assessment would be.

How often had this sort of thing happened to him!
At first people only saw him as the detective, the
policemen they had to beware of. Their mistrust was
understandable; after all, who had a completely clear
conscience nowadays? But when Studer managed to
get a person to himself, face to face, the mistrust generally vanished as the other came to feel that here was
a man, a middle-aged man, who radiated a rare sense
of security, of peace. And sometimes, when Studer was
not unhappy with himself, he got delusions of grandeur: he began to imagine he was a strong personality.
Perhaps he wasn't even entirely wrong.

Finally Jutzeler seemed to have made up his mind,
for he started to speak. It was a long story he had to
tell, sitting beside the body of little Gilgen. Several
times he was called, his name echoing through the
corridors of 0 Ward, but he didn't stir from the bed,
he went on talking, in a slightly monotonous voice, his
hands clasped round his knees ... And although his
story touched only briefly on the events of the last few
days, it explained quite a lot ...

It started with the founding of the Randlingen brass
band. The nurses who played brass instruments had
decided to get together. They looked for and found a
conductor, a certain Knuchel, a nurse in T Ward. With
a broad chin and thick lips, he was a man who knew his Bible, a member of one of the sects in the village. They
held a meeting and Knuchel made a number of
demands: they could only play hymns and serious folk
songs, no marches, no dances. At the start of every
rehearsal there would have to be prayers and a chapter
of the Bible read out, the same at the end. Little
Gilgen played the trombone. He was also the leader of
the opposition.

The "opposition" consisted of the more worldly
among them. They refused to have anything to do with
that kind of circus, as they put it. Gilgen saw a band as a
first step towards getting the staff organized in a union.
He wanted a clear decision: no religious circus, solidarity instead ... He was outvoted. The `unbelievers'
withdrew at the very first meeting and set up their own
group, which was to play marches and waltzes and provide dance music at "events". But they lacked a conductor. Although he had more than enough troubles
of his own, Gilgen rehearsed them. They played once,
at New Year ... They were awful: out of tune, no
rhythm ... Even the patients laughed, there were whistles and catcalls, and the Director was furious because
there were a few guests present and he felt he'd been
made to look a fool. The "profane brass" disbanded
and the few instrumentalists who were keen to play
donned sackcloth and ashes and went to join the Biblethumpers. As a conductor Knuchel was good. Two
weeks later they played on a Sunday morning, a serenade for the Director, who congratulated them; they
were given a grant from the clinic's entertainment
fund. Knuchel made his conditions. He was happy
to play at events with his musicians, but there must be
no dancing during the music. The brass band played
funeral marches - so dancing was out of the question
anyway - hymns and, at most, the Song of the Beresina.

Studer might think this was all irrelevant, Jutzeler
went on. On the contrary, it showed up the tensions
among the nursing staff. If the sergeant had no
objections, he'd tell him a little about himself.

Jutzeler spoke very calmly. It sounded as if he were
giving a report on some boring topic to a meeting of
the Board of Governors, though there was an emotional undertone buried somewhere beneath the
unmoved exterior.

"As a boy I was put into service with a farmer. In the
Bernese Oberland. You'll know what that means, Sergeant: hunger, beatings, never a friendly word. No
point in wasting my breath on it, the facts are well
enough known, too well known perhaps. I had a piece of
luck. I came to the notice of the village priest because
once, in a high Alpine meadow, I put a tourist's broken
leg in splints. The doctor was amazed. The result was
that I managed to get accepted into a nursing school at
eighteen. It was a very religious place, but I'll spare you
the details of what went on underneath the pious surface, Sergeant. Nothing very pleasant, I can assure you.
After I'd passed the examinations I worked in various
hospitals as a nurse. Then one day, while I was travelling about on holiday, I had a look round Randlingen.
I found it interesting - also the pay was better in the
psychiatric clinics than in the hospitals. I was thinking
of getting married. The Director happened to be away
on holiday; Dr Laduner was acting director and took
me on. At that time the clinic was-"

"I know," said Studer. "Dr Laduner's wife told me."

Fine. Jutzeler was telling him things he knew
already: the use of narcosis, the dogged struggle for
the mind of Pieterlen (perhaps the only odd thing was
that Jutzeler used Dr Laduner's expression, "the
classic case"), his attempt to establish a degree of unanimity among the nursing staff, an attempt that
had been discussed with Dr Laduner.

"It's just like it was at nursing school. All the nurses
do is hassle each other. No solidarity. They're always
complaining about the long hours we have to put in -
from six in the morning to eight in the evening - but
no one does anything to try and get it changed. In the
other clinics the nursing staff got organized, we always
lagged behind. They threatened to go on strike if conditions weren't improved, in Randlingen we knuckled
under. The Director had appointed the brother of his
second wife as chief mechanic and he sabotaged everything he could. I've not given up, I've read a lot about
tactics, the workers' struggle. I've read other books,
too; one in particular stuck out. In it the author said,
`Proletarian, your worst enemy is your fellow proletarian.' I've seen that here in the clinic. If Dr Laduner
hadn't always shielded me, I'd have been kicked out
long ago. I've had to take over one ward. I'm responsible for everything that happens in P because
Weyrauch, the senior nurse -"

"Takes nudist magazines."

"Exactly, Sergeant." Jutzeler gave a faint smile.

"I did manage to get a few nurses together and we
tried to get in contact with the nurses who have organized themselves into unions in other hospitals and
clinics. But the religious fanatics and the mechanic ...
What you must realize, Sergeant, is that in a clinic like
this it's not just two large groups - the religious ones
and those who want to form a union - the great majority drift between the two. Have you studied the French
Revolution?'

"Not much..."

"Between the two extreme groups," Jutzeler
explained, now speaking formal German, though his Oberland origins were still audible in the lilting
accent, "between the right wing and the extreme left,
the `mountain', lay the centre, the swamp they called
it, le marais. Those were the people who just wanted to
live, earn money, have a good life again. They were the
ones who tipped the balance. We have our own
`swamp', the people who are happy for others to get
them a rise in wages, who have money saved up in the
bank, who are worried about losing their jobs-"