In Matto's Realm: A Sergeant Studer Mystery (4 page)

What struck Studer was Laduner's use of the past
tense. "Pieterlen was . . .". The way you talk about
someone who's dead. But he said nothing. Laduner
suddenly shook himself, stood up, stretched and
turned to his wife. "Has Kasperli gone off to school
yet?"

"Yes, he's left already. He had his breakfast in the
kitchen."

"Kasperli's my seven-year-old son, if you want to note
that down, Studer," Dr Laduner said, with his fixed
smile. "Anyway, I have to go to hear the reports now,
you can come down with me and have a look at the
office. The Director's office - the scene of the crime, if
you prefer. Although we don't know yet whether
there's a crime to go with the scene."

At the door out into the corridor they were further
held up by a young man, who insisted he had to talk to
Dr Laduner.

"Later, Caplaun, I've no time just at the moment.
Wait in the sitting room. I'll talk to you between
reports and my rounds."

With that Laduner started to leap down the stairs,
taking them three at a time. But Studer did not follow
him. He stood outside the door, staring at the man
Laduner had addressed as Caplaun. Caplaun? Caplaun had been the name of his old enemy, the colonel who
had been involved in pulling strings over that business
with the bank, the business that had cost the then
Chief Inspector Studer of the Bern city police his job.
There weren't many Caplauns in Switzerland, it was an
uncommon name ...

Well, it certainly wasn't the Colonel. The man who
entered Dr Laduner's apartment and slipped into a
room as if he knew his way around was young. Young,
skinny and blond, with a hollow chest. Pale as well,
with wide, staring eyes. Caplaun?

Studer caught up with Dr Laduner on the ground
floor. The doctor was pacing up and down impatiently.

"Herr Doktor," said Studer, "that young lad who
went into your apartment just now, you called him
Caplaun. Is he related to ... ?"

"To the colonel who put a spoke in your wheel? Yes.
The colonel's his father. Young Caplaun's undergoing
treatment with me. As a private patient. Analysis. Anxiety neurosis, typical case. Not surprising with a father
like that. He has a drink problem as well, does Herbert
Caplaun. Yes, Herbert's his first name. Perhaps you
should put him down in your notebook."

Again Studer deliberately ignored the irony. Putting
on his most guileless expression, he asked, "An anxiety
neurosis? What's that, Herr Doktor?"

"God, I can't give you a lecture on the typology of
neuroses just now! I'll explain later. Anyway, there's
the Director's office. I'll be busy for the next hour; if
you need anything, just ask the porter. His name's
Dreyer, you'd better write it down in your notebook."

A door slammed, and he was gone.

The bush outside the window had white berries that
looked like balls of wax. Two sparrows were hopping
about on the window-ledge, among the splinters of
glass. They kept bobbing up and down, their heads
appearing over the bottom of the window frame, then
disappearing, only to reappear again after a brief
interval. When Studer set the desk chair back on its
legs they flew away.

First of all he sat down, took out his oilclothbound notebook and wrote, in his tiny handwriting
that somehow recalled Greek letters: Caplaun,
Herbert: the Colonel's son, anxiety neurosis, Dr Laduners
patient.

Then he sat back, a satisfied expression on his face,
and had a look at the devastation.

Blood on the floor, that was true. But only a little, a
few separate drops that had dried to dark scabs on the
gleaming parquet. They went in a line from the broken
window-pane to the door. Perhaps someone had put
his fist through the glass and cut himself.

The little table to the left of the window was presumably intended for the typewriter, while the desk - large,
wide, ornate - took up all the space in the corner to
the right of the window. Studer stood up, went over
and picked up the typewriter. Surely there was no need
to look for fingerprints here. For the moment they
didn't even know whether there had been a murder, or
whether the Director had just gone off on a little jaunt. If that were the case, you would have expected him to
inform the other doctors, but old men sometimes got
these fancies ...

On the wall above the desk was a group photograph:
surrounded by young men and women in nurse's uniform was an old gentleman with a broad-brimmed,
black hat on his head, a rampant, curly grey beard on
his chin and cheeks, and a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles on his nose. Written in white ink underneath the
photograph was: To the Director, with the respectful good
wishes of all the participants on the first course.

Hmm, they looked like a class of overgrown model
schoolboys, all those young men in their black suits
and stiff, high collars with ties slightly askew. To the
Director... No date? Oh yes, there it was, in the bottom
corner: 18 April 1927.

On the green blotting pad underneath the picture
was a letter folded in the middle. Studer read the first
few lines: We would most urgently remind you that it is
over two months since we requested a report on the mental
condition of...

Hm! He certainly took things at his own pace did
Herr Direktor Borstli with his loden cape and broadbrimmed hat. Bet he wore a swallowtail coat ... Yes,
got it in one! There it was on the picture, a grey one as
far as he could tell, and the trousers were baggy at the
knees. An old man, a gentleman of the old school.
How had he got on with someone as businesslike as Dr
Laduner, though? He still didn't know that much
about Herr Direktor Ulrich Borstli, apart from the fact
that he liked pretty nurses and got them to call him
Ueli. And why ever not? He was answerable to no one,
a little king in - what had Dr Laduner called it? - yes,
that was it, in Matto's realm. He really ought to get to
know that Schul who had thought up the spirit of madness. Matto! Brilliant. Matto meant crazy in Italian.
Matto - it had a ring to it.

Had he been married, the old director? Must have
been! Widowed? Probably ...

There was nothing for him in the office. Why then
had Dr Laduner sent him here? The man did nothing
without reason. What was he afraid of? Studer felt
slightly inhibited. He liked Laduner, genuinely liked
him. Above all he could not forget that scene, the
scene in the Oberhollabrunn reformatory. And then
he had offered him bread and salt, too. Chabis! A load
of nonsense really, but then things usually were.

Where could the Director be hiding? The best idea
would probably be to have a word with the porter.
Porters were usually chatty people, not to say downright gossipy. At least they always knew what was going
on.

And so Studer, to the sound of a monotonous voice
trickling through the closed door to the neighbouring
room, the doctors' room, slipped out of the office like
a schoolboy trying to keep out of the teacher's way.
The teacher? In this case Dr Ernst Laduner, senior
consultant, deputy director.

Dreyer, the porter, wore a waistcoat with sewn-on
sleeves of some shiny material with an apron tied over
it. He was busy sweeping the corridor. Studer stood in
his way, arms akimbo.

"Now then, Dreyer."

The man looked up with a vacant stare. His left
hand, still resting on the brush handle, was bandaged.

"Yes, Sergeant?" So the man knew who he was. All
the better.

"Cut yourself?"

"Nothing serious," said Dreyer, lowering his eyes.

Drops of blood on the office floor, the porter with a
cut - on his hand! Now then, Studer, he told himself,
don't go jumping to conclusions. Just note: Dreyer, the
porter, has a cut on his hand, and get on with it.

"Was the Director married?"

The porter grinned. Both his eye-teeth had gold fillings. It bothered Studer and he looked aside.

"Twice," said Dreyer. "He was married twice. And
both of his wives are dead. The second started as his
cook - housekeeper, that's what they called her. Quite
a family she came from, too. She was very good at
finding positions in the clinic for her relations, her
brother as mechanic, her sister in administration as
bookkeeper - and her brother-in-law, the husband of
her other sister, is one of the consultants."

It was just as Studer had expected. Porters really did
know everything that was going on. And they liked to
talk. Not as wittily as Dr Laduner, for example, but
more to the point.

"Thank you," said Studer in a matter-of-fact tone.
"Did the Director receive a sizeable sum of money
yesterday?"

"How did you know that, Sergeant? Between May and
August he was ill. He took leave, but he was insured,
and the money came yesterday. A hundred days at
twelve francs per day, that makes exactly 1,200 francs."

"Aha," said Studer. "Presumably he also took his
salary on the first, that was yesterday too?"

"No, he always leaves that with Accounts until
there's a decent amount built up, then he has it sent to
his bank. He hardly needed any money: board and
lodging free. He didn't want to employ another
housekeeper, so the kitchen sent up something from
the first-class menu every day."

"How old was the Director?"

"Sixty-nine. Next year he would have been seventy."

Then, as if that was it, Dreyer set off, pushing the
black brush in front of him. For a moment the smell of
floor polish and pharmaceuticals was overlaid with the
smell of dust.

"Did he keep the money on him? I mean the 1,200
francs."

The porter turned round to answer his question.
"One 1,000-franc note and two 100s. He stuffed all
three into his wallet. He told me he was going to put
the money in the bank tomorrow - that is today now.
He had to go to Bern anyway, he said."

"Where was the harvest festival held?"

"Go out by that door at the back there and the
casino will be right in front of you. The door's open.
You won't be disturbed."

The "casino"! Just like in Nice or Monte Carlo! And
here he was in Randlingen Psychiatric Clinic.

It looked like the aftermath of an office party: cigarette
ash on the floor, torn streamers festooning the walls,
white tablecloths strewn with pieces of bread. The air
smelt of stale cigarette smoke. At the back was a stage
with a table on it, wine glasses ... The "dignitaries", as
Dr Laduner had put it, had not been drinking tea, then.
Windows with pointed arches and cheap coloured
glass gave the room a churchy look, an impression that
was strengthened by the pulpit fixed to one of the side
walls, a little above floor level. Perhaps that was what
churches had looked like during the French Revolution when the Feast of Reason was celebrated in them.

Studer took a chair and sat down facing the stage.
He lit a Brissago and started making little gestures with
his right hand, like a director giving actors their places
at the beginning of a scene.

The Director ... He was probably sitting in the middle of the table, in that armchair that wasn't quite
straight, as if someone had got up in a hurry. To his
right would have been Dr Laduner, to his left the hospital manager, then the junior doctors. The other consultant was the husband of the sister of the Director's
second wife ... Complicated family connections. That
meant the doctor was a kind of brother-in-law to the
Director. What was his name? He really ought to have
asked what his name was, even if it meant extending
the list in his notebook.

There was an old piano in the corner. Who had
accompanied Pieterlen when he played his accordion?
And then they'd been dancing. Here, in the free space
between the tables, men and women together, male
and female nurses. And the patients had - how had Dr
Laduner put it? - oh yes, "worked off their sexual
tensions".

Next point: at ten o'clock the Director was called to
the telephone. By Staff Nurse ... what was his name?
Jutzeler. Was called to the telephone by Staff Nurse
Jutzeler. Must make a note to ask Staff Nurse Jutzeler
whether it was a man's or a woman's voice asking for
the Director ... The telephone? ... Where was the
telephone?

Studer got up, went over to the piano and picked
out a few notes. The thing was pretty out of tune. Then
he climbed up onto the stage - it was a bit of an effort -
and began to go round the table, bent down. Stooping
like that, in his black suit, he looked like a gigantic
Newfoundland dog following a scent. He lifted up one
corner of the tablecloth and reached down. A card,
blue, very grubby. Neat handwriting, like something
out of an exercise book. A schoolgirl's handwriting: I'll
give you a ring at ten, Ueli, and we can go for a strol. Stroll with only one `1'. No signature. Even if he hadn't
found the card under the armchair, it would not have
been difficult to guess whom it was intended for.
Where was the telephone? Studer climbed down from
the stage and had a look round. The phone was in a
cubby hole off the "casino".

It was black and had a white disc with the numbers
one to nine on it. Just like any telephone in the city. In
the middle was the number 49. Hanging from the wall
beside the phone was a list, with, written in small block
letters at the bottom: ALL NUMBERS PRINTED IN RED
HAVE AN EXTERNAL CONNECTION.

12 - Director was in red, of course, also 13 - Deputy
Director, Administration Office, etc. But the numbers of
the various wards were in black. 0 dormitory (male
side) had the number 44. And the casino, with the
number 49, was also in black.

So the logical deduction was that the call for Herr
Direktor Borstli had come from within the clinic. If it
had come from outside, it would have been the porter,
Dreyer, who had come to fetch him and the Director
would have had to take it in his office or his own
apartment.