The Ludwig Conspiracy (3 page)

Sighing, Steven rose from his mahogany desk and wandered around the little shop into which he had put so much of his heart—and so much of his money—for twenty years. Lovingly, he stroked the spines of individual books, straightening one here or there, putting copies gone astray back in their proper places. Finally he began emptying the crates from the estate of the old lady in Bogenhausen and putting the books in the few open spaces on the shelves. Among the books he had bought were an 1888 Baedeker travel guide to Belgium, an eighteenth-century work on chess, and Shelton’s standard work on shorthand,
Tachygraphy,
in one of the later editions—treasures, all of them. Whether he would ever sell them was another question.

On one point at least Frau Schultheiss was right: business was going badly, in fact very badly. Not that it had ever really gone well, but until now Steven hadn’t minded that so long as he could rummage around in flea markets, libraries, and other antiquarian bookshops to his heart’s content. But now the once-handsome inheritance left by his parents was exhausted, and he had to turn his mind to one of the least edifying aspects of human existence: earning money.

When people did come into the shop, most of them were just passersby who didn’t want to wait out in the rain for the next bus, or who hoped to buy a cheap Perry Rhodan or the latest Dan Brown. Not to mention drunks visiting Oktoberfest and looking for a public toilet.

The distinguished old gentleman with glasses and an ivory walking stick that morning, however, had been different. He had shown a great deal of interest in Steven’s life in the antiquarian book trade, and he had asked him many questions about an early copy of the diaries of Samuel Pepys. Experts considered particularly valuable the rare work that Steven had acquired only recently.

But knowledgeable as he was, the man had seemed to Steven slightly distracted—indeed, almost as if he were being hunted. His hands had been nervously clutching a package done up with gray wrapping paper and string, obviously a fairly large book. When Steven mentioned it to him, the man just smiled and whispered something that made no sense.

The royal line is at stake . . .

He had also been intrigued by the stranger’s nervous glances. Several times, the man had looked through the display window as if expecting something to happen. When Steven went into the stockroom behind the shop for a few minutes to fetch the Pepys diaries, he came back to find that the old gentleman had simply disappeared without so much as a goodbye.

The memory made Steven smile.

Oddballs and old fools,
he thought.
No one else comes into my shop anymore. If I don’t watch out, I’ll be turning into an oddball myself. Maybe I already am?

He went on clearing the crate, distributing books around the appropriate shelves by subject, climbing up a narrow ladder again and again, and humming the theme of Schubert’s
Death and the Maiden
.

Suddenly he stopped.

Level with his head, in between an old, leather-bound Bible and an antique edition of Molière’s works, there was a large tome, almost as wide as a man’s hand, that he had never seen before. He took the book off the shelf and saw, to his surprise, that what looked like a folio volume wasn’t paper at all, but was made of cherrywood glued together. Only the back, made to look like the spine of a book, was leather. The fake book seemed to be one of those camouflaged containers in which, back in the old days, good, respectable middle-class citizens used to hide their bottles of liquor or their cigars in the family library. Steven was reminded of the kind of small treasure chest where little boys sometimes kept their marbles, penknives, and Lego figurines. Surely he’d had a very similar little box for his treasures when he was a child.

Feeling curious, he opened the little box and suddenly sensed an odd tingling that he couldn’t explain. Briefly, everything went dark before his eyes, and he almost fell off the ladder. It was as if a misty hand were reaching out to touch him. Then he had himself back under control. Only an acrid, almost burning taste was left clinging to his palate.

What the hell was that? Some kind of aroma that I don’t tolerate? The smell of some varnish or something? Or have I turned allergic to something, just like that?

Carefully, Steven climbed down the last few rungs and looked inside the box. It was lined with dark fabric and had a musty smell. Inside, there were a few faded photographs and a lock of black hair tied with a silk ribbon—as well as a handsomely designed little book. Bound in blue velvet, adorned with ivory ornamentation, it looked like an enchanted book of spells. Steven traced the outline of a knight with a sword who seemed to be riding on a swan, stroked the blue velvet of the binding, and ran his fingertips over the intarsia work of white flowers and leaves. When he blew into the little treasure chest, a cloud of dust flew up; the smell of it made him dizzy again.

Once again, he felt a misty hand reach out for him; he closed his eyes and opened them again. His throat was suddenly dry, as if he’d been up all night drinking. Steven shook himself and tried to concentrate.

Don’t be silly; pull yourself together. It’s only an old box, that’s all.

The photos were the first thing he saw. They seemed to have been taken in the last third of the nineteenth century, and in matte gray colors and various positions they showed a young man of about thirty sitting on an adjustable wooden stool. Beside him stood an older, rather portly gentleman, wearing a black coat; in some of the pictures his left hand was resting almost caressingly on the younger man’s shoulder. He looked like a kindly giant. Did the dry lock of hair in the little box come from one of the men? They both had dark hair, anyway.

Thoughtfully, Steven put the pictures and the lock of hair back in the container, then focused again on the book with its valuable ivory intarsia work. When he began turning the pages, he stopped short in surprise. The fine handmade paper was covered not with letters and words, but with curious scribbles and hieroglyphics, like some kind of secret code. Could this really be an old book of magic spells? Steven’s heart beat faster. He knew that amazing sums were offered for
grimoires,
as such things were called. Self-styled “white witches” and others with a yen for esotericism competed to get their hands on them. The title page, however, did seem to be legible. Frowning, Steven took out his reading glasses and inspected the faded writing.

Memoirs of Theodor Marot, Assistant to Dr. Max Schleiss von Loewenfeld.

Steven rubbed his eyes. He had never seen either the book or its container before. Or had he? A strange sense of familiarity passed through him. For the life of him, though, he couldn’t remember how the little box came to be in his possession. It hadn’t been part of the estate left by the old lady from Bogenhausen; he would certainly have noticed such an unusual item. And he had been through all his purchases from flea markets over the last few weeks, classifying them one by one and keeping a written record. So how did this little treasure chest come to be in his shop?

He picked up the photographs again. Suddenly he was sure he’d seen a picture of the gigantic older man in them somewhere before. He hadn’t looked quite so portly, but the gentle eyes, the beard, and the full head of black hair were the same. He made a genuinely imposing, almost regal impression.

Suddenly Steven stopped dead.

Was it possible?

Thoughtfully, he tapped one of the photographs. Carrying the little box, he hurried into the stockroom behind the shop, where the books from flea markets and estate sales that he had already classified lay in stacks, waiting to be sorted and placed on the crowded shelves. He rummaged busily around in the cartons, in search of a book that he had bought quite cheaply when he found it only a few days before at a stall in the Munich Olympiad Park, among trashy novels and wartime stories. At last he found it at the bottom of the third carton that he searched.

The book, which was falling apart, was a treatise on the royal house of Bavaria written early in the twentieth century. It featured a whole series of heroic paintings of members of the Wittelsbach dynasty, beginning with Maximilian I Joseph, and ending with Ludwig III, the last king of Bavaria, who had to abdicate at the end of the First World War in his senile old age. Steven leafed quickly through the book until he found the right picture at last. There it was! A handsome young man with black hair looked out of it at him. He had no beard yet, but he had the same hairstyle and the faraway look that was in his eyes until the time of his mysterious death. He wore a blue coat with a white ermine cloak over it.

Steven smiled. No doubt about it, the portly giant in the photograph was none other than King Ludwig II, the Fairy-tale King. He must have been one of the best-known of all Germans, and his youthful portrait adorned beer mugs, T-shirts, and postcards all over Germany.

Steven compared the painting in the book with the photograph in his hand. Judging by the king’s appearance, the photo must have been taken in his later years. But there was no question—the little box really did contain photographs of the world-famous Bavarian monarch, probably taken shortly before his death. Maybe even still unpublished? Steven knew that in certain circles, one could ask a high price for such things. All of a sudden the rent problem seemed to retreat into the distance.

At that moment, the bell at the front of the shop announced another visitor coming in.

Irritated, Steven put the book and the photographs back in the little box and placed it on a shelf. Then he left the stockroom and went back into the shop. Couldn’t he ever be left in peace? It was seven in the evening already. Who on earth could want to buy something from him so near to closing time? Or was it Frau Schultheiss again with another offer?

“We’re really closed,” he began brusquely. “If you’d like to come back tomorrow morning . . .”

As he took a closer look at the man, he knew at once that this wasn’t one of the usual Perry Rhodan customers. The stranger was around sixty, with sparse gray hair, an old-fashioned pair of pince-nez perched on his nose, and he wore a suit in the Bavarian style of the kind favored by elderly gentlemen from the country complete with lederhosen. He was tall and thin, with a high forehead; his whole bearing suggested that he wasn’t used to having his authority questioned.

“I won’t take up much of your time, I promise you,” the man said in a gruff voice, inspecting Steven through his pince-nez. “My interest is only in very
special
literature.”

A slight shudder ran through Steven. “What kind of literature do you mean?” he asked, smiling faintly. “If you’re looking for typical Bavarian writers like Ludwig Thoma or Oskar Maria Graf, then—”

“I am interested in eyewitness accounts from the time of King Ludwig the Second,” the stranger interrupted. “Do you have anything of that nature, Herr . . . ?”

“Lukas. Steven Lukas.”

Steven bravely went on smiling, but he was feeling uneasier with every moment spent under the other man’s gaze. The newcomer seemed to be scrutinizing him closely, as if he didn’t trust him for some reason. Then he looked hard at the bookshelves. He was obviously searching them for something.

Eyewitness accounts from the time of King Ludwig II . . .

Steven forced himself to appear calm, showing nothing on the surface. But his mind was working furiously. Could this really be just coincidence, or did the stranger know about the photographs? Had he come to get hold of the little treasure chest?

“You hesitate,” the man said, examining him curiously through his pince-nez. “You do have something.”

“No, I’m sorry. I don’t. But if you’d like to give me your contact information, I’ll be happy to let you know if I get hold of anything.”

Steven had come to this decision in a fraction of a second. He didn’t trust the stranger; the man’s whole demeanor unsettled him. It reminded him of the self-satisfied manner of certain Bavarian politicians who were used to getting their way no matter what.

But you won’t get anything from me.

“Are you quite sure you have nothing of that nature?” the man in the Bavarian suit asked again.

“Perfectly sure. If I can have your telephone number . . .”

The tall stranger gave him a thin-lipped smile. “That won’t be necessary. We’ll come back to you.” He nodded a goodbye and then went out. Darkness had fallen.

Steven felt as if an icy wind had entered the shop, covering all the books with hoarfrost. Shivering, he went over to the window, but the man had already disappeared.

Fine rain was pattering against the panes.

A
FTER A WHILE,
Steven shook his head and chuckled quietly to himself. What on earth was the matter with him? First that odd dizziness when he had found the little box, and now this. He wasn’t usually so easily scared. What was more, he’d had far worse customers in his shop. A couple of years ago, a drunk had thrown up in his display during Oktoberfest. And unsavory characters in Bavarian-style suits were all over Munich, not just in upmarket Maximilianstrasse.

After looking out at the street one last time, the streetlamps casting dim light on its wet surface, he went back into the stockroom and took the little box off the shelf. Briefly, he was overcome by the fear that its contents could suddenly have disappeared, as if by magic. But when he opened the container, it was still all there: the faded photographs, the lock of black hair, the book bound in blue velvet and decorated with carved ivory . . .

All at once he felt extremely tired and just as hungry. It struck him that he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. All the excitement over the Grimms’
Tales,
followed by Frau Schultheiss and the stranger, had made him forget any hunger pangs, but now they announced themselves forcefully. Steven decided to stop work for the day and indulge in a large plateful of farfalle primavera and a bottle of wine at home. While the pasta was cooking, he’d take a closer look at that strange diary and the photographs. If the pictures were really genuine, they would create a small sensation. Steven knew, from hearsay, of a number of people who would pay good money for photographs like that. If he had to decide whether to use the illustrated Grimm or the photos to pay the rent, he would opt for the photographs.