The Tenth Witness (Henri Poincare Mystery) (3 page)

“The beach plums are ripe,” he said.

I looked for and found a hint of Liesel in his face. “Where can I find them?”

She had explained that the boy came into the world wearing the goggles and leather helmet of a combat ace. All he wanted to do was fly. He pointed to a dune fence half buried in sand and some low, scrubby bushes with flowers. “Magda and I are going to make plum jam tomorrow,” he said. “You can have some. Come on, I’ll show you. I’m a Stuka.” He raised his arms and buzzed ahead, looking over his shoulder to see if I would follow. “Make machine-gun sounds,” he called.

It was a fine afternoon in late May, the sun fat and yellow. We cast long shadows over the beach and dunes as we ran. I kept pace and gave him a lusty
Rat-atat-tat-tattt,
surprised I could move at all after my hike that morning. Friedrich was agile. He stalled to let me catch up, then banked hard right, dipping and pirouetting until he was on my tail. “I got you!” he cried.

When I banked into the dunes to lose him, I looked up the beach—and stopped dead on seeing a pair of large, heavily muscled dogs streaking toward me. My pulse rocketed. When Friedrich cried, “
You’re dead!
” and caught up to me, I placed myself between the boy and the onrushing dogs, then reached into my pants pocket for a trusted, compact weapon.

From the age of eight, I’ve carried a metal T that my father gave me after a nasty episode. At a park in Paris, I was off running when a Rottweiler slipped its chain and chased me down. Before anyone could stop it, the dog had sunk its teeth into my calf and begun to shake me about. My father knocked it senseless with the lid of a trash barrel and would have killed the animal had its owner not tackled him. But the damage was done: my leg had been “tenderized,” according to the emergency room doctor.

To this day, my calf aches at a change in weather and the approach of angry-looking dogs. It took months to learn how to walk and run again with a mangled calf. After a long convalescence, my father presented me with what he called a tool: a smoothly welded, stainless steel T of his own design that was, in fact, a small but very efficient weapon. He taught me to hold the cross of the T in my fist and to position the trunk between my ring and middle fingers.

He was more serious than usual the day he presented it, kneeling to my height and taking my shoulders in his hands.
Henri,
he said.
I won’t always be around to save you. When you’re attacked, always face the beast. Never run. If you must, let it bite you once, then aim for the eyes and throat.

For twenty years I had carried that T in my front right pocket, prepared for an attack that never came. But I had formed a lifelong habit by that point. I’d left my wallet to dry back in my room at Löwenherz, perfectly willing to part with, and even lose, my money, IDs, and credit cards. Yet I took my father’s T onto the dunes because I took it everywhere, just as I take my lungs and intestines with me on leaving a room.

As I tracked the dogs and set a firm stance, I was glad I had. The animals looked more like small lions than dogs.

“Hermann! Albert!” Friedrich yelled.

He ran from behind me and fell to his knees, his arms wide. When the dogs met him, they pranced and whined and licked his face. They were beautiful animals, I must admit: tawny-colored with thick, squarish heads and muscled like pit bulls though easily twice the size of that fighting breed. Friedrich tried climbing aboard the nearer one, which shook him off.

The dogs ambled over to me, sniffing, and I could guess why: they smelled Anselm’s familiar scent on these clothes, mingled with mine. They turned circles around me, whining.

Friedrich leapt onto the one he called Hermann. “Giddy-up!”

A man approached. “Opa!” the boy yelled, slipping off the dog. He ran to his grandfather, already dressed in his tuxedo for the party and looking as out of place on the dunes as Löwenherz itself.

“Hermann, Albert.
Kommen!
”

The dogs trotted to their master, Anselm’s father-in-law and Otto’s partner in Kraus Steel. I bowed instead of releasing the T, keeping my hand in my pocket.

“A fine evening for a party. Viktor Schmidt, at your service.” He was as kind and jovial as St. Nicholas. He was also short, with a thick bristle of white hair and a bull neck. He leaned forward as he spoke, as if into a stiff wind. “And you’ve come to Löwenherz . . . as a guest of—”

“Liesel Kraus. Don’t worry. I’m not crashing your party.”

“Ah! You’re that French stray she pulled in from the flats. I know all about it.”

“Opa, you promised to teach me to dance tonight!”

Liesel had never not known Viktor Schmidt—uncle by long association, not blood, just as the man who lived downstairs from my family’s apartment in Paris was uncle to me. Every family seems to have one. Schmidt’s daughter, Theresa, and Anselm had been crib mates after the war while their fathers built Kraus Steel. Their marriage twenty years later consolidated the partnership into a single bloodline.

“I don’t know the breed,” I said, nodding to the dogs. “Handsome animals.”

“My boys! Indeed they are! South African Boerboels. Bred as lion hunters, in fact. Outstanding guard dogs. They’re gentle with children and furiously protective of family. My boys. I trained them myself.”

“Opa, what about dancing?”

“Yes, Friedrich. Fine. Enough already. The orchestra was setting up when I left the house. We’ll have a grand evening. But I warn you, you’ll have to dance with your sister.”

The child made a face.

“Friedrich and I just met,” I said. “He’s a fine pilot.” I reached to tousle Friedrich’s hair, and the dogs growled.

“Don’t mind them,” said Schmidt, smiling. “Hey now, let’s have some fun. Friedrich, do you see those rabbits over there?” He pointed, and I saw them just before they skittered for the cover of dune grass.

I could scarcely believe the discipline of these animals, which must have smelled the rabbits or detected movement well before Schmidt did. Yet they didn’t flinch—not until he waited a five-count, then swept the flat of his hand toward the dunes and cried: “Hupt!” The dogs flew from his side.

Moments later, Friedrich called: “They’ve got one!”

I followed into the taller grass and found Albert and Hermann crouched on the sand, a rabbit paralyzed in fear between them. Friedrich sat on his haunches, staring.

“Ach hupt!”

The dogs closed in but didn’t touch the rabbit.

“Friedrich. What shall we do?”

The boy looked at the Boerboels, then to his grandfather.

“You decide, Opa.”

I glanced up and down the beach. We were alone.

“No, you’ll be nine next month. You’re a young man now and it’s time you decide these things. Watch Albert and Hermann closely, their absolute obedience. There’s nothing these fellows want more than a fresh kill. But see how they wait for my command? If you train your animals well, child, they’ll serve you well. Now then, what shall we do?”

I slipped a hand into my pocket again, then removed it. What was my plan, to attack the dogs and end up in a hospital in order to save a rabbit? I prepared to turn away if Friedrich gave the command to kill.

“Hermann, unst!”

The dog nearer to me broke from his crouch and lunged for the rabbit, which bolted into the waiting jaws of the second dog.

“Brilliant!” cried Schmidt. “Excellent work, Friedrich!”

The child turned to his grandfather. “Opa, the rabbit’s scared. Look at its eyes.”

It was true. I, too, was scared. I had killed spiders and assorted bugs. I had fished and watched trout flop on riverbanks until they died. But I had never killed a sentient animal with eyes that suggested a soul. The child’s color changed. The high, ruddy life in him drained.

Schmidt shifted his weight in the sand and said: “Yes, well, nothing leaves this world without fear. That’s a fact. Shall we have rabbit stew for lunch tomorrow?” He folded his arms and waited.

“The command is Z-I-N-D with a hand movement?”

Schmidt nodded.

I was about to excuse myself when the child shouted: “Luft!”

The dog loosed its hold, and the rabbit escaped.

Schmidt laughed as he knelt and reached into a side pocket. “You’re a gentle one, aren’t you?
Kommen!
” he called to the dogs. They loped to his side, and he produced a plastic bag filled with neatly cubed pieces of raw meat. “Good, Albert. That’s my Hermann. Good boys!” He stroked them behind the ears, cooing their names.

“Off with you, then,” he said. “Take the boys to my apartment and get changed for the party.” He swept a hand toward the mansion and the dogs took off, the child happy—a plane once more— zooming behind.

Friedrich disappeared into the dunes, and I turned to Schmidt. “Your grandson called himself a Stuka.”

“A damned good choice! It was the best single-engine prop dive bomber ever built. . . . Isn’t he a fine child! Isn’t he splendid?”

He leaned toward me as he spoke, and I found myself leaning away. I could only agree. Friedrich
was
splendid.

“It’s how we make them,” said Schmidt. “Welcome to Löwenherz. You’re
Herr
Poincaré in this house, not
Monsieur.
Make yourself at home.”

six

“S
hit and shit squared, Henri. We get perfect weather for the last two weeks—and now this for the first day of our dive? Low pressure from Greenland’s going to hit us like a fist by sunrise. I may need that inner tube after all. You said it had a duck on the front?”

I’d left the beach for Löwenherz, determined to steer clear of Schmidt for the evening. Alec would want to know I hadn’t drowned on the flats and that I’d be making my own way to the platform, so I called. On learning my host was Liesel Kraus, he accused me of gold digging.

“I should have gone on the trek with you after all,” he said. “Really, between the two of us, would it even have been a contest? Women think I’m a fucking
prince,
Henri. They can’t resist. And call your father. He’s trying to find you.”

“Any message?”

“No, he said to call, no matter how late. This Liesel of yours. She’s really
that
Kraus?”

S
HE
WAS
talking to Schmidt across the ballroom, touching his arm for punctuation as she told what must have been a very good story because Schmidt slapped his leg at one point, laughing hard enough for me to hear him over the music. Liesel’s affection for her godfather startled me. Here I was drawn to her. She adored him. Must I, in that case, take this man on as a friend? I turned my attention elsewhere when they stepped onto the dance floor.

One could learn a great deal about Otto Kraus from the ballroom at Löwenherz. The coffered ceilings, the parade of gilt-framed mirrors suggesting Versailles, the crystal chandeliers, and the velvet-trimmed chairs all hinted at money that didn’t know what to do with itself.

Two men to my right were puffing on Cuban cigars, observing the scene. One of them, short and rotund, looked like Kaiser Wilhelm with his waxed moustache. He was shaking his head. “Anselm flew in the string section from the Vienna Philharmonic, believe it or not. Landed them on the goddamned dunes in a helicopter.”

The waltz ended, and Liesel broke away from Schmidt and crossed the room in my direction. She had made a definite change from her hiking clothes. Her shape-fitting black dress was cut low enough to fuel my imagination. She wore a long strand of pearls. Her hair beneath the chandeliers flashed reds and chestnut. It also tumbled to her bare, well-formed shoulders, and I found myself staring again.

“
You
clean up nicely,” she said.

I kissed her right cheek, then her left.

“This is when you earn your rent money, Henri. That’s Mr. Bayer talking to my brother. His real name is Hans Kellerman. Do you see, with Anselm—the tall one?”

As we edged around the dance floor, every few paces some new gray-haired eminence stopped to congratulate her. “Well done, dear! We’re so proud of you!” Compliment followed compliment until we made our way to Anselm Kraus and Herr Kellerman.

“Why all the congratulations?” I asked.

“Never mind that. Here, meet my brother.”

Anselm was the star around which the people of this room turned. I had seen it before, ‘the great man effect’: guests standing near to feel the warmth of the maestro or, better still, to let something clever slip and be noticed. Kellerman had one meaty hand at Anselm’s shoulder, explaining something that required flourishes with the other hand. He stood a head taller than Kraus, who was tall—my height—and in place of a bow tie wore an onyx brooch as black as his hair. Kellerman possessed a quiescent, Cro-Magnon intensity that reminded me of Anthony Quinn, the actor: handsome but, on a bad day, potentially volcanic. He caught sight of Liesel’s hand in mine, and his color changed.

Liesel didn’t hesitate to interrupt.

I extended a hand to Kraus, who hesitated as if we’d been introduced via phone across a transatlantic cable. I said
hello.
He paused before responding as if he risked tripping over my words. I didn’t know what Liesel had said, but the man was clearly appraising me.

“My sister says you make things, Herr Poincaré.”

It was not an unreasonable definition of engineering. “Yes, I do.”

“My father believed you can trust people who make things. He didn’t care if it was a chamber pot or an airplane. Industry is the proper measure of a man, he thought, preferably German industry.” Anselm was looking at his sister, not me, as he said this. “We’ll keep an open mind for the moment.”

Was he marking territory? Laying out a grand view of the world? I said nothing.

“Liesel also says that you designed and built the dive platform out at the
Lutine
.”

“We’re hoping it’s the
Lutine.
But yes, my partner and I built it.”

“And that you used Kraus steel to anchor that platform over the wreck site.”

His hesitation had meant nothing, after all. I had made a good impression before meeting Anselm Kraus because I was clever enough to have used
his
steel on my platform. I invited him for a visit and offered to show him around. Liesel stood beside me, her arm looped through mine.