When the Devil's Idle (23 page)

He’d found an old
tape recorder at the station, which he pulled out of his briefcase,
turned on and set down on the table in front of her. They were
coming to it and he wanted to have a record. Normally he liked to
enter his impressions in a notebook, to jot things down, but he
didn’t want to interrupt her now.

Let her talk, he
told himself, get it off her chest.

“
He
lived next door to us,” she said. “Our village was small, and he
was there off and on for months. I saw him often. I was little and
he sounded funny. Now I know he was speaking German.”

She took a deep
breath. “He used to stand outside and talk to the other soldiers
sometimes. They were loud and I’d hear them. All day long, I’d hear
them. But that was a long time ago, and you want to know what
happened this summer on Patmos.”

“
Yes.
When did you first see him again?”

“
It
was late in July and I was hanging laundry outside my room in
Campos. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe he had dared to
come back to Greece and I walked closer to make sure. It was him,
all right. Same physique, same face. He even parted his hair the
same way he had in Aghios Stefanos. He was standing next to a
parked car, talking to his son. That’s when I knew for sure, when I
heard his voice. My heart stopped, and even after all these years,
I was afraid again.”

“
If
you were afraid, why did you agree to work for them? Did you see it
as an opportunity? A chance to kill him and avenge your
family?”

If so, he’d have
to charge her with premeditation. She’d be in jail the rest of her
life.

“
I
wanted to confront him, yes.” She paused, searching for the right
words. “But not then, not there in Campos. I had to gain entry to
his house, which is why I took the job. I couldn’t confront him in
the middle of the road, could I? But maids, they are invisible.
People wipe their feet on you. I could watch him without anyone
knowing and learn what I needed to know.”

“
And
then you killed him?”

“
I
killed him?” Shocked, her voice caught in her throat.

“
You
had cause. Gunther Bech was an evil man. He murdered your family.
He raped your best friend.”

“
I
would never kill him,” she said, growing more and more agitated.
“Never kill any of them. Oh, I might have thought about it over the
years, when I was younger, but not now. What good would it do?
Killing him wouldn’t bring back my family, the childhood I’d
lost.”

“
So
why did you go there?”

“
I
wanted to see him up close, see what kind of man he was. I thought
it would show on his face, the evil he’d done, that the devil would
have branded him.”

She started to
cry again, tears running down her powdered cheeks. “In Aghios
Stefanos, I’d watch him from inside the house, him and the others.
I saw them as monsters and maybe they were. I don’t know what I was
expecting in that house in Chora. Horns? Eyes that burned?
Something. But all I saw were dentures and a hearing aid, a cane
hanging on the back of a chair. He was senile. I don’t know if they
told you that. He couldn’t remember what day it was, let alone what
he’d done to my people. I was too late. He’d outlived his evil.
Maybe it had just departed. I don’t know. All I know is I never saw
it. For me, it was gone.”

Maria Georgiou
continued to weep. “I had it all planned what I’d say: ‘I’m from
Aghios Stefanos,’ I was going to tell him. ‘Remember that place? I
hid in the river the day you killed my family, covered myself with
blood so you’d think I was dead and wouldn’t shoot me, too. The
water was cold and my teeth were chattering and I was afraid you’d
hear. You stood on the bank above us, above me and the other people
from my village who’d fled to the river.’ ”

She paused a few
seconds before resuming her conversation with the dead
man.

“ ‘
You had a name for what you did to us. You called it
Sauberung,
a cleansing. I heard you talking about it. My
father was the village priest … and you shot him when you came
that day and set fire to all the houses.’ ”

Maria Georgiou
turned to Patronas. “You asked what I wanted, Chief Officer. I
wanted to say those things. But after I saw him in Chora, saw how
he was, I gave up the idea of confronting him. Maybe he’d been
tormented by the war like I was. I don’t know. All I know is, the
person he’d been—the man who’d held my people’s lives in his hand
and crushed them like paper—that man had vanished. He was still a
lycos
, a wolf. I was sure of it. But the wolf had grown old
and lost his teeth.” She smiled at this. “He would not have
understood what I was saying. ‘Aghios Stefanos?’ ” She
imitated a German accent. “ ‘Vere is dat?
Vat?’ ”

“
What
about the children?”

“
Oh,
his hunger was still there. You could see it when the gardener came
with his boy, see it on his face, the way he watched him. I always
stayed outside then. Took my broom and swept.”

“
Standing guard?”

“
Yes.
With Walter, too, sometimes.” She paraphrased the old Greek saying,
“
Even though he got old and his hair was white, he has not
changed his disposition
. In this, like the wolf, Bech remained
the same.”

“
Did
you kill him?” Patronas asked again.

“
I’m
not a
palikari
, Chief Officer.” A brave person. “I might
spit in your food or curse you under my breath, but that is all I
do.”

She reached out a
hand and touched his sleeve. “You have to understand: my father was
a priest and he believed with all his heart in the vision our
Savior held out for us, in the lessons of forgiveness in the Bible.
He would recite them to me and my brothers when we were in bed,
getting ready to go to sleep.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for
they shall be called the children of God
. People in the village
called him weak, especially after the Germans came, but I knew
better. I knew it was harder to be the way he was, that he was
stronger than any of them. I have nothing left of him but that,
that vision. That is his legacy and I would never betray it. I
would never raise my hand against another human being.”

Papa Michalis was
nodding. He had tears in his eyes.

“
The
night he died, when did you find him?” Patronas asked.

“
Around six thirty, long before the gardener came.”

“
Where
did you get the flowers and the candles?”

Perhaps someone
else had been involved. She might have brought another man or woman
to the house to do the actual killing, a second individual from the
village.

“
What
are you talking about?”

“
Someone burned candles and scattered petals around the
body.”

“
It
wasn’t me.” Maria Georgiou looked away, not meeting his eye. “No
one saw me in the garden. No point in checking.”

“
What
about the swastika?”

“
It
was already there.”

“
How
long were you alone with him?”

“
Not
long. Maybe a quarter of an hour, no more. I arrived late that
afternoon. I was supposed to stay on and help with dinner that
night. They’d all come back from the beach, were inside the house
by the time I got there, and I let myself in through the gate. When
I didn’t see him in his chair in the garden, I went looking. It’s
what I usually did when I came in the afternoon. I’d find him and
ask what he wanted, if he needed anything. It was then that I saw
him on the ground.”

“
Was
he still alive?”

She hesitated,
understanding the implication of the question. “Yes,” she said. “He
was breathing, but only a little, each breath taking longer than
the last.”

Cold, to stand
by and watch somebody die.
Patronas studied her. “You say
you’re the daughter of a priest, but you didn’t call an ambulance,
didn’t get help for him. What were you doing all that time?
Praying?” He struggled to keep the sarcasm out of his voice,
thinking she must have been lying about the candles and the
flowers. Killed him and then adorned the body in some unholy
ritual.

“
I
didn’t pray,” she said in a low voice. “Not at first.”

She went on, “I
could hear the shower running inside so I knew I’d be alone for a
while. They usually left the old man alone in the afternoon. The
garden was his. They didn’t use it much.”

“
Wouldn’t they have noticed your absence?”

“
I’m a
servant, Chief Officer. As I told you before, no one notices
servants, whether they are there or not.”

“
Why
take the risk? Why didn’t you call the police, dial 100 when you
found him, then stand back and let us do our work?”

“
Death
is death. Whether you hate someone or not, it affects you. You have
to acknowledge it. You can’t just walk away. And so I blessed him.
I would have sung a
mirologia
, a dirge for the dead, for
him, too, if I’d known one. They sang them for days in my village,
the people who were left. Days and days.”

A bird flew down
and began pecking at the seeds on the windowsill. “
Yeia sou,
poulaki mou,”
Maria Georgiou called out. Hello, my little bird.
She watched the bird for few moments, her face streaked with tears.
“I might have hated him, but still I prayed. You see my father’s
goodness? It lives on in me, while that man’s evil is gone, swept
away and forgotten.” Opening her hand, she blew across her palm
like a child with a dandelion. “Chaff in the wind.”

“
How
could you just leave him lying there?”

“
For
the same reason I didn’t call the police,” she said
matter-of-factly. “Once you heard I was from Aghios Stefanos, I
knew I’d be in trouble, that you’d arrest me.”

Raising her face,
she looked him straight in the eye. “Besides, I was done with them.
He was dead. Someone killed him and I would never find out what I
wanted to know—what makes one man good and another bad, what
determines what is in a person’s heart. No, I was done with the
Bechs, the Bechtels, whatever you want to call them. It was over
for me.”

Still Patronas
persisted. “You didn’t pick up a rock and hit him, cut up his face
with a knife?”

Her gaze never
faltered. “No, I swear on the memory of my family, my murdered
family, and all that is holy. I did not touch him.”

“
Shit,” Patronas said under his breath. He believed
her.

A
fter warning Maria Georgiou to stay away from the
Bechtels in the future and to report her movements to the police,
Patronas and Papa Michalis left the rooming house.

Patronas called
Stathis on his cellphone and told him he’d decided to hold off on
the arrest, saying he needed more time. “All the evidence I have is
circumstantial. We have no proof that the victim raped Maria
Georgiou or killed her father. All we have is proof of his presence
in the same village. We need more. We need to get this
right.”

“
What
about the assault on Gerta Bechtel?” Stathis asked.

“
Again, it’s the same thing. Maria Georgiou was there, but her
presence is not sufficient proof of guilt. She was working the
night it happened, helping with dinner, according to the family.
Anyway, Gerta Bechtel didn’t see who did it. There’s a side
entrance to the estate. The assailant might have come in through
there.”

“
Do
you have any idea who this ‘assailant’ might be?” Stathis’ voice
was heavy with sarcasm.

“
At
the present time, no.”

“
Well,
find out. I’ll give you another forty-eight hours.”

Next, Patronas
called the policeman who’d been monitoring Maria Georgiou and
ordered him to step up his surveillance and keep track of her
whereabouts day and night. “Get someone else to help you, but keep
her in sight at all times. Also, keep track of who she talks to,
especially anyone Greek. Under no circumstances is she to approach
the Bechtels again or go near anyone else in that house. I’ll
inform them that as of this moment, she is no longer working for
them.”

Finally, he
called the Bechtels and told them to tell the owners of the house,
the Bauers, that they needed to hire another housekeeper. For a
number of reasons, Maria Georgiou was now barred from the estate in
Chora.

Wondering how
Maria Georgiou had gotten to the house the evening of the murder,
Patronas sought out the driver of the bus route between Chora and
Skala and quizzed him, asking if he’d seen anything suspicious in
her behavior or appearance, blood stains for instance. The only
other possibility was that someone had driven her, an accomplice.
She was too old to walk.

“
Usually she rode to Chora in the morning and came back at
night,” the bus driver told him, “but I can’t say for sure she was
on the bus that day or if there were bloodstains on her dress when
she returned home. It’s not a bad stroll in the evening—no hills to
climb. Could be she walked. She seemed like a nice woman. What’s
she done?”