The Murder Farm Read online

  There were foreign workers everywhere. We prisoners of war in France were put to work ourselves.

  Do you imagine we were always well treated? I for one didn’t go and hang myself.

  Nor do I see what this could have to do with the dreadful crime committed against the Danner family. This is simply an attempt to revive old stories. There are some people, you know, who just can’t leave such stories alone. The war’s been over for ten years. So let’s lay those stories to rest once and for all. Times then were bad enough.

  We all suffered. Everyone has his own burden to bear, but the world goes on turning. Times change. Wondering “what if?” does no good. No good at all.

  Of course there were injustices, of course there were moments of despair. Every one of us went through them. But the war’s over. It’s been over almost ten years now, time we started forgetting.

  I was a prisoner of war myself, and believe you me, it wasn’t easy. I was lucky. I managed to get home soon after the end of the war. Others didn’t have as much luck, but what about it? What’s over is over.

  There are plenty of other problems, after all. But slowly we’re going uphill in this country. Don’t you read the paper?

  I mean, look at the international situation. Right at this moment in time, since the end of the Korean War, the tension has relaxed slightly, yes, I agree. Our fears of another war are gone for the moment. But I can tell you, the communists in Russia won’t let it stop at that. You don’t suppose this man Khrushchev is any better than his predecessor, do you?

  Very well, so now the last prisoners of war are coming home. At last, after almost ten years, but that doesn’t change anything; that doesn’t change the potential danger from the East. That’s why it was so important for us to sign the Paris treaties.

  We have to act as an opposite pole. If only because—perhaps most of all because—the world has changed since the war.

  That chapter, I would like to think, is now finally closed.

  I do beg you not to go chasing after every rumor. I can guess where you heard that one.

  And was that lady’s own conduct always so far above reproach that she can point the finger at others? I wouldn’t want to judge her, but one hears this and that.

  I mean, there’s her husband at the front, defending his homeland, and his own wife stabs him in the back, has a relationship with a Frenchman. He’s fighting for the Fatherland and she fraternizes with the enemy.

  The enemy is always the enemy, that’s what we said at the time, and you can’t deny the truth of it even now.

  So kindly listen to me. The names of honest folk are being blackened, a whole village community is dragged into it. Just because a half-Jewish Polish worker hanged herself. The girl was probably unbalanced.

  In my view, drawing such conclusions so long after the event is more than distasteful. That kind of thing gets no one anywhere. So let’s stick to the facts. Speculations of any kind are not constructive.

  Particularly in the case of such an abominable crime. So if you would now excuse me . . .

  O King of Glory,

  O Son of God, Jesus Christ,

  O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world,

  grant them peace!

  O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world,

  grant them peace!

  O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world,

  grant them peace everlasting!

  Anna Hierl, age 24, formerly maid at the Danner farm

  I saw it coming. Was I surprised? No, not me. Shaken, yes, I knew them all, I lived under the same roof with them for a while. But surprised, no, I wasn’t surprised. Somehow I’d always been expecting some such thing.

  Old Danner liked to hire drifters to help with the harvest, you know.

  Why? Well, he paid them less. Simple. You can pay a man less if he has a record and don’t fancy being reported to the police.

  A fellow like that, there’s times he’s glad to have a roof over his head and a hot meal. And Danner was glad, too, on account of he didn’t have to pay them much. That was old Danner for you. Sly as a fox, and a skinflint.

  I remember the old man showing one of those good-for-nothing deadbeats all over the farm. Now that’s something I can’t understand. Gave him a guided tour. Strutting around proud as a cockerel, chest swelling, backbone straight like he’d swallowed a poker.

  He’d take those vagabonds all around the house and the farmyard.

  Showed them all the machinery, so no wonder if one of them happens to vanish a couple of days later, together with some of the household goods.

  I always locked the door of my room when one of those gallows birds was around on the farm.

  There was one of them at the place once. Karl, that was his name, I think. Yes, I’m sure it was Karl. None of that lot liked giving a surname.

  Easy to see why.

  This Karl helped the old man get timber in from the woods.

  It was right after the big storm in June last year.

  They were getting in the trees that had keeled over in the storm. That’s not easy work. It’s been known for a man to be killed by a tree, or lose a leg. After a storm like that the trees are lying around all over the place. Sometimes stretched so taut, they spring right back when they’re felled.

  Well, after less than a week, off went Karl. Disappeared without trace, and a couple of chickens along with him, not to mention some clothes and shoes.

  And when someone tried breaking into the farm late last year I’d had enough. I looked around for a new job.

  What happened then? I wasn’t at the farm myself, it was Barbara, Danner’s daughter, told me next day. I was visiting my auntie in Endlfeld, she was sick.

  It was a Sunday, imagine that, a Sunday. While God-fearing folk are at church. I went to see my auntie straight after going to church. Barbara Spangler and her family, they went out into the graveyard after the service and then home.

  When they got close to the front door, they saw that someone had tried forcing it. You could see the marks on the wood of the door, scratches everywhere. Like they were made by a chisel. It’s a wonder the burglar didn’t break the door right down.

  Seems he’d been disturbed and ran for it. Just took to his heels and scarpered.

  A thing like that didn’t surprise me, I mean any of the deadbeats that worked at the farm knew very well there was plenty to be had at Danner’s place.

  Not just chickens neither. He always had plenty of cash stashed away in the house. That was an open secret. Anyone who ever worked at the farm knew it.

  So well, like I said before, after that I didn’t fancy staying on at the farm anymore.

  I was afraid the housebreaker might try it again, maybe at night next time. You hear about such things every day.

  I mean, the farm’s very isolated. Ever so lonely.

  So I didn’t want to be out there with them when winter came, not on your life. Twilight starts falling at three-thirty then, and by four o’clock it’s dark. You can’t see or hear a thing. So I packed up my belongings and went off. I found a new place right away.

  If I hadn’t left the farm then, who knows, I might well be dead now too. No thanks. I fancy living a little longer, I like life far too much.

  Otherwise I could have got on all right with old Danner and his family. I know the rumors. He was odd, so folk say. Him and his whole family.

  Maybe that’s true, but I got along well enough with them. I did my work, and on my days off I went dancing or I visited my family.

  Work’s work. You always have to work. No one’s going to pay you for idling around. A maid has to be able to work hard, and I like the work, too. Then on my free days I make sure I go out and have a good time.

  No, I was never pestered by old Danner. But I’d have known how to deal with that, believe you me. I don’t let anyone take liberties with me.

  What was the relationship like between Danner and his daughter Barbara Spangler?


  Ah, I see what you’re getting at.

  Well, I can’t really say, I didn’t let it bother me, and anyway I wasn’t at the farm all that long, just from spring to autumn.

  Did Barbara Spangler sleep in the same bedroom as her father, like some people say? I can’t swear to anything of that kind.

  People talk a lot. I can only say what I saw. And it was only once I saw the two of them together, in the barn. I’m not even quite certain of that.

  I went in and there was the two of them lying in the hay. Barbara jumped up just as I came into the barn. If she hadn’t jumped up I wouldn’t have seen her.

  I acted like I hadn’t noticed anything, and I didn’t either. Nothing precise anyway.

  None of my business, you see. Am I the priest or a judge? What’s it got to do with me?

  Barbara was ever so embarrassed by the whole thing, she said if she’d known I was going to go into the barn again she wouldn’t have gone out.

  Do I think those children are her father’s? Well, what a question to ask!

  You want me to be honest, yes, I do, but of course I can’t know for sure. I mean, I wasn’t there, was I? But I did hear Danner telling that deadbeat Karl how his daughter didn’t need any husband. She had him, he said. I heard that with my own ears.

  It was because that Karl asked about Barbara Spangler’s husband. Where was he, he asked? Maybe he had his eye on Barbara. Well, he’d have gotten nowhere with her.

  Neat and smart, Barbara looked, but she was a proud one, too. Took after her father.

  As for Barbara Spangler’s mother, she never said much.

  Grumpy, some called her. That’s not right, though. Worn out by troubles, disappointed by life, that’s what she was.

  She just looked after her grandchildren and did the cooking. In the evening she always sat holding her prayer book. It was a very old prayer book, all shabby and worn. She always sat there holding that book and muttering to herself.

  But once old Frau Danner did tell me her daughter’s husband was a terrible scoundrel and had emigrated to America.

  He got the money for it from old Danner. I still remember how surprised I was the old lady told me that, because she hardly ever said anything at all.

  There she sat, and she started talking. At first I didn’t even realize she was talking to me. She spoke so softly I thought, oh, she’s praying, and she couldn’t look you in the eye when she spoke to you.

  Except with her grandchildren. She was a really loving grandma to those kids. I guess they were her only joy. Marianne and little Josef.

  She can’t have had a good life with that husband of hers, that’s for sure.

  He was a bit younger than her, and I’m sure he just married her for the farm. It belonged to the old woman, you see, and Danner married into it. I think she was sometimes afraid of him, because otherwise a person can’t keep her mouth shut all her life, can she? She must have been afraid of her husband, bad-tempered as he was. There was many a day when he didn’t have a kind word for his wife. He snapped at her, and she always took it lying down. I never heard her raise her voice to him once, not once. Not even the time when he threw the food all over the floor just because he said her “eternal praying” was getting on his nerves. He swept the dish off the table with his arm, and the food splashed all over the room. Old Frau Danner stood there and then cleaned it all up without saying anything. Just stood there like a beaten dog. And Barbara watched as she mopped it up. Me, I wouldn’t have put up with that.

  And now I guess you want to hear the story about Hauer, too, am I right? Yes, I thought I knew what you were after straight away.

  Well, Hauer, he’s their nearest neighbor. You can see his farm from the attic window. Yes, from the Danner farm they can look right across to Hauer’s property. It lies on the other side of the meadows. A fine place it is.

  Ten minutes on foot, I should say, if you walk fast. I never timed it.

  Like I said, from the attic window you can see it, but only from there, that’s the only place.

  Hauer was chasing after Barbara. Very keen on her, he was. The little boy’s supposed to be his. At least, he claimed to be the father.

  Well, what I mean is he had himself entered as Josef’s father at the registry office, in the register of births.

  Barbara Spangler’s husband left right after their wedding, you see. Marianne wasn’t born yet. That’s what Hauer told me. Said he disappeared overnight. Here one day, gone the next.

  Anyway, that’s what Hauer said, but no one at the farm ever mentioned it.

  Hauer’s wife died three years back. She’d been ill for quite a long time. He told me so himself, and I heard it from people in the village, too.

  She had cancer, it seems, and she lingered on for a long time.

  Just as soon as his wife was dead, Hauer started his affair with Barbara Spangler. She was in love with him to start with, mad for him, she positively pressed herself on him soon after his wife died, he said.

  Whether that’s true I don’t know. I don’t get the impression that Hauer would be much of a ladies’ man.

  I’m only telling you what he told me himself. Hauer can get quite talkative when he’s had a beer too many.

  Barbara must have fallen pregnant right after they got together. Then, once the little boy was born—little Josef, that was—she suddenly didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. He just had to register that he was the father, and after that she gave him the brush-off, or leastways that’s what he told me. He wanted to report Barbara and her father, so as their relationship would be brought out into the light of day. Because it’s a mortal sin, he said, it’s against nature, and so on and so forth.

  But then Hauer had had one too many when he told me the story. At the church dedication festival, it was. He told me all the ins and outs of it.

  I wasn’t really listening to the whole palaver, and I didn’t understand most of it either, he was so drunk.

  I just happen to have seen for myself how once old Danner wouldn’t let Hauer see Barbara, you could say he hid her from him. He said she wasn’t at home. Although she was sitting in the little room next to the kitchen all the time.

  If you want more details you’ll have to talk to Hauer himself. I’m not saying any more about it, you just get involved in tittle-tattle that way.

  Well, if there’s no more questions you want to ask, I’ll go back to my work now, Like I said, no one gets paid for idling around.

  Evening has come. Everyone else in the house is already in bed.

  His son, Hansl, his sister-in-law, Anna. She came here six years ago now, their Anna did. When the first signs of his wife’s sickness were showing, and she wasn’t able to keep the place going anymore. Slowly, bit by bit, Anna took over the running of the household. She looked after Hansl as if he were her own son.

  She nursed his wife when she was lying so sick up in the bedroom. His sister-in-law Anna unselfishly nursed her sister, his wife. Washed her in the morning, fed her. Cared for her all day long. Stood by her when it was clear what the end would be. When the sight of his wife’s suffering had become unbearable for him, she moved into their bedroom with his wife instead of him. To be with her at night as well, ease her suffering, give her comfort.

  By then he already found it impossible to be close to his wife. Her infirmity scared him away, he couldn’t help her, couldn’t be any support to her. As should have been his duty. “For better and for worse, in sickness and in health.”

  He caught himself wishing her suffering would come to an end at long last. He was tired of the sight of her and her martyrdom. He could no longer bear the smell of sickness and death, a sweetish smell surrounding her like a cloak. He couldn’t bear to look at her, so thin and emaciated.

  He was out of the house as often as possible. Even on the day of her death he had been out all day. Had stayed out, walking around the place, even when his work was done. He’d wandered through the woods, spent a long time sitting on a rock. He
would do anything rather than go back to his house. He didn’t want to feel aware of the narrow confines of life and mortality.

  When Anna told him the news, he was relieved. He didn’t mourn, he was glad. A millstone had been lifted from his neck. He could begin to live again. He felt free. Free as a bird.

  No one would have understood.

  Before the first month of mourning was over, when his relationship with Barbara began, he showed no shame or sense of guilt. After all, he was free. For the first and perhaps the only time in his life he felt free.

  At first her interest in him surprised him. He doubted whether her feelings for him were genuine. But the readiness with which she gave herself to him laid the doubts in his mind to rest. Indeed, it made him long for her and her body even more.

  Her body, free of the breath of death and infirmity. A body still enfolded in the smell of life, a body full of lust for life. Greedily, without inhibition, he gave way to that urge, to that passion.

  Let the rest of the world consider his conduct improper and immoral—in Barbara he had found what had been denied him all his life before, not only in the last years of his marriage.

  That marriage had always been more a marriage of convenience than the union of two kindred spirits. An arranged marriage, something usual among farming people. “Love comes with the years. What matters is to keep the farm going.”

  After a brief moment of fear when the desire he felt near Barbara frightened him, he indulged his sensuality without inhibitions.

  When Barbara finally confessed her pregnancy to him he was happy. Only slowly did doubt grow in him.

  Her attitude toward him changed. She refused herself to him more and more often. Her passion for him gave way to increasingly open contempt. If he went to the farm to speak to her, she refused to see him.

  But he couldn’t retrace his steps now, he’d changed. Had given himself up to an addiction he had never known before, to a frenzy.

  He knew the talk in the village. All the same, he had told everyone that the boy was his child, whether they wanted to hear it or not. His Josef. He had himself entered in the register of births as the father. And he was the child’s father; he clung to that thought like a drowning man clinging to a rope thrown to him.