The Judge and His Hangman Read online

  “Born in Pockau, Saxony, son of a leather merchant. Starts out as an Argentinian—must have emigrated as a young man, serves as Argentine ambassador to China. After that he’s French, usually away on some long trip abroad. He was awarded the Cross of the Foreign Legion and is known as a scientist, published several works on questions of biology. As for his character: the man was elected to the French Academy and declined to accept the honor. I find that impressive.”

  “Interesting trait,” Barlach said.

  “We’re still investigating his two servants. They have French passports, but it seems they’re from the Emmental. That was a nasty joke he had them play on us at the funeral.”

  “That appears to be Gastmann’s sense of humor,” the old man said.

  “He’s probably upset about the death of his dog. But we have even greater cause to be upset. This whole Schmied case is putting us in a very wrong light. We can count ourselves lucky that I’m on friendly terms with von Schwendi. Gastmann is a man of international cachet, and he enjoys the full confidence of Swiss industrialists.”

  “Then he must be all right,” Barlach said.

  “His character is above all suspicion.”

  “Definitely,” the old man nodded.

  “Unfortunately we can no longer say the same about Schmied.” With these words, Lutz concluded the conversation. He picked up the receiver and asked the operator to connect him with the House of Parliament.

  But as Lutz sat waiting with the receiver against his ear, the inspector, who had already turned to leave, stopped and said:

  “I have to ask you for a week’s sick leave, Dr. Lutz.”

  “That’s quite all right,” Lutz said, covering the mouthpiece with his palm, since the call was coming through. “You needn’t come in on Monday.”

  Tschanz was waiting in Barlach’s office. He stood up when the old man came in. He had a calm demeanor, but the inspector sensed that the policeman was nervous.

  “Let’s drive out to Gastmann’s house,” Tschanz said, “it’s high time we did that.”

  “To the writer,” the old man replied, and put on his coat.

  “Detours, nothing but detours,” Tschanz said angrily as he followed Barlach down the stairs. The inspector stopped in the front door:

  “There’s Schmied’s blue Mercedes.”

  Tschanz said he had bought it, on an installment plan. “Someone has to own it,” he said, and got in. Barlach sat down next to him, and Tschanz drove across the Bahnhofplatz toward Bethlehem hospital. Barlach grumbled:

  “You’re driving via Ins again.”

  “I love this route.”

  Barlach rested his eyes on the fields that had been washed clean by the rain. Everything was steeped in a calm, bright light. The sun in the sky was mild and warm and was already sinking toward evening. Both men were silent. Only once, between Kerzers and Muntschemier, did Tschanz speak.

  “Frau Schönler told me you took a folder from Schmied’s room.”

  “Nothing official, Tschanz, just personal things.”

  Tschanz made no comment and asked no more questions. But Barlach had to tap his finger against the speedometer, which was showing eighty miles an hour.

  “Not so fast, Tschanz, not so fast. Not that I’m scared, but my stomach can’t take it. I’m an old man.”

  13

  The writer received them in his study. It was an old, low-ceilinged room, and as the two men stepped in they were forced to stoop as if under a yoke. Outside, the little white dog with the black head was still barking, and somewhere in the house a child was crying. The writer sat in front by the gothic window, dressed in overalls and a brown leather jacket. He swiveled in his chair to face the visitors. Without rising from his desk, which was covered with papers, and after a perfunctory greeting, he demanded to know what the police wanted of him. “He’s impolite,” Barlach thought, “and he doesn’t like policemen. Writers have never liked policemen.” The old man decided to be careful. Tschanz, too, was unpleasantly affected. “He’s observing us,” they both thought. “If we don’t watch out, we’ll end up in a book.” With a gesture of his hand, the writer invited them to sit down. But the moment they sank into the soft armchairs, they noted with surprise that they were seated in the light of the small window, and that the writer in his low green room filled with books was cunningly hidden from their view by the glare that fell into their eyes.

  “We’re looking into the case of police officer Schmied,” the old man began, “who was murdered above Twann.”

  “I know. The case of Doctor Prantl, who was spying on Gastmann,” replied the dark mass between the window and themselves. “Gastmann told me about it.” For a brief moment the writer’s face was revealed as he lit a cigarette. A grin twisted his features. “You want my alibi?” Then the match went out.

  “No,” Barlach said.

  “You don’t think I could have committed the murder?” asked the writer, noticeably disappointed.

  “No,” Barlach replied dryly, “not you.”

  The writer moaned. “There we are again. Writers are sadly underestimated in Switzerland!”

  The old man laughed. “If you really want to know: we already have your alibi, naturally. At twelve thirty on the night of the murder you met the bailiff and walked home together with him. The bailiff said you were in high spirits.”

  “I know. The policeman of Twann questioned the bailiff twice about me. And everyone who lives here. Even my mother-in-law. So you did suspect me after all,” the writer noted with pride. “That’s literary success of a sort!” And Barlach thought: so that’s the famous vanity of writers, this craving to be taken seriously. All three men fell silent, and Tschanz tried hard to make out the writer’s features. It was impossible to see him in this light.

  “So what else do you want?” the writer finally hissed.

  “Do you see Gastmann often?”

  “What is this—an interrogation?” asked the dark mass, pushing itself more squarely in front of the window. “I don’t have time for that right now.”

  “Come on, don’t be so mean,” said the inspector. “All we want is to talk a little.” The writer let out a grunt, Barlach began again. “Do you see Gastmann often?”

  “Now and then.”

  “Why?”

  The old man expected another angry reply; but the writer just laughed, blew a big cloud of smoke in both their faces, and replied:

  “He’s an interesting character, this Gastmann, Inspector, he’s the type who attracts writers like flies. And he’s a wonderful cook, just amazing, let me tell you!”

  And tell them he did. He told of Gastmann’s culinary artistry, describing one dish after the other. For five minutes the policemen paid polite attention, and then for another five minutes; but when, after fifteen minutes, the writer was still singing the praises of Gastmann’s cooking, Tschanz stood up and said he was sorry, but he and his colleague had not come to discuss food. Barlach however, whose spirits had thoroughly revived, contradicted him. “Not true,” he said, “I’m extremely interested in this subject,” and proceeded to rhapsodize about the culinary magic of the Turks, the Romanians, the Bulgarians, the Yugoslavs, the Czechs, until the two men were tossing exotic recipes back and forth with the tireless enthusiasm of boys playing catch. Tschanz was sweating and cursing under his breath. The delights of the palate were quite evidently infinite and inexhaustible. But finally, after forty-five minutes, the two men stopped, exhausted, as if they had eaten long and heartily and had reached the end of their appetite. The writer lit himself a cigar. The room was silent. The child next door started crying again. The dog was barking downstairs. Then Tschanz suddenly spoke.

  “Did Gastmann kill Schmied?”

  The question was primitive, the old man shook his head, and the dark mass in front of them said, “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

  “I would appreciate an answer,” Tschanz said firmly, leaning forward. But the writer’s face remained hidden in
darkness.

  Barlach wondered how the man would react.

  The writer remained calm.

  “When was the policeman killed?” he asked.

  “Before midnight,” Tschanz replied.

  “I don’t know whether the rules of logic apply for the police,” the writer said. “I rather doubt it. But since the police so cleverly found out that I met the bailiff at twelve thirty on the road to Tschernelz, it would seem that I must have taken leave of Gastmann no more than ten minutes earlier, in which case Gastmann is not very likely to have been the killer.”

  Tschanz wanted to know whether any other guests were present at Gastmann’s at that time.

  The writer answered in the negative.

  “Did Schmied leave with the others?”

  “Doctor Prantl was in the habit of being the penultimate guest to leave the party,” the writer replied with a touch of sarcasm.

  “And the last to leave?”

  “That was me.”

  Tschanz wouldn’t let go. “Were both servants present?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How about a straight answer.”

  “You got a straight answer. I never pay attention to this type of servant.”

  With a desperation and lack of restraint that made the inspector feel acutely uncomfortable, Tschanz demanded to know whether the writer considered Gastmann a good or a bad man. “If we don’t end up in his next novel,” Barlach thought, “it’ll be a miracle.”

  The writer blew such a thick cloud of smoke in Tschanz’s face that the officer began to cough. Then silence descended on the room again. Even the child next door was quiet.

  “Gastmann is a bad man,” the writer finally said.

  “And yet you keep visiting him, and for no other reason than that he’s a good cook?” Tschanz asked indignantly after recovering from another coughing spell.

  “For no other reason.”

  “I don’t understand that.”

  The writer laughed. “I’m kind of a policeman myself,” he said. “Except I have no state power, no body of laws, and no prisons to back me up. But my job is a lot like yours: I keep an eye on people.”

  Bewildered, Tschanz stopped asking questions, and Barlach said, “I understand.” After a while, he added:

  “I’m afraid that in his exaggerated zeal my subordinate Tschanz has forced us into an impasse from which I won’t escape without losing a few hairs. But youthful impetuousness has its good points. Now that an unbridled ox has trampled a path for us” (Tschanz grew red with anger when the inspector said this), “let’s stay with the questions and answers that have already fallen and make the best of them—take the bull by the horns, if you will. What is your opinion of this whole affair, sir? Is Gastmann capable of committing murder?”

  It had become darker in the room, but it didn’t occur to the writer to turn on the light. Instead he sat down in the windowsill, leaving the two policemen crouching in their armchairs like prisoners in a cave.

  “I believe Gastmann is capable of every imaginable crime.” The voice from the window was brutal, with a hint of sly malice in it. “But I am convinced that he is not the man who murdered Schmied.”

  “You know Gastmann well,” Barlach said.

  “I’m starting to get a picture of him,” the writer said.

  “Your picture of him,” the old man coolly corrected the massive silhouette in the window sill.

  “What fascinates me about him is not so much his cooking—though I must say there’s hardly anything else that thrills me these days—but that here is a man who is actually—not just possibly—a nihilist,” said the writer. “A slogan in the flesh. It takes your breath away.”

  “Listening to a writer takes your breath away too,” the inspector remarked dryly.

  “Maybe Gastmann has done more good than the three of us sitting here in this crooked little room,” the writer continued. “When I say he’s bad, it’s because good and evil are, for him, just a matter of whim, and he would go to any length in either direction simply because the mood strikes him. He would never do anything evil just for the sake of gain, the way others commit crimes, for money, women, or power. But he would do it for no reason at all—maybe. Because for him, two things are always possible, good and evil, and it’s chance that decides which it will be.”

  “You’re deducing this as if it were mathematics,” the old man retorted.

  “It is mathematics,” the writer replied. “You could construct his counterpart in evil the way you can construct a geometric figure as the mirror image of another one, and I’m sure that there is such a man—somewhere. Maybe you’ll meet him too. If you meet the one, you’ll meet the other.”

  “Sounds like a program,” the old man said.

  “Well, it is a program, and why not,” said the writer. “My idea of Gastmann’s mirror image is a man who would be a criminal because the idea of evil represents his ethics, his philosophy, to which he would be as fanatically committed as a saint might be devoted to the good.”

  The inspector suggested they get back to Gastmann, who was closer to his immediate interests.

  “As you wish,” said the writer. “Back to Gastmann, Inspector. Back to this one pole of evil. For him evil is not the expression of a philosophy or a biological drive, it is his freedom: the freedom of nothingness.”

  “Some freedom. I wouldn’t give a cent for it,” the old man replied.

  “Nor should you give a cent for it,” returned the other. “But one could spend a lifetime studying this man and this freedom of his.”

  “A lifetime,” said the old man.

  The writer was silent. He seemed unwilling to say anything further.

  “I’m dealing with a real Gastmann,” the old man finally said. “With a man who lives near Lamlingen on the Tessenberg plain and gives parties that cost a police lieutenant his life. I have to know whether the picture you have drawn for me is a picture of Gastmann or a product of your imagination.”

  “Our imagination,” the writer said.

  The inspector said nothing.

  “I don’t know,” the writer said. He rose from his seat and stepped up to his visitors. Evidently he expected them to leave. He shook Barlach’s hand, and not Tschanz’s. “That’s something I’ve never concerned myself with,” he said. “I leave that to the police.”

  14

  The two policemen walked back to their car, followed by the little white dog, which barked at them furiously, and Tschanz sat down at the wheel.

  “I don’t like this writer,” he said. Barlach arranged his coat before he got in. The little dog had climbed onto a low stone wall and continued barking.

  “Now to Gastmann’s place,” Tschanz said, and started the motor. The old man shook his head.

  “To Bern.”

  They drove downhill in the direction of Ligerz, into a land that opened out far below, at a tremendous depth. All around them, the elements lay spread out far and wide: stone, earth, and water. They were driving in the shade, but the sun, which had sunk behind the Tessenberg, was still shining on the lake, the island, the hills, the foothills of the mountains, the glaciers on the horizon, and the immense towering heaps of cloud floating along in the blue oceans of the sky. The old man gazed steadily at the ceaselessly shifting, already wintry weather. It’s always the same, he thought, no matter how much it changes it’s always the same. But as the road suddenly swerved and the lake lay vertically beneath them like a bulging shield, Tschanz stopped the car.

  “I have to talk to you, Inspector,” he said in an agitated tone.

  “What do you want?” Barlach asked, looking down at the huge drop by the side of the road.

  “We have to see Gastmann, it’s logical, it’s the only lead we’ve got. And above all, we have to question his servants.”

  Barlach leaned back and sat there, gray and well groomed, scrutinizing the young man by his side through cold, narrowed eyes.

  “My God, Tschanz, we can’t always
do the logical thing. Lutz doesn’t want us to visit Gastmann. That’s understandable, since he had to hand over the case to the attorney general. Let’s wait for the government’s ruling. It’s a touchy business, we’re dealing with foreigners.” Barlach’s casual manner drove Tschanz into a rage.

  “That’s nonsense!” he shouted. “Lutz is sabotaging the investigation for political reasons. Von Schwendi is his friend and Gastmann’s lawyer, don’t you see what’s going on?”

  Not a muscle moved in Barlach’s face. “It’s good that we’re alone, Tschanz. Lutz may have acted prematurely, but his reasons were sound. The mystery lies with Schmied and not with Gastmann.”

  “It’s our job to look for the truth!” Tschanz shouted the words into the mountainous clouds drifting overhead. “The truth and nothing but the truth! The truth about Schmied’s murderer!”

  “You’re right,” Barlach repeated, coldly and unemotionally. “The truth about Schmied’s murderer.”

  The young policeman placed his hand on the old man’s left shoulder and looked into his impenetrable face.

  “And that’s why we have to use every means at our disposal. And use them against Gastmann. If this is going to be a real investigation, it can’t have any holes in it. You say we can’t always do the logical thing. But in this case we have to. We can’t skip Gastmann.”

  “Gastmann is not the killer,” Barlach said dryly.

  “It’s possible that Gastmann ordered the killing. We have to interrogate the servants!” Tschanz retorted.

  “I don’t see the slightest reason why Gastmann should have wanted Schmied dead,” the old man said. “We must look for the criminal where the crime would make sense, and that, I’m afraid, is the attorney general’s business and not ours,” he continued.

  “The writer also thinks Gastmann did it,” Tschanz exclaimed.

  “You think so too?” Barlach asked, with a glowering look.

  “Me too, Inspector.”

  “Then you’re the only one,” Barlach noted. “The writer just considers him capable of any crime under the sun, there’s a difference. The writer didn’t say a thing about Gastmann’s actions, only about his potential.”