by Paul Park
“I was reading about her in the paper.”
“Yes,” said the policeman. “It was a crime. One doesn’t sympathize with her, perhaps—the sister of a proven traitor. She herself spoke better German than Roumanian. She was accused of complicity in your husband’s death.”
“I never believed that.”
“No? Then let me tell you it was true. Because she was not convicted, it does not mean there was no evidence. I am relieved to hear you felt no animosity. That is the correct attitude under the circumstances.”
The baroness rarely used her drawing room. It was small, uncomfortable. The walls were pink. The furniture was not designed for comfort. “I’m trying to discover what you’re asking me,” said the baroness. “You must have heard about an argument I had with the princess several months ago.”
“Yes. You took with you a soldier from the baron’s former regiment in Cluj. But he did not speak French, and was unable to inform us—”
“You’ve been busy.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry. These choices are not mine. I was an admirer of your husband’s. And I’m not as generous as you, at least as it concerns Miss Schenck. But I must ask you to explain. The soldier mentioned a book.”
The baroness shrugged. “That was it. I had a book that belonged to her. The rest, it was an accident.”
Luckacz stared at her, his head cocked to one side. Doubtless he expected more from her. After a moment he went on: “That’s what the soldier told us. I’m sorry to ask. But your overcoat was found in the cottage that burned. After Miss Schenck’s death, it was turned in to the police. I would have thought you left it there that night, except for the tickets.”
Now came the moment for the baroness’s performance to begin. First she was stupid: “My overcoat was found…?” She put her hand to her mouth, and allowed a procession of emotions to pass over her face.
“Yes. Not far from the shrine of Venus where Miss Schenck was killed.”
“Oh, no.” There was a wing-backed chair next to the piano, and she allowed herself to sit in it. Nothing exaggerated—she was not overcome with horror or fear. She sat primly on the edge of the seat. She was concerned, that’s all. And her mind was racing forward, or so it appeared.
“Someone must have put it there.”
“Yes, ma’am. You understand you have some enemies. After all…”
“I was at the empress’s reception last night. Many can vouch for that.”
“That’s what I meant. But the conductor claimed to have seen you on the train yesterday evening. Wearing this overcoat.”
Puzzled, she knotted her brows. “Someone dressed like me!”
“That is our theory, ma’am. Someone who knows you and Miss Schenck had a discussion. Witnesses saw a man walking away from Miss Schenck’s house, shortly after she was killed. A soldier in a pilgrim’s cape. There were different reports, but it is possible to think he could impersonate you on the train.”
The baroness pursed her lips. She was puzzling it out. “I don’t understand. The coat was found…”
“Not at the shrine. One of our witnesses took it from the burned house. She brought it to us after Miss Schenck was discovered.”
“I don’t understand. If the idea was to involve me, why not leave it…?”
“Perhaps he thought it was too obvious, ma’am. Perhaps he wanted to suggest that it was you who were disguised like the pilgrim. If so, you would not have left your overcoat at the scene.”
“But this is terrible!”
“Yes, ma’am. It is lucky you spent the evening in such a public place.”
“I can’t believe it. I decided to go to the reception at the last minute. My idea was to stay home.”
“Perhaps you can think who might have been aware of that.”
The baroness’s drawing room was decorated with pink wallpaper with a recurring pattern of gold birds. There was a clock on the mantelpiece, and she listened to the tick, tick. She decided she’d say nothing until the policeman spoke again.
“You must understand. Your husband’s death was a great loss. We were grateful not only because of von Schenck’s plot. When the baron was in government, he brought a sense of honor and honesty that is lacking now. I resigned after his death, as did others. We thought there was a reason von Schenck’s sister was not successfully charged. Corruption hates what is not corrupt, and there were many in his own department who were happy to see him dead. That is when I resigned, because of course our policy is not to tolerate the smallest violation of the conjuring laws. So this morning—three days a week there are hangings in the market, and it is always a miserable business. Scapegoats of all sorts. As far as I’m concerned, Miss Schenck got what she deserved.”
“It was not proved,” the baroness said again.
“That is the correct attitude, ma’am, if someone comes to question you. But you are wrong. When her house in Bucharest was broken into, they found a secret room under the rafters. On a table in the middle was a clay statue of your husband, the breast split open to reveal the internal organs, baked in clay. The skull was opened to reveal the brain. Tell me, how could a man like that, a soldier and a statesman, married and a father, have been driven to such despair?”
The baroness sat on the edge of her seat. She looked up at the portrait of her husband, a small, ugly man with a head too big for his body, and pig’s eyes. He looked ill at ease in his dress uniform with the gold braid. Even in his official portrait, the clothes didn’t seem to fit.
The portrait was painted in the last year of his life. It was the only one still in the house, and the baroness hadn’t looked at it for a long time. Now she saw among the medals on his chest, the star of Roumania, awarded by the empress’s own hand after his testimony against Prince Frederick. It must have been a heavy weight to him. Would Luckacz have been as sure he had been murdered if he knew what she knew, that the documents convicting Schenck von Schenck were forged? Would he have been so convinced of the baron’s honor if he had heard him mumbling and praying in the middle of night, weeping on his knees after a nightmare? She had given him laudanum to make him sleep. No wonder he had been so scrupulous in his public life. Perhaps he thought by good works he could sponge away his crime. No ghost or spirit from Aegypta Schenck’s laboratory, the baroness now thought, could have added or subtracted anything from the burden he carried: his betrayal of his only friend, the coldness of his wife, the sickness of his infant son, which he was convinced was a punishment from the gods.
No, Luckacz’s hatred of the Germans had blinded him. Perhaps he or his family had been refugees when the Germans invaded Hungary. The baroness looked away from the portrait, wondering as she did so what had become of the silver candlestick on the mantelpiece, one of a matched set. The other was in its place beside the clock. Domnul Luckacz stood as before, her leather coat over his arm. His expression was unfriendly, his blue eyes shrewd and piercing, and suddenly she wondered whether to believe him. Perhaps all of this—these protestations of respect for her husband, of hatred for the princess—was a trick.
Fortune loves the brave, she thought, a lesson which her husband’s cowardly death had taught her. “The newspaper mentioned another murder last night,” she said.
“That is another strange thing,” said the policeman. That was a Domnul Spitz, who—”
“Yes, I know,” interrupted the baroness. “I saw him at the reception.”
“You spoke to him?” Luckacz phrased these words midway between a question and a statement.
“I spoke to him. He asked me to dance. The newspaper suggests he was attacked by Gypsies.”
He shrugged. “It is possible.”
Which meant he didn’t think so. Perhaps “attacked by Gypsies” was the explanation that was always given out during an investigation. Either way, perhaps it was unwise to seem too curious. After a moment: “Please, you say you were a friend of my husband’s, but I’ve never seen you here. Can I show this house to you? I’ve tried to keep
it as it was.”
“Ma’am, there is no need…”
“No, but it would give me pleasure.” She wanted to make him understand she had nothing to hide. And she imagined he would scarcely ask to see her bedroom and her private bath.
So she took him up and down the stairs, pointing out her husband’s study, his library, the daybed on which he’d died, etc., etc.… Luckacz followed with his hat in his hands, her coat over his arm—he showed no signs of surrendering it. He was polite and deferential as if touring a museum.
Fortune loves the bold, she thought. She would show him everything, and he would leave the coat and go away. “Let me show you my husband’s bedroom,” she said, as she led him up the stair to the fourth floor, through the bathroom into her beautiful yellow bedchamber with the heavy curtains and the big four-poster bed. “This is where I sleep now,” she said, and he had the politeness to blush. Of her husband’s presence in that room, no trace remained. She walked past the bed, whose heavy silk coverlet, she now noticed, showed a mark of dried blood.
The baroness touched her fingers to her mouth. The policeman stood blinking in the middle of the room. She went to her closet and turned toward him, leaning her back against the door, imagining the dark knot of bloody sheets and clothes inside. In the bathroom he had walked straight through, his foot passing a few centimeters from the baseboard hiding place. There she had felt a secret thrill. But now her heart beat wildly and her throat was closed. On the yellow coverlet was one tiny bloodstain. The room contained too many secrets, chief among which, she now realized, was not even the stone in her pocket or the bloody bundle of clothes. But in the corner of the room stood the hidden, quilted door. Behind it the boy Markasev lay in the dark.
And at that moment from the landing she could hear the sound of the high, trilling bell that Markasev rang when he was hungry. She closed her eyes, savoring the sound. Surely she was lost, she thought. Surely this was the end. But Luckacz didn’t seem to hear. He stood with his hat in his hand, peering at her with his pale blue eyes. “The front door,” she managed to choke out—an absurd lie. He had entered that way. Doubtless he had noticed the brass knocker and no bell. What would he think when they descended and there was no one?
The bell on the landing rang for a long time, then stopped. “Shall we go down?” she asked. Sometimes Markasev would shout, and she could hear him from this room. Sometimes he would ring the bell and then cry out while she put her fingers to her ears. “Shall we go down?” she pleaded, but the policeman stared at her, his face drained of any cunning or shrewdness. He gave a weak, embarrassed smile, and she realized that his dyed moustache was suddenly ridiculous. She realized further what his smile meant. He found her beautiful just then, and her beauty was confusing him. She imagined that all he was able to think about in that room of secrets was her long neck and delicate jaw, the light on her cheek and hair. The way her nose looked now and in profile.
No, she thought, relieved, he was not the one. He was not the one who could destroy her. Calmer now, she put her hand out for the coat, and he gave it to her. The closet had three doors, and the one behind her was locked. She turned toward one of the others, opened it, and slipped the coat onto a hanger, all the time waiting for Markasev’s cry. It did not come. Instead she heard a knocking at the door and Jean-Baptiste’s uncharacteristically polite cough. Sent by the gods: “There’s a Mademoiselle Corelli on the front steps,” he said. “Shall I turn her away?”
9
Prisoners
FOR TWO YEARS after her husband’s death, the baroness did not disturb the laboratory where he’d spent so much of his time. She did not move the bookcase he had drawn over the little door. She associated that room with the collapse of her husband’s fortune, her son’s sickness, and the bad luck that seemed to follow her. But in time, as her social schedule was gradually curtailed, then she had the leisure to wonder about the hidden room. She opened it up, lit the lanterns. She pored over her husband’s books and notes. Little by little, knowledge seduced her. As she grew more skilled, she took greater risks.
She had acquired Markasev in this way: She had spent the summer at Cluj in her country cottage, now sold. Late at night she had been reading about imaginary travel in her husband’s books. Past midnight she’d been seated on the leather divan. And when she heard the boy scratching at her kitchen window, she had let him in. She had nothing to fear. He was wet, bedraggled, and she gave him some warm milk like a kitten. He was wet from the night rain, dressed in a few rags. She could not even tell whether he was Roumanian, because he would not talk. This was the detail that touched her heart, because it had reminded her of her own son.
Now as the baroness went downstairs to show the policeman out, she imagined him lying in the half-light of the kerosene lamp, his long fingers holding the string of the distant bell. She stood in the vestibule while Jean-Baptiste fetched Luckacz’s coat, wondering now for the first time why he had kept his hat with him in the house. Something to occupy his hands, she thought, watching him wrap himself in his heavy, woolen cloak, all the time finding a way to hold his hat under his arm, even in his teeth—anything to avoid putting it on in her presence. It was not until she stood outside with him in the cold, bright day, that he placed it on his head. He was muttering various things, but now she was convinced he couldn’t harm her, she wasn’t listening. She watched to see he wasn’t looking for the nonexistent bell-pull on the outside door, the source, she had told him, of the ringing inside the house. He walked down the steps into the street, then turned and squinted briefly up the narrow façade to the windows on the fourth floor. She wasn’t worried. She stood watching her breath and letting her mind move ahead to what she’d say to Mlle. Corelli, now waiting for her in the front sitting room. She had seen her peeking out as she came down the stairs, but had ignored her. She had not wanted to introduce her to Luckacz.
The baroness came inside again and stood for a moment in the small square vestibule at the bottom of the stairs, behind the double doors that led into the street. She could feel her heart beating with nervousness and fright. What was she to say to this woman? Without a doubt she was connected to the mystery.
She stood on the threshold of the sitting room. Mlle. Corelli had her back to her, and was huddled over the porcelain stove. “How cold it is!” she said. “Why do you keep it so cold?”
It was not because the baroness didn’t feel the chill. She imagined she was more susceptible than most. It was true. She kept the house very cold, and Jean-Baptiste often complained. Fuel was expensive in these times.
This room, like all the rooms on the lower floors, was small, high-ceilinged, square. Like all of them it was rarely used. The blue wallpaper had roses on it, and the curtains were made of blue velvet. There was some horsehair furniture. The stove was scarcely warm.
“I’ll ring for Jean-Baptiste,” she said.
“Please don’t. I don’t want him to see me. Oh, Nicola, what are we doing? What have we done?”
This was a question the baroness couldn’t answer. She hoped if she said nothing, then Mlle. Corelli would answer it herself. The young woman stood rubbing her arms. Her hair was tied up on top of her head, and she wore a high-necked woolen dress.
“Let me offer you a shawl,” murmured the baroness. She stripped one from the back of the settee, a piece of embroidered Chinese silk. But instead of holding it out, she wrapped it instead around her own shoulders. As was her habit, she found herself infected with sympathetic feelings. The way out of it, as always, was through anger. How could this tiresome, plain young woman have involved her in this nonsense, whatever it was? How dare she address her by her given name?
“My dear,” she said, and put her arms around Mlle. Corelli’s shoulders. It was a small, superficial gesture, so she was surprised how the girl clung to her. Mlle. Corelli was solid and strong, qualities that went with her big-featured face, and the baroness found it difficult to pull away. More than ever she was aware of the stone in her trou
sers’ pocket. “Jean-Baptiste will bring us coffee.”
“No, I don’t want to see him. Please. I want you to tell me what to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t cash the cheque now, can I? My God, today I thought I would be far away.”
The baroness said nothing.
“He gave me the cheque and told me I could cash it in the morning,” said Mlle. Corelli. “Nicola, you said I could trust him. Then in the morning I was packing my clothes. I was ready to come here or else go out to Monsieur Spitz’s hotel. To tell the truth, I hadn’t slept all night. I’d changed my mind. I couldn’t do this. I must have had too much to drink. How could I steal from my father and hurt my family in this way? I wanted to find Monsieur Spitz and return the money when I saw the newspaper.”
The baroness was relieved. The mystery was not hard to understand. Hadn’t the girl confided to the simulacrum that she felt stifled in her father’s house? Hadn’t she said she wanted to go live in Paris among artists? Maybe the simulacrum had convinced her to sell Kepler’s Eye to Monsieur Spitz.
“What am I to say to my papa? The stone is gone. The cheque is worthless now.”
“Maybe not.”
“How can you say that? If I take it to the bank, that would involve me in what came afterwards.”
“Not at all. The jewel was not found last night.”
“How do you know?”
“That was the police inspector who just left. He said Monsieur Spitz was robbed. You have the cheque, that’s all. Believe me, you’ve done nothing wrong.”
The girl began to cry. “I’m so ashamed,” she said, and the tears ran down her long nose. The baroness imagined taking out the tourmaline right then, wrapped as it was in her handkerchief, pressing it into the girl’s hands. The stone could not easily have been sold even before Spitz’s death. It was useless to her. But what story could she give?
