by Helen Grant
The details of Frau Kessel’s death soon percolated throughout the town, in spite of the fact that a major junction box on the gossip network had been removed. There was a good deal of speculation and fantasy mixed in with the reports of what the police had found. The old woman had been found at the bottom of the staircase in her house. She had died of head injuries, presumably sustained in a fall from the top of the stairs. It was rumoured that she had been discovered in a great pool of blood. Some said that she had tried to write the name of her killer with it, but had expired after completing the first letter, which was variously reported as J, K and (bizarrely) X.
Nobody seemed to know for sure whether it really was murder or simply an accident, although Timo’s aunt, who also lived in the Orchheimer Strasse, reported that the police had been in and out a number of times. On the last occasion they had been accompanied by a couple of men in plain clothes who might have been members of the Kriminalpolizei, come to investigate a crime scene. Of course, they might also have been relatives of Frau Kessel’s, come to look over their inheritance, or estate agents come to value the dead woman’s property. That was the trouble with getting your information from someone’s aunt or cousin or best friend’s cleaning lady’s sister: it was well-nigh impossible to distinguish fact from fabrication.
As I moved listlessly around the cafe, setting down cups of coffee and slices of cheesecake in front of the customers, I heard a good deal of talk about it. I wondered what they would say if I suddenly blurted out the truth, although I knew I would never do it. Nobody would believe me. They would think I was mad, imagining some connection to a long-dead witch.
The guilt was bad enough. Far worse was the reaction from Max and the others.
I was alone in the flat, curled up on the sofa, when the phone rang. I picked it up and heard an all-too-familiar voice.
‘Steffi?’
Jochen. My heart sank. ‘Hi, Jochen. I can’t really … ’ I was going to say, I can’t really talk now. I’m very busy, but he interrupted me.
‘I need to talk to you.’
‘OK, but I really –’
‘You killed Frau Kessel.’
‘Shhhh!’ I almost shrieked. ‘Shut up.’ My knuckles were white around the receiver, my mouth suddenly dry. ‘Who told you that?’
‘Who do you think? Max. You think you can keep something like that quiet for long?’
‘He wasn’t –’ I was about to say, He wasn’t supposed to tell, but I stopped short, realizing how that was going to sound. ‘Look,’ I said desperately, ‘you can’t talk about it. Someone might hear. Is there anyone else there?’
‘No.’ He sounded impatient. ‘So how come you wouldn’t do anything for me and now you’ve done this?’
‘Listen, Jochen … ’
‘No, you listen, Steffi. You told me you wouldn’t help me get rid of Udo. So what’s this crap? It’s OK to get rid of Frau Kessel, because she’s pissed you off a few times, but you won’t do anything about Udo?’
I didn’t listen to any more. I didn’t want to hang up only to have Jochen ring back two minutes later, even angrier, but I couldn’t listen to his ranting either. I laid the receiver down next to the phone. I sat on the sofa, pulling my knees up so that I was almost curled into a ball, hugging myself, shivering. I put my fingers in my ears, so that my head was filled with the rushing of my own blood, but still I thought I could hear Jochen’s shouting, as though he were drowning in it, being carried far away on its dark currents.
The next day it was Izabela. She didn’t try ringing; perhaps she had heard how little success Jochen had had with that strategy. She turned up at the flat in the afternoon when I was there on my own. As soon as I opened the front door I knew I was in trouble. There was the same old Izabela, with her pale clear skin and her dark hair falling across her face, but there was a strange intense look in her eyes, as though she had suddenly caught religion of a deeply evangelical brand. Before she was halfway into the flat she was speaking in a voice so fierce and rapid that it was like having a waterfall breaking over your head. Just this one thing, Steffi, she was saying, just this one thing, and I picked out from the torrent of words something about an elderly relative who was in such terrible pain, it would be a mercy to put them out of it, it would be a kind of release … In a way it was more horrible than Jochen’s request that I kill off Udo, because perhaps it really would have been a merciful release for whoever it was, but I was hardly the person to decide, and besides, there are many reasons for wanting elderly relatives dead, not all of them kind ones. When I said no, Izabela was almost as angry as Jochen had been. After she had gone, I was terribly shaken. I had begun to realize my position. Now that I had finally and irrefutably proved my power the others wanted me to use it for them. They were no longer really interested in Rote Gertrud; now I was the witch.
Soon they were badgering me night and day. Timo called, Max called, both of them with just one thing they wanted me to wish for. Hanna hadn’t asked for anything yet but it could only be a matter of time. She phoned twice and dropped in once too, seemingly just to chat, and I strongly suspected that she was simply adopting the more cautious strategy of gauging the right time to make her request. I began to feel trapped. They came to the bakery at all hours and on any excuse. If they couldn’t come in person they telephoned, and if I didn’t answer the landline they sent me texts. I switched my mobile phone off and put it at the bottom of a drawer, under stacks of T-shirts, but that didn’t solve the problem. Now I would get home from college in Kall to find a cluster of tersely worded messages jotted down by my mother, and she began to nag me to call them back, just to stop them ringing the bakery.
‘It’s nice to be popular,’ she said to me in a heavily ironic tone as she delivered another scrawled note.
Popular? I thought bitterly as I watched her bustle away. I had never felt so alone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Frau Kessel’s death put an end to the gossip about me, but I had not quite heard the last of the affair with Kai von Jülich. On the whole I was relieved that Kai had left the town. In a way my wish had been granted; I had wished him away and he had gone. He would no longer be able to propagate his own repulsive version of events, while I was spared the embarrassment of running into him and perhaps provoking an ugly scene. I was not particularly interested in where Kai had gone, just as long as he stayed away. All the same, I should have realized that not everyone would feel the way I did.
One morning, about a week after Frau Kessel’s funeral, I was clearing a table at the front of the cafe when I became aware that there was someone standing on the other side of the big plate-glass window, looking in. We were so close that if there had been no glass between us, we could have reached out and shaken hands. For a split second, when all I had taken in was a tall shape with bright sunlight behind it, I thought it might be Jochen or one of the others come to confront me with their demands. I jumped and knocked over a coffee cup, spilling dark dregs on to the tablecloth. While I was blotting the mess with a napkin I hazarded another glance at the person outside the window and this time I recognized her.
It was Frau von Jülich, Kai’s mother. As far as I could recall, she had never set foot inside the bakery in her life, but still I would have known her anywhere. She was distinctively tall, with the same dazzlingly blonde hair and high cheekbones as her son, the same brilliant blue eyes, although hers were framed with a network of very fine lines. As usual she was dressed like a visiting countess, in a dark woollen suit which had probably cost more than my mother’s entire wardrobe. I was just as surprised to see her peering through the bakery window as if Max’s wish had come true and Heidi Klum really had turned up in Bad Münstereifel with a beseeching look on her face. I could not help glancing around to see what it was that had caught her interest, but there was nobody else around. My mother had vanished into the kitchen and I was alone in the bakery.
A minute later the bell jingled as Frau von Jülich entered the cafe, pausi
ng for a moment on the threshold with the cautious air of a pedigree cat about to cross a farmyard.
I abandoned the table I had been clearing.
‘Guten Morgen,’ I said as politely as I could, although I had a sinking feeling.
Frau von Jülich did not look like the sort of person who pops into the local bakery for a cheese and ham roll in a paper bag. I guessed that she had other business here, either with myself or with my parents, and it was hard to say which was the worse option.
‘Guten Morgen,’ returned Frau von Jülich. She stood before the counter, not making any move towards a table. For what seemed like a very long time she simply studied me. Then she said, ‘Are you Stefanie Nett?’
There was no point in prevaricating. ‘Yes,’ I said.
Frau von Jülich glanced around her, as though she were looking for something. Her manner was oddly uncertain, considering her formidable appearance. Then she tried a smile.
‘May we sit down for a moment?’ she asked.
It was the first time a customer had ever asked me to sit with them. I was nonplussed.
‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘No – thank you.’ She put a slender hand on the back of one of the chairs at the nearest table. ‘Shall we sit here?’
I was beginning to feel very uncomfortable. I wished with all my heart that my mother would reappear from the kitchen and rescue me, but there was no sign of her. Reluctantly I took my place at the little table, sitting ramrod-straight, my hands clasped in my lap, where the folds of my apron hid their nervous twisting.
‘I’m not really supposed to sit down,’ I stammered rather idiotically.
The carefully plucked eyebrows rose just a fraction, although the faint smile was still on her lips. ‘I’m sure you can spare two minutes from your work,’ she said.
Since the cafe was deserted apart from the pair of us, this was undeniably true. I said nothing.
‘I have something to ask you,’ said Frau von Jülich, and now she really was smiling at me, all her perfect white teeth showing, although there was something in her eyes which told me that the smile was put on. She was anxious about something – perhaps even as nervous as I was. ‘You are a friend of Kai’s, aren’t you? My son, Kai?’
A friend? I stared at her.
‘Not really,’ I said, and since something more seemed to be called for, I added reluctantly, ‘I know Kai, though. Sort of.’
She leaned forward. ‘You met Kai once or twice, didn’t you?’
‘Once,’ I said. ‘We went out once but … it didn’t really work out.’ That’s an understatement, I told myself, recalling Kai’s handsome face distorted with fury and the shower of gravel as he had driven past me in the Eschweiler Tal. All the same, I didn’t have the nerve to tell his mother the truth, that her son was a brute, a peacock with the soul of a pig. Probably she would not even believe me.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, although I was not sure what she was sorry about: for asking me something personal or for my ill luck at not managing to net such a prize.
I said nothing. There was nothing I could possibly think of to say to Kai’s mother. The moment of silence stretched out between us.
Suddenly she put out one hand and touched me lightly on the shoulder. ‘Please,’ she said, and with astonishment I realized that she was near to tears, ‘if you know where Kai has gone, or why, please tell me.’ Her brittle manner was cracking like a thin veneer. In spite of her perfectly coiffed hair and expensive clothes she was still just someone’s mother, worrying about her child.
I hated to be blunt, especially to this sophisticated woman, who would probably think me a guttersnipe once she had calmed down. I saw, however, that I would have to speak plainly.
‘Frau von Jülich, I know what people are saying.’ I was conscious of the gaze of those blue eyes, so like Kai’s. I swallowed and made myself go on. ‘That I’m – pregnant. And that Kai had to leave because of it.’ I couldn’t look at her. Instead I studied my clasped hands with their white knuckles. ‘It’s absolutely not true. We just went out once and –’ I winced – ‘nothing happened. I don’t know where he is and I haven’t heard from him. I swear it.’
Silence. I wondered whether Frau von Jülich had finally succumbed to tears and risked a glance at her face, but she simply looked tired, very tired.
‘I’m really sorry,’ I added.
‘No,’ she said, turning that vivid blue gaze on me. ‘There’s nothing to be sorry for. Thank you for being frank.’
She stood up and I rose too.
‘Frau von Jülich?’ It seemed too brazen to ask, but I had to know. ‘Have you heard anything from Kai?’
She nodded wearily. ‘He texted his father. He says he’s not coming back – but he doesn’t say why, or where he is.’
I could not ask her anything else. I stood at the door of the bakery and watched her walk away up the street, a slim, elegant figure who could have passed for much younger than her fifty years, head held high in spite of her burden of worry. I wondered what she would say if she knew I had wished her son dead.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
That year, in early summer, the Grim Reaper was very active in Bad Münstereifel. The mounds of flowers which fans had heaped on Klara Klein’s elegant pink marble slab had barely begun to wither before another plot was opened to receive the earthly remains of Eva Kessel. And then my father felt the Reaper pass by, too close for comfort.
It was a Tuesday morning and both my mother and I were serving in the cafe. My father was alone in the kitchen as Achim Zimmer had taken a week off. This meant respite from Achim’s insinuating glances and clammy hands but rather slower progress than usual with the morning’s baking. A large group had come in very early in the day and not all the cakes and pastries were ready. My mother was waiting impatiently for a cherry streusel that would have to be served still soft and crumbling from the oven. When the streusel failed to appear and she had twice been summoned back to the table where two irritable customers were waiting, she went into the kitchen to investigate.
A moment later she came out again at top speed and ran straight to the telephone which hung on the wall near the coffee machine.
‘Mum?’ I said uncertainly as she punched numbers in. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Your father’s ill,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Hello?’ she said into the receiver.
I listened to her speaking for a couple of seconds, then I ran for the door to the kitchen.
My father, clad in his baker’s whites, was sitting on a stool between two of the big metal units which stood against the kitchen wall. He was leaning against the wall, his face greyish and clammy-looking. His right hand fumbled at his left arm, as though he were trying to feel for a wound.
‘Dad?’
His eyes turned to me, but he said nothing. I heard my mother come running back into the kitchen and turned a stricken face towards her.
‘He’s not answering me,’ I said. ‘What’s the matter with him?’
‘I think he’s having a heart attack,’ said my mother.
She had a strange, blank look on her face, one I had never seen before. It took me several moments to realize that she was terribly frightened.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The Notarzt came in a fluorescent orange car with a revolving light flashing away on top of it and parked right outside the bakery. When he arrived I was standing at the front door, taping a handwritten sign, CLOSED DUE TO ILL HEALTH, on to the glass. At the sight of the emergency vehicle I felt a chilling lurch in my stomach, as though I had stumbled on a flight of stairs. I recalled that other morning when I had stood outside Frau Kessel’s house, watching a similar vehicle nudging its way under the Orchheimer Tor and waiting for them to confirm that she was dead.
Not my father, I thought. Please, not my father.
My father was not dead. The Reaper had broken his stride as he passed the bakery, but in the end he had shouldered
his scythe and gone on his way, empty-handed. All the same, our lives could not go on unaffected. From the moment the ambulance doors closed on my father and bore him off to the hospital in Kall, the bakery was without a baker. My mother went with my father, still dressed in her green dirndl. The last thing she said to me before she climbed into the ambulance was, ‘Call Achim Zimmer.’
I stood on the cobblestones in front of the bakery, doing my best to ignore the whispers of the bystanders who had been drawn, as people always are, to the scene of the emergency. I watched the ambulance drive up the street and heard the siren go on as it rounded the corner, ushering some dawdling drivers out of the way. I turned back to the bakery and went inside, fumbling for the door handle as though I had been suddenly struck blind. Dad, I was thinking. Don’t die. Please, don’t die.
I closed the door behind me and locked it. Dully I surveyed the cafe. Six of the tables needed clearing. There were cups and glasses and plates smeared with cream or jam or jellied fruit. The cloths needed straightening and the chairs would have to be put back neatly under the tables. In their haste to depart, someone had knocked over what appeared to be a nearly full cup of coffee, which had stained the tablecloth and was still dripping on to the tiled floor.
Before I could even get started on any of that, there were rolls which needed to be taken out of the oven and probably loaves in the big ovens at the back of the kitchen too. I began to feel like the girl in the story of Frau Holle, besieged at every turn with jobs which needed doing, the apple tree crying, ‘Shake me, shake me,’ and the bread in the oven crying, ‘Pull me out, lest I burn.’ Suddenly the cafe was blurry, seen through the tears which had sprung to my eyes. I wanted to be with my father, not here in the bakery. But that was not an option; right now this was the best thing I could do for my parents.
