Innocence; or, Murder on Steep Street

by Heda Margolius Kovály

  Mrs. Nedomová nodded.

  “Well, I was wondering if you have any idea what the captain might have been doing on Steep Street? Who or what he was waiting for? Maybe there was some . . . private reason he was there. As far as we know, he wasn’t working a case in the area. But of course we’re just getting our investigation going . . .”

  Mrs. Nedomová looked hesitant at first, then sighed. “Well, I can tell you this, even though I might be better off keeping it to myself. Steep Street’s next door to the Horizon, right? At one point Václav had a case there, which I’m sure you’re aware of, and then he had a lady friend there, which you may not be aware of. But as far as I know, he broke it off with her quite painlessly some time ago. That’s all I know. Václav never confided in me about anything, and I never asked.”

  The lieutenant remained sitting a little while longer on the edge of his seat, studying the red-and-black pattern of the carpet. Then he rose, offered his hand to the widowed woman, and choked out a few more words of condolence.

  “I’ll be back in touch tomorrow, and if there’s anything at all you need . . .”

  Mrs. Nedomová escorted the lieutenant to the door, locked it behind him, and went back to the living room. She sat down in the armchair and broke down in anguished sobs, holding nothing back. She cried and cried—you might even say she put her heart into it. It was more an outburst of relief than of despair, but there was also a wistfulness to it, since perverse beings that we are, we always regret what we’ve lost, even if it was just suffering.

  Finally she got up, went to the bathroom, and gave her face a thorough scrubbing in cold water.

  “There, you see, Václav?” she said to the mirror, rubbing her face with a towel. “I cried so many tears over you when you were alive. It’s almost a pleasure now to cry because you’re dead. Here’s hoping I won’t have a reason to cry anymore.”

  She returned to the living room and stood a moment, thinking, then went to the phone and dialed a number. It rang several times before someone picked up.

  “Hello,” she said as a wary voice answered quietly on the other end. “Hello, Nedomová here. Is that you, Miss Vránová?”

  2

  Božena pushed through the heavy glass door and set her bulging striped canvas bag on the ground. She took a pouch of keys from her pocket, pulled the door to by its vertical handle, wrestled the key into the lock, and gave it a turn. Then, tugging the handle once to make sure it was locked, she picked up her bag and stepped onto the sidewalk. Stopping to take in a view of the crowd of gawkers at the corner of Steep Street, she spotted Ládinka coming out of the lobby with Líba and waited for them to join her.

  “Hey, Božena. What’s all the fuss about?” Ládinka asked.

  “Lemme tell you, ladies,” Božena began, having had a moment or two to assemble the speech in her head. “I am amazed! There’s earth-shaking events takin’ place, right outside our door, and you ask what’s goin’ on? Lucky for you you got me here to break the news to you gently, or you’d be in for a serious shock. Now listen up: There’s a beat-up sedan parked right over there, and sittin’ inside it’s a man we all know—some of us better than others. Gorgeous silver hair, always keeps it perfectly trimmed. Somebody took a knife to him and stabbed the life right outta him.”

  Ládinka and Líba looked at each other in horror.

  “Ain’t it somethin’, girls?” Božena chattered on. “It’s like there’s a spell on this place. What doesn’t happen here? We got more drama off screen than on it.”

  “I wouldn’t get too excited if I were you,” Líba said. “Once the men in blue get their hooks into you, you won’t know your up from your down. You’ve got a front-row view from that aquarium of yours, and everybody knows it. D’you see anything out of the ordinary?”

  “Well now, wouldn’t you girls like to know?” Božena laughed. She was in her element. Fat and unattractive, with swollen legs and a head of hair that looked moth-eaten, Božena, never wrapped in a loving embrace in her life, or even glanced at with affection, was about to become the center of attention. “It’s like they say: everyone gets their chance in life. Well, this is mine.”

  “Whatever you say, Božena. Bye now,” Líba said. “C’mon, Ládinka, let’s get outta here. I’ll tell you one thing. I’m givin’ my notice next month and you won’t see me in this hole in the ground again as long as I live. Me and Petr are goin’ away on a honeymoon to the Bohemian Forest, and when we get back I’m gonna find myself a normal job. This whole place is downright deranged.”

  “Course it is,” Ládinka said, popping a bonbon into her mouth. “One, it isn’t normal working only with women. And two, it’s nuts bein’ at work when everyone else is out tearin’ up the town. Look at us. We’re a bunch of freaks. All except for you.”

  “I told you to stop stuffin’ your face with chocolate all the time, Ládinka. If you want to see what’s goin’ on, be my guest, but I’m gone. Murder’s not my thing. I’m into life. My life. Nice, calm, happy. If other people wanna kill each other so bad, let ’em go right ahead. Hey, there’s Petr now. See you tomorrow, Ládinka.”

  Líba waved to a young man in a red T-shirt with hair so light it was practically white, and ran off to meet him. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

  “Hey, Šemík,” Líba said. “Don’t you know how to give a woman a proper pagan greeting?”

  “Be thou hale, good Princess Libuše,” said the long-haired young man, kissing her with a loud smack. “I mean, be hale but not so hale that you forget to call in sick one of these days. The two of us need to take a trip out of town while we’re still single. It won’t be as much fun once we’re married and respectable. Oh, and in case you haven’t heard, somebody got stabbed today next door to your work. No joke!”

  “I know and I couldn’t care less. I see so many murders on screen every day, it doesn’t even faze me anymore. So when should I take off? Hope the weather holds up. Autumn’s just around the corner.” The two of them walked away, snuggled in each other’s arms.

  Ládinka dug another bonbon out of her pocket and peeled off the wrapper. Then she turned and shuffled back toward the cluster of people gathered on the corner. She easily elbowed her way through to the mouth of Steep Street, and everyone stepped aside so she could have a look. There was nothing to see anyway. She just caught a glimpse as two uniforms parted to let a dark-haired, broad-shouldered man pass between them onto Broad Street. He stood a moment, gazing across the street, then climbed into one of the black sedans parked along the sidewalk. He sat down in front, next to the driver, and the car pulled away from the curb.

  What a hunk, Ládinka thought, biting into her candy. Maybe he’ll come and investigate us at the Horizon. I mean, unless he’s completely soft in the head, he’ll have to come see us sooner or later.

  Suddenly it dawned on her that the whole thing wasn’t actually as exciting as she had thought. Maybe nothing would come of it. She turned, pushing aside a few people to make her way back toward the tram. She fumbled around in her pocket for another bonbon, but she’d already eaten the last one.

  Mrs. Kouřimská climbed heavily up the stairs, passed through the lobby, and exited onto Broad Street. Two traffic policemen stood at the base of Steep Street, dispersing the crowd to make way for the ambulance, but Mrs. Kouřimská didn’t even turn to look, as if nothing that happened on this earth could possibly be of interest to her. She just plowed straight ahead down the street, head down, arms pinned to her sides. Home, she said doggedly to herself. I just want to be home, alone . . .

  She stopped impatiently at the corner by the embankment, standing on the edge of the curb, cars whizzing past. A second before the light turned green, a tall man in a beige suit appeared at her side. He stood so close their hands almost touched. She glanced up, then staggered back as if punched in the gut. The look of menace in the pale blue eyes between his graying temples took he
r breath away.

  A stream of people poured into the roadway, dragging her with them. She broke into a frantic run toward the bridge, but only made it a few steps. She stumbled and caught hold of the stone balustrade, leaning against it for support, and turned to look. The man stood erect on the corner, his head towering over the other pedestrians, implacable, unmoving, staring straight at her. He knows, she thought, heart pounding in her throat. He knows Nedoma told me. He knows everything . . . and he’s lying in wait for me.

  Helena left the Horizon just a few minutes after Mrs. Kouřimská. She made her way down the street, teeming with people, as if she were walking alone down a tunnel. Lately she’d had the feeling that the air around her was like a thick, heavy curtain she had to draw back in order to see anything. There wasn’t much that was worth the effort.

  The street corner was nothing but a solid wall of backs. She paused a moment to gaze absently, only half seeing the scene, then moved on, not stopping again until she reached the bridge. She leaned over the railing, staring listlessly into the water.

  Out of some animal instinct for self-preservation Helena continued to go to work and perform her simple duties, returning home at the end of the day, sometimes eating a meal, and occasionally even getting an hour of sleep. Meanwhile her head swam with shapeless fragments of thought, splintered recollections of circumstances and events, but all the connections that normally gave them meaning kept dropping out, like the power shutting off when a machine is overloaded.

  Almost every day, on her way home from work, she would stop and stare down at the river, submerging herself in its quiet, endless flow. If she looked long enough, she began to have the feeling of being carried along with the current, gently, soothingly floating away from the solid permanence of the human world, away from all those incomprehensible and immutable things . . . further and further, never to return, leaving behind the objects that defined her by the fact that they belonged to her, a part of her past and an assumption of her existence in the future . . .

  The solitude separating Helena from other people was starting to distance her from inanimate things as well, stealing into her brain, where every thought floated unanchored in the void, like a scrap of cloud in a smooth summer sky.

  “Helena,” said a voice next to her. A large, slightly calloused palm came to rest on top of her hand. She turned and found herself staring straight at the pocket of a men’s plaid shirt.

  “Helena,” the voice said again.

  Helena slowly lifted her eyes and arched the back of her hand so it nestled against the man’s palm. Mr. Šípek smiled gratefully.

  “Would you like to take a stroll in the park? Or sit down somewhere for a while? It’s such a lovely evening.”

  Helena shook her head. All of a sudden, that familiar voice, those familiar words, broke through the fog she was in. She felt the rough texture of the stone beneath her fingers; the breath of the river, tinged with the sharpness of autumn, on her cheeks. Behind her she heard people’s footsteps and voices, and thought to herself in amazement: I’m alive. I can hear, smell, breathe. I feel pain. I’m alive. Tears gushed from her eyes, streaming down her face and splashing on the stone railing next to her hand. Neither one of them so much as stirred as she felt the pain gathering inside her like a wave, like a surge of water crashing against a cliff. The only way to withstand such an onslaught was to ride it out in stillness. The man knew it and patiently waited.

  When at last they walked across the bridge toward Helena’s flat, Šípek said, “If you don’t mind, Helena, now I hope you’ll listen to me: Today somebody murdered Captain Nedoma, the one who investigated that boy who was killed where you work. It happened on Steep Street apparently. I was milling around there, hoping I might catch sight of you, when the officers came swooping in. At this point the Horizon is the center of the web, where all points converge. They’re probably going to question you, and everyone else who works there. They’ll probably come down on me too. I’m sure it didn’t escape their notice that I was in the area. But it isn’t me I’m worried about. It’s you.”

  Helena said quietly, “I’ve got one big advantage over you. There’s nothing left that anyone can do to me. The worst has already happened.”

  Šípek looked at his hand, where the salty spray of Helena’s tears had landed just moments before, and smiled sadly. Being in regular contact with nature and creatures subject to the same senseless, irredeemable suffering as humans had taught him that this sentence, like the original name of God, was best left unspoken, as it only took on meaning at the moment of our death. But all he said was:

  “Did you ever run into him—I mean Nedoma—again after he came to the Horizon?”

  Helena narrowed her eyes in concentration. Her memories of the whole thing were like cloudy water. A muddy pond. It was work to fish anything out of it. She shook her head.

  “No. Not that I recall. I’m almost sure I never saw him again. I think Marie had a thing with him. But that doesn’t concern me. I don’t have to tell anyone, do I?”

  “I wouldn’t think so. But we’ll see. I’m sure she’ll tell them herself. It’s not the kind of thing you can keep secret. We just have to hope they don’t harass you too much.” He paused a moment, then said tentatively, “So what happened with that tall gray-haired man I used to see you with?”

  Helena took her time answering.

  “He’s a friend of mine,” she said slowly. “Sort of an odd situation. He wanted to help. Made a promise and did what he could. He genuinely tried. But in the end it was still no use. I’m not seeing him anymore.”

  Šípek took her hand and they walked a while in silence. He would have liked to ask if she had found out anything more about Karel’s death, about the cause of his suicide, but didn’t dare. Helena was thinking the same: Why did you do it, Karel, why? How could you leave me that way?

  They stood a while in front of Helena’s building before she went inside. As she reached the elevator and pressed her finger to the button, she turned and looked back at Šípek, standing in the doorway, just as he had the first time she saw him. Only this time he wasn’t smiling.

  If only he knew, Helena thought as she stepped into the elevator.

  Marie was the last one to leave the Horizon. When she reached the street she stopped and watched the crowd on the corner a while. She seemed to be trying to make up her mind whether she should go and look, too. In the end she couldn’t resist, heading straight for the cluster of onlookers, finding the ideal spot, standing on her tiptoes, and craning her neck to get the best view she could. Just then, a short fat man in metal-rimmed glasses bumped into her. The impact threw her off balance. She stumbled and hopped to the side. The obese man caught her by the arm. “Pardon me, excuse me, I’m so sorry,” he said. Marie wrenched free of his grip, smiled mechanically, and went along her way.

  She walked home, taking advantage of the time to do some thinking. She climbed to the third floor of her building and unlocked the door to her studio flat, created by walling off the kitchen, pantry, and maid’s room from a former upper-class family flat. The rooms here were far more spacious than in the new buildings, and despite the incredible mess she so systematically cultivated, it was surprisingly cozy. Today in particular. From the moment she set foot inside and turned on the lights, a feeling of safety and calm washed over her. My refuge, she thought. She changed into her kaleidoscopic robe, then went to the kitchen and brewed herself some Turkish coffee. She swept the heap of magazines off her armchair onto the floor, and settled in, coffee in hand. Looking around the room, she spied a crumpled pack of cigarettes on the floor by the wall beneath the wardrobe. She set her coffee down on the table next to the chair and stretched her arm as far as she could, managing to reach the packet without getting up. She pulled a box of matches from the pocket of her robe, did her best to straighten one of the cigarettes, which were missing half their tobacco, and lit it. She needed t
o do some hard thinking.

  Just as she looked at her watch and decided she might as well call it a night, the phone rang. Marie’s heart started pounding. Who could that be, except . . . I won’t pick up . . . but that’ll just make it worse . . . It’ll look suspicious if I’m not at home . . . Everything needs to look totally normal . . .

  The phone rang again. Marie lifted the receiver.

  “Hello?” she said softly.

  “Hello,” a woman’s voice said. “Nedomová here. Is that you, Miss Vránová? Are you alone?”

  “Yes,” said Marie, still startled.

  “Listen, I don’t know if you’ve heard yet, but somebody murdered poor Václav tonight. Right next to your cinema, too. The police were just here and I alerted them to the fact that he had certain dealings at the Horizon—meaning you.”

  “But . . .” Marie stammered.

  “I know the two of you called it quits ages ago,” Mrs. Nedomová said with her usual directness. “And if it comes to that, I will testify to it under oath. But I had to tell them. I don’t think it will do you any harm. On the contrary. If I had acted like I didn’t know, it would have looked suspicious. After all, everyone knows I’m not stupid. And in this situation I can’t afford to have the police think I’m hiding anything. The same goes for you. Do you see what I mean?”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Marie said, “Thank you, I think you’re right. When it comes to these things, a person should lie as little as possible. But how come you’re—”

  “Warning you about it?” Mrs. Nedomová said. “Well, partly because we both know what sort of man Václav was. He caused so much suffering while he was alive and no one could do a thing about it. So I think now that he’s gone, it’s time he left us alone.” She paused a moment, then said, more to herself than Marie, “It does make me a little sad, but I swear, I can’t tell if it’s for him, because he’s dead, or for myself, because he lived with me.”