Death of a Dormouse

by Reginald Hill

  ‘You didn’t know?’ He was looking at her curiously. ‘No, obviously not or you could not have imagined your husband came here for treatment. Herr Schiller has been with us for nearly a year now. He requires intensive nursing, more than can be provided in his home, so I persuaded him to transfer here. To be honest, I thought it would be a short-term stay, but he rallied marvellously in this environment. If he were to leave, however …’

  ‘I understood this was an addiction clinic, Dr Werner,’ said Trudi.

  ‘That is our main area of work, but in some cases we do offer general nursing care and specialist treatment where we have the expertise. I have been Herr Schiller’s physician for many years, so when it became clear that he had to be admitted to hospital, it was hard for me not to bring him here.’

  He leaned back in his chair and studied Trudi carefully, as if assessing her response to his explanation. It reminded her of the way Jünger had looked at her.

  ‘Would it be possible for me to see Herr Schiller?’ she asked.

  He frowned and said, ‘That depends on his state of health today. Was there any special reason …?’

  ‘No. Only, I have met him a few times, and as he’s ill, and I am here, it would seem a kindness …’

  He nodded appreciatively. ‘It’s a generous thought. And perhaps a visit from an attractive woman would do him good. But I doubt if it will be possible. But we’ll see. Shall we go in to lunch?’

  In the dining room there was one central communal table for a dozen people and in the box bay another two tables set for two and four respectively. Presumably when staff members wanted a more private conversation over a meal, they used one of these. Werner led Trudi to the centre table, however, sat her down there and introduced her casually to her immediate neighbours. For a while the conversation was general, but soon the group dynamic took over and the talk veered back to shop. Werner smiled apologetically at Trudi, shook his head and said ‘No comment’ when his opinion was canvassed during a slightly heated debate, and used the argument as a cover to ask Trudi, ‘What is the situation now with your compensation case? Have there been any significant developments since last we talked?’

  Trudi considered all that had happened in recent weeks, shook her head, and said, ‘Not really. You know the law.’

  ‘Ah yes. The law. It’s the same everywhere. That’s the main difference between our professions. For lawyers, the longer the better. For doctors, the quicker the better.’

  Trudi felt that this proposition might bear close scrutiny but perhaps not here and now. She concentrated on the excellent food for a while. There was no wine on the table, only mineral water and Werner, noticing this, said, ‘I’m sorry. We’re subjecting you to our restrictions. On duty, one drink before a meal and no alcohol with. But there is no need for you to be so deprived. You are not facing an afternoon ministering to the sick!’

  He made to summon the woman who had served them but Trudi said, ‘No, the water’s fine, really. And don’t forget, I too hope to be visiting the sick. Herr Schiller, remember?’

  ‘Only if he is well enough, which I doubt,’ said Werner.

  A blond young man sitting opposite who had been introduced as Doctor Klarsfeld intervened to say, ‘Herr Schiller? No need to worry there, Franz. I was with him just before lunch. He’s the best today he’s been in weeks.’

  ‘Thank you, Paul,’ said Werner, a touch icily. ‘But, of course, in his condition, rapid swings of health are to be expected. By now he could have drifted off again.’

  The dining room door opened and Elvira came in. She went up to Werner and spoke into his ear.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘Some urgent business. Please, Frau Adamson, finish your lunch. I should be back to join you for coffee.’

  He went out with his secretary. Others at the table drifted off back into the lounge to smoke and drink coffee. Klarsfeld remained politely at the table though he had finished eating a few minutes earlier.

  ‘Please,’ said Trudi. ‘Don’t let me keep you from your coffee.’

  ‘No trouble,’ smiled the young doctor. ‘I’ll tell you a secret. It’s not very good actually. At least, I don’t think so though the others say I have a perverted taste!’

  ‘In that case,’ said Trudi, ‘I shan’t have any either. I wonder; perhaps you could show me to Herr Schiller’s room?’

  ‘Of course. But you haven’t had any dessert.’

  ‘I’m cutting down on sweets,’ said Trudi, rising. ‘Do we have to go outside?’

  ‘Oh no. The old lodge which is where we are now is linked by corridors to all the clinical complex. We can’t have medical staff coming on duty with frostbite and pneumonia, can we?’

  ‘I suppose it wouldn’t be a good advertisement,’ said Trudi.

  As they descended the stairs together she asked Klarsfeld how long he had been at the clinic. It turned out to be a couple of years, his first ‘big break’ as he put it. He was unstinting in his admiration of Werner.

  ‘A fine doctor and a fine man too. He does his best for everyone, staff and patients alike. Some men in his position would keep all the plums to themselves, you know, trips to conferences, that sort of thing, but not Franz. I’ve been to Milan, Cairo and Paris in the short time I’ve been here.’

  ‘Did you go with Dr Werner to the London conference last year?’

  There was no conscious ulterior motive in asking this question, but the moment she’d asked it, Trudi recognized her obliquity.

  ‘London? Last year? Let me see, I don’t recall …’

  ‘Last August,’ prompted Trudi.

  ‘Last August? No, I think you’re mistaken. Franz was away on holiday in August, I recall. But no conference.’

  ‘I must have got it wrong,’ said Trudi negligently. ‘Tell me about your work here. What do you specialize in?’

  Klarsfeld chattered happily about his job and his hopes as they walked along the corridor linking the lodge with the first unit of the clinical complex. Here everything changed from old world to hi-tech., but what remained constant was the unstinted luxury of appointment. Nothing but the best would do, from light fittings and door knobs up to, presumably, medical equipment.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Klarsfeld, ushering her through a door into what looked like a small office. It contained a desk with a telephone, an easy chair, a wall-mounted TV monitor with beneath it a bank of visual display panels along which points of green light bounced or undulated. On the monitor an old man could be seen, lying in bed with a nurse sitting at the bedside reading a book. Her voice came over the monitor. Trudi recognized the story instantly. Her father had used to read it to her when she was a child. It was Heidi.

  She looked at Klarsfeld in puzzlement.

  He said, ‘No, it doesn’t mean he’s gone infantile, but in his condition, long-term memory does tend to be much sharper than short-term and there’s an attendant urge to relive old times, old pleasures, perhaps a kind of leave-taking. How long is it since you’ve seen him?’

  ‘Over a year,’ said Trudi. ‘I didn’t know him well though my husband used to work for him. He’s dead now. He died last year.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Klarsfeld. ‘Does Herr Schiller know this?’

  Trudi shrugged.

  ‘Possibly he’ll have forgotten anyway. And it’s very likely from what you say that he won’t remember you at all. So don’t be disappointed. Shall we go in?’

  He pushed open a door opposite the one they had just come through. The nurse looked up, smiled and kept on reading till the end of the paragraph.

  Then she said, ‘You have visitors, Herr Schiller.’

  The old man turned his head towards them. Reduced on the monitor, he had looked like a rather thinner version of his old self. In the flesh, or rather in the absence of it, the changes were much more shocking. He had the emaciated skeletal look familiar to all the post-war generation from the concentration camp photographs. Only the eyes peering at her from cavernous sockets gave the lie t
o that image. There was nothing here of that blank despair even in the face of liberation. These eyes still glinted alertly as he studied the newcomers.

  ‘Good afternoon, Herr Schiller,’ said Klarsfeld. ‘Do you know who this is?’

  The eyes moved slowly over Trudi’s face.

  ‘Perhaps you’ve forgotten,’ said Klarsfeld, laughing. ‘Not to worry. It’s not always easy to remember, is it? This is …’

  Interrupting him with a vehemence which was shocking from such an unlikely source, Schiller cried, ‘No! Of course I haven’t forgotten, you fool. How should I forget? This is Trudi, isn’t it? Trudi! My dear dear Trudi!’

  The remembering was surprise enough without the totally unexpected enthusiasm.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Trudi, moving forward. ‘It’s Trudi.’

  And now another change came over the old man’s face. The smile which had stretched his narrow lips vanished and his features contorted with an emotion not far removed from terror. He slid down in the bed, shaking his head and crying, ‘No, no, no! It’s not Trudi! Trudi’s dead, she’s dead. The Jew killed her! Go away! Go away!’

  His left hand shot out sideways, clawed at, then knocked over a silver photo-frame which stood on a bedside table. It fell heavily to the ground but did not break on the resilient cushion floor.

  Klarsfeld took Trudi’s arm as she stood in helpless horror.

  ‘Would you mind leaving for a moment? It would be best, I think.’

  She turned and went out of the room. She realized she was trembling.

  In the monitor, she saw Klarsfeld and the nurse leaning over the old man. A sense of voyeurism came over her and she turned away and sat in the easy chair. Slowly she regained possession of herself but her nerves were still sufficiently raw for her to start as the outer door suddenly opened.

  It was Werner. His gaze touched her for a moment then swung up to the monitor.

  ‘What has happened?’ he demanded.

  ‘Nothing. Herr Schiller got a bit upset …’

  But the door from the patient’s room had opened now and Klarsfeld came out.

  ‘What’s going on, Dr Klarsfeld?’ said Werner harshly.

  ‘A rather excited reaction, that’s all. I’ve given him a sedative. No damage done. It was so curious, Franz …’

  ‘It was avoidable, doctor, and that’s all that concerns me. I warned that there might be a problem but you clearly rate your own judgment more highly than mine.’

  Klarsfeld looked taken aback by the violence of this attack. Embarrassed, Trudi stood up and said, ‘It was really my fault, Dr Werner. I’m sorry. Look, it’s really time that I ought to be getting back to town. I’ve got an appointment …’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Werner. ‘That’s what I came to tell you. The snow’s so deep that our own plough has got stuck. I’m afraid you will have to stay with us till the blizzard dies and the authorities can clear the road from the village.’

  But Trudi didn’t respond. She was staring into the monitor.

  The nurse had retrieved the silver photo-frame and replaced it on the table, but this time angled so that the picture it contained was visible. Visible but not comprehensible.

  Trudi pushed open the door again and peered inside, needing direct eye-contact. Immediately Klarsfeld took her arm, clearly eager to regain credit with Werner, and drew her back.

  ‘Please, he must rest, Frau Adamson.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Trudi. ‘Of course.’

  But her eyes had seen enough to confirm what the monitor had incredibly suggested.

  Schiller kept the photograph of a teenage girl by his bed. The young face smiling out of the ornate frame had been changed by the years, but no change is so great that the mind loses the image of what once it was.

  And Trudi knew beyond all doubt that the young girl whose recorded smile comforted the old man’s twilight pain was herself.

  6

  Trudi awoke. It was dark, dark night. She could see nothing, but she could hear. There were footsteps somewhere, not in the room, but outside, approaching the door, too soft almost for her straining ears, but plucking like a plectrum at her straining nerves.

  They stopped. The door. Where was the door? She did not know, except that it must be where the footsteps had halted. She had locked it but drew no comfort from a mere key.

  Was that the handle being turned, or just the squeak of her mouse-like terror, the crackle of her short-circuiting brain?

  It stopped. Silence. Then the steps retreated, fading like a dying man’s pulse, till all was still.

  She lay for many minutes, how many she did not know. Slowly she reached for the light switch, could not find it, stretched further. Her fingers touched curtains.

  In one convulsive movement she rolled out of bed, seized the curtains and flung them open. No light, nothing, it was as dark as ever, darker than any night could be.

  Then, hands and mind arriving at the solution together, her fingers fumbled with the window catch, pulled the hinged frames inward, fumbled again, and then her outstretched palms pushed with all her strength. The shutters burst open and the light of a full moon reflected off a sea of virgin snow dazzled her more than the midday sun.

  The snow was almost up to the windows. They had been right to close all the shutters against its wind-driven weight. But now all was still and the great arc of the frost-scoured sky glinted like polished quartz.

  She breathed deep, feeling the chill on her skin beneath her borrowed nightgown like a lover’s caress. She was aware now of the light cord within easy reaching distance of the bed, but she made no move to put it on. Just to stand here and breathe the cold air and see the bright champaign was all she desired.

  Then there was movement. Away to the left where the forest was thinnest. A man on skis. He flashed across a huge clearing, crouched low, expert, effortless. Then he was among the trees, flickering behind them like an old film for a little while. And now he was gone.

  Impossible to make him out at this distance except that his build was broad and solid. Like Jünger’s. Or James Dacre’s.

  Or Trent’s.

  Her sudden shivering was not due to cold alone, but she closed the window, though not the shutter, and scrambled back into bed.

  Her watch told her it was not much after midnight. She had gone to bed early, escaping the frustrations of finding herself an unwilling guest at the clinic. She had rung the hotel in the afternoon, Dacre had not returned, so she left a message explaining her situation. At that point she’d still had hopes of getting away the same evening but when the snow kept on coming and help from the village didn’t, she resigned herself to staying the night.

  She had expected James to ring up, but he hadn’t, not before six o’clock anyway, and by then it was discovered that the snow had brought some lines down and the telephones were out of order.

  Werner had been as apologetic and attentive as his own frustrations would permit, though whether he was missing an important medical appointment or a night at the opera wasn’t revealed. Klarsfeld she had not seen again and when she asked after him at dinner she was told he was on duty. The other staff members had treated her with friendly courtesy but inevitably they had drifted off into shop-talk after a little while.

  So, to bed, early, with a paperback novel borrowed from a bookcase in the staff sitting room, but it still lay open by her pillow at page one for she had found that no imagined world could win her from the mind-aching bewilderments and terrors of her own. Finally sleep, light as mourning crepe, had settled on her soul, to be snatched easily aside by the first real or fancied noise.

  She realized now that it was not going to be so easily regained. Her whole being, mind and body alike, felt electric with a craving for action. She considered the possibilities with a coolness which amazed the dormouse which still cowered in its tiny nest at her heart’s deep core. Only one offered any real hope of an advancement of knowledge, and that so small, its reality needed a microscope.

 
But small hopes are nourishment to a mind starved of understanding.

  She rose again and quickly got dressed.

  It proved remarkably easy to get to Schiller’s room. Trudi had not been in a hospital since she’d had her appendix out at the age of fifteen, but none of the still dimly remembered National Health Service clatters and clangs and nightly alarums disturbed the midnight peace of the Kahlenberg Klinik.

  Her main concern was that there would be a nurse in the outer room but this proved groundless. In fact, the TV monitor was not even switched on and for a second Trudi feared this might mean that Schiller had been moved. But instantly she was reassured by the green points of light tracing out the message that the old man still breathed and functioned in the next room.

  Quietly she entered. A dim night-light fell kindly on the ancient face. She went to the bedside and picked up the silver photo-frame.

  Her face looked back at her in double, reflected in the glass as she was now and peering through it as she had been then. No reason for anyone else to recognize it. Not even her recent incidental dieting could peel off all those years. But it was her, certainly …

  Except that, had she ever had her hair like that? She could not recall it. She studied the photo more closely. It was a close-up, blown up she surmised from a full-length negative, for there was a faint fuzziness which gave the print a rather attractive romantic glow. Background detail was therefore non-existent.

  Exasperated, she turned the frame over and twisted the wing screw which held the mounting in place. Now the print slid out to make close examination easier.

  There was some writing on the back and a faded photographer’s stamp.

  It read, ‘Brüder Schmidt, Wipplingerstrasse, Wien.’

  And the writing in a cramped Gothic script said, ‘Fräulein Gertrud Schiller. 17.’

  Slowly, necessarily, Trudi sank into the chair which the nurse had occupied.

  She turned the print over again to look at the face once more, the face which was hers and yet not hers. Gertrud Schiller. Her face. Her name. His name. This old man who lay dying close by.