The Riddle of Monte Verita

by Jean-Paul Torok

  The German must have realised this, for he gave Pierre a hard stare and changed the subject abruptly.

  ‘À-propos,’ he said, and Pierre’s first thought was that he had mistranslated, for what followed was a complete non sequitur. ‘À-propos, my wife told me she’d had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of your charming wife. It’s fortunate for her to have met someone who speaks such good German, because she herself doesn’t speak anything else.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pierre. ‘She was brought up in Germany.’

  ‘Her father was the consul in Berlin, I believe?’

  ‘Yes, I believe so,’ replied Pierre.

  ‘I may have known her parents. What was her maiden name?’

  Pierre couldn’t remember her ever having told him, but he recalled seeing the name on the marriage papers. It was an easy name to remember.

  ‘Duvernois, I think. Solange Duvernois.’

  ‘Do you think so? Tell me, Monsieur Garnier, how long have you been married? Trust me, I have reasons for asking that.’

  ‘We were married last year. It will be just one year next month.’

  ‘Just one year,’ repeated his inquisitor in a thoughtful voice.

  Pierre racked his brains to try and understand the reason for all these questions and cursed himself for not having had the guts to send this fellow packing. The bar was starting to empty, with small groups of guests now wandering into the dining room. Strahler had done the same, leaving his glass untouched on the counter. The only other person in the bar was a nondescript individual of modest physique, wearing a ready-to-wear suit who was obviously not part of the crowd. Pierre sensed that he was observing them but, when he turned to look, the fellow was staring fixedly at his half-empty glass of beer.

  ‘I seem to recall having read a number of articles….’ The doctor’s gaze fell upon the unknown man, registered curiosity, then returned to Pierre. ‘A number of articles by a certain Monsieur Garnier, written by someone with a keen analytic mind. One in particular, regarding On Murder, Considered As One of the Fine Arts, by De Quincey, a fundamental work on the psychological anatomy of character and the motives of those –male or female – who commit such crimes. Is that correct?’

  ‘What if it is?’

  ‘And, if memory serves, you also expounded on criminal schizophrenia in a penetrating analysis of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Where did you obtain the material necessary for your diagnosis?’

  In any other circumstance, Pierre would have been more than happy to answer; he would have been flattered, even, to reveal his knowledge. But he saw that the man was toying with him, so he replied coldly:

  ‘I’ve read two or three books on the subject.’

  ‘Freud?’

  ‘Among others.’

  Doctor Hoenig gave an exasperated chuckle and looked at the ceiling. Then he turned again to Pierre with a disapproving air.

  ‘I can see, young man, that you’re no more astute in your private life than you are in your lectures.’ He adjusted his position on the bar-stool, which groaned in response. ‘One final question: would you remind me of your wife’s name?’

  At this point Pierre, already highly exasperated, lost his self-control and exploded:

  ‘For heaven’s sake, where are you going with all this?’

  ‘I haven’t expressed myself very well,’ responded the doctor, a look of immense sadness spreading across his face. He looked away as he asked:

  ‘Do you know who the woman calling herself Solange Duvarnois really is?’

  Pierre, unable to speak, looked at him in fear and amazement.

  ‘I think,’ continued Hoenig, in a voice tinged with both distress and benevolence, ‘that I’m going to have to tell you sooner or later.’

  He sighed deeply and climbed carefully down from his stool. Pierre sat frozen in place for several seconds, trying to make sense of what he had just heard, while the man, with his heavy tread, walked slowly out of the bar. Pierre was too shaken to be angry. He told himself the fellow must be mad, and shrugged his shoulders as if trying to force himself to be indifferent.

  ***

  Pierre Garnier found an empty seat next to the young philosopher, whose name was Albert Mestre, and whom he had met before. They had both graduated from the Ecole Normale Superieure, although Mestre was from a later year, and this had formed something of a bond between them. Long tables had been installed in the vast dining-room and there was a hubbub of lively conversation as the attendees sat bathed in the sunshine from the great French windows.

  Mestre reported what he had heard on the radio. Germany continued to demand the annexation of the Sudetenland, the Czechoslovakian army was on a war footing, and the French were waiting on Premier Daladier’s dithering regarding troop mobilisation. Among the small group of Frenchmen at that end of the table, the talk was of whether and how soon they would have to pack their suitcases. Some declared that war would be a crime and were hoping for a miracle; those over fifty years old were confronted with the memories of their frightful youth; one of them, who made no attempt to hide the fact he was communist, argued that it was the fascists and the “two hundred families” – as Daladier had described the top industrialists in France – that wanted the war, as well as the Jews and the Americans.

  Mestre, the only one of an age to be mobilised, listened to them argue with a scornful smile on his face. He had nothing in common with them, which brought him closer to Pierre. In an aside, he confided that France no longer had an air force since the Popular Front had come to power, and very few tanks, so any confrontation with Germany would be over in less time than it took to describe it – Pierre remembered that Lippi had made the same prediction – and frankly he didn’t give a damn. He thought that the world was absurd, that existence had no sense other than that imparted by a pure act without ulterior motive, and there was no point in fighting for liberty because everyone was free anyway.

  Even though it was not in his character to be cynical, Pierre had a certain sympathy with his friend’s views. He didn’t pay much attention to contemporary calamities and displayed a studied indifference to events in the material world, provided they didn’t threaten the cocoon he was curled up in. During his military service he had been afflicted with acute sciatica complicated by heart murmurs and had been discharged after a long convalescence in a military hospital. During his time as a student, he had been cloistered with culture and books, and if he had chosen university life it was because he thought it would offer him a sort of monastic harbour from which he could serenely contemplate the storms that troubled the rest of humanity. He was ten years old in 1914 and thirteen when his father, a patriotic teacher, died from a bullet in the head at the battle of the Aisne. Watching his mother waste away from grief, he formed the impression that the world had been plunged into chaos and that humanity wasn’t worth the effort to understand, now that bestiality had taken over. His chance encounter with Solange had only served to accentuate his desire to shut himself away and he was only too happy for the two of them to confine themselves in a microcosm of shared love, with their own happiness as the only law.

  Nevertheless, he couldn’t help thinking that behind the outrageous comportment of Dr. Hoenig lurked evil forces, certain statements hinted at a background full of obscure threats and menaces, and some kind of plot was being hatched in the shadows.

  Although he was, happily, seated at a distance from the big man, he was able to observe his repugnant eating habits, with mayonnaise sauce dribbling down his chin as he devoured a plate of Kartoffeln. Meanwhile Strahler, sitting next to him, profited from the occasion, downing two glasses of white wine in rapid succession.

  ‘Who exactly is that fellow?’ he asked under his breath, but loud enough for Mestre to hear and look up.

  ‘Ah! The Nazi,’ he replied, his voice full of disgust.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘I’ll tell you as long as you keep it a secret. He’s one of Alfred Rosenberg’s closest advisers on the ma
tter of racial anthropology.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘You might not think of it to look at him, but his research is about how best to preserve the blond Aryan strain and eliminate hereditary defects that could spoil its purity. If you ask me,’ he sneered, ‘if they were serious about their aesthetic criteria, the Nazis would have disposed of him a long time ago. And not only him,’ he added fervently.

  ‘Have you any idea what he’s doing here?’

  ‘That’s a good question, old boy. He also happens to be one of the greatest living authorities on criminal matters.’

  ‘An authority on criminal matters,’ repeated Pierre. He was impressed and frightened at the same time.

  ‘Yes, Baron Karl Hoenig. Until 1933 he was the medical expert attached to the Berlin police headquarters. He played a decisive role in the arrest of Hans Beckert, the celebrated child murderer, which is no doubt why the Swiss invited him.’ He lowered his voice: ‘Don’t tell anyone I said so, but my friend Saussure, one of the symposium organisers – no relation to the linguist – told me in confidence that they were under great pressure from the German ambassador in Berne. He’s all the more furious that Hoenig was invited because Carter Gilbert, who is a die-hard conservative but an antifascist, decided not to attend when he found out Hoenig would be here.’

  Mestre blinked his eyes, took off his glasses, pinched the red mark they had made across his nose, and put them back.

  ‘But, hang on, didn’t I see you talking to him just now? What was all that about?’

  ‘Nothing important,’ replied Pierre, lying through his teeth and shrugging his shoulders. ‘The organisation of the symposium, the lack of hygiene in Swiss cooking, and he also asked me what I thought of this morning’s local newspaper, which he had found absolutely pathetic.’

  ‘What an absolute ass!’ said Mestre, by way of summary.

  ***

  The evening of that same day, around six-thirty, as the sun disappeared behind the mountain and an early twilight descended under the trees, Pierre Garnier and Professor Lippi walked rapidly down the winding path through the park forest. The afternoon had been very trying, with a provocative paper by a Marxist academic on class criticism in the novels of Agatha Christie. They had decided not to wait for the shuttle and to walk down to Ascona where they could catch the bus to Locarno.

  The path took them through a grove, in the middle of which stood a fountain where they stopped for a brief moment. It was in the Egyptian style; the dry basin, full of climbing plants and dead leaves, was surmounted by a black marble stele on which the image of the goddess Isis had been carved in bas-relief, decorated with hieroglyphics en cartouche to indicate royalty.

  Down the slope from the fountain, and linked to the main path by gravel tracks, they could see a number of bungalows scattered under the thick canopy of fir trees. They were quaint little buildings, each surrounded on all four sides by a strip of lawn, with shingle roofs and walls made from logs joined by thick planks. Each had a front porch, a pair of double-windows along one wall at waist height, and flagstones leading up to the porch. Most of the bungalows were occupied by conference attendees and through the branches they could see, here and there, light filtering through drawn curtains. As they passed one of the bungalows closest to the path they could see Harvey in the shadow of the porch, sitting in a rattan chair, taking in the evening air. He saw them and raised his pipe in salute.

  Beyond the Englishman’s bungalow, the path became suddenly steeper and then curved around the foot of a steep escarpment standing amidst a mass of fallen rocks. At the base was a narrow fissure roughly the size of a man.

  ‘That’s the entrance to the famous grotto,’ said Lippi over his shoulder. ‘The locals call it the Sorcerer’s Grotto. In fact, it’s nothing more than a simple cavity, only a few metres deep, just big enough to shelter from the rain or to frolic with your lover. Alas!’ he sighed, ‘when reality tries to imitate art, the result rarely lives up to expectation.’

  Pierre wasn’t listening. He had stopped, unable to take another step. It was possible that the old wives’ tale Lippi had served up had affected his judgment. But the unkempt nature of the site in the middle of such a well-maintained park seemed both incongruous and sinister. Black conifer trunks seemed to stand guard over rocks covered with wet moss, and shoots of ivy escaping from the dark fissure looked like fingers clawing at the stone.

  He shuddered as his mind filled with images: a whispering multitude all dressed in white; a small man in a billowing robe turning towards them to make an enigmatic sign before entering the grotto; naked arms rolling and stacking rocks to seal the natural sepulchre….

  And suppose, entering the dark chamber and groping around, one’s fingers touched something soft, a face with rotting skin or a half-decomposed corpse, pressed against the rear wall…?

  He turned to see the Italian looking at him with amusement.

  ‘You can’t get in there any more,’ he said, as if he’d been following Pierre’s morbid thoughts. ‘After Rosenkreutz’s disappearance, the authorities installed a steel grill to bar access to the site. Whatever is left in there, it is highly unlikely it will ever see the light of day… I have to admit I was a little hard on that cretin of a doctor when I challenged him to shut himself up in that hole,’ he added when they recommenced their walk. ‘The grill is solidly embedded in the rock and not even Houdini could get out.’

  The path descended once again and followed another curve. The fir trees were thinning out. Soon they could see below them the low wall that bounded the property and the gate beyond which they could see, above the roofs of the village, the black mirror that was the lake.

  To their left was a bungalow – the last before the wall – which seemed, as they walked past, to be abandoned. The roof was covered with a tarpaulin and a small scaffold stood against the log wall. Looking back up the slope to their right and through the trees they could see another bungalow about fifty meters away, connected to the main path by a narrow track and not far, it seemed, from the pale patch of the grotto escarpment. In the gathering darkness around the little building its lines were no longer visible and all that could be seen was the rectangle of a lighted window.

  The door of the bungalow they had just passed was wide open. Without thinking, Pierre went back to take a look. It was pitch black inside but he had a vague impression that something was moving and it seemed to him that he could make out a point of light (the tip of a cigarette, perhaps?) which went out abruptly. A labourer who had stayed behind? What would he be doing in the dark? ‘I’m hallucinating!’ he thought. But why let himself be affected by the atmosphere in this part of the property – of sinister tree trunks and damp undergrowth, giving off a sickly odour of decomposing mushrooms. That would be childish! No doubt. Ridiculous! Certainly. At that moment he spotted two abandoned cigarette butts under the porch – which a real detective would not have failed to examine closely, he told himself ironically, shrugging his shoulders.

  He was about to rejoin Lippi, who had stopped to wait for him, when he looked back up the slope and realised that, from where he was standing, there was a perfect view of the double-windows of the other bungalow. A man, of whom he could see only the upper part, was sitting in the middle of the lounge. The view was so clear that, even from afar and through the glass, Pierre could recognise Dr. Hoenig. The medical expert’s huge head could be seen in the glow of a standard lamp. He was wrapped in a violet dressing-gown and was holding a cigarette in his hand, and was looking in the direction of the window but not at the window itself.

  And, standing in front of him with her back to the window, was a woman, a petite woman in silhouette, backlit by the lamp. She was wearing a dark suit of an unfashionable and severe cut, her hair was tucked inside a felt hat with the rim down and she carried a large bag equipped with a shoulder strap.

  Later, Garnier and Lippi would be unable to provide a more detailed description. The one thing they were sure about was that the woma
n was not Freyja Hoenig, who was much taller and whose abundant blonde hair which she wore in a voluminous chignon would never have fit under the hat. What puzzled them was the absence of any intimacy between the two figures, which ruled out the possibility of a tryst. The woman did not move and made no gesture, yet she must have spoken because the man appeared to listen with a cold calculating look on his face. All of a sudden she became more agitated and opened her bag to take out some papers which she offered to him at arm’s length, and Hoenig put on his glasses to examine them.

  ‘This Hoenig is a very strange character,’ observed Lippi while they were walking away in the direction of the park exit. ‘One always gets the feeling that he’s involved in some dubious scheme or other. In any case,’ he added with a satisfied chuckle, ‘it would seem that something’s going on. We may have stumbled on the beginning of a secret and complicated intrigue. In the first place, why is Hoenig in a bungalow so far from the Albergo and set apart from the others? And who is the mysterious woman visiting him when his wife isn’t there? Also, I remember seeing his wife at a table on the terrace, in a tête-à-tête with a thin fellow, who I would swear was making eyes at her. What are they all up to? What kind of show: comedy or tragedy? I daren’t hope for a tragedy with, as Aristotle said “an action causing pain and destruction and murders committed on stage”.’ He turned abruptly to his companion. ‘Tell me, Garnier, what do you think?’

  Pierre pulled himself together, suddenly aware that he was expected to show some sign of interest and propose a theory, even though he hadn’t the faintest idea.