The Riddle of Monte Verita

by Jean-Paul Torok

  In the impeccably organised kitchen – the smallest utensil had its proper place – the battery of copper shone brilliantly. Through the open door she could see the crystal and the silverware laid out precisely on the dining-room table, the bottle of Chateau Lafite reclining in its basket and the twisted red candles in the chandelier. The tiny gift packet was hidden under a napkin – it contained a platinum signet ring engraved with their entwined initials. Solange allowed herself a moment of relaxation, serving herself a small glass of port with a sigh of satisfaction. It was the twenty-seventh of October, the date of their wedding anniversary. She had prepared everything herself, having given their maid the evening off. She lit a Muratti and pulled towards her the folded newspaper from where it lay on the side-board, the headlines and short article clearly visible:

  DEMON COUPLE FOUND IN ARGENTINA

  From our correspondent in Buenos Aires. The International Criminal Police Commission has located the secret hide-out of Hans Strahler, the diabolical murderer of Dr. Karl Hoenig in 1938, and his accomplice Freyja Hoenig. The couple were living under an assumed name in a hotel in Mar de Plata. Under questioning by the police, the couple denied any involvement in the murder of the eminent scientist. Nevertheless the Swiss authorities have initiated extradition proceedings. If they are successful it is possible that light will eventually be shed on one of the most mysterious crimes of this century.

  She crumpled the newspaper into a ball and went to toss it in the rubbish bin, then crossed over to the window overlooking the garden behind the house. Her face was reflected in the dark glass. It was a soft and pretty face with calm grey-green eyes under half-closed lids. A slight smile danced on her lips. She thought:

  “There won’t be any extradition. In a few months it will be war. It was dear Dr. Hoenig who told me so and he was certainly in a position to know. It’s a pity that little Strahler wasn’t arrested after all. He was a feeble coward. He had a thousand reasons to kill Hoenig but couldn’t summon the courage. And it’s a shame that Freyja wasn’t really guilty at all. She deserved to die, if only for being unfaithful to her husband. I’ve been married several times and I would have died rather than do such a thing.”

  She looked at her reflection with satisfaction and put a lock of her chestnut hair back in place. Outside, above the darkened garden, the pale lights of the nearby town seemed to absorb half the sky.

  She turned to look at the clock again. Pierre would be here soon, but the last few minutes were always the longest. She carefully rinsed the glass she had been using, placed it on the draining board, cast a last look at the immaculate kitchen and went into the lounge where the only light was the glow from the flames dancing in the chimney. The room was at the front of the house and the bow window looked out over the path leading up to the door. From there, she could see the headlights of the car as soon as it reached the gates. She stood in front of the glass reflecting the firelight. In the night outside, the blood-red light seemed to float in the foliage of a chestnut tree. Someone standing on the lawn could have made out the slender silhouette of the young woman and the pale white of her bare shoulders, but certainly not her face nor the smile on her lips.

  “It was pure madness to commit a murder in the window of such a well-lit room, right under the watching eyes of those men. I knew they were there, of course, and they were part of the scheme of things. The original plan was plain and simple, without any embellishments. When Dr. Hoenig threatened to tell my husband everything, I was forced to accept the role he wanted me to play. I confess I played it rather too realistically, but he didn’t have time to bear any grudges.

  “Afterwards, things got so complicated that I realised only Uncle Arthur would be able to sort them out, so I had to go and ask him for help. It’s true that, once again, the police weren’t much of a risk because nobody could explain how I’d got out of the bungalow. But I didn’t want my husband to harbour any suspicions about me. I love him and I’m determined to spend the rest of my life with him.

  “Uncle Arthur was really clever to have found an explanation taking into account all the facts such as I presented them. It was amazing to watch him do it, because I haven’t his intelligence, and it would never have occurred to me to pin the murder on poor little Strahler. He had the motive and the desire but he had no willpower and proved it by running away.

  “I wonder what I would do if I ever saw Uncle Arthur again. I’m sure I’d be sorely tempted to tell him what really happened, but I wouldn’t want to vex him because he’s so proud of his explanation. The fact is, all those great brains were embarrassed by the whole affair, because quite frankly they were completely thrown off the trail – and I found that terribly amusing. Perhaps it was the simplicity of it all that fooled them. Perhaps the solution was just too obvious. This time I took the idea from the story of the purloined letter that Pierre spoke about in his lecture. I told myself that if someone were to commit a crime in plain view and right under the noses of witnesses, our great amateur detectives would never solve it because there would be just too much evidence. When they look for the author of a crime, they can only think about the complicated methods they would have used to commit it. But I’m not very intelligent and I didn’t have time to work out a brilliant plan. I had to silence Hoenig quickly before he revealed all my little secrets in his lecture the following day. I gave Pierre a sleeping draught, I got rid of that joke accessory Hoenig gave me and I took a real knife from the hotel kitchens which are empty at that time of night. Then I took the route to Monte Verita. Everything happened exactly as the witnesses described. And then I came back to bed with my husband.

  “That’s what I would tell Uncle Arthur if I saw him again and I know it would disappoint him because he went to such lengths to invent that amazing story. Although I wonder if he didn’t guess the truth, all the same. He’s certainly clever enough for that, and there are so many other secrets between us. I know he loves his little ‘Alice’ – as he calls me – very much (Alice in Wonderland, of course). That’s why I won’t tell him anything.

  “I won’t tell him how I got out of the bungalow after stabbing Hoenig, either, or how I hermetically sealed all the apertures on the inside. No. I didn’t get out through the skylight, dear Uncle Arthur. That would have been incredibly inconvenient and undignified to boot. There again, I had to make it simple by necessity, as well from choice. When I was growing up I must have read a thousand locked room mysteries, by Uncle Arthur and many others. and I was always disappointed whenever the author concocted a solution that was extravagant, unlikely, or ridiculous. I have a taste for the simple and I’ve perfected two or three methods, but none that could have applied in this case. They found the door locked from the inside, and yet nobody could have done it from the outside because it had been under observation all the time. The bungalow was effectively sealed and simple common sense would tell you that nobody could have escaped.

  “Therefore, while the two agents were checking round the bungalow, unable to open the door, the shutters or even the famous skylight there shouldn’t be any doubt that I was locked inside. And while one of them stood guard while the other ran for help, it should be equally obvious that I was still inside. But if we accept that evidence we come hard up against a material impossibility, as Uncle Arthur would say: once the door had been opened and the lounge, the bedroom, the bathroom and all the nooks and crannies had been searched, it had to be admitted that – apart from the unfortunate Hoenig himself – there was nobody on the premises. I had to have got out by means of some hocus-pocus, therefore. That’s what prompted Uncle Arthur to invent that incredible explanation, which everyone believed simply because it was complicated.”

  She cocked an ear to the sound of a distant vehicle travelling on the main road, but it wasn’t the familiar purr of the Delahaye and she experienced a fleeting disappointment. She took up her train of thought again and a kind of rapture could have been read on her face. She continued:

  “I don’t much like
citing famous quotations at the end of almost every observation, as Pierre’s friends do. But it does seem to make sense that, once you’ve eliminated the impossible, what’s left, however improbable, must be the answer. I was still inside the bungalow when all those people arrived, and if nobody saw me it’s simply because I made myself invisible. I can see Uncle Arthur’s face from here if I told him that, and his disapproving air. ‘Non, no, Uncle Arthur,’ I’d say. ‘There’s no diabolical trick, I didn’t violate the laws of nature and I didn’t resort to witchcraft.’ I’d let him mull it over for a while and then I’d explain everything.

  “‘Let’s look,’ I’d say, ‘at what happened when they arrived in front of the bungalow. There were, first of all, the people who were at the bar – including Strahler and Freyja, of course – plus the hotel manager and the agent who’d gone to find him. Say about a dozen. They didn’t take the time to count because it was raining cats and dogs and they only had a flashlight to see by. And don’t forget the other agent who’d stayed behind to stand guard. The manager unlocked the door with his key and when it was flung open in the small entrance hall the manager, the agent and all those craning their necks to see only had eyes for the body of Hoenig which was clearly visible in the brightly-lit lounge, beyond the interior door that I had taken care to leave wide open. The agent went in first and rushed straight to the lounge which he inspected rapidly before moving on to the bedroom and the bathroom. The manager, on his orders, had stayed by the door to the lounge so as to bar access, except for little Strahler whom he allowed in to examine the victim. Meanwhile, all the others were milling around in the dark, either in the doorway or in the entrance hall itself, jostling one another and each trying to get a better look over the manager’s shoulder. As for me….

  “‘Yes, Uncle Arthur, you guessed. I was standing in a corner of the hall, where I had taken the precaution of removing the bulb (which turned out to be unnecessary, as not one of them thought to turn on the light switch.) Once they were all packed together inside, I naturally melded into the crowd and of course nobody noticed. Because, you see, Uncle Arthur, I was mentally invisible.

  “‘When all those honest folk swear there was nobody but them in the bungalow, they mean nobody resembling the woman in the raincoat who was seen stabbing the victim. And when the agent posted at the outside door testifies that nobody left other than those he had seen going in, he doesn’t mean nobody at all left. He means he didn’t see anyone he could suspect of being the murderess. In fact there really was someone in the middle of all those people in the hall; someone who did walk out under the nose of the watchman; but it was, as I say, a mentally invisible human being.

  “‘I can’t take this much longer,’ Uncle Arthur will roar (he’s quick to lose his temper). ‘Who is it? What does he look like? What kind of clothes was he wearing, because I assume he wasn’t naked?’ ‘Of course not, Uncle Arthur,’ I’ll reply, blushing. ‘He was wearing quite a nice red and gold uniform with a short brass-buttoned jacket and a pillbox cap, which enabled him to pass unnoticed. You see,’ I shall continue modestly, ‘there are people in every grand hotel that nobody ever notices because they are part of the furniture like the potted palms, the revolving door and the lift cage. One remembers the head doorman with his majestic air, the friendly concierge, the sympathetic face of the barman, even the chambermaid if she’s pretty enough, but everybody ignores the little bellboys, yet they have emotions just like everyone else.

  “‘Do you want to know how I did it? It was very easy. While my dear husband was asleep, I put on a raincoat that came down to my ankles under which, I’m ashamed to say, I was only wearing my undergarments. The service personnel’s cloakroom is on the corridor leading to the kitchens. I had all the time in the world to find a uniform of my size, and even slightly larger – I’d noticed beforehand that the bellboys at the Grand Hotel wore the same uniform as at the Albergo, of course. I put the raincoat back on; I drove to Monte Verita; I parked under the trees where nobody could see; and I knocked on the door of the bungalow where the good doctor was waiting for me to start his little show.’

  “‘You know the rest. After I closed the shutters I took off the headscarf and the brunette wig – which hadn’t really served much purpose – and collected the compromising document from the table and stuffed it down the front of my pants. Then I made the mistake of leaning over the body to make sure it wasn’t still alive – he seemed well and truly dead but Hoenig hadn’t told me he’d be taking an anaesthetic. That’s when I must have lost the hair that almost got me arrested. I stuffed the wig and scarf in the pants of the bellboy’s uniform, after first donning the pillbox cap and tucking my hair in underneath. All I had to do then was take off the raincoat and wait in the darkened corner of the entrance hall.

  “‘When the others arrived, everything happened just as I expected. Everything, that is, except Freyja Hoenig’s collapse, which actually helped quite a lot, I must say. The manager noticed me, asked me what the devil I was doing there – he seemed to think he’d seen me before – and sent me to the Albergo to get some brandy. I didn’t need to be asked twice and left in a hurry. I ran past the agent who didn’t even look at me. I got back in the car, slipped the raincoat back on, and drove back to Locarno. Needless to say I got back into the Grand Hotel through the servant’s entrance, the same way I had left earlier. I tore the dossier into a thousand pieces and put it in a dustbin along with the wig and the scarf. I put the bellboy’s uniform back into place and went up to the room to nestle against my dear husband where I slept like a log the rest of the night.’

  “It’s really a great shame I can’t confess the truth to Uncle Arthur – it almost makes me cry. I can imagine him drawing thoughtfully on one of his awful cigars and casually letting drop the question he would be sure to ask: ‘There’s just one small detail I don’t quite understand, my dear. What did you do with the raincoat after you took it off in the bungalow?’ ‘You’ll never guess, Uncle Arthur: Archibald, my American husband, worked for Dupont de Nemours. The laboratories there created a new synthetic fibre, water resistant and very light. They named it Nylon and it will soon be on the market. Meanwhile, my late husband had a raincoat made for me that would fit in a handbag or, in this case, under a bellboy’s jacket. Which is exactly what I did and it was practically invisible. I was sorry to have to get rid of it, because it was useful on so many occasions!’”

  She uttered a strange laugh as a beam of light shone on her face, which a cruel expression had made to seem suddenly older. The blinding headlights swept the lawn and the trees, creating a host of moving shadows. The sinister expression vanished, to be replaced by a joyful smile as she tore off her pinafore and threw it on the sofa.

  Her face became the face of a pretty wife, and she ran out to meet her husband.

  APPENDIX: NOTES

  Monte Verita in History

  Monte Verita does exist and is a popular tourist destination and conference centre. Henri Oedenkoven did establish Monte Verita as an "Individualistic Vegetarian Cooperative", which became an avant-garde cult that attracted such internationally known figures as Isadora Duncan, Hermann Hesse, Carl Jung, Jean Arp and Paul Klee. Josef Stalin was rumoured to have contemplated a visit. It was eventually shut down by the local authorities. There is, alas, no record of Oedenkoven vanishing from a locked grotto.

  A Real-Life Locked- Room Mystery

  When Professor Lippi challenged Dr. Hoenig (Chapter II) to produce one single real-life locked room mystery, the good doctor could well have cited an event that had taken place forty years earlier and not so very far from where the symposium was taking place.

  On 10 September 1898, Empress Elisabeth of Bavaria was stabbed in the heart with a sharpened file by a young anarchist named Luigi Lucheni as she was walking along the promenade of Lake Geneva with her lady-of-courtesy, Countess Sztaray, about to board a steamship for Montreux. Due to the narrowness of the wound and the strong pressure from her corset holding the bleeding do
wn, she did not die immediately but, feeling weak, went to her cabin to lie down. Once the corset was removed, several hours later, death was almost instantaneous.

  Although not technically a locked room crime, it could easily have become one had there been no witnesses to the attack and had the empress locked her cabin from the inside. In fact, it is thought by at least one locked room expert (Roland Lacourbe, John Dickson Carr’s French biographer) that the delayed assassination was the inspiration for Gaston Leroux’s The Mystery of the Yellow Room, published in France in 1907, which Carr himself declared to be the finest locked room mystery ever written.

  Echoes of John Dickson Carr and others

  (WARNING: this section contains SPOILERS)

  Anthony Carter Gilbert is obviously based on John Dickson Carr himself.

  Although the explanations of the locked room murder are themselves original, there are inevitably echoes of Carr’s and other authors’ works:

  ---the murderer as the person who initially examines the body first appeared in Israel Zangwill’s The Big Bow Mystery (1892)

  ---the victim aiding the “murderer” to escape and locking the door after him first appeared in Anthony Wynne’s The Case of the Red-Haired Girl (1935)