The Murder Farm

by Andrea Maria Schenkel

  Josef was his son, and his little boy was dead. Murdered. He couldn’t forget the sight of the child. He saw the dead boy in front of him all the time, whether his eyes were open or closed. The image wouldn’t leave him night or day.

  Anna Meier, shopkeeper, age 53

  Oh, the misery out there, it’s just terrible.

  We’ve all been afraid here in the village since it happened. Everyone’s afraid. Who could do a thing like that?

  Who could simply go there and kill all those people in their own house? And the little children, too, that’s the worst of it. A man who could do that can only be out of his mind. Downright out of his wits. No one in his right mind could do such a thing. No, no one in his right mind.

  The whole graveyard was full of people for the funeral. I never saw so many at a funeral before. They came from everywhere. There was a good many faces I didn’t know at all, and I know everyone from around here because of my shop. I mean, they all come to buy from me. But there were people in the graveyard at the funeral that I never set eyes on, not in all my born days.

  They weren’t from around here. They’d come like it was some kind of a show or a funfair. And they stared and gaped. Because it had all been in the paper, all that about the “Murder Farm.”

  “The Murder Farm,” that’s what it said in the paper. The man from the paper even came into my shop, wanting to ask me questions. He went around the whole village. And then he wrote that terrible story about the “Murder Farm.” People even came from out of town to join us in the graveyard. Terrible, it was. Plain terrible.

  When did I last see Barbara Spangler? Wait a minute, it was just a week before her death I saw her. On the Friday. She came into the shop and bought a few things. I took the opportunity of asking whether they had a new maid yet, because I knew just the girl for them, a good hardworking young woman.

  “Tell her she can start with us come St. Joseph’s Day,” Barbara told me.

  So I told Traudl Krieger.

  I blame myself bitterly, but how was I to know everyone at the farm would be murdered in the night?

  These days it’s not easy to find a reliable maid. It’s not the way it was before the war.

  All these young girls want to go to the big city and work in the factories now. They don’t want a place here in the village with a farmer. Well, they earn much more in the factories than on the land. And they don’t get dirty either. It’s not like the old days.

  So Barbara bought her things and then she went out of the shop, and it was all the same as usual.

  A burglary at the farm? Oh no, I really don’t know anything about that. Once in autumn, yes, Barbara told me then someone had tried breaking into their farm. But that was some time ago. Nothing was stolen, folk said then.

  But that’s why Anna left. Anna was the maid they used to have at the farm. They managed without a maid through the winter. There’s not so much to be done on a farm in winter. Now and then a casual laborer helped out about their place, Barbara told me that as well.

  No, I never asked who he was. There were strangers at their farm quite often. Mostly they moved on again after a while.

  You can be sure they weren’t the kind who are registered with the authorities.

  I liked Barbara myself, I don’t know anything about the stories they tell. It’s none of my business. I’d have my hands full if I made what folk tell me all day my business, wouldn’t I?

  I could write books, whole books. But it’s nothing to do with me.

  That story about Barbara and her father, there was a lot of talk about them, but nobody knows anything for certain.

  I mean, nobody was there, right?

  How did she get the little boy? Oh, you can imagine how tongues wagged here in the village. It made a great stir.

  When it was known that Farmer Hauer was the father, there was a great to-do. Slut and tart, those were some of the nicer names they called Barbara.

  I listen to the tittle-tattle and then I forget it again. In one ear, out the other.

  I can remember that Vinzenz, Barbara’s husband. He wasn’t keen on farming. Not him. He didn’t stick it out there at the farm for long. If you ask me, when it came to work on the land he had two left hands. He was in the wrong job farming with old Danner up at Tannöd.

  You can say what you like about Danner, but he was a good hard worker. A proper farmer, he kept his place going well, even if he was an oddity.

  I think he made sure he was rid of Vinzenz again. They say he paid him off, but there again that’s just rumors.

  What’s a fact is that Vinzenz went off, here today, gone tomorrow. Some say he emigrated to America. But I don’t believe that. He’ll have gone back where he came from. He was from over the border, you see. A refugee. He came in ’45, just after the war. They placed him on old Danner at the farm.

  But he hardly stayed a year. He wasn’t the man to work on the land, not him.

  It’s terrible it all had to end like that. Terrible. I think about it all day. I can’t get it out of my head. Who’d do a thing like that, I ask you? What kind of man? Not a man, no, it was an animal did it.

  VICTIMS OF MURDER FARM AT TANNÖD BURIED

  STILL NO CLUE TO MURDERERS AND MOTIVE

  Einhausen. The members of the Danner family murdered in the isolated village of Tannöd, in the parish of Einhausen, were laid to rest on Monday with a large crowd present.

  The murder raised painful questions, said Father Hans-Georg Meissner at the funeral ceremony, addressing a congregation of over four hundred.

  “We are left behind in pain and grief. We stand by their open grave, unable to comprehend this heinous crime.”

  As reported earlier, the body of farmer Hermann Danner was found last Tuesday, together with the corpses of his wife, Theresia, his daughter, Barbara Spangler, her children, Marianne and Josef, and Maria Meiler, employed as a maid at the farm.

  According to the findings of the post mortem, all the victims died as a result of massive trauma to the head area. The murderer or murderers probably used a pickax found at the scene of the crime as a weapon.

  The nature of their injuries, say the police in charge of the case, allow that assumption to be made. The investigating officers at the scene were shocked by the brutality with which the blows had been inflicted.

  The bodies of Herr and Frau Danner, and of their daughter Barbara and granddaughter Marianne, were found by neighbors in the farmyard barn, hidden under a pile of straw.

  The bodies of the other murder victims at the farm were found in the farmhouse.

  The family lived a secluded life on their property. Maria Meiler had only just gone to work as a maid at the farm.

  According to information from the police department responsible for the case, the above-named persons were presumably murdered on the night of March 18/19. The findings of the post mortem confirmed that supposition.

  There were also traces of injury to the neck of Barbara Spangler’s dead body.

  The possibility that this crime was a case of murder committed in the course of a robbery cannot be ruled out.

  According to the neighbors, the family, who lived so privately, was prosperous. It is reported that there were large amounts of cash, jewelry, and securities in the house.

  The closets in the main bedroom of the house appeared to have been ransacked.

  However, there is no clue to the identity of the murderer or murderers.

  Maria Lichtl, age 63, priest’s cook and housekeeper

  If you ask me, the Devil took them. Yes, the Devil himself, Old Nick, he flew away with the entire family.

  Father Meissner don’t think so. He says I didn’t ought to repeat such godless talk. But it’s true, it’s a fact, and it’s our duty to tell the truth.

  I’ve been cook-housekeeper for the priest here these thirty years. Thirty years I’ve been keeping house for the Reverend Fathers. I was cook-housekeeper for the old priest, Father Rauch. The Reverend Fathers have always been satisfie
d with me.

  Oh, I’ve seen things, believe you me. And that’s why I say that family out there was carried off by Lucifer. Even if the Reverend Father don’t like to hear me say so.

  Why, I saw him myself. The Destroyer, the Prince of Darkness.

  It was when I was coming home from my sister’s. She lives in Schaumau, and the way there passes Tannöd.

  Yes, it was there, right there, I saw him. A-standing on the outskirts of the wood, he was, looking at the Danner farm in Tannöd. All black, with a hat on his head, a hat as had a feather in it. There’s only one being looks like that, and it was him, it was the Devil. Only the Devil can look like that, I tell you, and when I turned to look again he’d vanished. The ground opened and just swallowed him up. Well, no wonder, is it? Not with the shocking goings-on out at that place.

  You mark my words, when father and daughter get together everything’s all topsy-turvy.

  And the riffraff he always had working on that farm! Not surprising if he comes, is it? Not surprising if Beelzebub comes to take them all away.

  Rogues and vagabonds, a pack of ne’er-do-wells he had working on that farm. Shady riffraff, the lot of them.

  And his precious son-in-law made off, too, disappeared overnight.

  The Devil will have come for him first of all. Though they say that fine gentleman’s in America.

  What a joke! He’ll have gone to join the Foreign Legion. That’s where all the scoundrels go.

  The old man paid him off. Everyone in the village says so, and then he went to join the French.

  Oh yes, you can be sure that scoundrel went to join the Legion. Like all them scoundrels. If the Devil hasn’t come for him yet then the Prince of Hell will be fetching him away soon.

  That Barbara, she came to see Father Meissner with a letter.

  With a letter from the French. No, I didn’t see the letter.

  But she wanted to speak to the Reverend Father, and then she left him a donation for the church by way of thanks.

  I saw the envelope lying there, I saw it with my own eyes.

  I daresay she wanted to buy absolution from her sins. Her guilty conscience was pricking her. Sitting on her like it was the Trud. But it was too late, the Evil One carried her off.

  Oh, she was a proud piece, she was, and her father the same.

  Never spoke to a soul as wasn’t right in front of their noses. It’s a wonder the saints didn’t turn their faces away in church of a Sunday.

  That little boy of hers, he was her father’s, too. Everyone in the village knows that. But that fool Hauer got paid to say he was the child’s father.

  Still, you mustn’t say that kind of thing, oh no, mustn’t say it.

  The Reverend Father likes to close his eyes and ears to such things.

  That’s how they are, the Reverend Fathers, always believing the best of people. While there’s fornicating all around them, worse and worse all the time.

  Old Danner has all the deadly sins on his conscience, every last one of them.

  Chopping and changing right after the war, he was, and before it too.

  He backed them a hundred percent first, and then suddenly he’s all for the Yanks.

  He’d throw in his lot with anyone as brought him profit.

  I wouldn’t like to know what he had on his conscience. I could never sleep at night if I was to know it all.

  And the police was after his son-in-law, too. Folk say he was trafficking in something, and then he was gone. But for that he wouldn’t have had to leave, not like that he wouldn’t, not between gloom and dead of night, like we say hereabouts.

  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the Devil took that family away.

  There was a storm too, that Friday night.

  Friday’s a good day for the Black Folk, and the Trud, and the likes of them. Many a man has disappeared of a Friday, and that in a house where someone’s already killed himself.

  They wander around, poor souls, a-looking for their rights.

  My mother told me such stories, and she had them from her mother before her. We have to listen to the old folk. By the Blessed Virgin Mary, may I fall down stone dead if it’s not the truth I’m telling.

  Reverend Father Meissner, age 63

  I have been priest of this parish since the end of the war. That’s nearly ten years now.

  But to the best of my knowledge such a thing as this, a murder, has never happened here before.

  Many families in the parish are deeply distressed and shaken. Some won’t leave their houses now after nightfall. Community life has ceased to exist. Everyone distrusts his neighbor. It’s nothing short of a tragedy.

  We all believed the bad years were behind us at last, life was gradually getting back on an even keel. By now everyone who came from this village is home again. Life had returned to normal—and now this murder. Suddenly there’s fear abroad once more, people question everything. We see how deceptive appearances can be in everyday life. But let’s not talk about that.

  You want to ask me about the Danner family, I’m sure. Ah yes, the Danner family. What the Danners were like. Well, I think old Frau Danner was a good Christian soul. A simple woman, but very devout. She often sought and found comfort in prayer. She was very reserved, and latterly her reserve was if anything more marked. I think she had already come to the end of her journey, and was preparing herself inwardly for life after death. As far as I can judge, she was loving to her grandchildren.

  Her husband was a patriarch in all senses of the word, good and bad. What he said was law in the family. No one was to rebel against him, no one. No one was to go against his will. He was certainly a believer, if in his own way. I’d say he was a man of the Old Testament. Hard on himself, hard on his family.

  His daughter, Barbara. I thought for a long time she was suffering from her father’s autocratic ways. But now I’m not so sure. Barbara had been greatly influenced by her father. I’d say the two of them were bound by a love-hate relationship.

  On the one hand she admired her father. In her brusque way she was often very like him. On the other hand, I can’t shake off a feeling that she detested him. Truly detested him.

  She would never confide in me, although I tried to induce her to do so several times. But there was the way she sometimes looked at him when she thought she was unobserved. To me, as a man of God, it was very strange. There was hatred in her eyes. Not love, no: hatred.

  As a priest one is confronted with all aspects of human life. And you may believe me when I say I have seen and known much. It was recently in particular that I more and more often saw dislike, indeed venom, in her eyes.

  The child Marianne was a dreamer, a little dreamer. I taught her Religious Instruction at school. She was very quiet and dreamy. A pretty little girl with blond braids. I cannot bear to think that she too fell victim to the murderer’s hand. She and little Josef. Why, I ask myself, why can such a thing happen, why are two innocent children victims of such a wicked deed?

  The mills of God grind slowly, but I do firmly believe that this deed cannot remain unatoned for. If no sentence is passed here and now on the murderer or murderers, then he or they will still not escape just retribution.

  I am firmly of the opinion that none of us here can be the murderer. I wouldn’t believe such a thing of any member of my congregation. No right-minded Christian can have committed such a diabolical crime.

  What became of Barbara’s husband? You mean Vinzenz?

  There’s a rumor that he emigrated to America. But the only certain fact is that he isn’t here anymore. He disappeared overnight. Vinzenz was one of those refugees uprooted from their homes who came to us in the weeks and months after the end of the war, in search of a new homeland, a new place where they could live and survive.

  He found work on the Danner family’s farm. It wasn’t until Barbara was pregnant that she married Vinzenz.

  I can’t approve, of course, but directly after the collapse of the regime ideas of morali
ty and order were in some confusion. After that terrible inferno, people were hungry not just for food but for physical closeness too.

  It was one of the first wedding services I conducted in my new parish. Why did the marriage not last? Well, people may come together in turbulent times when in other circumstances they would never have done so. Many of these unions last, in spite of the problems of daily life, but others break under the stress of them.

  Vinzenz Spangler was no farmer, and he couldn’t get used to life on the farm. In particular he had a very difficult relationship with his father-in-law, and so he left.

  Two years ago Barbara became pregnant again. Georg Hauer was entered in the baptismal register as little Josef’s father. I wasn’t going to condemn anyone.

  The week before her terrible death, Barbara came to see me in the presbytery. She wanted to confess, she said. But then the next moment she thought better of it. She seemed agitated, nervous. There was something on her mind. I told her to lighten her conscience.

  At that her mood changed, she became defiant, almost aggressive. She had nothing to confess, she said. She didn’t have to ask forgiveness for anything, she had done nothing wrong. Then she turned to go. I stopped her, because she had left an envelope lying there. I could have that for the church, she said, or for needy souls.

  “Do as you like with it. It’s all the same to me.”

  And then she left the house quickly, without another word. There were 500 marks in the envelope. I still have them in my desk drawer.

  There is perspiration on Barbara’s forehead. In spite of the cold, in spite of the chilly wind blowing in her face, she is sweating. She hurries up the road to her property. Her property. Her father has transferred the farm over to her. She’s her own mistress now. Her own mistress.