The Hanging Artist

by Jon Steinhagen

  “I had the idea that Henker communicated with her via radio or some such electrical arrangement. The gramophone, for instance. He would say something in code, it would be picked up by the gramophone, the receiving end of which was concealed in their suite of rooms at the boarding house, and she could be on her way, unobserved, unfollowed—”

  “And you decided that couldn’t be the case because that explanation is miraculously more ludicrous than saying the rope is the killer.”

  “Ludicrous?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m editorializing, and I told you I wasn’t going to do that.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  “At any rate, you’ve since rejected this explanation. Perhaps it’s because Mathilde Henker is a bona fide disabled person?”

  “Her work as a nurse during the war led me to believe—”

  “Her what?”

  “She told me she was a nurse during the war, and because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, her injuries resulted in her current condition—”

  “My dear fellow,” Beide said, “the only link between Mathilde Henker, the war, and a nurse is that Hans Henker paid a nurse to attend her until he could return to care for her.”

  “Come again?”

  “Henker has been his sister’s sole caregiver since the death of their parents, nearly twenty years ago. He’s been devoted to her, and when it came time for his military service, he spent no more than three weeks away from her while he tried to straighten out his military obligation by hiring a replacement.”

  “She told me that he served with distinction as an engineer.”

  “Whoever he paid to serve in his staid served with distinction, Franz. Henker has been servile to his sister since adolescence.”

  Franz let that sink in a moment, then said, “I can understand why she would lie to me about that.”

  “You can?”

  “I think she found in me a sympathetic ear while I was under the guise of ‘Monsieur Choucas,’” Franz said. “While she can’t mask her infirmities, she can always amend their cause and duration. I think, if anything, she is embarrassed more by her brother’s lack of participation in that wretched war than any horrors that have been visited on her own body.”

  “The rope, Franz. Mathilde Henker aside, what then made you come to the incredible realization that the rope was doing the killings?”

  “Henker’s gloves.”

  “He has psoriasis.”

  “He told you that, too?” Franz asked. “Well, perhaps he does, but I think he wears those gloves to protect himself.”

  “From the rope?”

  Franz nodded. “Oh, yes. I think Henker is all too aware of the rope’s power, that it has a lethal life of its own, and the only way he can control it and—dare I say—feed it is to ensure others touch it, not he.”

  “You’re saying the rope senses the dark intentions of whomever holds it?”

  “I am.”

  “Then the whole act… the speeches, the gramophone records, the gallows, Henker’s nightly deaths…”

  “As show folk say, ‘It’s all an act.’ Because if you found yourself in the thrall of some avatar of evil that had its own, otherworldly blood lust, how would you get it into the hands of as many people as you could?”

  “Ask for volunteers.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And it allows Henker to live?”

  “It allows Henker to endure the punishment for his sentence again and again.”

  “And why is he being punished?”

  “Why do you think?”

  Beide thought a moment. “Henker wanted someone out of the way.”

  “Yes.”

  “But we’ve found no history of unusual deaths surrounding him or his sister. His parents contracted dengue fever and died from it; there are no cases of anyone even remotely associated with the Henkers that involve hanged corpses and missing weapons.”

  “That’s because the person Henker wanted out of the way is, miraculously, still alive.”

  “Who?” Beide asked. “Wait; don’t tell me. Mathilde.”

  “I’m almost sure of it.”

  Beide had become pale during the conversation, and with an exhalation drained the remaining whisky from the flask.

  “I hate to ask what correlate caused you to believe the rope is our culprit,” Beide said.

  Franz gave the details of the murder of Lisy Dierkop, and the off-hand comment that was made about the Borgia goblets in connection to the supposedly poisonless poisoning.

  Beide reddened. “Oh, come on. Now you’re going to tell me all Henker does is go around collecting things that have retained some unearthly power to kill? How can that be? The Henkers just happen to be magnets for all the ancient evils of the world?”

  “Well, you and I have seen Henker’s centuries-old table and chair, inspector. We’ve seen the concealed compartment containing the rotted rope…”

  “And that’s another thing,” Beide said. “The rope in the old chair is clearly dysfunctional. The rope Henker uses in his act is definitely solid, and strong, and—I hate to say it—looks beautiful. Are there two ropes?”

  “I don’t think so,” Franz said. “I think it reconstitutes itself by virtue of Henker’s performance and goes on its way once it has hanged Henker and that curtain comes down. What happens in the fifteen minutes or so after the curtain comes down and the lights go out? We don’t know. Whatever occurs—and we may never know—both Henker and the rope are back where they’re supposed to be, both in their original state.”

  Beide took an envelope from within the hidden pockets of his cape and handed it to Franz. “Now’s as good a time as any to give you this,” he said.

  Franz laughed. “Is this the infamous ‘third envelope’ that I chucked from the train days ago?”

  “No,” said Beide. “It’s the translation of the writing we found inside the chair.”

  Franz opened the envelope, removed a sheet of paper, and read:

  “Whoever to true goodness

  Turns his mind

  He will meet with fortune and honor.

  “He won such fame that

  Although his body died

  His name lives on.

  Of sinful shame

  He will forever be free

  Who follows his example.”

  Franz returned the paper to the envelope. “Henker uses a variation of these words during his act,” he said. “When you take everything into consideration, Inspector, it’s a horrifying proposition.”

  “And Leo Kropold?” Beide asked.

  “…had figured out only that in order to have his bidding done he would merely have to get his hands on the rope,” Franz said. “I don’t know if he knew the deeper history of what Henker had discovered, but he had become sure that the rope was the agent of destruction, so he returned to the theater, again and again, performance after performance, in the hopes that he would someday be chosen to volunteer. When that night finally came, he only cared about handling the rope—he didn’t care to go through the other meaningless motions of searching Henker, because he knew Inge Hersch’s death was imminent.”

  “And that’s why he wrote ‘Thank You Hanging Artist’ on his last note?”

  “Yes, he was thanking Henker for the vengeance of the rope. And also, with his suicide, he left enough clues about himself and his purpose to point someone in the right direction—the direction of seeing The Hanging Artist’s act for what it is, what it means. Because I think enough humanity remained in Kropold to know that whatever dark forces were behind the rope had to be stopped. If possible.”

  “Is it possible?” Beide asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Franz said. “Certainly not on a purely rational level. Other than the marks the rope leaves on the necks of the victims—and we’ll never be able to seize the actual rope to do any comparisons—we’ve no practical way of connecting the rope to the crimes, and therefore no way of implicating Henker.”

&n
bsp; Beide grabbed the speaking tube and gave an order to the driver. The car swerved on the boulevard and sped to its new destination.

  “What you’ve just told me could solve a long string of mysteries,” Beide said. “And we’ve kept our guest waiting a little too long.”

  “What guest? The man you wanted me to meet?”

  “I hope you’ll forgive my bringing him here,” Beide said, “but I felt certain you’d need to see him and hear his incredible story. And it saves time.”

  “Saves time?”

  “Our guest is from Prague, two hours away.”

  “Prague?”

  “Yes. Your home.”

  “Prague is a big city, inspector. Just because this person is from Prague doesn’t mean I know him.”

  “When you meet him, Franz, I want you to remember one thing, based on the theories we’ve discussed this afternoon.”

  “Yes?”

  “You, too, touched that rope.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  THE MAN FROM PRAGUE

  FRANZ WAS ALONE in the small room with the man from Prague, who was not happy.

  “So this is what you do, you play tricks on me?” the old man said. He was twice the size of Franz and, even at his age, looked to be four times as hearty. “For you I have to be dragged here, to be made to wait? You should be ashamed of yourself, but no, you don’t know from shame, do you? Do you?”

  Franz lowered himself into the chair opposite the man.

  “Hello, Father,” he said.

  “Don’t you sit down in my presence,” his father said. “Get up until I tell you to sit.”

  Franz stood.

  “So this is you, this is you walking around healthy as a carrot, this is you not bothering to tell your mother you are not at that place with the white walls?”

  “I can’t really understand it myself, Father. Only the other day…”

  “Or a word to your sisters, who love you, God knows why? Shame! You spit on them. Me, I don’t matter, spit on me all you like, I know you’ve washed your hands of me, and so be it, but your sisters! Your mother! Ungrateful, is what I’m looking at. Ungrateful dressed in a cheap suit.”

  “What happened, Father?”

  “As if you don’t know.”

  “I don’t. I haven’t been told.”

  “So I’m to tell you? They don’t believe me, is that it? They think my telling you will make a difference? Is that it?”

  “I want to know what happened, Father.”

  “Because why?”

  “Because I might have an answer.”

  The red-faced old man wiped the spit from his mouth.

  “Last night,” he said, “I was in the kitchen. Never mind what I was doing in the kitchen, I was there and that’s all there is to it. Suddenly something goes around me feet and I’m caught and it pulls. I’m dragged across the floor like a cow going to slaughter. And then I’m up in the air, hanging by my ankles, I’m trussed up like beef, I’m yelling and nobody’s coming, I don’t know why, everybody comes when I yell, even the neighbors, but then, no, and I can’t free myself.”

  “Who did this to you?”

  “I didn’t see anyone. But there was someone there, I knew it, I felt it.”

  Franz swallowed hard, suppressing a cough.

  “How did you get free?” Franz asked.

  The old man smiled a grim smile. “I had the hallaf,” he said, “and I hacked my way free.”

  “Grandfather’s butcher knife?”

  “The same. And then I fell to the floor, bumped my head something terrible, but look! No bandages! Hard head, not like you—you, you would crack like an egg. And this thing”—he nodded to a steel box on the table—“was all that was left behind. I wanted to throw it out, but your mother, she told me the police would want to see it.”

  Franz eyed the box.

  “What is it?” Franz asked.

  “Filth,” his father said, “garbage. A turd.”

  Franz raised the lid of the box.

  The object inside, no more than two inches in length, did indeed resemble a turd, but Franz saw it as what it was—the decaying remains of a silken rope. He slammed the lid.

  “This is some trick on me you arranged?” his father demanded. “This is why you’re here, you charlatan, you faker? You sponge? As if my sufferance of you for a son hasn’t been indignity enough, you go and do this? For why? For to teach me some lesson? For to make more of a mockery of me? Where do you think you’re going? Come back here right now with that, you cretin!”

  FRANZ HANDED THE box to Beide.

  “Judenstrafe,” he said.

  “Beg pardon?” Beide asked.

  “Judenstrafe,” Franz said, and dropped onto a chair. He could still hear his father screaming behind the closed door down the hall. “It’s why he wasn’t killed outright.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Judenstrafe,” Franz said, absently caressing his own neck as he spoke, “was the so-called ‘Jewish punishment’ during the Middle Ages. It was done to Jewish thieves, mostly; inverted hanging by the legs, either as a torture or execution method.”

  “And how do you know this?”

  “I’ve already told you about my deep studies into my faith,” Franz said. “The Judenstrafe was part of my learning. That bit of rope is of the same appearance as the rope we discovered in Henker’s dressing room. It came after my father, inspector. It tried to kill him.”

  “But why differently than the others?”

  “I suspect none of the previous victims have been Jewish. And my father—even though he has long since abandoned our religion and mocks anything we consider holy—is a Jew. His father, my grandfather, was a kosher butcher. And that awful man”—he gestured to the apoplectic harangue going on down the hall—“uses his father’s sacred knives to prepare his midnight snacks.”

  “Well, it saved his life.”

  “Yes,” Franz said. “No thanks to me.”

  Beide put a reassuring hand on Franz’s shoulder.

  “What do we do now, Franz?” Beide asked.

  “About my father?”

  “About Henker.”

  Franz got to his feet, swayed, and burst into a barrage of coughing that knocked him back onto the chair. Beide handed him a handkerchief. Franz coughed up what he could, but began making sounds like steam being forced back into a teakettle. Alarmed, Beide thumped Franz on his back, but Franz pushed him away. He raised his arms above his head, and indicated that Beide should help him to stand. Once standing, Franz forced air into his lungs until he became calm. He gave a final cough into the handkerchief.

  Franz showed Beide the handkerchief’s new bright red spots.

  Franz smiled. “I’ll put an end to this,” he said. “Let Henker go on tonight as usual.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  TILLIE

  “HANSEL WAS BORN first,” Mathilde Henker said, “and he was the perfect child.”

  She and Franz were sitting together on the sofa in the stripped parlor of her rooming house suite, surrounded by crates. A single lamp was perched atop one of the crates; most of its yellow light was cast upon Mathilde.

  “The doctor had no little difficulty delivering me,” she continued. “Perhaps I didn’t wish to be born. Who knows? Do you know what a nuchal cord is, Herr Kafka?”

  “When a child is born with the cord wrapped around its neck,” Franz said. She nodded.

  “I understand it isn’t an uncommon occurrence at all,” she said. “In my case, however, I was being slowly strangulated, and what saved me…”

  She raised her fists to her cheeks.

  “…were my own two hands.” She dropped her hands to her lap and gazed at them. “My father would joke that perhaps Hansel had tried to kill me. That was no joke to Hans. My father learned not to joke about that as Hans grew older.

  “Having survived birth, I grew up as best I could… Not because of any unkindnesses done to me by anyone, but… Well, my life w
as one illness after another; always some new condition I developed, yet another disease waiting its turn to cripple me.

  “Hans took care of me. Always. He put my needs ahead of his, my comfort far above his own. I daresay he could have married several times, he could have had a family of his own by now, but no—he had to see to me. He never brought it up. He would never turn on me in resentment.”

  “Had you ever encouraged him to… leave you?” Franz asked.

  She looked at him. “Always,” she said. “He took it as an insult. He thought it was my way of saying he was doing a terrible job, that he was more hindrance than help.”

  “Was he?”

  “No,” she said softly. “He was perfect.”

  She gathered her canes and went on.

  “He filled our house with beautiful things,” she said, “things of value, things with history. Our father had left us very well off indeed, but it wasn’t as if Hans just bought things for the mere reason of having them. He searched. He chose. He was critical. He said it wouldn’t do for us to have ‘just anything.’ He wanted the rare, the special.

  “And then he found the table and chair. I thought it crude and ugly—and it is, you’ve seen it. He told me it could very well date back to Arthurian times! I remember asking him why we should give a damn about old British legends. He was a bit put off by that. It sat in our parlor for I don’t know how long until one night when he was fooling it, trying to polish it up a bit in a vain attempt at making it presentable, he found that the seat was a chest, and that’s the first sight we got of the rope.”

  She looked away, off into the deep growing shadows of the room.

  “He said those words,” she said, recalling the scene, “and he held that filthy, rotten rope in his hands. And in the next moment, something oily and foul was writhing its way across my lap, over my chest, and to my throat.”

  “How did it not kill you?” Franz asked.

  Once again, Mathilde raised her fists to her cheeks. “Just as I had done in my mother’s womb,” she said. “Only that time, I had these in each hand.” She picked up the canes and held them to her cheeks. “The snakewood. Carved specially for me by my father. One of the strongest, hardest woods on Earth. The rope crushed my hands, but it couldn’t crush the canes as it tried to get to my neck.”