by Muriel Spark
They would ring the hospitals, possibly the police stations. Jean-Pierre would send the patient away with his polite apologies. Eventually, perhaps tomorrow, he might make a statement to the police. Dr. Wolf is missing. The police would search her office, the flat she shared with Jean-Pierre. He would be interrogated closely. “When did you last see Mme. Wolf? What was her state of mind?” He would probably guess her state of mind. He would of course not elaborate on this to the police. He would know she had gone into hiding.
He would wait for a message. About that, she would have to decide. On no account must anyone trace her whereabouts. She had disappeared, perhaps forever. The Lucans would disappear too, go back to where they had come from; Hildegard thought of them as “The Lucans,” without a thought that one of them was probably real, and the other a fake.
In Paris, the course of events that Hildegard had imagined more or less took place, except that Jean-Pierre did not report her disappearance to the police. She had paid up the rent on her office and given notice. She had left the office furniture, but taken her laptop computer and many of the current files, including the Lucan papers. Dominique checked through, wearing her coat and wool cap, ready to go off into her own life, while Jean-Pierre watched. Dominique looked at all the files that were left. “From my memory,” she said, “and from my appointments book, the files here belong only to patients who had finished their course. The current files are gone.”
“Who were the current clients?”
“Well, there was Walker, there was Lucky Lucan. There was Mrs. Maisie Round, Karl K. Jacobs, and just a minute . . .” She consulted her diary: “There was Dr. Oscar Hertz. Dr. Wolf did like Dr. Hertz so very much. There was Ruth Ciampino. Mrs. William Hane-Busby, also.”
“No French clients?”
“At the moment, none.”
Jean-Pierre was struck by a stab of jealousy. “Who was Dr. Hertz?”
“Dr. Oscar Hertz is a recent widower. He has problems of grief and so on.”
“Do you know the addresses and telephone numbers of all the clients whose files are missing?” She sat down in her coat and typed, with the aid of her appointments book, what little she knew about the list of names she had just given. “Dr. Wolf spoke seldom about her clients. She was friendly, talkative, very nice to me, but she didn’t say much about the patients who came to consult her. Now, I’ll leave you my office keys. This is the front door. These are the office door-there are two safety locks.”
“I know,” he said. “I have copies of the keys.”
“And the keys to the filing cabinet. The keys to Dr. Wolf ’s desk.”
“I don’t have those. Leave them with me.” “Do you want me to make a statement to the police, M. Roget?”
“There’s no need to tell the police.”
“Would it not be correct?”
“There is no need.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Suppose,” she said, “that Dr. Wolf has met with an accident?”
“I don’t suppose. You do not take half your office archives with you to have an accident.”
Dominique left, a small figure, wrapped in her coat and scarf, her woolly cap, her paycheck in her bag, provided by Jean-Pierre, her blonde hair half covering her pink cheeks.
She closed the door behind her, but immediately he opened it to call her back.
“Leave me your telephone number and your address.” “It’s in my file,” said Dominique, “but I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying in Paris.”
“No?”
“No.”
He asked her, “Are you in touch with Dr. Wolf?”
“Why should I be in touch with Dr. Wolf?” “I mean no offense, Dominique. But if she gets in touch with you, will you let me know?”
“Yes, I will do that, M. Roget. I will certainly tell you.” Hildegard had long felt that sentimentality was a luxury she could not afford. Perhaps she had always felt it, right back to the time when the family had a pig farm, and the little pigs squealed pitifully, and bled. These things had to be.
She had fourteen brothers and sisters, some old enough to be her mother or father. Someone washed and dressed her, took her to school, fed her: a brother, a mother, a sister, a father, whomsoever. She grew up on the pig farm. The sisters and brothers eventually married and went to live each in a house not far away. They continued in the pig business. Hildegard (then Beate) grew up, with all of them around, among the pigs. She went to school, was clever. She fought herself free from her home. She found Heinrich. She made blood-money. And now she was supposed to ask herself about her loyalty and love for Jean-Pierre in Paris. She knew very well he would be frantically looking for her. She couldn’t afford such sweetness. He would expect some sign of her affection. It was too much to ask. And yet the question asked itself. Oh, Jean-Pierre, what else, what else could I have done?
Jean-Pierre had packed a small bag and set it aside. He was ready to leave Paris any time, at a moment’s notice. Hildegard had been missing over a week and no message from her had reached him. He was more worried by this fact than by her absence, for he was convinced that she was safely settled somewhere of her own choice. She had left her car in the garage, paid up three months in advance. The garage owner could give no explanation, no clue. Jean-Pierre was not anxious for her safety. He brooded only over the fact that she hadn’t rung him at his business number or on his mobile telephone. He made a decision to find her and follow. He began with the list of her patients that Dominique had given her. Only Lucan and Walker had no phone numbers against their names.
“Mrs. Maisie Round?” Jean-Pierre spoke in English, and quite well.
“Yes, speaking. Who is it?”
“Jean-Pierre Roget. I am a friend of Dr. Hildegard Wolf. I-” “Where is Dr. Wolf? It is shameful that she has left in the middle of my treatment. Her secretary just rang and told me she had left Paris, that was all.”
“I was wondering if you had any clue where she was, Madame.”
The woman started to speak again, shrieking, and did not leave off shrieks until she had come to the point in her discourse where Jean-Pierre broke her off. She shrieked:
“It is nothing short of criminal to leave a patient hamstrung in a sitting in the middle of a course just as I was getting to the heart of the matter and she knew that I was arriving at that point of no return so I am now in deep shock and my psyche is severely damaged and at the end of the day the bottom line is I am going to have my attorney issue a writ against Hildegard Wolf and also have her definitely struck off because it looks like here in Paris she was never registered at all with any school or any institute of psychiatry but I paid her over a period of eight months only to find myself neither divorcing from him or engaging with Thomas and I am in a preposterous dilemma that she should have spared me as it was her responsibility to address the problem right from “
At this point Jean-Pierre quietly hung up. He fixed himself a vodka tonic and rang the next patient. A woman answered in French.
“May I speak to Dr. Karl Jacobs?”
“Dr. Jacobs is on holiday. Can I take a message?”
“Well perhaps you can tell me yourself if Dr. Jacobs had any idea of the whereabouts of his analyst, Dr. Hildegard Wolf? When will Dr. Jacobs be back?” “He’s expected to return in about ten days. I can leave a message for him, but I don’t think I can help. A gentleman called Walker has been asking how to get hold of Dr. Wolf. He saw Dr. Jacobs’ name on the desk of the receptionist, I believe, as he was one of Dr. Wolf ’s patients himself. Dr. Wolf left suddenly, it seems.” “Is Dr. Jacobs upset?”
“Oh, no, he was very relieved. He said he’d had enough of her.”
Jean-Pierre left his phone number.
The next patient, Dr. Oscar Hertz, was the one that Dominique had mentioned that Hildegard had liked. A widower, she had said; his problem, grief. From Dr. Oscar Hertz there was no reply. Jean-Pierre rang Mrs. William Hane-Busby’s number. “Yes, speaking,” said the
lady in the English tongue. “I’m a friend of Dr. Hildegard Wolf, and I have your name as one of her friends. You see I’m trying to find out where she is.”
“Yes, I would like to know, too. I esteem Dr. Wolf greatly. A very distinguished mind. You know she is discussed in the universities and their publications. She must have had some very urgent reason for going off like that. Do you know her well?”
“She’s my girlfriend,” Jean-Pierre felt it right to say.
He liked this woman’s tone.
“She often spoke to me of places she stayed in different parts, you know in Madrid she stayed at a lovely little hotel, the Paradiso, and at Zurich there was a gem of a place she loved, Seelach Gasthof, just a boarding-house really. She loved to stay in places like that, but perhaps she’s with friends.”
“Where else did she mention, Madame? London?
Brussels?”
“There was a place in London at Queen’s Gate, and Brussels I don’t know the name, it was a rundown part. She ate at a restaurant called La Moule Parquée, whatever that means. Oh, I do hope you can find her. I very much miss Hildegard. Why ever did she go off just like that?”
“Look,” said Jean-Pierre, “I’ll keep in touch. If she gets hold of you at all will you let me know?” He left his number.
He rang Dick and Paul. Dick answered. “We were devastated when we got her message. Just a few lines enclosing a check and, although we’re fully paid up, it kind of hurts. Do you know when she’s coming back, Jean-Pierre? Did she leave any message with Olivia?” Olivia, the maid whom Jean-Pierre and Hildegard had shared, was still working in the flat. She had already expressed herself as bewildered as everyone else by Hildegard’s disappearance.
Jean-Pierre looked at the piece of paper where he had jotted down Mrs. William Hane-Busby’s information.
She had been the only one to furnish any sort of clue as to where Hildegard might be. She had obviously been a confidante as much as a patient. Jean-Pierre put a cross against the Hotel Paradiso, Madrid, and a query against Hotel-Queen’s Gate, London. Maybe Brussels, though. He tried Dr. Oscar Hertz’s number again. This time he was more successful. A woman answered in guttural English, “Dr. Hertz?-I think he’s just come in. Hold on.” A rendering of “Greensleeves” filled in the gap. It was cut off, not before time, by a click and a man’s voice. “Here is Dr. Hertz.”
“I’m Jean-Pierre Roget, Hildegard Wolf ’s companion.
I suppose you know she has disappeared.”
“I myself am very anxious about that.”
“If you’re so anxious why didn’t you telephone to me?
You know we lived together. You know that.” “The secretary, Dominique, informed me. There is nothing we can do?”
“Dr. Hertz, she had a special friendship with you.
She-“
“Oh, yes, I was not a patient.”
“No?”
“No. I was a colleague.”
“You’re a psychiatrist?”
“A psychologist, rather. Hildegard was not herself a theorist, she was essentially a practitioner.” “You speak of her in the past tense.”
“Yes, I speak in the past tense.”
“Oh, God, what do you think has happened to her?”
“Nothing. She wasn’t a person to whom things happen.
She did all the happenings.”
“You think she’s committed suicide on us?”
“I daresay.”
“Well, I daresay you’re wrong. I know her better than you do.”
“She was being blackmailed.”
“That I know. And her disappearance is no doubt the result. But she has gone somewhere. Have you any idea where?”
“From a psychological point of view, if she remains alive she would be expected to have gone back to the place of her origin, to the countryside of Nuremberg. There, the most successful psychiatrist would be safe from detection.” “Thank you, Dr. Hertz.”
Jean-Pierre poured himself another drink. “Cold bastard,” he reflected. He thought of Hertz’s words: From a psychological point of view . . . she would be expected . . . As if Hildegard herself would not know what she might be expected to do, and avoid just that course of action. Jean- Pierre studied the few scribbles he had made on the telephone pad during his conversations. Certainly the cross he had made against Mrs. William Hane-Busby’s remarks was the most sensible, although he reserved suspicions about Dr. Hertz. The houseboys, Dick and Paul, were probably reticent. Dr. Jacobs, whoever he was, perhaps knew more than he would say if he were available. In the meantime Jean-Pierre busied himself in finding out the phone number of Hotel Paradiso, Madrid, the names of hotels, large and small, in Brussels, and in the Queen’s Gate area of London.
Hildegard lay on top of her hotel bed aware of the pouring rain of London, which was somehow much worse than the equivalent rain of Paris. Her mind, with the passing of the years, had become ever more studious. It was not only because she feared the Lucan pair, but because she was fascinated by them, that she had brought, in her bulging zipper-bags, the Lucan files comprising her notes and three published books on the subject of Lucan the killer, his habits of life, his milieu, his friends. The documents were spread on the bed beside her, that double bed in which Hildegard had felt, every night she had spent in the Manderville Hotel, decidedly alone. Her lover had been replaced by her clinical notes. She kept in touch with her au pair helpers in Paris, Dick and Paul. Yes, Jean-Pierre rang every day to find out if either one of them had heard from her. “No, don’t worry, we haven’t said a word.” “Once, that Mr. Walker had called. No one by name of Lucan.” “Jean-Pierre is really frantic, though, Hildegard, why don’t you call him?”
“I will,” Hildegard said, “oh, yes, I will.” Eventually . . . she said to herself.
“Walker-Lucan,” as she thought of him, had said to her, “You know I am officially dead in England, although that leaves a big doubt as to the reality of my death. The House of Lords cannot recognize my death. Sometimes I’m tempted to go back, though, and challenge the courts. I would plead that, as a dead man, I couldn’t be tried.”
“It wouldn’t work,” said Hildegard. “You would be tried for murder if you are indeed Lord Lucan.” “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I am. And you would be found guilty on the evidence.” “And you, Dr. Wolf? On the evidence against you, could you still be tried for fraud?”
“Yes,” said Hildegard.
“All those years ago?”
“In both cases,” Hildegard said, “all those years ago.” Conversations like these led Hildegard to wonder if, after all, Walker was the real Lucan. He seemed to have been there at the kill.
But so, in a sense, through immersing herself in the subject, did she. And what interested her even more was the whole world of feelings that preceded Lucan’s decision-apparently a good month before the event-to kill his wife. Hildegard opened one of her notebooks and read:
He detested his wife. She had defeated his lawsuit for the custody of his children, leaving him with a large legal debt and the mortification of being exposed by her as a sexual sadist, a wife-caner. In his eyes, his wife, Veronica, was expendable.
It was, according to the testimony, early in October 1974 that he actually told a friend of his decision to murder his wife, and of his carefully planned precautions. “I would never be caught,” he told his friend (according to Chief Superintendent Ranson who conducted the investigation into the crime).
Twenty years later Ranson wrote, “I believe that,
rather than the much-quoted love of his children, it is his lack of money, all of it lost through uncontrollable gambling, that provides the key to this case.”
“I believe,” Hildegard had noted, “that this is very much to the point, if not altogether true. Another motive is spite.”
“Walker,” Hildegard has also put in her notes, “could be a hit man hired by Lucan, and Lucky is Lucan himself. Or it could be the other way round. But the evidence is all a
gainst this theory.”
Lucky, by Walker’s account, genuinely needed treatment by a psychiatrist. Not long after Walker started consulting Hildegard he had said, “I hear voices.” By this he probably meant that Lucky “heard” voices, and equally he was covering the personage of Lord Lucan for a possible confrontation with the law. Establish the “voices” and Lucan could be found not fit to plead.
But was he fit to plead? Lucky, more so than Walker, Hildegard felt. But there was no doubt that in the weeks before the murder a certain madness had set in. “Uncontrollable gambling,” as the worthy policeman had cited as the main cause of his action, was in itself only a symptom. His hatred of his wife had been an obsession aggravated by the continual dunning letters from the banks to which he owed money.
Hildegard turned the pages of the Detective Superintendent’s account. A year before the murder, letters from the bank managers were moving in on Lucan daily. These letters sounded like the phrases of a popular music-hall song:
23rd October, 1973
Dear Lord Lucan,
I am extremely disappointed that I cannot trace a reply from you to my letter of the 10th October regarding the borrowing on your account . . .
And in December 1973, as his thirty-ninth birthday approached:
Dear Lord Lucan,
You will know from my recent letters how disappointed I am that you have not been in touch before this to let me know what arrangements are being made to adjust your overdraft here . . .
Lucan put the family silver up for auction at Christie’s. He took recourse to money lenders. Where, demanded Hildegard, did he say good-bye to reality? That he did just that is the only certainty in the case. For even if his plan had come off, even if he had succeeded in killing his wife and not the nanny, he could not have escaped detection. Was it the approach of his fortieth birthday combined with the shock of being a failure in life, irretrievably on the point of bankruptcy, that had removed him from reality? In the second half of the twentieth century, in any case, an inherited earldom was not very real. While it was a social fact, it did not relate to any other social fact of significance, especially in his case where there was little family property, no house with its land, no money. In reality, he belonged to a middle-class environment with upper-class claims in his conscious mind.
