‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘Slow strangulation. Evidently she did not allow herself an adequate drop.’ He picked up the chair she had kicked away, and nodded as his hypothesis was confirmed: her heels were not much lower than the seat. ‘Just as I thought,’ he said. ‘She should have jumped from that table.’ He pointed. ‘It’s higher.’
The woman’s head was level with his. He took it in his hands and moved it from side to side. ‘The neck doesn’t appear to be broken,’ he said, ‘and judging by these fingernail marks on the throat it would seem that the unfortunate lady remained conscious for some time, trying quite desperately to save herself.’ The old man stopped sawing for a moment to look at the scratches. He looked at her hands too. Her fingers were streaked with dry blood, and marked with burns from the rope. The doctor carried on. ‘She would have fought for some time, maybe for as long as half an hour, realising all the time the terrible mistake she had made.’ He sighed. ‘What a shame that nobody heard a thing, that this poor creature could not have been rescued from her wrong turning.’
Neither of them had known this to happen before: whenever a visitor had chosen this manner of exit the doctor had found no evidence of a struggle. The well-executed incidents had resulted in a broken neck and instant death, and the less well-planned ones, with their insufficient drops or incorrectly positioned nooses, had apparently caused the person to black out as they fell, and they would hang, insensible, until the end.
His post mortem complete, the doctor stood aside as the final strands gave way and the body thumped to the floor. He removed the noose from the woman’s neck, and pushed her tongue back into her mouth. ‘Let’s be absolutely sure,’ he said, and listened for a while with his stethoscope before shaking his head. They stood together, looking down at her. She had been around thirty, and was dressed in jeans and a thin, green jacket. The old man had seen her arrive, but he had not seen her leave. He paid as little attention as possible to the museum’s visitors, but he had noticed a hunted look about her eyes, and had not been surprised to see her again. He said nothing.
‘We must do this quickly,’ said the doctor. ‘After all, I am a busy general practitioner and I have not yet eaten my breakfast and, as any doctor will tell you, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.’
The old man felt no need to say anything, and assumed his established role in the removal of the body, leaning over to grab it by the wrists. The doctor lifted the ankles, and they made their way down to the back door. When they got there the doctor dropped his end, pushed the bar and peered into the alley. There was nobody around, so he darted out and opened the rear door of his large saloon car, which he had backed up close to the building. He raced back inside. ‘Now,’ he whispered. Together they hauled the body into the car. The doctor slammed it shut, and hurried round to the driver’s seat. Without a word he got in and drove away.
The old man pulled the fire exit door closed and made his way up to Room Eight. He put the steps back in their cupboard, and the chair in its place in the corner, checking it for damage as he did. None was noticeable. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the seat. Very occasionally he would sit there, and he didn’t want any muck from the woman’s shoes ending up on his trousers.
Crouching, his knees stiff, he used his hands to wipe the sawn fibres into a pile, and wrapped them in the handkerchief. He picked up both lengths of rope, and had a final look around. He noticed her handbag was on the floor behind the display board. He picked it up, then went upstairs and dropped the pieces of rope into the kitchen bin. It had all been quite straightforward; he and the doctor had known these incidents to be a lot messier than this one. The cuffs of his brilliant white shirt remained spotless as he measured a fresh length from the coil of rope he kept under the sink, cut it, and tied an immaculate noose to replace the one the woman had taken from the display in the
Popular Methods
room. He wondered how long it would be before he was to find himself cutting yet another length of rope. A moment later he stopped wondering. It meant so little to him. It would happen when it happened.
III
It took little time for the doctor to drive from the city centre to the suburbs. As the old man was putting the newly tied noose in its place, he arrived back at his home, a detached house in a quiet, green neighbourhood. His gates and the door to his double garage opened automatically, and when they had clicked shut behind him he walked to the back of the car, opened it, looked down and sighed.
‘You poor girl,’ he whispered, as though she were sleeping and he must take care not to wake her. ‘You poor girl.’ He shook his head. ‘Coffee first.’ He opened the door to the kitchen, and went through.
Doctor Ernst Fröhlicher had moved to the city ten years earlier, bringing with him a black Labrador called Hans and a heart-stopping tale of tragedy. While looking for a house to settle in he had rented a room, and a short conversation with his landlady ensured that before his trunks were unpacked his story had spread through the streets around his practice. This was the extent of what was known:
Doctor Fröhlicher had married at the age of twenty-five, and been widowed at the age of twenty-eight
.
Noticing his wedding ring, his landlady had asked whether he would be joined at any point by Frau Fröhlicher, and on hearing his reply she had not found it possible to ask him to go on. The story remained unembellished as it passed from house to house, and everyone who heard it felt their heart turn to lead with pity. Barring only the smallest details they saw the same image in their minds, of a wife so beautiful and so gentle that to behold her would make the heart overflow with joy, and of a man quite superhuman in his courage as he faced the world alone, smiling as he devoted himself to healing others even though he was unable to mend his own broken heart. When, a few years into his time in the town, the doctor let slip to a talkative patient that his wife had died as a result of complications from a pregnancy, his heroic status soared to even further heights, and thus he was able to live alone as he entered middle age without a single eyebrow being raised, or so much as a whisper of innuendo passing from house to house.
His wife, Ute, had indeed been extraordinarily beautiful, but his new neighbours were not to know that she had also been wayward, devious, scheming and, when it suited her, shrill. Nor were they to know that there had been a coldness to her beauty, her lips always on the verge of turning thin and her blue eyes quick to narrow into slits. Her mother had not been blind to her daughter’s ways, and had often found herself suggesting that she stop all her nonsense, find a promising young professional and settle down. One day the girl surprised her by seeming to do just that.
The conventionally good-looking son of a nearby family was in the final stages of studying medicine, and hearing he was back for a few days, Ute had feigned a dizzy spell and requested a visit from him. The consultation took place in her bedroom, and the moment he walked in she let her white silk robe fall to the floor.
‘I’m ready for my examination,’ she said.
As his eyes took in the most wonderful sight he had ever seen, he had no idea what to do.
She helped him. ‘Why not start here?’ she said, taking one of his hands, guiding it downwards and gently pressing his middle finger to her, applying just the right amount of pressure as she guided it in a circular motion. He closed his eyes, and could feel the brush of the coarse, dark hairs, and the warmth, and the moisture. ‘I’m feeling dizzy again,’ she whispered, ‘but in a different way from before.’ She let out a series of small, breathy yelps, and touched his cheek with a single finger. ‘A very different way.’
She moved his hand to one of her breasts, making sure the soft golden hair she had shaken loose brushed against his fingers. ‘Have you found the root of the problem yet?’ she asked, her mouth open just a little as she moved closer to him. She took his spare hand, and guided it to her other breast. ‘Do you think it could be glandular?’ As she pushed her body into his she could feel that she had conquered him.
‘Oh, doctor,’ she said.
‘Well, I am not yet qualified, and I suggest you . . .’ Her lips brushed against his, and at last the world made sense. Everything he had strived for and everything he had lived through had been a stepping-stone leading him to this: the moment he found out what it meant to love somebody with every cell in his body. He had always had a sense that he had been looking for something, and he had found it right there in the soft lips that no longer brushed against his but devoured them, and in the smooth back that undulated beneath the touch of his fingers, and when they finally disengaged from their kiss it was there in the face that looked up at him, a face so immaculate that for a moment he thought nature unkind for not having made all women as perfect as the one in his arms.
Her fingers moved down to his belt buckle, and three months later her mother stood in church and looked on as her nineteen-year-old daughter exchanged vows with this handsome and promising young professional. She wanted to be happy for them, but no matter how hard she tried, it wasn’t possible. She had only ever seen her child look so demure when she had been up to something, and the joy and relief she should have felt was eclipsed by worry for her new son-in-law, and a creeping sense of guilt for having wished this terrible fate upon him.
Ute’s mother’s fears had not been misplaced. As the honeymooners paddled at sunset in the Mediterranean Sea, the bride told her husband that she had only married him to get back at her much older lover for refusing to leave his wife. She called a passing stranger, handed over their camera and asked for a photograph. ‘Look happy,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll make sure he gets a copy. It’ll drive him insane.’
The young man felt as if he had been punched in the belly as he placed his arm around his bride’s shoulders, and smiled.
‘Don’t worry though,’ she said, when the stranger had handed back the camera, ‘I’ll still let you fuck me.’
To his horror, he found his heart gladdened by these words.
As they set up home together, Ute complained about the modest size of their apartment, railed at the time he devoted to his junior position at the hospital when he could have been dancing attendance on her, and did little to hide her readiness to yield to temptation in his absence. The onslaught never abated. Even on her death bed, when she had known there was no chance of recovery, she had refused to say she was sorry for the way she had treated him, and she used the last of her energy to imply that the baby, by this time lost, had almost certainly been her lover’s, the one she had gone so far out of her way to spite. ‘Now he’ll be sorry,’ she said, her beauty more powerful than ever as it shone from her ashen face. The doctor still loved her completely, and even though he felt a sense of release when this awful child’s heart stopped beating, it was a release he would never have wished for.
The people who heard his story were right when they shook their heads and supposed that nobody would ever be able to take her place.
The doctor tickled Hans behind his ears, and while the coffee was percolating he found his camera, returned to the garage and opened the back of the car. He took some photographs then braced himself, picked up the body and carried it to one of his four large chest freezers. Smiling, he heaved it in, closed the lid and went back inside. There was still time for breakfast before Hans’ walk.
He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a thick slice of meat, which he fried in dripping and seasoned with a sprinkling of salt and pepper. When it was ready he put it on a plate and ate it, throwing the occasional piece to the grateful dog. ‘This will set me up amply for the morning ahead,’ he said, ‘and for the sake of balance I shall eat an apple as we walk in the park. After all, Hans, it is important to receive a range of nutrients, particularly at breakfast time, and folk wisdom and modern science are united in telling us that there are few foods more nutritious than the apple.’
Hans had heard these sounds many times before.
The doctor scraped the bone into the bin and put the plate in the dishwasher. ‘Come, Hans,’ he said. The dog bounded for the front door and waited to be put on his lead.
IV
After putting the noose in its place the old man spent some time sitting at his kitchen table, where he ate a single cracker and drank a glass of water. His breakfast over, he sat and looked straight ahead, glancing every once in a while at the clock on the wall as he waited for the time his duties would begin.
At eight fifty-eight he stood and made his way downstairs. On the stroke of nine he opened the front door to see the large, smiling face of a powerfully built young woman, her light brown hair sitting in a chaotic pile on top of her head. Her name was Hulda. It was the correct name for her. Every once in a while a Hulda will come along who is able to pass through life discreetly, but most of them are so thoroughly
Hulda
that there is no other name they could possibly have been given. Shopkeepers, ticket inspectors and tourists in search of directions will greet them with the words,
Good morning, Hulda
, or,
Excuse me, Hulda
. This happens so naturally, and with such frequency, that neither party stops to think it strange.
‘What a lovely day,’ she said. ‘Cooler than yesterday, but still almost cloudless. And I brought this,’ she chuckled, as she held up her umbrella, ‘just in case. I always seem to expect the worst. I suppose it must be a habit I picked up in my mid-to-late childhood, when everything was so difficult for me.’
He said nothing as she walked past him. He bolted the door then sat at the front desk, where he sorted through a small pile of mail. A minute later he looked up to see she had emerged from the cupboard under the stairs. With her mop, bucket and broom lined up and ready to go she stood before him, whistling as she snapped on a pair of rubber gloves.