The Defeated Aristocrat (19 page)

‘He was our ancestor?’

‘So my father told me.’ Wolf indicated the suit and shirt he’d bought for his son. ‘Aunt Martha told me green was your favourite colour, but if you’d don’t like them they can be changed. In fact we should go shopping on Monday anyway. You need more clothes than this one suit. Would you like to choose your own?’

Heinrich shrugged his shoulders again. He was showing a distinct lack of enthusiasm, but Wolf remembered that he hadn’t like receiving clothes he had to say ‘thank you’ for at that age either.

‘Aunt Martha told me your size, but it might be as well you try them on in case they need changing.’

Heinrich pulled his sweater over his head and unbuttoned his patched and threadbare shirt. He winced as he moved his arms. The bruises Wolf had noticed on his face and hands were only the visible ones. Both of Heini’s arms were black and blue to his shoulder blades and there were ugly dark red marks on his chest above his vest.

Heinrich saw Wolf looking at them and hung his head.

Wolf wanted to hug his son but sensed he’d withdraw. ‘I’m your Papa, and I promise you, I won’t allow anyone to hurt you when I’m close by and I will never, ever, hit you.’

‘Not even when I’m naughty?’

His blue eyes looked enormous. If Franz had been in the room Wolf would have punched him to a pulp. Just as he had a British soldier who’d knocked Peter down after they’d been captured. It had cost him a beating but it had been worth it.

‘That’s not to say I won’t tell you off if you’re naughty, but words don’t leave marks like these. Would you like to go to the zoo tomorrow after church?’

Heinrich shrugged again.

‘We’ll see what the others want to do, shall we?’

‘If these clothes are for me, shall I put them away if they fit?’

‘That would be good. I have to go out tonight to see my lawyer but I’ll be back in the morning and we’ll spend tomorrow together.’

‘You won’t be sleeping here?’

‘Not tonight, no. But Martha and your Uncle Martin and Aunt Ludwiga will.’

‘I thought you’d be staying here.’

‘I will, very soon.’ Wolf hoped he wasn’t misleading his son. ‘But it costs money to live and I have to find a job. How about you leave the new things on your bed for the moment and we go downstairs and get coffee and cake?’

‘I suppose so.’

A cry downstairs sent Wolf running to the door. He looked down the stairs. Lotte was standing in the hall holding the telephone.

‘Dedleff Gluck has been murdered. I must go to Lilli.’

Carriage House, Engels’s Brewery, Hoker Strasse, Konigsberg, Saturday January 11th 1919

Helmut jerked into consciousness. Disorientated, he stared at the unfamiliar surroundings before the unaccustomed warmth and smell of food prompted his memory. He smiled. Who would have thought Dolf Engels would turn out to be his saviour?

The couch was comfortable but his skin was itching. Much as hated the thought of leaving the office he needed to wash. He reluctantly threw back the rug and left the sofa. He’d visited the lavatory when he and Dolf had arrived. It was at the opposite end of the building, clean, but basic with bare concrete floor and walls. It had also been freezing cold.

He rummaged in his kit bag for his soap and razor and opened the door. The air outside the office was bitter. Draping the rug around his shoulders like a shawl, he picked up the lamp and stepped into the carriage house.

The lamplight cast eerie shadows that jumped out at him as he walked the length of the building. He was glad when he was able to thrust the bolt across the inside of the washroom door. He set the lamp on the floor, used the toilet, immersed his hands in water that felt as though it held needle-sharp shards of ice and tried – and failed – to rub his soap to lather. He decided to take Dolf’s advice and boil a kettle so he could wash and shave in warm water. He couldn’t wait to return to the office. He couldn’t be that dirty after cleaning himself up in the station earlier that day. Perhaps he could wait until morning …

He left the washroom. The office light shone; a beacon at the far end of a darkened hall populated by threatening silhouettes. They loomed around and over him, assuming monstrous shapes as he rushed back to the warmth. Misjudging a distance he collided painfully with a waggon wheel. He heard a sound. A new one he didn’t recognise.

Hairs prickled on the back of his neck. He called out.

‘Who’s there?’

His voice wavered. He quickened his step and ran into the office. He took a deep breath and slammed the door behind him.

Something pressed against his neck. He tumbled headlong into darkness. 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Von Mau house, Gebaur Strasse, Konigsberg, Saturday January 11th 1919

‘I’m going through my officers’ reports now.’ Georg Hafen’s clipped tones echoed down the telephone line from police headquarters to Wolf in Martin’s study. ‘They called at the Engels’s house this evening and interviewed Dolf. He’d been out all day on the brewery delivery waggon and had settled in for the evening with his parents. He has no intention of going out again.’

‘I thought Engels’s outburst against Norde was worth mentioning.’

‘It was. Thank you, but given these murders my last concern is Paragraph 175 of the penal code. Provided no force is used, I couldn’t give a damn what homosexuals do in private. Never have and never will, but as I can be asked to produce my notebook at any time by a superior officer I haven’t documented your information. I trust you to remember that if it becomes relevant in any way?’

‘I will,’ Wolf assured him.

‘Lilli told me you’re moving into the Richters’s tonight?’

‘After I’ve seen my lawyer.’

‘You’ll be there before midnight?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘My sister and sister-in-law are paying a condolence visit to Lilli Richter. I’ll go with them and leave them there while I visit my lawyer. Martin’s coachman will pick me up from Johanna Behn’s on his way to fetch them.’

‘You’ll watch the Richters’s front door from the inside?’

‘You don’t have to tell me to do something twice, sir.’

‘Meet me tomorrow morning in the Green Stork at nine.’ Georg ended the call.

Carriage House, Engels’s Brewery, Hoker Strasse, Konigsberg, Saturday January 11th 1919

Helmut dreamed he was lying in a snow-filled trench. The drift closed around him, freezing his blood and icing his skin. Agonising pains shot up his legs and arms. He lurched awake, his back arched and his entire body locked in painful spasm.

A lamp flickered somewhere behind his head sending the shadows dancing. The air was foul and rancid with the stench of low-grade oil. He tried to move his arms and realised they’d been lashed to something hard and unyielding. The entire weight of his body was supported by bonds that bit into his wrists and ankles. He twisted his head. It felt strangely heavy. He saw wooden railings and realised he’d been suspended on a barrel cradle on the back of a brewery waggon.

His limbs burned from the sting of ropes and the weight of his body. His neck hurt from the strain of supporting his head. He weakened and it jerked painfully backwards.

Figures moved around him shrouded in black hooded cloaks that concealed their faces. One was holding something long. It shone, reflecting light.

‘Shall we begin?’

The language was German but heavily accented.

The glittering blade plunged downwards. Pain escalated until it was unbearable. Helmut thrashed as warm liquid cascaded down his groin, on to the inside of his thigh.

A door opened. Footsteps resounded. He sensed eyes staring, studying him.

‘He’s not the one.’

It was the last thing he heard.

Behn’s House, The Kneiphof, Konigsberg, Saturday January 11
th
1919

‘Isn’t your brother coming in?’ Johanna asked when she opened the door to Wolf and saw Martin’s carriage turn the corner of the street.

‘He isn’t in the carriage. I just accompanied Ludwiga and Lotte to the Richters’s to offer my condolences. Lilli Richter’s husband …’

‘Was found murdered this morning, I heard.’ Johanna frowned. ‘Thank you for coming. My private apartment’s on the first floor,’ She led the way through the vestibule, past the doors that led to the offices and into a vast wood-panelled hall decorated with hundreds of deer and elk antlers. A circular carved staircase adorned with medieval figures led up to the first floor.

‘I’ve admired this house since the first time my father brought me here to introduce me to the family lawyer. Before then, I thought Waldschloss was the oldest building in East Prussia. This house seems so much older.’

‘Perhaps not so much older, as untouched,’ Johanna qualified. ‘My family never had the imagination to make improvements to the lifestyle of their parents and grandparents.’

Wolf ran his fingers over the contours of the banisters and looked out of a mullioned window at the ribbon of lights that followed the curve of the river bank. ‘I’m glad they didn’t. Perfection can’t be improved upon.’

‘That sounds like something my father would have said. He believed this house was the original farm and inn on the island: kneip – inn and farm – hof.’

‘Was he right?’

‘Who knows? There are enormous beer and wine barrels and benches and tables in the cellars. The house must have been built around them. Certainly it required more effort than any Behn, past or present, was prepared to make to remove them.’

‘Do the barrels still contain beer and wine?’ Wolf asked.

‘I said my family were reluctant to instigate change, I didn’t say they were saints. The barrels haven’t retained a sniff of the original contents, probably because my forefathers licked them out. I remember that visit you made with your father. You had rats in your pockets.’

‘They were my pets.’

‘Peculiar pets. You were an annoying child. You looked disappointed when I told you I wasn’t frightened of them.’

‘I kept them to guard my bedroom. Lotte never went near there because she was terrified of rodents and knew I allowed them the run of the place. I hoped all girls were as squeamish.’

‘You also had a catapult you used to shoot dried peas at my legs.’

‘I apologise. I really was annoying, wasn’t I?’

‘You need to ask? But at that age I found all small boys disgusting. I took myself immensely seriously. A student in my final year in university, working as my father’s clerk in the holidays, I believed I had a glittering career that included judge’s robes ahead of me.’

‘You’ve lost your ambition to become a judge?’

‘It died when I was forced to accept that women will never be appointed to high office, legal or political. Your father must have known I was here that day because he brought my father a gift of cigars and me a bottle of cologne.’

‘Sorry not to be more original.’

Wolf handed her a parcel after she opened a door on the landing and showed him into a large room that overlooked the river. The walls were hung with green, bronze and gold embroidered tapestries and ancient family portraits. The sofas and chairs were upholstered in dark brown hide. The dining table, chairs, bookcases, desk and coffee table were crafted from age-stained, dark wood. The impression was of solid wealth that hadn’t changed in centuries. Little imagination was needed to conjure men and women sitting there in the same armour and crinolines they’d worn when their likenesses had been captured in oils.

Johanna unwrapped the cologne. ‘You shouldn’t have been so extravagant.’

‘Thanks to you, I can afford to be extravagant.’ Wolf walked through the French doors that opened on to a glazed balcony that extended the full width of the back of the building. A small table had been laid at the far end that overlooked Honey Bridge. The balcony was even warmer than the living room because it had its own tiled stove. Another set of doors opened back into the kitchen. Wolf went to the table. ‘This view is wonderful.

‘Isn’t it? I eat here most nights.’ Johanna lifted a cloth to reveal plates of cold meat, cheese, rustic bread, butter, herrings in sour cream, and winter salad.

‘I haven’t seen a table like that since before the war.’

‘All traded for my services. I feel sorry for those who have nothing to barter.’

‘It looks delicious. You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble on my account.’

‘I didn’t, my housekeeper did. Would you like to see to business or eat first?’ she asked.

‘Business, so we can relax while we eat.’

She poured two glasses of wine from a bottle that had been cooling in a basket outside the window, handed him one, and taking the bottle went to the desk in the living room.

‘I hope not all those papers are relevant to the Lichtenhagen Estate.’ Wolf eyed a daunting pile of files.

‘They are, but not all of them require a signature. We – that’s the Behn law firm on your behalf – lodged an appeal this morning against the court case your brother Franz instigated. This afternoon Gretel, or more likely Franz, as he was the one who insisted that Gretel was entitled to more than you left her, dropped the claim to the von Mau estate.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that,’ she reiterated. ‘From your point of view it’s perfect. There’ll be no court costs and you won’t be left with a large bill for my – or Gretel’s – legal expenses.’

‘I trust I wouldn’t have had to pay Gretel’s expenses.’

‘Given that Gretel is legally your wife and responsibility until you’re divorced that’s arguable. I advise you to post a notice in the
Konigsberg Times
stating you won’t honour any debts other than those directly incurred by you.’

‘Better still, post a notice stating I am not responsible for debts incurred by Franz or Gretel. If any of my other relatives are in trouble, I’d be happy to help them.’

‘Your money won’t last long if you do that.’

‘Lotte’s working, Martin’s doing all right, and the twins have their college trust funds and Liesl her dowry– don’t they?’