Doctor Death Read online

  “Should I get another pillow?” I asked.

  “No, thank you,” he said.

  “Do you think you could sleep a little?”

  He looked at me. “It is four o’clock in the afternoon.”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “I have a broken leg, Madeleine. I have not lost my mind. There is a copy of Médecine Aujourd’hui on my bedside table. Perhaps you would care to fetch it.”

  I fled up the stairs.

  I did not enter my father’s bedroom very often. Elise made the bed and did the cleaning, and my contact with him usually did not commence until he, fully dressed, shaved, and hair neatly brushed, came down to join me for breakfast. It made me hesitate for a moment on the threshold as if I were about to invade a foreign territory.

  The journal was indeed lying on the bedside table next to the photograph of my mother. At first glance one might think it a wedding picture. My mother was dressed in white and seated in an armchair, while my father stood half a step behind her and held one of her hands. Only when one looked more closely did one see that her head was supported by pillows and still drooped a little bit to the right, against my father, and that her eyes were closed. I, or a pale and very frightened ten-year-old version of me, had withdrawn as far into the background as the photographer would permit.

  The day the picture had been taken was missing from my memory. I had been there; anyone could see that. But I could remember almost nothing. Only Aunt Desirée combing my hair with water and braiding it with decisive hands, and putting powder on my face, which I had never tried before, all the while murmuring, “Poor child, oh, my poor child.”

  I stared at the picture for a few seconds without touching it. Many people exhibited their mourning portraits more ostentatiously. Madame Vogler, for example, had a picture of Elise’s father in his coffin proudly placed on top of the sideboard in the parlor, but I was glad this one was not in a place where I would have to see it every day. I probably ought to have brought it downstairs with me, so that my father could have it by him—it was the only photograph of Maman that we had—but I could not make myself.

  People who knew my mother always say that I look like her. I have her narrow nose, her prominent, not entirely feminine eyebrows, her blue eyes. My hands are like hers, too, long and narrow, with slender fingers. Her hair was darker than mine, but ten years of sunlight had bleached and yellowed the photograph so the difference was erased, and because she had been placed sitting, you could not see the difference in height. Une petite, Aunt Desirée always said about her, and when my own body unexpectedly shot up so that even as a fourteen-year-old I was only ten centimeters shorter than my lanky father, her disappointment was palpable.

  We never spoke of my mother. Never. But she was there on the bedside table nonetheless, and in spite of everything the photographer had done to make her look alive, what we were posing with, Papa and I, remained a corpse.

  “Maddie!”

  My father was calling me from the salon. I grabbed the journal, turned my back on the picture of my dead mother, and hurried down the stairs.

  In spite of the laudanum drops, he slept badly that night, and I, who had settled on the chaise longue so that I could help him if necessary, slept even less.

  The next morning I sent Elise Vogler to the boulangerie and made tea for both of us by the fireplace in the salon. Papa looked terrible. There were deep shadows under his eyes, deep furrows around his mouth, and his skin tone was so alarming that I feared internal bleeding.

  “I am going to send for Doctor Lanier,” I said, referring to his orthopedically interested colleague at Saint Bernardine. “When he hears it is you, he will no doubt come right away.”

  “Absolutely not,” said Papa. “I feel fine. Lanier has more important things to do. Besides, you are going to Heidelberg.”

  “I am what?”

  “You are going to call on August Dreyfuss. He is professor of parasitology at the Forchhammer Institute, and I am sure he will be able to identify the mites for us.”

  “Mites,” I said. “Who can think about mites now? I can’t leave you!”

  “Of course you can. Elise will take care of me. We will send a telegram to Professor Dreyfuss, so he knows you are coming. You can leave this very morning.”

  And so it was. In his laudanum haze, my father had convinced himself that there was a connection between the brutal killing of Father Abigore and Cecile Montaine’s death. He was so tormented by the notion that he had not examined Abigore with sufficient diligence that I finally agreed to his request, even though it pained me to leave him in Elise’s care. She was sweet and helpful, but she would not be able to stand up to him if he should suddenly decide to get out of bed.

  The Forchhammer Institute was situated close to Heidelberg University’s library behind St. Peter’s Church. It was a large, newly built yellow brick building with a generally plain exterior that made the classical columns along the front look oddly pasted on.

  “The professor has been waiting for you,” said the terrifying concierge who showed me to his office, and there was no mistaking the reproach in her tone and choice of words. She was dressed completely in black, and in spite of her relative youth—she must have been in her midthirties—one got the clear impression that she was wearing widow’s weeds.

  Perhaps her hostility was simply due to the fact that I was French. Even though the last shot in the Franco-Prussian War had been fired several years before I was even born, there was still a great deal of bitterness on both sides, and it was only seven years since the Schnaebelé Affair had almost ignited a new conflict between the two countries.

  “I am sorry,” I said with my most careful German pronunciation. “We were delayed in our departure from Strasbourg.” I overcame a desire to smooth both my hair and my clothes and hoped the professor was less irritable than the Black Widow.

  My German is very good—Varbourg is, after all, more or less bilingual, even though the French authorities prefer not to admit it—but I had to search a little longer for the words I needed, and right now I could have done without that handicap. As it was, I felt sufficiently hampered by my sex, my age, my not particularly elegant traveling suit, and the fact that I was here to ask the important man a favor.

  “This way,” said the widow and led me down a long corridor made bright and modernized by the daylight that came flooding in through an elongated cupola overhead. She stopped at the last of a series of tall, black-painted doors and knocked discreetly.

  “Avanti,” someone said cheerfully from inside, even though the professor as far as I knew was not the least bit Italian. The widow’s lips tightened a bit, and I sensed that she did not approve of the lighthearted tone.

  “Fräulein Karno,” she said and opened the door for me. She pronounced it Karno and not Karno, which made my own name sound foreign to my ears.

  I don’t know what I expected a professor of parasitology—especially one from Heidelberg—to look like. Definitely spectacles and gray temples. Possibly also a certain bulk across the middle or perhaps an ascetic leanness like my father’s.

  Professor Dreyfuss had none of these. He was young in a slightly indeterminate way that covered the territory between twenty-five and thirty-five; his prominent chin was marked by a very short and extremely elegant beard with no sign of gray, and his dark hair hung down over his brow with a boyish unkemptness that did not seem to match his title. He was wearing knickers, a shirt, and a padded vest, all in bright white, and had a slender rapier in his hand. He was a bit out of breath and a little sweaty, and the large window facing the institute’s atrium yard had been opened wide.

  “I must beg the young lady’s apology for my appearance,” he said in perfect French. “I am off to the fencing club once we finish here.” He had clearly used the waiting time to warm up. With an elastic flick of the wrist he threw the rapier from his right hand to his left, took my hand, and kissed it lightly in a way that was at once gallant and formal. “Welcome t
o Heidelberg, Mademoiselle Karno.”

  Had I not been wearing gloves, I would have felt his lips, I thought spontaneously, and felt a ridiculous blush rising to my cheeks.

  “Thank you for seeing me, Professor,” I said.

  “Of course,” he said. “I have read several of your father’s articles. I understand that he has suffered a slight misadventure?”

  “Slight? Is that what he wrote? He broke both an arm and a leg, Professor, in a terrible accident that might easily have cost him his life.”

  “I am so sorry. Please convey my warmest wishes for a full recovery.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And so what is this fascinating specimen that you have brought me, Mademoiselle Karno?”

  “A mite.” From my little chatelaine bag I brought out the microscope slide case containing one of the two mites Papa had managed to collect, along with the description and drawing of it. “We think it must belong to the soft mites, but my father has never seen anything like it.”

  “Hmmm. Let me see.” He tossed the rapier casually in an armchair and accepted the specimen with unvarnished curiosity. His enormous desk overflowed with a judicious mixture of books, papers, and sports equipment—I noticed among other things a tennis racquet, a pair of riding spurs, and a cap of the type that rowing crews use—but on a contrastingly tidy laboratory bench by the window there was a microscope. I could not help noticing that it was Zeiss’s latest model, and it was with difficulty that I repressed a wave of envy. He placed the slide under the Zeiss lens and bent over the microscope. At that moment, everything that was flamboyant and boyish fell away and was replaced by a searching intensity, and he looked what he was—a serious scientist. It suited him.

  He studied the mite for several minutes. Then he smoothed the drawing and looked at it. Then back to the microscope. Then to the drawing. He compared them perhaps half a dozen times before he straightened up.

  “Interesting,” he said, and stared out the window for a few more seconds. Then he suddenly turned to me with a completely different expression from the one he had worn when he bid me welcome. The humor and gallantry were gone. He observed me with more or less the same searching intensity that he had devoted to the mite. I felt myself caught in his examination, pinned and studied to such a degree that it was difficult to breathe.

  “Did you execute the drawing?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded briefly. “Very precise. Extremely precise, in fact. You have a scientist’s eye for detail, Mademoiselle Karno.”

  My heart swelled with pride. He could have given me no compliment that would have made a greater impression.

  “Can you identify the mite, Professor?” I asked.

  “Not offhand, but with certain additional studies I will probably be able to classify it. Where did you get it?”

  “My father found it while examining a young deceased woman. It apparently crawled out of her nose.”

  “I see . . .” He looked in the microscope one more time. “May I keep it? I would like to make some comparisons with various specimens from the institute’s collection.”

  “Of course.” I thought for a moment. “But can you perhaps venture a guess at whether the mite infection could have caused the young woman’s death?”

  He shook his head, just one sharp jerk of his chin. “I don’t yet have sufficient basis for that kind of supposition. If you want to come back in a few days, I’ll be able to give you a clearer and more detailed answer.”

  Come back? I had not been planning to make two trips to Heidelberg within a week. Even with the railroad, it was more than six hours in each direction, and the expense was a substantial strain for a modest household like ours. I had somehow imagined that the rest could be taken care of by letter or telegram.

  He sensed my hesitation.

  “Well, if you can’t come, I shall have to come to you,” he said with a faint smile.

  All at once I was very conscious of being alone with a man I didn’t know. True, he had left the door open, presumably out of consideration for my reputation, but still.

  “I am not sure that my father can do without me,” I said, embarrassed to note that it sounded like what it was—a schoolgirl’s excuse.

  At that moment there were steps in the corridor outside. The professor raised his head and listened.

  “You had better discuss that with your father, then,” he said. “I expect to have a result in a few days.”

  Through the door burst a long-limbed blond young man, also sweaty and out of breath and dressed in a luminously white fencing costume.

  “What is keeping you, Gussi?” he said. “We can’t manage without you! They have brought von Hahn, and Grawitch is about to shit his pants from fear . . .” He came to a sharp halt when he noticed me. “Aha!” he said. “The cause of the delay. I must ask the Fräulein to excuse me. I did not realize that there was a lady present.”

  “I was just leaving,” I said quickly. “Professor, my father is deeply grateful for your help. We look forward to learning the results of your studies.”

  “Let me show you out,” said the professor.

  “I have delayed you long enough,” I protested. “Goodbye.”

  I left before he could offer any further objections and walked away with rapid steps that resounded between the corridor’s shiny walls. That there was an element of flight in my retreat, I knew only too well.

  “What did he say?” my father shouted as soon as he could hear me in the hallway. “Did he know what it was?”

  “He wanted to study it more closely,” I answered awkwardly, with one of my hatpins between my teeth. “It will be a couple of days before we know more. How have things been? Are you feeling better?”

  “I am completely fine,” he growled.

  But when I came into the salon, I saw that his facial color was still awful and his breathing heavy from laudanum drops. He was not well.

  “I am sending Elise for Doctor Lanier,” I said, and this time I ignored his protests. They were not as vigorous as before, I noted, which further increased my concern.

  “Has the Commissioner been here?” I asked.

  “Yes. At noon. They still have not found Father Abigore’s body.”

  “And the dog?”

  “No, not that, either.”

  Two days later, the Commissioner was once again seated in the mahogany armchair. It was his habit to drop by at lunchtime, and there was usually an evident relief in the way his solid, square figure sank into the chair. The Commissioner had neither wife nor children, and at the age of fifty-two it seemed unlikely that this would change. He lived in a rooming house nearby and in many ways probably led a lonely existence. He was a presentable man with a good position in life, and although his income was not princely, it was still quite reputable. He was perhaps not the type to set young girls’ hearts aflutter, but why not a calm, good-natured widow with a bit of sense? Did the dead scare them off, or did he? If you did not know him, he might seem severe and inaccessible.

  In any case, the house on Carmelite Street was the closest he came to a home during this time. He stopped by most days of the week, sometimes even twice a day if he thought a case provided him with sufficient excuse.

  “How are you feeling, dear friend?” he asked.

  “Fine,” answered my father, and then, with an acknowledgment that it had been more serious than he would previously have admitted, “better.”

  It was true. My father was much improved. Doctor Lanier had placed a plaster cast both on his arm and the broken leg according to Antonius Mathijsen’s method, instead of the primitive splints that the medics had used. It was clear that this immobilization led to a dramatic easing of the pain. He now used the laudanum drops only to fall asleep at night and in much smaller doses. This had restored his pallor and his breathing to levels considerably more normal, and he had regained his customary sharp wits.

  “Have they found Father Abigore?” he asked.

  �
��No.” The Commissioner sighed. “Marot apparently does not consider that part of the investigation important.”

  Police Inspector Marot’s investigation of the circumstances of Father Abigore’s death proceeded slowly, the Commissioner told us. His housekeeper, an elderly widow from the parish, had explained that someone had knocked on the door a little past eleven on the night in question, just as she and the priest were going to bed—a little earlier than usual because Father Abigore was still ill from the cold weather at Cecile’s burial. When the housekeeper opened the door, she found an errand boy who delivered a message and disappeared into the darkness again before she had adjusted her spectacles properly. “No proper description” it said in the report, which made the Commissioner grumble crankily.

  “No proper report,” he corrected. “The woman must have said something, no matter how imprecise. Fat, thin, tall, little? They have given up in advance on finding him, in spite of the fact that he may have spoken with the murderer! And she used the note to light the stove.”

  But what was clear in spite of everything was that the note had said that a railroad worker had been hurt so badly that last rites were required. Ignoring his own illness, the priest immediately grabbed the bag that always stood ready for precisely this kind of emergency and rushed off on his bicycle. They found the bicycle later, propped against a gable at the Varbourg East railway station, but the bag had not resurfaced, and there was still no sign of the missing corpse.

  “Marot’s theory is that the body has simply been stolen and sold by an opportunistic street gang. My dear friend, is it possible for you to ask around? One might tell things to a colleague one doesn’t feel like admitting to the police—or to me.”

  My father raised an eyebrow. “Who is it you think I should ask?”