Both were lost in thoughts, which were interrupted when Wanda entered the room carrying a tray.
“Ah,” Koznicki said, “you will join us now?”
“As soon as everything’s done in the kitchen,” Wanda said. “I just brought you some fresh coffee.” She placed a full cup on a small stand next to Koesler’s chair. “You take yours black, don’t you, Father?”
Koesler smiled. “Every single time,” he said.
Wanda glanced at him. It was an odd response. She thought he might elaborate. But since the priest said no more, she put the other cup near her husband and left the room.
Koznicki was smiling broadly. He had caught the allusion of Koesler’s words. “That was the beginning, was it not?”
“I guess it was.” Koesler savored the aroma of Wanda’s coffee. For a woman who liked coffee as much as she, he wondered why she never seemed to want any when he made it. “Krieg was right. I was not at all surprised when he was familiar with a Yiddish word. Myron Cohen could have told that joke; maybe he did. When he got to the punch line, the very context would have defined ‘Gevalt!’ And once you heard it you’d remember it.
“But I did wonder about Krieg’s diet. It wasn’t too surprising when he preferred an omelet to the Stroganoff. It was a little odd, though, that he didn’t eat what was served. Most people do at sit-down dinners. It’s the rare bird who insists on an entirely different main dish. It was just out of the ordinary enough to attract my attention so that I took note of what else he ate at that first dinner we shared.”
“I am surprised,” Koznicki said, “that Sister Janet, or whoever planned the menu, didn’t take into account the Jewish dietary laws-in honor of Rabbi Winer’s presence.”
Koesler smiled. “It’s just as well she didn’t-or I never would’ve latched on to the discrepancy. . there wouldn’t have been anything for me to pick up on.” He shook his head. “That’s the interesting thing about the Gentiles’ perception of Jews. We tend to think of the Jews as abstaining from pork. So we make sure not to insult our Jewish guests by including pork on the menu. We don’t stop to consider the rest of the Old Testament injunction, ‘Thou shalt not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.’
“In any case, I didn’t really pay that much attention to the dinner Monday evening until we were served coffee. Sister Janet took cream. I guess it was subconscious, but I was waiting for Krieg to ask that the cream be passed to him. When he took his coffee black, it dawned on me why I was waiting for him to ask for the cream. It was because he had taken cream the night before.
“Of course there was no reason to draw any sort of inference at all. It was just odd and it stuck in my mind. Actually, to be honest, I bought the whole thing about some sort of plot to kill Krieg. First, there was that seemingly unreasonable animosity the writers had for Krieg. Then, after what appeared to be the botched effort to murder Krieg that ended in the death of Winer, I was sure that one of the remaining three was guilty-or that possibly there was a conspiracy. It just made me sad. I didn’t want to suspect any of these people. But it seemed unavoidable.”
Koznicki sipped gingerly at the still hot coffee. “And so it might have been. Sister Marie admitted that she and David Benbow did discuss a plan to do away with Krieg. But it came to no more than that: a meeting that concluded with their admitting to each other that they simply were incapable of murder.
“Then David Benbow was forced by Sister Marie’s confession to admit that he had surreptitiously extended a similar invitation to Augustine and Winer. Of course we know now that the rabbi was the only one of the four writers who knew exactly what he was doing. He held the key to the one chink in Krieg’s armor. And Augustine had his own plan for Krieg, which, likewise, he had to abandon because he was incapable of killing anyone.
“Unlike Krieg,” Koznicki added.
“Unlike Krieg,” Koesler concurred. “It wasn’t until I stood looking at that press release and the fact sheets your people worked up that everything began falling into place. To borrow the words of Father Augustine, it was the whole damn thing. That there was no Catholic vestige at all visible in Krieg made him seem to be not quite what he was supposed to be. Then the dominos began to fall. I remembered quite vividly how Rabbi Winer alone seemed able to stand up to him. And there were the dietary peculiarities. Then even ‘Gevalt!’ fell into place.
“And then,” he said, “Lieutenant Tully and I talked about how odd it was that Krieg wasn’t scared, didn’t seem concerned or fearful for his safety. Well, of course he wouldn’t be, since his life was not actually at stake.”
“The ironic thing,” Koesler mused, “is that even though Rabbi Winer discovered Krieg’s secret, I’m sure it wasn’t necessary for Krieg to kill him. Let’s face it: It was truly a stand-off. Sure, Winer knew about Krieg. But Krieg knew about Winer. And that reciprocal knowledge was the best defense for each of the two. But Krieg panicked. All he could think of was getting rid of the one person who had the power to destroy him and his empire. And, when it came right down to it, having panicked he did fairly well at thinking on his feet. He took advantage of the coincidence that he and Winer shared the same drink preference. He took advantage of his own psychodrama “murder”-it fell right into his spur of the moment plot. Unless. .” Koesler hesitated. “Unless, of course, the alternate hypothesis was true: that Krieg had this whole plot formed well in advance.
“In either case,” he concluded, “it was Krieg who killed Winer.”
“How sad,” said Koznicki. “It was all so unnecessary. Most assuredly, the rabbi would have kept Krieg’s secret, using the knowledge only to make Krieg back off and desist hounding him and the other three writers. And”-he spoke increasingly slowly and thoughtfully-“we will never know, of course, but one wonders whether another factor, no matter how slight, was that, having betrayed fellow Jews almost a half-century before and having suffered the intense long-term guilt over it, one wonders whether Rabbi Winer would have held back due to the thought of again informing on a fellow Jew-even though undoubtedly neither Krieg nor the rabbi would have considered Krieg truly Jewish.
“Or is it,” he looked at Koesler, “something like, ‘Once a Catholic always a Catholic’. . or, ‘Once a priest always a priest’?”
Koesler smiled and shrugged. He seemed lost in thought. “Strange. .” he said, finally.
Koznicki waited, but when nothing more was said, he asked, “Strange? What is strange?”
“Oh. .” Koesler stirred himself from reflection. “I was just thinking about Krieg and Rabbi Winer-how similar their situations were.”
“Similar?”
“Yes. Each had a secret-and a deep-seated fear that he would be ruined if that closet skeleton were to be revealed. That fear haunted both Krieg and Winer, and, sadly, motivated Krieg in his fatal decision to murder the rabbi.”
“Hmmm. .” Koznicki murmured, “. . and yet we learned that a few of the rabbi’s fellow Jews did find out what had happened in the concentration camp and they had been understanding-forgiving even.” He looked at Koesler questioningly. “Could that not have been the case with Reverend Krieg? Might his followers have been unconcerned about his Jewish heritage?”
Koesler shook his head. “I don’t know, Inspector. I don’t think anyone can tell for sure. The rabbi’s forced collaboration with the Nazis was certainly not common knowledge. A rare few discovered it and those few loved and admired him enough to understand the impossible pressure he’d had to endure at Dachau. Would his entire congregation have been as understanding? Would his literary fans have found it easy to overlook, or to forgive and forget?
“The same thing with Krieg. We don’t know that anyone knew his secret. I guess we’d just have to assume that he concealed his mother’s ethnicity and religion.