Schramm nodded, his head hung like a truant schoolboy.
“So here you are, she and you, you in your partly unbuttoned shirt and shoeless — as you are at the moment, I see — and perhaps preparing to shed more. The woman has thrown her coat across the foot of your bed, but the bed is undisturbed indicating that matters hadn’t progressed all that much. She too is shoeless and the buttons of her blouse are undone. There is a smudge of her rouge on your shirt collar, Schramm, and another on your left cheek. The overture before Act One Scene One, I suppose. Still correct, Schramm?”
“I swear to God, Preiss, I had no intention of killing her. None! You must believe me. The picture you’ve painted … it’s all true. But for some reason I found strange, she insisted on wearing her hat into the bedroom, and kept it on even while — ” Schramm hesitated, then looking sheepish went on, “even while we were beginning to … well, you’ve already observed how far we got, haven’t you? I looked away for a moment. Actually, I was looking down at the floor. I’d dropped a shirt stud, you see. My back was turned to her. I stopped to pick up the stud, and as I rose and began to turn about … my God, Preiss, her right hand was plunging toward my neck with this enormous hatpin. I managed to seize her wrist and twist her arm back over her shoulder, pushing her at the same time with all my might. She fell back. Her head struck the bedpost. I was defending myself, Preiss, I swear!”
“The hatpin … where is it?”
“She dropped it as I was twisting her arm. It’s probably there — ” Schramm pointed to the woman’s body “- somewhere under her.”
Gently I raised the woman’s right shoulder. The hatpin was there, on the carpet, a thin but sturdy-looking piece of steel the length of a crochet needle, with a tiny knob at one end.
I lifted the hatpin and held it up for both Schramm and me to examine closely. “Strange, isn’t it?” I said. “One moment the servant of a woman’s vanity, the next a potential murder weapon. The good and the bad, life and death … all in one, all at the same time.”
Schramm said, not wanting to look further at what might have ended his life, nor at the person who brandished it, “I assume, by the way you’re wrapping it in your handkerchief, that you’re taking it to the Constabulary. Am I to be charged then?”
“Charged? Charged with what, Schramm?”
“Murder, of course.”
“That depends,” I said.
“On what?”
“On how truthful you are.”
“But I’ve told you the truth, Inspector. I swear!”
“Yes yes, Schramm, so you’ve sworn, not just once but twice now. And I’m fully prepared to accept your account except — well, except for one rather important item.”
“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” Schramm said. “I’ve hidden nothing.”
“That is not quite true,” I said. “You have managed to hide your real identity up to this point. But as I said a moment ago, I despise people who play that game. So, my friend, here is how the game ends: I will report this incident as a case of self-defence, pure and simple. But you must first admit that your true name is not Henryk Schramm but Hershel Socransky.”
“My name is what? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Inspector. Whatever gave you — ”
“Please, Socransky, don’t waste my time and yours. Be straight with me, or I promise you I will make life very difficult for you over this incident with this woman. I repeat … and I will tell you this once more only: admit who you really are, then I will file a report exonerating you from any criminal conduct. These are my terms.”
The young tenor studied me for a full minute, his lips pursed as though deciding whether or not he could take me at my word. “How do I know I can trust you?” he said.
“You don’t,” I replied flatly. “But you have no choice, do you?”
“How did you find out … about my name?”
“Ah, there you go again,” I said, “answering my questions with questions of your own. How I found out is neither here nor there. The business of a detective is to detect.”
“And to solve murder cases,” Socransky put in. “So I assume Fräulein Vanderhoute’s demise is a kind of blessing in disguise. I mean, it’s obvious, is it not, that I was intended to be the next victim in her string of murders? You may recall I suggested this might happen the night we dined at your friend’s restaurant, Preiss, and you didn’t rule out the possibility. Come to think of it, Inspector, I’ve probably done you … you and the entire city of Munich … a great favour, even if it was inadvertent.”
I felt myself at a crossroads. Socransky hadn’t denied the revelation of his real name. To that extent, and that extent only, the air had been cleared. But beyond that revelation lay deeper unanswered questions: What was Hershel Socransky’s purpose — his true purpose — here in Munich? And what would happen if his identity became known to Richard Wagner? Should I press these questions here and now? Or should I pretend that, with the death of Cornelia Vanderhoute, an immense burden had been lifted from my shoulders giving me cause to celebrate, and leave it at that for the moment?
I decided on the latter course. Not for one second did I doubt that the man I no longer needed to call Henryk Schramm was on a mission to avenge the suicide to which the elder Socransky had been driven by Wagner. But a confrontation with Hershel Socransky at this point, without better evidence, would achieve nothing but denials and more denials.
And so I chose instead to lay a trap.
“Actually, Socransky, you’ve done me — or Munich, if you will — more of a favour than you think. The question of who wrote the note threatening Wagner is now put to rest. I had originally discarded the notion that Cornelia Vanderhoute wrote that note on the grounds that murderers don’t customarily announce their plans in writing, and well ahead of time. Well, I’ve changed my mind. I’m convinced that this was an amateurish attempt on her part to terrify not only Wagner himself but everyone connected with him and his latest venture.” I heaved a false sigh of relief. “We can write ‘fini’ to that ugly little chapter too.”
“Yes, absolutely,” Socransky said a little too agreeably, as though he’d known all along about the note.
But how could he have known? I had never mentioned it to him. I was certain Brunner would have had no reason to mention it, nor old Mecklenberg who first brought it to my attention.
There was only one way Hershel Socransky could have known about the note threatening Wagner’s ruination on June twenty-first. Hershel Socransky was the author of the note.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Commissioner von Mannstein received the news of Cornelia Vanderhoute’s death with the look of a martyr whom God had forsaken. “Well, Preiss,” he said in a sepulchral voice, “thus perishes the one slim hope I cherished.” I was tempted to point out that Vanderhoute may have been a source of hope but that “slim” was not exactly an apt description — a quip that ordinarily would have elicited a comradely chuckle and wink, given his fondness for voluptuous females. But not this morning. Peering at me over his pince-nez, von Mannstein continued: “So now, the radical notions of this malcontent Wagner will go on fermenting. Richard Wagner … the one brewer Munich can do without! Tell me, Preiss, how could you allow this to happen?”
“With all due respect,” I said, “I believe my report makes clear — ”
“Your report, Inspector Preiss, makes clear that you suffer from an apparently incurable attraction to these artist types. As a result, they seem to get away with everything from minor sins to major transgressions while you, sir, stand enchanted on the sidelines. I remind you, Preiss, that the whole point of assigning you to this Wagner business was that you were the one person on my staff intimately acquainted with the habits of these exotic hothouse flowers. Looking back at your record — I refer of course to the Schumann affair in Düsseldorf — I suppose I ought to have known better. And now you hand me a report which asks me to accept that a man possessing the physique of a gladiator overpowers a mere woman, kills her, and claims he did so in self-defence! Self-defence against what, I ask you? A heaving bosom? A suffocating embrace?”