The Riddle of Monte Verita Read online

  ‘The man who was watching him was starting to get bored. He was sleepy. He went to fetch his thermos of coffee which he had left inside in a corner. It was pitch black in there and some time elapsed before he could locate it. When he finally found it and got back to his post, Dr. Hoenig was no longer alone. He was standing next to the lounge door and the person who had just come in was in the middle of the room.

  ‘The agent has excellent eyesight. He has been able to retrace all the details of the murder scene with a remarkable clarity. He had – and these were his own words – the impression of being at the theatre. He swore to me that he had never seen anything quite so horrible.’

  ‘Damn it, man,’ barked Harvey. ‘Get on with it. As an eye-witness to the crime, he must be able to describe the murderer.’

  ‘He did,’ replied Prokosch with an ominous calm. ‘Only it wasn’t a murderer, it was a murderess.’

  ***

  The sun had moved in the sky and now it shone directly into Pierre’s eyes, so he saw the terrace, the palm trees and his friends’ faces through a dazzling glare. His metal chair made a scraping noise on the flagstones when he moved it. He had the impression that everyone was looking at him. Until then he had listened with a certain detachment, not asking any questions, with the polite attention of someone with no direct involvement. Yet at the same time he had had the feeling that there was the risk of immediate danger. Nevertheless, he was completely unprepared for the crushing blow which hit him now and which tore him from the reality to which he had been clinging – a reality based on intelligence, reflection and reasonable convictions – and plunged him again into nightmare. The most horrible aspect of the nightmare was that it wasn’t based on false terrors, on a chaos of confused sensations. What made it particularly frightening was its total coherence. It was accompanied by the certitude that all the pieces of the puzzle fit together with an implacable logic. He remembered his meeting with Dr. Hoenig, the strange discussion between the doctor and his wife in the grottos of the Borromeo Palace, the confusion and the disarray of Solange, her bizarre behaviour towards him, and the truths which she kept from him.

  He remembered their short time together the night before, the bitter taste of the drink she had made him take, his sudden desire to sleep and the bottomless pit into which he had then fallen. The memories rushed into his brain with the automatic rapidity of an association of ideas, and it took a determined intellectual effort on his part to interrupt the flow. “You’re becoming delirious, old chap,” he said to himself. “Your delirium has a certain logic to it, but it’s time to remember that logic is directly instigated by delirium, as your master Edgar Allan Poe, was in the habit of claiming.” And, assuredly, although reflection and intelligence told him to desist from his frightful thoughts, it was precisely because of them that he could not.

  From where he sat he had a view of the staircase leading to the park below. A small group of uniformed police officers was climbing the stairs. At their head was a tall thin man carrying a raincoat over his arm and a leather briefcase in his gloved hand. He was impeccably dressed in a grey flannel suit and a brown felt hat. His fair complexion made him appear younger than he was, for his temples were greying. As he crossed the terrace, he glanced with studied indifference at the table where the five men, more embarrassed than they tried to appear, sat stiffly and silently.

  ‘Who’s that,’ whispered Lippi.

  ‘Superintendent Brenner,’ replied Prokosch. ‘The policeman I was telling you about.’

  Pierre followed him with his eyes. The man seemed all the more dangerous for not looking like a policeman. “He must play his cards close to his chest,” he thought. The superintendent joined one of the organisers who had been waiting for him at the door and disappeared into the Albergo.

  ‘We’re certainly going to be questioned,’ announced Lippi solemnly. ‘In the novels, the chief inspector or the superintendent gather all the suspects together and warn them not to leave the area before the end of the investigation.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ exclaimed Harvey. ‘I have to get back to England. I have a magistrate’s court in Oxford on Friday.’

  Mestre burst out laughing. He looked at Harvey and then at Lippi, still giggling.

  ‘You’re both the same. We aren’t in a detective story. And we aren’t suspects. If what Prokosch just said is true, Hoenig was killed by a woman. And, unless I’m much mistaken, there isn’t a woman amongst us.’

  ‘Actually, there is,’ said Harvey thoughtfully. ‘In fact there are two: Madame Hoenig, whom we can eliminate because apparently she has an alibi, which leaves Madame Garnier.’

  ‘Cherchez la femme,’ chuckled Lippi.

  Pierre had seen it coming, in a vague sort of way. But now it had been said. Mestre rushed to his aid:

  ‘Stop pretending you’re Dr. Watson, Harvey. And as for you, Professor, you’re not funny. Look at poor Pierre.’

  ‘I merely wanted to point out ….’ protested Harvey, weakly.

  ‘What? That you were all alone in your bungalow, a few steps away from the scene of the crime, and you haven’t an alibi? You could quite easily have disguised yourself as a woman and killed Hoenig.’ He tilted his chair back and look at them quizzically. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you puzzle lovers, but the whole business seems exceedingly simple to me.’

  ‘Exceedingly is the mot juste,’ agreed Prokosch, in an even tone, and they all turned towards him. It was only now that it dawned on them that he had been speaking without an accent for quite some time. Putting the tips of his fingers together, he contemplated the sky just above the trees.

  ‘I told you that the crime was committed in front of witnesses and they had seen the murderer. Nothing could be more simple, in fact. Well….’

  ‘Well, all that remains is to arrest her and put a rope around her neck!’ exclaimed Lippi, cheerfully.

  Prokosch coughed gently.

  ‘Well, at least you’re not shy in expressing yourself,’ he said with obvious distaste. ‘Er… may I go on? But first I would ask you to envisage the scene as I did when the two agents described it to me. Let’s start with the woman. She was a head shorter than Dr. Hoenig, which puts her height at about one metre fifty-eight – five feet two inches in English terms. She wore a very ample brown raincoat, without a belt, and a scarf knotted under her chin in place of a hat. What disconcerted the witnesses is that she didn’t remove either the coat or the scarf, even though they must both have been soaking wet.’

  ‘But surely,’ exclaimed Pierre, forcing himself not to betray the anxiety he was feeling, ‘they must be able to provide more detail? Was she blonde or brunette, for example?’

  ‘That’s the trouble,’ replied Prokosch. ‘They couldn’t even tell us that much. The scarf covered her hair and part of her shoulders. Under the circumstances –.’

  ‘Hang on!’ said Mestre. ‘There was plenty of light in the room. Don’t tell me they didn’t see her face.’

  Prokosch shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘At that distance, behind the window glass and through the rain? You can’t be serious. The agents only saw a shape: that of an individual of the female sex, fairly short, and who seemed quite young. At the time, they thought they recognised her, for it was not her first visit to the doctor.’

  ‘Wait!’ said Lippi, brusquely. ‘The other evening, as Garnier and I were strolling near Hoenig’s bungalow, we saw a woman with him. We couldn’t make out her face either, but it’s probably the same woman.’

  ‘I was going to say the same thing,’ added Pierre, hardly able to contain his relief. ‘I think we should report that to the police.’ He turned to Prokosch, who put on a polite expression. ‘A woman in a badly cut suit, wearing a shapeless hat. Apart from that, she fits the description,’ he added lamely, trying to convince himself.

  ‘Irena Samoïlova,’ the little Russian announced, placidly. ‘She’s the Molotov envoy I spoke about before. There’s no need to notify the authorities. They alrea
dy know.’

  ‘You don’t seem very surprised,’ said Lippi in astonishment.

  ‘Surprised about what? The woman has been under surveillance since she arrived in Switzerland. I can understand why you want to look at all the possibilities, but that’s not the answer.’

  ‘Why not? She’s about the height and build of the person who killed Hoenig. What are the police waiting for?’

  ‘Yes, she’s about the right height and build,’ admitted Prokosch. ‘But the description – if you can call it that – fits a multitude of women. Madame Garnier, for one,’ he said to Pierre with a friendly smile as if he were joking. ‘Although, having had the opportunity to admire her wardrobe, I can’t imagine her rigged out like that.’

  ‘Too true,’ agreed Pierre, attempting to maintain the light banter. ‘Even more so as she spent the entire afternoon in the company of Madame Hoenig.’

  ‘Careful!’ joked Lippi, in the same vein. ‘You can’t get away that easily! If we’re talking alibis, Monsieur Garnier, where was your wife last night?’

  ‘She was with me,’ replied Pierre, a little too quickly. ‘We never left the room and we went to bed early.’

  ‘At what time, exactly?’ asked Lippi, still in the spirit of things.

  ‘Eleven thirty exactly,’ replied Pierre.

  It was the first actual lie he had told and it seemed to him as though his voice betrayed him.

  ‘How do you happen to know the time so precisely?’

  ‘That’s enough, Lippi!’ Mestre intervened. “ I don’t think we should be playing at detectives, even if it’s only in fun. And that goes for you, too, Prokosch.’

  Prokosch made a half-hearted protest.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I merely wanted to show that it was as absurd to suspect La Samoïlova as to suspect Monsieur Garnier’s wife. What motive would she have? She was sent from Moscow to negotiate with Hoenig, not to assassinate him.’

  ‘I still think she should be interrogated,’ muttered Lippi.

  ‘That’s impossible for two reasons. One being that the Swiss are supposed to be unaware of her activities and it would create an international incident. The other….’

  ‘Well?’ said Mestre, impatiently.

  Prokosch hesitated.

  ‘The other being that she has disappeared. She slipped through the net last night and didn’t return to her hotel. They’ve been looking for her for twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Well, there you are!’ announced Lippi, triumphantly. ‘No need to look any further.’

  ‘She had all the time in the world to kill Hoenig,’ added Mestre.

  ‘And so the Russkies set a trap with that story about a secret treaty which, as I said, made no sense at all. I’m truly surprised, my dear Prokosch, that you didn’t recognise the signature of that Machiavellian playwright The Little Father of the People, who weaves his innumerable assassinations with the hand of a master.’

  ‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs,’ announced Harvey sententiously and somewhat incongruously, motivated not so much by any support for Stalin as a desire to show off his familiarity with French sayings.

  ‘You can’t make… Oh, that’s a good one!’ Lippi said loudly and with ill-concealed sarcasm, slapping Harvey on the knee. ‘Did you just make that up or did you hear it somewhere?’

  ‘Come, come, gentlemen,’ interceded Prokosch in the manner of a schoolmaster admonishing unruly students. ‘Instead of constructing all sorts of wild hypotheses, you’d be better off hearing the end of the story, even though I’m reluctant to tell it. It’s quite likely you won’t believe me. And I might as well tell you I don’t know what to believe myself.

  ‘Here’s the rest of what the agent told me. Normally, he would have watched such a scene as a matter of routine importance, had he not sensed something bizarre about it. As I said before, the woman was standing in the centre of the lounge without making the slightest effort to take off her scarf or the brown oilskin covering the rest of her clothes. She even kept her gloves on (did I mention she was wearing gloves?): the cuffs were covered by the sleeves of the raincoat. At no time did her host invite her to sit down and he, too, remained standing. It was she who spoke most of the time, animatedly, it seems. The he started to reply and the discussion quickly became very heated. At least, that’s what the agent deduced from the movements of the two participants which appeared confrontational; from Hoenig’s gestures he was evidently furious.

  ‘Seeing that things were taking a turn for the worse, the agent went to wake up his colleague and they both took up their observation posts. The woman had planted herself directly in front of Hoenig and drawn herself up to her full height. She appeared, according to the agent, to be “telling him a few home truths,” and then she slapped his face. Hoenig didn’t flinch. He adjusted his spectacles and laughed at her. The woman turned and walked to the door, which she opened and then disappeared from view. Both agents swear they heard the other door slam, the one leading to the outside. I must stress that, from their observation posts they could only see the side of the bungalow with the window; the front door and the porch remained outside their field of vision. Nevertheless, they would have seen her once she started to walk on the path, for there is a streetlamp not far from the bungalow. The fact is they did not see her, so they assumed she had worked her way round to the rear of the bungalow, which seemed a curious route to take.’

  ‘And they didn’t try to follow her?’ asked Lippi.

  ‘Why would they? Remember, they were more than fifty metres away and they would never have caught up with her in the darkness. And besides, they were under orders not to intervene in any way. So they went back to watching Dr. Hoenig.

  ‘After the woman had left, he shrugged his shoulders and went back to the table, as if nothing had happened. He took his time lighting a cigar, then picked up his pen and continued writing. Then the woman reappeared in the room.

  ‘She was moving very slowly, with her upper body entirely motionless. It was as if she were approaching her prey, gliding imperceptibly along the ground. Her right hand was tucked inside her raincoat. When she reached a spot behind the doctor, with his curved back presenting a clear target, she pulled out her hand. It was holding a knife. She was holding it at chest height, with the blade pointing slightly downwards, as the professionals do. The blade was aimed at the part of the body below the left collarbone. “Exactly the way we are taught in training,” as one of the agents observed.

  ‘At the time, everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. Without the slightest hesitation, the woman drove the knife in as far as the handle, putting all her weight behind the blow with, as one agent put it: “surgical precision.” Hoenig keeled over on the table, his hands attempting to grip the edge. Because his face was directly under the lamp, the two agents saw his face almost distinctly, despite the distance. It held an expression of immense surprise.

  ‘The woman took one step back and let go of the knife. Hoenig was seized with violent convulsions that brought him up out of his chair, which then tilted over and crashed to the floor, taking him with it. In the process, his body left the agents’ field of vision. Then the woman did something extraordinary.

  ‘She walked round the table to the window, which she opened. She then leant out of the window to grab the shutters. She pulled them towards her and closed them tightly. Curtains. The show was over.’

  ‘Let’s see,’ said Mestre. ‘When she leant out of the window, the agents must have got a look at her face, I assume?’

  ‘Of course not,’ sighed Prokosch. ‘You can be sure I asked them that. The woman was seen in silhouette, backlit by the lamp. All they could make out was the colour of her hair. In that position, if it had been blonde or light chestnut, there would have been a halo around her head, despite the scarf. They didn’t see anything, so they deduced she must have had black or very dark hair. By the way, La Samoïlova is a natural blonde.’

  He paused for a moment, while the re
st looked at each other in silence.

  ‘Keep going,’ said Pierre, brusquely.

  ‘Our two heroes, both young and relatively inexperienced, stood rooted to the spot at first. One of them had the sense to look at his watch. It was 23 17. The other picked up a flashlight and they both ran out of the bungalow. They ran quickly up the path leading to Hoenig’s bungalow and straight to the door which they tried to open, without success. One of them tried to barge the door down, but only managed to bruise his shoulder. Meanwhile, the other tried to open the shutters of the lounge and bedroom, to no avail. The door was bolted, the shutters were hermetically closed, and there was no other way in.

  ‘Yes, there was,’ objected Harvey. ‘There was one at the back: the skylight in the bathroom ceiling.’

  ‘You’re quite right. There’s one made of frosted glass, just wide enough for a small person to squeeze through. But it was also locked on the inside. Moreover, there’s a grassy border all round the bungalow which was very soggy due to all the rain. Anyone dropping from the bathroom window couldn’t have failed to leave footprints. And there weren’t any.

  ‘You see, these bungalows are set apart from each other and are protected by pretty effective locks so as to discourage cat burglars, for – despite what the natives may tell you – there are robberies in Switzerland just like everywhere else.

  ‘So, to conclude, one of the agents went up to the Albergo and the other stayed behind to stand guard, in the unlikely event that the murderess had stayed behind in the bungalow. Their theory was that she had slipped out of the bungalow closing the door behind her and she had managed to escape by keeping herself out of sight. You know the rest, thanks to the excellent account given by Monsieur Mestre.’

  ‘This is all terribly banal,’ said Lippi, affecting a yawn. ‘The villain has disappeared and all that remains is to find her. So what? Where’s the mystery?’

  ‘So what? But it doesn’t hold up!’ retorted Harvey, indignantly. ‘Think about it: whether the woman shut the door behind her or let it shut by mistake – as has happened to me – all she had to do was to turn the handle. If the door didn’t open when the agents tried it, it was because it had been locked with a key.’