Fatal Lies

26

It was late afternoon when Rheinhardt arrived in Land-strasse. He had not forewarned the Zelenkas of his intention to visit; consequently, he was not surprised to find the bungalow empty. Removing a box of cigars from his coat, he passed the time puffing contentedly and contemplating the gasworks through a trail of rising smoke. Perhaps, on account of his elated state, these bleak edifices no longer looked ugly. They appeared romantic-like the dolmen tombs of mythic warriors, or the watchtowers of Valhalla.

Meta was the first to return. She immediately apologized-for no obvious reason-and ushered Rheinhardt through the door. The cramped living space was just as he remembered it: shadowy and claustrophobic. After offering him a chair, she began making tea.

“Your husband left a message-you wanted to see me?”

“Yes,” said Meta. “It's about Thomas's things.”

“Things?”

“His possessions… We received a parcel from the school, yesterday morning.” She paused, and struggled to control a sudden swell of grief that made her chest heave. “His clothes, a little money… his schoolwork and some books. But something was missing. His dictionary.”

Meta came to the table and placed a cracked cup in front of the inspector. He thanked her, and indicated that she should continue.

“It was very expensive… Hartel and Jacobsen: bound in green leather, with gold lettering. Fanousek worked very hard to get the extra money we needed. We thought Thomas should have something like that-so that he wouldn't stand out so much. We thought the other boys would have such things.”

Meta sat down opposite Rheinhardt and searched his face for a response. He felt vaguely disappointed. His expectation had been that the Zelenkas would have something interesting to tell him- something that would help him solve the mystery of their son's premature demise. The loss of the boy's dictionary however valuable the book might have been, seemed rather trivial under the circumstances.

“Are you suggesting that it has been stolen?”

Meta shrugged. “We just want it back.”

Rheinhardt nodded. “I will make some inquiries.”

“Thank you, Inspector.”

His promise to make some inquiries was hollow, disingenuous. He might ask one or two questions, he supposed, but that was all.

Rheinhardt sipped his tea.

There was nothing more to say-and the silence became increasingly brittle. Yet the inspector was reluctant to leave. He did not want to depart under a pall of disappointment, feeling that his earlier high spirits had been dissipated and that he had wasted his time.

“You said that there were other things in the parcel. May I see them?”

“Yes,” said Meta. “Everything we received is in Thomas's room. I put the clothes in the chest-the other things are on top of it.”

She gestured toward the closed door. As before, she was disinclined to follow.

Rheinhardt entered the boy's room and was struck by its terrible stillness-more so than before. He recalled sitting in his parlor, listening to Therese playing the piano and Mitzi humming, he recalled contemplating the horror of being predeceased by one's own children, and as he recalled these things, he felt as if the back of his neck was being chilled by an icy exhalation. He turned around nervously, half expecting to see the Erlkonig.

The strange presentiment passed, and Rheinhardt was visited by a sad realization. Fanousek and Meta did not want Thomas's dictionary back in order to sell it. They wanted it back because it was Thomas's-and everything that Thomas had owned was here. This was all they had left of their son.

Rheinhardt knelt by the chest and began to flick through the boy's exercise books. The margins were filled with teachers’ comments- most were helpful, but a significant number were merely sarcastic. Beneath these exercise books was a much larger volume with hard cloth covers and thick yellow paper. It contained sketches: a vase, naked bodies in various Olympian poses, and a seated woman. They were not very accomplished works of art-the athletic figures in particular were flawed by errors of proportion. However, the seated woman was executed with just enough proficiency to suggest the distinctive lineaments of Frau Becker.

The next exercise book was full of numbers and algebraic equations. Throughout, the left page had been used for rough work and was a chaotic mess of scribbled operators and products. The opposite page, however, was much neater, showing, step by step, the precise method employed to calculate answers.

Something caught Rheinhardt's attention: a systematic regularity among the rough work-number pairs, arranged in neat columns of varying length. Rheinhardt had forgotten most of his school mathematics. Even so, he was reasonably confident that these pairings had nothing to do with Zelenka's calculations. Moreover, although some were in Zelenka's hand, most of them were in someone else's- someone whose numerals were much smaller. Inspection of the marginalia soon established that the additional number pairs had been produced by the mathematics master, Herr Sommer.

What did they mean?

Rheinhardt remembered that Liebermann-for reasons the young doctor had not cared to disclose-was of the opinion that Herr Sommer should be closely questioned. Liebermann's penchant for mystification was extremely irritating, but Rheinhardt could not suppress a smile, impressed as he was by his friend's perspicacity.