The Time Dweller

THE PLEASURE GARDEN OF FELIPE SAGITTARIUS

THE AIR was still and warm, the sun bright and the sky blue above the ruins of Berlin as I clambered over piles of weedcovered brick and broken concrete on my way to investigate the murder of an unknown man in the garden of Police Chief Bismarck.

My name is Minos Aquilinas, top Metatemporal Investigator of Europe, and this job was going to be a tough one, I knew.

Don't ask me the location or the date. I never bother to find out things like that, they only confuse me. With me it's instinct, win or lose.

They'd given me all the information there was. The dead man had already had an autopsy. Nothing unusual about him except that he had paper lungs - disposable lungs. That pinned him down a little. The only place I knew of where they still used paper lungs was Rome. What was a Roman doing in Berlin? Why was he murdered in Police Chief Bismarck's garden? He'd been strangled, that I'd been told. It wasn't hard to strangle a man with paper lungs, it didn't take long. But who and why were harder questions to answer right then.

It was a long way across the ruins to Bismarck's place. Rubble stretched in all directions and only here and there could you see a landmark - what was left of the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate, the Brechtsmuseum and a few other places like that I stopped to lean on the only remaining wall of a house, took off my jacket and loosened my tie, wiped my forehead and neck with my handkerchief and lit a cheroot. The wall gave me some shade and I felt a little cooler by the time I was ready to press on.

As I mounted a big heap of brick on which a lot of blue weeds grew I saw the Bismarck place ahead. Built of heavy, blackveined marble, in the kind of Valhalla/Olympus mixture they went in for, it was fronted by a smooth, green lawn and backed by a, garden that was surrounded by such a high wall I only glimpsed the leaves of some of the foliage even though I was looking down on the place. The thick Grecian columns flanking the porch were topped by a baroque facade covered in bas-reliefs showing men in horned helmets killing dragons and one another apparently indiscriminately.

I picked my way down to the lawn and walked across it, then up some steps until I'd crossed to the front door. It was big and heavy, bronze I guessed, with more bas-reliefs, this time of clean-shaven characters in more ornate and complicated armour with two-handed swords and riding horses. Some had lances and axes. I pulled the bell and waited.

I had plenty of time to study the pictures before one of the doors swung open and an old man in a semi-military suit, holding himself straight by an effort, raised a white eyebrow at me.I told him my name and he let me in to a cool, dark hall full of the same kinds of armour the men on the door had been wearing. He opened a door on the right and told me to wait. The room I was in was all iron and leather - weapons on the walls and leather-covered furniture on the carpet.

Thick velvet curtains were drawn back from the window and I stood looking out over the quiet ruins, smoked another stick, popped the butt in a green pot and put my jacket back on.

The old man came in again and I followed him out of that room, along the hall, up one flight of the wide stairs and in to a huge, less cluttered room where I found the guy I'd come to see.

He stood in the middle of the carpet. He was wearing a heavily ornamented helmet with a spike on the top, a deep blue uniform covered in badges, gold and black epaulettes, shiny jackboots and steel spurs. He looked about seventy and very tough. He had bushy grey eyebrows and a big, carefully combed moustache. As I came in he grunted and one arm sprang into a horizontal position, pointing at me.

'Herr Aquilinas. I am Otto von Bismarck, Chief of Berlin's police.'

I shook the hand. Actually it shook me, all over.

'Quite a turn up,' I said. ' A murder in the garden of the man who's supposed to prevent murders.'

His face must have been paralysed or something because it didn't move except when he spoke, and even then it didn't move much.

'Quite so,' he said. ' We were reluctant to call you in, of course. But I think this is your speciality.'

'Maybe. Is the body still here?'

'In the kitchen. The autopsy was performed here. Paper lungs - you know about that?'

'I know. Now, if I've got it right, you heard nothing in the night - '

'Oh, yes, I did hear something - the barking of my wolfhounds. One of the servants investigated but found nothing.'

'What time was this?'

'Time?'

'What did the clock say?'

'About two in the morning.'

'When was the body found?'

'About ten - the gardener discovered it in the vine grove.'

'Right - let's look at the body and then talk to the gardener.'

He took me to the kitchen. One of the windows was opened on to a lush garden, full of tall, brightly coloured shrubs of every possible shade. An intoxicating scent came from the garden. It made me feel randy. I turned to look at the corpse lying on a scrubbed deal table covered in a sheet.

I pulled back the sheet. The body was naked. It looked old but strong, deeply tanned. The head was big and its most noticeable feature was the heavy black moustache. The body wasn't what it had been. First there were the marks of strangulation around the throat, as well as swelling on wrists, forearms and legs which seemed to indicate that the victim had also been tied up recently. The whole of the front of the torso had been opened for the autopsy and whoever had stitched it up again hadn't been too careful.

'What about clothes?' I asked the Police Chief.

Bismarck shook his head and pointed to a chair standing beside the table.' That was-all we found.'

There was a pair of neatly folded paper lungs, a bit the worse for wear. The trouble with disposable lungs was that while you never had to worry about smoking or any of the other causes of lung disease, the lungs had to be changed regularly.

This was expensive, particularly in Rome where there was no State-controlled Lung Service as there had been in most of the European City-States until a few years before the war when the longer-lasting polythene lung had superseded the paper one.

There was also a wrist-watch and a pair of red shoes with long, curling toes. I picked up one of the shoes. Middle Eastern workmanship. I looked at the watch. It was heavy, old, tarnished and Russian. The strap was new, pigskin, with ' Made in England' stamped on it.

'I see why they called us,' I said.

'There were certain anachronisms,' Bismarck admitted.

'This gardener who found him, can I talk to him?'

Bismarck went to the window and called: ' Felipe!'

The foliage seemed to fold back of its own volition and a dark haired young man came through it. He was tall, long-faced and pale. He held an elegant watering can in one hand. He was dressed in a dark-green high-collared shirt and matching trousers.

We looked at one another through the window.

'This is my gardener Felipe Sagittarius,' Bismarck said.

Sagittarius bowed, his eyes amused. Bismarck didn't seem to notice.

'Can you let me see where you found the body?' I asked.

'Sure,' said Sagittarius.

'I shall wait here,' Bismarck told me as I went towards the kitchen door.

'Okay.' I stepped into the garden and let Sagittarius show me the way. Once again the shrubs seemed to part on their own.

The scent was still thick and erotic. Most of the plants. had dark, fleshy leaves and flowers of deep reds, purples and blues. Here and there were clusters of heavy yellow and pink.

The grass I was walking on seemed to crawl under my feet and the weird shapes of the trunks and stems of the shrubs didn't make me feel like taking a snooze in that garden.

'This is all your work is it, Sagittarius?' I asked.

He nodded and kept walking.

'Original,' I said. ' Never seen one like it before.'

Sagittarius turned then and pointed a thumb behind him.

'This is the place.'

We were standing in a little glade almost entirely surrounded by thick vines that curled about their trellises like snakes. On the far side of the glade I could see where some of the vines had been ripped and the trellis torn and I guessed there had been a fight. I still couldn't work out why the victim had been untied before the murderer strangled him - it must have been before, or else there wouldn't have been a fight. I checked the scene, but there were no clues. Through the place where the trellis was torn I saw a small summerhouse, built to represent a Chinese pavilion, all red, yellow and black lacquer with highlights picked out in gold. It didn't fit with the architecture of the house.

'What's that?' I asked the gardener.

'Nothing,' he said sulkily, evidently sorry I'd seen it.

'I'll take a look at it anyway.'

He shrugged but didn't offer to lead on. I moved between the trellises until I reached the pavilion. Sagittarius followed slowly. I took the short flight of wooden steps up to the veranda and tried the door. It opened. I walked in. There seemed to be only one room, a bedroom. The bed needed making and it looked as if two people had left it in a hurry. There was a pair of nylons tucked half under the pillow and a pair of man's underpants on the floor. The sheets were very white, the furnishings very oriental and rich.

Sagittarius was standing in the doorway.

'Your place?' I said.

'No.' He sounded offended.' The Police Chiefs.'

I grinned.

Sagittarius burst into rhapsody. ' The languorous scents, the very menace of the plants, the heaviness in the air of the garden, must surely stir the blood of even the most ancient man. This is the only place he can relax. This is what I'm employed for why he gives me my head.'

'Has this,' I said, pointing to the bed,' anything to do with last night?'

'He was probably here when it happened, but I… ' Sagittarius shook his head and I Wondered if there was anything he'd meant to imply which I'd missed.

I saw something on the floor, stooped and picked it up. A pendant with the initials E.B. engraved on it in Gothic script.

'Who's E.B.?' I said.

'Only the garden interests me, Mr Aquilinas -I do not know who she is.'

I looked out at the weird garden. ' Why does it interest you -what's all this for? You're not doing it to his orders, are you? You're doing it for yourself.'

Sagittarius smiled bleakly. ' You are astute.' He waved an arm at the warm foliage that seemed more reptilian than plant and more mammalian, in its own way, than either. ' You know what I see out there? I see deep-sea canyons where lost submarines cruise through a silence of twilit green, threatened by the waving tentacles of predators, half-fish, half-plant, and watched by the eyes of long-dead mermen whose blood went to feed their young; where squids and rays fight in a graceful dance of death, clouds of black ink merging with clouds of red blood, drifting to the surface, sipped at by sharks in passing, where they will be seen by mariners leaning over the rails of their ships; maddened, the mariners will fling themselves overboard to sail slowly towards those distant plant-creatures already feasting on the corpse of squid and ray. This is the world I can bring to the land - that is my ambition.'

He stared at me, paused, and said: 'My skull -it's like a monstrous gold-fish bowl!'

I nipped back to the house to find Bismarck had returned to his room. He was sitting in a plush armchair, a hidden HiFi playing, of all things, a Ravel String Quartet.

'No Wagner?' I said and then: ' Who's E.B.?'

'Later,' he said. ' My assistant will answer your questions for the moment. He should be waiting for you outside.'

There was a car parked outside the house - a battered Volkswagen containing a neatly uniformed man of below average height, a small tooth-brush moustache, a stray lock of black hair falling over his forehead, black gloves on his hands which, gripped a military cane in his lap. When he saw me come out he smiled, said,' Aha,' and got briskly from the car to shake my hand with a slight bow.

'Adolf Hitler,' he said.' Captain of Uniformed Detectives in Precinct XII. Police Chief Bismarck has put me at your service.'

'Glad to hear it. Do you know much about him?'

Hitler opened the car door for me and I got in. He went round the other side, slid into the driving seat.

'The chief?' He shook his head. 'He is somewhat remote.

I do not know him well-there are several ranks between us.

Usually my orders come from him indirectly. This time he chose Jo see me himself and give me my orders.'

'What were they, these orders?'

'Simply to help you in this investigation.'

'There isn't much to investigate. You're completely loyal to your chief I take it?'

'Of course.' Hitler seemed honestly puzzled. He started the car and we drove down the drive and out along a flat, white road, surmounted on both sides by great heaps of overgrown rubble.

'The murdered man had paper lungs, eh?' he said.

'Yes. Guess he must have come from Rome. He looked a bit like an Italian.'

'Or a Jew, eh?'

'I don't think so. What made you think that?'

'The Russian watch, the Oriental shoes - the nose. That was a. big. nose he had. And they still have paper lungs in Moscow, you know.'

His logic seemed a bit off-beat to me but I let it pass. We turned a corner and entered a residential section where a lot of buildings were still standing. I noticed that one of them had a bar in its cellar.' How about a drink?' I said.

'Here?' He seemed surprised, or maybe nervous.

'Why not?'

So he stopped the car and we went down the steps into the bar. A girl was singing. She was a plumpish brunette with a small, good voice. She was singing in English and I caught the chorus: '

Nobody's grievin' for Steven, And Sterne ain't grievin' no more, For Steve took his life in a prison cell, And Johnny took a new whore.'

It was the latest hit in England. We ordered beers from the bartender. He seemed to know Hitler well because he laughed and slapped him on the shoulder and didn't charge us for the beer. Hitler seemed embarrassed.

'Who was that?' I asked.

'Oh, his name is Weill. I know him slightly.'

'More than slightly, it looks like.'

Hitler seemed unhappy and undid his uniform Jacket, tilted his cap back on his head and tried unsuccessfully to push back the stray lock of hair. He looked a sad little man and I felt that maybe my habit of asking questions was out of line here. I drank my beer and watched the singer. Hitler kept his back to her but I noticed she kept looking at him.

'What do you know about this Sagittarius?" I asked.

Hitler shrugged.' Very little.'

Weill turned up again behind the bar and asked us if we wanted more beer. We said we didn't.

'Sagittarius?' Weill spoke up brightly. 'Are you talking about that crank?'

'He's a crank, is he?' I said.

'That's not fair, Kurt,' Hitler said. ' He's a brilliant man,, a biologist - '

'Who was thrown out of his job because he was insane!'

'That is unkind, Kurt,' Hitler said reprovingly. ' He was investigating the potential sentience of plant-life. A perfectly reasonable line of scientific enquiry.'

From the corner of the room someone laughed jeeringly. It was a shaggy-haired old man sitting by himself with a glass of schnapps on the little table in front of him.

Weill pointed at him. ' Ask Albert. He knows about science.'

Hitler pursed his lips and looked at the floor. ' He's just an embittered old mathematics teacher - he's jealous of Felipe,' he said quietly, so that the old man wouldn't hear.

'Who is he?' I asked Weill.

'Albert? A really brilliant man. He has never had the recognition he deserves. Do you want to meet him?'

But the shaggy man was leaving. He waved a hand at Hitler and Weill. 'Kurt, Captain Hitler-good day.'

'Good day, Doctor Einstein,' muttered Hitler. He turned to me.' Where would you like to go now?'

'A tour of the places that sell jewellery, I guess,' I said, fingering the pendant in my pocket. ' I may be on the wrong track altogether, but it's the only track I can find at the moment.'

We toured the jewellers. By nightfall we were nowhere nearer finding out who had owned the thing. I'd just have to get the truth out of Bismarck the next day, though I knew it wouldn't be easy. He wouldn't Eke answering my personal questions at all. Hitler dropped me off at the Precinct House where a cell had been converted into a bedroom for me.

I sat on the hard bed smoking and thinking. I was just about to get undressed and go to sleep when I started to think about the bar we'd been in earlier. I was sure someone there could help me. On impulse I left the cell and went out into the deserted street. It was still very hot arid the sky was full of heavy clouds. Looked like a storm was due.

I got a cab back to the bar. It was still open.

Weill wasn't serving there now-he was playing the pianoaccordion for the same girl singer I'd seen earlier. He nodded to me as I came in. I leant on the bar and ordered a beer from the barman.

When the number was over. Weill unstrapped his accordion and joined me. The girl followed him.

'Adolf not with you?' he said.

'He went home. He's a good friend of yours, is he?'

'Oh, we met years ago in Austria. He's a nice man, you know. He should never have become a policeman, he's too mild.'

'That's the impression I got. Why did he ever join in the first place?'

Weill smiled and shook his head. He was a short, thin man, wearing heavy glasses. He had a large, sensitive mouth. ' Sense of duty, perhaps. He has a great sense of duty. He is very religious, too - a devout Catholic. I think that weighs on him.

You know these converts, they accept nothing, are torn by their consciences.' I never yet met a happy Catholic convert.'

'He seems to have a thing about Jews.'

Weill frowned.' What sort of thing? I've never really noticed.

Many of his friends are Jews. I am, and Sagittarius… '

'Sagittarius is a friend of his?'

'Oh, more an acquaintance I should think. I've seen them together a couple of times.'

It began to thunder outside. Then it started to rain.

Weill walked towards the door and began to pull down the blind. Through the noise of the storm I heard another sound, a strange, metallic grinding sound, a crunching sound.

'What's that?' I called. Weill shook his head and walked back towards the bar. The place was empty now.' I'm going to have a look,' I said.

I went to the door, opened it, and climbed the steps.

Marching across the ruins, illuminated by rapid flashes of lightning like gunfire, I saw a gigantic metal monster, as big as a tall building. Supported on four telescopic legs, it lumbered at right angles to the street. From its huge body and head the snouts of guns stuck out in all directions. Lightning sometimes struck it and it made an ear-shattering bell-like clang, paused to fire upwards at the source of the lightning, and march on.

I ran down the steps and flung open the door. Weill was tidying up the bar. I described what I'd seen.

'What is it, Weill?'

The short man shook his head.' I don't know. At a guess it is. something Berlin's conquerors left behind.'

'It looked as if it was made here… '

'Perhaps it was. After all, who conquered Berlin-?'

A woman screamed from a back room, high and brief.

Weill dropped a glass and ran towards the room. I followed.

He opened a door. The room was homely. A table covered by a thick, dark cloth, laid with salt and pepper, knives and forks, a piano near the window, a girl lying on the floor.

'Eva!' Weill gasped, kneeling beside the body.

I gave the room another once over. Standing on a small coffee table was a plant. It looked at first rather like a cactus "of unpleasantly mottled green, though the top curved so that it resembled a snake about to strike. An eyeless, noseless snake with a mouth. There was a mouth. It opened as I approached.

There were teeth in the mouth - or rather thorns arranged the way teeth are. One thorn seemed to be missing near the front. I backed away from the plant and inspected the corpse. I found the thorn in her wrist. I left it there.

'She is dead,' Weill said softly, standing up and looking around.' How?'

'She was bitten by that poisonous plant,' I said.

'Plant…? I must call the police.'

'That wouldn't be wise at this stage maybe,' I said as I left. I knew where I was going.

Bismarck's house-and the pleasure garden of Felipe Sagittarius.

It took me time to find a cab and I was soaked through when I did. I told the cabby to step on it.

I had the cab stop before we got to the house, paid it off and walked across the lawns. I didn't bother to ring the doorbell. I let myself in by the window, using my pocket glasscutter.

I heard voices coming from upstairs. I followed the sound until I located it - Bismarck's study. I inched the door open.

Hitler was there. He had a gun pointed at Otto von Bismarck who was still in full uniform. They both looked pale.

Hitler's hand was shaking and Bismarck was moaning slightly.

Bismarck stopped moaning to say pleadingly, 'I wasn't blackmailing Eva Braun, you fool - she liked me.'

Hitler laughed curtly, half hysterically. ' Like you a fat old man.'

'She liked fat old men.'

'She wasn't that kind of girl.'

'Who told you this, anyway?'

'The investigator told me some. And Weill rang me half an hour ago to tell me some more - also that Eva had been killed.

I thought Sagittarius was my friend. I was wrong. He is your hired assassin. Well, tonight I intend to do my own killing.'

'Captain Hitler -I am your superior officer!'

The gun wavered as Bismarck's voice recovered some of its authority. I realized that the HiFi had been playing quietly all the time. Curiously it was Bartok's Fifth String Quartet.

Bismarck moved his hand. ' You are completely mistaken.

That man you hired to follow Eva here last night-he was Eva's ex-lover!'

Hitler's lip trembled.

'You knew,' said Bismarck.

'I suspected it.'

'You also knew the dangers of the garden, because Felipe had told you about them. The vines killed him as he sneaked towards the summer house.'

The gun steadied. Bismarck looked scared.

He pointed at Hitler.' You killed him - not I!' he screamed.

'You sent him to his death. You killed Stalin - out of jealousy.

You hoped he would kill me and Eva first. You were too frightened, too weak, to confront any of us openly!'

Hitler shouted wordlessly, put both hands to the gun and pulled the trigger several times. Some of the shots went wide, but one hit Bismarck in his Iron Cross, pierced it and got him in the heart. He fell backwards and as he did so his uniform ripped apart and his helmet fell off. I ran into the room and took the gun from Hitler who was crying. I checked that Bismarck was dead. I saw what had caused the uniform to rip open.

He had been wearing a corset- one of the bullets must have cut the cord. It was a heavy corset and had had a lot to hold in…

I felt sorry for Hitler. I helped him sit down as he sobbed.

He looked small and wretched.

'What have I killed?' he stuttered. 'What have I killed?'

'Did Bismarck send that plant to Eva Braun to silence her because I was getting too close?'

Hitler nodded, snorted and started to cry again.

I looked towards the door. A man stood there, hesitantly.

I put the gun on the mantelpiece.

It was Sagittarius.

He nodded to me.

Hitler's just shot Bismarck,' I explained.

'So it appears,' he said.

'Bismarck had you send Eva Braun that plant, is that so?'

I said.

'Yes. A beautiful cross between a common cactus, a Venus Flytrap and a rose-the venom was curare, of course.'

Hitler got up and walked from the room. We watched him leave. He was still sniffling.

'Where are you going?' I asked.

'To get some air,' I heard him say as he went down the stairs.

'The repression of sexual desires,' said Sagittarius seating himself in an armchair and resting his feet comfortably on Bismarck's corpse. ' It is the cause of so much trouble. If only the passions that lie beneath the surface, the desires that are locked in the mind could be allowed to range free, what a better place the world would be.'

'Maybe,' I said.

'Are you going to make any arrests, Herr Aquilinas?'

'It's my job to make a report on my investigation, not to make arrests,' I said.

'Will there be any repercussions concerned with this business?'

I laughed. '

There are always repercussions,' I told him.

From the garden came a peculiar barking noise.

'What's that?' I asked.' The wolfhounds?'

Sagittarius giggled. ' No, no - the dog-plant, I fear.'

I ran out of the room and down the stairs until I reached the kitchen. The sheet-covered corpse was still lying on the table. I was going to open the door on to the garden when I stopped and pressed my face to the window instead.

The whole garden was moving in what appeared to be an agitated dance. Foliage threshed about and, even with the door closed, the strange scent was even less bearable than it had been earlier.

I thought I saw a figure struggling with some thick-boled shrubs. I heard a growling noise, a tearing sound, a scream and a long drawn out groan.

Suddenly the garden was motionless.

I turned. Sagittarius stood behind me, his hands folded on his chest, his eyes staring down at the floor.

'It seems your dog-plant got him,' I said.

'He knew me - he knew the garden.'

'Suicide maybe?'

'Very likely.' Sagittarius unfolded his hands and looked up at me.' I liked him, you know. He was something of a protege.

If you had not interfered none of this might have happened. He might have gone far with me to guide him.'

'You'll find other proteges,' I said.

'Let us hope so.'

The sky outside began to lighten imperceptibly. The rain was now only a drizzle, falling on the thirsty leaves of the plants in the garden.

'Are you going to stay on here?' I asked him; ' Yes -I have the garden to work on. Bismarck's servants will look after me.'

'I guess they will,' I said.

I went back up the stairs and walked out of that house into the dawn, cold and rain-washed. I turned up my collar and began to climb across the ruins.