Bill Pronzini - The Vanished

Kriminalbeamter Franz Hüssner was a big, smiling man with heavy blue jowls and bright, quick blue eyes. He wore gray tweed as well as anyone can wear it, and smoked a short white-bowled clay pipe, and had a nervous habit of scratching behind his right ear with the little finger on his right hand. He spoke English in a voice that would have gone well singing Trink, Trink, Brüderlein, Trink in a German beer garden, and he was not averse to discussing the Diane Emery suicide with me-especially after he learned my profession. He had never met a private detective, he said, his bright eyes dancing, and to have one from America visit him was indeed an honor. I could not tell if he was putting me on or not.

We sat in his small, spartan office in the Kitzingen Polizeirevier and smiled at each other across an old oak desk that was vaguely reminiscent of the one in my own office. Smoke from his clay pipe lay on the air like tule fog in a marsh, and it was aggravating my chest, biting sharply into my lungs with each breath; it smelled as mawkishly sweet as the perfumed joss they burn on Chinese New Year. But Herr Hüssner was on my side now, and I did not want to jeopardize that by insulting his brand of tobacco or his smoking habits; I kept my mouth judiciously shut.

‘A sad business, a very sad business,’ he said at length. ‘Such a young girl to take her own life. Ach, a terrible thing.’

‘I understand there was no suicide note,’ I said.

‘That is true.’

‘She was despondent over personal problems?’

‘Yes.’

‘Any particular personal problems?’

‘She was to have a child.’

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I see.’

‘A sad business, yes?’ He shook his head.

‘Were you able to locate the father?’

‘No, we were not.’

‘Then you have no idea who it was?’

‘None.’

‘There was nothing in her personal effects?’

‘Fräulein Emery did not keep letters or a journal or photographs.’

‘And there were no portraits among her paintings?’

‘We found only two canvases in her flat- both unfinished and both most definitely not portraits. Her drawing pad contained nothing but blank sheets of paper.’

‘Uh-huh. Well, what about her friends?’

‘She had few friends in Kitzingen,’ Herr Hüssner said, and went to work behind his ear with the little finger on his right hand. ‘She was-what do you say?-a lonesome person.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Her lover was her private affair, apparently shared with no one.’

I studied the backs of my hands. ‘Were you completely satisfied that her death was suicide?’

Surprisingly, Herr Hüssner smiled. ‘You suspect murder perhaps?’ he asked, as if the idea were gentle insanity.

‘No,’ I said, and gave him an apologetic look. ‘I was just curious.’

‘Of course. But no, the death of Fräulein Emery was at her own hands and no others. Frau Mende, who lives in the apartment next door, heard a loud noise from the girl’s studio that Saturday and came quickly to investigate. She found the girl still alive and strangling on the clothesline, a chair overturned beneath her. By the time she could summon help, the poor child was dead. A sad, sad business.’ Herr Hüssner shook his head again and dug behind his ear and raised a great pollutant of gray-blue smoke like a withered wreath about his head.

I said, ‘Had the Emery girl been known to keep company with military personnel? Or were you able to determine that?’

‘We learned little of her private life. You were thinking, perhaps, that the man you are looking for-Herr Sands-was her lover?’

‘The idea crossed my mind.’

‘And why is that?’

I told him, and he nodded thoughtfully. ‘It is possible you are right. But if so, what would this have to do with Herr Sands’ disappearance in America?’

‘I don’t know yet. I’m still sifting through the haystack.’

‘What does this mean, sifting through the haystack?’

I explained it to him. He smiled and looked pleased. ‘The American idiom is wonderful,’ he said.

‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘Was Diane buried here in Kitzingen?’

‘No. Her family was notified, from a card we discovered in her purse, and arrangements were made for her to be returned to America by plane.’

‘I see.’

‘It was to California,’ Herr Hüssner said. ‘You are from San Francisco-that is in California, is it not?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Where does the Emery girl’s family live?’

‘The town of Roxbury.’

‘I don’t think I know it.’

‘It is near-what is it?-ah yes, Eureka. We wished to cable the family of the tragedy and it was necessary to send the cable to this Eureka.’

The air in there was cloying now, and very hot, and I wanted nothing so much than to get up and open the window behind Herr Hüssner’s desk; I could see the cold, fresh rain beading and running on the glass outside. I forced myself to sit still, and said, ‘Would you mind telling me the address, Herr Hüssner?’

‘Do you plan to see the Emerys when you are again in America?’

‘Well, possibly. I’m not sure just yet.’

‘Of course,’ he said, and smiled knowingly, and got up on his feet. ‘A moment, please?’

‘Sure.’

He went out and shut the door, and I stared hungrily at the rain on the window glass. I coughed into my handkerchief and tried not to dwell on implications just yet, not with the atmosphere the way it was. Two or three minutes went by, and Herr Hüssner came back with a folder and sat down behind his desk again.

He spread the folder open and moved a sheaf of papers aside. On top of them was a photograph. I tried to look at it upside down and gave that idea up almost immediately. I said, ‘Is that a picture of Diane Emery?’

‘Yes.’

‘May I see it?’

‘If you wish.’

He handed it to me, and it was a death-scene shot, a close-up of the girl’s body after they had cut her down from where she had hanged herself. Mercifully, someone had closed her mouth and her eyelids, and you could not see the marks the clothesline must have left on her throat. Her features were contorted, swollen, but the intrinsic beauty which had been hers was apparent; she had been slim, dark, long-featured, with hair cropped close to her head. She looked very young-very young.

I put the photograph back on the sheaf of papers, face down. ‘How old was she?’ I asked quietly.

‘Twenty-four.’

‘Nobody should die at twenty-four,’ I said. ‘Twenty-four is an age for living, an age for laughing.’

Herr Hüssner glanced up at me, and now his smile was gentle and sad. ‘Life can be very cruel at times,’ he said.

‘Yeah.’

Silence settled for a long moment, and then I looked at Herr Hüssner and I knew that he was thinking the same things I was-two middle-aged cops looking back on all the injustices and all the cruelties which had been wreaked on man by man in two worlds not so different, not so far apart. What happened in Germany thirty-five years ago could have happened in America, because man was the most callous of beings, the rational beast, the thinking predator, destroying himself and his species and never knowing-this superior, intelligent creature-the why of it, of any of it…

Herr Hüssner shuffled papers and sighed and said, ‘The girl’s parents are Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Emery, twenty-six nineteen Coachman Road, Roxbury, California.’

I wrote that down in my notebook, closed it, and got on my feet. I had no more business here, and as much as I enjoyed Herr Hüssner’s company, I needed to get out of that room very quickly. I said, ‘I appreciate all the help you’ve given me, Herr Hüssner.’

‘Keine Ursache ,’ he answered graciously.