Morley Torgov - The Mastersinger from Minsk

Three days. Seventy-two hours. What can a weary worn-out, fed-up aging police inspector accomplish in such a short time span? I asked myself.

Düsseldorf … Helena Becker! That was the answer. I would send a telegram immediately. “Dearest Helena … a bit of luck …” I would pack quickly, make a dash for the late afternoon train. Seventy-two hours of heaven!

I began hastily to tidy up my office, humming a passage from Schubert’s “Trout,” the second movement, a happy little tune that reflected my mood perfectly. Finished, I looked about, saw that everything was in order, blew a kiss to my modest workplace, whispered, “Auf Wiedersehen,” and prepared to leave.

At which point the door was thrown open and in came Gruber, his young face flushed with excitement. “Inspector Preiss, you won’t believe what’s happened,” he yelled, as though I were stationed in some remote section of Bavaria instead of a metre or two away. “You know Detective Brunner, Detective Franz Brunner?”

“Of course. What about him?”

“He’s been murdered.”

If I were a wagering man I would have bet my last pfennig that the person who had just confessed to murdering Detective Franz Brunner was incapable of slaying a common house fly, let alone an overweight human being. She was at least a head shorter than her victim and her physique was anything but robust. Indeed, so thin was she that, had it been possible, I would have interrupted my interrogation and ordered up a square meal for the woman. Lines of exhaustion fanned out across her brow and her hollow cheeks were barely supported by a drooping mouth and weak chin. It was not difficult to understand the state of her appearance. I had only to look about me to realize that, despite the modesty of the place, and despite the burdens of raising four young children, there was not so much as a speck of dust or a crumb to be seen anywhere. If one needed evidence that fastidiousness has nothing to do with affluence, here was proof absolute! Throughout the small house, part of a row of similar small houses in Munich’s working-class district, there were signs that this woman must have spent all her waking hours cleaning — when she wasn’t busy cooking, that is. Even the children’s rooms were as orderly as military barracks. I wondered where their playthings were stored until it occurred to me that there probably were no playthings. I wondered also who could have imposed such a pattern of tidiness, such a standard of perfection. (Even I, who admire good housekeeping, doubted that I could maintain this level of cleanliness and neatness in such confined quarters.)

“My husband was sloppy and clumsy but insisted his home be as spotless as a clinic. The only thing that interested him about children was the act of conceiving them, if you must know the truth, Inspector.”

But this was not all Helga Brunner had to say about the man she had just slain. We were seated at a plain wooden dining table in the kitchen. Between us, at the centre of the table, lay a large butcher’s knife. Not surprisingly, its blade and handle were spotless, Franz Brunner’s blood having been typically scrubbed off. (Brunner’s body had already been carted away for an autopsy, and the Brunner children dispatched to the nearby house of their grandmother.)

“He would routinely arrive home from work with his clothing rumpled and messy and stained,” Helga Brunner went on, “and always with the same excuse. ‘Ours is not a life of tea parties, Helga,’ he would say. ‘Be happy you’re a housewife, Helga,’ and he would hand me his shirt to wash and his suit to clean and press as best I could. I must say, Inspector Preiss, you don’t seem to fit the picture my husband painted about police life.”

“So that is how you happened upon this photograph and a note pinned to it?”

“I was going through the pockets of his jacket, you know, and came to the inner pocket where apparently you detectives normally carry your identity cards and badges. I always did this before starting to iron out the creases. And yes, the picture and note were there. Obviously he’d forgotten to remove them.”

I asked, “Is it possible that he actually intended you to see these? That he deliberately — ”

Before I could finish my question Helga Brunner tossed aside the suggestion with a harsh and bitter laugh. “Not a chance of that! He was too stupid. Anyway, a woman can always tell when her husband is unfaithful, especially when her job is to look after his clothes. This certainly was not the first time I came across signs — signs I would rather not have to describe to you in detail, Inspector, disgusting signs — signs that he was doing with other women what he’d stopped doing with me, may he rest in hell!”

“I take it,” I said, holding up the photograph for both of us to see, “that this, and the woman’s note, were the last straw — ”

“I have no regrets, Inspector. I’ll probably burn in the same hell that I’ve sent him to, but this … this, as you say, was the last straw.”

“Does the woman in the photograph mean anything to you?” I asked.

“No, nothing at all.”

“Her name was Cornelia Vanderhoute,” I said.

“ Was ?”

“She, too, is dead, though her death had nothing to do with your husband,” I said. “Or so I thought, until now. It is clear to me now that your husband was much more involved with this Vanderhoute woman than I was led to believe, and for a much longer time.”

“The note says something about the two of them working together and hoping … how does she put it? … hoping to make progress soon with H. S. Who or what is ‘H.S.’?”

Once again a well-used excuse came to my aid. “I’m afraid that is a highly sensitive matter under police investigation which I am not at liberty to disclose.”

Helga Brunner received this reply with an air of resignation. “Then there’s nothing left, I suppose, except for you to arrest me for murder. Does the law go easier if it’s a crime of passion, Inspector?”

“I have to be honest with you,” I said. “Crimes of passion are a French phenomenon. We Germans go out of our way to avoid linking the two things … crime, and passion. I wouldn’t count on too much leniency in our courts, but I will tell you this: I had the dubious honour of working with Franz Brunner, and I will do my very best to convince your judge that Detective Brunner was the kind of man that even a saint would have taken a knife to.”

I watched Constable First Class Emil Gruber take Helga Brunner into custody and leave the Brunner house in a cab destined for the Constabulary. I myself had other plans. Hailing another cab, I ordered the driver to take me to the opera house. At this hour of the day — it was just short of noon — I knew it was most likely that “H.S.” could be found there, participating in the last-minute frantic rehearsals that are part and parcel of an immense operatic undertaking like Die Meistersinger .

At the stage door of the National Theater I was confronted by a security guard, posted there presumably at the behest of Maestro Wagner. A man of brutish demeanor with hands that could crush rocks, he demanded to know the purpose of my visit, his stance suggesting that nothing would have sweetened his day more than an excuse to send me — or anyone , for that matter — flying clear across Max-Joseph-Platz. So crestfallen was he when I presented my police identity card and badge that my heart bled a little for him.

Standing aside, he pointed with his thumb over his broad shoulder to the auditorium behind him. “Final dress rehearsal,” he grunted. “It’s holy hell in there!”