Frank Tallis - Fatal Lies

Frau Becker shrugged. “I could… but it's nonsense, Herr Doctor.”

“Please.” Liebermann urged her to continue.

“Very well,” said Frau Becker. “I dreamed that I went to the theater with my husband… One side of the stalls was empty. My husband told me that Marianne and her fiance had wanted to go too-”

“Marianne?”

“A friend.”

“An old friend?”

“Yes, we grew up together. As a matter of fact, I got a letter from her yesterday, which contained some very important news. She has just got engaged to a lieutenant in the uhlans.”

“Go on.”

“Where was I? Oh yes… Marianne and her fiance had wanted to go too, but only cheap seats-costing eight hellers-were available, so they didn't take them. But I thought it wouldn't have been so bad if they had.” Frau Becker looked at Liebermann. She seemed confused, and faintly embarrassed. “That's it. That's all I can remember.”

Liebermann leaned back in his chair and allowed his clenched fist to fall against his right cheek. The index finger unfurled and tapped against his temple.

“Did the empty half of the stalls that you saw in your dream remind you of anything?”

Frau Becker paused and gave the question serious consideration. Her lips pursed, and a thin horizontal line appeared on her brow.

“Now that you mention it, yes. Just after Christmas, I wanted to see a play-a comedy-at the Volkstheatre. I had bought tickets for this play very early. So early, in fact, that I had to pay an extra booking fee. When we got to the Volkstheatre, it turned out that I needn't have bothered-one side of the theater was half empty. My husband kept on teasing me for having been in such a hurry.”

“And the sum of eight hellers-is that associated with some memory of a real event?”

Frau Becker toyed with her brooch, a thin crescent of garnets.

“Not eight hellers but eight kronen. The maid was recently given a present of eight kronen by an admirer. She immediately rushed off to Vienna in order to buy some jewelry.”

“Thank you,” said Liebermann. “Thank you,” he repeated, nodding his head. “You have been most helpful.”

Frau Becker looked from Liebermann to Inspector Rheinhardt, her expression inviting an explanation. But the inspector merely thanked her for being so cooperative.

On leaving the house, Liebermann and Rheinhardt discovered that the garden was no longer empty. A man in muddy overalls and boots was kneeling next to a flower bed, tugging coils of dead creeper from a thorny bush.

“Good afternoon,” said Rheinhardt.

The man stood up, drew his sleeve across his nose, and uttered a greeting. Rheinhardt introduced himself and showed the gardener a photograph of Zelenka-the one that he had had copied after visiting the boy's parents.

“Do you recognize him?”

“Yes, I recognize him.”

“He came here often?”

“Some would say too often.” The man's lips suddenly parted. He began to chuckle, revealing a mouth full of yellow carious teeth.

“What do you mean, ‘too often’?”

The gardener made a lewd gesture with his hand, winked, and, without excusing himself, stomped off.

Liebermann and Rheinhardt watched him recede.

“Just a moment,” Rheinhardt called.

The man accelerated his step and disappeared behind the house.

“When our great poets versify about the rustic charm of country folk,” said Rheinhardt, “what do you think they mean, exactly?”

Liebermann stared out of the carriage window at the passing woodland.

“So,” said Rheinhardt. “What did you make of Frau Becker?”

“She is very much regretting her marriage.”

“If that really is the case, then I'm not surprised-I can't think of a more ill-matched couple. However, given that you have never laid eyes on Herr Becker, I must assume that you have determined this by interpreting her dream.”

“Professor Freud has explained that dreams are often a reaction to events that occur on the preceding day. This certainly seems to be the case with Frau Becker, who only yesterday received a letter from Marianne, an old friend, containing news of her engagement to an excellent prospective husband-a dashing young officer. A common factor linking much of the material that surfaced in her dream- albeit in the form of distortions-was haste. You will recall that Frau Becker purchased her theater tickets far too early, and the maid hurried into town to spend her eight kronen. Taken together, I would suggest that these elements express the following sentiment: ‘It was stupid of me to marry in a hurry. I can now see from Marianne's example that I could have got a better husband if I had waited.’ “

Liebermann raised a hand in the air and then let it drop, as if tired of the sheer predictability of human affairs.

“I suspect that Frau Becker's story,” he continued, “is one with which we are all very familiar. An attractive provincial girl, desiring a better life, encounters an older man of means. She beguiles him with her youthful good looks, but after they are married, she discovers that the life of a schoolmaster's wife is not what she'd expected. She is bored, stranded on a lonely eminence in the woods, trapped in a big empty house, miles away from the delightful shops on Karntner Strasse, Kohlmarkt, and the Graben, where she once imagined herself purchasing beautiful, expensive things for her home and wardrobe. Her erotic instinct is frustrated, and she envies her friend, Marianne, who will almost certainly find satisfaction-if she hasn't already- in the arms of her handsome young cavalryman. Such a woman might well find solace in the company of boys like Zelenka: intelligent, sensitive boys, approaching manhood. And such is her appetite that even the gardener is conscious of her misconduct. I cannot believe that the extraordinary properties of Frau Becker's blouse escaped your attention.”

Rheinhardt coughed into his hand and his cheeks became flushed. “I did not know where to look!”

“Do you know something, Oskar?” said Liebermann, rubbing his hands together. “I'm beginning to think that there is something quite odd going on at Saint Florian's.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Rheinhardt.

“Zelenka appears to have died naturally… but the more your investigations proceed, the more you seem to uncover conditions and circumstances that one would ordinarily associate with murder. Sadistic persecution… and now the possibility of an illicit sexual liaison. What if Zelenka had threatened to expose Frau Becker? What if he had asked her for money? The boy was very poor and hated Saint Florian's. It might have been his only way out.”

“Well,” said Rheinhardt, “our opinions seem to be converging at last. You have a strong sense of something being wrong, but you can't quite put your finger on it. In other words, you have a feeling. Isn't that so?” Liebermann raised his chin and looked down his nose at his friend with haughty displeasure. “I only hope,” Rheinhardt continued, his voice becoming more reflective, “that I am given an adequate opportunity to get to the bottom of it.”

Liebermann caught the change of register. “Why shouldn't you be?”

“Oh,” grumbled Rheinhardt, “some business of von Bulow's.”

“Ordinarily I would ask you the nature of that business, but I know there is little point. You have been ordered to keep it a secret.”

Rheinhardt emitted a cry of surprise and demanded: “How on earth did you know that?”

Liebermann closed his eyes and an enigmatic smile played about his lips. “Perhaps I had a feeling,” he said softly.

Rheinhardt burst out laughing. “Sometimes,” he said, shaking his head, “you can be quite insufferable!”

“You wanted to see me, headmaster?”