Pavel Kohout - The Widow Killer

“Any questions?” he asked in closing.

The technician in charge of the grave plaque spoke up.

“What about the name on the grave?”

“Whatever occurs to you.”

“Nothing occurs to me,” the man insisted.

“How about Jan Morava?”

He noticed Jitka’s sudden start and tried to reassure her.

“Superstition says grave owners live the longest.”

The technician had already written it down.

“Where will we find an apartment?” ebesta wanted to know.

Morava’s eyes once again met Jitka’s, this time questioningly. It buoyed him to see her nod back immediately.

“Jitka Modrá rents a room in a house in Kav í Hory that fits the requirements quite well. The owners are away from Prague; if they return, we’ll show that it’s in the public interest and possibly pay them.”

The technician wrote down the address for the plaque on the door.

“Anything else?”

The team already looked like runners crouched at the starting line. Beran, however, spoke up for the first time in that half hour.

“Be sure to tell your lady colleagues the whole truth: We’ll give them the best protection we can, but at certain points the murderer will be closer to them than any assistance we can give, and his behavior might unexpectedly change. Any women who volunteer in spite of this will immediately be elevated to a higher service grade, but they must be aware that they are voluntarily exposing themselves to a degree of risk. I’ll want to speak with all of them personally at four as well;’

These three sentences instantly deflated their hunters’ euphoria. They dispersed in a pensive mood. Beran asked Buback to remain behind with Morava. He dismissed the interpreter and led the discussion in German.

“Herr Oberkriminalrat,” he said to Buback, “I’d like to personally convey to you some information I’m sending to the police commissioner. The case of the widow killer will continue to fall under the jurisdiction of Assistant Detective Morava, but all his activities — including this most recent one — have been cleared with me, and I am therefore responsible for them.”

“I will pass it on,” the German said, and added unexpectedly, “along with the fact that I approve of the plan. In this phase I will continue to be at your disposal in my office here.”

As he and Morava proceeded through the anteroom, where Jitka was alone at her desk again, he stopped and asked her, “How is your father doing?”

It was the first time Buback had spoken to her since their dinner together, and Jitka, surprised, stood up as if reciting in school.

“Danke___”

“Please, sit down. Is everything all right?”

“Nothing happened to him…. Almost nothing,” she added in her forthright way, “just a couple of bruises….”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Oh,” she replied quickly, as if approving the deed, “they weren’t the first ones he’s gotten. And at least he survived. We’re all very grateful to you.”

“Good,” said Buback a bit absentmindedly, “very good. Well then, good luck. To you, your family, and your fiancé. Who is it, by the way?

Morava could sense Jitka’s unease at having deceived the German. Hesitantly she answered, “The assistant detective

When Buback still seemed puzzled, she pointed at Morava.

The German stared, flabbergasted, first at him, then at her and back at him. For the first time they could remember, he laughed out loud.

“Oh, no! Oh, no!”

He took her by the left hand and him by the right, and shook both their hands simultaneously. The warmth of his response seemed completely sincere.

“My heartiest congratulations! My heartiest congratulations!”

With that he let go and left them, still laughing. Morava and Jitka were equally dumbfounded.

What has happened to him? Morava wondered.

He knew there was no way to find out, so he gave Jitka a kiss and set off on his way. The rest of the day did not go nearly as well; later that afternoon in Beran’s office a dejected Morava had little good news to report.

“At your suggestion, Mr. Beran, we gave briefings in all our departments, but not a single female employee volunteered.”

“That’s not surprising,” said his superior, “but they’re not the only women in Prague, after all, are they?”

“No,” Morava sighed, “but where can we look? We need some sort of assurance….”

“Relatives of the victims,” Beran suggested. “The last one had a sister, maybe the other ones did as well. Or jailers; there’s a few sharp girls among them.”

“Actresses….” The German surprised them again.

“But of course,” Beran concurred. “Morava, put your men on it.”

“I sent them home,” Morava confessed, deflated. “They haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a week.”

Before Beran could rebuke him, Jitka walked in through the open door.

“Tomorrow I’ll go, Mr. Beran,” she announced simply. “It’s my house and Jan will certainly protect me best, don’t you think?”

She sat, wrapped again in a large white bath sheet, legs crossed beneath her in his only armchair, laughing her head off as he told her about his conversation with Meckerle.

“Don’t you know Hamlet?“

“I remember it vaguely from school

“They send him to France with a letter requesting his execution.”

“Is that what you wanted?”

“Come on, love! Big Mecky explained it himself, didn’t he?”

“What?”

“He had to learn about you from me, and in your presence, no less. He’s proud — as I’d expected — but he does have some sense. He’d been wondering what to do with me anyway.”

“He tried to tell me something of the sort.”

“You mean he confided in you?”

Buback attempted to reproduce in his own words Meckerle’s description of her as a femme fatale and his regret that he couldn’t destroy either of them.

“I’m inclined to believe it,” she remarked. “He’d never had it like that before, so he should be grateful.”

She said it quite matter-of-factly, as if they were talking about the weather, and Buback once again felt how deeply it pained him.

“Like what?” he managed nonetheless to ask.

“Come on, you saw his wife. If you want to know a man, look at his spouse. He tried to impress me by bragging about his mistresses, but I saw one of them and that confirmed it: yet another peasant. I taught him what royal lovemaking is.”

Buback felt worse and worse but still could not stop this new confession. He wanted finally to understand completely whom she chose and how, so he could find the strength to end their relationship.

“I don’t understand. He told me you were uncommunicative and chilly. Like a fish.”

“You’re joking. Were you that open with each other? That should have pleased you, shouldn’t it? That you know a different me?”

“I was more surprised than anything. And now you tell me that he—”

“What don’t you understand? After all, I admitted, he did impress me a bit. So I gave him the opportunity to find himself through me. Don’t let his appearance fool you; he’s not much of a lover. I taught him that in bed, rank, weight, age, and responsibility don’t matter. With me — and only with me — he learned that there’s more to love-making than a bit of grunting and thrusting. I stimulated his imagination, because I didn’t fuss over him. Instead, I made him win my favor on his own.”

Buback was so visibly upset that she suddenly turned petulant.