Sample: "Crime of the Centuries"

 

 

 

 

Prologue: The Little Albert Case

 

A suburb of Munich, Bavaria, Germany, 11 September 1885

 

     The stranger’s true name was not the one on the passport in his breast pocket, but he had decided long ago that his identity—especially who others thought he was—mattered little. Standing in the shadows across the road from a cottage nestled in overgrown shrubbery, all he cared about was his present mission and the cause it served.
Under his gray wool suit, his body was hard and athletic. His clean-shaven jaw was square, and his blue eyes, shaded beneath his homburg, were deceptively gentle. His visible hair was short and dark blond. The only flaws on his handsome head were his ears, which stuck out.
     According to his pocket watch, it was now seven o’clock in the morning. He had arrived in Munich yesterday and taken a room at a boardinghouse in Sendling. He had arisen at five this morning and made his way to this address.
     The stranger ignored the discomfort of the late summer weather, the trickles of sweat under his shirt and on his forehead beneath the band of his hat. He was barely twenty-five but exuded an older man’s patience and determination.
     Framed in the doorway of the cottage was a full-faced woman who was bending to kiss the cheek of a boy of six. Her straight, black hair, tied in a bun at the back of her head, contrasted with the thin child’s light, tousled hair that sat like a mop atop a big, inverted triangle of a head, featuring eyes with a permanently sad expression. From his research, the stranger had been able to identify everyone who entered or left the house. The boy’s father and uncle had gone out much earlier.
     The slight boy with the big head sauntered down the walk toward the road, carrying a violin case and a brace of books held together with a leather strap. He ignored his mother who nevertheless continued to wave at his back.
     When the boy set foot on the road, he turned toward Munich. The stranger waited long enough to assure himself that the woman had gone back into the house and that he was not observed. Then, he nonchalantly followed the boy. He held his walking stick in one hand and a Brunswick green bag in the other, staying several paces behind the boy.
     It was not long before his adult stride brought him within two paces of the child. He stopped short when the boy stopped, watching as the boy pulled something from his pocket, consulted it, returned it to his pocket and resumed walking. When the boy stopped a second time to look at the thing, the man drew abreast of him.
     “Wie geht’s?” said the stranger. He bent over, trying to look the sad-eyed boy in the face. The boy avoided his gaze. The adult saw that the boy was looking at a compass that was as large as the palm of the small hand holding it. Without speaking, the boy put it back in his pocket and resumed walking. “Is that a compass?” asked the stranger, continuing in German. The boy still ignored him. “I’ll wager I know who gave it to you. Your father. Am I correct?”
     The boy stopped and finally turned toward the stranger. The large, liquid eyes shone with curiosity.
     “How do you know that?” the boy asked.
     “How do I know that it is a compass?” replied the stranger facetiously. “It is a very familiar object to me. I have a compass of my own. Would you like to see it?”
      “Yes, sir, I would,” said the boy, “but I meant, how do you know my father gave it to me?”
     “Oh, I just thought that if you were my son, I might give you my compass.” The stranger set down his green, embroidered bag, then offered the back of his right hand to the boy, almost as if expecting him to kiss it. The boy was now peering at the crown of a tarnished brass ring, engraved with a flowery letter “C,” instead of the promised face of a compass. The beginnings of a frown appeared at the corners of the boy’s mouth, but before it fully formed, the man reached down with his other hand and flipped the engraved locket cover open, revealing a miniature compass. He watched the boy’s frown reverse itself and the liquid eyes widen in delight.
     “Wunderbar!” declared the boy. He looked the man directly in the eyes for the first time. “Might I touch it, sir?” he asked. The man smiled and, without a word, slipped off the compass-ring and placed it into the child’s offered hand. As he studied it, the boy’s smile spread. Presently, the pair began walking again, but this time side by side.
     “My name is Herr Wolf,” said the man. “What is yours?”
     “Albert,” replied the boy without taking his eyes off of the compass. “Your compass is truly wonderful! Where did it come from?”
     “America, I believe.” The man spoke absently now, his mind moving on to other things.
     “America,” repeated little Albert in a reverential tone. “My father and uncle discuss America all the time. They say the American, Thomas Edison, is among the greatest men who ever lived. Do you think so, too?”
     “There are many great men,” said the stranger distantly. “Some of the greatest have not yet been born.”
     “Someday, I think I should like to visit America,” said Albert. “Have you been to America?”
     He took his cane and carpetbag together in one hand so that he could take the boy’s hand with the other. 

     “Yes, but that was in another lifetime,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder at the road behind them. It was entirely empty at the moment. Earlier, he had scouted the deserted path coming up on their right. It led to a small clearing in the wood.
     “When I grow up,” Albert said, “I will go to America.” He nodded at no one, as if promising himself.
     “I do not believe there is any possibility that you will ever go to America,” said the man as he led the boy off the main road and in among the trees. The boy looked up at him with sudden alarm.
     Through his fear, Albert choked out the words, “What do you mean?” As he began to resist, the man half lifted and half dragged the boy at a quickened pace.
     “I mean that you will never grow up,” he said as they reached the secluded clearing.

 

 
 
 
                                                            Chapter 1
 

Meyrin, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland, three days earlier

 
     On a late summer’s day, Chief Inspector Maurice Durand arrived in Meyrin to investigate the disappearance of a local shopkeeper. Meyrin was located west of Geneva in the forested foothills of the French Alps. Fewer than seven hundred souls made their homes here, and it was unusual for a senior homicide investigator to be sent to look into a local missing-person case, but someone with influence had evidently called in a favor.
    Durand had served on the force for thirty-five years. He was a short, wiry man with an aquiline nose and light gray hair. His bushy white eyebrows overhung his dark eyes, which glanced in every direction and consequently missed nothing.
     He was reluctant to concur with the local gendarmerie’s suspicion that a murder had occurred in Meyrin, and he would have preferred to await the discovery of a body before beginning work, but his services had been especially requested because his reputation for solving homicides preceded him.
     The chief inspector learned the basic facts from a uniformed gendarme named Legette, who wore waxed mustaches that came to pin-point ends. According to him, Monsieur Anton Ducote was a miserly recluse who almost never left his shop where he both worked and lived. No one had seen him since Saturday. Ducote, who was not a church-goer, was rarely seen on Sundays, but it was now Tuesday, and although he was eccentric, Ducote was not erratic. He always opened and closed his shop at the same hours every day, six days a week, unless he was ill, which was not often. Knocks at the shop door had gone unanswered for two days now. Legette finally broke down the door, whereupon he found no trace of Ducote.
     Arriving at the shop, Durand first studied the door, prodding it with the carved, black walking stick that had been his companion since he injured his left leg more than a decade ago. The door was of solid construction, and aside from part of the casing having splintered around the lock when Legette forced it open, the door remained intact and held firmly to its hinges. When he opened the door, there was a loud squealing sound. Examining the locking mechanism, Durand noted that it was of the type that could be slammed shut and locked by anyone upon exiting the shop. It did not need to be locked from the inside. There was a bolt in the upper part of the door that could be locked from the inside only, but it had not been engaged and, so, had been undamaged by Legette’s battery.
     Durand entered the shop, followed at a respectful distance by Legette. The men did not remove their hats, neither the inspector his bowler nor Legette his blue kepi. They were not guests but police investigating a possible crime scene. Durand found himself in a display room that took up the entire width of the little shop. Appliances such as skillets, clothes irons and small stoves stood along a shelf on the rear wall. Smaller objects were kept in glass cases. There were bins and bags of flour, beans and other dry foodstuffs. All of these goods seemed undisturbed. There was a cash desk, which Durand found to contain fifty-seven francs in notes and coins. If there had been foul play, Durand thought, simple robbery did not appear to be the motive.
     Behind the display room was a small office with a roll-up desk, unlocked and full of neatly filed business papers. On the wall above the desk, a calendar for 1885 displayed the current month. A doorway led from this office to a kitchen—Spartan, yet modern enough—with a flat-topped coal stove and a plain wooden table with a pair of matching chairs. There was a pump for water and, near it, a basin and wooden drain board. On the board were two china soup bowls, both turned upside down, a pair of clean wine glasses, a ladle, and two soup spoons. There was also an upside-down pot, suitable for making soup or stew. Each of these items was dry yet free of dust. Durand guessed that they might well have been used within the past two or three days.
     “Did Monsieur Ducote have friends?” asked Durand.
     “None, Chief Inspector,” said Legette before adding, “so far as I know.”
     Durand nodded and turned toward a staircase that led to the upper floor. Using his cane to help his weaker left leg, he mounted its narrow, turning steps with Legette following him, again, at a distance. Bracing himself, lest the old wooden planks give way beneath him, Durand counted twelve steps up to the small bedroom, made smaller and angular by the imposition of a severely sloping roof. Legette joined him but stood back. Durand took in the furnishings: a worn, stained armoire and a single bed with an old wooden frame upon which sagged a dilapidated mattress. Legette had described Ducote as a miser.
     As he stepped on a floorboard in the middle of the room, Durand noticed it give creakily. He and Legette exchanged looks. The two men pried up the floorboard and, in the space beneath, found a small tin box. It was dusty on the outside, but there was nothing inside—not even dust. Beside the tin were two small, empty brown burlap sacks. Durand picked up the box, and beneath it he found a stray franc coin with an 1860s date, grimy after two decades of use. He put the empty bags and the coin into the box and closed the cover. He gave them to Legette, and watched his colleague walk downstairs, holding the box out in front of him as if to keep from getting dust on his crisp blue uniform.
     Before going back downstairs himself, Durand replaced the plank in the floor and looked around once more. He noted that there was only one window in the room, highly placed above the bed. He had to stand on tiptoe, to see out of it, but it afforded a wide view of the main street that ran in front of the shop and was the main thoroughfare, bringing both eastern and western traffic through Meyrin.
     Back down in the kitchen, Durand saw that Legette had placed the tin box on the table. The gendarme was looking around with a puzzled expression, staring at an empty coat rack.
     “What is it, Legette?” asked Durand.
     “I have not yet seen Ducote’s hat. He had a green Tyrolean hat. I have seen him wear it, but it isn’t here.”
     “If he were to take a trip,” said Durand, “he might have worn it.”
     “Perhaps,” replied Legette, “but it is so unlike him to leave without so much as putting a sign on his door.”
     Durand turned in a slow circle, eyeing everything and noting a wooden door between the kitchen and the counting room.
     “Where does this door lead?” he asked.
     “I do not know, Chief Inspector,” the gendarme replied. “Perhaps a pantry or closet.”
     “A closet, perhaps?” said Durand, “where we might find the green hat, for example. So, let us see what is actually behind the door.”
     The door squealed on its hinges as Legette opened it, revealing pitch dark and a musty odor. Durand peered in and down with some apprehension. He intuited that the dark space had both horizontal and vertical depth. He hesitated.
     “Allow me, Monsieur,” said Legette at his elbow.
     Durand stepped aside with some relief, but said, “I would not recommend descending into the darkness without a lamp.”
     “I have matches, Chief Inspector,” said the gendarme, and he drew a small box from his coat. When he struck a match, it flared brightly, but its intensity was quickly reduced. Nevertheless, it afforded them a brief glimpse into the murk. The doorway opened onto a wooden staircase that presumably led into the basement of the shop.
     Durand thought that he spied a kerosene lamp hanging on a nail just inside, and he pointed it out to the gendarme. Legette took the lamp and was able to light it with his still burning match. Their path illuminated a few feet at a time, the two men proceeded down the stairs, Legette with the lamp in the lead.
     Durand assumed that there was, unspoken between them, the qualified hope and fear that someone might be down there, either the missing M. Ducote, who might be dead—or near death and in need of help—or else a person who had harmed the shopkeeper, in which case, both of them were wise to remain on guard. Durand’s hand tightened around the ivory handle of his ebony-shafted cane.
     The earthy odor of the cellar suggested to Durand that Ducote stored potatoes down here, but there was something unpleasant and yet not quite identifiable beneath that smell. The lamp cast its light only so far, and it was difficult to see much of the cellar at once, but the general picture was of a square room of comparable dimensions to the upstairs, with a dirt floor under their feet. There were no signs of life.
     There were bins along two walls and, beneath the staircase, a few tools. Some of the bins were empty and others contained potatoes, just a few of which were in the process of sprouting tubers from their eyes. A shelf contained unlabeled jars of canned vegetables and fruit. There were also a few bottles of wine laid sideways in a wooden rack.
    As his eyes became use to the dim light, Durand recognized suspiciously uneven and discolored areas on the earthen floor. The dirt in two or more areas formed slight mounds, suggesting that they might have been disturbed recently.
     “Legette,” Durand said soberly, “we should return to the station and bring back some men with proper lanterns and shovels.”
     “But, Chief Inspector,” said Legette, holding up his lamp and peering between the steps of the staircase, “there are shovels here already.”
     “And I will wager that at least one of them has been used recently, Officer. Everything in this cellar might be evidence of a crime and should not be touched. Do you understand?”
     “Yes, Chief Inspector.” 
     Within the hour, Durand and Legette were back in the cellar accompanied by three townsmen, two of whom were of average height while the third was much taller and broad shouldered. Between them, they carried two lanterns, three shovels, and a pick. Visibility was improved by the additional lanterns, which were hung from nails already fixed in the wooden cross beams that supported the ceiling. They confirmed Durand’s suspicion that three areas had been disturbed. As each laborer took one of the three spots, Durand warned them to be careful not to damage anything that might be buried beneath.
     Two of the disturbed areas were long and wide enough to be adult graves, and if he was right, they would be shallow. The third mound was small, circular, and scarcely large enough even for a child. There having been no reports of missing children, Durand deduced that some inanimate object or objects were buried there.
    While Legette supervised the men, Durand took the lamp that belonged to Ducote and peered beneath the staircase. There were two shovels, and he could see that the blade of the better one was encrusted with relatively fresh earth.
     “Chief Inspector!” said Legette suddenly. 

     As Durand turned, the light from his lamp highlighted the tableau of three men looking into the hole that one of them had just dug. There was horror on their faces, and as Durand approached, he saw what it was that troubled them. Even after three decades of viewing murder victims, many of them as robbed of their dignity as this one, Durand found the partially revealed corpse macabre.
     The light of Durand’s lamp not only highlighted a badly decomposed, larvae-infested head, but unexpectedly reflected off of the torso, which was wrapped in a silvery tunic. The chief inspector could not identify the material, but he suspected that it was not aluminum, although that was what it most resembled.
     Something about the shape of the body—the hips especially—suggested that this might be the body of a woman, but the decomposition was such that Durand was not certain. Although the conditions of the cellar had undoubtedly hastened the body’s decay—Durand estimated that it had been buried for some months, yet the tunic was still shiny the way that gold can be resistant to corruption and won’t even tarnish.
     “What have you found in the other places?” asked Durand.
     “Nothing yet,” Legette said. “I think Arnaud uncovered the body by digging faster than he should have, but Jerome has been digging cautiously as you urged.”
     “Good,” said Durand, giving a forced smile to the giant, Jerome, who had to stoop constantly beneath the ceiling of the cellar. “You may resume, Jerome, with a little more abandon.”  

      Jerome half-heartedly smiled back before returning to his task.
      The third townsman was using the pick to scrape soil out of the smallest hole after having initially attacked it with a shovel. The hole was becoming deep. Durand stopped the man. He laid his white handkerchief by the edge of the hole and gingerly placed his right knee on it; then he gently poked at the loose dirt with his cane. As he did so, something appeared at the bottom. It was a small disk, and it glinted. At this, the man with the pick gasped.
     “Is it—could it be gold?” asked the man excitedly.
     “If it is, we are not treasure hunters,” said Durand. “This is police business, and if this is gold, it all too likely has something to do with the grisly thing in the grave.”   

     These remarks sobered the man into silence. No one else spoke as Durand continued to poke the dirt until he found several more shiny discs. Their surfaces were smooth and featureless, almost like golden mirrors. There were no markings of any kind to identify them as belonging to any governmental or private mint. Durand found two in the rim of soil around the hole and five at the bottom of it. There might be more, Durand thought, which seemed all the more reason for the local gendarmerie to seal off this building and ascertain how much gold might still be buried here, although he was convinced that more gold had been taken away than remained. The coins they had found were surely mere spillage from the original cache.
     “My God!”
     All this time, Jerome had continued digging, ignoring the excitement over the gold coins. Now all eyes turned to him as Jerome backed away from his hole. Durand knew without looking that the giant had uncovered another body. At first, the other men pressed past Jerome to see the latest grave, but Durand and Legette elbowed them aside.
    The man in the grave was gray-skinned from a combination of dirt and death, but he was still a recognizable man with wrinkled skin, a thin physique. The color of his white hair was not concealed by the dark dirt caked on it.
     “Is this Monsieur Ducote?” asked Durand.
     Legette nodded without taking his eyes off of the corpse. “Yes,” he choked. Judging from Legette’s emotion, Durand wondered whether the gendarme had been honest in saying that Ducote had no friends.
     “How well did you know him?”
     “None of us knew him well,” said Legette, “and yet we knew him all of our lives. He was—a fixture.” 
     Leaving Legette in charge of the bodies and the search for more gold, Durand left the shop and walked along the main street of Meyrin. It was late afternoon, but the sun hurt his eyes, use as they were now to the dark cellar. Townspeople were beginning to gather along the street, undoubtedly gossiping about what had happened in Ducote’s shop.
Durand approached a boulangerie that was cater-corner to Ducote’s shop.
     “Bonjour, Monsieur,” Durand greeted the baker, showing him his warrant card. The baker returned the greeting and asked what was happening at his neighbor’s shop. Durand smiled at the returned greeting but ignored the question. “Are you the proprietor of this boulangerie?”
     “Yes, Monsieur.”
     “And what is your name?”
     “Pierre Blaise, Monsieur.”
     “Tell me, Monsieur Blaise, have you noticed any strangers in town lately?”
     “Do you mean, other than yourself, Monsieur Inspector?”
     Durand was unamused and pressed on. “When did you last see Monsieur Ducote?”
     “Three days ago, nearly to this hour.”
     “And were there any strangers on the street about that time?”
     “Now that you ask, there was a man walking into town that evening. I only paid him heed for a moment. I was late in closing and in a hurry. I saw him out of the corner of my eye. Through-traffic of all sorts pass through town, all day long, but few men enter the village on foot. That drew me to him. That and his odd clothes.”
     “What was odd about his clothing?” asked Durand, thinking immediately of the person buried in the shiny tunic.
     Blaise pondered before answering. “This time of year, it is too cold at night not to wear a coat, yet the man wore nothing but a brown pull-over and thin black pants. I was even more surprised that he did not wear a hat. At the time, I supposed that he must have lost it.”
      “What did he look like?”
      “He seemed neither tall nor short. He was blond. Not light blond, but dark blond. He looked thin but not weak. He walked vigorously, like a man who was cold, perhaps, but not tired.”
     “How old was he?”
     “He was a young man, perhaps in his twenties.”
     “Did he have a bag or rucksack?”
     The baker wrinkled his brow. “He carried nothing whatsoever. It was as if he came with nothing but the few clothes on his back.”
     “Did you see him again afterward?”
     “When I looked out of my window a few minutes later, he was already out of sight. I never saw him again.”
     “Thank you, Monsieur,” said Durand. “You have been very helpful. If you should think of anything—about the stranger or anything else—please contact Constable Legette. Good evening.” 

     Without waiting for a response, Durand turned away, but suddenly stopped and turned back.

     “Tell me one more thing, Monsieur Blaise. Where was this stranger, exactly, when you first noticed him?”

     Blaise pointed down the road leading out of town to the west, where in the distance Durand could see forests and fields with the French Alps rising imposingly behind them.      “He came in on this road, Monsieur. From the direction of the meadows.”
     “The meadows?”
     “Yes, Monsieur. There is very little between here and the foothills, aside from a farm or two, some sheep and, of course, a few shepherds.”
     “Does this continue to be as wide a road as it is here?” Durand asked.
     “Yes, people have been known to come over the mountains from France, then through the meadows instead of using the road, but they need warm clothes, good boots and hiking gear. By far, the road is the easiest way, especially for a man on foot and underdressed.”
     Durand nodded and thanked the baker again. The baker folded a painted wooden sign and carried it into his shop.
     Durand walked out of town, in the direction of the distant Alps. As he often found, once he achieved his stride, with the help of his stick, the pain in his leg subsided. After several minutes, despite himself, he was enjoying the country air.
     He heard a dog bark as he passed a solitary farm. He found the sound more pleasant than startling. The barking seemed far away. He could not see the dog but suspected that the animal either saw or smelled him.
     Even the animals notice strangers, he thought. Somebody, aside from the baker, must surely have seen the young man. Legette had said that he had asked around and that no one reported anything suspicious, but had Legette spoken to the baker? Had he asked the right questions?
     Durand wondered whether the man who came into town three days ago could have been the one who murdered and buried Monsieur Ducote in his own cellar. If so, who put the more decomposed body in the cellar months before? Could Ducote, himself, have been the murderer of the woman? He considered possible scenarios, but it was too soon to reach any conclusion.
     The road ahead of him continued for a great distance, but Durand remembered what the baker had said. The man had been on foot and yet had not seemed particularly tired. How far and how long had he walked to reach the village, and from where? Had he perhaps spent the previous night resting beneath the stars?
     Durand cast his eyes about as he walked. There were occasional paths that led off the road and into the meadows. One well-trod path led away from the highway about a kilometer outside of Meyrin, and Durand took it purely on intuition. In the midst of the meadow, the path petered out. 

     He stopped and looked around. The Alps were closer now but still separated from him, first by meadows and then by tree-covered hills. He saw sheep, like tiny dots of white cotton, grazing on one of the distant hills, but he could not see their shepherd. Close at hand was a gnarled old tree. Moving toward it, he looked at the ground. Closely placed footprints led away from the tree, back toward the road.

     Carefully, he walked around the tree, studying the soil. The shoe impressions seemed to start near the base of the tree. There was, perhaps, an impression where someone could have sat or lain beside the tree, but where had the person come from? Durand took his cane and poked at a spot beneath the tree where the soil appeared to have been disturbed. This whole case seemed to be about digging, he mused without humor.
     Without bothering to lay down his handkerchief this time, he lowered his body slowly, using his cane to steady himself, and rested his good knee on a thick, exposed tree root. He began to turn the soil and poke beneath it with his cane. Presently, he felt resistance to his prodding. Not a solid object but something more like a membrane or fabric that gave a little but would not let the tip of his cane go through. Turning over the soil around the object, he at last uncovered something shiny.
     Durand was not a man to be readily shocked, but he checked his breath at the sight of more buried glister. He touched the object. It was silver in color, a sort of fabric, much like the material found on the decaying corps that shared the basement with Ducote’s body. It was, in fact, exactly like it. Only it had been folded up, making it compact. In his excitement, Durand forgot his own fastidiousness and handled the loosely soiled cloth, unfolding it. It was not like any cloth he had seen or touched before. Not painted cloth, it reminded him of waterproofed fabric, except that it was stronger. It reminded him of metal, but it was not at all like chain mail worn by knights of old. Rather, it was as flexible as wool or cotton.
     Durand had assumed that the buried person’s silvery garment was like a tunic because he had only seen the body down to the hips. Unfolding this strange garment now, he realized that it was more similar to overalls. Turning it inside out, he found that it had a dull, off-white inner lining. He carefully refolded the suit but left it inside-out, making it into a less conspicuous square of thick white cloth, which he put under his arm. Supporting himself with his cane, he stood up.
     Durand walked back to the main road while his mind turned to the thing that truly perplexed him. The ground was soft, and his own footprints showed his path from the road to the tree as well as the other person’s steps from the tree to the road, but unless this person deliberately walked backward from the road to the tree—perhaps in order to bury the silvery tunic—and then carefully retraced his own steps back to the road…. But that seemed unmotivated. Where did this individual come from? It was as if the blond stranger—or whoever left these tracks—simply fell from the sky.