This time Studer went to the right room. He walked past the door to the landlord’s private quarters and saw the stove coated with aluminium paint only in memory. Then he was in the bar. He heard a glass fall to the floor and smash. The barmaid, Hulda Nüesch, her plaits like a wreath round her head, was bending down behind the bar. It seemed to Studer that her complexion was even paler than on that long-ago July night.
“What’s up, Huldi?” No reply.
He told her to bring him a large glass of red wine and some ham.
“Yes, Herr . . . Herr . . . Sergeant.” Fearfully, the girl slipped out of the door.
In the bar it smelled of cold cigar smoke, of stale beer too. Studer went through the ceremony of lighting a Brissago, took a notebook out of his pocket and licked the end of his pencil.
Farny, James Jakob, he wrote, born 13 March 1878, place of origin Gampligen.
He had only seen these details once, briefly, but he remembered them as if the page from the passport that contained them was photographed on his mind. He continued to write in his tiny script:
Any relations?
Brothers? Sisters? Nieces?
Why was the body on Frau Hungerlott’s grave?
Must have been shot while wearing his pyjamas. Find the pyjamas!
He looked around the room. Behind the bar was a sideboard, the upper part of which was full of bottles. There was a telephone on the corner of the marble top. Studer pushed past the barmaid, who was washing glasses, dialled the number of the Institute for Forensic Medicine and asked to speak to Dr Malapelle. He told him what he wanted, half in Italian and half in German: the body of the man who had been shot was to be collected as soon as possible, an autopsy was necessary, he hoped he’d be able to come to Bern the next day to get the results. Auf Wiedersehen . . .
His Brissago had gone out, of course. While he was relighting it, he looked out of the window. Five hundred yards further on the plateau fell away steeply. On the other side of the valley the hazy glow of colourful autumn foliage, bordered by the dark green of pines, shone through the mist.
“There you are . . . there you are . . . Sergeant.”
“Meerci.”
Studer filled his glass; it was the pink ordinaire of the region. The barmaid hurried out of the room, and the old man appeared.
“Ah! . . . Sergeant Studer . . . How’s the snack?”
“Mhm.” Studer chewed and observed Brönnimann from beneath his lowered lids. “It was you,” he said, “who found the body?”
“Me? . . . Yes . . . as it happened.”
“What were you doing out in the graveyard in the morning? Eh? It was still dark, wasn’t it?”
“Takin’ a little . . . Just goin’ out for few minutes. Fresh air’s good for you when you’re my age . . .”
“And then you saw your guest? Dead?”
“Dead and done for, yes, Sergeant. But I didn’t touch him!”
“Who said anything about touching? But sit down, sit down. You’re going round and round the room like a . . .”
“Sorry. Pardon. If that’s all right.”
The old man called out, “Huldi! Bring another glass.”
He couldn’t leave the girl in peace. Once she’d brought the glass, she had to look sharp and bring a half carafe of wine. The innkeeper clinked glasses with the sergeant and wished him “Your good health”, but his whole behaviour seemed put on. Brönnimann never looked the sergeant in the eye; he kept his gaze on the floor. The old man breathed heavily, panting and wheezing all the time, and when he talked, he kept being interrupted by fits of coughing.
“Yes, Sergeant, if you’d only listen to me. But an old man like me, what’s ’e got to say that’s worth hearin’? – kherfkherfkherf. Yerss. He was a nice man to have staying here, was Herr Farny, never any noise, never any fuss – quiet as a little mouse. Yerss. – kherfkherfkherf – And still ’e’s been murdered.” Coughing. Then the innkeeper went on: “If he could only tell what he knew! But like people said, better safe than sorry – kherfkherfkherf. Important people came to this inn, the warden of the poorhouse, the principal of the horticultural college, members of the canton parliament, of the government – when they were inspecting the college and the poorhouse, of course – kherfkherfkherf – And you didn’t want to get on the wrong side of important people . . .
“Do you know any of the dead man’s relatives?” Studer asked. He’d skewered a piece of ham on his fork and was examining it critically.
“Relatives? Yerss, I could tell you a lot about ’is relatives. But you know, Sergeant, you have to be careful, you can easily open your mouth a bit too wide . . . If I were to tell you all the things that were said when that Anna died . . .”
“Anna Hungerlott? The warden’s wife? What was her maiden name?”
“Er, Äbi . . .”
“Äbi?” Studer popped the piece of ham in his mouth and thought. Äbi? He’d heard that name before. But where? The July night came back to mind and two words the late James Farny had said. “Down, Äbi,” he’d said to one of the students from the horticultural college.
“Was Anna related to someone from Pfründisberg?”
Brönnimann nodded and nodded. Her brother had gradated from the horticultural college. Studer smiled. Ah yes, those difficult words. But in the end of the day it didn’t matter. Gradated or graduated, there wasn’t much of a difference, the important thing was to be understood.
“Listen, Brönnimann, you didn’t hear anything last night, did you?”
Silence. Then a little cry – the sound came from the direction of the bar. The old man turned around and barked at the barmaid, “Get on with yer work, Missie.” Then he turned back to his guest, and his eyes were as blue as the flame of a spirit stove.
“The staff nowadays, Sergeant,” he said. “It’s enough to drive a man to despair.”
“I asked you whether you heard a shot.”
“A shot?” the old man repeated. There had been something, he thought, around half past two. He had heard a bang, but then a motorbike had driven past, and the bang could have come from the bike . . . the engine backfiring, something like that . . .
“But there was a shot, Brönnimann.”
“You keep your nose out of other people’s business, Missie,” the old man told her sharply, but Studer was already licking the point of his pencil and making a new entry in his notebook.
“At half past two then, was it?” the sergeant asked. “Who was here yesterday evening?”
“Oh . . . kherfkherfkherf . . . Herr Hungerlott, the warden, Herr Sack-Amherd, the principal of the college, Gerber . . . we were playing Jass. And then two or three of the students . . .” The old man stopped.
“No one else?” Studer wanted to know. Again the answer came from behind the bar.
“There were two others. Why don’t you want to name them, Brönnimann?”
“You hold yer tongue, Missie. Too much talk can be bad for you.”
Studer resolved to get the girl to talk at the first opportunity. For the moment he concentrated on another question:
“Tell me, Brönnimann . . . why are you afraid?”
“Me, Sergeant? Me, afraid?”
“Yes, you,” said Studer baldly, using the familiar, almost insulting “Du”, at the same time thrusting his index finger at the old man’s hollow chest. How different people were! You had to address some formally, be friendly to others – and then there were those who would only tell you what they knew when you were downright rude to them.
He wasn’t afraid, the innkeeper protested, the very idea was ridiculous. Afraid! Then the old man got up, toddled over to the door, flung it open and slammed it shut behind him.
Studer’s rudeness had had its effect. He stood up.
“Come on, Huldi,” he said, “Show me the dead man’s room.”
“But you’re not going to arrest him, are you, Sergeant?”
Aha! So there was someone in the inn who had a guilty conscience. Not the landlord, although the barmaid would probably have been delighted to get him locked up, no, someone else . . . Who? Could it be the one the Chinaman had spoken about during that evening in July? “From what I heard today there’s another young lad in the house whom I couldn’t introduce to you.” Strange how well he could remember that sentence . . . Studer pretended to misunderstand what the girl had said.
“No, no, Huldi, I don’t arrest dead men.”
“Oh, you know who I mean, Sergeant.”
“Me? I know nothing, nothing at all.”
Huldi Nüesch, who wore her brown plaits pinned round her head like a wreath, led the way, Studer following. They went along a corridor with red tiles on the floor – they had white sand sprinkled over them. The barmaid opened a door on the left, and the two of them went into the late James Farny’s room.