When, in later years, Studer told the story of James Farny, he also called it the story of the three locales. “For,” he would say, “the case of the Chinaman took place in three locales: in a village inn, in a poorhouse, in a horticultural college. That’s why I sometimes call it the story of the three locales.”
The next morning it was the turn of the third locale, the horticultural college. First of all Studer had breakfast with Ludwig Farny, the assistant chance had brought him, then he set off with him to pay a visit to the principal, Sack-Amherd. He felt an urge to make the acquaintance of Ernst Äbi, the Chinaman’s other nephew.
There had been a change in the weather during the night; the Föhn was blowing. The slope on the other side of the valley stood out clearly; the leaves of individual birches shone like gold coins in the sun, and the deciduous wood was a crimson glow in its frame of dark-green pines.
As soon as he entered the grounds of the horticultural college, he could see that things were different there. Although the gravel had been scraped up into heaps – so that it wouldn’t be trodden into the soil during the damp winter months – it was obvious that the paths had been laid on a bed of stone. In the distance the hum of a rotary hoe could be heard; along a stone wall was an orchard of dwarf fruit trees in which a group of students stood. Studer’s arrival caused some agitation among them; he thought he could hear whispers and chatter. But he continued to stride forward undeterred – fifty yards – thirty yards – then he heard a voice he knew: “Pay attention. There’s nothing to see over there. This is a lesson. Now here you have to be careful.”
Studer recognized the speaker: the principal, Herr Sack-Amherd, was wearing a fur-lined coat – the collar was fur too, as was his hat – and his hands were in lined leather gloves. He was wearing galoshes over his shoes, and his trousers were immaculately ironed. In his hand he had a gleaming pair of nickel-plated secateurs with which he snipped off a twig here and there.
“For the dwarf pyramid the most important thing is to avoid damaging the structure, the shape of the tree. Of course there are gardeners who chop away anything that comes to hand. I don’t call that pruning, I call it botching . . . Ah! Good morning, Herr Studer. Delighted to see you again. You’ll be here about the murder, of course. I hope you don’t suspect one of our students . . . do you?”
Studer shook his slim hand, muttered some vague greeting and drew the principal to one side, away from the staring students.
“Naturally I want to cause your college as little disruption as possible, Principal,” he said. “But I will have to question at least one of your students, that much is unavoidable. I have been told he is a nephew of the murdered man. Ernst Äbi they say he’s called. I think it will even be necessary to search his locker . . .”
“To search his locker! You don’t say! To search the locker of one of my students! – Äbi!” he called out, and his voice cracked.
How old could this student be? Certainly older than the others. Twenty-six? Twenty-eight? An old acquaintance as well. It was the student with such a long nose it looked like a caricature. When the student reached the two men, the principal barked at him, “Nothing but trouble we have with you. Now the police want to search your locker. Can you imagine what that does for the college’s reputation?”
Was he imagining things? It seemed to the sergeant that Ernst Äbi had gone pale. But Studer deliberately put on a genial voice when he said, “Let’s make it like at the dentist’s, Herr Sack-Amherd, the quicker the better.”
Giving Ludwig a signal to keep an eye on his stepbrother, he led the way, together with the principal, to the college.
It was a broad building, in the mixture of styles favoured by the canton architect: part farm, part village school, part factory building. The main door decorated with ornamental metalwork. Inside, they came into a square hall from which a staircase with a double turn went up to the first floor. In the space between the two flights was a little moss-grown fountain surrounded by a few potted chrysanthemums with stems between one and three feet high. The flowers were colourful, bronze, crimson, gold – and white. As Studer went up the stairs with the principal, he turned around. The scene he saw was to haunt him for a long time.
Ludwig Farny had placed his broad, calloused hand on his stepbrother’s shoulder. There was a worried look in those eyes with their remarkable blue sheen. The young labourer’s protective gesture – he was much smaller than his stepbrother – was so touching that Studer felt a momentary pang of conscience. But he had a job to do, after all. You can’t let yourself be swayed by feelings in an investigation.
If the sergeant thought he was going to be taken straight to Ernst Äbi’s locker, he was mistaken. Even a murder is not enough to keep the principal of a college from showing off the glories of his establishment. Moreover, Herr Sack-Amherd suffered from asthma. So he took his visitor on a guided tour of the whole of the first floor, giving him the opportunity to admire the sickbay (it had two beds), the library, the museum, the conference room. As they entered the last-named, it suddenly occurred to the principal that he had forgotten to get another teacher to stand in for him. At first he was going to send Äbi, but the sergeant protested. So Ludwig was sent, and Studer had to wait in the room, in which a table covered in green baize was looking bored, despite the presence of six high-backed chairs round it.
“Off you go, lad,” said Herr Sack-Amherd, describing the shortest way. “Tell him I’ll be occupied until eleven. He’s to take the rest to the glasshouse and give them a lesson on pot plants. Wottli’s his name. His nameplate’s on the letter box. You’ve got that?”
Again Ludwig blushed and glanced at his stepbrother, who was leaning with his forehead against the window and staring out into the garden. Then he left. In order to free himself from the principal’s chatter, Studer sat down and leafed through a book that was on the table. It was a strange book. An Indian had written it, and it described bizarre experiments. With the help of complicated instruments, the author had measured the plants’ pulse, which he had managed to slow down with injections of chloroform and speed up with injections of caffeine . . .
Eventually Ludwig Farny returned, and the four of them went up to the second floor. Here, too, Studer had to admire the dormitories, their gleaming parquet floors, the iron bedsteads painted white, with eider-downs and pillows in red-checked covers. Then, finally, the group went out into the corridor (the grey tiles had a coconut-matting runner, and the washroom had two dozen white porcelain basins with hot and cold taps) and stopped by a locker with the number 26 painted in black on it.
“Open it,” the principal commanded. Turning to the sergeant, he added, “Naturally I have a second key for every locker, but it seems to me . . .”
Ernst Äbi opened his locker. Work clothes, a Sunday suit . . . underwear, shoes . . . Studer started to clear it out, placing every object neatly on the coconut matting. From time to time he threw a sidelong glance at Ernst Äbi and marvelled at the paleness of the tip of the lad’s nose. A vague memory of the book he had just leafed through came to mind: he would have liked to feel the horticultural student’s pulse, to see if it was beating faster. People probably didn’t need a toxic substance, as plants did, to speed up the circulation of blood . . .
“What’s this?” Studer had taken the shoes out and now he was holding a package, tied up with string, and weighing it suspiciously in his hand. “What’s this?” he repeated.
No answer. Ernst Äbi had put on a stubborn expression. So the sergeant untied the knot, removed the paper and looked at what came to light.
A pair of raw-silk pyjamas. A spattering of red on the trousers . . . but the jacket was covered in blood. There was a frayed hole on the left-hand side of the front.
“What’s this?” Studer asked for the third time. When the student still refused to answer, the principal lost his temper: “Will you answer?!”
But Ernst Äbi had his lips clamped between his teeth, and not only the tip of his nose was pale; his whole face was. Ludwig Farny, on the other hand, had gone bright red and was staring anxiously at his stepbrother.
Studer tried once more: “Where did you find this, Ernstli?”
Again the obstinate silence. His friendly approach was getting him nowhere, so Studer dropped the bloodstained pyjamas on the floor, went over to the window with the wrapping paper and examined it . . . No doubt about it, the address that had been on it had been scratched out with a penknife. However, if he held the paper up to the window, the letters could be clearly seen:
Herr Paul Wottli, Instructor, Horticultural College, Pfründisberg bei Gampligen. And the sender: Frau Emilie Wottli, 25 Aarbergergasse, Bern.
It could be a clue. The well-fed principal of the college had stared at Studer’s every action. Had Herr Studer found something? he wanted to know, as he fiddled with the white-gold watch chain dangling over his paunch. The sergeant said nothing, just shrugged his shoulders.
Wottli . . . Wottli . . . He had the feeling he’d heard the name. Hadn’t Ludwig been sent to see a Wottli? Wasn’t Wottli the name of the teacher who’d had to stand in for the principal?
“What are your teachers’ names, Herr Direktor?”
Sack-Amherd held up his right hand and dutifully counted off the members of staff:
“Blumenstein, he does fruit-growing, Kehrli does vegetables and Wottli does pot plants; he also teaches composting and chemistry. Wottli’s a very capable teacher, that’s why I had him take over my class.”
“Is Wottli married?”
“No, Sergeant. He looks after his mother, and she lives in Bern. A good son – a model son.” How sweet the principal’s voice sounded! His lips formed a perfect circle: “Oh yes, Wottli will go far. Incidentally, my teacher” – my teacher, the fat man said – “was also very friendly with the late Herr Farny. I wouldn’t be surprised if Wottli received a legacy . . . He was very rich, you know, though a bit of an eccentric, writing his memoirs in an out-of-the-way inn.”
So Herr Sack-Amherd also knew that the Chinaman was writing his memoirs.
“Have you read his memoirs, Herr Direktor?”
“Only in part. Once Herr Farny read out from them to us.”
Studer suddenly turned to Äbi: “Where did you find the wrapping paper?”
Silence, obstinate silence. Ludwig Farny tried to get his stepbrother to speak.
“Come on, Ernst, tell us,” he said, begging, imploring him. His voice seemed to tremble with tears.
But Ernst Äbi refused to speak. He shrugged his shoulders, raising them so high they touched his ears, which were big and very red, as if to suggest by that gesture that it was pointless to say anything. And the sergeant could understand his mute protest . . .
“If you have no objection, Herr Sack-Amherd,” (Studer used his best formal German for this suggestion) “then perhaps we could – with your approval, of course, only if you have no objection – come to the following conclusion: you yourself will have to admit that the discovery of this strangely suspicious package suggests your student is guilty of – or at least implicated in the mysterious murder . . .”
“Mysterious, very mysterious,” Sack-Amherd sighed, slipping into Swiss dialect.
“Do you know what? On the first floor you have a splendid sickbay, which is empty, completely empty, proof of how hygienically run your school is . . .”
Flattered, Sack-Amherd laughed, modestly digging his chin into the black cravat covering his starched shirtfront.
“I don’t want to arrest Ernst Äbi until I’m absolutely sure,” Studer went on, speaking loudly enough for the two stepbrothers to hear every syllable. “How would it be if we put the pair of them into the sickbay? Then Ludwig Farny could keep an eye on his stepbrother, and I would be sure he wouldn’t try to escape. I trust Ludwig Farny . . .”
“What?” the principal hissed, sticking his chin out. “What? You trust him, a former inmate of the poorhouse? A man who’s been in and out of reformatories?”
“Yes,” said Studer mildly, “I trust him because the Chin– er, his uncle also trusted him.”
“On your responsibility, Herr Studer. And if the police will cover you, I have no . . .”
“OK, Ludwig?” The lad nodded. “And you, Ernst?”
“Yes . . . fine.”
“That’s that, then.” Studer gave a sigh of satisfaction. “As far as I’m concerned, they can have the freedom of the building during the day, but at six you, Principal, will lock them in the sickbay and keep the key until the morning. I am making you responsible for your student.”
Sack-Amherd was about to protest, but then he desisted and nodded to indicate his agreement.
“Goodbye, one and all.” The sergeant waved his hand, gently ruffled his assistant’s straw-blond hair, then crooked his finger and gave Ernst Äbi a friendly tap on the chest. “And you, clodhopper, don’t do anything silly.”
Then he slowly went down the stairs. He could still hear the principal’s angry voice. Sack-Amherd was annoyed at the expression “clodhopper”. The word was an insult for a student who was due to receive his diploma from the college next February.