Did I already know? Do I know now? Do I want to know any more? My conscious self struggles to set her bald statement within a frame of reason. In evidentiary terms, I did not know she had committed murder. I still do not know. I am a doctor of sick minds which distort reality. I have listened to a narrative, every word of which may be a fiction. I have had no time to test its truth or analyse its hidden meanings.
On the other hand, the unrest in my own subconscious – the sudden release of archetypes of terror and violence – affirms that what I am hearing is truth. It is as if a chord struck on a pianoforte has set up a whole series of sympathetic vibrations. Whether the truth is what the words say – that is another matter. When Toni tells me that I intend to kill Freud at Munich, she is talking of a moral act with moral consequences, not an offence under the criminal code.
Do I want to know more? I must. I have seen what this confession has cost my patient. I know what it has cost me. Each of us must draw some benefit from the experience. There is another reason, too. I am so joined to her, even by this brief day’s experience, that everything that touches her, touches me in a special mystery of conjunction. We are not joined in body yet; but our subconscious selves are very close. Nevertheless, I have to deal – and deal very carefully – with the conscious. I get up from my chair and pace the room slowly, taking care not to pass too close to her until I have finished what must be said.
“This morning we made a bargain, to guarantee that what passed between us in this room would remain secret. That bargain stands. Having come this far we have consummated a kind of sacrament.” Before the last words are out I am aware of myself as a pompous idiot, mouthing banalities like my father in the pulpit. I am standing by the bookshelves. She comes to me. She has her own word to say.
“I’m not worried. That part was settled in my mind hours ago. You see, once you’ve joined the Vogel-freier, the outlaws, the next stop is the sky. I can make that flight whenever I choose.”
“I know that; but I have to be sure of something. There’s so much metaphor and symbol in this business. Did you actually and physically kill Ilse Hellman?”
“Actually, physically and by premeditated act. But no court in the world could ever convict me.”
“Did you have accomplices?”
“Did Johann know?”
“Never.”
“Who then?”
“No one. Lily guessed. Papa guessed. But no one ever knew, until this moment.”
“How did you do it?”
“Is that important?”
“From this moment, everything is important. You are my patient. It is you who are in jeopardy now.”
“Do you care so much?”
“I care.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know! But I care. Now for Christ’s sake, let’s have the rest of the story!”
I turn away from her to go back to my desk. She catches at my sleeve, turns me in mid-stride and kisses me full on the lips. The mystery of conjunction is complete; for a long moment we are glued together like those little copulating dolls one finds in curiosity shops. The moment passes. She pushes me away and seats herself again in the patient’s chair. She gives me an odd, half-sad smile and an ironic comment: “Now I understand why the Romans use a wire grille in the confessional.” I remind her with a grin that I am an analyst and not a confessor, so the rules of the game are different. Then she begins again; and as she talks, the realisation grows that I have just embraced a murderess and found it a most stimulating experience.
“Everything was planned around that first hunt at Gamsfeld. We had organised it as a full day’s festival: the fox hunt in the morning, a parade of our blood stock after lunch, a hunt ball in the evening, with fireworks and a Bierfest in the village for the locals. We were bringing in some of our own people from Silbersee as handlers and grooms, so that the two enterprises would be seen to be working together. Can you let me have a pencil and a sheet of paper. There’s a certain amount of geography involved. It’s easier if you see it on paper.”
She pulls her chair up to the desk and draws a figure eight with the top loop much larger than the lower one. In the lower loop she marks a cross.
“That’s Gamsfeld itself: the castle, which is small but very old. It’s perched on a hill, surrounded by a wall, with dwellings inside the enclosure for the household staff. Below, in this first round valley, are the home meadows, three hundred acres of them. The perimeter is all hills, with meadows on the lower slopes, then pinewoods, then the snowline, crags and stunted growth. That’s where the Gams, the chamois, could still be found. Here, where the two parts of the figure touch, is a defile, about a quarter of a mile wide between two hills. Beyond that, as you see, the country opens out again into pastures, meadowlands and orchards, each divided by low walls of stone. At the top of the figure eight is the village. Very old, quite beautiful in spring and summer, but grim and depressing in winter.
“We knew we would have a big cavalcade for the event and Johann wanted to ingratiate himself with the village folk. So, we arranged to assemble the huntsmen and the hounds in the village square itself, with breakfast and a stirrup cup and favours for the children. That way the butcher, the baker, the innkeeper, the farmers and the working folk all got a share of the proceeds. After breakfast we would move out to the open meadowland, where there was the best chance of flushing a fox. The hounds would be slipped and the hunt would be on. We would try to drive the fox back through the defile and on to the home estate where the going was rougher but the risks of damage to farm property were less.
“At my suggestion, Johann had arranged some insurance against accidents. We had the farm boys trap a fox and keep it penned. If we didn’t flush our own fox before we hit the defile, the boys would release the trapped animal about a quarter of a mile ahead so that hounds and horsemen would have themselves a runnable quarry. The second insurance was to invite the local doctor to join the hunt – and bring his bag of tricks with him. That meant there would be three of us to deal with any casualties, which would be picked up by a farm brake following the cavalcade.
“Finally, the four of us, Johann Dietrich, Hans Hemeling, Ilse and myself rode the whole course, across and around, to note any hazards for novice riders or those unfamiliar with the country. There were several: a bank on the mill stream where the timbers of the chute had rotted, a rabbit warren, honeycombed with burrows, where both horse and rider could come to grief, and a stone wall, higher than the rest, part of an old building complex, with a rubble-filled ditch on the other side. A good rider on a good mount could take it in one stride, a poor one would risk his neck. We agreed to mark the hazards and warn the huntsmen before we set off.
“I asked Ilse how well she rode over the jumps. Johann answered for her. ‘She’s quite good. We’ve been out a lot together; but I don’t want her taking any risks. I suggest she ride with you, Magda. She doesn’t have to prove anything against these big country fellows on their heavy hunters, or my friends from the cavalry who are trained to take risks. I’ve warned her however, if she has any doubts, to pass up the jump. When the pack is in full cry, it’s catch as catch can!’
“For the first time I heard a jangle of jealousy among the silver bells. Ilse didn’t want to be lectured in front of me. Ilse was perfectly able to take care of herself. The Mistress of Gamsfeld had a name to keep up. She wanted her Johann to be proud of her. Amen! So be it! I was absolved from responsibility. Which was exactly as I had planned it.”
“But surely, Madame . . .” Even to me, the sober Swiss from Küsnacht, an obvious question presents itself. “Surely it is the fox who makes the running, not the huntsmen? How could you calculate on hitting this or that obstacle where your accident was to be staged? After all, your neck was at risk, too – from the hangman if things went wrong.”
She gives me a brief patronising smile and shakes her head.
“You miss the point, dear colleague. The danger spots were a diversion, a distraction. There was no guarantee that we would ever come near them at all; but in a steeplechase, a point-to-point, a hunt across country, there is danger at every instant. Accidents can happen very easily. Ilse Hellman was a mediocre horsewoman. She rode sidesaddle like a perfect lady. I am a good rider – a very good one – and I’ve always ridden astride. So you see, the odds were all in my favour. Johann and his friends were out for a fox. I was after the vixen. I would be riding neck and neck with Ilse Hellman until the kill.”
There is no doubt that the voice which issues from her mouth, the fire which lights her eyes, are expressions of the shadow, the dark and primitive element of her self. I begin to understand how deep is the split within her psyche, and what she really means when she claims, on the one hand, to have no religious or moral instincts and, on the other, gropes so desperately for a handhold on faith. I am reminded vividly of accounts which I have read of so-called diabolic possession. I am sure that many of these are phenomena belonging to states of dementia praecox. I am convinced that this woman, while acting with complete rationality is, at certain moments, cut completely in two like a tomato. I urge her to continue. I have to confess that I am irresistibly intrigued by this account of an assassination by the assassin herself.
“At Gamsfeld we all rose early, in order to welcome the guests as they arrived in the village. It was a beautiful spring morning, sunny, crisp, with rime still crackling underfoot and the first faint buds breaking on the winter-bare branches. Johann, Ilse and I set off together. Johann, bred to the cavalry, was riding his favourite mount, a big Furioso from Hungary. I had brought Celsius, a Hanoverian that I had schooled myself, a handy jumper, seventeen hands and steady as a Swiss clock. Ilse’s mount was a gift from Johann, a pretty little half-Arab mare from the stud at Radautz. She was young and mettlesome and Ilse, splendid in a new riding habit, matched her for beauty and line, if not for intelligence.
“I know it sounds strange, a compliment to the woman I wanted to kill; but what would you have instead? A lie? She did look beautiful. Her mount was a beauty too; though I didn’t know how much heart she’d have under pressure. But of course there would be no pressure today. We were out for good, honest country fun, with the village band playing oom-pah-pah in the square, the girls in starched aprons and Sunday dirndls dashing about with beer and bread and sausage, and all the gentry for miles around ready to join a fox hunt à l’Anglaise at Gamsfeld!
“As we trotted off, Ilse was next to Aunt Sibilla. I drew alongside them and reminded Ilse of Johann’s warnings. Let the men take the lead. Once the view halloo sounded, all those big seventeen-handers would go charging forward like a regiment of hussars. She was nervous now and glad to have me by her. The little mare was restive, too, and hard to hold. Ilse complained, ‘I don’t know her well enough. I’m not sure how she’s going to respond.’ I told her to ride with a firm hand. We were in no hurry. If she wanted her head at the fences, give it to her. If she faltered, pass up the jump rather than risk a tumble. I would ride with her all the way but take each jump ahead of her. My Celsius had a big, steady stride, and he would lend confidence to the little mare. Aunt Sibilla added her own counsel. ‘You can trust Magda. Just stay with her, she’ll get you home safe.’ Which was exactly what I needed: clear evidence that I had a great care for my dear friend Ilse. Then the master sounded his horn, the hounds moved off, we trotted after them, out of the square, down the cobbled street, over the little arched bridge – nine centuries old they said! – and into the open meadows, where the hounds were slipped and the horsemen fanned out across the pastures.
“Our luck held. Half a mile from the bridge we flushed our fox, a big, sleek male who appeared from the lee of an ashlar fence and loped away towards the defile, with the hounds two paddocks away from him. At the first cry, Ilse was off at a hand gallop, as I knew she would be. She was jostled in the first rush, was almost thrown, and then fell back to join me and Aunt Sibilla at the tail of the chase.
“Sibilla scolded her. I, the dear and faithful friend, encouraged her. ‘We’ll catch them up. Let’s take it easy over the next two fences, then we’ll move up into the pack.’ She settled down then, we took three stone fences, in beautiful rhythm. By the time the little mare was gathered and ready, I was over and cantering until Ilse caught up. It was child’s play, a training exercise that I used to do with Rudi in the old days in Geneva. The next two fences we took more smartly. Ilse was flushed with excitement. She called out: ‘Now let’s go! Now!’ We were three fields away from the main group. We had to take two stone fences, a brush fence with a ditch beyond, and then, looming up from a different angle altogether, the stone wall with the rubble ditch.
“This was the moment. I knew I had to decide – now or never. The rubble ditch might kill us both. If I judged it right, the brush fence could be the last frontier for Ilse. I answered her cry, ‘Go! Let’s go!’ and took the first two fences, flying, with Ilse ten feet behind me. She stumbled a little after the second, but recovered and was hard on my heels as I made for the brush fence. Johann and I had noted this one as we made our rounds. The ditch on the other side was wide and steep; but any clean jumper could take it with ease. Even Ilse. She was only a length behind me when I jumped, not straight, but slewed slightly across her path. I cleared the ditch easily; but the little mare, thrown off stride, propped at the last moment and Ilse went sailing over the brush fence, to land head first in the ditch.
“There are no good falls – only lucky ones. This was a bad one. She was alive but unconscious, her body grotesquely twisted. There was bleeding from the nose and ears, and one side of the skull was impacted against a small sharp rock embedded in the wall of the ditch. The first riders to come on the scene were Aunt Sibilla and Papa. Aunt Sibilla – old regime to the tops of her riding gloves – looked down, stricken but tearless, and announced: ‘I saw it happen. Poor child! Her timing was all wrong. Dear God, what a mess! I’ll get some help.’
“Papa knelt with me, made a quick examination and muttered to me: ‘We’ll be lucky if she’s alive when we get her back home. If she is, then we’ll work on her together. The local man can do the anaesthetic; you assist me.’ Then the men arrived with the brake. We lifted Ilse into it and made her as comfortable as we could. Papa and I rode back with her to the castle.
“Johann was horror-struck, but he carried himself like a soldier. He sent his major-domo and my Hans Hemeling to deal with the guests; then came upstairs to the bedroom where Sibilla and Lily were undressing Ilse while Papa and I and the local doctor were scrubbing up for whatever surgery seemed possible – which was little enough. There was a large depressed fracture of the skull, fractures in the central vertebral structure and, by the look of things, a profuse cranial haemorrhage. Johann asked, ‘Is there any hope?’ The village physician left the answer to Papa. He was gentle but firm in his opinion. ‘Not much, I fear. We might do a little better in a hospital, but she’ll die before we get her there. We need your agreement for emergency work now – but don’t count on any miracles.’
“Johann was grim and pale. He said simply: ‘Do what you can, please, gentlemen.’ Then he bent and kissed Ilse on the forehead, shepherded Sibilla and Lily out of the room and left us to our work. The physician from the village proved both competent and judicious. In his opinion the cranial damage was major and irreparable. The spinal fracture would probably mean permanent paralysis. All in all, it would be a mercy if she did not survive. Papa nodded agreement. I, being in the presence of my seniors, had no opinion to offer. Papa suggested that we deal first with the cranial depression and see what sort of mess we had inside. It was a mess, too. After an hour of useless work we simply sewed back the flaps, bandaged the skull, composed her in the bed and called in Johann.
“It was Papa who delivered the verdict. She was not going to survive. The most merciful thing was to let her die quietly with no more butcher’s work. Johann broke down completely. He knelt by the bed, his face buried in his hands, sobbing like a stricken child. The physician asked tactfully whether we should not have the priest in to give her the last sacraments. Aunt Sibilla had already sent for him. I, who had never seen this service before, stood with the rest and listened to the words of dismissal, and felt – would you believe? – joyful that it would soon be over.
“But the end was not yet. The vigil was longer than any of us expected. About eight in the evening, I was sitting in the bedroom with Johann and Aunt Sibilla. I was longing to take him in my arms; but dared not give so much as a hint of what I felt for him. I was keeping watch with Ilse, my dearest friend, companion of my woman’s heart.
“Suddenly she began to roll her head on the pillow and utter strange animal cries. Sibilla and Johann looked at me and asked what was happening. I explained as best I could that the synapses in the brain were all askew and that these were reflex actions only. Then Johann cried out: ‘But she’s hurting can’t you see? She’s hurting! Please help her! Please!’ I told him I would do what I could. I asked them both to leave the room. I poured a little chloroform on a pad and waved it under Ilse’s nose. The smell would make it appear – to all but Papa – that I had administered more anaesthetic. Then I killed her with an injection of air into the femoral artery, where the pinprick would not be noticed.
“Ten minutes later I called in Papa and the local man. They pronounced her dead. There was the usual bedside grief. The local man signed a death certificate. My father witnessed it. The priest gave the last blessing, offered his condolences to the family and took his leave. Johann, frozen in a terrible grief, refused to leave the room until the women came in to wash the body and prepare it for the undertaker.
“The rest of it is a sequence of rituals, unreal as the scenes painted on an ancient vase. Aunt Sibilla begged us to stay at Gamsfeld until after the funeral. For the first time, I began to be wary. It was no part of my plan to be talked of as a possible consort for the widowed Ritter von Gamsfeld. So I made the excuse that I had things to do at Silbersee and would take the same train as Hans, who was taking the horses back home. I promised faithfully that I would be back in time for the funeral.
“Lily was less than happy. She was jealous of Aunt Sibilla’s attentions to Papa, and had some sour words to say about the gentry being always gentry and settling their own affairs without care for anyone else. I suggested she come home with me and Hans and let Papa work out his own destiny. On the train journey she sprang a surprise. She had decided to take a vacation in England, very soon, while the spring flowers were out and the gardens at their best. She hadn’t been home for so long. She was getting a kind of hunger to see the old place again.
“I told her it was a marvellous idea, just what she needed. I knew Papa was getting to be a trial; and I was always busy. ‘So busy, luv!’ Lily told me sadly. ‘So very busy! And so clever that I wonder where you learned it all!’ There was a barb in that bait too, but I ignored it. I was sure a holiday in England was just what Lily needed. I promised a gift of fifty crowns to help her on her way.
“The funeral at Gamsfeld was a big affair, very feudal, full of strange local protocols that made no sense at all to us Ausländers. On one side of the grave, Johann stood with Aunt Sibilla and other members of his family. Facing them were Papa Hellman and his sons. I stood with the Hellmans – a mute and mourning witness to my own sad loss. Papa Hellman held my hand and put his arm around my shoulder, and told me he would always look on me as his second daughter.
“As we moved out of the churchyard, Johann caught up with me. With a humility that moved me to tears, he begged: ‘Please, would you be willing to go on working as we planned? I need desperately to keep busy, and Ilse was so wrapped up in the project, I’m sure she’d want it to go on. Aunt Sibilla wants it, too. She thinks you’re one of the bravest and most complete women she’s met – and she loves having you around. I want to come to Silbersee sometimes; if you’ll have me. Gamsfeld is going to be a very lonely place now.” If I could have moved in then and there, I would have done it; but that little colony at Gamsfeld was full of sharp peasant eyes and clacking tongues. If I had learned nothing else in life I had learned to sit patiently behind my defences and wait for the time to strike.”
“Tell me! Through all this, did you feel no guilt, no doubt, no fear?”
“I felt nothing but triumph.”
It is an extraordinary statement; yet I believe it absolutely. All my own death dreams have prepared me to understand it. She is telling of a moment when the shadow, the dark element of the self, is in complete control, when all guilt is suppressed, and one feels like a conqueror marching into a vanquished city over a carpet of corpses, without even a twinge of remorse. Only later, a long time later perhaps, does the conqueror discover that he has taken possession of a plague town, where the bodies of the dead pollute the wells and the scavenging rats are carriers of the Black Death.
Her dream makes sense now. All its elements are contained in the macabre story I have just heard: the hunt, the fall, the dead vixen, she herself locked in the globe of glass, naked under the accusing eye of the sun – the primal God symbol. It is the glass ball itself which interests me now. It is at once a prison, a place of exhibition, a womb, a capsule in which she can maintain herself alive and safe, beyond the touch of hostile hands. I mention all these matters briefly. She does not contend with them. The dream has served its purpose. It has brought her safely to me, exposed but still untouchable. I remind her that we have a time limit and we must press on. I ask:
“After the funeral did you go back to Silbersee?”
“We went back, yes; but it wasn’t the same. It would never be the same again.”
“Why not?”
“Because my heart was with Johann in Gamsfeld and a strange, dark alchemy had begun to work between Papa and Lily and me. It began with the complicated chemistry of age. Papa – handsome, charming, agreeable, utterly selfish Papa! – was now a rather portly gentleman in his late fifties, with a well trained eye for young girls and an increasing dependence on the company and the ministrations of women long past their first youth. He needed to be coddled. He needed to be reassured that all his male parts were in working order and that his musk could raise all the females in the vicinity. What he didn’t need, what he fled like the plague, was marriage. So when someone like Aunt Sibilla, practised, persuasive and persistently urbane began stalking him, he tended to indulge himself first, then flee in panic – only to find himself hunted by other predatory ladies with money on their minds.
“What he could never see was that the only person with whom he could possibly be happy in marriage was Lily. She would have indulged him to the limit, forgiven him all his infidelities and still had love and body warmth to share when he came home. I tried a hundred times to persuade him; but no! He could not, would not see it. All his education was against the notion. A gentleman never married beneath him. He could tumble the common folk to his heart’s content, but he never raised them to his own high estate. Charge him with these ancient snobberies, and he would huff and puff and tell you ‘Nonsense! Nonsense!’ but he clung to them just the same.
“So, Lily, ten years younger but trapped in the shoals of the spinster forties, became more and more bitter. She was still a good-looking woman; she still exercised every day; but there was grey in her hair and a certain matronly look and fewer smiles in her eyes – and, after we came back from Gamsfeld, a strange, furtive withdrawal from me. For a while I pretended not to notice. I was busy all the time, with Silbersee, with the Gamsfeld project, and with a clinic which I had opened in the village to take some of the weight off our ageing medico. However, one day she irritated me so much that I attacked. I told her I was sick of her childish sulks and if she had something on her mind, now was the time to say it.
“She said it. She said it loud and long in purest Lancashire. She had given the best years of her life to Papa, to me, to Silbersee. She had finished in a dead end street. She was nothing but a glorified housekeeper. She had no respect, no love. Papa preened himself like an old turkey whenever that Sibilla woman was around – and then expected Lily to rub his back and warm his front and wind him up for his next big affair. It was all too much! ‘And as for you, young Miss, I’ve loved you as if you were my own flesh and blood; but I don’t know you any more. You frighten me now. Oh, I know you say you love me! You probably do, in your own weird way. But if you wanted something badly enough, you’d walk all over me to get it. There’s a devil in you, lass! I’ve seen him looking out of those beautiful eyes. I know what you’ve done. I know what you’re doing now. I don’t want to be around to see what comes of it!’ Then she burst into tears and ran to lock herself in her room.
“My first reaction was a cold rage – too cold for words, thank God! I said nothing to defend myself, nothing to answer the veiled accusation. As I calmed down, I realised that silence was the only armour I needed. With Johann’s family and Papa Hellman on my side, any accusations that Lily might make would only be interpreted as the vagaries of a spinster lady in menopause.
“Later in the day she came to me, pale and penitent, and begged me to forgive her. She hadn’t meant half the things she’d said. She wasn’t well. The affair at Gamsfeld had upset her terribly. Much as she loved him, Papa was sometimes a monster. I took her in my arms and kissed her and told her it was just a bad moment, best forgotten. The sooner she could get away on her holiday, the better.
“Then she sprang another surprise. While she was in England she might – just might – look around for a little cottage in the country, a place where she could retire and live quietly when the time seemed right. She had some capital saved and Papa had always said she had a pension coming. I assured her she had; but was it necessary to think so far ahead? I had always hoped she would stay with me and help me to bring up my own children.
“She gave me a long searching look. Her eyes filled up with tears. She shook her head. ‘I’ve thought of that too, luv; but it wouldn’t work. The kind of life we’ve lived – you don’t want to pass that on to your children. My guess is that Johann Dietrich will ask you to marry him, and you’ll do it and he’ll want a son, and you’ll probably give him one. If you can keep everything clean after that, you’re home and happy; but it’s not easy, as I have good reason to know!’
“A few days later, she left for London. Papa was operating in Vienna. Hans Hemeling drove her to the station. I was glad to be rid of her for a while. Johann Dietrich was coming to Silbersee.”