The morning was grey and cold, reflecting Fritz’s mood. The Central Cemetery was also grey and cold, with its stone fences and wrought iron gates. The mortuary inside the gate was empty. Father Pant parked his car around the back, and used a gold key to open the unpainted wooden door. Fritz brought the camera with him. It was heavy and large, and he had to carry it carefully. Father Pant watched him without offering help. The camera itself had gained a withering glance from him earlier when Fritz had removed it from his own car.
Inside, the mortuary smelled of decaying flowers. Father Pant bypassed the public rooms and took Fritz through a dark, unlit hallway. The air was cool here as well, as if someone had left the heat off, and the smell changed from dying flowers to the tang of formaldehyde. The smells seemed exaggerated, the silence heavy, and Fritz attributed his over reaction to his lack of sleep.
Finally, Father Pant led him to double doors made of cheap stained brown wood. The brown had faded near the knobs where pressure of hands had rubbed the stain away. After Father Pant pushed the doors open, he reached for the light switch to the right.
Immediately a string of uncovered electric bulbs lit, banishing the dark. Fritz understood why Father Pant went for the light first. The room was the size of three normal rooms, with lockers standing against the far wall. There was a basin sink near the lockers, and counters ran along the remaining walls. Wooden tables filled the rest of the room, all stained dark, but even the colour could not hide the black blotches that irregularly marked each surface.
The body of an elderly woman, covered with a pale blue cloth, lay on a table closest to the lockers. Her silver hair draped across the side of the table, and the uneven ends brushed against the floor. Her eyes were open and sunken into her face, her mouth a silent ‘O’ of pain. Even the odour of formaldehyde could not hide the stench of rot.
Father Pant said nothing. Obviously he had been in the room before. He pointed to an unpainted wooden coffin beside one of the counters.
‘That should be Geli,’ he said.
‘Have you seen her recently?’ Fritz asked. ‘Would you be able to recognise her?’
Father Pant nodded, but didn’t move toward the coffin.
‘I’m sorry,’ Fritz said.
Father Pant shook his head and sighed. ‘Sometimes I think God has cursed me, asking me to do his work during the last twenty years. The things I have seen…’ His voice trailed away. Then he turned to Fritz, eyes dark with sorrow. ‘Geli Raubal was an energetic girl, lighthearted, given to easy laughter. I cannot picture her dying by her own hand. I cannot picture her dying.’
The priest’s words echoed in the large room. Fritz hadn’t realised until then how much the other man’s voice carried.
Fritz walked over to the coffin. It was cheap, obviously hastily put together for transport. The men who had taken the body had not had a coffin with them – or had they? Frau Winter had been unable to answer his question about the way the men transported the body. He should have asked Frau Reichert, but he hadn’t thought of it. He would ask her, or the others, when he returned. He couldn’t imagine even the most grief-stricken being willing to put a blood-soaked corpse flat across the back seat.
Someone had taped a piece of paper to the top of the coffin. It read ‘Angela Marie Raubal’, and had the address of the Central Cemetery in Vienna. Across the top was a stamp, marking the transportation paid. He took a photograph of the coffin’s lid, then set the camera on the counter next to a pile of tools.
Fritz grabbed a hammer from the pile and prised the lid off the coffin. It took him a moment – the coffin had been sealed with a number of nails. Father Pant came up beside him and watched. The squeals of the wood and metal were the only sounds in the room.
The odour seeping from the coffin made Fritz’s eyes water. Father Pant crouched beside him and helped him pull the lid off. The smell was overwhelming. Fritz put a hand over his nose and mouth, but too late. The stench had already coated his tongue and the back of his throat. He wouldn’t have expected this kind of odour on someone who had been dead a little less than 24 hours.
‘Merciful God,’ Father Pant said. He was staring into the coffin.
Fritz stared as well. Geli had been a tall woman. She filled the coffin. Her blue nightgown had been pulled down over her thighs. A small round hole surrounded by powder burns was beneath her left breast. Fritz had expected that much.
He had not expected her face.
The area around her open eyes and her nose was black and blue. Her nose was flat, the skin swollen but not, it appeared, from the after effects of death. A bit of blood had dried beneath her nostrils. Her lips were cut, and she had another bruise beneath her left ear.
He had seen a woman he loved look like that.
He had touched her.
Gisela.
He closed his eyes for a brief moment, struggling for control. He had to think of the present, not the past. He had become a detective to blot the past from his mind.
He opened his eyes.
Zehrt had said that she had lividity in the back. The blood had settled. These wounds happened before she died.
Her hands were at her sides. Fritz leaned over the coffin. Three nails on her left hand had been broken, and had not been filed, even though the remaining two were perfect ovals. Her right hand hung at an unnatural angle from the wrist. Her bare legs were covered with yellow bruises above the knees, older bruises that had occurred days before her death.
‘Merciful God,’ Father Pant said again. ‘The poor child.’
The poor woman. For Geli was a woman full grown, with a slender body and long well defined legs. Fritz could not tell if she had been beautiful. The damage was too severe for that.
‘Father,’ he said softly. ‘I would like to check the rest of her body for injury.’
‘I think that would be wise, my son.’
The familiar form of address surprised Fritz. Father Pant had been careful to call him ‘Detective Inspector’ before. They had gone from antagonists to conspirators in solving a woman’s murder.
Fritz pushed up the nightgown, made of a soft satin, in a bizarre imitation of foreplay. Her skin beneath the satin was cold and rigid. His own action disgusted him. He was used to watching Dr Zehrt work on the corpses. He had never done so himself.
The bruises ran up Geli’s legs and disappeared into her small black pubic thatch. Her waist was cross-hatched with red welts and a few scars. Her breasts and upper body were untouched.
‘The doctor did not examine her,’ Father Pant said.
‘I think he had no choice but to sign that document,’ Fritz said. He stood, and took the camera off the countertop. Father Pant said nothing, watching silently, his expression softer than it had been near the church. Fritz took as many photographs as he could, some of Geli’s face, others focusing on her torso, still others on her legs. The flashes left red and green spots in front of his eyes. When he was finished, he set the camera back on the counter, then bent over and eased the nightgown back down, attempting to give Geli what dignity he could.
He had learned compassion since Gisela’s death.
He shook his head. It was Geli before him. Geli, not Gisela.
Gisela had been dead for years.
He turned Geli slightly and examined her back. The nightgown was black with blood, her limbs discoloured as the remaining blood settled, just like Zehrt had said.
The exit wound was as large as his fist.
But there was no gun. Not beside her body, not beneath it, and not in her hand.
He eased her down. There was no need to photograph her back. The evidence he needed was on her face and her legs.
He had just grabbed the coffin’s lid when Father Pant touched his shoulder.
‘What’s that?’ Father Pant asked. He crouched beside Fritz and pointed to the material near Geli’s right breast. There, stuck into the satin, was a small, yellow feather.
‘One of the servants said she had a canary,’ Fritz said.
Father Pant nodded, and without saying a word, the men replaced the coffin lid. Fritz also pounded the nails back in place. No sense in alarming the mortician or the unknown persons (if any) who had accompanied the body.
‘All morning I have worried about how to place her in consecrated ground,’ Father Pant said. He looked at Fritz, his face grey in the odd light. ‘I shall have no trouble doing so now.’ He ran a hand on the coffin. ‘Most merciful God.’
‘God has never been merciful,’ Fritz said. ‘And He never will be.’