Читать книгу Salzburg Crime Stories - Brigitte Lenz - Страница 3

It was early morning and still tranquil in the narrow street of a Salzburg garden suburb. It was lined with well-kept homes.

It had rained the night before. You could feel the wind and smell the damp, rotting leaves in the wet grass – a scent of autumn.

The fallen leaves rustled in a garden with a wrought-iron gate.

Carlo, a tomcat who everybody in the neighborhood knew, crept through the grass. He was black and white, well-fed, and had a bushy tail.

Loudly hissing, he crept to the gate and squeezed under it, all the while furtively watching.

Something was wrong here. With his keen ears, he listened attentively in all directions. There was nothing to be heard.

He had not had his breakfast yet; his feet were wet from the grass – and now this!

Something was wrong…it was too quiet here…

He sat upright, his bushy tail wrapped around him.

Suddenly, there was a loud noise, shrill barking, ear-piercing yelping.

In the parklike garden of the house on the opposite side of the street, the schnauzer Rufus was howling and wildly running back and forth between a large biotope and a wide freestanding staircase that led to the door of the house.

Tomcat Carlo crept over the street to the fence of the large garden. Even more noise…the heavy door slammed shut…

“Spoiled dog! Have you gone mad? Are you feeling your oats? I have work to do! Stop it!”

A chubby elderly woman wearing an apron came running down the stairs. She gave a shrill scream! “O Holy Mary, help me!”

She was apparently a housekeeper. Arms upraised, she ran back up the stairs screaming, and the door slammed shut.

Outside the fence, the fat tomcat Carlo could finally see the key figures in this scene. For a long time, he stood there motionless, staring at the garden and the pond. His infallible intuition told him that there was a dead person there.

Police inspector Martin Buchholz slammed the car door shut and ran through the open garden gate to the biotope.

“Sorry for the slight delay, I spent nearly the whole night in the studio.”

His colleague Sandra Steiner brushed back her shoulder-length brown hair and rolled her eyes.

“Good morning!”

“Good morning, Picasso the Second”, said Dr. Hofbauer, the physician, a big man with sideburns.

“Two shots in the chest at close range; he died on the spot. Preliminary time of death – about nine in the evening. We’ll know more after the autopsy. Goodbye now.”

The deceased lay on the stone slabs surrounding the pond – a haven for water lilies and many other aquatic plants. He was a tall, thin man in a blue lounge suit. It was not a pretty sight; there was blood everywhere.

The forensic department had already arrived and started to work. They were a good team, but the rain the night before had probably washed away all the clues.

“My God!”, Buchholz cried suddenly and knelt next to the corpse.

“Do you know him? His name is Mark Vogel; he lives at Linzergasse 12. Keys, Wallet with money, driver’s license, credit card. Is he a friend of yours?”

“An acquaintance. A young musician…”

“The housekeeper found him because the dog wouldn’t stop barking”, Sandra said. “Yesterday she had a day off. She came back at six in the morning; it was dark, so she did not see the corpse right away. I think the crime took place where they found him. We didn’t find a murder weapon.”

The sun had emerged from the clouds and its reflection glowed in the pond. A scene of ethereal magnificence, Buchholz thought.

The wind drove through the large old trees on the other side of the pond, and the leaves swirled in the grass.

They laid the deceased in a coffin.

“I think the Hohenbergs are filthy rich. A two-story art nouveau mansion in a small park; they must have had a garden designer…”

“Good morning, inspector!”

Mrs. Hohenberg descended the stairs, enveloped in a cloud of cigarette smoke. She was wearing a dark red trouser suit with black, high-heeled shoes.

“I have taken a tranquilizer, but it doesn’t help me. He was so young!”

“Do you know the deceased?”

“Of course! He’s Mark Vogel, he played the piano at our New Year’s Eve party. He was a musician. Like so many of them, he didn’t have a real job.”

She stamped out the cigarette and lit a new one. Her hands were shaking.

“Where were you last evening?”

“I went to bed early and took a tranquilizer. My husband told me he had to go to his company. He hasn’t returned yet, and he doesn’t answer the phone.”

“Please come to police headquarters tomorrow. We need to file a report.”

Sandra said she would ask the neighbors if they had seen anything and made her way towards the entrance door of the mansion on the other side of the street. Tomcat Carlo was creeping around there. He meowed as if he wanted to tell her something.