Читать книгу Now or Never - Cyril Henry Coles - Страница 4

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The moon crept across the sky until its light fell upon the girder which had a rope on the end of it and on the rope the body of a man hanged by the neck and turning slowly, first one way and then the other. From it there drifted on the night air, faint but unmistakable, the incongruous smell of bananas.

Cologne in 1950 was a city of ruins. If a man came out from the railway station he found the Cathedral standing with its twin towers apparently undamaged, the Excelsior Hotel looked the same as ever apart from scars from bomb fragments, and the Dom Hotel, on the opposite side of the square, still had sixty bedrooms left out of six hundred. The fourth side of the square, opposite the Cathedral, was all ruins. If a man crossed the square and walked up what is still called the Hohe Strasse he found small one-story shops hastily built of rough brickwork, poured concrete or timber; over their heads loomed the skeletons of tall houses, roofless, with sagging floors and bent and twisted iron girders sticking out at all angles like the arms of demented gallows.

Behind these ruins, on both sides of the Hohe Strasse, conditions were even worse. Here and there a corner of a building still stood, but in the main there was nothing left but shapeless heaps of rubble of varying heights all overgrown with weeds. Young trees had taken root; some of them after eight years were quite tall with leaves rustling in the wind and birds singing in the branches. Small animals ran about in the undergrowth; the country had crept in upon Cologne.

The street called the Grosse Budengasse leads from the Hohe Strasse towards the river. Since it was once an important thoroughfare, the surface of the road had been cleared of rubble so that it was possible to pass along it. There was, in one place, a piece of wall left standing about three feet high and just wide enough to permit the authorities to paint the name of the street upon it, though even that was crumbling, so that part of the B of Budengasse was missing.

Four men came along this street pushing a truck loaded with bananas. It was late at night, well after midnight, very late for Cologne, which nowadays goes to bed early, but the moon, past its full, was rising and they could see their way well enough. The four men were all pushing the truck, but bananas are, of course, a heavy fruit. They were stacked in a long heap the whole length of the truck.

“If he hadn’t been a fool,” said one man in a low tone, “he might have been having his usual instead of this.”

“If he’d stuck to beer,” said another, “but he would mix it with Steinhager. Serve him right.”

“All the same,” said a third man, “I don’t want another session like we had to-night. A full meeting, and that being done in front of us all. I’ve seen some things, but that——”

“Going to dream about it?”

“I hope not, but I shan’t forget it in a hurry.”

“Of course,” said the first man, “that was why the President did it. I reckon any member will think twice before he gets drunk and babbles like that. It’s our lives, isn’t it?”

“There’s a lot more hangs on this than just our lives,” said the second man. “By the way, did you see his farewell letter? Oh, you missed something; it was good. Give you my word, if he’d lived long enough to see it he’d have thought he wrote it himself. Gerhardt is clever, isn’t he?”

“I wouldn’t lend him my cheque-book,” agreed the first man.

“What did they do with it? Post it?”

“Of course not. It’s in his pocket, naturally.”

They came to the corner of the Unter Goldschmeid and turned right; the road began to rise here and the surface was rough and pot-holed. The four men bent to their work and the banana truck rumbled on. Not far ahead of them there was a heap of rubble rather larger than usual; a wall, with the iron girders which had supported a floor still sticking out of it, had turned right over so that the end of one girder overhung the path. Bushes had grown thickly on the top of the pile casting a dark shadow; as the men looked towards it the figure of a girl came into sight and went back again. One of the men pushing the truck checked suddenly, but the leader reassured him. “It’s all right; it’s only Magda.”

When the truck reached the patch of shadow, it stopped. Two men and two girls came forward to meet it; the men stayed, but the girls ran past it and parted, one going south towards Laurentz Platz, the other north, the way the truck had come; fifty yards along the road they stood and waited. There was no suggestion of lounging in their attitude, but rather an alertness, as of one who is keeping watch.

It was impossible to see in detail what was happening in the shadow; there was only a general impression of activity, as though the bananas were being off-loaded and replaced. Presently the truck came out along the road again, briskly pushed by two men only. It still had bananas upon it, but one would have said that the long mound was not so high as it had been.

A little later the road was quite empty; the girls had disappeared and there was no sign of the four men who had been so busy in the shadows. The moon rose and crossed the sky until that which had been obscure was illuminated. The girder which overhung the path was no longer useless and bare: it had a rope on the end of it, and on the rope the body of a man hanged by the neck and turning slowly, first one way and then the other.

Tommy Hambledon was staying at the Gurzenich Hotel, which, for reasons of his own, he preferred to the Dom Hotel for this visit. The Gurzenich Hotel, largely destroyed and now partially rebuilt, stands on an island site at the far end of the Unter Goldschmeid from the Dom, though one would not take that way from choice, because it is now so uncomfortably rough. It still remains a short-cut for people coming on foot; the chambermaid on Hambledon’s floor came that way every morning just before six from her home between the station and the river.

Hambledon was called later than usual on the following morning, and Elsa came into his room so obviously bursting with news that he sat up in bed and looked at her.

“The gracious Herr will forgive my lateness. I beg his pardon,” she babbled. “I’m so upset, I saw something—oh dear!”

“Calm yourself,” said Hambledon. “I don’t mind being called late for once. What is the matter?”

“In the Unter Goldschmeid—I come that way—there was a policeman and when I came to him he said, ‘Go by quickly, do not look,’ so of course I looked and oh, mein Herr, there was a man hanging by a rope from a girder—oh!”

“Only one?” said Tommy.

The girl gaped at him.

“Only one—how many did the Herr expect?”

“None at all. But it would have been a lot worse if there had been a row of them, wouldn’t it?”

“Ach!” gasped Elsa, and hurried out of the room.

“I’m afraid I’ve horrified the poor girl,” said Hambledon to himself, “but at least I stopped her describing it to me before breakfast.” He threw back the bedclothes and got up. Suicides are not uncommon in a country which has been defeated, although this man seemed to have left it rather late, as it were. Despair comes upon people in the hour of defeat, not, as a rule, five years later. This man, Hambledon assumed, must have had some private reason for doing it. Tommy dismissed the subject from his mind, breakfasted and strolled down the Hohe Strasse in the morning sunlight. He was dressed in tweeds, wearing an English hat and carrying a camera slung from his shoulder; he looked about him as he went, stopping every now and again when anything interested him, the very picture of a harmless tourist.

He reached the Dom Square and wandered about for some time, watching the people and taking photographs of the Cathedral. He was, actually, waiting in the hope of seeing two friends of his come out of the Dom Hotel; they should have arrived there on the previous day, but when he telephoned the hotel the evening before he was told that the Herren Campbell and Forgan were not yet there. They might come by the late train; their rooms were booked.

Hambledon was approached by an elderly man with a camera, desiring to take his photograph with the Cathedral in the background. The man was one of Cologne’s official photographers licensed by the city authorities; he wore an arm-band to that effect. Tommy agreed at once and paid six marks for three copies to be delivered at the Gurzenich Hotel the following morning. He entered into conversation with the man, who was very ready to talk, since business was anything but brisk.

“It is the rate of exchange,” said the photographer. “It is too high: eleven point eight marks to the pound sterling. It keeps the tourists away, and who can wonder? No one is rich in these days. If the exchange went down to twenty or twenty-four to the pound, as it used to be, the tourists would come again and a man like me could earn an honest living.”

Hambledon looked across at the ruins and wondered what tourists would come to Cologne for, but naturally did not say so. He agreed, and added that a situation already difficult was made more so by the incomprehensible rules of the currency controls on all frontiers. “The Customs are bad enough,” he said, “but there have always been Customs. This currency business——” He shook his head and the photographer sympathised. “You English,” he said, “for it is evident that the Herr is English—everyone knows you are severely dealt with by your Government in the matter of money.”

“Not only my Government,” said Tommy gloomily. “They all do it except the Americans.”

“Ah,” said the photographer. “Except the Americans!”

“But,” said Hambledon, “surely you have numerous German visitors who come to see how their famous city has fared?”

“Groups of children pay best. One photograph, and each of them buys a copy. One can then reduce the price, the Herr understands. But there are not enough of them, and sometimes one has losses. Only yesterday I lost six marks.”

Hambledon turned casually so as to face the Dom Hotel and said: “Really? What hard luck. How was that?”

“I took a young man’s photograph. I knew him; his father is a manufacturer and well-to-do. He came to me and insisted that I take his photograph in front of the Dom as I have just taken the Herr’s. He was a little drunk—not very; just happy and rather unsteady. It was not a very good photograph because he could not stand quite still, the Herr understands. Here it is,” said the photographer, pulling an envelope out of his pocket and showing Hambledon a print of a young man with a fair, rather silly face. “He did not pay, but I am not anxious, since I knew him. This morning I take the photographs to his house and find it a house of sorrow. He has hanged himself during the night.”

“Good gracious,” said Hambledon in a shocked voice, “what a dreadful thing.”

“So I did not get paid. You understand, one cannot trouble the family about a trifle at such a moment. I apologised and came away quickly. Yet he was happy yesterday. It is strange, is it not? He left me and went across to that Bierkeller on the corner there. I saw him go in.”

“Drowning his sorrows, perhaps,” began Hambledon, but the photographer saw a group of people who were quite obviously visitors and excused himself hastily. There was still no sign of Forgan and Campbell, and Hambledon felt that if he stood about much longer he would become conspicuous. He walked away; for want of a more definite errand, he went down the Unter Goldschmeid to see where yesterday’s happy man had hanged himself.

There was no mistaking the spot, there was only one place along that devastated road where a man could find anything high enough to hang himself on. Besides, there was another man already there looking up at the projecting girder, a small, square man with a shock of white hair which blew about in the wind. He stood with his legs wide apart and a long, shabby waterproof flapping round them, looking keenly at every detail of the scene before him. Hambledon came along and stopped, and the man looked round at him.

“Excuse me,” said Tommy. “This is, I take it, the place where that unhappy young man committed suicide last night?”

“This is, indeed, the place.”

Hambledon looked at it from several viewpoints.

“The Herr is a visitor?” said the man.

“I am,” said Tommy.

“An English visitor.”

“The Herr is right again. I am interested in this because the chambermaid at my hotel on her way to work this morning saw the poor young man hanging. It upset her very much.”

“It would,” said the white-haired man; “it would, naturally. She did not see the other one also?”

“What other one?”

“The other man who hung himself upon this very girder about three months ago.”

“How very odd,” said Hambledon. “No; she didn’t mention it.”

“It is odd, as the Herr says. I do not know so many details about the previous suicide as I do about this one—I was not engaged upon the earlier case—but this one has some peculiar features about it.”

“The Herr is a detective?”

“A private investigator,” said the man. He stepped down from the bank upon which he was standing and gave Hambledon a card from his wallet. It read: “Heinrich Spelmann. Private investigator. Enquiries undertaken with discretion and despatch.”

“I see,” said Tommy. “No connection with the police.”

“None. Absolutely none. The police are no help to me at all; quite the contrary. They have a tendency to tell me to go away. Our poor police, they do their best, but what are they? Young ex-Servicemen enrolled for the purpose of keeping order and quite untrained in the finer points of crime investigation. Traffic cops, that is all. The earlier police had to be disbanded; they were politically tainted, the Herr will understand, but with them went all their skill and experience. These poor young men.” He shook his head and his white hair flew out like a halo.

“It must be an exasperation to a man of experience like yourself,” said Hambledon.

“It is, it is. Now, in this case I knew quite a lot about the young gentleman beforehand.” Spelmann paused and looked at Hambledon. “The Herr is a visitor and, it is evident, a man of intelligence and probity. He is here now and will presently go home again, he is independent, he is impartial. Let me lay the case before the Herr; it will help to clear my mind.”

“Carry on,” said Tommy. “Have a cigarette.”

“I thank the Herr. I have been engaged by the family of the late Karl Torgius to look into this painful affair, and I had an opportunity this morning to examine the body. He did not break his neck; he strangled himself. Now, I have seen many suicides, mein Herr, during these late unhappy years. A man puts a rope round a beam or some similar”—he gestured towards the girder with a curious fluttering of the fingers—“he stands on a chair, or a wall as in this case, puts the noose round his neck and jumps into space. If he is lucky and the noose is correctly adjusted, he breaks his neck and it is all over. If not, he strangles, a comparatively slow process, and when it begins he invariably—but, invariably, mein Herr, changes his mind. He does not wish to die like that. He grasps the rope with frantic hands, he tries to ease the pressure, he struggles, he tears the skin of his hands. I have seen it so often. But young Karl Torgius hangs there like a rag doll, quite limp, with his arms straight down and his hands less abraded than mine are with scrambling about on this infernal rubble.”

“I suppose he did jump from that lump of wall?”

“Undoubtedly. Here are the marks where his feet scraped off the dust.”

“It is odd,” said Hambledon. “I was talking this morning to a photographer in the Dom Square who took young Torgius’ photograph yesterday. He said that the young man was quite happy then, very happy and a little drunk. After that, he went across to the Muserkeller at the corner. Do you know it?”

“I do; yes.”

“Scrambling about in brick-dust is thirsty work, Herr Spelmann. Will you do me the honour to have a glass of beer with me? I suggest the Muserkeller.”

Spelmann bowed. “I accept with pleasure. Also, since the Muserkeller was one of the places which our poor young friend visited yesterday, I ought to go there. I am obliged to the Herr—the Herr——”

“Hambledon.”

“The Herr Hambledon—thank you—for the suggestion. Some hint may await me there which will lead to some explanation of this affair.”

They walked along the road together, walking carefully and avoiding the rougher places where bomb-holes had simply been filled in with rubble unacquainted with any road-roller.

“It is quite plain,” said Hambledon, “that you are not satisfied in your mind about this suicide.”

“I have not only to satisfy myself,” said Spelmann. “I have to satisfy his parents. They consulted me some little time ago; they were uneasy about their son. He was once open and frank in all his doings: he became secretive. He was a home-lover; he took to going out late at night and became evasive when asked about it. They suspected that he was having an affair with a lady, and since he did not produce her it followed that the lady was such as they would not approve. I took some pains to observe his doings, but I was not, unfortunately, successful. I followed him several times at night: he used to come along the Hohe Strasse and turn towards this district, where I invariably lost him. I ask the Herr, what is there for a young man in this area of desolation?” Spelmann stopped as they reached the Grosse Budengasse and gestured at the scene. “Brickbats, weeds and rats. There are also some miserable girls who frolic among the ruins. I thought that he might have become interested in one of them, but I satisfied myself that that was not so.”

“Where did he go, then?”

“I have no idea. He used to disappear somewhere about here. I have searched the area by daylight and found nothing. There are cellars under all this debris. I looked into such of them as are accessible and not too unsafe. They are dark, damp, dirty and malodorous, eerie also—a haunted feeling. There are many thousand dead under those rubble-heaps, Herr Hambledon, no one knows how many. Twenty thousand, they say, died in one night in Cologne. Nobody strolls here at night for pleasure.”

“I believe you,” said Hambledon with emphasis.

“Let us go on. Even in daylight this place depresses me. Mein Köln, mein Köln!”

“Reverting to your Torgius,” said Hambledon, leading the way towards the Hohe Strasse at a smart pace, “has a doctor examined the body?”

“Certainly, yes. It was he who confirmed my opinion that the neck was not broken. Why?”

“I let my imagination run ahead of sense,” said Tommy apologetically. “It was your saying that he had not struggled. I wondered whether perhaps he had been doped.”

“A post-mortem,” murmured Spelmann.

“Is there to be one?”

“There will be if I have any say in the matter. The Herr’s thoughts run on the same lines as my own.”

“I noticed that my suggestion didn’t surprise you. Is there much dope-taking in Cologne now?”

“There is some. Where is there not? Not much; we have not the money.”

“But the Torgius family are well-to-do, you said. I wondered—probably the idea is foolish—I pictured a party of dope-takers and young Torgius passes right out. The others think he is dead; they also are in a stupid state. To cover themselves, they stage a suicide by hanging.”

“But he did die by strangulation,” said Spelmann.

“Just so. I said that they also were half stupefied. He was not dead then.”

Spelmann looked at Hambledon. “The Herr has an ingenious mind. The suggestion is possible.”

“So are half a dozen others,” said Tommy.