Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009
The Vorpal Blade
by Edward D. Hoch
It is almost a year since EQMM lost one of the greatest mystery short story writers of all time, Edward D. Hoch. We have been publishing an assortment of remaining new Hoch stories and Hoch reprints since his death, in order to complete another full year in the unbroken streak of publication he’s had in this magazine since 1973. Fan Steve Steinbock suggested this story as a good way to conclude Ed Hoch’s 36-year streak. There will be periodic Hoch reprints in future.
Winterluck had been living with Von Baden for some five years before he ever raised the subject of the Heidelberg killing. It was on a mild April day — one of the first pleasant days of spring — and they were strolling around the big yard as they so often did when the weather was good. Overhead, the sky was blue with promise, and already the first small buds were clustering on branches.
“The German spring is a wonderful time,” Winterluck said that morning.
“Spring is always wonderful,” Von Baden said. “I remember only one bad spring — in ’forty-five, when it meant the Allies would begin their final drive along the western front. That year, I cursed the birds as they sang in the trees, and wished I could hold back the blossoms with my hands. But the snow melted, and the tanks rumbled on.”
“They would have come in any event,” Winterluck said. “Hitler was finished. We were all finished.” He stared for a time at the distant trees. “It was like some great tragedy by Shakespeare, though I suppose the other side didn’t see it that way.”
Von Baden nodded his balding head, and the light caught the curving scar on his left cheek. “Perhaps Hitler was a sort of Hamlet, at least to us. Perhaps he should have died by a poisoned sword.”
Winterluck was still staring at the trees. “That reminds me of the Heidelberg thing. Remember it?”
“How could I forget? I was there.”
“Cassan was a sort of Hamlet, and he was struck down by a poisoned sword.”
But Von Baden shook his head. “To borrow from our late enemies the English, he was much more a Jabberwock, struck down by a vorpal blade.”
“How did it happen?” Winterluck asked. “I never heard the full details.”
“Very few people did. The crime — if crime it was — happened at a time when young Cassan was the most hated, and feared, student in all of Heidelberg. No one very much wanted to see the boy who killed him punished. In those days, such things were easy to hush up, and after all, Cassan was not the first to die in the dueling clubs of Heidelberg. Or the last.”
“But some said he was murdered, killed by a poisoned sword. At least that was the talk at the time.”
“That was the talk, yes.” Von Baden’s eyes clouded, as if he were trying to remember the exact feeling of that day. “It was such a long time ago, a lifetime ago. The world has seen so much violence since, I wonder if what happened there could still have any importance.”
“It was important to Cassan. It was the end of his life.”
“Yes, yes,” Von Baden agreed, scratching the smooth skin of his aging head. “It was surely important to Cassan.”
In that time, when Germany was only just recovering from one war, and the figure of Adolf Hitler was known only to the jailers of Landsberg and a handful of followers, Heidelberg was still the university town with its singing students and beer-drinking frolic. Von Baden had entered the university in 1921, the same year that Joseph Goebbels was receiving his Ph.D. at the age of twenty-four. He did not know Goebbels then, and was not to meet him until much later.
For Von Baden, Heidelberg University was a dream realized. Away from the confines of a strict home for the first time, he plunged into the daily student life and joined almost at once one of the five dueling clubs that were the center of university social life. At the beginning, and during all of his freshman year, he thought very little about the actual fact of dueling, the main reason for the clubs’ existence. He had seen the scarred faces about the campus and in the classroom, of course, and he was often present at the semiweekly matches in the large whitewashed apartment on the second floor of the public house. But to him it remained a thing apart, not nearly so important as the annual election of a beer king among the dueling corps.
Since first-year members of the five clubs were not obliged to fight, it was not until his second year at the university that the pressure to take part in the bloody spectacles became intense. Von Baden was a member of the White Corps, and its president that year was Cassan, a sulking bully who proudly wore his silken ribbon awarded after three duels. He’d fought thirty times the previous year, more than any other student, and the presidency of the White Corps had come to him by acclamation. He was a wizard with the blade, and once during a particularly brutal duel he’d sliced off the tip of an opponent’s nose. Many people hated Rudolf Cassan, but more people feared him.
It was the affair over Eva, the sensuous barmaid at the Three Crowns, that finally brought matters to a head. Generally, the members of the White Corps ignored the other four clubs and kept to themselves on their beer-drinking excursions. Even if the only seats in the tavern were at a table occupied by a few red-capped youths, the White Corps would not join them, preferring to go instead to another of the beer gardens or rathskellers that dotted the area.
But this night the white-capped Cassan happened into the Three Crowns just as Eva was going off duty. He’d been seeing a good deal of her during the preceding months, even spending a weekend with her on a raft trip down the Neckar. No one doubted that Eva was a girl of loose virtue, but oddly enough she seemed the only one capable of bringing out the tender, human side of Cassan’s nature. When he was with her, he was almost a different person. And this night, as he walked into the crowded, smoky confines of the tavern, he saw that Eva was sitting at a table with members of the Red Corps, laughing and drinking, with her arm actually around Gunner Macker’s waist. Macker was a top athlete and excellent swordsman himself, and there’d been bad blood before between him and Cassan.
Von Baden was with Cassan as he entered the Three Crowns, and the president was just telling him of his duties as a second-year man. “You must fight, boy, because that is our only purpose. We did not take you into our ranks so you could merely amuse yourself at beer parties and wenching.”
“I will fight,” Von Baden managed to say, hating the smooth, dominant figure Cassan made as he walked among the crowded tables. “But when I’m ready.”
Cassan smiled over his shoulder. “You will fight next week, boy. Be ready. It is time you tasted blood. Your own, if necessary.”
“Not so soon!”
“I am your president. You fight when I order you to or you leave the corps in disgrace.” But then, before he could add anything, he saw Eva at the table with Macker. He left Von Baden standing there as he fought his way to the Red Corps group.
Macker glanced up at him with a disdainful smirk and deliberately placed his hand on Eva’s breast. “Well, Cassan, you arrived a bit late this night!”
The president of the White Corps stood his ground while the flush crept up his neck. “What is this, Eva?” he asked.
The girl was embarrassed. She brushed Macker’s hand away and stood up. “Nothing. It is nothing, Rudolf. I was waiting for you.”
At the table Macker gave a snort. “She waits for the first one in pants. It’s all the same to her.”