The sturdy mustachioed marionette of military aspect and middle years made his entry. A prolonged scream of horror and anguish burst from the other marionettes, sick with fear as the threat to the new-born infant became clear. Zorka struggled desperately to hold him back. They lurched back and forth across the stage and down into the audience. The powerful wooden arm of the military marionette sent Zorka crashing to the ground. He turned and stretched his merciless hands down into the cot to throttle the child. He lifted up the lifeless body. The auditorium went black. The air was filled with the sound of a hundred voices screaming, marionettes and audience alike.
Absurdly, hypnotically, a stone started to trundle out over the audience, lit up from behind the stage by a single beam no larger than a coin. The stone halted above where Holmes and I were seated, rocking gently on the wires. My comrade reached up and took hold of it. Scratched on it were the words Ukleta kuća.
Outside the tent, relieved to be away from the horror of the infanticide, I asked, ‘Holmes, what on Earth could all this mean?’
Holmes replied grimly, ‘The marionettes have presented us with a conundrum. If that was Rózsika’s child mentioned by Besso, she was born an imbecile and murdered. One thing is certain, we are no longer searching for a living being. We seek a corpse. The question is, why are we to take an interest in the fate of Rózsika’s child? What has that to do with Einstein?’
I added, ‘And what are we to make of the words ‘Ukleta kuća’?’
‘I must encourage you to learn German,’ Holmes replied. ‘With just Pashto and Hindi at your command you are at a considerable disadvantage in this matter.’
Holmes’s command of the language was legendary, and not employed solely to read great works of science in their original tongue. To my knowledge he had quoted Goethe in the original three times. He had even conquered the Fraktur type and the confusing majuscule of eszett.
‘How would speaking German help?’ I asked. ‘Surely the words Ukleta kućaare in the local language?’
‘You miss the point, Watson. The significance for our quest is the fact the message was scratched into a stone. The German for a stone is Ein Stein.’
I retired early. I was on the point of getting into bed when a tap at the door produced my comrade.
‘Watson, I was just passing by and saw your light on. I am sorry to trouble you but I have a further question concerning the Café Bollwerk. Do you recall Mileva’s words when we met there - the way she described her infant boy?’
‘Only that he’s called Hans Albert,’ I replied. ‘Is there something curious about that? Surely Hans and Albert are perfectly standard German names?’
‘Not the names, Watson, but how she went on to describe him,’ Holmes replied.
I reached across for my note-book. As I expected, I had not recorded such an inconsequential matter. I begged, ‘Given you appear to feel the matter is of staggering importance, Holmes, would you be good enough to refresh my memory- and then let me get a decent night’s sleep?’
‘I shall, my dear friend, certainly. I believe Mileva’s exact words were ‘He’s our first son’.’
‘Those were certainly her words. What’s so unusual about that?’
‘Her ‘first son’,’ Holmes repeated. ‘By which she means what?’
‘Simply that Hans Albert was the first of several sons they plan to have,’ I replied.
‘You may be right, Watson,’ my comrade replied thoughtfully. ‘Nevertheless I shall tuck it away and see whether it withers at the vine or bursts into glorious life further down the track. It’s time to follow the clue we were given in the second note. Tomorrow we go to Titel.’
As he turned away he said, ‘Zorka is making allegations against Miloš Marić based on what knowledge? If the events portrayed by the marionettes are true, how do you suppose she got to know about them? Only the closest members of the Marić family would have been party to a matter as terrible as this.’
Chapter IX
We Discover the Ukleta kuća
In the morning we set off for Titel, passing the location of the marionette show. The tent had been struck. Now just a few sheep awaiting slaughter grazed the patch of ground. The long poles of the tarantass carriage reduced the jolting of long-distance travel. We spent the journey resting on straw within the basket, safe from the ever-present mud and manure flung up by the horses’ hooves.
Titel was a scattered collection of houses thirty miles from Novi-Sad, more hamlet than village. The larger houses were of brick, stuccoed and painted a dusty pink. They sat in their own vegetable and flower gardens. Most had clumps of fan-shaped yellow irises sacred to Basilicum, god of thunder and lightning, highest of the Slavic pantheon. Vendors stood at every street corner, their three-legged tables piled up with circular bread with sesame seeds known by the local name đevrek. The tarantass dropped us off at the Hotel Kondor. It was hardly more than a coaching inn. A saloon pistol and rook rifle dangled from pegs on the wall. The Proprietor was a short man with a bold hooked nose and gold-rimmed spectacles. He spoke English with fluent inaccuracy. A stuffed macaw perched behind him in a glass case. We signed our nationality and date of arrival into his book.
‘My esteemed guests, I see you are from the land of the blackbird and robin,’ our host began.
‘I have many visitors who follow that fine English tradition of bird-surveying. You may already know our beloved forests and meadowlands and cliffs are renowned for their variety of species (here, he paused to point behind him at the macaw)not least the Spotted Eagle. With the advent of summer, you will find the squacco heron, the black stork, the eagle owl, the hoopoe, the lesser grey shrike. Even as we speak the fieldfare loses its winter grey. What else. Ah, yes, all sorts of warblers, the great reed, barred, and the olive-tree warbler.’
I asked to see our rooms. They were comfortably furnished with rattan chairs and water-colour paintings of English cathedrals, the jalousies drawn against the heat of the outside world. We returned with our host to the front desk. I said we had a question to ask him. He beamed. He welcomed any question we might wish to put to him. About the pied wheat eater perhaps? I showed him the inscription on the stone and asked the translation of Ukleta kuća. The smile disappeared. He took a sharp step backward, startled and disturbed.
‘Ukleta kuća,’ he repeated.
Why would we want to know about that?
‘About what?’ I asked.
He came from behind the desk and beckoned us to join him by the armchairs. ‘You do not know what Ukleta kuća means?’
‘Not the slightest idea,’ I agreed.
His voice dropped.
‘In your language it means haunted hearth, by which we mean haunted house. Once upon a time it was a fine house. Now it’s fallen down. No-one goes anywhere goes near it.’
His voice dropped further, obliging us to lean forward until our three heads nearly touched.