“The lady was found in a fetal position on the floor,” said Meyer. “Which suggested that she’d been killed and placed there before rigor mortis could set in. The knot on the rope around her neck was a bit unusual. A bit like the knot in a cravat. And the lady was wearing a pink pinafore-style dress, expensive shoes, silk stockings, and — most interesting of all — a good diamond ring. And I mean a good diamond. At least three carats in size and worth a lot of anyone’s money. I mean, it’s hard to imagine someone not taking that ring before disposing of the body. That’s what made the newspapers take notice. The size of the diamond. What else? Red-and-white cushion covers on the seats of the boat. Nothing unusual about that. Swiss people are fond of red and white, the colors of our national flag. That’s about all, I think.”
“I don’t understand,” I told Meyer. “A woman’s body was found in the lake. So what? Why does this interest you? Paul, this is 1943. If it’s dead bodies you want, I’ll take you to the Ukraine and show you thousands.”
“This is Switzerland, Bernie. Murders like this just don’t happen here. In peacetime we have one of the lowest homicide rates in Europe. Most murder is domestic, and in half of these cases a firearm is involved. Less than ten percent of our murder cases remain unsolved. But it was the ring that awoke the public’s interest. I mean, a three-carat ring is the size of a bird’s egg. So she had to be somebody, right? That’s what interests me. One day I want to write a book about this case. I thought I might call it The Lady in the Lake. It’s a good title, don’t you think?”
“Oh, sure. But look, Paul, everyone is somebody. Even when they’re nobody. That’s the first thing you tell yourself when you join the Murder Commission. Doesn’t matter if it’s a homeless old man, a ten-year-old child, Walther Rathenau, or the king of Yugoslavia. They all rate investigation. At least they used to before our government started doing most of the killing.”
It sounded good but the truth was that after what I’d seen in the Katyn Forest earlier that year, I was hardly inclined to think of one woman’s death as in any way important. Death had undone so many since the beginning of the war that one more murder seemed irrelevant.
“Of course, of course, I just thought that something might occur to you, that’s all,” said Meyer. “In your speech last year you said that a cold case is nothing but all of the false and misleading evidence that, over a period of years, has come to be accepted as true. In other words, you start by patiently challenging almost everything you think you know.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to be rude to Meyer after his kind hospitality but it was all I could do to stop myself from telling him he was wasting his time and mine. From what I’d seen so far, this case was as cold as the Ypres Salient. And it wasn’t his fault that he’d managed to get through the war without seeing a single body. I envied him that, just as much as I envied him his lovely château at Wolfsberg and his beautiful wife. Besides, my nose was hurting and I really only had room for one thing in my mind and that was seeing Dalia once more. Especially now that I had a telegram from Goebbels. At least after our hotel tryst I’d be able to tell him that I’d seen her again. Maybe I could walk her up to the telegraph office in Rapperswil and get her to send him a telegram; that way I’d be off the hook.
Dinner at the Schwanen Hotel with Meyer and Police Inspector Leuenberger wasn’t any more interesting than my afternoon trip to the Rapperswil boatyard. Very thoughtfully, the Swiss cop brought some color photographs to the table but I didn’t look at them and there are better after-dinner subjects to talk about than a woman who’s been half-eaten by some pike perch, especially when that’s what’s on the menu. In spite of everything I now knew about their diet, I’m fond of pike perch. But the Riesling was a good Trocken and I drank a little too much of it, or at least enough to ask some questions about the lady in the lake, and from these I gathered only that the Rapperswil police were utterly clueless. It seemed that even a top detective from Bern had turned up and pronounced himself completely baffled.
“Maybe she had it coming,” I suggested when we finished the wine and started on the schnapps. “Maybe nobody came forward because people were glad to see this lady dead. That happens, you know. It’s not just nice, innocent people who get murdered. Not so innocent ones do, too. Perhaps someone bashed her head in because she deserved it. Did you think about that for a motive? That someone did the world a favor?”
Inspector Leuenberger frowned. “I don’t believe that for a second. No one should die that way. And it’s a very cruel thing to say about a woman you don’t know.”
I almost laughed. “Cruel? Yes, I suppose I have become cruel. Which isn’t a surprise, really. I’ve learned from the experts. But what I say still stands. If no one reported this lady missing, then it can only be because no one missed her. And if no one missed her, then it might be because people were glad to see the back of her. Look, forget about the lady in the lake, think about that diamond ring. No one missed that, either. That ought to tell you something. It takes a lot of hate to overcome the love of a good diamond, especially one as big as a bird’s egg. Either that, or a lot of money. From what you’ve told me, you’ve been looking for a murderer among the kind of people who commit murder. Crooks and gangsters. The usual suspects. But that’s all wrong. You want to know something? I think I can already give you a perfect description of the person who killed this woman. In fact, I’m sure of it. Believe me, it’s easy to spot a murderer. They’re nearly always decent people, Inspector. You’d better look for someone who’s law-abiding.”
“He’s right,” Meyer told Leuenberger. “Gormann worked in a bank, didn’t he, Bernie? He was respectable.”
I nodded and lit a cigarette.
“So maybe we should look elsewhere for a suspect. Someone respectable.”
“Of course it’s someone respectable,” I said. “This murderer has been living right under your nose all this time and you didn’t notice. It’s your next-door neighbor. Your boss. Your dentist. Your doctor. The local banker. That’s how they got away with it. That’s how they all get away with it. That’s why when the police finally do carry a fellow off to the local shit house, the rest of the neighbors will all stand around in the street looking bemused and say, ‘Who would have thought old so-and-so was a murderer? To look at him you’d have thought he wouldn’t have harmed a fly.’”