He paused for a moment, as if feeling for the thread. Munster eyed the rows of dark, leather-bound books behind the judge’s back. I wonder how many of them he’s read, he wondered, and how many he can remember.
“I’m not bothered about it anymore.”
“What are you not bothered about?”
“Leopold Verhaven. You’re too young to understand. He has worried me quite a lot. . Both those damned affairs. I wish I’d been able to get out of that second trial, but there again, it wouldn’t have been fair to pass it on to some other poor soul. . ”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought it would give me an opportunity to be sure about it all. Draw a line under all the doubt raised by the first tribunal.”
“Tribunal?”
“Call it whatever you like. It was a devil of a business, no matter how you look at it. Don’t quote me on that.”
“I’m not a journalist,” said Munster.
“No, of course not,” said Heidelbluum, picking up the cigarillo again.
“Am I right in thinking that you believe Verhaven was innocent?”
Heidelbluum shook his head.
“Oh no. Good Lord, no. I’ve never found anybody guilty when I didn’t think they were guilty. Good heavens no! But he t h e r e t u r n
was. . a mystery. Yes, a mystery. You and your colleagues won’t be able to make sense of it; you needed to be there and see the man. Everything about him was a mystery. I was on the bench for over thirty years, and I’ve seen it all, but I’ve never come across anything like Leopold Verhaven. Nothing.”
He lit the cigarillo and took a drag.
“Could you elaborate on that a little?”
“Hmm. Well, no, you don’t understand this. The most remarkable thing about it is that he was found to be sane enough to plead. It would have explained a lot if they’d found some kind of derangement or mental disorder, but there was never any question of that.”
“What was so remarkable about him, then?” Munster asked.
Heidelbluum thought for a while.
“There were lots of things. He didn’t care about the verdict, for instance. I’ve thought a lot about that, and my lasting impression is that Leopold Verhaven was totally indifferent about being found guilty or not. Totally indifferent.”
“That sounds odd,” said Munster.
“You bet it’s odd, damned odd. That’s what I’m saying.”
“I have the impression that he enjoyed being accused,” said Munster.
“No doubt about it,” said Heidelbluum. “He was very
happy to sit there like the spider at the center of a legal web, playing what everybody thought was the leading role. He didn’t make it obvious, of course, but I could see it in him. He longed to be in the center of things, and now he’d got what he wanted.”
“Did he enjoy it so much that he was prepared to crawl into prison for twelve years? Twice, in fact?”
Heidelbluum sighed.
“Hmm,” he said. “That’s precisely the point at the center of it all.”
Munster sat for some time without speaking, listening to the water sprinkler being used somewhere in the garden.
“When he heard the verdict, I’ll be damned if he didn’t give a little smile. Both times. What do you say to that?”
“What about the submission of evidence and the court findings, that kind of thing?” Munster asked cautiously.
“Weak,” said Heidelbluum. “But sufficient, as I said. I’ve found prisoners guilty on weaker grounds.”
“And sentenced them to twelve years?”
Heidelbluum made no reply.
“Was it the same in both trials?” Munster asked.
Heidelbluum shrugged.
“In a way,” he said. “Both were based on circumstantial evidence. Strong prosecuting counsels, Hagendeck and Kiesling.
The defending counsels did their duty, but not much more.
The Marlene case had a bit more meat to it, as it were. Lots of witnesses, meetings, precise timings-even reconstructions. A real puzzle, in fact. The first time, there was hardly anything to go on.”
“But still he was found guilty. Isn’t that a bit strange?” asked Munster, wondering as he spoke if he was going too far.
But Heidelbluum seemed not to have noticed the insinuation. He was bent over his desk, gazing out into the garden, and seemed to be lost in thought. Half a minute passed.
“Two of them wanted to let him go,” he said suddenly.
“Excuse me?”
“Mrs. Paneva and that factory owner wanted to set him free. Two out of a jury of five wanted a not-guilty verdict, but we talked them round.”
“Really?” said Munster. “Which of the trials was this?”
But Heidelbluum ignored the question.
“You have to accept the responsibility,” he said, scratching nervously at his temple and cheek. “That’s what some people find hard to understand.”
“But nobody abstained?” Munster asked.
“I have never accepted abstentions in any of my cases,”
said Heidelbluum. “The verdict must be unanimous. Especially when it’s first degree.”
Munster nodded. A reasonable stand to take, he thought.
What would it look like if somebody was condemned to ten or twelve years in jail by a majority verdict of three to two? Hardly likely to uphold people’s respect for the law and justice.
“Were there any other suspects at all?” Munster wondered.
“No,” said Heidelbluum. “That would have changed everything, if there had been.”
“How?” Munster asked.
But Heidelbluum didn’t seem to have heard the question.
Either that or he’s just ignoring anything he doesn’t want to hear, thought Munster. He decided to put a bit more pressure on the judge. Presumably it was best to strike before the iron cooled down completely. It wouldn’t be possible to go on questioning him for much longer, in any case.
“But in spite of everything,” he said, “you don’t think it is impossible that Verhaven was in fact innocent?”
Silence again. Then Heidelbluum sighed deeply, and when he responded, Munster had the impression that it had been formulated in advance-possibly a long time in advance, long before there had been any mention of a visit by the police. A statement, a final, well-thought-out judgment in the case of Leopold Verhaven.
“I thought he was a murderer,” he said. “When there are no clear indications, you have to make up your mind. That goes with the job. I still think Verhaven was guilty. Of both murders. But to say I was certain would be to tell a lie. Such a long time has gone by, and I’m so close to death that I dare to tell it as it is. I don’t know. I don’t know if it really was Leopold 1 5 7
Verhaven who killed Beatrice Holden and Marlene Nietsch.
But I think it was him.”
He paused and took the cigarillo butt from the porphyry ashtray. Looked up and gazed out of the open French doors again.
“And I hope it was him. Because if it wasn’t, he’s been an innocent man in jail for a quarter of a century. And a double murderer has gone free.”
The last words were laden with exhaustion, but even so, Munster dared to ask one more question.
“You are assuming that no matter what else, both murders were committed by the same person?”
“Yes,” said Heidelbluum. “I’m quite certain of that.”
“In that case,” said Munster, “I would suggest that we are in fact dealing with a triple murderer, not just a double one.”
But Heidelbluum no longer appeared to be interested, and Munster realized that it was time to leave him in peace.
When the children were in bed at last, and Munster and his wife were drinking tea in the kitchen, he took out two photographs of Verhaven-one taken at some athletics meeting before the drugs scandal, the other taken a few years later, the afternoon at the end of April 1962 when he was arrested by two plainclothes police officers.
In both pictures the sun was shining into Verhaven’s face from the side, and in both he looked guileless, squinting straight at the camera. And there was a slight trace of a smile on his lips. An air of mischievous seriousness.