What a goddamn awful business, he thought.
And now all those involved were dead. Just as in a Shake-spearean tragedy. Beatrice Holden and Marlene Nietsch.
Arnold and Anna Jahrens. And Verhaven himself, of course.
But justice had been done after all. Insofar as that was possible, that is. Nemesis had claimed her due. That was the only way of looking at it.
And who were left?
Verhaven’s ancient sister, who had played no part at all in the events.
Andrea Jahrens, or Valgre, as she was called nowadays.
The daughter, with two children of her own.
You could say they were the only survivors, in fact; Mrs.
Hoegstraa would soon join the others six feet down.
Survivors, and completely ignorant of the whole business.
Needless to say, there was no reason why they should be informed.
He would never dream of doing so.
Never.
And as he drove slowly back down the hill for the last time to the village, which was wallowing sleepily if misleadingly in the summer sunshine, he thought about what he had said to Munster.
Not everything is what it seems.
Kaustin-the village of murders.
Then it struck him that he hadn’t really told Munster the whole truth. The real reason why he’d stopped by at the Czermaks that afternoon was, of course, not because he had noticed the wheelchair ramp-that was something he’d picked up in passing. No, the real reason was more prosaic than that, and just now he was beginning to feel the same symptom.
He’d been thirsty.
Ah well, he thought, possessed by a sudden if brief attack of cheerfulness, and an obvious risk of repeating himself: Not everything is what it seems.
He sped up and started thinking instead about that borderline that he’d at long last overstepped.