Boris says he’s definitely the one.”
“How does he know?”
Stefan and I were sitting on a wall in the Gymnasium courtyard. The stone felt glacial even through the thick jeans I was wearing. Stefan seemed unconcerned by the cold, even though his jacket was too thin for the time of year.
“He says it’s obvious.” Stefan shrugged. “Everyone’s heard the rumors going around, about Herr Schiller’s daughter. Where there’s smoke there’s fire, he says.”
“That doesn’t sound much like Boris-it sounds more like Frau Kessel,” I said.
“Doch, well, I guess that’s where it started,” agreed Stefan. He kicked the heels of his sneakers against the wall, thinking.
“My mother says there has to be proof before you can say somebody did something, like a crime or something,” I said.
“If he took Herr Schiller’s daughter…” said Stefan.
“But they didn’t ever get him for that, did they?” I pointed out. “He didn’t go to prison or anything. And Herr Schiller’s supposed to have stuck up for him. Surely he wouldn’t do that if he thought his own brother had taken his daughter away?”
“Who knows? Grown-ups, sometimes I think they’re all crazy,” said Stefan with feeling. “If we were both grown-up, twenty or something, and you went off and married someone else, like maybe Thilo Koch-” Here he broke off, laughing at my disgusted expression. “Well, I wouldn’t kidnap your kids and murder them.”
“If they were Thilo Koch’s kids maybe you should,” I said, shuddering at the thought. “Anyway, it’s still just a rumor. Nobody ever even found the body.”
“Maybe she just ran away,” suggested Stefan.
“Nee.” I shook my head emphatically. “Would you? It would be too cool having Herr Schiller as a father, if he were younger, I mean. Imagine all the stuff he could tell you. That one about the fiery man, that was really horrible. It was a shame you didn’t hear it.”
“Hmmm.” Stefan raked a hand through his dirty blond hair. “Pity we can’t ask him about what happened.”
“No way,” I said regretfully. “If he didn’t get angry, my mother would when she found out.”
There was a silence as we both pondered this. Finally, Stefan said, “Well, someone needs to find proof.”
“I suppose the police are doing that,” I said dubiously.
“They haven’t come up with anything so far, or they would’ve arrested him.”
“They did arrest him once,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but they had to let him go, didn’t they? If they’d found something they wouldn’t have done that.” He paused, then added, “In fact, according to Boris, that time at Herr Düster’s house Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf said they didn’t arrest him, he was just helping them or whatever. You remember, when you were in England?”
A hot flame of guilt spurted up inside me at the memory of the telephone calls I had made from Oma Warner’s house. That was months ago and still I hadn’t heard a thing about them, but it was too much to hope that the crime could be concealed forever. Oma Warner was old but she was definitely not senile. There was no way she could miss those calls when the bill came in, which it must do any day now.
Worse, the defense I had so blithely imagined at the time, that the deceit was for the greater cause of solving the mystery blighting the town, was patently not going to hold up.
The stray bits of information we had gathered had singularly failed to coalesce into anything solid; instead it was like trying to do a jigsaw, not realizing that you actually had two or three different jigsaws at the same time with all the pieces muddled up together. Here there was a section with a sleek black cat curled up in someone’s armchair; here there was one depicting a ruined castle by moonlight, and a boy running white-faced down the hill from it. Here was a single piece with a child’s shoe on it. None of them seemed to fit together to make a recognizable scene.
I shook my head despondently. “So maybe he didn’t do it.”
“Or maybe they just don’t have proof,” said Stefan.
I slid off the wall. “This is stupid. We’re just going around in circles.”
There was a gentle thump as Stefan’s sneakers also hit the ground. He hauled his bag off the wall and slung it over his shoulder.
“So let’s get some proof.”
I stared at him. “Very funny.”
“No, I mean it.”
I put my hands on my hips. “What are you going to do? Break into Herr Düster’s house while he’s out, and search it?” A hot little prickle of excitement ran through me even as the words left my lips. It was the thing to do, of course; it was the thing all this had been leading up to. The question was whether we would really, really try to do it. This was in a whole different league from using Oma Warner’s telephone when she was out at bingo. This was like climbing to the highest platform at the swimming pool and deciding whether to dive off-no: this was like climbing up to the top of a cliff and deciding whether to dive off. Just contemplating the idea was like anticipating that sickening plunge.
Now it was Stefan’s turn to stare. “I was going to suggest we follow him,” he said. “But you’re right, we should try to search the house.”
“Stefan-” Hearing the idea on someone else’s lips, suddenly it sounded real and also completely crazy.
“What?”
“We can’t just break in… What if we get caught?”
“We won’t get caught. And, anyway, who says we have to break anything?”
I hugged my schoolbag to my chest. “Well, what else are we going to do? Knock on his door and ask if we can search the house?”
“We could get in through the cellar.”
“No way.” Now Stefan had me seriously concerned. We were discussing this as though we were really and truly about to get into Herr Düster’s house and turn it upside down looking for dead girls. I shivered.
I knew exactly what he was proposing about the cellar. Most of the old houses in the town had a grille or even a little trapdoor somewhere at ground level, leading into the cellar. In times gone by it would have been used to deliver fuel. Nowadays most of them were rusted up, covered with cobwebs-but still there. Now that I thought about it, I was pretty sure Herr Düster’s house had the trapdoor sort, two little doors set at an angle to the wall and fastened with a padlock. If we could find some way of removing the padlock it would be easy to just open the doors, hold on to the top of the frame, and slide one’s body down into the darkness below…
“We’d never get in that way,” I said as firmly as I could.
“Yes, we would.” Stefan’s voice was earnest. “Look, Frau Weiss is off sick today, anyway, so who’s going to notice if we’re not in class?”
I looked at him in horror. “You think we should do it now?”
“No, I just think we should go and look.” Stefan rolled his eyes. “I’m not that stupid. We’d never get in there in broad daylight, not with Thilo Koch’s Oma watching the whole street. When we get in there, it has to be at nighttime. After dark.”