“Yes, sir.”
“What was your testimony about?”
Moltke thought for a while.
“I’m damned if I know,” he said. “I was up at Verhaven’s quite a bit around the time it happened, that’s all really.
Helped him with the lighting inside the chicken sheds. He was experimenting with daily rhythms and there was some wiring job he wasn’t up to.”
“So that’s it,” said deBries. “Were you there on the Saturday she disappeared? Well, if you believe what he said, that is.”
Moltke nodded solemnly.
“Yes, I put in a few hours that Saturday. Finished about one, roughly. I was the last person to see her alive, I suppose.
Apart from the murderer, of course.”
“The murderer?” said Moreno. “You mean Verhaven?”
“Yes,” said Moltke. “I suppose I do.”
“You don’t sound too convinced,” said deBries.
A brief silence again.
“Oh yes,” he said. “I’ve become convinced as the years have passed. After the Marlene murder, and then. .”
“But you were a witness for the defense at the trial, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“What did you have to say?”
“Well,” said Moltke. He shook another cigarette from the pack on the table in front of him, but didn’t light it. “I worked for him the following week as well. Monday to Thursday, and they thought I would have noticed something if there was anything wrong.”
“And did you?”
“No. He was exactly the same as usual.”
“As usual?” said Moreno. “Surely he must have reacted to her disappearance?”
“No. He said she’d gone off somewhere, but he didn’t know where.”
“Didn’t you think that was odd?”
Moltke shrugged.
“People were asking me that ten times a day around then. I can’t remember what I thought, but I don’t suppose I thought much about it. They were a bit unusual, both him and Beatrice. Everybody knew that, and it was hardly surprising that she went off for a few days.”
Nobody spoke for a few seconds. Moltke lit his cigarette.
DeBries stubbed his out.
“That Saturday, the last time you saw her. What was she like?” Moreno asked.
“Same as usual, her as well,” said Moltke without hesitation. “A touch more sulky, perhaps. They’d been fighting the previous week. She still had a bit of a bruise under one eye, but apart from that there was nothing special. I didn’t see much of her, come to that. She called in at the chicken shed for a little chat, that’s all. On her way back from the village.”
“What time was that?”
“Twelve, round about.”
“And you went home at about one?”
“Yes. A minute or two past.”
“What did you talk about?”
“The weather and the wind. Nothing special. She offered me coffee, but I was about to pack in and so I said no thank you.”
“Nothing else?”
“No.”
“And she was still there when you left?”
“Of course. Standing in the kitchen, busy with something or other. I just put my head round the door and wished her a good weekend.”
DeBries nodded.
“But when you gave your testimony, if I can come back to that, you didn’t think Verhaven was guilty?”
Moltke drew deeply on his cigarette and exhaled before replying.
“No,” he said. “I suppose I didn’t, in fact.”
“And you still don’t?” asked deBries. “In fact?”
“I don’t know. It’s easier to live in this village if you think it was him, if you follow me. Is he really dead, like they say?”
“Who do you mean by they?”
“The folks in the village, of course.”
“Yes,” said deBries. “He’s dead.”
“Ah well,” said Moltke with a sigh. “It comes to us all eventually.”
“What do we do now?” wondered Moreno. “Time to go back to town, perhaps?”
DeBries checked his watch.
“Half past six. Shouldn’t we take a look at the house, seeing as we’re here? You’ve never been there.”
“OK,” said Moreno. “I have a date at nine, though, and I’d like to have time to powder my nose first.”
“You’d be all right for me with no powder at all,” said deBries.
“Thank you,” said Moreno. “It’s good to know that you don’t ask too much of people.”
“You learn to make the most of whatever you get,” said deBries.
“A gloomy place,” she said as they were driving back through the trees. “Although it would have looked better in those days, no doubt.”
“Sure,” said deBries. “It’s been standing empty for twelve or thirteen years. That leaves its mark. . What’s all this!
Have we time for another little chat?”
“A short one,” said Moreno.
DeBries slowed down and stopped beside a man bending
down by the side of the road, painting a fence.
“Good evening,” said deBries through the open window.
“Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?”
The man straightened his back.
“Good evening,” he said. “Please do. It will be a pleasure to stand upright for a bit.”
DeBries and Moreno got out of the car and shook hands.
Claus Czermak had only been living in the blue house for just over a year, it transpired, and he was also too young to have any personal memories of the Verhaven trials. But it was always worthwhile spending a few minutes, just in case.
“We moved here when we had our third son,” he said, gesturing toward the house and garden, where a couple of toddlers were steering a pedal car down a wheelchair ramp built into the steps leading up to the front door. “We thought it was a bit stifling in town. The country air and all that, you know. .”
Moreno nodded.
“You don’t work here in the village?”
Czermak shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I have a post at the university. History, the Middle Ages and Byzantium.”
“I see. We’re interested in Leopold Verhaven and his house up there in the forest,” said deBries. “You are his nearest neighbors, so to speak. You and the people opposite. .”
“The Wilkersons, yes. We had gathered there was some-
thing going on.”
“Exactly,” said deBries. “But I don’t suppose you have anything that could be of interest to us?”
