Her voice faded away into uncertainty.
“Oh, Willy was guilty, all right,” Erlich said with a scoff. “Atleast of part of the crime. He told me his story when I questioned him at the Bundenspolizeirevier.He found Forstmann prowling around the beer vat on the stage. Forstmann wasdrunk, of course, and when Willy asked him what he was doing there, he gotbelligerent—no surprise.”
Erlich put his hands in his pockets.
“They got into an altercation, and Willy lost his temper andwhacked Forstmann on the head with his nightstick—unfortunately, hitting himmuch harder than he’d intended, although he had no idea how serious an injuryhe’d caused. Willy said he left the scene quickly. He was alarmed by hisactions and still very angry, and he was afraid of what he might do next.”
Erlich tilted his head and added, “Willy swore to me that he’ddone Forstmann no further harm. He’d just left him there on the stage, lookingdazed but still very much alive.”
Erlich shrugged and said, “Well, I had no idea whether to believehim—at least not until my men called to tell me what took place between you andHelmut Preiss. I came out right away, and here I am.”
Erlich sat down on the bench next to London.
“I must admit, though,” he said, scratching his chin, “I stilldon’t understand exactly what happened—at least not all of it.”
At that moment, one of Erlich’s officers came back from the van.
“Detektiv Erlich,” he said. “Herr Preiss says he’dlike to talk.”
“Excellent,” Erlich said, getting up from the bench. “The soonerhe makes a full confession, the sooner I’ll be able to put my mind at ease.”
Turning again to London, he added, “You ladies stay right here. I’llcome back and fill you in.”
“Excuse me, sir,” the officer interrupted, “but Herr Preissespecially wants to talk to Fräulein Rose.”
Erlich drew back with surprise.
“Well, come on, then,” he said to London.
London handed Sir Reggie’s leash to Audrey and left the two ofthem on the bench as she followed Erlich over to the back of the van.
A very wet Herr Preiss sat waiting, looking very miserableindeed.
“London Rose, I think perhaps I ought to thank you,” he said.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because … you made possible my undoing. You made it happen. Ican’t help thinking you did me a great favor.”
Astonished, London waited for him to explain.
“Of course,” he said, “I ran across the recipe while readingthrough archives at the Bayerische Biermuseum here in Bamberg. It lookedmarvelous, and it seemed a shame that it hadn’t ever gone into production andwas lost for so many years, and …”
Preiss shrugged wearily.
“I saw no harm at all as claiming it as my own. Who would I hurtby it, after all? In a way, I suppose I thought I was doing the Leitner familya posthumous favor by bringing their creation back to life. A lie is a lie, ofcourse … but I managed to persuade myself otherwise.”
Preiss paused for a moment.
“Yesterday afternoon, Sigmund was already quite drunk by the timehe came to my booth. I gave him a sample of my beer and told him … well, what Istarted to tell the audience just now. That the name of the beer was Illicium,which was the Latin word for ‘enticement,’ and that the recipe involved aninnovative use of star anise blended with Chinese ‘five spice,’ and …”
Preiss heaved a long, bitter sigh.
“I had no idea that he’d discovered the same recipe quite on hisown. And when I told him about it, he flew into a rage. He considered my theftan insult to the revered memory of the Leitner dynasty and an insult tothe art of beer making itself.”
He choked with emotion.
“I apologized to him. I tried to take it all back. I told him Iwouldn’t go through with it. I’d give the Leitner family all the creditthey deserved. But he was drunk, and he was furious, and to him what I had donewas nothing less than some sort of a personal betrayal. We could no longer befriends, he said, and he would tell the whole story in his upcoming column,whether I changed my mind or not. He stormed away and just left me standingthere.”
Preiss shifted uncomfortably.
“About an hour later I was walking through the Maximiliensplatzconsidering my situation. I knew Sigmund had meant what he’d said. Even afterhe sobered up, he wouldn’t change his mind. That was just the kind of man hewas. And I figured there was nothing I could do about it. He would write hiscolumn, and I would suffer the full brunt of his wrath. The best I could dowould be to spend the rest of my life and career atoning for my dishonesty. Iwould survive it, I thought.”
He squinted thoughtfully.
“But as I walked past the curtain in front of the stage, I hearda voice from behind it. ‘I am the true king of the Hoffmann Fest! I amthe true king of the Hoffmann Fest! This year’s Katers Murr is nobody.The true king of the festival is I!’”
Preiss looked back and forth at London and Erlich.
“I crept up onto the stage behind the curtain, and I foundSigmund sitting in the chair on the platform above the beer vat. He was beyonddrunk, not even wearing his monocle. He seemed to be quite out of his mind.”
“He’d been hit on the head,” Erlich explained. “He was deliriousas well as drunk.”
“Was he? Well. I was seized by an impulse of pure spite andvengefulness. If there was nothing I could do to stop him from telling hisstory, at least I could humiliate him first. As he kept ranting away, ‘I am thetrue king!’ I climbed up the stairs and pulled the lever.”
Preiss shuddered deeply.
“I hadn’t meant to kill him. But he thrashed around for only afew moments before he fell completely still.”
London asked, “Why didn’t you try to save him?”
“Because … I was angry, I suppose. And at the same time, I wasafraid. I’d made my own situation much, much worse than it had already been.”
He shook his head again.
“Anger and fear. It was—what is the English phrase?—a ‘perfectstorm’ of desperate, self-destructive emotion. I wasn’t like myself. I acted
