‘No.’
‘Tell us what you did instead.’
Leverkuhn brushed aside an annoying strand of hair and seemed to be hesitating about what to say next. The prosecutor eyed her without moving a muscle.
‘I was standing with the knife in my hand. And then my husband shouted something.’
‘What?’
‘I’d rather not say. It was a very rude insult.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I felt that I just couldn’t go on like this any longer. I don’t think I really understood what I was doing. I went into the bedroom, and then I stabbed him in the stomach.’
‘Did he try to defend himself?’
‘He didn’t have time.’
‘And then?’
‘I just carried on stabbing. It felt…’
‘Yes?’
‘It felt as if it wasn’t me holding the knife. As if it was someone else. It was very odd.’
Prosecutor Grootner paused again, then went for a little walk. When she returned to her starting point, a metre or so in front of the table, she first coughed into her hand, then turned her head so that she seemed to be speaking to a point somewhere diagonally above where the accused was sitting. As if she were actually talking to somebody else.
‘I find it a bit difficult to believe this,’ she said. ‘You have been married to your husband for over forty years. You have shared the same home and bed and endured the same hardships during a long life, but now you suddenly lose your head without any real reason. You said you were used to, er, exchanges of opinion like that, didn’t you?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Leverkuhn, looking down at the table. ‘It’s just that this was something extra…’
‘This wasn’t something you’d considered doing earlier?’
‘No.’
‘You’d never even given it a thought?’
‘No.’
‘Not earlier that evening, for instance?’
‘No.’
‘Are you suggesting that you didn’t know what you were doing when you murdered your husband?’
‘Objection!’ shouted Bachmann. ‘It has not been established that she murdered her husband.’
‘Sustained,’ muttered the judge without moving his mouth. The prosecutor shrugged, and her heavy bosom bobbed up and down.
‘Did you know what you were doing when you stabbed your husband?’ she said.
‘Yes, of course.’
A faint murmur ran through the gallery, and Judge Hart called for silence by raising his gaze half an inch.
‘What did you intend to do by stabbing him?’
‘To kill him, of course. To shut him up.’
The prosecutor nodded again, several times, and looked pleased.
‘Then what did you do?’
‘I rinsed the knife under the tap in the kitchen. Then I wrapped it up in a newspaper and went out.’
‘Why?’
Leverkuhn hesitated.
‘I don’t know. I suppose I wanted to make it look as if somebody else had done it.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘Towards Entwick Plejn. I threw the knife and the newspaper into a rubbish bin.’
‘Where?’
‘I can’t remember. Maybe in Entwickstraat, but I’m not sure. I was a bit confused.’
‘And then?’
‘Then I went back home and phoned the police. I pretended that I’d found my husband dead, but that wasn’t the case…’
‘Didn’t you get a lot of blood on you when you killed your husband?’
‘Only a bit. I washed it off at the same time as I rinsed the knife.’
The prosecutor seemed to be thinking for a few seconds. Then she slowly turned her back on the accused. Pushed up her spectacles again and let her gaze wander over the members of the jury.
‘Thank you, fru Leverkuhn,’ she said, in a voice lowered by half an octave. ‘I don’t think we need to doubt that you acted with great presence of mind and purposefulness all the time. And I no longer think there is a single one of us who doubts that you murdered your husband with malice aforethought. Thank you, no more questions.’
Bachmann had stood up, but didn’t bother to protest. He had bags under his eyes, she noticed. Looked tired and somewhat resigned. She had the impression that his fee depended in some way on whether he won or lost the case, but she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t easy to know the ways of this strange world.
Not easy at all.
Nor did she know how common it was for the judge himself to ask questions, but when Bachmann had finished his rather pointless interrogation – all the time she found it difficult to understand what he was after and what he wanted her to say, and when he sat down he looked even more dispirited – the great man cleared his throat emphatically and announced that certain things needed clarifying.
But first he asked if she would like a little rest before he started questioning her.
No, she said that was not necessary.
‘Certain things need clarifying,’ Judge Hart said again, clasping his hairy hands on the Bible in front of him. A murmur ran through the public gallery and Prosecutor Grootner suddenly began scribbling away on her notepad. Bachmann stroked his hair and looked like a morose question mark.
‘What made you confess?’
He looked down on her from his slightly raised position with a sceptical frown between his bushy eyebrows.
‘My conscience,’ she said.
‘Your conscience?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what made your conscience stir after more than a week?’
Marie-Louise Leverkuhn was certainly ten years older than Judge Hart, but nevertheless there was suddenly an element of teacher and schoolgirl in the situation. A teenager caught smoking in the toilets and now summoned to the headmaster for a telling-off.
‘I don’t know,’ she said after a short pause for thought. ‘I thought about it for a few days and then decided it was wrong to carry on lying.’
‘What made you lie in the first place?’
‘Fear,’ she said without hesitation. ‘Of the consequences… court and prison and so on.’
‘Do you regret what you did?’
She examined her hands for a while.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course I regret it. It’s terrible, killing another human being. You have to take your punishment.’
Judge Hart leaned back.
‘Why didn’t you throw the knife into a canal instead of a dustbin?’
‘I didn’t think.’
‘Have you been asked that question before?’
‘Yes.’
‘But why bother to get rid of the knife in the first place? Wouldn’t it have been sufficient to rinse the blood off it and put it back in its place in the kitchen?’
Leverkuhn frowned briefly before answering.
