‘Migraine,’ she explained. ‘I’m in the middle of an attack. Can we keep this as short as possible?’
‘I realize this must be very traumatic for you,’ Moreno began, ‘but there are a few things we’d like to throw some light on.’
‘Really?’ said Leverkuhn. ‘What exactly?’
She led the way into a living room with low, soft sofas, oriental fans and a mass of brightly coloured fluffy cushions. The flat was on the fifth floor, and the picture window gave a splendid view over the flat landscape with scattered clumps of bare deciduous trees, church towers and arrow-straight canals. The sky was covered in rain clouds, and mist was starting to roll in from the sea like a discreet shroud. Moreno stood for a few moments taking in the scenery before sinking down among the fluff.
‘What a lovely view you have!’ she said. ‘It must be very pleasant to sit here, watching dusk fall.’
But Leverkuhn was not particularly interested in beauty today. She muttered something and sat down opposite Moreno on the other side of the low cane table.
‘What do you want to know?’ she asked after a few seconds of silence.
Moreno took a deep breath.
‘Were you surprised?’ she said.
‘What?’ said Leverkuhn.
‘When you heard she had confessed. Did you get another shock, or had you suspected that it was your mother who was guilty?’
Leverkuhn adjusted the wet towel over her forehead.
‘I don’t see the point of this,’ she said. ‘The fact is that my mother has killed my father. Isn’t that enough? Why do you want details? Why do you want to drag us even further down into the dirt? Can’t you understand how it feels?’
Her voice sounded unsteady: Moreno guessed that it was to do with the migraine medicine, and began wondering once again why she was sitting there. Using her job as cover for her own therapy was not especially attractive, now she came to think about it.
‘So you weren’t surprised?’ she said even so.
No reply.
‘And then we have the other two strange occurrences,’ Moreno continued. ‘Herr Bonger and fru Van Eck. Did you know them?’
Leverkuhn shook her head.
‘But you have met them?’
‘I suppose I must have seen the Van Ecks once or twice, both him and her. But I’ve no idea who Bonger is.’
‘One of your father’s friends,’ said Moreno.
‘Did he have any friends?’
It slipped out before she could stop it. Moreno could see clearly that she wanted to bite her tongue off.
‘What do you mean by that?’
Leverkuhn shrugged.
‘Nothing.’
‘Was your father a solitary person?’
No reply.
‘You don’t know much about his habits in recent years, then? Friends and suchlike?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know if they socialized with the Van Ecks occasionally? Your father and mother, that is? Either of them?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘How often did you visit your parents?’
‘Hardly ever. You know that already. We did not have a good relationship.’
‘So you didn’t like your father?’
But now Ruth Leverkuhn had had enough.
‘I… I’m not going to answer any more questions,’ she said. ‘You have no right to come poking around into my private life. Don’t you think we’ve suffered enough from all this?’
‘Yes,’ said Moreno. ‘Of course I do. But no matter how awful it might seem, we have to try to find our way to the truth. That’s our job.’
That sounded a bit pompous, no doubt – find our way to the truth! – and she wondered where that formulation could have come from. A few moments passed before Leverkuhn answered.
‘The truth?’ she said, slowly and thoughtfully, turning her head and apparently directing her attention at the sky and the landscape. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Why should anybody go digging after something which is ugly and repulsive? If the truth were a beautiful pearl, then yes, I could understand why anybody should want to go hunting after it; but as it is… well, why not let it lie hidden, if somebody is managing to hide it so well?’
Those were momentous words coming from such a sloppy woman, Moreno realized that, and as she drove back home she wondered what they could mean.
The ugly snout of the truth?
Was it merely a general reflection about a family with bad internal relationships, and the feeling of hopelessness after the final catastrophe? Or was it something more than that?
Something more tangible and concrete?
As dusk was falling and she drove into Maardam over the Fourth Of November Bridge and along Zwille, she still hadn’t found an answer to these questions.
Apart from an irritating feeling that she was absolutely sure about.
There was more to this story than had yet come to light. A lot more. And hence good reason to continue with these tentative efforts to penetrate the darkness.
Even if the pearls were black and crackled.
26
The trial of Marie-Louise Leverkuhn dragged on over three long-drawn-out afternoons in the presence of dwindling audiences in the public gallery. The only person who seemed to have any doubts about her guilt – to go by the grim expression on his face – was Judge Hart, who occasionally intervened with questions that neither the prosecutor nor defence counsel seemed to have bothered about.
Nor had she, come to that.
Otherwise, it seemed that the line of truth was going to be drawn somewhere in the grey area between murder and manslaughter. In accordance with a series of points difficult to pin down, such as:
She found these questions pretty pointless. Instead of listening while they were being argued about, she often sat observing members of the jury. These unimpeachable men and women holding her fate in their hands – or imagining that they did so, at least. For some reason it was one of the two females who captured her interest. A dark-haired woman aged sixty-something – not much younger than she was. Slim and wiry, but with a certain stature that was noticeable mainly in the way she held her head: she hardly ever looked at the person who happened to be speaking – usually the prosecutor or the tiresome Bachmann – but seemed to be concentrating on something else. Something inside herself.
Or more elevated. I could entrust myself to a woman like that, thought Marie-Louise Leverkuhn.
The prosecution had called three witnesses in all, the defence one. She was never quite sure precisely what role the prosecutor’s henchmen were supposed to be playing: if she understood it correctly, they comprised a doctor, a pathologist and some kind of police officer. Their evidence merely confirmed what was claimed to be
