Free In Matto's Realm: A Sergeant Studer Mystery by Friedrich Glauser Page A

strand of hair was sticking up
at the back of his head.
    "Let's go then," said Dr Laduner.
    They walked down a long avenue of apple trees, the
branches covered in pale lichen and with tiny apples
hanging from them, green as grass. At the end of the
avenue the central block loomed up, crowned by a little tower with a bell in it. The hammer was raised, fell
... The sound was sharp, sharp as the apples must
taste. Studer counted the strokes ... Three o'clock in
the afternoon. All kinds of things were going through
his head as he walked along beside Dr Laduner. The
first sentence of the report that was still to be written,
for example: "In the course of my investigation, at 2.30
p.m. on 2 September, I found the body of a man in late
middle age in the basement housing the heating plant
below T Ward of Randlingen Psychiatric Clinic. His
pockets were empty. . ."
    "Where?" Dr Laduner suddenly asked.
    "The heating plant of the male T Ward."
    "You know your way round the clinic pretty well
already, Studer. But you let us down at lunchtime. I
like listening to Fraulein Kolla myself, but just you
beware. She's more dangerous than a movie vamp."
    Another wrong note, but he couldn't quite grasp it
... You can't grasp a note anyway.
    "And he was dead?"
    "Dead as a doornail," said Studer.

    Dr Laduner stopped. He breathed in deeply and
stretched until the material of his white shirt was tight
across his chest.
    In a low voice Studer said, "Yesterday night, quite
late, Staff Nurse Jutzeler had an argument with the
Director. In the office ..."
    "Jutzeler?" Dr Laduner's surprise was genuine, but
then he waved the matter away as being of no interest.
"Oh yes, that's quite possible. But it will have been a
difference of opinion about politics. Jutzeler wanted to
get the staff organized in a union, the Director was an
arch-conservative."
    At the foot of the stone steps leading up to the main
entrance, in the same spot as that morning, Dr
Laduner halted. Studer kept his eyes on the ground.
When the silence remained unbroken, however, he
glanced discreetly at the other man. Dr Laduner had
his jaws clamped so tightly together the muscles stood
out like cords under the skin of his cheeks.
    "Now presumably we'll have to look for Pieterlen ...
won't we, Herr Doktor?"
    "Pieterlen? Sure-ly. We'll get on the telephone. You
think it's murder?"
    The sergeant shrugged his shoulders and waggled
his head from side to side. "I don't know," he said.
    But he said nothing about his find. On the landing,
at the top of the iron ladder leading down to the furnace door, he had found something that looked like a
huge salami: a good fifteen inches long, twice as fat as a
man's thumb, made of coarse linen, filled with sand
and sewn tight. A handy cosh. And the cloth was the
same as that he had found under the mattress in
Pieterlen's room.
    Nor did Studer say anything about the envelope in
the breast pocket of his jacket. It contained dust, dust he had combed out of the thick, white hair of the
corpse. Perhaps a microscopic examination would
reveal some tiny, glittering grains of sand among all
the ash that would doubtless be there ...

    Why did he not mention his find, and the precautionary measure he had taken, to Dr Laduner?
Studer could not have said, at least not at that
moment. Sometimes he had the feeling there was a
fight to be fought out between himself and the slim,
intelligent doctor. A fight? ... No, not quite that.
Wasn't it more a trial of strength? A friendly way of
getting his own back? Dr Laduner had "particularly
asked" for Studer in order to be "covered by the
police". Was it not a matter of honour to prove to the
doctor that he was more than a convenient shield? Or,
to put it better, more than an ordinary umbrella you
opened when it started to rain?
    The hall of the central block was cool, the gilt letters
shimmered on the green marble of the benefactors'
plaque. Dreyer, the porter, was nowhere