Berlin Vertigo by Jones Christopher P

Author:Jones Christopher P [P, Jones Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychological mystery set in 1920s Berlin
Publisher: Thinksheet
Published: 2020-04-05T05:00:00+00:00

16

Erich seemed to have disappeared from view. No matter where he looked, Thomas couldn’t find him. So he decided he would visit Ingrid Koerner instead.

Ingrid Koerner had been Erich’s lover for the past three years. They had been engaged for twelve months. Like Erich, she came from a wealthy family, and like him, possessed a self-confident, theatrical side. She smoked cigarettes through an ivory holder and has a liberal taste for whiskey. She paraded herself as sexually fearless, an attitude which lent her an avant-garde style. It was almost as if she thought herself to be famous; the flip-side to this was an acute self-consciousness which had become something of a debilitation, for she couldn’t act without thinking of the effect on her appearance. Thomas once saw her undress through an open doorway, an image which he was sure she had orchestrated deliberately.

Thomas arrived at her apartment at exactly noon. In stark contrast to her carefully tuned appearance, her apartment was a cluttered trove. In the entrance hall three clarinets were lined up along the wall, none of which she could play. Rose petals lay in numerous shallow dishes. A hat stand stood in the corner blossomed with brightly coloured bonnets. A stack of framed Dürer prints was piled up against a table ready to be hung. In the main living room, there was an original oil painting by Jana Constein – Ingrid had always fancied herself as something of a patron and promised to buy more work from the artist. Below the picture, a pile of typed manuscripts – a novel she was working on – were strewn haphazardly across a desk. A miniature of Michelangelo’s David stood nearby; it was now strung with brightly-coloured bead-necklaces. A single shelf in the middle of the wall stored a volume of encyclopaedias, and on the rug below, a stack of foreign literature translated into German. This charming mess was her way of keeping the world from drying up. But anyone who spent some time with Ingrid would inevitably sense that it was also a burden to her, since those unread books and those incense sticks not yet burnt were signs of a restless, dissatisfied spirit.

Exactly how Ingrid ought to live had never been fully answered. She once said to Thomas, ‘I was not put on this earth to live like a grain of sand. Why would God have wanted that?’

She had a perfectly oval face, symmetrical in every part, shallow blue eyes that were simple in an elegant way, and a slender nose bearing on a mouth that was neatly pursed. Thomas had noticed that her speech had become even more measured of late, and her vocabulary was thinning out. He felt her recent bouts of despondency were perversions of a truer, more colourful character. It did not suit her to be so solemn.

As soon as he arrived, she told him they were leaving.

‘Erich is not here,’ she said. ‘It’s just the two of us today.’

‘Where is he?’ Thomas said. ‘I’ve been looking for him all over the city.

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