The Hanging Artist by Jon Steinhagen

Author:Jon Steinhagen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Rebellion Publishing Ltd

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

A GIFT

FRANZ RETURNED TO Frau Alt’s in a condition he would have embraced three days ago, when he was lying on his deathbed: hot, tired, frustrated, and singularly aromatic after his romp through the Hotel Das Gottesbeterin’s garbage. As he was no longer on his deathbed, he did not embrace his condition. He had missed the lunch, and his thoughts and hopes were focused on the prospect of the goulash dinner.

He had yet to meet any of his fellow boarders, and perhaps that was a blessing. He had barely been a guest for twenty-four hours, had yet to share a meal with them, or chance upon any of them in the parlor or anywhere else. He was sure the arrival of ‘Monsieur Choucas’ had been announced to them by his landlady, but what would that mean to them? As it was, it meant little enough to him.

He climbed the endless stairs to the third landing and his snug quarters, overwhelmed with despair. He reviewed all he had seen and heard that day, and his gross mismanagement of all of it: he was fairly certain that Beide had summarily dismissed him from the case without saying as much, and why would he not? Kafka had thus far proved to be as capable a detective as he was a… what?

What was he? A pensioned insurance investigator? A writer? A lover?

He was none of those things, although he had, at various points in time, been all of those things. His failure at all of them—and at so much more, if he had the energy to enumerate the entire list—had culminated in his final failure to even die properly.

Leo Kropold, he reflected, had died properly, at least.

What did he mean by ‘properly’?

Well, Leo Kropold wasn’t about to come back to life. Nor was ‘Immerplatz Inge,’ or Hermann Herbort, or any of the so-called victims stretching back to Ulla Salich. Had Kropold been responsible for all their deaths? Beide had thought it possible, but Beide had also been convinced that Hans Henker, The Hanging Artist, had been responsible, too, with even less to go on—other than a gut feeling.

Franz’s current gut feeling was hunger. And a little nausea: the sight of two dead bodies in less than six hours was more than any self-respecting stomach could handle, even without grotesque additions of Kropold’s twisted, blackened, strangulated face, and Inge’s practically noseless, disease-ravaged face…

Her face.

There was the link.

Leo Kropold and Inge Hersch.

She had shown the advanced stages of syphilis.

He had been taking bichloride of mercury.

Both had died on the same night.

Had Kropold contracted the disease from Inge?

Had he killed Inge, and then killed himself?

Timing.

What had been the timing of Kropold’s visit to the Traumhalle, his return to the Hotel Das Gottesbeterin, Inge’s death, Kropold’s suicide?

These were the questions he should have been asking Beide and the grim officers, or the mismatched duo at the morgue.

It was now that he wished that people’s penchant for appearing out of thin air could be relied upon. He wanted Beide, male or female or both, to be sitting on the top landing, waiting for him.

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