The Chinaman E-Book

Friedrich Glauser

• Herausgeber: Bitter Lemon Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2008

Beschreibung

"After reading Friedrich Glauser's dark tour de force In Matto's Realm, it's easy to see why the German equivalent of the Edgar Allan Poe Award is dubbed 'The Glauser.'"—The Washington Post Praise for the Sergeant Studer series: "Thumbprint is a fine example of the craft of detective writing in a period which fans will regard as the golden age of crime fiction."—The Sunday Telegraph "In Matto's Realm is a gem that contains echoes of Dürrenmatt, Fritz Lang's film M and Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. Both a compelling mystery and an illuminating, finely wrought mainstream novel."—Publishers Weekly When, in later years, Sergeant Studer told the story of the Chinaman, he called it the story of three places, as the case unfolded in a Swiss country inn, in a poorhouse, and in a horticultural college. Three places and two murders. Anna Hungerlott, supposedly dead from gastric influenza, left behind handkerchiefs with traces of arsenic. One foggy November morning the enigmatic James Farny, nicknamed the Chinaman by Studer, was found lying on Anna's grave. Murdered, a single pistol shot to the heart that did not pierce his clothing. This is the fourth in the Sergeant Studer series. Friedrich Glauser is a legendary figure in European crime writing. He was a morphine and opium addict much of his life and began writing crime novels while an inmate of the Swiss asylum for the insane at Waldau.

Leseprobe

Friedrich Glauser was born in Vienna in 1896. Often referred to as the Swiss Simenon, he died aged forty-two, a few days before he was due to be married. Diagnosed a schizophrenic, addicted to morphine and opium, he spent much of his life in psychiatric wards, insane asylums and, when he was arrested for forging prescriptions, in prison. He also spent two years with the Foreign Legion in North Africa, after which he worked as a coal miner and a hospital orderly. His Sergeant Studer crime novels have ensured his place as a cult figure in Europe.

Germany’s most prestigious crime fiction award is called the Glauser prize.

Other Bitter Lemon books featuring Sergeant Studer

Thumbprint

In Matto’s Realm

Fever

BITTER LEMON PRESS

First published in the United Kingdom in 2007 by Bitter Lemon Press, 37 Arundel Gardens, London W11 2LW

www.bitterlemonpress.com

Originally published in German as Der Chinese in the National-Zeitung, Basel in 1938

First published in book form in German as Der Chinese by Morgarten Verlag AG Zurich in 1939

This edition has been translated with the financial assistance of Pro Helvetia, the Arts Council of Switzerland

German-language edition © Diogenes Verlag AG Zurich, 1989

English translation © Mike Mitchell, 2007

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.

The moral right of Mike Mitchell has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978–1–904738–48–0

Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Broad Street, Bungay, Suffolk

Contents

A dead man on a grave and two men arguing

Memories

The storm

A fracas

Three locales

Fear

“Keep your fingers off our rösti!”

A stowaway

The story of Barbara

“Pauperism”

A lecture continued

The third locale

Old Mother Trili

In the capital

Two mothers

A round of Jass with a new partner

In the glasshouse

Students at night

Finds in the boiler room

A nocturnal visit from the lawyer

Wottli decides to leave

A blank day

The beginning of an end

An interrupted lunch

And its continuation

A lawyer appears

The mother

A dead man on a grave and two men arguing

Studer switched off the engine, dismounted from his motorbike and marvelled at the sudden silence all around. In the fog, yellow, greasy and matted like unwashed wool, walls appeared, the gleam of a redtiled roof. Then the sun pierced the mist, striking a round sign and making it shine like gold. No, it wasn’t gold but some other, much less precious, metal, a flat disc with two eyes, a nose and a mouth drawn on it and spiky hair sticking out round the edge. An inscription dangled below the sign: The Sun Inn. Well-worn stone steps led up to a door, in the frame of which stood a very old man. Studer had the feeling he recognized him, but the old man seemed unwilling to acknowledge the sergeant, for he turned away and disappeared inside the inn. A gust set the fog swirling, and once more inn, door and sign vanished.

Again the sun pierced the greyness. A low wall on the right-hand side of the street appeared, glass beads glistened on wreaths, gold lettering on gravestones shone, and box leaves gleamed like emeralds.

Three figures were standing round a grave: an officer of the rural gendarmerie in uniform, to his right a smooth-shaven, elegantly clad man, who looked young, and to his left an oldish man with an unkempt blond beard streaked with white. The bitter argument that was raging between two of them could be heard out in the street.

Studer shrugged his shoulders, pushed his bike alongside the worn-down steps, lifted it up onto its stand and went into the cemetery, towards the grave where two of the living were arguing while a third stood watch in silence.

And Sergeant Studer of the Bern Cantonal Police sighed despondently several times as he walked. He didn’t have an easy life, he thought.

That morning the deputy governor had phoned police headquarters from Roggwil. The body of a certain Farny, he said, had been found in the cemetery of the village of Pfründisberg. For the last nine months this Farny had been living in the Sun Inn, and it was Brönnimann, the landlord, who had found the body and informed the village policeman. Merz, the policeman, had reported that the cause of death was a shot to the heart.

“So far I have not been able to put an investigation in train, but it looks suspicious to me. The doctor maintains it’s a case of suicide. I do not agree! To be on the safe side, I feel it is important to have an experienced detective present. The cemetery’s opposite the inn . . .”

“I know that,” Studer had broken in as an unpleasant shiver ran down his spine. A July night had come to mind on which a stranger had foretold this murder . . .

“Oh, you know that, do you? Who is that on the line?”

“Sergeant Studer. The chief superintendent’s busy.”

“Ah, Studer! Good. Excellent. Come at once! I’ll be waiting for you at the cemetery.”

Studer gave another sigh, shrugged his powerful shoulders, scratched his thin, pointed nose and cursed silently. It would be just the same as always, of course. He wasn’t a celebrated criminologist, although in earlier years he had studied a lot. An intrigue had cost him his position as chief inspector with the Bern City Police; he’d had to start from the bottom again with the cantonal force and had quickly risen to the rank of sergeant. Yet, although he’d been demoted, although he had enemies, he was always the one who was sent when there was a difficult case. This time too. After the telephone conversation Studer had reported to the superintendent and mentioned what had happened that July night. “Off you go, then, Studer. But don’t come back until you’re sure, until the case’s solved. Right?”

“If I must . . . Cheerio.” Studer had got on his bike and set off. The July night had been exactly four months ago, the night when he had met the stranger with the Swiss name of Farny. A stranger who was now dead . . .

“You can thank your lucky stars, yes, you can thank your lucky stars, Herr Deputy Governor, that I’m about to retire from my practice. Otherwise you’d have a few awkward questions to answer. You may well laugh! Putting the whole of the cantonal police on the alarm . . . er . . . on the alert for an obvious suicide, yes, a suicide!”

That was the oldish man with the profuse blond beard, streaked with white, round his wide mouth. The elegant, smooth-shaven gentleman raised his hands, clad in brown kid gloves, to ward off these accusations.

“Herr Doktor Buff, I must ask you to moderate your tone. After all, I am here in an official capacity . . .”

“Official capacity! Hahaha! Don’t make me laugh.” Why are the two of them speaking High German and not dialect? Studer thought. “You say you’re an official? Any official could see at a glance that what we have here is a suicide, a suicide, Herr Deputy Governor.”

“A murder, Herr Doktor Buff, yes, a murder. If you can’t even distinguish between a murder and a suicide at your age . . .”

“At my age?! At my age?! A young mooncalf like you! Yes, a mooncalf, I stick by that word . . . trying to tell an old doctor like me what’s a murder and what’s not!”

“My instructions state that in cases of doubt an experienced detective must always . . .”

Studer had stopped listening. A little verse crept into his mind:

Things have happened on the Moon

That made the Mooncalf change his tune;

Honeymoon and Loondemyell

Both ran off with Mademoiselle . . .

But he called himself to order. It wasn’t respectful to be thinking of amusing nonsense poems beside a dead body.

The body: the face of an old man, a white moustache, drooping down over the corners of his mouth, soft, like the skeins of silk women use for fine needlework. Narrow, slanting eyes . . . It was the man Studer had met during a night in July four months ago. From the very first moment he’d called him “the Chinaman”.

While the old country doctor, looking shabby in his threadbare overcoat, continued to argue with the elegantly clad deputy governor, Studer recalled that night in July for the third time that morning. And if the memory of that remarkable experience had been vague the first two times, now it was clear, vivid, and he began to hear the words that had been spoken as well . . .

With a voice that sounded like the angel of peace as he interrupted the argument of the two fellow countrymen, he asked in his Bernese accent, “Who is it who’s buried here?”

It was Dr Buff who replied. “The warden of the poorhouse lost his wife ten days ago.”

“Hungerlott?”

The doctor nodded. His hair was rather long at the back and over his ears.

“Can you explain, Doctor Buff,” the deputy governor said, “how a suicide can shoot himself in the heart, when the bullet has not made a hole in his coat or his jacket, not even in his shirt or waistcoat? Is that a suicide, Sergeant? You can see for yourself, the clothes are all buttoned up. That’s the way we found the body. But he was shot through the heart.”

Studer nodded, his thoughts elsewhere.

“And the gun?” Dr Buff squawked. “Isn’t that the gun next to the dead man’s hand? Isn’t that suicide?”

Studer looked at the heavy gun, a Colt that he recognized. He nodded, nodded – and then said nothing more for five minutes because the night of 18 July was flickering through his mind like a film . . .

Memories

It was mere chance that Studer had stopped in Pfründisberg that evening. He’d forgotten to fill up in Olten, so he’d gone to the Sun Inn.

He went in. By the door in the side room was an iron stove, gleaming silver because it had been coated with aluminium paint. Four men were sitting round a table playing Jass. Studer shook himself like a big St Bernard, there was a lot of dust on his leather jacket. He sat down in one corner. No one took any notice. After a while he asked if you could get a can of petrol here. One of the card players, a little old man wearing a cardigan with linen sleeves sewn on, said to his partner in thick dialect, “’E wants a can o’ petrol.”

“Hmm . . . A can o’ petrol . . .”

Silence. The room was hot and stuffy because the windows were closed. Through the glass you could see the green wood of the shutters. Studer was surprised no barmaid appeared to ask him what he wanted. The old man’s partner said, “You forgot to count the king and queen.”

Studer stood up and asked the way out onto the terrace. The room was too hot for him and, anyway, at the card table was a skinny man with a goatee whom Studer knew – the warden of the poorhouse in Pfründisberg, Hungerlott by name. An unpleasant man he’d got to know when he was a corporal in the cantonal police and had to escort people from the police station to Pfründisberg. That evening especially he didn’t feel like chatting with Hungerlott.

“The corridor at the back,” said the old man – he couldn’t miss it.

When Studer stepped out into the open air he breathed more freely, despite the fact that it was close. Huge clouds were squatting on the horizon, a tiny moon, no bigger than an unripe lemon, was at its zenith casting its sparse light over the landscape. Then it disappeared and the only thing that was brightly lit in the area was the ground floor of a large building about four hundred yards from the inn. The sergeant leaned on the balustrade and looked out over the silent countryside; close in front of him was a maple, the leaves on the nearest branch were so clearly lit he could count each one. When he turned around to see where the light was coming from, he saw, through a window that gave onto the terrace, a lamp and a man writing. No curtains over the windows . . .

The man was sitting at a table with five exercise books covered in oilcloth piled up beside his right elbow; he was well on his way to filling the sixth book. How did a visitor come to be writing his memoirs in a little village like Pfründisberg?

Pfründisberg: a poorhouse, a horticultural college, two farms. The only thing that gave the hamlet any importance was the fact that the larger village of Gampligen, a mile and a half away, buried its dead in Pfründisberg.

All that went through Studer’s mind as he stood at the window watching the solitary man tirelessly writing away in his exercise book. A white moustache hung down over the corners of his mouth, his cheekbones were prominent, and he had slant eyes. Before he had exchanged a word with the stranger, Studer’s name for him was “the Chinaman”.

The sergeant would probably not have made the acquaintance of the man on that evening of 18 July had he not had a slight mishap. Was it the dust from the country lane? Was it the start of a cold? To put it briefly, Studer sneezed.

The stranger’s reaction to this innocent sound was remarkable. He leaped up in such a hurry that he knocked his chair over, and his right hand went to the side pocket of his camelhair smoking jacket. With two rapid steps to the side he was by the window, seeking cover in the embrasure. With his left hand he grasped the handle of the window and flung it open. A brief silence. Then the man asked, “Who’s there?”

Studer stood in the bright light, his massive figure casting a broad shadow on the balustrade.

“Me,” he said.

“Don’t be so stupid!” the stranger barked. “Will you tell me who you are?”

The man spoke German with an English accent. English? The odd thing was that there was something Swiss peeking out from beneath this foreign accent, something Studer couldn’t quite put his finger on. Perhaps it was the stress he put on the word “will”, which came out as “wiu”.

“Bern Cantonal Police,” the sergeant said good-humouredly.

“Identification.”

Studer showed it, though with a heavy heart; the photograph on his identity card always irked him. He felt it made him look like a lovesick sea lion.

The stranger handed it back, but that did not resolve the situation, for the sergeant knew the man had a revolver in his jacket pocket. The thought of being shot in the stomach was decidedly unpleasant. The word “laparotomy” buzzed around inside his head like an irritating mosquito, and he breathed a sigh of relief when the stranger finally took his right hand out of his pocket.

Now Studer asked, quietly, with excessive politeness and in his best High German, “And now might I ask to see your papers?”

“Surely,” the man said in English, then reverted to German. “Certainly.”

He went over to the table, opened a drawer and came back with a passport.

A Swiss passport! Issued in the name of James Farny, place of origin: Gampligen, Bern Canton, born 13 March 1878, issued in Toronto, Canada, renewed 1903 in Shanghai, renewed in Sydney, renewed in Tokyo, renewed . . . renewed . . . renewed in 1928 in Chicago USA . . . crossed into Switzerland 18 February 1931 in Geneva . . .

“So you’ve been back in Switzerland for five months, Herr Farny?” Studer asked.

“Five months, yes. Wanted to see my home country, the Heimat, once more.” There it was again, that sound. The Chinaman said “He-imat”, separating the “e” and “i”, while an Englishman would surely have made it a long “ai”. “Are you a . . .?” He was clearly struggling with his German. “A . . . senior police officer? A . . . what do you call them, an . . . inspector and not just a plain constable?” The last word was in English again.

“Sergeant,” said Studer good-humouredly.

“Then you would be called in when there’s a murder, for example?”

Studer nodded.

“You see, it is possible that I will be murdered,” said the Chinaman. “Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in a month’s time. It might perhaps take even longer. You’ll have a drink?”