Games of the Hangman (8 page)

He heard Etan
laughing.
 
She entered the bathroom and
pulled a towel off the heated rail.
 
"It's Shane.
 
He asks would
you mind leaving your duck for a moment.
 
He wants to talk to you."

Fitzduane
picked up the phone in a damp hand.
 
There were bubbles in his hair.
 
He leaned over and turned the music down lower.
 
"Still alive?" he said into the
mouthpiece.

"You're a
real bundle of laughs," said Kilmara.
 
It was late on a wet March evening, and it would take him well over an
hour to get to his home in Westmeath.
 
He
was feeling grumpy, and he thought it quite probable he was coming down with a
cold.

"Developments?"
asked Fitzduane.
 
"Or are you just
trying to get me out of the bath?"

"Developments,"
said Kilmara.
 
"The man in
Cork
says yes, but you'll
have to drive down there.
 
The man in
Bern
says well-behaved
tourists are always welcome, though he gargled a bit when he heard the name von
Graffenlaub.
 
And I say
,
if I'm not in bed with acute pneumonia, will you take a stroll over to

"In
part," said Fitzduane.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Three hours
later, Kilmara felt much improved.

Logs crackled
in the big fireplace.
 
An
omelette fines herbes
, a tomato salad, a
little cheese, red wine — all sat especially well when prepared by a
Frenchwoman.
 
He heard the whir of the
coffee grinder from the kitchen.

He lay back in
the old leather wing chair, the twins snuggled in close.
 
They were cozy in pajamas and matching Snoopy
robes, and they smelled of soap and shampoo and freshly scrubbed six-year-old.
 
Afterward, when the cries and the squeals and
the “But, Daddy, we can't go to bed until our hair is really, really dry” had
died down, he talked with Adeline.
 
As
always when he looked at her or thought about her, he felt a fortunate man.

"But why,
chéri
, does he want to do this
thing?" said Adeline.
 
She held her
balloon glass of
Armagnac
up to the firelight
and enjoyed the flickering rich color.
 
"Why does Hugo go on this quest when nothing is suspicious, when
there seems to be no reason?"

"There's
nothing suspicious as far as the authorities are concerned," said Kilmara,
"but Hugo marches to the beat of a different drum.
 
The point is that it doesn't feel right to
him, and that, to him, is what counts."

Adeline looked
skeptical.
 
"A feeling — is that
all?"

"Oh, I
think it's more than that," said Kilmara.
 
"Hugo is something of a paradox.
 
He's a gentle man with a hard edge — and he's spent most of his adult
life in war zones.
 
In the
Congo
he was a
natural master of combat while in action, though he had qualms of conscience
when it was all over.
 
Combat photography
was his compromise.
 
Well, now he's
heading toward middle age, and that's a time when you tend to take stock of
where you've been and where you're going.
 
I suspect he feels a sense of guilt about having made a living for so
many years out of photographing other people's suffering, and I think this one
death on his doorstep is like a catalyst for his accumulated feelings.
 
He seems to think he can prevent some future
tragedy by finding out the reasons for this one."

"Do you
think anything will come of all this?" said Adeline.
 
"It seems to me he's more likely to have
a series of doors slammed in his face.
 
Nobody likes to talk about a suicide — least of all the family."

Kilmara
nodded.
 
"Well," he said,
"ordinarily you'd be right, of course, but Fitzduane is a little
different.
 
He'd laugh if you mentioned
them, but he's got some special qualities.
 
People talk to him, and he feels things others do not.
 
It's more than being simpatico.
 
If I believed in such things, I'd call him
fey."

"What is
this word
fey
?" asked
Adeline.
 
Her English was excellent, and
she sounded mildly indignant that Kilmara had come up with a word that she did
not recognize.
 
Her nose tilted at a
pugnacious angle, and there was a glint of amusement in her eye.
 
Kilmara thought she looked luscious.
 
He laughed.

"Oh, it's
a real word," he said, "and a good word to know if you are mixing
with the Celts."
 
He pulled a
Chambers dictionary from the bookshelves behind the chair.
 
He leafed through the pages and found the entry.

"
‘Fey
’," he read.
 
"‘Doomed; fated to die; under the shadow of a sudden or violent
death; foreseeing the future, especially a calamity; eccentric, slightly mad;
supernatural.’"

Adeline
shivered and looked into the firelight.
 
"Does all of that apply, do you think?"

Kilmara
smiled.
 
He took her hands between
his.
 
"It isn't that terrible,"
he said.
 
"The son of a bitch is
also lucky."

Adeline
smiled, and then she was silent for a while before she spoke.
 
Now her voice was grave.
 
"Shane, my love," she said,
"you told me once about Hugo's wife:
 
how she died; how she was killed; how he did nothing to save her."

"He
couldn't," said Kilmara.
 
"He
had orders, and his men were grossly outnumbered, and frankly, there wasn't
even the time.
 
It was quite terrible for
him — hell, I knew the girl and she was quite gorgeous — but there was nothing
he could do."

Adeline looked
at him.
 
"I think Anne-Marie is the
reason," she said.
 
"She is the
reason he can't let this thing go."

Kilmara kissed
his wife's hand.
 
He loved her greatly,
and it was a growing love as the days passed and the children grew.
 
He thought Adeline was almost certainly right
about Fitzduane, and he worried for his friend.

5

Fitzduane
drove and decided he'd better think about something more cheerful than
conditions on the
Dublin
to
Cork
road, because the alternative was a
heart attack.
 
He decided to review the
aftermath of the hanging.

The obvious
place to start his quest was
Draker
College
— only it wasn't
that simple.
 
The impact of the tragedy
of Rudolf von Graffenlaub's death on the small, isolated community of the
college had been considerable.
 
Immediately, it had been made quite, quite clear to Fitzduane that the
sooner the whole episode was forgotten, the better.
 
Nobody in the college wished to be reminded
of Rudi's death.
 
The attitude was that
these things happen.
 
It was pointed out,
as if in defense, that suicide was the most common cause of death among young
people.
 
Fitzduane, who had never thought
twice about the matter in the past, found this hard to believe, but
investigation showed it to be true.

"Actually,
statistically speaking, it's amazing that something like this didn't happen
before," said Pierre Danelle, the principal of the college and a man
Fitzduane found it hard to warm to.

"All the
students at Draker are normally so happy," said the deputy principal.
 
He was a Danelle clone.

The inquest
took less than an hour.
 
Sergeant Tommy
Keane drove Fitzduane to the two-centuries-old granite courthouse where it was
held.
 
In the trunk of the sergeant's car
was fishing tackle, a child's doll — and a length of thin blue rope culminating
in a noose stained with brownish marks.
 
Fitzduane found this juxtaposition of domesticity and death bizarre.

During the
inquest Fitzduane was struck, by the one emotion that seemed to grip everyone
present:
 
the desire to get the whole
wretched business over and done with.

Fitzduane gave
his evidence.
 
The pathologist gave his
evidence.
 
Tommy Keane gave and produced
his evidence.
 
The principal of the
college and some students were called.
 
One of the students, a pretty, chubby-faced blonde with a halo of golden
curls, whose name was Toni Hoffman, had been particularly close to Rudi.
 
She cried.
 
No one, in Fitzduane's opinion, advanced any credible reason why Rudi
had killed himself, and cross-examination was minimal.
 
Fitzduane had the feeling they were in a race
to beat the clock.

The coroner
found that the hanged man had been properly identified and was indeed Rudolf
von Graffenlaub.
 
He had died as a result
of hanging himself from a tree.
 
It was
known he was of a serious disposition, prone to be moody, and had been upset by
‘world problems.’
 
His parents, who were
not present, were offered the condolences of the court.
 
The word
suicide
— for legal reasons, Fitzduane gathered — was never mentioned.

As they drove
back in the car, Sergeant Keane spoke.
 
"You expected more, didn't you, Hugo?"

"I think
I did," said Fitzduane.
 
"It
was all so rushed."

"That's
the way these things normally are," said Keane.
 
"It makes the whole affair easier for
all concerned.
 
A few little white lies
like saying the lad died instantly do nobody any harm."

"Didn't
he?"

"Lord,
no," said the sergeant.
 
"It
wasn't read out in open court, of course, but the truth is the lad strangled to
death.
 
Dr. Buckley estimated it took at
least four or five minutes, but it could have been longer — quite a bit
longer."

They drove on
in silence.
 
Fitzduane wondered if the
blue rope was still in the trunk.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

The duty
lieutenant came into Kilmara's office.
 
He was looking, Kilmara thought, distinctly green about the gills.

"You
asked to be informed of any developments on Fitzduane's
Island
,
colonel?"

Kilmara
nodded.

"We've
had a call from the local police superintendent," said the lieutenant.
 
"There's been another hanging at
Draker."
 
He looked down at his
clipboard.
 
"The victim was an
eighteen-year-old Swiss female, one Toni Hoffman — apparently a close friend of
Rudolf von Graffenlaub.
 
No question of
foul play.
 
She left a note."
 
He paused and swallowed.

Kilmara raised
an eyebrow.
 
"And?"

"It's
sick, Colonel," said the lieutenant.
 
"Apparently she did it in front of the whole school.
 
They have an assembly hall.
 
Just when all the faculty and students had
gathered, there was a shout from the balcony at the back of the hall.
 
When they turned, the girl was standing on
the gallery rail with a rope around her neck.
 
When she saw everyone was looking, she jumped.
 
I gather it was very messy.
 
Her head just about came
off."

Did she say
anything before she jumped?" said Kilmara.

"She
shouted, ‘Remember Rudi,’" said the lieutenant.

Kilmara raised
the other eyebrow.
 
"I expect we
shall," he said dryly.
 
He dismissed
the lieutenant.
 
"Obviously a young
lady with a theatrical bent," he said to Günther.

Günther
shrugged.
 
"Poor girl," he
said.
 
"What else can one say?
 
It sounds like a classic copycat suicide.
 
One suicide in a group has a tendency to
spark off others.
 
Many coroners think
that's one good reason why suicides shouldn't be reported."

Kilmara gave a
shudder.
 
"Ugh," he said.
 
"This is gloomy stuff.
 
Until our green lieutenant came in with the
tidings, I was geared to go home early and bathe the twins."