The Minotaur's Head: An Eberhard Mock Investigation (Eberhard Mock Investigation 4) Read online

  Rita Popielska did not share her peers’ view of the priest’s spiritual and physical beauty. Once, unable to bear a friend’s near-ecstatic rapture, she had even sharply retorted that Father Kierski must be a “queen”. Still, despite her negative attitude, she visited St Nicolas’ for social reasons; it was here that most of her friends gathered, and they could dawdle home together afterwards.

  That day, however, she had no intention of walking home with her friends. She stood close to the entrance, scrunching in her pocket the holy picture she had won with a charming smile before the end of the service, and waited for the right moment to outsmart their catechist, Sister Bonifanta.

  At the cross her station keeping,

  Stood the mournful Mother weeping,

  Close to her son to the last.

  Through her heart, His sorrow sharing,

  All His bitter anguish bearing,

  Now at length the sword has passed.

  O, how sad and sore distressed

  Was that Mother highly blest,

  Of the sold-begotten One.

  As the words of Stabat Mater came to an end, Sister Bonifanta approached the group of young schoolgirls to restore order, which had been momentarily disrupted. At that moment Rita, squeezing the hand of her new friend Beata Zacharkiewicz – nicknamed “Beanpole” – to say goodbye, hastily left the church, ran down the road and turned right. Here Sister Bonifanta would no longer see her.

  Dusk had fallen over Mochnacki Street, cut through here and there by yellow shafts that beamed from the gas lamps. Beneath an old chestnut tree on the corner stood a rogue with a hat pulled down over his eyes, smoking a cigarette. Rita felt uneasy. She climbed the steep street, slipping on the icy paving stones. The man abandoned his tree and made after her. The street was deserted, the university library already closed. At the top of the street, beneath another tree that was battered by the wind, stood another man. Rita wanted to turn back to the church, but the first man was already nearing it. He stood staring at her for a moment, then slipped into the shadow of a doorway. Rita breathed a deep sigh of relief and quickened her stride up the street. She would turn off very soon, and a few minutes later find herself beneath Fredro’s statue on Academy Square in the friendly urban hum, the lights, the window displays and amongst trustworthy people.

  The man standing by the tree at the top of the street suddenly started towards her. Again a spasm clutched at her throat. She could do one of two things: walk towards him, or return to the church where the other rogue, the one in the hat, might still be waiting for her. She chose a third solution and turned into Chmielowski Steet. Here the street lamps were few and far between. Drizzle glanced against the few lit windows. Rita looked back and saw the man from the tree standing still, his eyes searching for her. Quickly she ran towards Kalecza Góra. She leaped into the little street, then into a doorway reeking of cat’s pee, and wrapped herself in darkness.

  When she was little she had prayed in moments of great fear. Now she no longer believed in prayer and remained quite still in the darkness. An impudent thought flitted through her mind. Her father would certainly not worry if she was murdered here because for him all that counted were good marks in Latin and German! But he would be furious at the photograph she had hidden in the pocket of her school coat. On it were inscribed the words:

  “I saw you beneath the clock. So you have taken the first step. The next lies ahead. Do you want to find out something about me? Write to me. Poste restante, number 192. I have beautiful eyes. It’s a shame they aren’t any clearer on the photograph.”

  The photograph showed a young man dressed only in trousers and a vest. He was slim but perfectly muscular. His stomach muscles undulated beneath the taut material. He wore a hat, and his face was covered by a white headscarf.

  The man following her reached the little street and passed Rita’s hideout. He walked around the tenement building and a moment later found himself in the courtyard. For a while he stood perfectly still beneath a huge oak, then from the side of the yard entered the doorway where Rita was crouching and sniffed. He hated cats. He pressed the handle of the cellar door. It was open. He walked past it and quietly climbed the steps to the landing. Now he could see her. Feeble light fell from a doorway, casting light across her back. She was shaking all over. He made towards her.

  At that moment he heard heavy footsteps in the street.

  “Rita, how could you take such a risk and walk down forbidden streets!” he heard a loud voice cry. “What would your papa say!”

  “Were you following me, Mr Zaremba?” screamed Rita. “I hate my father! He never leaves me alone, and he’s always having me followed!”

  A moment later the girl was no longer there. On a stair lay one of her gloves. He picked it up and sniffed it for a long while.

  LWÓW, SATURDAY, MARCH 13TH, 1937 A QUARTER TO FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON

  Popielski left the Scotch House where, for perhaps the first time ever, he had spent time solely as a customer and drunk an entire pot of scalding tea flavoured with raspberry preserve and fortified with a glass of vodka. He did not feel very well; the ’flu which had already mowed down his entire family, including the serving girl Hanna Półtoranos, had finally caught up with him. He had, therefore, taken the alcoholic raspberry mixture as a prophylactic measure, considering it an effective remedy for everything.

  He followed a group of mathematicians down St Nicolas towards the university, and in order to avoid small talk kept slowing his pace, which had been exceptionally brisk since childhood. As it was, meeting them would be unavoidable since they were going to the same place, but he did not see the need to precipitate the irksome situation. He walked very slowly in the rain and mud, gazing about in the hope of looking like someone who was truly interested in this remarkable oasis of learning in the very heart of Lwów. Unfortunately, he did not sense any spirituality in the atmosphere and instead associated everything with past and fairly recent criminal cases. Instead of the university library he saw the massacred body of a student who had jumped from its roof; instead of the trees on Mochnacki Street – leafless at this time of the year – he saw the horrified face of a young nurse who had been raped in one of the street’s courtyards; and instead of the Trinitarian Monastery, a frozen infant left at its gate. Everything that surrounded him was evil. He did not even see the greatest luminaries of world mathematics in the hunched and gesticulating men who were walking in front of him, but only malicious, absent-minded men with sick ambitions.

  He followed the men into a building – known as the “old university” – adjacent to the Church of St Nicolas. Like them, he left his overcoat and hat in the cloakroom and climbed to the first floor where a meeting of the Lwów circle of the Polish Mathematical Society was to be held in one of the lecture theatres at four o’clock. Besides current issues there was to be a lecture by Bronisław Kulik entitled “Logic of names and logic of sentences”.

  Popielski sat by a window and leaned against the sill. This way he could clearly see anyone who entered. The mathematicians glanced at him with absent eyes and sat down on the benches. Some eyed his carefully chosen outfit with envy: the snow-white shirt, the black tie with white polka dots purchased in the Gentleman, and the suit made by Dajewski on Akademicka. He, in turn, looked at them through tired eyes and knew what would happen at this dull hour on such a rainy day: he would presently close his eyes and the sough of ominous phrases such as “interdependent operators” and “dual spaces” would lull him to sleep. Suddenly he started. He had caught sight of a small squat man with a nose turned up like a piglet. Slovenly dressed and unshaven, he had been the last to enter the lecture theatre and had not closed the door behind him. Popielski’s heart pounded.

  The stranger looked around, arousing general interest, then his eyes rested on Popielski’s bald head. He walked up to him quietly and handed him an envelope.

  “I’m the brother of Józef Majda, the caretaker.” Popielski recoiled at the strong reek of garlic tha
t wafted from the mouth of this man who resembled a pig. “My brother’s sick and told me to pass this on to you, Commissioner.”

  The hum in the lecture theatre had died down. Everybody, including Professor Stefan Banach, who was chairing the meeting, stared at Popielski and the garlic lover.

  “May we commence?” said the chairman, clearly vexed and addressing Popielski.

  “Thank you,” whispered Popielski. He backed away from the messenger in repulsion and waved his hand as if chasing off a fly.

  “A warm welcome to you, gentlemen, at this, our March meeting of the Lwów circle of the Polish Mathematical Society,” began Banach. “Today we have the pleasure of listening to Doctor Bronisław Kulik from Kraków, who will be talking to us about formal logic in a lecture entitled ‘Logic of names and logic of sentences’. As the very title suggests, we are dealing here with an interesting methodological proposition. Welcome, Doctor Kulik.”

  Muted applause reverberated around the room and a slim, elegantly dressed and good-looking man of under thirty took the chair. He began by assuring everyone that it was a great honour for him to be standing in front of such excellent scholars and that he would note down all their comments, although he was not certain that he would be able to respond to them immediately. Two men sitting behind Popielski struck up a conversation.

  “Who is this Kulik anyway?” Popielski heard them whisper. “Someone from the Jagiellonian? One of Leja’s?”

  “No,” replied his companion. “No, Leja doesn’t deal with logic. It’s one of Łukasiewicz’s new doctors. I think he’s a private reader in Kraków, passed his Ph.D. recently and goes around Poland giving lectures. He wants to worm his way into the circle. Apparently it was Łukasiewicz who intervened with Banach about today’s meeting. He’s some kind of layabout, like all those logicians!”

  Popielski smiled to himself, noting that gossip and envy also find their way into the world of abstraction. He threw a discreet glance behind him and saw two mathematicians he had never spotted in the Scotch House. In front of one was a file spilling over with exercise books. School teachers, thought Popielski, and pulled the letter out of its envelope. As usual, he was happy to see Mock’s neat, even writing. He had a fast track for correspondence with the police officer from distant Breslau. Mock would hand the letter to the conductor on the Kattowitz–Lwów train who, on arriving in Lwów, would send the station messenger with the letter to Popielski’s house on Łącki. There the caretaker would deliver it personally, or knew where to find him. Popielski began to read the letter in the hope of news, happy in the knowledge that he would have something to do during the boring meeting.

  Kattowitz,

  12th March, 1937

  Dear Edward,

  Let me relate what has happened since my last letter. As I wrote to you, I caught Maria Szynok’s so-called betrothed – a certain Michał Borecki – in a vice, and he revealed the name of a woman who performs abortions in the area where the wretched madwoman lived. You will probably ask why I needed it. Well, I am pursuing the trail of “carnal mediation”. I believe Szynok was a covert prostitute. First I thought that the murdered Nowoziemska was a bawd, even though I could find no evidence to confirm this. But this thought became an obsession. I called it the “trail of crypto-prostitution”. While speaking to Borecki it occurred to me that women who perform abortions are often bawds. He himself made me aware of this unwittingly when he revealed that Szynok had had lots of lovers before him and – as he put it – had “had the scrape several times”. So I put pressure on Borecki and he gave me a name. Monika Halaburda. As it turned out there did indeed live a woman of that name in the area, except that she was a respected seamstress, and in her private life the mother-in-law of this suburban Don Juan. He had played a cruel joke on me and my vice is now probably no more useful than scrap iron. I have not, however, been put off, despite Commissioner Holewa poking spokes into the wheel. For the time being the drone is ineffective, and I’m conducting my private investigation under his nose. How so? Well, I’m obstinately pursuing the “crypto-prostitution” trail, visiting Aphrodite’s priestesses in Kattowitz and asking them about women who perform abortions. I’m visiting them as a client, of course, so my shadow in the form of that nark, Senior Sergeant Wybraniec, does not accompany me. Holewa is furious with me and spouts moralistic tirades, but he cannot in the end forbid me my harmless weakness. And I can already see light at the end of the tunnel. I feel I am going to discover something soon. You know I know how to talk to girls and I’m generous with them. Besides, I don’t pay them just to talk. Remember, dear friend? Homo sum et nil humani … That is all the news for today.

  My best wishes,

  Your Eberhard

  P.S. Nothing new as far as Nowoziemska’s murder is concerned.

  Popielski read the letter three times and looked up at the lecture theatre. The lecturer must have been nearing the end of his talk, and the listeners were fidgeting impatiently. A muted hum had broken out. Popielski, who even then had not entirely given up Latin and frequented scholarly philological meetings, knew what the noise meant. The lecturer would meet with either admiration or crushing criticism.

  “What on earth is he saying?” he heard a stage whisper behind him. “That’s methodological treason!”

  “Are you going to take the voice, Professor?” said the second whisperer.

  “I’m not even going to stoop to taking part in the discussion!”

  “Oh, don’t exaggerate, Professor! You spoke up once at a similar lecture …”

  “Never!” The professor flared up. “Never! What are you talking about, dear colleague!”

  “What about that time the amateur gave a lecture, eh? Did you not debate then, Prof? Did you not take him to pieces?”

  “What amateur?”

  “I don’t remember his name … Short … you know, the one who was as ugly as the devil himself! That eccentric, who looked as though he had escaped from a madhouse. The one who took Auerbach’s hat by mistake!”

  “Hat? Auerbach?”

  “You don’t know the anecdote? It’s beautiful!”

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen!” responded Banach ex cathedra as he glared at both teachers and rapped his pencil on the table. “Our lecturer is nearing his conclusion. Please allow him to do so!”

  Popielski’s heart was thumping again. “An amateur as ugly as the devil himself,” he thought quickly, “they don’t remember his name … Auerbach’s hat … Steinhaus’ sandwich … Hilbert’s tripod … Ugly as the devil himself … ugly as an ape, like a monkey … Looks mentally ill … As if escaped from a lunatic asylum.” These feverish thoughts quickened his pulse. He felt a twitch at his right ear. Auerbach’s hat. He looked around the theatre. The lecturer had finished and Herman Auerbach, sitting in the front row, put himself forward to be the first to speak. Popielski left his seat noisily. Everyone turned to looked at him.

  “Please wait for your turn,” Banach reprimanded him, somewhat startled. “Reader Auerbach has the voice now.”

  The twitch at his ear became a thudding. Popielski approached Auerbach and grabbed him by the elbow. The grip was firm.

  “You’ll ask your question presently,” he said in the silence of the theatre, “but there’s something I have to know straightaway!”

  “What is this supposed to mean?” yelled Leon Chwistek. “How dare you disrupt our academic freedom? How dare you drag us down from our crystalline heights of logic into the cesspool?”

  “Let’s go!” Popielski said to Auerbach. “It’s a matter of the greatest importance!”

  “As you can see, gentlemen” – Auerbach was clearly amused – “I am vi coactus.”†

  “Cloacus,”‡ sighed Steinhaus looking at Chwistek.

  Popielski stepped into the corridor with Auerbach and then lost his self-control. He grasped the mathematician by his feeble biceps and pressed him to the wall.

  “An amateur once held a lecture here. Very ugly. You’ll remember him because he to
ok your hat by mistake! Tell me all you know about him!”

  “Yes, I know who you mean,” replied Auerbach calmly. “But first let me go. He’s a logician and mathematician – self-taught, in fact. He didn’t complete any studies. I don’t know where he comes from or whether he studied anything at all,” he continued once Popielski had let go of him. “His name is Zdzisław Potok. I saw him in the Scotch House only once. There was me and Staszek Ulam, who left for America a few days ago. Potok spoke to us for a while, he even had an interesting idea regarding Dirichlet’s theorem, and then he left. He took the wrong hat. The rascal took my new one and left his old. Then he disappeared. So I wore his old hat. Better that than nothing at all. About a year later he approached me at the university, returned my hat with his apologies, and asked whether he could give a lecture there on logic. A lecture by a foreign guest, Professor Lebesgue, had just been cancelled and we were left with a gap to fill. I questioned him in detail about his lecture. It seemed to make sense and was coherent. So I agreed. He spoke to a practically empty theatre. I remember there was only Ulam, myself and one other person. Afterwards I got a hard time from my boss for allowing an amateur in and practically nobody turning up. That’s all I know about him. Oh, and I know where he lives too because I sent him back his old hat. Żulińskiego Street 10, apartment 12.”