McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [145]
“But where could I find this hermit?”
“Well, there’s a chance he’ll be at home in his cottage. It’s out in the Munich woods there.” He jabbed his hand toward the door. “Couple of miles or so. Do you have a map?”
Sinclair produced one and Hanfstaengl plotted their course for them. “I’d go with you myself, but I’m a bit vulnerable at the moment. I think someone’s already had a potshot at me with a rifle. Be a bit careful, sport. There are lots of homeless people in the woods these days. They could spell danger for a stranger. Even some of our locals have been held up at gunpoint and robbed.”
Begg shook hands with Hanfstaengl and said that he was much obliged. “One last question, Herr Hanfstaengl.” He hesitated.
“Fire away,” said “Putzi.”
“Who do you think killed Geli Raubal?”
Hanfstaengl looked down.
“You have an idea, I know,” said Begg.
Hanfstaengl turned back, offering Begg a cigarette from his case, which Begg refused. “Killed that poor little neurotic girl? Almost anyone but Hitler.”
“But you have an idea, I know.”
Hanfstaengl drained his glass. “Well, she was seeing this SS guy. . . .”
“Name?”
“Never heard one, but I think they planned to go to Vienna together. Hitler knew all about it, of course. Or at least he guessed what he didn’t know.”
“And had her killed?”
Hanfstaengl snorted sardonically. “Oh, no. He doesn’t have the guts.” His face had turned a terrible greenish white.
“Who does—?” Begg asked, but Hanfstaengl was already heading from the room, begging his pardon, acting like a man whose food had disagreed with him.
“Poor fellow,” murmured Begg, “I don’t think he has a taste for the poison or the antidote. . . .”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE POLITICS OF EXCLUSION
An hour or so later, Taffy Sinclair was shining the hand-torch down onto their map, trying to work out what Hanfstaengl had shown them. All around them in the woods were the camps of people who had been ruined by Germany’s recent economic troubles. While Munich herself seemed wealthy enough, the homeless had been pushed to the outlying suburbs and woodlands, to fend for themselves as best they could. The detectives saw fires burning and shadows flitting around them, but the forest people were too wary to reveal themselves and would not respond when Begg or Sinclair called out to them.
“I suppose it’s fair enough that a follower of Saint Heironymous the Hermit makes himself hard to find,” declared Sinclair, “but I think this place was less populated and with fewer caves when— aha!” His torchlight had fallen on the penciled mark. “Just up this road and stop. Should be a cottage here.”
The car’s brilliant headlamps made day of night, picking up the building ahead as if lit for the cinema, with great, elongated black shadows spreading away through the moonlit forest. An ancient, thatched, much-buttressed cottage was revealed. The place had two main chimneys, three downstairs windows and three up, including the dormer, which had its own chimney. The whole place leaned and declined in a dozen different directions, so that even the straw resembled a series of dirty, ill-fitting wigs.
“This has got to be it.” Noting shadows moving in the nearby trees, Sir Seaton climbed from the car and walked across the weed-grown path to the old door of Gothic oak and black iron, hammering on it heavily and calling out in his most authoritative tone: “Open up! Metatemporal detectives! Come along, Father Stempfle, sir! Let us in.”
A grinding of locks and rattling chains confirmed Sir Seaton’s inspired guess. A face that looked as if it had been folded, stretched, and refolded many times regarded them in the light of the lamp it held over the chink in the door, still latched by a massive row of steel links.
“Open up, sir.”
Seeing their faces seemed to weaken the old man’s resolve, for another bolt turned and the door creaked slowly