Read Online In Matto's Realm: A Sergeant Studer Mystery by Friedrich Glauser - Free Book Online Page B

there?"

    Studer stood up and started pacing up and down the
room, from the door to the window and back again.
Fraulein Kolla had rested her heaving bosom on the
table and was following him with her eyes. He stopped
by the window, opened it and leant out: a lawn, newly
mown, iron poles with clothes lines stretched between
them, sheets waving in the gentle breeze. He could
hear the hum of a machine.
    "What's that?" Studer asked.
    "The laundry's next door," Fraulein Kolla explained. "One of the machines must be spinning to
make that kind of whirring noise."

    And Studer thought of all the things needed in a
clinic like this: countless shirts, socks, handkerchiefs,
sheets, nightdresses, all marked, all arranged in piles,
all counted. He caught himself thinking that he
wouldn't mind if the investigation took a while so that
he could see how such an organization worked.
He felt like spending some time here, in this realm
that was ruled over by a spirit called Matto, who had
been invested with such great power ... Sergeant
Studer would quite like to make this Matto's acquaintance...
    He stared out of the window.
    "Is that the female 0 Ward?" he asked, gesturing
with his hand at the building opposite.
    "Yes."
    Studer heard Fraulein KOlla's reply, but by then he
was already leaning out of the window, watching a girl
who was hurrying towards the entrance to the ward,
bent forward, holding her handkerchief over her eyes.
    A woman crying. It could mean everything and
nothing, but to Studer it suggested that silly young
thing Nurse Irma Wasem, who imagined she was soon
going to be Fran Director Borstli.
    He called the fat cook to come over quickly, pointed
out of the window at the girl and asked who it was.
    That was the girl they'd just been talking about, she
said, that Irma Wasem who ... But Fraulein KOlla's
explanation tailed off in a giggle as Studer swung himself up over the window-ledge, ran across the grass,
getting entangled in a sheet, and caught up with the
girl just as she was putting her key in the lock. He
placed his hand on her shoulder and said, in a very
gentle, fatherly voice, "What's happened?" Then he asked if she would come for a short walk with him,
there were some questions he'd like to ask.

    The handkerchief was sopping wet. The tears were
still running down her cheeks ...
    More by instinct that conscious reflection, Studer
realized that the only way to calm the girl down was a
matter-of-fact approach. He abandoned his usual sympathetic tone and asked in a dispassionate voice, "Are
congratulations in order, Fraulein Wasem? Is it Fran
Direktor Borstli now?"
    A stare ... A look of defiance ... The tears dried up.
    "Who're you?"
    "Detective Sergeant Studer."
    "Lord above! I knew it! Has something happened to
Ueli?"
    Ueli ... Dr Ulrich Borstli MD, Director of Randlingen Psychiatric Clinic, was simply Ueli. Lucky old
Dr Borstli. Actually, Studer would certainly not have
objected himself if Irma Wasem had called him "KObi"
or, even better, "KObeli". His wife had got into the
habit of calling him "Dad". There were times when it
got on his nerves ...
    "We don't know yet," Studer said. "Have you spoken
to anyone else?"
    A shake of the head.
    Sergeant Studer came to a decision. "The Director's office looks as if there's been a fight there," he
said. "Traces of blood on the floor, the typewriter's
bitten the dust ..." Studer shook his head. Why on
earth was he using Dr Laduner's jokey expression?
Then he finished with, "The Director's disappeared
and-"
    "Jutzeler! The men's staff nurse in 0 Ward!"
    That was not at all what Studer had been going to
say. "And Pieterlen's run off," was what he had been about to add, so Irma Wasem's interruption took him
aback for a moment.

    "What's this about Jutzeler?" he asked.
    "They had an argument. Ueli ... the Director and
the staff nurse."
    "When?"
    "That's why I had to wait so long, almost three quarters of an hour. I could see them