Murder in A-Major Read Online Free Page A

in Germany that Hamburg's waterfront was an immense open sewer, where human waste and wasted humans mingled so freely in the tides that they were often indistinguishable. The city's sidewalks and shady entrance-ways throbbed with brothel life around the clock, offering with one hand a few minutes of pleasure, and guaranteeing with the other a lifetime of embarrassing skin disorders. Innocent glasses of water indeed!
    Nevertheless, I was determined that my last few minutes in Zwicken should be spent agreeably. “Thank you, father,” I said, “I will try to remember your words of wisdom. I consider myself blessed to be the son of a true sage.”
    My father's eyes suddenly gazed even more deeply into my own. “Ah yes, Hermann,” he said, “that's the other thing I meant to tell you.”
    â€œOther thing?”
    â€œYes. You are not my son. Your mother was pregnant by another man…possibly a French warrant officer at the time of the invasion, though there was also this commercial traveller from Potsdam…when I agreed to marry her. Since you are not my own flesh and blood, my last will and testament leaves nothing to you. I'm sure you understand that it's only fair that your dear little sister Ilse should be my sole beneficiary, bearing in mind that she is to the best of my knowledge and belief my own flesh and blood. Now then, my boy, do try to be of good cheer at all times. Goodbye and best of luck.”
    The truth is that the sudden news of my disinheritance came as nothing more than a very glancing blow. After all, when there's nothing to gain, there's nothing to lose. But the revelation that my mother's egg had been fertilized by some random sperm from out of town left me profoundly unsettled not only throughout the train ride to Hamburg that night but for the many years that followed. To this day I am nagged by doubts about my origins and the taint of illegitimacy.
    That I chose to remain a bachelor, despite the odd flirtation now and then, was directly attributable to that conversation at the railway station in Zwicken. Given my parents’ incessant wrangling, was it any wonder that I came to regard the temple of marriage as being no more reliable than a tent in a hurricane.
    Bachelorhood had its positive side in my case. It left me free to immerse myself in my work in the field of crime in general, and homicide in particular. Not for me the scheduled life…supper at six, bedtime stories for the children at seven, pipe and slippers at eight, lights out at nine. When most men were sitting down to dine, or to listen to the end-of-the-day chatter of their children, or lie snugly against the flannel of their wives’ nightclothes, I found myself bending with boundless curiosity over a bludgeoned corpse, or examining a knife planted like a flagpole in someone's chest, or figuring out the trajectory of a bullet lodged in someone's skull.
    There is an irony here, of course. For one who was warned to avoid surprises, I had made it my occupation to deal with those very things. The surprises I dealt with, however, happened to others , not to me. This fact made all the difference. No matter how heinous the crimes I encountered, I was able to view them dispassionately. Objectivity is the soul of professional crime investigation, and mine had never faltered.
    In short, my work was my life.
    Still, there came a point in each day when I was able to lay down the tools of my trade and say “Enough.” It was at such times that, in effect, I managed to hand the crime back to society, as one hands back to its mother an infant that has done something bothersome in its under-clothing. Once removed, if only for a few hours, from the jigsaw puzzles of my profession, I was at liberty to immerse myself in a very different kind of life, a life of good food, good wine, great music, and the company of a beautiful woman, namely my cellist friend Helena Becker.
    And it was the same Helena who