The Hangman's Daughter

At first he would only show the instruments to the Stechlin woman—the red-hot pincers and the rusty thumbscrews with which the agony could be intensified one turn at a time. He would have to explain to her what it was like to be slowly stretched by hundredweights of stone until the bones cracked and finally sprang out of their sockets. Often it was sufficient just to show the instruments to break the victim’s spirit. But with Martha Stechlin the hangman was not so sure.

The midwife seemed to be asleep. When Jakob Kuisl stepped up to the grill, she looked up, blinking. There was a clinking sound. Her hands were connected by rusty chains to rings in the walls. Martha Stechlin tried to smile.

“They’ve chained me up like a mad dog.” She showed him the chains. “And the grub is just what you would give to one.”

Kuisl grinned. “It can’t be worse than in your house.”

Martha Stechlin’s expression darkened. “What’s it look like there? They smashed everything up, didn’t they?”

“I’ll go there and have another look. But at the moment you have a much greater problem. They think you did it. Tomorrow I’ll come with the court clerk and the burgomaster to show you the instruments.”

“Tomorrow—so soon?”

He nodded. Then he regarded the midwife intensely.

“Martha, tell me honestly, did you do it?”

“In the name of the Holy Virgin Mary, no! I could never do anything like that to the boy!”

“But was he with you? In the night before his death too?”

The midwife was freezing. She was wearing only the thin linen shirt in which she had fled from Grimmer and his men. Her whole body was shivering. Jakob Kuisl handed her his long coat, full of holes, and without a word she took it through the grill and put it round her shoulders. Not until then did she begin to speak.

“It wasn’t only Peter who was with me. There were some of the others as well. They miss their mothers, that’s it.”

“Which others?”

“Well, the orphans, you know—Sophie, Clara, Anton, Johannes…whatever they’re all called. They visited me, sometimes several times a week. They played in my garden, and I made some porridge for them. They haven’t anybody else anymore.”

Jakob Kuisl remembered. He, too, had occasionally seen children in the midwife’s garden, but he had never realized that they were almost all orphans.

The hangman knew the children from seeing them in the streets. They often stood together and were avoided by the others. Several times he had intervened when other children had banded together to attack the orphans and beat them. It seemed almost as if they had some sort of sign on their foreheads that led the others to choose them again and again as victims of aggression. For a moment, his mind went back to his own childhood. He was a dirty, dishonorable hangman’s son, but at least he had parents—a blessing that meanwhile fewer and fewer children enjoyed. The Great War had taken the lives of many fathers and mothers. The city put such poor, orphaned souls under the care of a guardian. They were often citizens from the city administration, but they were sometimes master craftsmen, who also took over the possessions of the dead parents as part of the bargain. In these families, usually numerous, these children were the last link in a long chain. Barely tolerated, pushed about, rarely loved. One more mouth to feed because the money was needed. Jakob Kuisl could well understand why these children had seen something like a mother in the affectionate Martha Stechlin.

“When was the last time they were with you?” he asked the midwife.

“The day before yesterday.”

“So then, the day before the night of the murder. Was Peter also with them?”

“Yes, of course. He was such a polite boy…”

Tears rolled down the midwife’s blood-encrusted face. “He didn’t have a mother anymore. I was with her in her last hours myself. They always wanted to know everything, Peter and Sophie. What I did as a midwife and what herbs I used. They watched closely when I pulverized them in the mortar. Sophie said she would like to become a midwife one day.”

“How long did they stay?”

“Until shortly before dark. I sent them home then, because Klingensteiner’s wife sent for me. I stayed with her until early yesterday morning. By God, there are witnesses to that!”

The hangman shook his head. “That won’t help you. Yesterday evening I spoke with old Grimmer. Peter supposedly never returned home. Grimmer was at the inn until closing hour. When he went to wake his son the next morning, the bed was empty.”

The midwife sighed. “So I was the last one to see him alive…”

“That’s just it, Martha. It looks bad. Out there people are gossiping.”

The midwife pulled the coat tighter around her. Her lips tightened.

“When will you begin with the pincers and the thumbscrews?” she asked.

“Soon, if Lechner has anything to say about it.”

“Shall I confess?”