The Hangman's Daughter

Jakob Kuisl pointed to the charnel house that had been dedicated only a few weeks before. A shovel was leaning near the door. Simon, shaking his head, took the tool and began to dig next to the hangman. To be safe he crossed himself once more. He was not particularly superstitious, but if God was going to punish anybody with a thunderbolt, then surely it would be someone who dug up the bodies of dead children.

“We won’t have to go down very deep,” whispered Jakob Kuisl. “The grave was almost full.”

After only a few feet they did in fact find a layer of white lime. Under it appeared a small coffin and something wrapped in a bundle of linen, also small.

“I might have known it!” The hangman struck the spade against the stiff little bundle. “They didn’t even get a coffin for Anton Kratz. And the family does have enough money. But the orphans, you can just shove them into a pit like dead animals!”

He shook his head, then lifted the bundle and the coffin with his strong arms and put them on the grass beside the grave. In his huge hands the child’s coffin looked almost like a little tool chest.

“Here!” He held out a scrap of cloth to Simon. “Tie that around your head, they’ll certainly stink pretty bad.” Simon wrapped the cloth around his head and saw the hangman start to work with his hammer and chisel. One by one, he pried the nails out. A short time afterward the lid fell to the side.

Simon picked up his knife and slit the linen sack open lengthwise. Immediately a sickly sweet odor spread out, causing the physician to retch. He had seen many dead bodies in his time and smelled them, too, but these two boys had been dead for more than three days. In spite of the cloth around his face, the stench was so strong that he had to turn aside. He raised the cloth a bit and vomited, then he wiped his mouth, coughing. When he turned around again, the hangman grinned at him.

“I thought as much!”

“What?” Simon inquired in a rasping voice. He looked down at the dead children, who were covered all over with black spots. A wood louse scampered over little Peter’s face.

Contentedly Kuisl took out his pipe and lit it by the light of the lantern. After taking two deep puffs, he pointed to the fingers of the corpses. When Simon still did not react, he poked under Anton Kratz’s fingernails with the point of his knife, then held the blade out for the physician to smell. Simon could make out nothing at first, but when he held the lantern very close to the knife he could see some fine red soil on the point.

He looked questioningly at the hangman.

“So?”

Jakob Kuisl held the knife so close to Simon’s nose that he was frightened and retreated a step.

“Well, can’t you see, you dunce?” hissed the hangman. “The soil is red! It’s the same with Peter and Johannes. All three dead children had scraped about in red soil before they died. And what kind of soil is red? Well? Which soil is red?”

Simon swallowed before he spoke.

“Clay…clay is red,” he whispered.

“And where around here is so much clay that you can bury yourself in it?”

The answer hit Simon like a blow. It was as if two broken parts had come together.

“The pit by the brick kiln just behind the tanners’ quarter! Where all the clay tiles come from! Then…then is the children’s hiding place there, perhaps?”

Jakob Kuisl puffed on his pipe and blew the smoke directly into Simon’s face, so that Simon had to cough. But at least the smoke covered the smell of the corpses.

“Smart quack,” said Kuisl and slapped the coughing Simon on the shoulder.

“And that is exactly where we’re going now, to pay the kids a visit.”

Hastily the hangman filled the grave in again. Then he seized the spade and the lantern and ran to the wall of the cemetery. He was just about to heave his heavy body up the stone wall, when a figure appeared on top of the wall. It stuck out its tongue at him.

“Ha, caught you at grave robbing! You look like the Grim Reaper in person, only a bit fatter.”

“Magdalena, damn it, I—”

Jakob Kuisl snatched at his daughter’s leg, intending to pull her down to him, but with a quick movement she jumped to one side and strutted along the wall. Disdainfully, she looked down on the two grave robbers.

“I figured you would go to the cemetery. Nobody puts one over on me! Well, Father? Did you find the same dirt under the boys’ fingernails as with Johannes?”

The hangman looked angrily across to Simon. “Did you tell?”

The physician held up his hands trying to calm him down. “I never! I only told her about poor Johannes…and that you had examined the fingernails very closely.”

“You idiot! You must not tell women anything, above all my daughter. She’s too good at reading between the lines and figuring things out.”

Jakob Kuisl tried once more to grab Magdalena’s leg, but she was already a few steps farther on, balancing on the wall toward the church. The hangman hurried after her.

“Come down from there at once! You’ll wake up the whole neighborhood, and then all hell will break loose!” he whispered hoarsely.