The Unlucky Lottery

‘I got home at about two o’clock,’ she said. ‘There had been a power cut on the railway line to Bossingen and Löhr. We were at a standstill for an hour. I’d been to visit a friend.’

She looked up at the public gallery, as if she were looking for a face. The prosecutor made no attempt to hurry her, and after a while she continued of her own accord.

‘My husband woke up as I came through the door into the bedroom, and started making abusive remarks.’

‘Abusive remarks?’ wondered the prosecutor.

‘Because I’d woken him up. He claimed I’d done it on purpose. Then he went on and on.’

‘How did he go on?’

‘He said he’d won some money, and that he was going to spend it so that he didn’t have to see me so often.’

‘Did he usually say things like that?’

‘It happened. When he’d been drinking.’

‘Was he drunk that evening?’

‘Yes.’

‘How drunk?’

‘He was pretty far gone. Slurring when he spoke.’

Short pause. The prosecutor nodded thoughtfully several times.

‘Please continue now, fru Leverkuhn.’

‘Well, I went out into the kitchen and saw the knife lying on the draining board. I’d used it when I’d been cutting up some ham that afternoon.’

‘What did you think when you saw the knife?’

‘Nothing. I think I just picked it up to wash it and put it back in the drawer.’

‘Is that what you did?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Did you wash the knife, in fact?’

‘No.’

‘Tell us what you did instead.’

Leverkuhn brushed aside an annoying strand of hair and seemed to be hesitating about what to say next. The prosecutor eyed her without moving a muscle.

‘I was standing with the knife in my hand. And then my husband shouted something.’

‘What?’

‘I’d rather not say. It was a very rude insult.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I felt that I just couldn’t go on like this any longer. I don’t think I really understood what I was doing. I went into the bedroom, and then I stabbed him in the stomach.’

‘Did he try to defend himself?’

‘He didn’t have time.’

‘And then?’

‘I just carried on stabbing. It felt . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘It felt as if it wasn’t me holding the knife. As if it was someone else. It was very odd.’

Prosecutor Grootner paused again, then went for a little walk. When she returned to her starting point, a metre or so in front of the table, she first coughed into her hand, then turned her head so that she seemed to be speaking to a point somewhere diagonally above where the accused was sitting. As if she were actually talking to somebody else.

‘I find it a bit difficult to believe this,’ she said. ‘You have been married to your husband for over forty years. You have shared the same home and bed and endured the same hardships during a long life, but now you suddenly lose your head without any real reason. You said you were used to, er, exchanges of opinion like that, didn’t you?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Leverkuhn, looking down at the table. ‘It’s just that this was something extra . . .’

‘This wasn’t something you’d considered doing earlier?’

‘No.’

‘You’d never even given it a thought?’

‘No.’

‘Not earlier that evening, for instance?’

‘No.’

‘Are you suggesting that you didn’t know what you were doing when you murdered your husband?’

‘Objection!’ shouted Bachmann. ‘It has not been established that she murdered her husband.’

‘Sustained,’ muttered the judge without moving his mouth. The prosecutor shrugged, and her heavy bosom bobbed up and down.

‘Did you know what you were doing when you stabbed your husband?’ she said.

‘Yes, of course.’

A faint murmur ran through the gallery, and Judge Hart called for silence by raising his gaze half an inch.

‘What did you intend to do by stabbing him?’

‘To kill him, of course. To shut him up.’

The prosecutor nodded again, several times, and looked pleased.

‘Then what did you do?’

‘I rinsed the knife under the tap in the kitchen. Then I wrapped it up in a newspaper and went out.’

‘Why?’

Leverkuhn hesitated.

‘I don’t know. I suppose I wanted to make it look as if somebody else had done it.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Towards Entwick Plejn. I threw the knife and the newspaper into a rubbish bin.’

‘Where?’

‘I can’t remember. Maybe in Entwickstraat, but I’m not sure. I was a bit confused.’

‘And then?’

‘Then I went back home and phoned the police. I pretended that I’d found my husband dead, but that wasn’t the case . . .’

‘Didn’t you get a lot of blood on you when you killed your husband?’

‘Only a bit. I washed it off at the same time as I rinsed the knife.’

The prosecutor seemed to be thinking for a few seconds. Then she slowly turned her back on the accused. Pushed up her spectacles again and let her gaze wander over the members of the jury.

‘Thank you, fru Leverkuhn,’ she said, in a voice lowered by half an octave. ‘I don’t think we need to doubt that you acted with great presence of mind and purposefulness all the time. And I no longer think there is a single one of us who doubts that you murdered your husband with malice aforethought. Thank you, no more questions.’