The Ludwig Conspiracy

  Suddenly he put his hand to his breast pocket. “Damn it, I almost forgot. The letter.” He took out the large envelope and the small folded note. “I gave the king my word to hand it over in Linderhof. But now I must go straight to Munich if I don’t want to end up in front of a court martial.”

  I thought for a moment and then put out my hand. “Give it to me. I’ll take the letter to Linderhof with me and give it to the recipient there.”

  Dürckheim looked at me doubtfully. “I gave my word,” he said. But then a sigh escaped him. “What does it matter? If I can’t trust you anymore, whom can I trust? But remember that the letter is to be given only to the person named in the note. And you are not to open the note until you are at Linderhof.”

  I nodded, then took the letter and the note, stowing both safely away in my vest pocket just below my heart.

  “I must go.” The count gave me his hand in farewell, and the first pale rays of the morning sun fell on his face. “For God and the king.”

  “For God and the king.”

  Without another word, Count Dürckheim turned away and hurried down the stairs of the palace to the first floor. A little later I heard a horse neighing, and I looked through the window, where nocturnal drifts of mist were dispersing. Leaning low on his horse, like a miscreant, the count galloped out of the castle gate.

  The morning twilight quickly swallowed him up.

  29

  A KNOCK AT THE door brought Steven out of his reading. It was Albert Zöller, standing in the doorway of the small hotel room that the bookseller shared with Sara.

  “Adolf the photographer reporting for duty,” he announced, saluting like a soldier. Around his neck hung an unwieldy camera that he had scrounged up a few hours ago in a photographic equipment store in Schwangau. “Always wanted one of these,” he said, grinning as he waved the old-fashioned camera in front of Steven’s face. “I thought it looks more professional than those newfangled digital cameras.” He looked at his watch. “Eight thirty already. We’d better go up to the castle quickly, if we don’t want to miss our date.”

  Steven started in surprise. “So late already?” He packed the diary away in his rucksack and put on his shoes. Then he and Zöller went down the well-worn hotel stairway.

  “Anything new?” Uncle Lu asked, pointing to the rucksack with the book in it.

  Steven shook his head slightly. “Only that just before his death Ludwig wanted to send what was obviously an important letter to Linderhof. According to Marot, he considered it possibly the most important document he had ever written.”

  Zöller paused for a moment on the stairs. “How remarkable,” he murmured. “There’s nothing in the scholarly literature about any such letter. Does Marot say what was in it?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Steven replied. “But maybe the letter will come up in his diary again.”

  “Maybe. If it does, you absolutely must tell me about it. It matters, do you understand? It matters a great deal.”

  Steven scrutinized the old man, who was now thoughtfully running his hand over his mouth. It seemed to him that Zöller was keeping something from him. Obviously Sara had been right in her assumptions about those phone calls. But why in the world had Uncle Lu been in touch with a private detective agency? And what was so important about the king’s last letter?

  Suddenly Zöller’s expression changed. He grinned and patted a shopping bag full to bursting that he had brought out from behind his back. “Well, never mind that now,” he said happily. “I have twenty pounds of books that could help us in here. Critical literature, illustrated books, a collection of ballads . . . I even have the librettos of Tannhäuser and Lohengrin with me.”

  “So long as you don’t start singing from them.” It was the voice of Sara, who was standing at the bottom of the stairs. She clapped her hands impatiently. “Hurry up, you two. Or we’ll be too late for Steven’s tryst.”

  It was already dark outside. A drizzling rain had begun to fall, blowing into their faces as they went up the broad road to the castle. Steven had refrained from wearing his disguise of the traditional hat and Bavarian T-shirt. It was too dark for anyone to be able to recognize him, anyway. The road stretching before them was empty of people. A black ribbon through the woods, it lost itself in the darkness after only a few yards. Only the steaming heaps of horse dung, the crumpled tickets, and the ice-cream wrappers by the roadside still bore witness to the hectic activity of the daytime. It occurred to Steven that Theodor Marot had hurried to the side of his mentally disturbed king through this very wood 125 years ago. Many of the trees around them might date from that time.

  “You know, Neuschwanstein should be glad to have a famous firm like Manstein Systems seeing to its modernization,” Sara said as they hurried ahead through the wood. “When you think that more than a million visitors from all over the world come here every year, the place could do with a more distinguished touch.”

  “If I understood Frau Manstein correctly, the firm is more concerned with the security aspect,” Steven said. Feeling cold, he buttoned up his jacket. “Since she mentioned potential terrorists, I’ve had a distinctly queasy feeling. I think Manstein was in charge of all the security for Oktoberfest in Munich. And how about this place? A terrorist could easily attack it if he wanted to.”

  “Don’t go inviting trouble,” Zöller said, gasping for air. “And I’d be glad if we could go a little slower, or you’ll lose your Ludwig expert without needing any terrorist attack.”

  When they came to the next bend in the road, all three stood spellbound for a long moment.

  The castle towered ahead of them, radiant with almost unearthly glory in the beams of countless floodlights. At night, Neuschwanstein looked even more like a Grail castle than in the day. Its battlements and towers were almost dazzlingly white, standing out against the black wood around them. Somewhere an owl called, and a large bird of prey flew by in front of the bright crescent moon, disappearing on the other side of the castle. Steven could not suppress a smile. Ludwig II and Richard Wagner would both have appreciated this spectacle.

  He looked away and was about to go up the drive to the gatehouse, when two more lights came on below the Knights’ house, as it was known. They were the headlights of a car.

  “Looks like la baronne is waiting for you,” Sara said, and went over to the Maserati, walking as if she were stumbling clumsily on the wet cobblestones. “Right, so I’m silly Peggy from Texas.”

  The lights were switched off, and Luise Manstein got out of the car. After glancing with disapproval at Sara and Uncle Lu, she greeted Steven with a brief nod. “Good evening, Mr. Landsdale. I see you brought your charming companion. Pity, I would have liked to be alone with you. But as you wish.” She looked at her silver watch. “You’re late. I was about to go in without you.”

  “I’m sorry, but it took Peggy a little time to do her face.” Steven smiled. “You know what young assistants are like these days. They think of nothing but their makeup.”

  The industrialist cast a mocking glance at Sara, who went pale and bit her lip. Luise pointed to a small iron door at the foot of the castle. “Well, one can’t always choose one’s own staff. Come along, then. I don’t have all night.”

  Steven looked up at the white walls of the castle towering into the air once more. All of a sudden Neuschwanstein looked genuinely menacing, like a castle in a ghost story with gates that might close behind them forever. He shook off the thought and followed Luise Manstein to the iron door.

  To the right of the entrance, a small keypad was set into the wall. The head of Manstein Systems tapped in a numerical code, put her thumb on a panel, and stared into a convex lens at eye level. After a few seconds the safety door opened with a quiet hum. Together, they entered a long corridor with a vaulted ceiling stretching ahead farther than they could see. The light at the entrance illuminated only the first few yards, but whenever they came to a new section of the tunnel, a red emergency light flicked on. As they went a
long, Steven felt that they were walking at least twice the length of the castle.

  At last, by means of a stairway, they reached a souvenir shop on the first floor of the castle. The tall room was crammed to the ceiling with kitschy cups, plates, and jigsaw puzzles in boxes, every item bearing the famous portrait of the king. Ludwig beer mugs, Ludwig wooden platters, Ludwig dolls, Ludwig coloring books, and even Ludwig pencil sharpeners in the shape of a white plastic swan covered tables and racks set out all over the room. There were several posters behind the cash desk, showing Ludwig II in the prime of his youth. None of the pictures were of the fat, toothless tyrant who had died at the age of forty in Lake Starnberg.

  If the king could see all these knickknacks, he’d probably be turning in his grave, thought Steven. In fact he’d be positively spinning in it.

  Luise noticed his glance and looked at him sardonically. “Did you know that Ludwig wanted to blow up his castles rather than have them desecrated by the unworthy?” she asked. “Maybe that would have been a better solution. As it is, the world is full of this tasteless junk. But what’s to be done?” She pointed to a plastic dinner service with the design of a golden castle. “What do you think Neuschwanstein makes annually out of this tatty stuff and tickets to see the castle? More than six million euros. The king has repaid his debts a hundred times over.”

  “Great, I’ll put all that in my . . . er, story,” Steven said, taking out a notepad. “It would be terrific if we could take a little look at the royal apartments.”

  “Ah, the Americans and their proverbial superficiality.” Luise smiled ironically. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to give you a long lecture on cultural history. I’m going to the security control room now, and meanwhile you can walk around the palace as you like. We’ll say two hours, all right?” She pointed to a door at the back of the souvenir shop. “Keep going straight ahead, but please don’t touch anything, or you’ll get a firsthand experience of the new alarm system, and the police will turn up with a hundred officers.”

  She turned away and disappeared through an iron door on the right, which was secured by another numerical code. For a while Steven and the others stood in the room in silence, and only when the footsteps beyond the door had died away did Sara clear her throat loudly.

  “‘You know what young assistants are like these days,’” she said, mimicking Steven. “‘They think of nothing but their makeup.’ Ha, ha, very funny, Mr. Landsdale.”

  “Only joking, nothing to get jealous about.” Steven winked at Sara and then walked ahead. “Now, let’s get this over with. We only have two hours, and if we haven’t solved the puzzle in that time, I’m going to throw the damn book into the Pöllat Gorge and turn myself in to the police.”

  30

  THE KING’S APARTMENTS were on the third and fourth floors of the palace, on the west side of the castle.

  As soon as they were up there, Zöller tipped out his books on the mosaic floor of the throne room and declared the high vault of the hall, with its massive chandelier, their headquarters. The place was gigantic, reminiscent of Byzantine architecture, with a cupola bedecked with stars. It occupied the full height of those two floors, and it had a gallery running around the room halfway up.

  They set out from there to investigate the separate rooms, but a first, superficial inspection produced not a single useful clue. In addition, they dared not touch the furniture and mural paintings, for fear of setting off the alarm. Small cameras in the ceiling showed that security featured prominently in Neuschwanstein these days. Zöller took pictures of some of the furniture with his new camera, but he was looking more and more distracted. Steven even thought he detected a trace of panic in Zöller’s expression. However, he had no idea why that might be.

  At a loss, Steven stood in the middle of the enormous hall and looked up, as if he might find the keyword there. Beneath the vault of the cupola, there were pictures of pre-Christian rulers, and in the apse the bookseller saw Jesus Christ, the twelve apostles, and six more kings. The murals in the room celebrated the heroic deeds of saints, and Steven was struck, in particular, by the figure of St. George stabbing the dragon in the eye. While the battle between knight and monster went on in the foreground, the background of the painting showed a castle on a mountain looking very much like Neuschwanstein itself.

  “Where’s the throne?” Steven asked, and his voice echoed in the high spaces of the room. “After all, this is the throne room.” He pointed to the empty apse, and a broad flight of steps leading up to it.

  “Ludwig died before the throne was finished,” Zöller said. “But there are drawings. It would have been huge, made of gold and ivory, intended to outdo the thrones of both Charlemagne and Louis the Fourteenth. Everything here was to be just like the music of Wagner: grandiose and a little too loud.” He chuckled and pointed up. “Most of this stuff is only smoke and mirrors, anyway. The cupola is an iron structure, the columns are stucco, and glass drops hang from the chandelier. The entire castle is a theatrical setting.”

  Groaning, Uncle Lu levered himself down to the floor and began leafing through a thick volume.

  “Let’s just sum up,” he announced. “Supposing the keyword really does have something to do with Richard Wagner, then we’re looking at five thematic areas here. Each of the state rooms in the palace is based on an old legend. In the salon, the murals tell the story of the legend of Lohengrin; in the study, it’s Tannhäuser; in the bedroom, Tristan and Isolde; and finally, in the Lower Hall, Sigurd and Gudrun.”

  “I’ve already fed all those names separately into the laptop,” Sara complained. “Nada. But that would have been too easy.”

  Steven turned to Zöller. “Which do you think is the most likely room?”

  “Lohengrin was Ludwig’s favorite Wagner opera,” Uncle Lu said thoughtfully. “It impressed him in his youth. And it’s perfectly possible that Marot concealed a clue in the Lohengrin pictures in the salon.”

  “Who exactly was Lohengrin, anyway?” Sara asked. “All I really know about him is that he crosses the lake singing, in a boat drawn by a swan.”

  Uncle Lu cleared his throat. “The character goes back to the Parsifal legend. Parsifal is the Grail king, that’s to say the keeper of the Holy Grail, and Lohengrin is his son. As the Knight of the Swan, Lohengrin travels to the Duchess of Brabant to protect her. But she must never ask him his name . . .”

  “Which, of course, she does anyway,” Sara interrupted. “Naturally. Now I remember the story. And Tannhäuser?”

  “Deals, among other things, with the medieval singers’ contest at the Wartburg castle. The Singers’ Hall on the fourth floor is modeled on the hall in the Wartburg.” Zöller opened a thick, well-thumbed book. “The story of Sigurd and Gudrun, in turn, goes back to the legendary Germanic world of the Edda.” He looked at Steven and Sara, his eyes twinkling. “You two probably know the romance better as the Nibelung legend featuring handsome Siegfried and his prim and proper Kriemhilde. The legend is easily the best-known story in Wagner’s operas. All most people really know about Tristan and Isolde is that they were a couple of lovers.”

  “Hey, wait a moment.” Steven suddenly pricked up his ears and leafed fast through the diary, his voice growing more and more urgent. “Theodor Marot described the paintings and figures of the two lovers in Ludwig’s bedroom at some length. And Marot and Maria, after all, were another couple of lovers. The other two keywords were MARIA and LILIES. They’re both kind of connected with love. Couldn’t ‘Tristan and Isolde’ be the legend we’re after?”

  “And suppose it is?” Sara was sitting beside Zöller on the mosaic floor, tapping the keyboard of her laptop listlessly. “I’ve fed the names Tristan and Isolde in about a dozen times. All I get out of that is garbage.”

  “Then let’s go back to the bedroom,” Steven said, already making for the exit. “Maybe we’ll find a clue that we’ve overlooked so far. There simply must be something, I’m sure of it. We’ve been too blind to spot it so far, tha
t’s all.”

  IN THE FLICKERING emergency lighting, they hurried along the dark corridors and chambers of the castle. As a teenager, Steven had once gone on a guided tour of Neuschwanstein, but at night the building looked little like the fairy-tale tourist attraction of his childhood. In the darkness, the castle was gloomy, cold, and almost unreal, like a theatrical backdrop in which painted characters suddenly came to life. Knights with faces distorted by pain, pale aristocratic maidens, kings, and warriors stared out of the murals at Steven and seemed to follow every step he took. The heavy wooden doors creaked and squealed, and several times he thought he heard footsteps directly overhead, as if the king were still wandering restlessly through the Singers’ Hall. Sara, too, kept looking up at the ceiling, intrigued.

  “All the cameras are making me paranoid,” she said softly, pointing to another lens mounted in a corner. “You really do feel you’re under observation the whole time.”

  “Any idea how many people go around this place every day?” Zöller said, standing in contemplation of the furniture. Once again, Steven felt that something was troubling him. “It’s sometimes up to ten thousand a day in the summer. Ten thousand idiots who think they can paw everything here. Without security cameras, you might as well shut up shop.”

  Zöller went ahead as they finally, by way of the anteroom and the dining room, reached the king’s bedchamber. The magnificent neo-Gothic furnishings were as impressive as the stage set for a Wagnerian opera. In the left-hand corner stood the broad bed with its carved wooden canopy. Next to it was an equally ornate washstand with a silver swan providing water. Two doorways led to the private chapel next door and a small, artificial grotto with a conservatory. The bedroom walls were covered by mural paintings from the legend of Tristan and Isolde, and here again the small cameras made sure that improper behavior by any visitors was immediately detected.