Trixie Trulla Kills Big Dörte · Chapter 4

Trixie’s Curse

Trixie took Napoleon in temporarily. The police had no objection. Frau Knobloch had all the more.

“The perpetrator is taking possession of the only witness,” she said over the garden fence.

“Napoleon isn’t a witness,” Herr Yilmaz objected.

“You don’t know that.”

“He can’t give evidence.”

“Which is precisely why his credibility remains unimpaired.”

Trixie heard none of this. She sat in her kitchen watching the black dog, his head resting on his forepaws. Since morning she had been remembering a sentence she would rather have forgotten.

It was not the threat that had become public knowledge. She had uttered that one with a laugh after Dörte, over coffee and shop-bought streusel cake, had coaxed the price out of her. “But not a word,” Trixie had said. “Or I’ll kill you.” Dörte had clutched her breast, declared “On my honour,” and had probably rung two people before reaching her own garden gate.

No, Trixie was thinking of something else.

On the evening before Dörte’s death, she had discovered how far the secret had travelled. A complete stranger had spoken to her outside the supermarket.

“Well, for a million, you might at least have expected a roof,” he had said.

Trixie had gone home. In the hall, a floor tile had come towards her. Not metaphorically. It had detached itself beneath her foot and slid to the opposite side of the room.

Standing there with a shopping bag in each hand and a leek under one arm, Trixie had shouted into the empty hall:

“Dörte, may the Devil take you!”

That very night, Dörte had died.

A reasonable person would have seen no connection. Trixie generally considered herself reasonable. As a child, however, she had possessed an aunt who could silence radios by sheer disapproval. At least, that was what the aunt claimed. The radios dated from the 1960s and frequently fell silent without her assistance. Nevertheless, the suspicion persisted in Trixie’s family that certain wishes might possess a degree of operational force.

Napoleon raised his head.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” said Trixie.

The dog looked at her.

“Of course I was angry. But anger isn’t an order form.”

Napoleon sighed.

Trixie stood, closed the kitchen door, drew the curtains and opened a website about the curse of Tutankhamun. After twenty minutes, she understood that there were numerous rational explanations. After forty, she was convinced that rational explanations were merely the preferred disguise of supernatural events.

At one o’clock, Inspector Martens rang the bell.

“Frau Trullmann?”

“Trullner,” said Trixie. “Beatrix Trullner.”

This incidentally explained the origin of “Trixie Trulla”. The neighbourhood had not invented her name. It had merely worked on it until it contained an opinion.

Martens asked about the house purchase, the conversation with Dörte and the threat. Trixie answered everything truthfully, except the matter of the Devil. About that, she remained silent.

Not because she considered herself guilty.

Only because she feared she might be.

To be continued …