When Simon Fronwieser reached the Schreevogls’ house to look at the sick child, he saw at once that something was not right. In front of the door a dozen people had assembled. A few had lit lanterns in the gathering darkness. The flickering light threw unnaturally big shadows on the walls of the houses, and the faces of the curious were bathed in a dull red light. People whispered, again and again fingers were pointed up at the second floor. Simon heard someone say: “He flew out of the window and took her with him. The devil incarnate, as true as I stand here!” Another uttered curses against Martha Stechlin and wanted to see her burn that very day.
Directly above the physician the shutters of a window stood wide open. The right shutter swung crookedly on its lower hinge, as if a heavy man had held fast to it. Splinters of glass were scattered on the street. From the upper rooms a woman could be heard sobbing. At that moment she uttered such a shrill cry of grief that Simon thought the other glass panes would be shattered as well.
The physician made his way through the crowd and began to climb the broad, thickly carpeted stairs up to the second floor. The crying came out of the room on the left. A maid and another servant, pale as death, were standing in front of the door. The maid was mumbling prayers and fingering a rosary. Simon examined the damaged door. The thin wood in the middle had been broken out and the splinters lay on the carpet. Through the chest-high hole Simon could see Maria Schreevogl lying on her stomach in the bed, her fingers clutching the comforter, her head buried in the pillows. Jakob Schreevogl sat alongside her on the edge of the bed and stroked his wife’s hair, talking softly to her and trying to calm her. Two chairs in the room had been upset; a picture of the Holy Virgin lay on the floor, the frame shattered. Right across her peacefully smiling face was the impression of a boot.
When Jakob Schreevogl saw the physician standing at the splintered door, he nodded to him and asked him to come in.
“If you’ve come to see our sick Clara, you’ve come too late,” whispered Schreevogl. Simon saw that he, too, had been weeping. The face of the young alderman was even paler than usual. The arched, rather oversize nose stuck out under eyes red with tears, his otherwise carefully arranged hair looked unkempt and fell over his forehead.
“What’s happened?” Simon asked.
Maria Schreevogl began to scream again: “The devil has taken her! He flew into the room and took our little Clara…” The rest was drowned in sobs.
Jakob Schreevogl shook his head.
“We don’t know exactly what happened,” he said. “Someone must have…kidnapped her. He opened the street door, although it was locked, then he kicked down the upper door, seized our little Clara, and obviously jumped out of the window with her.”
“Out of the window?” Simon frowned. He went over to the window and looked down. Directly beneath him stood a hay wagon.
The physician nodded. With a bold jump it would be possible to get down without breaking all one’s bones.
“Someone down on the street said that he or it flew away with little Clara,” Simon said, looking down at the crowd below. He could hear angry sounds like the buzzing of bees coming from the crowd down below. “Are there any eyewitnesses?”
“Anton Stecher says he saw it with his own eyes,” said Schreevogl and again took the hand of his wife, who was sobbing quietly to herself. He shook his head. “Until now I always believed that all this with the children and the murders had a natural explanation, but now…” Schreevogl’s voice faltered. He turned to Simon. “What do you think, then?” he asked the physician.
Simon shrugged. “I don’t believe anything that I haven’t seen for myself. And I see that the house was broken into and that the child has disappeared.”
“But the street door was locked.”
“An experienced man with a skeleton key, nothing easier than that.”
Schreevogl nodded. “I see,” he said. “Then Anton Stecher was lying.”
“Not necessarily,” answered Simon. He pointed to the hay cart under the window. “I think it happened this way. A man got through the front door with a skeleton key. Clara heard him and bolted the door of her room. He broke down this door and there was a struggle. Finally he jumped out of the window with Clara right into the hay wagon. Then he made off with her.”
Schreevogl frowned. “But why did he jump out of the window with the child? Couldn’t he have just gone out again through the front door?”
Simon could think of no quick answer. Instead he asked: “Clara was an orphan, wasn’t she?”
Schreevogl nodded. “Her parents died five years ago. The town assigned her to us as a ward. But we treated her exactly like one of our own children. My wife was particularly fond of her.”
Tears came to his eyes. He wiped them away hastily. His wife had turned away from the men and was crying quietly into the pillows.
