Hanno’s Doll by Evelyn Piper

Mr. Starter. You think I wouldn’t have been such a fool as to try to hide a body if I had read less Montaigne and more whodunits? Anni, this young man thinks I should have read more whodunits, and then I wouldn’t have tried to hide a body in Felix’s funk hole.”
    She said, “Why did you hide it, Hanno? Why did you, Hanno?”
    â€œFor Puppchen, of course! That doesn’t convince him, Anni. For Puppchen, quite simply. Mr. Starter, Anni will tell you. She understands. Look at Anni’s face, Mr. Starter. She finds it quite understandable that I hid the body for Puppchen’s sake.”
    â€œCertainly I believe it. Believe it! Of course! He would do anything for her, Mr. Starter. There is nothing he wouldn’t do—for Puppchen. The highest. The lowest. Take my word for it, there is nothing, nothing, he wouldn’t do for her.” She tapped her breast militantly, as if it weren’t a woman’s breast any more.
    (He began to wonder. Was this Anni?)
    She looked at him. Her nostrils flared. “I will get on a witness stand and swear that to anyone. Oh, yes,” she said, “on the Bible.”
    How quickly thought carried you. How far thought carried you … because of what Anni had just said, not the words so much but the tone of it; the tone of “nothing he wouldn’t do … the highest … the lowest …” because of that. From nothing, from a tone merely, a cut to a voice, from the rolling way Anni was now standing, one hand on her hip, from the sneer on her face; from these things Anni and the boy became, in thought, one person.
    Now he had to force his eyes back to this new land of Anni to which omniscient thought had carried him, and raised his head just in time to intercept a signal from the K.K.K. to Anni.
    The K.K.K. was advising her to leave the sunroom. (While she could?)
    The K.K.K. had been quietly moving so that now he stood between Anni and the wheel chair. (He heard himself talking about “less Montaigne and more whodunits.”) He asked himself, Who done it? and gave the chair a savage thrust, whereupon the K.K.K. blocked the way. (So he could not get at Anni.) He now had to lean sidewise out of the wheel chair to see Anni’s face. He said, “You told them about Felix’s funk hole, Anni. Judas! You told them! Judas!”
    She came around the K.K.K. “Dirty Judas, Hanno?”
    â€œIt was you!”
    â€œIt was me. Yes! Ja! ”
    The K.K.K. was at Anni’s side again. He said pacifying, “They would have found it anyhow, Mr. D-D-Dietrich. Once th-they traced the guy t-t-to y-y-your place, it was j-just a m-matter of t-time.” He put up his hand to restrain Anni, but she thrust it away.
    He said, “So? And how did they trace the boy to Felix’s house, Anni? Tell me that. I want to know how they traced the boy to the place.”
    â€œI will tell you.”
    â€œMrs. L-le-”
    â€œHe should know how it happened.”
    â€œShe’s proud of herself for telling them. She’s proud, my God!”
    â€œI am going to sit here and tell him. Let me sit.”
    The K.K.K. stationed himself between Hanno and the wicker chair into which Anni now lowered herself. (It creaked.) The K.K.K. stood there, alert, prepared for anything.
    He was the one who should have been prepared. But was one ever prepared for betrayal by a friend? His eyes filled with tears.
    She said, “If you will listen …”
    He remembered how many times she had spoken those words, “if you will listen.”
    He said, “I will listen.”
    â€œThen listen. Stop crying. Listen!”
    It hadn’t started with her, Anni said. With the mail. “Do you hear, Hanno? With the mail.” It had started with his mail, which had been piling up.
    It had started because they would not allow him visitors at the hospital in the beginning, when he had been so sick, and Ernest believed it would be