After a sleepless night full of nightmarish visions, Gurdweill spent the whole of the next day in a frantic search for Lotte, popping in and out of the Café Herrenhof and even going twice to her house, where something prevented him on both occasions from going upstairs. The whole day long he did not meet a single acquaintance, as if they had all entered into some conspiracy against him. And the day after that — a Thursday, stabbed by sharp needles of rain — he went into the café in the afternoon, and was just about to leave again when he bumped into Ulrich in the vestibule.

‘Arsenic!’ he blurted out in a choking voice that sounded more like the bellow of a slaughtered bull than a human voice. ‘The night before last!’

Gurdweill felt an icy coldness sliding down his spine. He knew the answer to his question before he asked it. ‘Who? Who?’

‘Lotte … It was too late to save her …’