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then ventured out onto the glacier, where he started looking for her. Finally he made his way as fast as he could down to the chalet and called the rescue service. The search went on for a number of weeks.
    “How can one not find a body on a glacier?” I asked Nägelsbach.
    “On a glacier? You mean
in
a glacier. She must have fallen into one of the countless crevasses, and since no one knew exactly where she’d been hiking, they couldn’t look for her in a specific area, as they would have in other cases.”
    “What a gruesome idea: the woman lies buried in the ice, her youth and beauty preserved, and when they find her someday in the distant future, her aged husband is called in to identify her.”
    “My wife said that, too. She says something like that happens in some novel. But who’s to say it will happen? Think of the Stone Age mummy from the Ötztal Alps, or Hannibal’s soldiers, or those of the German emperors, or General Souvarov. Think of the Bernadine monks and all the early British mountain climbers. They were lost in the glaciers a lot longer than Frau Welker and have yet to be found.”
    I’d never seen my old friend like this. I must have stared at him in surprise.
    “What you want to know is whether I think he murdered her. The fact that he had her note means nothing. There was no date on it, so it could be old. That he was at his wit’s end when he turned up at the chalet doesn’t mean anything, either. One would have to be quite a monster not to be a nervous wreck after killing one’s own wife. What’s in his favor is that one can’t be sure a glacier near Saint Moritz would be free of hikers, even early in the morning. Pushing one’s wife into a crevasse in the glacier is about as discreet as pushing her off a bridge onto an autobahn.”
    “If there’s enough money at stake—”
    “One takes bigger risks, I know. But then both had made more than enough money since their takeover of the Sorbian Cooperative Bank.”
    “Since what?”
    “After the Berlin Wall fell, the Weller and Welker bank took over the Sorbian Cooperative Bank, a former East German institution based in Cottbus, with local branches nearby. The takeover was a success, not to mention that every investment people make now is supported by more grants than you can mention, all the way from Berlin to Brussels.”
    “But a man might also be ready to take a bigger risk when love or hatred—”
    “No, there was no sign at all that he might have had a mistress, or she a lover. The two of them had been in love since they were children, and they were happily married. Have you seen pictures of her? A dark beauty, with eyes full of fire and spirit. It’s true that beautiful women—and especially beautiful women—get murdered. But not by happy, loving husbands.”
    “Brigitte thinks she might have run away.”
    “My wife suggested that, too.” He laughed. “What we have here is a touch of feminine instinct. Yes, she could have run away.”
    I waited to hear how the police followed up that lead and what they’d found, what his view of the likelihood of such a possibility was. When he said nothing, I asked him outright.
    “She could be God knows where. It might not be the most charming way to leave a man, but then, no way of leaving someone is charming.”
    I’d known Nägelsbach since he had started working as a bailiff at the Heidelberg public prosecutor’s office. He is a quiet, serious, thoughtful police officer. His hobby is building matchstick sculptures, models ranging from the Cologne Cathedral and Neuschwanstein Castle to the Bruchsal prison. He is often in a good mood and likes a good joke. Dark humor, satire, and sarcasm are foreign to him.
    “What’s wrong?” I asked.
    He avoided my eyes and looked out the window. The trees were still bare, but their buds were on the verge of bursting open. He raised his hands and let them fall again. “I’m up for the Federal Cross of Merit.”
    “Well,