Father Weichs looked down at his hands. “You would not have thought to see him or speak with him that he was a young man whom it was necessary to protect from disillusion. I think I failed him. I did not understand him until it was too late. He came to see me several times. He asked many questions about his grandfather. I saw afterwards that he wanted to make a hero of him. At the time I did not think. I answered the questions as kindly as I could. Then one day he asked me if I did not think that his grandfather Friedrich had been a fine and good man.” He paused and then went on slowly and carefully as if choosing words in his own defence. “I made the best answer I could. I said that Friedrich Schirmer had been a hard-working man and that he had suffered his long, painful illness with patience and courage. I could say no more. The boy took my words for agreement and began to speak with great bitterness of his father, who had, he said, sent the old man away in a moment of jealous hatred. I could not allow him to speak so. It was against the truth. I said that he was doing his father a great injustice, that he should go to his father and ask for the truth.” He raised his eyes and looked at George sombrely. “He laughed. He said that he had never yet had anything from his father that was good and would not get the truth. He went on to talk jokingly of his father as if he despised him. Then he went away. I did not see him again.”
Outside, on the iron balconies of the hospital, the shadows were getting longer. A clock tolled the hour.
“And what was the truth, Father?” asked George quietly.
The priest shook his head. “I was Friedrich Schirmer’s confessor, Mr. Carey.”
“Of course. I’m sorry.”
“It would not help you to know.”
“No, I see that. But tell me this, Father. Mr. Moreton made a rough list of the documents and photographs that were found after Friedrich Schirmer’s death. Was that all he had? Was nothing else ever found?”
To his surprise, he saw a look of embarrassment come over the priest’s face. His eyes avoided George’s. For a moment or two there was something positively furtive about Father Weichs’s expression.
“Old documents,” George added quickly, “can be very important evidence in cases like these.”
Father Weichs’s jaw muscles tightened. “There were no other documents,” he said.