A Murder in Auschwitz Read Online Free PDF Page A

other. He had been standing, looking out of his window when the two men had entered his room. Meyer spotted a glass bottle, obviously medical in style, on his desk next to a jug of water. A walking stick was leaning against the desk not too far from the reach of the man. Deschler downed his glass of water and then, with a single limp towards his desk, opened a drawer and dropped the bottle out of sight without looking at it.
    “Herr Deschler, this is Herr Meyer.”
    “Ah yes. My new assistant,” said Deschler rather dryly as he held out his hand. Meyer stepped forward and shook it.
    Deschler was around forty years old and slightly taller than Meyer’s one metre seventy. He had a full head of hair which had obviously been jet black when he was younger but now had silver streaks running through it, especially at the temples. He sported a similar style of moustache to Muller's which contained a considerably higher proportion of grey than his head. Glasses sat on a thin nose, behind which an old scar ran over his left eye.
    “Please sit down, Herr Meyer.” The tone of Deschler’s voice barely changed. Muller had already left the office as Meyer sat in a chair at the side of the room.
    Deschler took a long drag on his cigarette and then put it out in a crystal ashtray on his desk, carefully folding over the end of the butt to ensure that the glowing tobacco embers were extinguished. The sunlight, now streaming in through the window, caught the long, slow plume of thin smoke that he blew across the room.
    “So, Herr Meyer, have you assisted in a court of law before?” The question sounded more like a challenge.
    “Yes Herr Deschler, I was an intern for...” but he was not allowed to finish.
    “Good. You will know what to expect then,” came the interruption, as Deschler reached for his stick, took his coat off the stand and hung it over his arm. “We are in court this morning at eleven am precisely, court number three. The final day of my defence of a Gypsy in a murder trial. I am sure you have read all about it in the papers?”
    Meyer had indeed been reading about this case.
    “Yes, Herr Deschler. This is the trial of Prala Weide, the suspect in the murder of an elderly couple for the sake of a few Reichsmarks.”
    “That is correct, Herr Meyer. And do you think he is guilty?” asked Deschler, as he pointed at two briefcases which he obviously meant Meyer to carry.
    “I am not sure, Herr Deschler, but I would think that from what I have read, his innocence will be difficult to prove,” replied Meyer, as he picked up the cases and began to follow Deschler out of the room. He immediately realised the naivety of his answer when Deschler came to a sudden halt and turned to him.
    “The first two lessons you need to learn, Herr Meyer, are these; first of all, unless they wish you to view them otherwise, which is very uncommon, your client is always innocent in your eyes. As you are my assistant, he is also your client. Secondly, and more importantly, you do not need to prove a man’s innocence, only his lack of guilt.”
    Meyer noticed that Deschler’s eye, which carried the scar, was twitching. He wondered if this was a nervous twitch brought on by the final day of a trial, or caused by anger over Meyer’s schoolboy response.
    “Today, I have to secure the doubt about Herr Weide’s guilt which I have been attempting to place in the minds of the jurors over the past week,” continued Deschler.
    “I have to make sure that the doubt I have sewn is enough to overcome human nature’s requirement to find a reason for something happening. Each of the jurors we face today wants a guilty man to be provided to them to revenge the murders of that couple. As defence lawyers, this is the most difficult thing we have to overcome; not just to prove the lack of guilt of our client but to not then hand over a further suspect for them to inflict judgement upon. The perfect way to ‘prove a man’s innocence’ is to provide