The Ludwig Conspiracy Read Online Free PDF Page B

look at it all back in the shop. If this man Marot really had taken a royal secret to his grave, Steven would make a few phone calls, earn good money, and then, so far as he was concerned, Frau Schultheiss could go and open her boutique in the downmarket Hasenbergl district. As an expert on the literary history of Bavaria, Steven knew that rumors of King Ludwig II’s homosexuality had come up time and again. To him, it made no difference one way or the other, but he was sure that plenty of newspapers would come up with a large sum of money for actual evidence—money that could pay the rent on his shop for a good long while.
    After a long, hot, almost boiling shower, he put on a new brown corduroy suit, with a white shirt and a tweed bow tie, put the little treasure chest back in his leather briefcase, and set off for the Westend district. The rain clouds had disappeared overnight, the leaves on the chestnut trees in the beer gardens were red and yellow, and the people coming toward him had friendly expressions on their faces. As Steven strolled over the Theresienwiese, populated this morning by cyclists and pedestrians, it was hard to imagine that a few teenagers wearing hoods had scared him so badly here only a few hours ago. The almost summery warmth and the mild sunlight helped to banish his headache, and his mood improved with every step he took. It was one of those mornings that herald a very pleasant day.
    But even as Steven was still more than fifty yards away from his antiquarian bookshop, he guessed that, on the contrary, this was going to be one of the lousiest days of his whole year.
     
    A SMALL GROUP OF curious onlookers stood in front of a pile of broken glass that had once been the display window of his shop. A few books lay out in the street, looking like limp, dead flies, their leather bindings splayed. Pages of parchment had been torn out and were splashed with mud. But that was nothing compared to the chaos that Steven saw when he looked through the broken window into the bookshop itself.
    It looked as if a medium-sized and very specific earthquake had wreaked havoc in there.
    One of the tall bookshelves had fallen over, and books, maps, engravings, and folio volumes covered the floor like a sea of paper. Steven saw the eighteenth-century book on chess that he had only just bought; someone had slit the leather spine lengthwise. A dirty footprint left by a boot adorned the dramas of Molière; other books had come apart entirely, and their pages were crumpled or torn out. A gust of wind whirled a few ragged pages up in the air like withered leaves. The mahogany table in the backroom of the shop was the only piece of furniture still in place. The scene was so appalling, so unreal, that Steven stood there for a long time as if turned to stone, staring into his shop. It was the thought of a single book that brought him back to life.
    Oh God, not the Grimm.
Not the
Grimms’ Children’s and Household Tales.
    Taking no notice of the onlookers, he stumbled to the door and unlocked it. He tried to make his way into the shop but was prevented by the pile of books pressing against the inside of the door. For a while the people outside watched, spellbound, as Steven fought a desperate battle against a mass of printed paper and parchment. He continued these useless efforts until someone placed a hand on his shoulder.
    “Is this your shop?”
    The female police officer in front of him was still young, maybe in her midtwenties, and she looked genuinely concerned. Her older male colleague was waiting, with a bored expression, in the police car parked at the curb with its blue light switched on.
    As Steven nodded silently, the police officer went on calmly. “We’ll have to investigate this break-in, although it looks more like a few young hooligans out to make trouble than anything else.”
    Or like Frau Schultheiss, who just can’t wait to open her fashion boutique,
thought Steven.
    Would she really go that far? Had