Casimir Wollner

Casimir Wollner is 58 and has spent almost his whole life serving tables. Born in a German river town, the son of a baker, by fifteen he was already carrying trays in a spa hotel. He crossed the sea young, worked in three of the city's restaurants and, for sixteen years, has been on the pavilion's terrace, since its opening. He says he knows the name of half the customers and the favorite dish of the other half.

He lives in a boarding house room, near the river, with a narrow bed and a window onto a bakery. He wakes at five, polishes his shoes and irons his tailcoat before any coffee. He has no family in the city. He writes one letter a month to a sister who stayed in Germany and keeps her replies tied with string in a cigar box.

He is tall and thin, with white hair combed back and a trimmed white mustache, a long, serious face. He wears a black tailcoat, a white tie and a napkin folded over his forearm, as if it were part of his body. He speaks slowly, with ceremony, and chooses each word carefully, like someone who doesn't want to get the order wrong. He has the dignity of someone who learned early that good service is a form of respect.

He was the one who loosened the architect's collar while they waited for the doctor and saw a note in a woman's handwriting fall from his waistcoatwaistcoat A sleeveless, buttoned garment worn over the shirt and under the jacket (a vest, in American English)., signed only with a D. He kept it for the police. He was also the one who explained that every night, at exactly 11 p.m., the electrician turns off the terrace lights for forty seconds, with only the girls' lanterns, the drum and the sparklers. About the dismissal he received that afternoon, he says only that not even the job comes back.

Casimir knows a dismissed man found near his employer's table seems to have a motive. It could be the wounded pride of a professional who gave sixteen years to one house. It could be someone who keeps his anger with the same elegance with which he keeps his napkin. The detective will have to decide which.