NUREMBURG 1931
Karl Schmidt stared at the exhibited curiosity. His friend Johannes said it would have been much better if a waxwork model of a victim had been stood in it, Karl silently disagreed – he preferred it empty so he could imagine a naked, terrified young woman in it waiting for the doors to be closed onto, into, her pale flesh. He looked across the room at Miss Dieter; she would fit into it nicely. He wished he could ask her to step over the rope barrier and stand in the open cabinet; impossible of course.
Miss Dieter started gathering the rest of the class together to hurry them on to the next exhibit on their tour of the Nuremberg Castle.
Karl hung back, getting deliberately left behind so he could again read the description of the ‘Virgin of Nuremburg’. How on August 14, 1515 a forger of coins had been placed inside the device and the doors shut “slowly, so that the very sharp points penetrated his arms, and his legs in several places, and his belly and chest, and his bladder and the root of his member, and his eyes, and his shoulders, and his buttocks, but not enough to kill him; and so he remained making great cry and lament for two days, after which he died”.
He jumped as an elderly voice behind him said “Of course it was all a fraud.”
Startled, Karl turned to see an elderly man with a monocle leaning on a stick.
“Professor Siebenkees made up that story in 1793 after he bought the device from a travelling fair.” He paused before continuing “It would be a bit pointless really, it would probably kill the victim almost instantly unless it was carefully fashioned to fit a particular individual. One of those spikes would pierce a vital organ or a lung, either that or a thin man might hardly be pierced at all.” He stroked his beard, thinking “Yes, that might be the worse option; standing upright unable to relax without a spike tearing into his flesh if he slumped…”
“Karl Schmidt!” To his disappointment Miss Dieter had noticed his absence from the group.
Many times after that school trip Karl, awake in bed at night, thought of ways to improve and perfect the device. There would need to be multiple threaded studs welded in different positions onto which the spikes could be screwed, to suit the varying stature of victims. Also the threads should be of sufficient length to allow adjustment of the lengths of individual spikes… Of course he also dreamt of possible victims. He almost got to the stage where, on seeing a girl he would be considering the arrangement of spikes that would best suit her body!

CAEN 1941
Kriminalobersekretär Schmidt smiled as his latest prisoner readily surrendered the name of his accomplice. Kriminaldirektor Pohl couldn’t really understand how Karl Schmidt had so much success with his interrogations, he didn’t really seem the most intimidating of his assistants.
But among the underworld and disaffected members of the population of Caen word had spread, from the elderly blacksmith and metalworker who had helped make it, of the terrible device now kept in a basement storeroom of Gestapo Headquarters.
Herr Pohl kept meticulous records of everyone who passed through their hands. Who interrogated them, how long they were detained for, what their fate was when the Gestapo had finished with them. Karl was always disappointed That the most intense questioning was reserved for male prisoners; being stripped and whipped until unconscious, being hung up by the ankles naked in a cold dark cell. In short all the things that Karl would like to have done to a female subject.
But then the Kriminaldirektor received a telegram calling him to Paris to assist in the administration of the deportation of Jews from there to eastern Europe.
The bomb had been placed inside the former Wagon-Lits saloon reserved for Herr Pohl and several SS officers; there were no survivors. Officials responsible for coordinating military traffic from Caen at Gare de l’Oest had recognised a young woman who had stepped down from the carriage shortly before Herr Pohl’s party boarded it. Within 24 hours she was arrested and delivered to Gestapo Headquarters and into the care of Kriminalobersekretär Karl Schmidt.
GESTAPO HEADQUARTERS, CAEN, 22 AUGUST 1941
Marie Le Maigre had known when she volunteered to place the bomb in the carriage reserved for the SS that it was likely that she would be identified and arrested.
But as the only survivor of her family her hatred of the Nazis was complete. She only knew codenames of her contacts in the Resistance but was confident that she would never divulge even that Information, no matter what they did to her. She had been told of the tortures and whippings which had sometimes broken even the strongest fellow partisans, but she was already resigned to the expectation of the most extreme physical pain, while there was no one close to her that the Gestapo could seize and threaten.
She had of course heard rumours of a terrible device built for Herr Schmidt, but the more she considered it the more likely it seemed that it was made just to threaten and terrify rather than being of practical use as an instrument of torture.
Now sat shivering in her cell she felt growing unease, verging on panic. She wished she was wearing something warmer than just her cotton nightdress. Looking down at her bruised and bleeding bare feet she still felt confident that she would be able to withstand any amount of pain the Nazi bastards might inflict upon her. She again thought of the spiked cabinet her comrades had speculated about. She tried telling herself that being put into that device might well be the best she could hope for rather than being something to dread.