March Violets (3 page)

We waited in the library. It wasn't big by the standards of a Bismarck or a Hindenburg, and you couldn't have packed more than six cars between the Reichstag-sized desk and the door. It was decorated in early Lohengrin, with its great beams, granite chimney-piece in which a log crackled quietly, and wall-mounted weaponry. There were plenty of books, of the sort you buy by the metre: lots of German poets and philosophers and jurists with whom I can claim a degree of familiarity, but only as the names of streets and cafés and bars.

I took a hike around the room. ‘If I'm not back in five minutes, send out a search party.'

Schemm sighed and sat down on one of the two leather sofas that were positioned at right angles to the fire. He picked a magazine off the rack and pretended to read. ‘Don't these little cottages give you claustrophobia?' Schemm sighed petulantly, like an old maiden aunt catching the smell of gin on the pastor's breath.

‘Do sit down, Herr Gunther,' he said.

I ignored him. Fingering the two hundreds in my trouser pocket to help me stay awake, I meandered over to the desk and glanced over its green-leather surface. There was a copy of the
Berliner Tageblatt,
well read, and a pair of half-moon spectacles; a pen; a heavy brass ashtray containing the butt of a well-chewed cigar and, next to it, the box of Black Wisdom Havanas from which it had been taken; a pile of correspondence and several silver-framed photographs. I glanced over at Schemm, who was making heavy weather of his magazine and his eyelids, and then picked up one of the framed photographs. She was dark and pretty, with a full figure, which is just how I like them, although I could tell that she might find my after-dinner conversation quite resistible: her graduation robes told me that.

‘She's beautiful, don't you think?' said a voice that came from the direction of the library door and caused Schemm to get up off the sofa. It was a singsong sort of voice with a light Berlin accent. I turned to face its owner and found myself looking at a man of negligible stature. His face was florid and puffy and had something so despondent in it that I almost failed to recognize it. While Schemm was busy bowing I mumbled something complimentary about the girl in the photograph.

‘Herr Six,' said Schemm with more obsequy than a sultan's concubine, ‘may I introduce Herr Bernhard Gunther.' He turned to me, his voice changing to suit my depressed bank balance. ‘This is Herr Doktor Hermann Six.' It was funny, I thought, how it was that in more elevated circles everyone was a damned doctor. I shook his hand and found it held for an uncomfortably long time as my new client's eyes looked into my face. You get a lot of clients who do that: they reckon themselves as judges of a man's character, and after all they're not going to reveal their embarrassing little problems to a man who looks shifty and dishonest: so it's fortunate that I've got the look of someone who is steady and dependable. Anyway, about the new client's eyes: they were blue, large and prominent, and with an odd sort of watery brightness in them, as if he had just stepped out of a cloud of mustard gas. It was with some shock that it dawned on me that the man had been crying.

Six released my hand and picked up the photograph I'd just been looking at. He stared at it for several seconds and then sighed profoundly.

‘She was my daughter,' he said, with his heart in his throat. I nodded patiently. He replaced the photograph face down on the desk, and pushed his monkishly-styled grey hair across his brow. ‘Was, because she is dead.'

‘I'm sorry,' I said gravely.

‘You shouldn't be,' he said. ‘Because if she were alive you wouldn't be here with the chance to make a lot of money.' I listened: he was talking my language. ‘You see, she was murdered.' He paused for dramatic effect: clients do a lot of that, but this one was good.

‘Murdered,' I repeated dumbly.

‘Murdered.' He tugged at one of his loose, elephantine ears before thrusting his gnarled hands into the pockets of his shapeless navy-blue suit. I couldn't help noticing that the cuffs of his shirt were frayed and dirty. I'd never met a steel millionaire before (I'd heard of Hermann Six; he was one of the major Ruhr industrialists), but this struck me as odd. He rocked on the balls of his feet, and I glanced down at his shoes. You can tell a lot by a client's shoes. That's the only thing I've picked up from Sherlock Holmes. Six's were ready for the Winter Relief- that's the National Socialist People's Welfare Organization where you send all your old clothes. But then German shoes aren't much good anyway. The ersatz leather is like cardboard; just like the meat, and the coffee, and the butter, and the cloth. But coming back to Herr Six, I didn't have him marked as so stricken by grief that he was sleeping in his clothes. No; I decided he was one of these eccentric millionaires that you sometimes read about in the newspapers: they spend nothing on anything, which is how they come to be rich in the first place.

‘She was shot dead, in cold blood,' he said bitterly. I could see we were in for a long night. I got out my cigarettes.

‘Mind if I smoke?' I asked. He seemed to recover himself at that.

‘Do excuse me, Herr Gunther,' he sighed. ‘I'm forgetting my manners. Would you like a drink or something?' The ‘or something' sounded just fine, like a nice four-poster, perhaps, but I asked for a mocha instead. ‘Fritz?'

Schemm stirred on the big sofa. ‘Thank you, just a glass of water,' he said humbly. Six pulled the bell-rope, and then selected a fat black cigar from the box on the desk. He ushered me to a seat, and I dumped myself on the other sofa, opposite Schemm. Six took a taper and pushed it at a flame. Then he lit his cigar and sat down beside the man in grey. Behind him the library door opened and a young man of about thirty-five came into the room. A pair of rimless glasses worn studiously at the end of a broad, almost negroid nose belied his athletic frame. He snatched them off, stared awkwardly at me and then at his employer.

‘Do you want me in this meeting, Herr Six?' he said. His accent was vaguely Frankfurt.

‘No, it's all right, Hjalmar,' said Six. ‘You get off to bed, there's a good fellow. Perhaps you'd ask Farraj to bring us a mocha and a glass of water, and my usual.'

‘Um, right away, Herr Six.' Again he looked at me, and I couldn't work out whether my being there was a source of vexation to him or not, so I made a mental note to speak to him when I got the chance.

‘There is one more thing,' said Six, turning round on the sofa. ‘Please remind me to go through the funeral arrangements with you first thing tomorrow. I want you to look after things while I'm away.'

‘Very well, Herr Six,' and with that he wished us good night and left.

‘Now then, Herr Gunther,' said Six after the door had closed. He spoke with the Black Wisdom stuck in the corner of his mouth, so that he looked like a fairground barker and sounded like a child with a piece of candy. ‘I must apologize for bringing you here at this unearthly hour; however, I'm a busy man. Most important of all, you must understand that I am also a very private one.'

‘All the same, Herr Six,' I said, ‘I must have heard of you.'

‘That is very probable. In my position I have to be the patron of many causes and the sponsor of many charities - you know the sort of thing I'm talking about. Wealth does have its obligations.'

So does an outside toilet, I thought. Anticipating what was coming, I yawned inside myself. But I said: ‘I can certainly believe it,' with such an affectation of understanding that it caused him to hesitate for a short moment before continuing with the well-worn phrases I had heard so many times before. ‘Need for discretion'; and ‘no wish to involve the authorities in my affairs'; and ‘complete respect for confidentiality', etc., etc. That's the thing about my job. People are always telling you how to conduct their case, almost as if they didn't quite trust you, almost as if you were going to have to improve your standards in order to work for them.

‘If I could make a better living as a not-so-private investigator, I'd have tried it a long time ago,' I told him. ‘But in my line of business a big mouth is bad for business. Word would get around, and one or two well-established insurance companies and legal practices who I can call regular clients would go elsewhere. Look, I know you've had me checked out, so let's get down to business, shall we?' The interesting thing about the rich is that they like being told where to get off. They confuse it with honesty. Six nodded appreciatively.

At this point, the butler cruised smoothly into the room like a rubber wheel on a waxed floor and, smelling faintly of sweat and something spicy, he served the coffee, the water and his master's brandy with the blank look of a man who changes his earplugs six times a day. I sipped my coffee and reflected that I could have told Six that my nonagenarian grandmother had eloped with the Führer and the butler would have continued to serve the drinks without so much as flexing a hair follicle. When he left the room I swear I hardly noticed.

‘The photograph you were looking at was taken only a few years ago, at my daughter's graduation. Subsequently she became a schoolteacher at the Arndt Grammar School in Berlin-Dahlem.' I found a pen and prepared to take notes on the back of Dagmarr's wedding invitation. ‘No,' he said, ‘please don't take notes, just listen. Herr Schemm will provide you with a complete dossier of information at the conclusion of this meeting.

‘Actually, she was rather a good schoolteacher, although I ought to be honest and tell you that I could have wished for her to have done something else with her life. Grete - yes, I forgot to tell you her name - Grete had the most beautiful singing voice, and I wanted her to take up singing professionally. But in 1930 she married a young lawyer attached to the Berlin Provincial Court. His name was Paul Pfarr.'

‘Was?' I said. My interruption drew the profound sigh from him once again.

‘Yes. I should have mentioned it. I'm afraid he's dead too.'

‘Two murders, then,' I said.

‘Yes,' he said awkwardly. ‘Two murders.' He took out his wallet and a snapshot. ‘This was taken at their wedding.'

There wasn't much to tell from it except that, like most society wedding-receptions, it had been held at the Adlon Hotel. I recognized the Whispering Fountain's distinctive pagoda, with its carved elephants from the Adlon's Goethe Garden. I stifled a real yawn. It wasn't a particularly good photograph, and I'd had more than enough of weddings for one day and a half. I handed it back.

‘A fine couple,' I said, lighting another Muratti. Six's black cigar lay smokeless and flat on the round brass ashtray.

‘Grete was teaching until 1934 when, like many other women, she lost her job - a casualty of the government's general discrimination against working women in the employment drive. Meanwhile Paul landed a job at the Ministry of the Interior. Not long afterwards my first wife Lisa died, and Grete became very depressed. She started drinking and staying out late. But just a few weeks ago she seemed her old self again.' Six regarded his brandy morosely and then threw it back in one gulp. ‘Three nights ago, however, Paul and Grete died in a fire at their home in Lichterfelde-Ost. But before the house caught fire they were each shot, several times, and the safe ransacked.'

‘Any idea what was in the safe?'

‘I told the fellows from Kripo that I had no idea what it contained.'

I read between the lines and said: ‘Which wasn't quite true, right?'

‘I have no idea as to most of the safe's contents. There was one item, however, which I did know about and failed to inform them of.'

‘Why did you do that, Herr Six?'

‘Because I would prefer that they didn't know.'

‘And me?'

‘The item in question affords you with an excellent chance of tracking down the murderer ahead of the police.'

‘And what then?' I hoped he wasn't planning some private little execution, because I didn't feel up to wrestling with my conscience, especially when there was a lot of money involved.

‘Before delivering the murderer into the hands of the authorities you will recover my property. On no account must they get their hands on it.'

‘What exactly are we talking about?'

Six folded his hands thoughtfully, then unfolded them again, and then swathed himself with his arms like a party-girl's wrap. He looked quizzically at me.

‘Confidentially, of course,' I growled.

‘Jewels,' he said. ‘You see, Herr Gunther, my daughter died intestate, and without a will all her property goes to her husband's estate. Paul did make a will, leaving everything to the Reich.' He shook his head. ‘Can you believe such stupidity, Herr Gunther? He left everything. Everything. One can hardly credit it.'

‘He was a patriot then.'

Six failed to perceive the irony in my remark. He snorted with derision. ‘My dear Herr Gunther, he was a National Socialist. Those people think that they are the first people ever to love the Fatherland.' He smiled grimly. ‘I love my country. And there is nobody who gives more than I do. But I simply cannot stand the thought that the Reich is to be enriched even further at my expense. Do you understand me?'

‘I think so.'

‘Not only that, but the jewels were her mother's, so quite apart from their intrinsic value, which I can tell you is considerable, they are also of some sentimental account.'

‘How much are they worth?'

Schemm stirred himself to offer up some facts and figures. ‘I think I can be of some assistance here, Herr Six,' he said, delving into a briefcase that lay by his feet, and producing a buff-coloured file which he laid on the rug between the two sofas. ‘I have here the last insurance valuations, as well as some photographs.' He lifted a sheet of paper and read off the bottom-line figure with no more expression than if it had been the amount of his monthly newspaper account. ‘Seven hundred and fifty thousand Reichsmarks.' I let out an involuntary whistle. Schemm winced at that, and handed me some photographs. I had seen bigger stones, but only in photographs of the pyramids. Six took over with a description of their history.