Prague Fatale (43 page)

‘Am I interrupting you?’

An officer in Army uniform put his head around the door, and for a moment I failed to recognize him.

‘Only Captain Kluckholn said he was going to try to get me bumped up your list but – peculiar fellow – he wouldn’t answer me when I asked him just now if that was all right with you. Seemed rather upset about something. Had a face like thunder.’ He paused. ‘Well, is it? All right, I mean? I can come back in a few minutes if you’d prefer, only I was rather hoping to catch this afternoon’s train to Dresden. There’s quite a lot of work waiting on my desk. The Admiral – that’s Admiral Canaris – he keeps me pretty busy these days, I can tell you.’

‘I’m sorry. Major Thummel, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You’d better come in.’

‘Good of you,’ he warbled.

Paul Thummel advanced into the Morning Room. He moved with flat-footed nonchalance, like a golfer approaching a putt he expected to sink without any trouble, and sat down on the sofa recently vacated by Hermann Kluckholn.

‘All right here, am I?’ He smoothed his hands along the silk cushions like a schoolboy and then leaned back, comfortably. ‘I haven’t been in this room,’ he added, looking around. ‘Very cosy. Although maybe a bit too feminine for my taste. Not that I have any. At least that’s what my wife says. She gets to choose the wallpaper in our house, not me. I just pay for it.’

Thummel was about forty. He had dark hair which, like almost everyone wearing a German uniform, he wore very
short at the sides so that what was on top of his skull resembled a little cap. His face was sharp and he had a very pronounced hook nose that looked as if it was trying its best to meet halfway his equally prominent chin. He was friendly and as smoothly confident as you might have expected of a man wearing a gold Party badge, a first-class Iron Cross, a decent cologne, and a silver wedding band.

‘Any suspects yet?’

‘It’s still a little early for that, Major.’

‘Hmm. Bad business all round. Leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth to think that some fellow sitting next to you at dinner might have murdered some other fellow you knew in cold blood.’

‘Have you anyone in mind?’

‘Who me? No.’ Thummel crossed his legs, took hold of the shin of his boot and hugged it toward him like an oar in a two-man scull. ‘But fire away with your questions, Commissar, all the same.’

‘Are you feeling better today?’

‘Hmm?’

‘The hangover?’

‘Oh, that. Yes. Fine thanks. I’ll say one thing for Heydrich, he keeps a spectacular cellar. Himmler will be jealous when I tell him.’

That was a little heavy-handed, I thought. Just as he was doing so well creating an easygoing impression of himself he had to go and spoil it by mentioning Himmler, with whom he was quite probably familiar. I looked at Kahlo who rolled his eyes eloquently as if to suggest that in comparison to Kluckholn I was wasting my time – that Thummel was one of the people with a kind face and a good alibi he had been talking about.

‘Nevertheless, I shan’t be at all unhappy to go back to Dresden. I don’t feel at all comfortable here in Bohemia. Nothing to do with the Reichsprotector’s hospitality, of course. But there’s something about this country that makes you feel as if you might get your head bashed in on your way to church, like poor old King Wenceslas. Or that one might be defenestrated by a bunch of malodorous Hussites. Awkward, stinky mob, the Czechos. Always were. Right the way through history. Always will be. If you ask me the General’s got his work cut out with these bastards. You were in Paris before this, I hear.’

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘Well, I don’t have to tell you how different Prague is from Paris. The Frenchies are nothing if not pragmatic. They know what side their bread is buttered on, for now. But the Czecho is a very different kettle of fish. He’s a real festering sore is your average Czecho. You mark my words, Commissar, there’s going to be a lot of blood spilled here if we’re ever going to hold on to this country.’

He frowned.

‘Sorry. Rattling on like a milkmaid as usual. You want to talk about poor old Captain Kuttner, don’t you? Not my opinion of the Czechos.’

‘I found a spent cartridge on the landing in front of your door. From a P38. Which would seem to indicate that a shot must have been fired in that vicinity. On the morning of the murder did you hear a shot fired?’

‘You mean in the house. Not outside. Seems to me there’s always someone shooting something out there. No, I didn’t hear a thing. Mind you, that night I slept like a pickled marmot after all the booze I’d consumed. Slept right through until about – let’s see now – well, it must have been about seven
o’clock in the morning when I heard a couple of loud bangs. I got up to see what the commotion was about and Captain Pomme, I think, explained to me that he and the butler had been obliged to batter down Kuttner’s door, on account of how they thought he must have taken an overdose of barbitol. At least that’s what I think he said. So I wandered along to see if I could help and heard Dr Jury say that the poor fellow was dead. There was nothing I could do, of course, so I went back to bed. Stayed there until just about nine. Had a wash, dressed, came out my door again, and there you were, crawling around on the floor looking for that bullet casing. Frankly, I’ve been racking by brains ever since for a reason why anyone would have killed him. Not to mention how. The room door was locked and bolted from the inside, wasn’t it? Window bolted? And no murder weapon yet found. A regular mystery.’

I nodded.

‘I even had a look about the dead man’s bedroom last evening, in search of some inspiration. I’m not trying to show the hen how to lay an egg and all that but while I was there I found several floorboards underneath the rug that were loose. Loose enough to pull them up. There was a good space underneath them. Easily big enough for a decent-sized man to have hidden there. And it occurred to me that the murderer, with a sufficiently cool head, might have been lurking in there all the while that you were all in the room, on top of him, so to speak. Of course, he would have to have devised a means of replacing the floorboards on top of his place of concealment and then pulling the rug back. With a couple of lengths of fishing line, perhaps. Yes, that’s what I’d have used if it had been me in there. With a couple of strategically-placed nails on the skirting-board, you could have wound the rug in as easily as a venetian blind.’

I looked at Kahlo, who shrugged back at me.

‘Sorry.’ Thummel smiled ruefully. ‘I just sort of thought you ought to know. Really, I wasn’t trying to make you look a fool or anything, Commissar Gunther.’

‘Actually, sir, I seem to be managing that particular task perfectly well on my own.’

I sighed and stared up at the ceiling where, immediately above, Kuttner’s room was situated.

‘Why didn’t I think of that?’

‘You can’t think of everything. Such an investigation as you are trying to conduct in this house would try the patience and ingenuity of any mortal man. And look here, I am not saying that is where the murderer was hiding. I am merely suggesting it as a possibility, although not a strong one, I think.’

He shrugged.

‘However, I will say this. In the Abwehr we are constantly impressed by the resourcefulness and imagination of the enemy. Especially the Tommies. Desperation is the father of innovation, after all.’ He sighed. ‘I do not say that is how it was done, Commissar. I say only that is how it could have been done.’

I nodded. ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Don’t mention it, Commissar. I certainly won’t. If you receive my meaning.’

‘We had better go up there and take a look for ourselves.’

We all three stood up and moved, simultaneously, for the Morning Room door.

‘By the way, Major Thummel,’ I said, remembering the letter I had received from Berlin that morning. ‘Does the name Geert Vranken mean anything to you?’

‘Geert Vranken?’ Thummel paused for a moment and then shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so. Why, should it?’

‘There was a murder investigation in Berlin this summer. The S-Bahn murderer? Vranken was a foreign worker on the railways who was interviewed by the police as a potential suspect and he mentioned a German officer who might be prepared to stand as a character witness for him.’

‘And you think that was me?’

‘I just received a letter from his father in the Netherlands and he said that his son had met a Captain Thummel, in The Hague, before the war, in 1939.’

‘Well, there you are, Commissar. It must be another officer called Thummel. Last time I was in The Hague was 1933. Or maybe thirty-four. But certainly not in 1939. In 1939, I was stationed in Paris. You know, Thummel is not an uncommon name. The maître d’ at the Adlon Hotel is called Thummel. Did you know that?’

‘Yes sir. I do know that. You’re right, it must be another officer called Thummel.’

Thummel grinned cheerfully. ‘Besides, I’m hardly in the habit of giving guest workers a character reference.’ He nodded upstairs. ‘But I don’t mind showing you those loose floorboards, Commissar.’

After Thummel had left Kuttner’s bedroom, Kahlo climbed into the space in the floor and waited patiently while I replaced the boards. Then I took them up again.

Kahlo climbed out, covered in dust.

‘Well, it’s possible, all right,’ I said. ‘But hardly probable.’

‘Why do you say that, sir?’

‘The amount of dust on you. If someone had been hidden there on Friday morning I’d have expected a little less dust than there is in there now. Or at least, was, until you got in there.’

I handed Kahlo the clothes brush I’d picked up from the top of the dresser.

‘Lucky it’s not a good suit,’ I said.

Kahlo growled an obscenity and began to brush off his jacket and trousers.

‘Depends on how much dust there was down there before, doesn’t it?’ he muttered.

‘Maybe.’

‘And with all of the cauliflower still pissed in their rooms, any one of them might have hidden himself in there and no one would have been any the wiser.’

‘I’ve looked at the rug, too, and I can see no means whereby someone drew the rug back over the boards while he was hidden down there. No fishing line; no nails on the skirting.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Kahlo, ‘the murderer has been back in here and removed them.’

‘Perhaps. Anyway, if the murderer did manage to conceal himself down there, that puts Kluckholn in the clear. Immediately after the murder, he was here in the room, remember? With you and me.’

‘Pity. But I still like him for it. And like you said yourself, it’s hardly probable, is it? That the killer would have hidden in here.’ Kahlo shook his head. ‘No, you’re right. Kluckholn must have done it some other way. It might just be that he turned himself into a bat.’

I grinned and shook my head. ‘He couldn’t have done it that way, either. The window was closed, remember?’

‘So the General says. We all assume that because he’s the General his evidence is one hundred per cent. What if he made a mistake about that? What if the window was open after all?’

‘Heydrich doesn’t make mistakes about things like that.’

‘Why not? He’s only human.’

‘Whatever gave you that impression?’

Kahlo shrugged.

‘It’ll be lunchtime soon,’ he said. ‘You could ask him then.’

‘Why don’t you ask him yourself?’

‘Yeah sure. I meant what I said about that promotion, you know.’

He handed me the clothes brush and then turned around.

‘Do you mind, sir?’

I brushed the worst of it off his jacket and thought of Arianne brushing off my own jacket the previous day. I liked that she had been so particular about my appearance, straightening my tie, adjusting my shirt-collar, and always picking my trousers off the floor and tucking them under the mattress so that they might keep the crease. It was a caring touch I was missing already. By now she was probably across the Bohemian border and back in Germany and a lot safer than she was in Prague. I knew what Thummel had been talking about; there was something about Prague that I didn’t care for at all.

‘I’m looking forward to lunch,’ said Kahlo. He was sniffing the air like a big hungry dog. ‘Whatever it is smells good.’

‘Everything smells good to you.’

‘Everything except this case.’

‘True. Look, you go ahead, to lunch. I’m going to stay here for a while.’

‘And do what?’

‘Oh, nothing much. Stare at the floor. Listen to that crow outside the window. Shoot myself. Or perhaps pray for some inspiration.’

‘You’re not going to miss lunch, are you?’

Kahlo’s tone made this sound as serious as if I really was
planning to shoot myself. Which wouldn’t have been so very far from the truth.

‘Now I come to think of it, that’s a good idea,’ I said. ‘Eating has a habit of interfering with my thinking. In that respect it’s almost as bad as beer. If I fast for a while maybe I’ll be given a vision as to how this murder was done. Yes, why not? Maybe if I starve myself like Moses for forty days and nights then perhaps the Almighty will just come and tell me who did it. Of course he might have to set the house on fire to get my full attention, but it’ll be worth it. Besides, I’m pretty sure I have a head start on Moses in one respect.’