Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction

Foxx made introductions.

Maccabee’s companion was a broad-shouldered woman of middle years. She wore her blonde hair in long braids, wound around her head, and had on a brown dress that did little to hide her full figure. Rubies, or at least red, gem-cut stones, sparkled at her ears and throat and wrists. Her name was Lisalotte Schmidt.

Reuter’s wife, Helga, served hors d’oeuvres. Foxx himself rose from his favourite chair to offer beverages — a rare event, Winslow noted.

After a time Helga Reuter returned to announce the meal, and the party moved from the parlour to the dining salon.

The meal consisted of alternating hot and cold courses: a red-pepper soup of Reuter’s own devising, a cold asparagus salad, small portions of fillet of sole in lemon sauce, tiny portions of sherbet to clear the pallet, noisettes d’agneau with small roasted potatoes and legumes, and for dessert Reuter’s own apple pie served hot with home-churned vanilla-bean ice cream.

During the meal it had become obvious to Andy Winslow that Lisalotte’s English, while fluent, was not that of a native speaker. Her accent bore a distinct North German harshness.

When the meal had ended, Caligula Foxx offered a humidor stocked with dark red Cameroon Diademas. Jacob Maccabee accepted one — as did Lisalotte Schmidt, to Andy Winslow’s surprise. Rose Palmer declined the smoke, as did Andy. An ancient Bodegas Gutierrez Oloroso sherry was also served.

Foxx blew a stream of blue-grey smoke towards the room’s high ceiling. He turned to the investigator. “Jacob, you have prints of the photographs provided by our friend Barney Hopkins. Would you be so kind as to pass them around.”

The photographs were crisp and glossy. One was apparently a studio portrait. It showed a man apparently of Foxx’s age. He wore a dark suit, white shirt, dark tie. A small swastika pin was visible on his lapel. The face was long and not altogether unhandsome. The most notable feature was his jet black hair, which he wore cut short. The hair had receded from his brow above the eyes but protruded forward in an extreme widow’s peak. He wore round, steel-rimmed spectacles. A point of light was reflected sharply in each lens.

The second photo was neither as formally posed nor as sharply focused as the first; in it, the man in the first photo could be seen standing in a small group. All were similarly garbed in grey military uniforms with peaked caps. All of them were smiling as if they had just accomplished an important and rewarding task. All of them wore swastika armbands on their uniforms.

“This is a news photo,” Maccabee explained. “Came from Barney Hopkins’s paper’s photo library. It’s our boy and some comrades celebrating the reunion of Sudetenland with the Fatherland just a few weeks ago. Aren’t they all a happy little crew?”

“The fellow with the devilish hair is one Heinrich Konrad,” Foxx stated. “He and I were comrades — after a fashion — in the Great War. He is now my mortal enemy. He arrived in the United States using the nom de guerre of Bedrich Smetana.”

“Dopey name,” Andy Winslow commented.

“Not really,” Foxx corrected him. “I would say, rather, that Pan Konrad is thumbing his nose at me. He must have known that I would find out he was in New York, and he has chosen a name that only a fellow Bohemian would recognize. Or a lover of fine music. Being neither, Andy, you could hardly be expected to get the joke.”

“Okay, Caligula, so I don’t know this Bedford Stuyvesant guy or whoever he is, but I do recognize the gink in the photos.”

That created a sensation.

“Blast you, Andrew, why didn’t you say so?”

“Caligula, I just did.”

“Double blast you! Out with it! You recognize Heinrich Konrad? Had you seen his photo in the newspapers?”

Andy Winslow shook his head. “I was up at the hospital earlier today visiting Miss Mayhew. She’s getting her memory back. She described two men in a car who offered her a lift on her way here from Postal Telegraph. One of them was this bozo.”

He picked up the portrait photograph and snapped Heinrich Konrad on the nose with his fingernail.

Jacob Maccabee made a humming noise. “Mr Foxx, this is all very interesting, but you haven’t given me my assignment.”

Foxx repeated the information he’d given Andy Winslow about the planned luncheon at the Blaue Gans. “I want Heinrich Konrad in this house. I want to confront that man. I want to find out his mission in this country and I do not want him to be able to accomplish it. Do you understand me?”

Andy Winslow asked, “Why don’t you go to the meeting yourself, Caligula? I’ll warm up the Packard and — ”

Foxx’s frown and his angry growl were all the answer Winslow needed. He already knew how much Foxx hated to leave his home. “All right, Caligula. Then why not just invite him over?”

“He would ignore my invitation. No, Andy, we must lure the rat from his hole and into our trap. That will be Miss Schmidt’s job. I have known Konrad for a quarter of a century. I know his taste in many things, including women. He is drawn to women of — pardon me, Miss Schmidt — a certain size and appearance. Large women with long blonde hair worn in braids.”

He turned to the woman in the brown dress. “Did Jacob Maccabee explain your assignment to you? Is this agreeable to you, my dear?”

Lisalotte Schmidt laid a large fist heavily on the table. “He is one of Hitler’s men, this I know. You know they kill people. Mostly Jews they kill, but also others — anyone they choose. My brother Heinz, he was — how do you say it — slow. He was like a child. He did not understand everything but he was a sweet man. He harmed no one. He wanted only to please.”

She shook her head. “They came for him, the Nazis; they said they were taking him to a hospital to make him better, to make him like everyone else. He trusted them, my Heinzie; he went with them, smiling back at me and merrily waving, but it was not to a hospital they took him. It was a camp. They killed him there. Hitler’s men. Men like this Konrad. Yes, I will lure him here, Herr Foxx, Pan Foxx; I will bring to you this foul Nazi rat.”

It might have drawn too much attention had they arrived together, so Andy Winslow and Rose Palmer, Jacob Maccabee and Lisalotte Schmidt walked into the Blaue Gans a few minutes apart. December night falls early in Manhattan. Duane Street was a small thoroughfare, running from West Broadway to Church Street. The lighting was poor.

A cold wind carried a hint of sleet. Andy Winslow and Rose Palmer scurried through the cut-glass doors of the Blaue Gans into a merry world that could have come from Mad King Ludwig’s Bavaria. The restaurant was decorated with stuffed hunting trophies. Bartenders seemed to compete for the title of Largest Belly and Biggest Moustache. Serving-girls carried foaming steins of beer.

Winslow asked a waiter where the Beethoven — Wagner Institute was holding its meeting, and he and Rose Palmer were directed up a flight of stairs to a meeting-hall filled with oversized tables set with white linen and shining china. There must have been a couple of hundred members of the Institute at least — the majority of them males — gathered in groups, exchanging conversation in a mixture of German and English.

Half a dozen oversized portraits decorated the walls. Winslow assumed that the fierce-looking individual with the shock of dark hair was Beethoven — at least, he thought he’d seen that image on the cover of a record album in Foxx’s collection. Then the other old-timer in the fey-looking outfit must be Wagner. Winslow nudged Rose Palmer. “Who’s that gink next to Wagner?”