Philip Kerr - Prague Fatale

‘Not yet.’

‘Kuttner helps to bring some champagne into the library after the speech and after that things are understandably vague. Just after one a.m. there is some sort of altercation between Kuttner and General Henlein and Colonel Bohme. I’m not quite sure what that was about.’

‘General Henlein made a pass at one of the maids. Her name is Rosa Steffel. Kuttner was her champion.’

‘I see. Then he’s in Heydrich’s office for a while with the General and Colonel Jacobi.’ Kahlo lowered his voice. ‘He’s the one who I find to be the most sinister of the lot.’

‘Then Kritzinger sees Kuttner just before two and wishes him a good night. Says he seemed dog-tired.’

Kahlo made a note of that and then continued reading his notes.

‘At six o’clock this morning Kuttner fails to awaken Captain Pomme, as arranged. Nothing new there. He often overslept because he was taking sleeping pills. At six-thirty Pomme says he’s still knocking on Kuttner’s door, trying to awaken him. At six-forty-five Pomme goes to fetch Kritzinger to see if there’s some other means of opening the door, which is locked from the inside. There isn’t. Kritzinger tells one of the footmen to go and fetch a ladder and see if he can’t get in from the outside.’

‘And did he?’

‘Yes. But the ladder was locked up and the footman had to go and fetch the gardener, so it was seven-fifteen a.m. by the time he brought it around to the window. Coming back a bit, though: at seven a.m. Heydrich is also outside Kuttner’s door, and that’s when he tells Pomme and the butler to break it down. Entering the room they find Kuttner dead and Captain Pomme is dispatched to fetch Doctor Jury. Jury arrives in the room just as the footman arrives with the ladder.’

‘We shall want to speak to that footman. Maybe he saw something.’

‘His name is Fendler, sir.’

‘Then at seven-thirty I get the call from Ploetz in my room at the Imperial. And at eight-thirty we viewed the scene of the crime.’

‘What were you doing at the Imperial anyway? Why weren’t you staying here in your room, sir?’

‘I was sleeping. What do you know about Veronal?’

‘It’s barbital. Sleeping pills. Take too many and you don’t wake up. That’s about it really.’

‘Ever use them yourself?’

‘The wife did. She’d been working nights at the Park and couldn’t sleep in the day. So the doctor gave her some Veronal. But she didn’t care for the stuff at all. They always left her feeling like she’d been coshed.’

‘Strong then.’

‘Very.’

‘Kuttner goes to bed at around two a.m. having told the butler that he intended to take some sleeping pills. Nobody sees him enter his room.’

‘I’m not sure if I’d take sleeping pills knowing I had to be up at six,’ observed Kahlo. ‘Then again, you do get used to them, so it’s possible he didn’t see that as a problem.’

‘Which may be why he doesn’t undress for bed. He’s still dressed when we found him.’

‘Looked like he took one boot off and then got tired. Or dead. So then maybe he was shot before he entered his room.’

‘In the corridor.’ But I was shaking my head even as I said it. ‘Sure. After he’s shot — and by the way nobody hears the shot-’

‘Perhaps the murderer used a sound suppressor.’

‘For a P38? Hasn’t been invented yet. So, after he’s shot in the corridor and no one hears anything, he staggers along to his room without mentioning it to anyone or shouting for help, locks the door carefully behind him, as you do when you’ve just been shot, lies down on the bed just to get his breath back, removes a boot, and then dies sometime between two and five-thirty a.m.’

‘It’s a mystery, isn’t it?’

‘No, not really. I solve this kind of case all the time. Usually in the penultimate Chapter. I like to keep the last few pages for restoring some sort of normality to the world.’

‘You know what I reckon, sir? I reckon that if you solve this case Heydrich will probably promote you.’

‘That’s what I’m worried about.’

‘And then you won’t ever get to Bremen to live there without an owner.’

‘Shut up and eat your Mish-Mash.’

Kahlo’s mention of the Traitor X Group and a top-level spy in Germany who had been transmitting information to the Czechos got me wondering about Arianne and her friend Gustav, the man she claimed to have met in the Jockey Bar.

A smooth type with a thin prick accent and spats. Or so she had described him. A civil servant with a gold cigarette holder and a little gold eagle in his lapel. A man whose nerves had prevented him from meeting Franz Koci, a former lieutenant of Czech artillery and possibly one of the last members of the Three Kings group operating in Berlin — at least he had been until a collision with a taxi cab in the blackout had terminated his career as a spy.

Was it possible that Gustav and Heydrich’s traitor X were one and the same person?

Arianne struck me as an unlikely sort of spy. After all, hadn’t she confessed to being Gustav’s unwitting courier before I had told her that I was a cop? And, having told her I was a Commissar from the Alex, what kind of spy was it who, instead of disappearing the very next day, chose to begin a relationship with someone who very probably ought to have seen it as his duty to inform the Gestapo about her? What kind of spy was it who was prepared to risk so much for so little? After all, I was privy to no secret information she could have passed to anyone. Surely she was just what she seemed to be: a good-time girl with a dead husband and a brother who was a kennel hound with the Field Military Police. I’d checked him out, too. What else did she want but a chance to see a bit of what life had to offer before the Nazis turned her into yet another dutiful little German wife producing children for her first-class rabbit medal — the Honour Cross for the German Mother?

All the same, now that I knew about the local SD’s VXG, it had become very obvious that bringing Arianne along to Prague for my own pleasure had helped put her in considerable danger; and it seemed imperative that she return to Berlin as soon as possible.

It was while I was deciding to send Arianne back to Berlin that I remembered Major Ploetz had given me a letter forwarded from the Alex. Sitting in the Morning Room with a coffee and a cigarette awaiting the next senior officer on my list, I read it.

The letter was from a girl I knew in Paris; her name was Bettina and she worked at the Lutetia Hotel. I’d stayed there during my posting to the French capital. I had fixed her up with a better job at the Adlon and she was writing to thank me and to tell me that she would be coming to Berlin before Christmas. She hoped to see me then. She wrote a lot of other things besides, and since I didn’t get many letters, least of all from attractive girls, I read it again. I even passed it under my nose a couple of times, as it seemed to be scented — then again, that might have been my own imagination.

I was reading the letter a third time when Kahlo ushered General Henlein into the Morning Room.

Henlein wore round metallic-framed glasses that flashed in the firelight like newly minted coins. His hair was dark and wavy but the wave was on the ebb-flow. His mouth was sulky, and facially he was not unlike Doctor Jury. It was hard to connect this 43-year-old from Maffesdorf and the leader of the Sudeten German Movement with the vigorous gymnastics teacher described by Arianne’s girl friend at the Imperial.

Kahlo handed me the plan of the house that Kritzinger had given him, and while Henlein made himself comfortable I glanced over it briefly and, for the moment, noted only that Henlein had occupied the room immediately next to Captain Kuttner’s.