Philip Kerr - Prague Fatale

‘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.’