Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

Kaspel came down the ladder and followed me through the winter garden, the Great Hall, and into the dining room, where there was too much knotted-pine paneling and a built-in display cabinet that contained various pieces of fussy-looking china with a dragon design. I hoped they might be fire-breathing dragons because for all its pretensions to grandeur the room was cold. There were two tables, a smaller round one in a bay window set for six, and a larger rectangular one set for sixteen. Kaspel and I took the smaller table, threw off our coats, drew up two terra-cotta-red leather armchairs, and sat down. Without thinking, I tossed my cigarettes onto the tablecloth. Somewhere I could smell fresh coffee brewing.

“Are you serious?” said Kaspel.

“Sorry. I forgot our orders.” Hurriedly, I put the cigarettes away, seconds before a waiter wearing white gloves appeared in the room, as if he had materialized out of a brass lamp to grant us both three wishes. But I had a lot more than three.

“Coffee,” I said. “Lots of hot coffee. And cheeses, lots of cheeses. And meats, too. Boiled eggs, smoked fish, fruit, honey, plenty of bread, and more piping-hot coffee. I don’t know about you, Hermann, but I’m hungry.”

The waiter bowed politely and went away to fetch our German breakfast. I had high hopes of the kitchen at the Berghof; if you couldn’t get a good German breakfast at Hitler’s house, then all hope was surely lost.

“No,” said Kaspel. “I meant are you serious about an investigation at the Villa Bechstein? That place is for Nazi VIPs.”

“Is that what I am? That’s interesting. Never saw myself that way before now.”

“They put you there because it’s the nearest place to the Berghof that’s not someone else’s house. So you wouldn’t have too far to go.”

“Very considerate.”

“I don’t suppose Bormann ever considered that you might be looking for a gunman at the Villa Bechstein. The deputy leader, Rudolf Hess himself, is due to arrive any time now.”

“Doesn’t he have his own house?”

“Not yet. And actually Hess doesn’t really like it here. Even brings his own food. So he doesn’t come that often. But when he does, he always stays at the villa, with his dogs.”

“I’m not fussy who I stay with. Or what I eat, as long as there’s plenty of it.” I glanced around, disliking the dining room almost as much as I’d disliked the Great Hall. It was like being inside a walnut shell. “I guess this must be the new wing we’re in now.”

“Bormann isn’t going to like it.”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

“No, really, Bernie. Relations between Bormann and Hess are already poor. If we start poking our noses around the Villa Bechstein, Hess is likely to view it as an attempt to undermine his authority as deputy leader.”

“Bormann’s going to like it even less if I don’t catch this shooter and soon. Look, Hermann, you saw where those bullets were. They’re the angles we have to work with. Just like in billiards. Maybe someone who works there didn’t like Flex. Who knows, maybe the butler got bored and stuck a rifle out of the master-bedroom window to see who he could hit on the terrace. I always like the butler for a murder. They’ve usually got something to hide.”

The coffee arrived and I took out my cigarettes again before putting them away, again . It’s only when your habit bothers someone else that you start to notice how much of a habit it really is. So I swallowed a couple of Pervitin with the coffee and bit my lip.

“What happens to people who smoke in this fucking house?” I said. “Seriously? Are they sent to Dachau? Or are they just hurled off the Tarpeian Rock by locals high on meth?”

“Give me a couple of pills,” said Kaspel. “I’m starting to slow down. And I’ve a feeling I’m going to need to keep going for a while longer.”

“Could be.” I laid the four misshapen bullets on the tablecloth. They looked like the teeth from a witch doctor’s kit bag. Who knows? Maybe they would enable me to divine the name of Flex’s murderer. Stranger things had happened in the ballistics lab at the Alex. “There are five bullets in a standard rifle magazine,” I said. “That means either our murderer shot at Karl Flex four times and missed, or he tried to shoot more than one man on the terrace. But why didn’t anyone hear anything? If the shots came from somewhere as close as the Villa Bechstein, someone must have heard shots being fired. Even the butler. This is supposed to be a secure area.”

“You heard the explosion,” said Kaspel. “The one made by the construction workers. And especially first thing in the morning, shots are often fired to make small avalanches up on the Hoher Göll, in order to prevent larger ones. So it’s possible that people did hear a shot and connected it with an avalanche. Equally, there are lots of historic shooters’ clubs in Berchtesgaden that like to meet up on public holidays and discharge old black powder weapons. Blunderbusses and dragoon pistols. Any excuse. Frankly, we’ve tried to put a stop to them but it’s no use. They pay no attention.”

The waiter returned with an enormous breakfast tray on which was a large piece of honeycomb, still attached to the wooden tray that had come out of the hive. Seeing it, I let out a groan of childish excitement. It had been a while since anyone in Berlin had seen honey.

“My God, that’s what I call luxury,” I said. “Ever since I was a boy I’ve never been able to resist honeycomb.” Even before the waiter had laid all the things on the breakfast table, I’d gouged off a piece, scraped off the beeswax capping with my knife, and started sucking the honey greedily.

“Is it local?” I looked at the label on the side of the wooden tray. “Honey from the Leader’s own apiary at Landlerwald. Where’s that?”

“On the other side of the Kehlstein,” said Kaspel. “The deputy chief of staff is an expert on agriculture. That’s Bormann’s background, you know. He trained to be an estate manager. The Gutshof is a farm that produces all sorts of produce for the Berghof. Including honey. When we drive up the mountain, the main farmhouse is on our left. There’s eighty hectares of farmland. All the way around the mountain.”

“I’m beginning to see why the Leader likes it here so much. I’ll want to talk to someone at that apiary.”

“I’ll speak to Kannenberg,” said Kaspel. “He’ll fix it with Hayer, the fellow who’s in charge of things at the Landlerwald. But why?”

“Let’s just say I have a bee in my bonnet.”

Not long after we’d finished eating breakfast several of the other men who’d also been on the terrace when Flex was shot turned up. Freda Kannenberg came and told me “the engineers” were waiting for me in the Great Hall.

“How many are there?”

“Eight.”

“Is anyone else likely to come in here for breakfast?”

“No,” she said. “Frau Braun usually has breakfast in her own rooms upstairs, with her friend. And Frau Troost doesn’t ever eat breakfast.”

“Very well,” I told Freda, “I’ll see them in here. One at a time.”

Freda nodded. “I’ll tell the waiter to bring some fresh coffee.”

The first man I spoke to was the state engineer August Michahelles. He was a handsome man wearing military uniform, who bowed politely as he presented himself at the breakfast table. I stood up, shook his limp hand, and then invited him to sit down and help himself to coffee. I opened my file of witness statements and found the list that Högl had compiled.

“You’re the head of the state construction bureau for Deutsche Alpenstrasse, is that right?”