Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

“They are involved,” I snarled back. “Who do you think it was asked me to come here? Now go out there and speak to your colleagues waiting in the Great Hall and when I come back here, I want a list of names. Resentful workers, angry homeowners, sons of aggrieved widows, anyone with a grudge against you, Flex, or even Martin Bormann. Understood?”

“Yes, yes, I’ll do as you say. Immediately.”

I grabbed my coat and walked out of the dining room. I’d enjoyed my breakfast but I’d eaten too much. Either that or talking to a Nazi like Schenk just gave me a rotten feeling in my stomach.

“I don’t know where any of this is going to go,” said Kaspel, following me out of the Berghof and down the icy steps to the car. “But I do like working with you.”

The Villa Bechstein was a five-minute drive down the hill from the Berghof and on the other side of a stone-built SS guardhouse that covered the entire road. Kaspel told me that after Helene Bechstein had been obliged to sell her house to Bormann, Albert Speer had lived there while his own house — and a studio — much farther to the west, was being constructed to his own design. Having seen quite a bit of Speer’s architectural talent on show in Berlin, I doubt it could have improved on the Villa Bechstein, which sat in a nest of deep snow like a fancy gingerbread house. It was a large, three-story villa with two wraparound wooden balconies, a high mansard roof with a dormer window, and a bell tower made of marzipan and chocolate. It was the sort of house you could only have afforded if you’d been Martin Bormann or someone who sold a great many pianos to a great many Germans.

Almost immediately I got out of the car I turned and looked back up the mountain at the Berghof, only there were several trees in the way. From inside the hallway a butler had appeared, hovering silently in the doorway like a black-and-white dragonfly. He bowed gravely and then ushered me up the heavy wooden stairs to the second floor. The house might have been old but everything had been recently refurbished and was of the very highest quality, which is a style of interior decoration that always seems to suit the simple tastes of the rich and powerful.

“Has the deputy leader arrived yet?” I asked the butler, who answered — with a local accent — to the name of Winkelhof.

“Not yet. We expect him sometime this morning, sir. He’ll be occupying his apartments on the upper floor, as usual. You’ll hardly notice each other.”

I had my doubts about that. Top Nazis aren’t known for being shy and retiring. At the top of the stairs was a long case clock with a Nazi eagle on top and next to this a life-sized bronze nude of a bewildered woman who looked as if she was trying to find the bathroom. Winkelhof showed me into a large, chintzy bedroom with a green Biedermeier sofa, a single bed, and a small portrait of the Leader. My bag was already waiting for me on the bed and although a log fire was laid it wasn’t lit and the room was cold. I was already wishing I hadn’t handed over my coat. The butler apologized for the room’s temperature and immediately set about trying to light the fire, only the chimney flap seemed to be firmly stuck, which caused him some irritation.

“I do apologize, sir,” said Winkelhof. “Perhaps I’d better show you to another room.”

So we found another room, with another portrait of Hitler — this one was just a face on a black background, which was a little more pleasing to me, given that the Leader’s head seemed almost to have been severed, in accordance with my earlier hopes and dreams. A big French window opened onto the wooden balcony and the fireplace worked. While the butler lit the fire with a candle match, I went onto the snow-covered balcony and inspected the view, which wasn’t a view at all in that I could only see more of the same trees I’d already seen at ground level.

“This is east facing, right?” I asked the butler.

“That’s correct, sir.”

“So the Berghof is behind those trees.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Before the deputy leader gets here, I’d like to take a look out of the windows immediately above this room. And from that dormer window on the roof, too.”

“Certainly, sir. But may I ask why?”

“I just want to satisfy my own curiosity about something,” I explained.

We went upstairs. The deputy leader’s apartments were predictably opulent and included several Egyptian artifacts, but his biggest window afforded no better a view of the Berghof than the one I’d seen from the floor below. It was only the dormer window on the floor above that gave me what I’d been hoping for, which was a clear, uninterrupted sight of the Berghof terrace about a hundred meters to the southeast of the Villa Bechstein. I looked at the butler and quietly sized him up for the murder, and it took just a second to see that he’d had nothing to do with the shooting; after twenty years in the job you get a nose for these things. Besides, the lenses in his horn-rimmed spectacles were as thick as the bottom on a glass-bottomed boat. He wasn’t the most obvious sniper I’d ever seen. I opened the window — which took a bit of doing because of the ice — and poked my head outside for a moment or two.

“Winkelhof, is anyone staying in this room now?”

“No, sir.”

“Was anyone in it yesterday morning?”

“No, sir.”

“Could anyone have had access to this room that you don’t know about?”

“No, sir. And you saw me unlock the door.”

“Are all the rooms in the villa locked like this one?”

“Yes, sir. It’s standard practice at the Villa Bechstein. Some of our guests have sensitive government papers and they prefer to have a lock on the doors to their rooms and apartments.”

“Were you on duty yesterday morning at around nine o’clock?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you hear anything that sounded like a shot? A car backfiring? An avalanche charge, perhaps? A door closing loudly?”

“No, sir. Nothing.”

I went downstairs again and took a quick walk around the exterior of the house along a pathway that had been recently cleared of snow. The ground floor of the Villa Bechstein was made of rough stone with a covered terrace, where I found an armory of snow shovels and a pile of logs that looked like enough fuel for a short ice age. Seeing this it crossed my mind that perhaps the Leader’s pious wish to look after the local trees wasn’t such a high priority after all. It didn’t take very long to find what I was looking for: on the eastern side of the house there was a scaffolding tower, which went all the way up to the icicled eaves, about nine to twelve meters above the ground; beside it was a neat ziggurat of tiles, a bucket, and some ropes. Tied to the tower was a sign from a local roofing company but there were no ladders that might have enabled a man to climb up to the roof. Even with ladders it looked like a hazardous job in winter, but not quite as hazardous, perhaps, as going up there with a rifle to take a shot at Hitler’s private terrace. I knew I was right about that now because I found an empty brass cartridge lying on the ground immediately below the dormer window. I spent another fifteen minutes looking for others but found only one.

In the villa’s hallway, I summoned Winkelhof and asked him about the roofer.

“Müller? He’s been repairing some tiles and a chimney pot that came off in a recent storm. He’d be working up there now but it seems that someone has stolen his ladders. But don’t worry, sir, it won’t disturb you. I’m certain of that.”

“Stolen? When?”

“I’m not sure, sir. He reported them missing about an hour ago, when he arrived here first thing this morning. But yesterday he didn’t come at all. So really, there’s no telling how long the ladders have been gone. Please don’t concern yourself. Really, it’s not important.”