March Violets

7

Just off Clayallee, on the edge of Dahlem, was the huge wrought-iron gate to Six’s estate. I sat in the car for a while and watched the road. Several times I closed my eyes and found my head nodding. It had been a late night. After a short nap I got out and opened the gate. Then I ambled back to the car and turned onto the private road, down a long, gentle slope and into the cool shade cast by the dark pine trees lining its gravelled length.

In daylight Six’s house was even more impressive, although I could see now that it was not one but two houses, standing close together: beautiful, solidly built Wilhelmine farmhouses.

I pulled up at the front door, where Ilse Rudel had parked her BMW the night I had first seen her, and got out, leaving the door open just in case the two Dobermanns put in an appearance. Dogs are not at all keen on private investigators, and it’s an antipathy that is entirely mutual.

I knocked on the door. I heard it echo in the hall and, seeing the closed shutters, I wondered if I’d had a wasted journey. I lit a cigarette and stood there, just leaning on the door, smoking and listening. The place was about as quiet as the sap in a gift-wrapped rubber tree. Then I heard some footsteps, and I straightened up as the door opened to reveal the Levantine head and round shoulders of the butler, Farraj.

‘Good morning,’ I said brightly. ‘I was hoping that I’d find Herr Haupthandler in.’ Farraj looked at me with the clinical distaste of a chiropodist regarding a septic toenail.

‘Do you have an appointment?’ he asked.

‘Not really,’ I said, handing him my card. ‘I was hoping he might give me five minutes, though. I was here the other night, to see Herr Six.’ Farraj nodded silently, and returned my card.

‘My apologies for not recognizing you, sir.’ Still holding the door, he retreated into the hall, inviting me to enter. Having closed it behind him, he looked at my hat with something short of amusement.

‘No doubt you will wish to keep your hat again, sir.’

‘I think I had better, don’t you?’ Standing closer to him, I could detect the very definite smell of alcohol, and not the sort they serve in exclusive gentlemen’s clubs.

‘Very good, sir. If you’ll just wait here for a moment, I’ll find Herr Haupthändler and ask him if he can see you.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Do you have an ashtray?’ I held my cigarette ash aloft like a hypodermic syringe.

‘Yes, sir.’ He produced one made of dark onyx that was the size of a church Bible, and which he held in both hands while I did the stubbing out. When my cigarette was extinguished he turned away and, still carrying the ashtray, he disappeared down the corridor, leaving me to wonder what I was going to say to Haupthändler if he would see me. There was nothing in particular I had in mind, and not for one minute did I imagine that he would be prepared to discuss Ilse Rudel’s story about him and Grete Pfarr. I was just poking around. You ask ten people ten dumb questions, and sometimes you hit a raw nerve somewhere. Sometimes, if you weren’t too bored to notice, you managed to recognize that you were on to something. It was a bit like panning for gold. Every day you went down to the river and went through pan after pan of mud. And just occasionally, provided you kept your eyes peeled, you found a dirty little stone that was actually a nugget.

I went to the bottom of the stairs and looked up the stairwell. A large circular skylight illuminated the paintings on the scarlet-coloured walls. I was looking at a still life of a lobster and a pewter pot when I heard footsteps on the marble floor behind me.

‘It’s by Karl Schuch you know,’ said Haupthändler. ‘Worth a great deal of money.’ He paused, and added: ‘But very, very dull. Please, come this way.’ He led the way into Six’s library.

‘I’m afraid I can’t give you very long. You see, I still have a great many things to do for the funeral tomorrow. I’m sure you understand.’ I sat down on one of the sofas and lit a cigarette. Haupthändler folded his arms, the leather of his nutmeg-brown sports jacket creaking across his sizeable shoulders, and leaned against his master’s desk.

‘Now what was it that you wished to see me about?’

‘Actually, it’s about the funeral,’ I said, improvising on what he had given me. ‘I wondered where it was to be held.’

‘I must apologize, Herr Gunther,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid it hadn’t occurred to me that Herr Six would wish you to attend. He’s left all the arrangements to me while he’s in the Ruhr, but he didn’t think to leave any instructions regarding a list of mourners.’

I tried to look awkward. ‘Oh, well,’ I said, standing up. ‘Naturally, with a client such as Herr Six I should like to have been able to pay my respects to his daughter. It is customary. But I’m sure he will understand.’

‘Herr Gunther,’ said Haupthandler, after a short silence. ‘Would you think it terrible of me if I were to give you an invitation now, by hand?’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘If you are sure it won’t inconvenience your arrangements.’

‘It’s no trouble,’ he said. ‘I have some cards here.’ He walked around the desk and pulled open a drawer.

‘Have you worked for Herr Six long?’

‘About two years,’ he said absently. ‘Prior to that I was a diplomat with the German Consular Service.’ He took out a pair of glasses from his breast pocket and placed them on the end of his nose before writing out the invitation.

‘And did you know Grete Pfarr well?’

He glanced up at me briefly. ‘I really didn’t know her at all,’ he said. ‘Other than to say hallo to.’

‘Do you know if she had any enemies, jealous lovers, that sort of thing?’ He finished writing the card, and pressed it on the blotter.

‘I’m quite sure she didn’t,’ he said crisply, removing his glasses and returning them to his pocket.

‘Is that so? What about him? Paul.’

‘I can tell you even less about him, I’m afraid,’ he said, slipping the invitation into an envelope.

‘Did he and Herr Six get on all right?’

‘They weren’t enemies, if that’s what you’re implying. Their differences were purely political.’

‘Well, that amounts to something quite fundamental these days, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Not in this case, no. Now if you’ll excuse me, Herr Gunther, I really must be getting on.’

‘Yes, of course.’ He handed me the invitation. ‘Well, thanks for this,’ I said, following him out into the hall. ‘Do you live here too, Herr Haupthandler?’

‘No, I have an apartment in town.’

‘Really? Where?’ He hesitated for a moment.

‘Kurfürstenstrasse,’ he said eventually. ‘Why do you ask?’

I shrugged. ‘I ask too many questions, Herr Haupthandler,’ I said. ‘Forgive me. It’s habit, I’m afraid. A suspicious nature goes with the job. Please don’t be offended. Well, I must be going.’ He smiled thinly, and as he showed me to the door he seemed relaxed; but I hoped I had said enough to put a few ripples on his pond.

The Hanomag seems to take an age to reach any sort of speed, so it was with a certain amount of misplaced optimism that I took the Avus ‘Speedway’ back to the centre of town. It costs a mark to get on this highway, but the Avus is worth it: ten kilometres without a curve, all the way from Potsdam to Kurfürstendamm. It’s the one road in the city on which the driver who fancies himself as Carraciola, the great racing driver, can put his foot down and hit speeds of up to 150 kilometres an hour. At least, they could in the days before BV Aral, the low-octane substitute petrol that’s not much better than meths. Now it was all I could do to get ninety out of the Hanomag’s 1.3 litre engine.

I parked at the intersection of Kurfürstendamm and Joachimsthaler Strasse, known as ‘Grunfeld Corner’ because of the department store of the same name which occupies it. When Grunfeld, a Jew, still owned his store, they used to serve free lemonade at the Fountain in the basement. But since the State dispossessed him, as it has with all the Jews who owned big stores, like Wertheim, Hermann Teitz and Israel, the days of free lemonade have gone. If that weren’t bad enough, the lemonade you now have to pay for and once got free doesn’t taste half as good, and you don’t have to have the sharpest taste-buds in the world to realize that they’re cutting down on the sugar. Just like they’re cheating on everything else.

I sat drinking my lemonade and watching the lift go up and down the tubular glass shaft that allowed you to see out into the store as you rode from floor to floor, in two minds whether or not to go up to the stocking counter and see Carola, the girl from Dagmarr’s wedding. It was the sour taste of the lemonade that put me in mind of my own debauched behaviour, and that decided me against it. Instead I left Grunfeld’s and walked the short distance down Kurfurstendamm and onto Schlüterstrasse.

A jewellers is one of the few places in Berlin where you can expect to find people queueing to sell rather than to buy. Peter Neumaier’s Antique Jewellers was no exception. When I got there the line wasn’t quite outside the door, but it was certainly rubbing the glass; and it was older and sadder looking than most of the queues that I was used to standing in. The people waiting there were from a mixture of backgrounds, but mostly they had two things in common: their Judaism and, as an inevitable corollary, their lack of work, which was how they came to be selling their valuables in the first place. At the top of the queue, behind a long glass counter, were two stone-faced shop assistants in good suits. They had a neat line in appraisal, which was to tell the prospective seller how poor the piece actually was and how little it was likely to fetch on the open market.

‘We see stuff like this all the time,’ said one of them, wrinkling his lips and shaking his head at the spread of pearls and brooches on the counter beneath him. ‘You see, we can’t put a price on sentimental value. I’m sure you understand that.’ He was a young fellow, half the age of the deflating old mattress of a woman before him, and good-looking too, although in need of a shave, perhaps. His colleague was less forthcoming with his indifference: he sniffed so that his nose took on a sneer, he shrugged a half shrug of his coathanger-sized shoulders, and he grunted unenthusiastically. Silently, he counted out five one-hundred-mark notes from a roll in his skinny miser’s hand that must have been worth thirty times as much. The old man he was buying from was undecided about whether or not he should accept what must have been a derisory offer, and with a trembling hand he pointed at the bracelet lying on the piece of cloth he had wrapped it up in.

‘But look here,’ said the old man, ‘you’ve got one just like it in the window for three times what you’re offering.’

The Coathanger pursed his lips. ‘Fritz,’ he said, ‘how long has that sapphire bracelet been in the window?’ It was an efficient double-act, you had to say that much.

‘Must be six months,’ responded the other. ‘Don’t buy another one, this isn’t a charity you know.’ He probably said that several times a day. Coathanger blinked with slow boredom.

‘See what I mean? Look, go somewhere else if you think you can get more for it.’ But the sight of the cash was too much for the old man, and he capitulated. I walked to the head of the line and said that I was looking for Herr Neumaier.

‘If you’ve got something to sell, then you’ll have to wait in line with all the rest of them,’ muttered Coathanger.

‘I have nothing to sell,’ I said vaguely, adding, ‘I’m looking for a diamond necklace.’ At that Coathanger smiled at me like I was his long-lost rich uncle.

‘If you’ll just wait one moment,’ he said unctuously, ‘I’ll just see if Herr Neumaier is free.’ He disappeared behind a curtain for a minute, and when he returned I was ushered through to a small office at the end of the corridor.

Peter Neumaier sat at his desk, smoking a cigar that belonged properly in a plumber’s tool-bag. He was dark, with bright blue eyes, just like our beloved Führer, and was possessed of a stomach that stuck out like a cash register. The cheeks of his face had a red, skinned look, as if he had eczema, or had simply stood too close to his razor that morning. He shook me by the hand as I introduced myself. It was like holding a cucumber.

‘I’m pleased to meet you, Herr Gunther,’ he said warmly. ‘I hear you’re looking for some diamonds.’

‘That’s correct. But I should tell you that I’m acting on behalf of someone else.’

‘I understand,’ Neumaier grinned. ‘Did you have a particular setting in mind?’

‘Oh, yes indeed. A diamond necklace.’

‘Well, you have come to the right place. There are several diamond necklaces I can show you.’

‘My client knows precisely what he requires,’ I said. ‘It must be a diamond collet necklace, made by Cartier.’ Neumaier laid his cigar in the ashtray, and breathed out a mixture of smoke, nerves and amusement.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘That certainly narrows the field.’

‘That’s the thing about the rich, Herr Neumaier,’ I said. ‘They always seem to know exactly what they want, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, indeed they do, Herr Gunther.’ He leaned forwards in his chair and, collecting his cigar, he said: ‘A necklace such as you describe is not the sort of piece that comes along every day. And of course it would cost a great deal of money.’ It was time to stick the nettle down his trousers.

‘Naturally, my client is prepared to pay a great deal of money. Twenty-five per cent of the insured value, no questions asked.’

He frowned. ‘I’m not sure I understand what you’re talking about,’ he said.

‘Come off it, Neumaier. We both know that there’s a lot more to your operation than the heart-warming little scene you’re putting on out front there.’

He blew some smoke and looked at the end of his cigar. ‘Are you suggesting that I buy stolen merchandise, Herr Gunther, because if you are—’

‘Keep your ears stiff, Neumaier, I haven’t finished yet. My client’s flea is solid. Cash money.’ I tossed the photograph of Six’s diamonds at him. ‘If some mouse walks in here trying to sell it, you give me a call. The number’s on the back.’

Neumaier regarded it and me distastefully and then stood up. ‘You are a joke, Herr Gunther. With a few cups short in your cupboard. Now get out of here before I call the police.’

‘You know, that’s not a bad idea,’ I said. ‘I’m sure they’ll be very impressed with your public spirit when you offer to open up your safe and invite them to inspect the contents. That’s the confidence of honesty, I suppose.’

‘Get out of here.’

I stood up and walked out of his office. I hadn’t intended to handle it that way, but I hadn’t liked what I’d seen of Neumaier’s operation. In the shop Coathanger was half-way through offering an old woman a price for her jewel-box that was less than she might have got for it at the Salvation Army hostel. Several of the Jews waiting behind her looked at me with an expression that was a mixture of hope and hopelessness. It made me feel about as comfortable as a trout on a marble slab, and for no reason that I could think of, I felt something like shame.

Gert Jeschonnek was a different proposition. His premises were on the eighth floor of Columbus Haus, a nine-storeyed building on Potsdamer Platz which has a strong emphasis on the horizontal line. It looked like something a long-term prisoner might have made, given an endless supply of matches, and at the same time it put me in mind of the nearly eponymous building near Tempelhof Airport that is Columbia Haus—the Gestapo prison in Berlin. This country shows its admiration for the discoverer of America in the strangest ways.

The eighth floor was home to a whole country-club of doctors, lawyers and publishers, who were only just getting by on 30,000 a year.

The double entrance doors to Jeschonnek’s office were made of polished mahogany, on which appeared in gold lettering, ‘GERT JESCHONNEK. PRECIOUS STONE MERCHANT’. Beyond these was an L-shaped office with walls that were a pleasant shade of pink, on which were hung several framed photographs of diamonds, rubies and various gaudy little baubles that might have stimulated the greed of a Solomon or two. I took a chair and waited for an anaemic young man sitting behind a typewriter to finish on the telephone. After a minute he said:

‘I’ll call you back, Rudi.’ He replaced the receiver and looked at me with an expression that was just a few centimetres short of surly.

‘Yes?’ he said. Call me old-fashioned, but I have never liked male secretaries. A man’s vanity gets in the way of serving the needs of another male, and this particular specimen wasn’t about to win me over.

‘When you’ve finished filing your nails, perhaps you’d tell your boss that I’d like to see him. The name’s Gunther.’

‘Do you have an appointment?’ he said archly.

‘Since when does a man who’s looking for some diamonds need to make an appointment? Tell me that, would you?’ I could see that he found me less amusing than a boxful of smoke.

‘Save your breath to cool your soup,’ he said, and came round the desk to go through the only other door. ‘I’ll find out if he can see you.’ While he was out of the room I picked up a recent issue of Der Stürmer from the magazine rack. The front page had a drawing of a man in angel’s robes holding an angel’s mask in front of his face. Behind him was his devil’s tail, sticking out from underneath his surplice, and his ‘angel’s’ shadow, except that this now revealed the profile behind the mask to be unmistakably Jewish. Those Der Stürmer cartoonists love to draw a big nose, and this one was a real pelican’s beak. A strange thing to find in a respectable businessman’s office, I thought. The anaemic young man emerging from the other office provided the simple explanation.

‘He won’t keep you very long,’ he said, adding, ‘He buys that to impress the kikes.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t follow.’

‘We get a lot of Jewish custom in here,’ he explained. ‘Of course, they only want to sell, never to buy. Herr Jeschonnek thinks that if they see that he subscribes to Der Stürmer, it will help him to drive a harder bargain.’

‘Very shrewd of him,’ I said. ‘Does it work?’

‘I guess so. You’d better ask him.’

‘Maybe I will at that.’

There wasn’t much to see in the boss’s office. Across a couple of acres of carpet was a grey steel safe that had once been a small battleship, and a Panzer-sized desk with a dark leather top. The desk had very little on it except a square of felt, on which lay a ruby that was big enough to decorate a Maharajah’s favourite elephant, and Jeschonnek’s feet, wearing immaculate white spats, and these swung under the table as I came through the door.

Gert Jeschonnek was a burly hog of a man, with small piggy eyes and a brown beard cropped close to his sunburned face. He wore a light-grey double-breasted suit that was ten years too young for him, and in the lapel was a Scary Badge. He had March Violet plastered all over him like insect repellent.

‘Herr Gunther,’ he said brightly, and for a moment he was almost standing at attention. Then he crossed the floor to greet me. A purplish butcher’s hand pumped mine own, which showed patches of white when I let it go. He must have had blood like treacle. He smiled a sweet smile and then looked across my shoulder to his anaemic secretary who was about to close the door on us. Jeschonnek said:

‘Helmut. A pot of your best strong coffee please. Two cups, and no delays.’ He spoke quickly and precisely, beating time with his hand like a teacher of elocution. He led me over to the desk, and the ruby, which I figured was there to impress me, in the same way as the copies of Der Stürmer were there to impress his Jewish custom. I pretended to ignore it, but Jeschonnek was not to be denied his little performance. He held the ruby up to the light in his fat fingers, and grinned obscenely.

‘An extremely fine cabochon ruby,’ he said. ‘Like it?’

‘Red isn’t my colour,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t go with my hair.’ He laughed and replaced the ruby on the velvet, which he folded up and returned to his safe. I sat down on a big armchair in front of his desk.

‘I’m looking for a diamond necklace,’ I said. He sat down opposite me.

‘Well, Herr Gunther, I’m the acknowledged expert on diamonds.’ His head gave a proud little flourish, like a racehorse, and I caught a powerful whiff of cologne.

‘Is that so?’ I said.

‘I doubt if there’s a man in Berlin who knows as much about diamonds as I do.’ He thrust his stubbly chin at me, as if challenging me to contradict him. I almost threw up.

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ I said. The coffee arrived and Jeschonnek glanced uncomfortably after his secretary as he minced out of the room.

‘I cannot get used to having a male secretary,’ he said. ‘Of course, I can see that the proper place for a woman is in the home, bringing up a family, but I have a great fondness for women, Herr Gunther.’

‘I’d take a partner before I’d take on a male secretary,’ I said. He smiled politely.

‘Now then, I believe you’re in the market for a diamond.’

‘Diamonds,’ I said, correcting him.

‘I see. On their own, or in a setting?’

‘Actually I’m trying to trace a particular piece which has been stolen from my client,’ I explained, and handed him my card. He stared at it impassively. ‘A necklace, to be precise. I have a photograph of it here.’ I produced another photograph and handed it to him.

‘Magnificent,’ he said.

‘Each one of the baguettes is one carat,’ I told him.

‘Quite,’ he said. ‘But I don’t see how I can help you, Herr Gunther.’

‘If the thief should try and offer it to you, I’d be grateful if you would contact me. Naturally, there is a substantial reward. I have been authorized by my client to offer twenty-five per cent of the insured value for recovery, no questions asked.’

‘May one know the name of your client, Herr Gunther?’

I hesitated. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Ordinarily, a client’s identity is confidential. But I can see that you are the kind of man who is used to respecting confidentiality.’

‘You’re much too kind,’ he said.

‘The necklace is Indian, and belongs to a princess who is in Berlin for the Olympiad, as the guest of the Government.’ Jeschonnek began to frown as he listened to my lies. ‘I have not met the princess myself, but I am told that she is the most beautiful creature that Berlin has ever seen. She is staying at the Adlon Hotel, from where the necklace was stolen several nights ago.’

‘Stolen from an Indian princess, eh?’ he said, adding a smile to his features. ‘Well, I mean, why was there nothing in the newspapers about this? And why are the police not involved?’ I drank some of my coffee to prolong a dramatic pause.

‘The management of the Adlon is anxious to avoid a scandal,’ I said. ‘It’s not so very long ago that the Adlon suffered a series of unfortunate robberies committed there by the celebrated jewel-thief Faulhaber.’

‘Yes, I remember reading about that.’

‘It goes without question that the necklace is insured, but where the reputation of the Adlon is concerned, that is hardly the point, as I am sure you will understand.’

‘Well, sir, I shall certainly contact you immediately if I come across any information that may help you,’ said Jeschonnek, producing a gold watch from his pocket. He glanced at it deliberately. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, I really must be getting on.’ He stood up and held out his pudgy hand.

‘Thanks for your time,’ I said. ‘I’ll see myself out.’

‘Perhaps you’d be kind enough to ask that boy to step in here when you go out,’ he said.

‘Sure.’

He gave me the Hitler Salute. ‘Heil Hitler,’ I repeated dumbly.

In the outside office the anaemic boy was reading a magazine. My eyes caught sight of the keys before I’d finished telling him that his boss required his presence: they were lying on the desk next to the telephone. He grunted and wrenched himself out of his seat. I hesitated at the door.

‘Oh, do you have a piece of paper?’

He pointed to the pad on which the keys were lying. ‘Help yourself,’ he said, and went into Jeschonnek’s office.

‘Thanks, I will.’ The key-ring was labelled ‘Office’. I took a cigarette case out of my pocket and opened it. In the smooth surface of the modelling clay I made three impressions—two sides and a vertical—of both keys. I suppose that you could say I did it on impulse. I’d hardly had time to digest everything that Jeschonnek had said; or rather, what he hadn’t said. But then I always carry that piece of clay, and it seems a shame not to use it when the opportunity presents itself. You would be surprised how often a key that I’ve had made with that mould comes in useful.

Outside, I found a public telephone and called the Adlon. I still remembered lots of good times at the Adlon, and lots of friends, too.

‘Hello, Hermine,’ I said, ‘it’s Bernie.’ Hermine was one of the girls on the Adlon’s switchboard.

‘You stranger,’ she said. ‘We haven’t seen you in ages.’

‘I’ve been a bit busy,’ I said.

‘So’s the Führer, but he still manages to get around and wave to us.’

‘Maybe I should buy myself an open-top Mercedes and a couple of outriders.’ I lit a cigarette. ‘I need a small favour, Hermine.’

‘Ask.’

‘If a man telephones and asks you or Benita if there is an Indian princess staying at the hotel, would you please say that there is? If he wants to speak to her, say she’s not taking any calls.’

‘That’s all?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does this princess have a name?’

‘You know the names of any Indian girls?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I saw a film the other week which had this Indian girl in it. Her name was Mushmi.’

‘Let it be Princess Mushmi then. And thanks, Hermine. I’ll be speaking to you soon.’

I went into the Pschorr Haus restaurant and ate a plate of bacon and broad beans, and drank a couple of beers. Either Jeschonnek knew nothing about diamonds, or he had something to hide. I’d told him that the necklace was Indian, when he ought to have recognized it as being by Cartier. Not only that, but he had failed to contradict me when I described the stones incorrectly as baguettes. Baguettes are square or oblong, with a straight edge; but Six’s necklace consisted of brilliants, which are round. And then there was the caratage; I’d said that each stone was a carat in weight, when they were obviously several times larger.

It wasn’t much to go on; and mistakes are made: it’s impossible always to pick up a stick by the right end; but all the same, I had this feeling in my socks that I was going to have to visit Jeschonnek again.