Prussian Blue

NINETEEN

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.”

But something made me think that I’d had something to do with this theft and so I picked up the telephone and asked the Obersalzberg operator to connect me with the Berghof; a few moments later the mystery of the missing ladders had been solved. Arthur Kannenberg had asked the RSD to find him a ladder so that I might have one on the Berghof terrace and they’d borrowed the roofer’s ladders from the Villa Bechstein without telling anyone. If only all feats of criminal detection were so straightforward.

“They’re bringing the ladders back now,” I said to the butler. “Telephone Herr Müller and tell him I’d like to speak with him as soon as he gets here. The sooner, the better, Winkelhof.”

In the drawing room I found Friedrich Korsch warming himself in front of a large fire and reading a newspaper while he listened to the radio. In Berlin there was much outrage at the military pact the British had signed with Poland and I wasn’t sure if this was good news or bad news—if this would deter Hitler from invading Poland, or bring about an immediate declaration of war by the Tommies if he did.

“I was beginning to think something might have happened to you,” said Korsch. “I had a terrible feeling I might be kicking my heels here all day.”

I glanced around the drawing room and nodded appreciatively. Kicking your heels didn’t look so bad in a room like that. Even the tropical fish in the aquarium looked warm and dry. Kicking arses felt altogether more hazardous; for all I knew, Bormann was going to be furious at the way I’d just treated his first administrator.

“As it happens, you’re in luck, Friedrich. You’re right in the center of things after all. This villa is now a crime scene.”

“It is? It certainly doesn’t feel like one. I slept like a top last night.”

“Lucky you.” I told him about Karl Flex, as much as I knew. Then I showed him the brass cartridges. “I found these on the path outside. By the way, this is Captain Kaspel. I think you met, briefly, earlier on.”

The two nodded at each other. Korsch lifted the cartridge up to the firelight.

“Looks like a standard rimless bottleneck eight-millimeter rifle cartridge.”

“My guess is that we’ll find more of these on the roof. Just as soon as the RSD comes back with the ladders.”

I explained about the roofer before handing Korsch the spent bullets we’d dug out of the balcony at the Berghof.

“Get someone to take a look at these. Might have to be the Police Praesidium in Salzburg. And I’m going to need a rifle with a telescopic sight. I also want these films developed and printed. And discreetly. Bormann wants this matter handled very discreetly. And you’d better warn whoever does it that these prints are for adult eyes only.”

“There’s a photographer in Berchtesgaden who can do the job,” said Kaspel. “Johann Brandner. On Maximilianstrasse, just behind the railway station. I’ll organize a car for you. Although now I come to think about it, I’m not altogether sure if he’s still there.”

“I’ll sort it out,” said Korsch, and pocketed the films. “There must be someone local who can do your dirty pictures. You have been busy, sir.”

“Not as busy as Karl Flex,” I said. “By the way, Hermann. Where does a man go if he wants some female company in this town?”

“That’s an unfortunate side effect of the magic potion,” said Kaspel. “It does give a man the point.”

“Not me, Hermann. Karl Flex. He had a dose of jelly. Remember the Protargol? The question is, where did he get it? The jelly, I mean. If it comes to that, where did he get the Protargol?”

“There is a place,” said Kaspel. “The P-Barracks. But it’s supposed to be under the medical supervision of a doctor from Salzburg.”

“It’s a barrack. You mean it’s under the control of the Obersalzberg Administration?”

Kaspel went to the drawing room door and closed it carefully.

“Not exactly. Yes, it’s the P&Z workers who are going to the P-Barracks, yes. But I really don’t see someone like Hans Weber or Professor Fich running a bunch of whores, do you?”

“So who then?”

Kaspel shook his head.

“Keep talking,” I said. “This is starting to get interesting.”

“It’s about six kilometers from here, at the Gartenauer Insel, in Unterau, on the north bank of the River Ache. About twenty girls work there. But it’s strictly workers only, and off limits for anyone in uniform. I’m not sure if that would have included Karl Flex. I haven’t been there myself but I know some SS men in Berchtesgaden who have, if only because there’s always trouble at the P-Barracks.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“The workers get drunk while they’re waiting for a particular girl. Then they fight about which girl they want and then the local SS have to restore order. It’s always busy, day and night.”

“If the place is making two hundred marks an hour, sixteen hours a day,” said Korsch, “then that’s three thousand a day. Twenty thousand a week.”

“Assuming that Bormann is keeping at least half—” I said.

“I didn’t say that,” said Kaspel.

“Are you saying he doesn’t know about it?”

“No. From what I’ve heard it was his idea. To set the place up. But—”

“Then perhaps it was Karl Flex who collected the cash from these girls for his master, the Lord of the Obersalzberg. As well as a little taste of what was on offer. Which in itself provides a possible motive for murder. Pimps get murdered all the time. Horst Wessel, for example. He was just an SA pimp murdered by a good friend of his whore’s landlady.”

Kaspel was looking slightly sick.

“True story,” I said. “Happened right on my patch, in Alexanderplatz. I helped my then boss, Chief Inspector Teichmann, crack that case. You can forget all the crap in the Nazi song. It was a simple dispute about an eighteen-year-old snapper. Wessel wasn’t much older. So that’s where we’re going next. To the P-Barracks in Unterau.” I looked around as I heard the RSD men returning the ladders outside the window. “As soon as we’ve had a look at the Villa Bechstein’s roof.”

“I swear, you’re going to get me killed, Gunther.”

“You’ll be fine,” I said. “Just watch where you’re putting your feet. It looks slippery up there.”