Prussian Blue

FIFTY-FOUR

“What’s all this about?” Frau Diesbach closed the front door behind us and wiped her large hands on the white apron she was wearing. She was taller than Friedrich Korsch by more than a head.

“Are you alone?”

“Yes. Quite alone.”

We were in a hallway with a flagstone floor, a dark oak sideboard, and, on the whitewashed wall, an old photograph of the even older Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I, who looked a lot like the wiliest animal in the Vienna woods, and another of Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. There were several other pictures of a heavily mustached Johann Diesbach in uniform that seemed to indicate he’d been part of the German Sixth Army and a veteran of the Battle of Lorraine, which was one of the very first engagements of the war and generally held to have been so inconclusive that it had helped to create the stalemate of trench warfare that persisted for another four costly years. On his chest was an Iron Cross First Class. Several hunting rifles and shotguns were on a rack beside a woodcut print of a hermit ticking off a group of medieval horsemen for some undisclosed offense: waking him up, probably. Everything smelled strongly of pipe tobacco and since the lady of the house didn’t strike me as an obvious pipe smoker herself, I concluded a man had been there very recently.

“What does your husband do, Frau Diesbach?” I asked.

“We own a small salt mine,” she explained. “In Berchtesgaden. We refine our own high-quality table salt. Which he sells direct to restaurants throughout Germany and Austria.”

“Sounds like a lot of digging,” said Korsch.

“There’s not much digging involved,” she explained. “We use a brine extraction process. Freshwater is fed into the mountain and the nonsoluble components of the rock sink to the bottom. It’s all about pumps and pipelines now, and very scientific.”

“Is he at the mine now?”

“No, he’s away selling gourmet-quality salt to our big customers in Munich, so he could be home very late.”

“Which customers would they be?”

“The head chef at the Kaiserhof.”

I walked into the drawing room and switched on a lamp that appeared to be made of a large rose-colored crystal. On the table next to it were several jars of pink salt. I picked one up. It was full of smaller versions of the table lamp and was the same salt that I’d seen in the lugs of the boot outside.

“I told you, my husband’s not here,” she insisted irritably, and tugged nervously at a piece of dry skin on her lower lip.

“Is this it? Your gourmet-quality salt?”

“That’s what it says on the label.”

“He’s in Munich, you say.”

“Yes. Of course, it’s possible he might stay overnight. If he’s had too much to drink. Having dinner with clients, he often does, I’m afraid. It’s an occupational hazard when you’re offering hospitality.” She lit a cigarette from a silver box with nervous fingers. By now the cleavage between her breasts was shifting like the San Andreas Fault.

“The head chef at the Kaiserhof, Konrad Held,” I lied. “I know him well. I could telephone him if you like and find out if your husband’s still there.”

“It might not be the head chef he’s seeing,” she allowed, tugging at the skin on her lip some more. “But someone else in the hotel kitchen.”

I smiled patiently. You get to know when someone is lying to you. Especially with tits as eloquent as hers. After that it’s just a question of judging the right moment to let them hear that. No one likes being called a liar to his or her face. Least of all in their own home and by the police. I almost felt sorry for the woman; if it hadn’t been for that earlier bit of sarcasm I might have been polite, but as things stood I was more inclined to bully her now, just to hurry things along. An innocent man’s life was at stake, after all. There was a fretted shelf running the length of the drawing room at just above head height and my eyes were already sorting through the books, looking for something to help bring some extra pressure to bear on her, to overcome any more resistance to our questions. Mostly the books were to do with geology, but I’d already seen a couple of titles that might serve my purpose. But for now I ignored them and walked across the drawing room to the wide, redbrick fireplace. Behind a wrought-iron screen, the log fire was still burning quietly; the log was hardly a size you’d have chosen if you’d been on your own. Whoever had built that fire from scratch had done it for a cozy evening made for two. Next to the fire was an armchair and on the chair was a copy of that day’s Völkischer Beobachter. I picked it up, sat down, and laid the paper on the hearth next to an ashtray and a tin of Von Eicken with the lid left off; in the ashtray was a pipe. After a while I picked that up as well and found the cherrywood bowl was still warm—warmer than the fire. It was all too easy to picture the man who had been seated there in front of the fire not half an hour before, puffing his tobacco like a Danube boat captain.

“It’s a nice house you have here,” said Korsch, opening a drawer in the bureau.

Frau Diesbach folded her arms defensively. Probably it helped prevent her from hitting Korsch over the head with the table lamp. “Make yourself at home, why don’t you?”

“Is there much money in table salt then?” he asked, ignoring her remark. Sometimes police work contains the very opposite of a Socratic dialogue: you say one thing, I pretend I didn’t hear it and say another.

“Like anything else, there is if you work hard.”

“I wish that was true,” said Korsch. “There’s certainly not much money in being a policeman. Isn’t that right, boss?”

“Is that what you’re looking for? Money? I assumed you were here to investigate a crime, not commit one.”

Korsch laughed harshly. “She’s a sour one. Must be all that salt, eh, boss?”

“Sounds like it.”

“You should try refining sugar, instead, missus.”

“Are you going to tell me what this is about?”

“I told you,” said Korsch, pulling open another drawer provocatively. “We’re looking for your husband.”

“And I told you. He’s not here. And he’s certainly not in that bureau.”

“Lots of people start out trying to be clever with us,” said Korsch. “But it never lasts for very long. The last laugh is usually ours. Isn’t that right, boss?”

I grunted. I didn’t feel much like laughing. Not with my jaw tied up. And certainly not after seeing poor Aneta Husák murdered in cold blood. I wasn’t about to forget that in a hurry. On top of a baby grand piano were some photographs and it wasn’t long before I started to believe that one of these was of the same scholarly-looking young man who had sent us on the wild-goose chase to Luegwinkl. After a while I got up, collected the picture off the polished piano lid, looked at it for a while, and showed it to Korsch who nodded back at me. It was him all right.

“That explains a lot,” he said.

“Who’s this?” I asked Frau Diesbach.

“My son Benno.”

“Good-looking boy, isn’t he?” Korsch was being sarcastic. With his thick glasses, receding chin, and coy expression, Benno Diesbach looked like a real wet paper bag and just the type of sensitive, weedy boy an anxious, doting mother would have wanted kept out of something as rough as the army. My mother had probably felt the same way about me when I was about twelve, assuming she ever felt anything at all.

“Where is he now?” I asked.

“I thought you said it was my husband you were looking for.”

“Just answer the question, missus,” said Korsch.

“He went out. For a beer with some friends.”

“He doesn’t look old enough.”

“He’s twenty. And he’s got nothing to do with this.”

“To do with what?” asked Korsch.

“To do with anything. Look, why are you looking for him at all?”

“Who?”

“My husband. He hasn’t broken the law.”

“No?” From among several books on geology on the shelves I fetched a copy of Alfred Döblin’s famous novel and another one by Erich Maria Remarque for good measure. They were the same cheap editions I had at home. “Someone has. Are these his books or yours?”

“They must belong to—look, does it matter? My God, they’re just some old books.”

I felt sure she’d been about to confess that the books belonged to her son, Benno. He certainly looked like anyone’s idea of a keen reader.

“These are not just books,” I said, “they’re forbidden books.” There were times when it was necessary for me to sound like a real Nazi. Times when I hated myself more than was usual, even by my debased standards. I already had the strong sense not only that Johann Diesbach had just escaped us but also that his escape was prima facie evidence of his guilt. There was that and the pink salt in the soles of the boots outside. I was pretty sure that the man who had worn those had murdered Udo Ambros.

But with each minute that his wife managed to delay us, the better were the man’s chances of evading capture and the worse were Johann Brandner’s chances of escaping a firing squad or the falling ax at Plötzensee. “Since 1933 these authors have been banned because of their Jewish descent or because of their communist or pacifist sympathies.”

“I had no idea. Says who?”

“The Ministry of Truth and Propaganda, that’s who. Don’t you see the newsreels in the cinema theaters? For the last six years we’ve been burning books we don’t like.”

“We don’t go to the cinema very much.”

“Me, I could care less what you read but ignorance of the law is no excuse, Frau Diesbach. Ownership of these books can result in deportation, imprisonment, or even death. Yes, seriously. So I advise you to cooperate with us and tell us exactly where your husband is, Frau Diesbach, otherwise it won’t just be him that’s in trouble, it will be you, too.” I wondered exactly how much she knew of what her husband had done.

“Your husband is suspected of being involved in the commission of two murders.”

“Two?” She looked surprised at the number so I guessed that maybe she’d known about Flex, but not about Udo Ambros.

“Didn’t I say we’d have the last laugh?” said Korsch.

“I’ve already told you both,” she said dully. “Johann’s in Munich.”

“With clients, yes,” said Korsch. “Yes. You said that. We didn’t believe it the first time you said it.”

The woman sat down heavily in a cloud of Guerlain and despair, and lit another cigarette. I helped myself to the one she was still smoking and which was lying in a large salt-crystal ashtray, puffed it thoughtfully, and smiled a painful smile.

“May I use your lavatory, Frau Diesbach?” I asked. “While you think things over, perhaps. And I strongly recommend that you do.”

“Yes, I suppose so. It’s at the top of the stairs.”

“What time will your son be back?” Korsch asked her.

“I really don’t know. Why?”

“When are you going to understand that we ask the questions, Frau Diesbach?”

While Korsch kept her talking I went up the narrow stairs and took a look around. The house was like a smaller version of the Berghof, only without the resident dwarf Alberich. The hallway was lined with several historic maps of the old Bavarian Rhenish Palatinate, an area of southwestern Germany that bordered the Saarland, and framed photographs of cave formations and what looked like salt mines and interesting geological formations. Opening a couple of the plain wooden doors I found small, comfortable rooms with the mattresses rolled up like pastry, and several prints of Alpine hikers. It was probably a nice, clean place to stay in the summer; any happy wanderer would have slept well and after a good German breakfast prepared by Frau Diesbach they’d think they’d done well choosing it—especially if they managed to catch a glimpse or two of her ample bosom.

I opened a closet and on a shelf behind some blankets I found several boxes of the same red Brenneke slugs that had been used to kill Udo Ambros. Leaning against a thickly papered wall in a corner of the chilly master bedroom was a Walloon sword as long as a ski pole, which almost made me glad we’d not got there earlier. A white cat was lying on the brass bed and he stared at me with bright blue eyes that were as sharp as the sword and full of a cat’s questions, which meant the answers were no more important than the time of day, the taste of fresh snow, or the shape of a cloud formation above the Kehlstein. There are times when I think it would be good to be a cat, even in that part of the world, at least as long as you stayed away from Hitler and the Landlerwald. Some of the drawers in the bedroom chest were empty and still open and, lying on the carpet, were a cuff link, a collar stud, and a 7.62 mm Parabellum cartridge; clearly someone with a Luger pistol had left in quite a hurry.

On the bedside table was a piece of paper and on this was a long list of customer names and train times for Munich and Frankfurt, which was unremarkable except for the fact that whoever had written it preferred using the same neat, semi-literate capital letters that had appeared on Udo Ambros’s “suicide” note. I folded the paper and pocketed it. More pictures among the ivory-handled hairbrushes and combs on the Biedermeier dressing table showed several of Benno, the much-loved young man who’d misdirected us earlier, clearly to allow him enough time to cycle home and warn his father, Johann—who appeared in another photograph with Udo Ambros when he’d still been in possession of a head, and before someone blew it off with a shotgun—that the police were now hot on his trail. Ambros was a tough-looking man, but Diesbach looked tougher and altogether more dislikable, not least because the mustache had been trimmed and now looked exactly like Adolf Hitler’s. I removed the pictures from their frames, put them in my coat pocket, and went into the next room. I stared at the man in the bathroom mirror, retied the Raxon keeping my jaw tight, and growled back at him:

“No wonder the cat was looking strangely at you, Gunther. You look like someone’s idea of toothache.”

The bath was full of cold water, as if Frau Diesbach had been on the point of having a bath when her heroic son had arrived home and announced my imminent arrival; her stockings and underwear lay on a white basket chair behind the door. In another place I might have picked them up and sniffed them; it had been a while since I’d enjoyed the intimate smell of an attractive woman and I was beginning to experience withdrawal symptoms. Instead I picked up her brassiere and for a moment or two admired its sheer size. It looked like a slingshot that had once belonged to Goliath and one that might have substantially improved his slim chances against the shepherd boy David. That and a decent boulder or two. I’d always felt sorry for Goliath. But Bavarian mountain air does strange things to a Berlin Fritz like me.

There was a chromium-plated electric radiator on the tiled wall, a set of false teeth in a glass on the windowsill, and a large bathroom cabinet above the basin. I opened it and immediately saw the answers to questions the white cat might have cared more about if he’d known exactly how they were going to affect him. The plain fact of the matter is that you can’t get a plate of fish and a saucer of milk if your owners are locked up in a concentration camp, or worse. But of professional satisfaction at my having suddenly grasped the full extent of what was going on here in the Diesbach home, there was none. Besides, I doubted that it was the kind of elegant drawing-room solution to a crime you’d have found in the work of any respectable detective storyteller like Agatha Christie or Dorothy L. Sayers; it wasn’t the kind of police evidence that made you feel anything but ashamed to have discovered it. And I felt sick to my stomach at what I was now obliged to go downstairs and say to Frau Diesbach’s face, because in the circumstances I didn’t know that I’d have done anything different from what Johann Diesbach had done—except perhaps not shoot Udo Ambros. Nobody deserved to have their face become the startled facsimile of a painting by Picasso. In the bathroom cabinet was a bottle of Protargol. And it was about then I remembered that Protargol was silver nitrate and that the symbol for silver on the periodic table was Ag. Which probably explained the Ag list in Flex’s loathsome ledger. There was some Pervitin, too—P for Pervitin?—but that hardly seemed important beside the standard medical treatment for a venereal disease. The question was, which of them was afflicted with the dose of jelly? Johann Diesbach, his wife, or both? Benno Diesbach didn’t even come into my thinking here; from the look of him he was a long way off that first moment of joy when a boy becomes a very startled man. I’d seen more obvious-looking virgins on a Berlin street corner. I pocketed both types of pill and ran downstairs with more evidence for my present theories than Archimedes wearing just a bath towel.