March Violets

by Philip Kerr

  I said: ‘Listen, Herr Doktor, like I was just telling your boy here, I’m tired and I’ve drunk enough to forget that I’ve got a bank manager who worries about my welfare.’ Schemm reached into his jacket pocket and I didn’t even shift, which shows you how blue I must have been. As it was he only took out his wallet.

  ‘I have made inquiries about you and I am informed that you offer a reliable service. I need you now for a couple of hours, for which I will pay you 200 Reichsmarks: in effect a week’s money.’ He laid his wallet on his knee and thumbed two blues onto his trouser-leg. This couldn’t have been easy, since he had only one arm. ‘And afterwards Ulrich will drive you home.’

  I took the notes. ‘Hell,’ I said, ‘I was only going to go to bed and sleep. I can do that anytime.’ I ducked my head and stepped into the car. ‘Let’s go, Ulrich.’

  The door slammed and Ulrich climbed into the driver’s seat, with Freshface alongside of him. We headed west.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I said.

  ‘All in good time, Herr Gunther,’ he said. ‘Help yourself to a drink, or a cigarette.’ He flipped open a cocktail cabinet which looked as though it had been salvaged from the Titanic and produced a cigarette box. ‘These are American.’

  I said yes to the smoke but no to the drink: when people are as ready to part with 200 marks as Dr Schemm had been, it pays to keep your wits about you.

  ‘Would you be so kind as to light me, please?’ said Schemm, fitting a cigarette between his lips. ‘Matches are the one thing I cannot manage. I lost my arm with Ludendorff at the capture of the fortress of Liege. Did you see any active service?’ The voice was fastidious, suave even: soft and slow, with just a hint of cruelty. The sort of voice, I thought, that could lead you into incriminating yourself quite nicely, thank you. The sort of voice that would have done well for its owner had he worked for the Gestapo. I lit our cigarettes and settled back into the Mercedes’s big seat.

  ‘Yes, I was in Turkey.’ Christ, there were so many people taking an interest in my war record all of a sudden, that I wondered if I hadn’t better apply for an Old Comrades Badge. I looked out of the window and saw that we were driving towards the Grunewald, an area of forest that lies on the west side of the city, near the River Havel.

  ‘Commissioned?’

  ‘Sergeant.’ I heard him smile.

  ‘I was a major,’ he said, and that was me put firmly in my place. ‘And you became a policeman after the war?’

  ‘No, not right away. I was a civil servant for a while, but I couldn’t stand the routine. I didn’t join the force until 1922.’

  ‘And when did you leave?’

  ‘Listen, Herr Doktor, I don’t remember you putting me on oath when I got into the car.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was merely curious to discover whether you left of your own accord, or . . .’

  ‘Or was pushed? You’ve got a lot of forehead asking me that, Schemm.’

  ‘Have I?’ he said innocently.

  ‘But I’ll answer your question. I left. I dare say if I’d waited long enough they’d have weeded me out like all the others. I’m not a National Socialist, but I’m not a fucking Kozi either; I dislike Bolshevism just like the Party does, or at least I think it does. But that’s not quite good enough for the modern Kripo or Sipo or whatever it’s called now. In their book if you’re not for it you must be against it.’

  ‘And so you, a Kriminalinspektor, left Kripo,’ he paused, and then added in tones of affected surprise, ‘to become the house detective at the Adlon Hotel.’

  ‘You’re pretty cute,’ I sneered, ‘asking me all these questions when you already know the answers.’

  ‘My client likes to know about the people who work for him,’ he said smugly.

  ‘I haven’t taken the case yet. Maybe I’ll turn it down just to see your face.’

  ‘Maybe. But you’d be a fool. Berlin has a dozen like you - private investigators.’ He named my profession with more than a little distaste.

  ‘So why pick me?’

  ‘You have worked for my client before, indirectly. A couple of years ago you conducted an insurance investigation for the Germania Life Assurance Company, of which my client is a major shareholder. While the Kripo were still whistling in the dark you were successful in recovering some stolen bonds.’

  ‘I remember it.’ And I had good reason to. It had been one of my first cases after leaving the Adlon and setting up as a private investigator. I said: ‘I was lucky.’

  ‘Never underestimate luck,’ said Schemm pompously. Sure, I thought: just look at the Führer.

  By now we were on the edge of the Grunewald Forest in Dahlem, home to some of the richest and most influential people in the country, like the Ribbentrops. We pulled up at a huge wrought-iron gate which hung between massive walls, and Freshface had to hop out to wrestle it open. Ulrich drove on through.

  ‘Drive on,’ ordered Schemm. ‘Don’t wait. We’re late enough as it is.’ We drove along an avenue of trees for about five minutes before arriving at a wide gravel courtyard around which were set on three sides a long centre building and the two wings that comprised the house. Ulrich stopped beside a small fountain and jumped out to open the doors. We got out.

  Circling the courtyard was an ambulatory, with a roof supported by thick beams and wooden columns, and this was patrolled by a man with a pair of evil-looking Dobermanns. There wasn’t much light apart from the coachlamp by the front door, but as far as I could see the house was white with pebbledash walls and a deep mansard roof — as big as a decent-sized hotel of the sort that I couldn’t afford. Somewhere in the trees behind the house a peacock was screaming for help.

  Closer to the door I got my first good look at the doctor. I suppose he was quite a handsome man. Since he was at least fifty, I suppose you would say that he was distinguished-looking. Taller than he had seemed when sitting in the back of the car, and dressed fastidiously, but with a total disregard for fashion. He wore a stiff collar you could have sliced a loaf with, a pin-striped suit of a light-grey shade, a creamy-coloured waistcoat and spats; his only hand was gloved in grey kid, and on his neatly cropped square grey head he wore a large grey hat with a brim that surrounded the high, well-pleated crown like a castle moat. He looked like an old suit of armour.

  He ushered me towards the big mahogany door, which swung open to reveal an ashen-faced butler who stood aside as we crossed the threshold and stepped into the wide entrance hall. It was the kind of hall that made you feel lucky just to have got through the door. Twin flights of stairs with gleaming white banisters led up to the upper floors, and on the ceiling hung a chandelier that was bigger than a church-bell and gaudier than a stripper’s earrings. I made a mental note to raise my fees.

  The butler, who was an Arab, bowed gravely and asked me for my hat.

  ‘I’ll hang on to it, if you don’t mind,’ I said, feeding its brim through my fingers. ‘It’ll help to keep my hands off the silver.’

  ‘As you wish, sir.’

  Schemm handed the butler his own hat as if to the manor born. Maybe he was, but with lawyers I always assume that they came by their wealth and position through avarice and by means nefarious: I never yet met one that I could trust. His glove he neatly removed with an almost double-jointed contortion of his fingers, and dropped it into his hat. Then he straightened his necktie and asked the butler to announce us.

  We waited in the library. It wasn’t big by the standards of a Bismarck or a Hindenburg, and you couldn’t have packed more than six cars between the Reichstag-sized desk and the door. It was decorated in early Lohengrin, with its great beams, granite chimney-piece in which a log crackled quietly, and wall-mounted weaponry. There were plenty of books, of the sort you buy by the metre: lots of German poets and philosophers and jurists with whom I can claim a degree of familiarity, but only as the names of streets and cafés and bars.

  I took a hike around the room. ‘If I’m not back in five minutes, send out a se
arch party.’

  Schemm sighed and sat down on one of the two leather sofas that were positioned at right angles to the fire. He picked a magazine off the rack and pretended to read. ‘Don’t these little cottages give you claustrophobia?’ Schemm sighed petulantly, like an old maiden aunt catching the smell of gin on the pastor’s breath.

  ‘Do sit down, Herr Gunther,’ he said.

  I ignored him. Fingering the two hundreds in my trouser pocket to help me stay awake, I meandered over to the desk and glanced over its green-leather surface. There was a copy of the Berliner Tageblatt, well read, and a pair of half-moon spectacles; a pen; a heavy brass ashtray containing the butt of a well-chewed cigar and, next to it, the box of Black Wisdom Havanas from which it had been taken; a pile of correspondence and several silver-framed photographs. I glanced over at Schemm, who was making heavy weather of his magazine and his eyelids, and then picked up one of the framed photographs. She was dark and pretty, with a full figure, which is just how I like them, although I could tell that she might find my after-dinner conversation quite resistible: her graduation robes told me that.

  ‘She’s beautiful, don’t you think?’ said a voice that came from the direction of the library door and caused Schemm to get up off the sofa. It was a singsong sort of voice with a light Berlin accent. I turned to face its owner and found myself looking at a man of negligible stature. His face was florid and puffy and had something so despondent in it that I almost failed to recognize it. While Schemm was busy bowing I mumbled something complimentary about the girl in the photograph.

  ‘Herr Six,’ said Schemm with more obsequy than a sultan’s concubine, ‘may I introduce Herr Bernhard Gunther.’ He turned to me, his voice changing to suit my depressed bank balance. ‘This is Herr Doktor Hermann Six.’ It was funny, I thought, how it was that in more elevated circles everyone was a damned doctor. I shook his hand and found it held for an uncomfortably long time as my new client’s eyes looked into my face. You get a lot of clients who do that: they reckon themselves as judges of a man’s character, and after all they’re not going to reveal their embarrassing little problems to a man who looks shifty and dishonest: so it’s fortunate that I’ve got the look of someone who is steady and dependable. Anyway, about the new client’s eyes: they were blue, large and prominent, and with an odd sort of watery brightness in them, as if he had just stepped out of a cloud of mustard gas. It was with some shock that it dawned on me that the man had been crying.

  Six released my hand and picked up the photograph I’d just been looking at. He stared at it for several seconds and then sighed profoundly.

  ‘She was my daughter,’ he said, with his heart in his throat. I nodded patiently. He replaced the photograph face down on the desk, and pushed his monkishly-styled grey hair across his brow. ‘Was, because she is dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said gravely.

  ‘You shouldn’t be,’ he said. ‘Because if she were alive you wouldn’t be here with the chance to make a lot of money.’ I listened: he was talking my language. ‘You see, she was murdered.’ He paused for dramatic effect: clients do a lot of that, but this one was good.

  ‘Murdered,’ I repeated dumbly.

  ‘Murdered.’ He tugged at one of his loose, elephantine ears before thrusting his gnarled hands into the pockets of his shapeless navy-blue suit. I couldn’t help noticing that the cuffs of his shirt were frayed and dirty. I’d never met a steel millionaire before (I’d heard of Hermann Six; he was one of the major Ruhr industrialists), but this struck me as odd. He rocked on the balls of his feet, and I glanced down at his shoes. You can tell a lot by a client’s shoes. That’s the only thing I’ve picked up from Sherlock Holmes. Six’s were ready for the Winter Relief- that’s the National Socialist People’s Welfare Organization where you send all your old clothes. But then German shoes aren’t much good anyway. The ersatz leather is like cardboard; just like the meat, and the coffee, and the butter, and the cloth. But coming back to Herr Six, I didn’t have him marked as so stricken by grief that he was sleeping in his clothes. No; I decided he was one of these eccentric millionaires that you sometimes read about in the newspapers: they spend nothing on anything, which is how they come to be rich in the first place.

  ‘She was shot dead, in cold blood,’ he said bitterly. I could see we were in for a long night. I got out my cigarettes.

  ‘Mind if I smoke?’ I asked. He seemed to recover himself at that.

  ‘Do excuse me, Herr Gunther,’ he sighed. ‘I’m forgetting my manners. Would you like a drink or something?’ The ‘or something’ sounded just fine, like a nice four-poster, perhaps, but I asked for a mocha instead. ‘Fritz?’

  Schemm stirred on the big sofa. ‘Thank you, just a glass of water,’ he said humbly. Six pulled the bell-rope, and then selected a fat black cigar from the box on the desk. He ushered me to a seat, and I dumped myself on the other sofa, opposite Schemm. Six took a taper and pushed it at a flame. Then he lit his cigar and sat down beside the man in grey. Behind him the library door opened and a young man of about thirty-five came into the room. A pair of rimless glasses worn studiously at the end of a broad, almost negroid nose belied his athletic frame. He snatched them off, stared awkwardly at me and then at his employer.

  ‘Do you want me in this meeting, Herr Six?’ he said. His accent was vaguely Frankfurt.

  ‘No, it’s all right, Hjalmar,’ said Six. ‘You get off to bed, there’s a good fellow. Perhaps you’d ask Farraj to bring us a mocha and a glass of water, and my usual.’

  ‘Um, right away, Herr Six.’ Again he looked at me, and I couldn’t work out whether my being there was a source of vexation to him or not, so I made a mental note to speak to him when I got the chance.

  ‘There is one more thing,’ said Six, turning round on the sofa. ‘Please remind me to go through the funeral arrangements with you first thing tomorrow. I want you to look after things while I’m away.’

  ‘Very well, Herr Six,’ and with that he wished us good night and left.

  ‘Now then, Herr Gunther,’ said Six after the door had closed. He spoke with the Black Wisdom stuck in the corner of his mouth, so that he looked like a fairground barker and sounded like a child with a piece of candy. ‘I must apologize for bringing you here at this unearthly hour; however, I’m a busy man. Most important of all, you must understand that I am also a very private one.’

  ‘All the same, Herr Six,’ I said, ‘I must have heard of you.’

  ‘That is very probable. In my position I have to be the patron of many causes and the sponsor of many charities - you know the sort of thing I’m talking about. Wealth does have its obligations.’

  So does an outside toilet, I thought. Anticipating what was coming, I yawned inside myself. But I said: ‘I can certainly believe it,’ with such an affectation of understanding that it caused him to hesitate for a short moment before continuing with the well-worn phrases I had heard so many times before. ‘Need for discretion’; and ‘no wish to involve the authorities in my affairs’; and ‘complete respect for confidentiality’, etc., etc. That’s the thing about my job. People are always telling you how to conduct their case, almost as if they didn’t quite trust you, almost as if you were going to have to improve your standards in order to work for them.

  ‘If I could make a better living as a not-so-private investigator, I’d have tried it a long time ago,’ I told him. ‘But in my line of business a big mouth is bad for business. Word would get around, and one or two well-established insurance companies and legal practices who I can call regular clients would go elsewhere. Look, I know you’ve had me checked out, so let’s get down to business, shall we?’ The interesting thing about the rich is that they like being told where to get off. They confuse it with honesty. Six nodded appreciatively.

  At this point, the butler cruised smoothly into the room like a rubber wheel on a waxed floor and, smelling faintly of sweat and something spicy, he served the coffee, the water and his master’s brandy with the b
lank look of a man who changes his earplugs six times a day. I sipped my coffee and reflected that I could have told Six that my nonagenarian grandmother had eloped with the Führer and the butler would have continued to serve the drinks without so much as flexing a hair follicle. When he left the room I swear I hardly noticed.

  ‘The photograph you were looking at was taken only a few years ago, at my daughter’s graduation. Subsequently she became a schoolteacher at the Arndt Grammar School in Berlin-Dahlem.’ I found a pen and prepared to take notes on the back of Dagmarr’s wedding invitation. ‘No,’ he said, ‘please don’t take notes, just listen. Herr Schemm will provide you with a complete dossier of information at the conclusion of this meeting.

  ‘Actually, she was rather a good schoolteacher, although I ought to be honest and tell you that I could have wished for her to have done something else with her life. Grete - yes, I forgot to tell you her name - Grete had the most beautiful singing voice, and I wanted her to take up singing professionally. But in 1930 she married a young lawyer attached to the Berlin Provincial Court. His name was Paul Pfarr.’

  ‘Was?’ I said. My interruption drew the profound sigh from him once again.

  ‘Yes. I should have mentioned it. I’m afraid he’s dead too.’

  ‘Two murders, then,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Two murders.’ He took out his wallet and a snapshot. ‘This was taken at their wedding.’

  There wasn’t much to tell from it except that, like most society wedding-receptions, it had been held at the Adlon Hotel. I recognized the Whispering Fountain’s distinctive pagoda, with its carved elephants from the Adlon’s Goethe Garden. I stifled a real yawn. It wasn’t a particularly good photograph, and I’d had more than enough of weddings for one day and a half. I handed it back.