CHAPTER 5
He wore a dark, belted raincoat and his hair was wet from the rain. He slipped an arm about Anna’s shoulders and kissed her lightly on the cheek, and then he smiled across at Chavasse. “So you found her all right?”
Chavasse nodded. “No trouble at all.”
Hardt removed his coat and threw it across a chair, and then he walked to the table and sat down. Anna got another cup from the kitchen and filled it with coffee. He drank a little. “It’s raining heavier than ever now.” He looked up at her. “Anything to report?”
She nodded. “Katie Holdt didn’t come in to work. I checked with her landlady. Apparently, she packed a bag and left without leaving any forwarding address.”
He put down the cup. “I was hoping she might put us onto something in time.”
“What about the hotel in Gluckstrasse?” Chavasse asked. “Did you find anything of interest?”
“Only the fact that Muller never lived there,” Hardt said. “He seems to have used the place simply as an address where he could safely pick up his mail.”
“And Otto Schmidt?” Chavasse said. “Any luck there?”
Hardt nodded. “He’s a widower – lives on his own in an apartment in Steinerstrasse. That’s not too far from here.”
Chavasse glanced at his watch. It was just after four-thirty. “How about paying him a visit? It’s amazing what one can sometimes get out of people in the cold, gray light of dawn.”
“Just what I was going to suggest.” Hardt got to his feet, and as he reached for his coat, he appeared to remember something. He turned to the girl. “By the way, Anna, didn’t you tell me that Muller had been in the Army?”
She nodded, a puzzled look on her face. “That’s right. Why, is anything wrong?”
“Only that according to a photo Chavasse found when searching Muller’s body on the train, he was in the Luftwaffe.”
“But he was in the Army,” Anna said. “I’ve got an old photo to prove it.” She picked up her handbag and rummaged through it. After a moment, she handed it across. “It fell from Katie’s handbag yesterday after she’d been showing it to me. It was taken in 1942 when she was only a child.”
Hardt took the photo and Chavasse moved to look over his shoulder. The photo was cracked and faded, but it was still possible to see the pride in the face of the little girl as she held the hand of the big brother who stood stiffly to attention in his Army uniform.
Chavasse frowned. “But this isn’t Muller,” he said to Anna.
She said firmly, “But it is – why would Katie Holdt lie? In any case, I can tell that she definitely is the little girl and there’s an unmistakable family likeness between her and the soldier. It must be her brother.”
“Then who was the man in your compartment?” Hardt said to Chavasse.
Chavasse shook his head. “He wasn’t Muller, we can be certain of that.”
“Then what do you think happened?”
Chavasse pulled on his raincoat and buttoned it quickly. “I’d only be guessing,” he said, “and I never like to do that. Let’s say a certain pattern has formed in my mind. I think a few words with Otto Schmidt might go a long way toward completing the picture.”
“Then we’ll go and see him,” Hardt said. He turned to Anna. “We’ll take the car. Have you got the keys?”
She quickly took them from her bag and handed them across, and then she opened the door for them. Hardt went out without a word, but as Chavasse descended the stairs, he glanced back and saw her still standing there, framed in the opening of the door. She raised her hand and her mouth moved silently. When he looked back again, she had closed the door.
THEY parked the car around the corner from Steinerstrasse and walked the rest of the way. Hardt found the apartment house with no difficulty and they moved inside. Schmidt’s apartment was on the third floor and they paused outside the door and listened. There was no sound and Chavasse gently tried the door. It was locked.
Hardt pressed the bell firmly, holding it in position, and they waited. Within a few moments, they heard steps approaching the door. It opened on a chain and Schmidt said sleepily, “Yes, who is it?”
“Police!” Chavasse said gruffly in German. “Come on, open up!”
Schmidt seemed to come to life at once. He disengaged the chain and opened the door. As he saw Chavasse, his jaw dropped. Chavasse moved in quickly and jabbed a fist into the man’s belly before he could cry out. Schmidt sagged at the knees and started to keel forward. Chavasse ducked, caught him across one shoulder, and walked on into the room.
Behind him, Hardt closed the door, and Chavasse flung Schmidt into a chair. He lit a cigarette, sat back, and waited.
Schmidt looked terrible in the half-light of the nearby table lamp. After a while, he seemed to have got his breath back. Chavasse pulled a chair forward and sat in front of him. “Surprised to see me, Schmidt?”
Schmidt looked frightened to death. He moistened his lips. “The police are looking for you, Herr Chavasse.”
“Nice of you to let me know,” Chavasse said. He leaned across and slashed Schmidt backhanded across the mouth. “Now let’s cut out the polite talk and get down to business. The coffee you served me on the train just before we arrived at Osnabruck – it was drugged, wasn’t it?”
Schmidt made a feeble effort to protest. “I don’t know what you are talking about, mein Herr.”
Chavasse leaned forward. “I haven’t got much time, Schmidt, so I’ll make it brief. I’ll give you about ten seconds to start talking. If you don’t, I’m going to have to break your left wrist. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try the right one as well.”
Schmidt’s mouth went slack. “But I daren’t tell you, mein Herr. If I do, he’ll kill me.”
“Who will?” Hardt said, moving across the room quickly and standing at the back of the chair.
Schmidt looked up at him, his eyes round and staring. “Inspector Steiner,” he whispered.
“I thought so,” Chavasse said. “Now we’re beginning to get somewhere. The man who was killed in my compartment – was he the man who boarded the train at Osnabruck?”
Schmidt shook his head. “No, mein Herr.”
“Who was he then?” Hardt demanded.
Schmidt seemed to have difficulty in forming the words and when he spoke, it was in a whisper. “He was the one Steiner and Dr. Kruger brought on board at Rheine on the stretcher.”
“And was there anything peculiar about him when they boarded the train?” Chavasse said. He pulled Schmidt forward by the front of his dressing gown. “Come on, answer me!”
“He was dead, mein Herr!” Schmidt moaned and collapsed in the chair, sobbing.
Chavasse stood up. “I thought so. There was something about the body that didn’t quite fit when I examined it. At the time my brain was still feeling the aftereffects of the drug and I couldn’t make any sense of it. But I remembered on the way here in the car. The fingers had already stiffened and the body was as cold as clay.”
“Because he’d been dead for some hours?” Hardt said.
Chavasse nodded. “I don’t know who he was. Perhaps simply a body supplied by Dr. Kruger. He and Steiner boarded the train at Rheine, made Schmidt drug my coffee, and waited in my compartment for the real Muller to board the train at Osnabruck.”
“Then Muller was the man on the stretcher when it left the train at Hamburg?” Hardt said.
Chavasse nodded. “It was a neat plan. They eliminated me and they got their hands on Muller. Presumably, they intend to screw the information out of him at their leisure.”
“I wonder where they’ve taken him,” Hardt said.
Chavasse shrugged and then a thought occurred to him. “Perhaps our friend here can tell us.” He lifted Schmidt’s head back by the hair. “Any suggestions, Schmidt?”