She smiled as the door of the beer hall opened and we heard the band in the Hofbräuhaus strike up with “So Long Old Peter,” which was enough to put a smile on anyone’s face.
“All right, I’m impressed,” she said. “Let’s agree that you’re not as dumb as you look. What of it?”
I took her by the arm and led her farther away from the beer hall and down a quiet alley.
“If I’m going to perform dressage for you, angel, I need to know what happened. That’s all. You see, when you’re a detective and you find out that someone killed someone else, it says on page one of the police manual that you’re supposed to do something about it. It’s just good professional conduct. Like I said, that was then. But I still have to look at myself in the shaving mirror every morning. And it wouldn’t do for me to lose all my self-respect about this. Not that there’s much of that left, you understand, but maybe there’s still enough that I need to be able to meet my own eye. Any detective would tell you the same thing. Finding out things, cracking a case open, solving crimes — even if that doesn’t amount to much more than solving the crossword in today’s newspaper — it’s what detectives do, angel, even when we choose never to do anything about it afterward. That’s all I’m saying. I’ve got an itch and I want you to help me scratch it. After that we can forget all about it. Honest. But I need to know, see?”
She sighed, snatched a drag on the cigarette, and then shot me a sulky look.
“Talk to me,” I said, taking hold of her elbow. “You knew her. Tell me what happened.”
“All right,” she said, pulling her elbow away again. “But it wasn’t murder, Gunther. You’re wrong about that. I promise you, I didn’t mean to kill her. It was an accident.”
“Who was she? The woman in the boat.”
“Does it matter now?”
“I think so.”
“All right. She was an old girlfriend of mine. Someone who lived in Zurich. She came to the house in Küsnacht one night, got stinking drunk, and we had an argument. Maybe I was a bit drunk, too, I don’t know. We argued about a man. What else? She was planning to go and see this man and I said that she shouldn’t. Maybe I was a little more forceful than that. Anyway, the argument grew a bit heated and I’m not sure why but she took a swing at me and missed, and then I hit her back. I slapped her, hoping to bring her back to her senses. It didn’t. I slapped her a little too hard and caught her right on the chin and she went down like Schmeling in the first. Hit her head on a big cast-iron firedog and that was it. She was dead. Agnes used to be a nurse and checked her pulse, but it was no good. There was blood all over the carpet and it was obvious to anyone that she was dead. Have you ever killed your best friend? It has its low points. I sat around for a long time, crying and wondering what to do. Feeling sorry for her but sorrier for myself, I guess. Well, I wasn’t married to Stefan at the time — we were just sort of living in the same house. The Swiss could have deported me at any time. Anyway, when he came home he took charge of everything. It was Stefan who suggested that we should dispose of the body. That it certainly wouldn’t help my movie career or him if we involved the police. By then I was a little calmer. So, in the middle of the night, we carried her down to the boathouse and took her out in this old boat that was moored in there. Stefan drove that boat while I followed in The Gretchen. We sailed down the lakeshore for a bit and then scuttled her. That’s it. Before you ask, I married Stefan the following week. She stayed down in the water for almost a year before they found her, but by then it was almost impossible to identify her, of course. So, I figured I was in the clear. At least I did until yesterday, Gunther.” She tossed her cigarette away and stamped her foot. “Why did you have to—” She sighed. “Be so damned clever? I hate you knowing this. I could kill you, Gunther. Really I could.”
“This is a nice quiet place. Nobody’s around. Maybe now’s your chance.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
I took the Walther out of its shoulder holster, worked the slide to put one in the chamber, put it in her hand, and lifted her arm so that the gun was pointed straight at my heart.
“You said yourself that nobody has ever done something noble for you. Well, now I’m doing it. Sacrificing myself to your happiness. Just like one of those Teutonic knights.”
“Be careful. I’ll do it. You just watch me.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “Be my guest. That’s a P38 you’re holding. It fires eight rounds of nine-millimeter Luger ammunition. But at this kind of range one’s more than enough to put a decent-sized hole in me.”
“Don’t be so sure I won’t do it, you big stupid ape.”
“That’s really the point of the whole exercise, my love. A month or two ago I’d have said you’d be doing me a favor or something like that. But since I met you, I’ve changed my opinion.”
“You’re drunk.”
“Not so drunk that I don’t know exactly what I’m doing. All you’ve got to do is pull the trigger, drop the gun, and walk quickly away. That’s right. Think about it. With me gone, there’s no one in Germany who’s ever going to know that you killed that girl. You can go on being a movie star without a care in the world. No one will ever figure a beautiful woman like you for a shooter. Especially not in Munich. Unlike Prussians, Bavarians are a little old-fashioned like that. Go ahead and shoot.”
“Stop it, Gunther.”
“You can do it if you want to do it. You said you wanted to kill me. Believe me, on a dark night, in a quiet street, with a loaded gun in your hand, you’ll never get a better chance than this.”
“Stop it,” she said. “Of course I don’t want to kill you, Gunther. I was just saying that. Why would I want you dead, you idiot? I told you I love you, didn’t I? Well, I do.”
She lowered the gun and turned her face to the wall. I took the gun away from her and let the hammer down gently. The safety was still on — had been all along — but she wasn’t to know that. It’s the good thing about the P38 — it’s always been very safe, for a gun. You can keep one quite safely in the chamber all the time without worrying that you’re going to blow your ear off. I returned the P38 to my shoulder holster, took her in my arms and then kissed her face, which was now wet with tears.
“Only now I’m sure of that,” I said quietly. “And that’s really all that matters, isn’t it?”
“You’re crazy,” she said. “Suppose I’d shot you?”
“You didn’t. And if you had shot me, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The fact is, I really don’t like the idea of carrying on without you in my life. You’d have been doing me a favor, angel.”
“I don’t believe that,” she said.
I kissed her again. “Sure you do.”
“What happens now? About the other thing?”
“The lady in the lake?”
She nodded.
“Nothing. Maybe you weren’t listening. These days murder isn’t a crime, it’s a map of Germany’s so-called protectorates and puppet states with the numbers of dead proudly delivered and announced as birthday presents for the leader. There’s no reason why you should understand what I mean by that, or why anyone should tell you. Maybe one day I’ll explain it, but not now. So forget about all that and we’ll make it just this: whatever happened, whatever you did, I don’t give a damn. All that matters now is today. And that’s all that will matter tomorrow. And the day after. Your secret is safe with me. And anytime you bid me to go and throw someone or something into a lake for you, angel, I’m your man.”