‘I’d appreciate it, Alex.’
‘You want to advertise yourself, maybe?’
‘Sorry, Alex, but this is a case.’
‘I get it. Spying on the competition, eh?’
‘Something like that.’
I spent the rest of that afternoon reading Gestapo reports on Streicher and his Der Stürmer associates: of the Gauleiter’s affair with one Anni Seitz, and others, which he conducted in secret from his wife Kunigunde; of his son Lothar’s affair with an English girl called Mitford who was of noble birth; of Stürmer editor Ernst Hiemer’s homosexuality; of Stürmer cartoonist Philippe Rupprecht’s illegal activities after the war in Argentina; and of how the Stürmer team of writers included a man called Fritz Brand, who was really a Jew by the name of Jonas Wolk.
These reports made fascinating, salacious reading, of the sort that would no doubt have appealed to Der Stürmer’s own following, but they didn’t bring me any nearer to establishing a connection between Streicher and the murders.
Sievers called back at around five, and said that Vogelmann’s advertising was costing something like three or four hundred marks a month.
‘When did he start spending that kind of mouse?’
‘Since the beginning of July. Only he’s not spending it, Bernie.’
‘Don’t tell me he’s getting it for nothing.’
‘No, somebody else is picking up the bill.’
‘Oh? Who?’
‘Well that’s the funny thing, Bernie. Can you think of any reason why the Lange Publishing Company should be paying for a private investigator’s advertising campaign?’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘That’s very interesting, Alex. I owe you one.’
‘Just make sure that if you ever decide to do some advertising it’s me you speak to first, all right?’
‘You bet.’
I put down the receiver and opened my diary. My account for work done on Frau Gertrude Lange’s behalf was at least a week overdue. Glancing at my watch I thought I could just about beat the westbound traffic.
They had the painters in at the house in Herbertstrasse when I called, and Frau Lange’s black maid complained bitterly about people coming and going all the time so that she was never off her feet. You wouldn’t have thought it to look at her. She was even fatter than I remembered.
‘You’ll have to wait here in the hall while I go and see if she’s available,’ she told me. ‘Everywhere else is being decorated. Don’t touch anything, mind.’ She flinched as an enormous crash echoed through the house and, mumbling about men with dirty overalls disrupting the place, she went off in search of her mistress, leaving me to tap my heels on the marble floor.
It seemed to make sense, their decorating the place. They probably did it every year, instead of spring cleaning. I ran my hand over an art-deco bronze of a leaping salmon that occupied the middle of a great round table. I might have enjoyed its tactile smoothness if the thing hadn’t been covered in dust. I turned, grimacing, as the black cauldron waddled back into the hall. She grimaced back at me and then down at my feet.
‘You see what your boots has gone and done to my clean floor?’ she said pointing at the several black marks my heels had left.
I tutted with theatrical insincerity.
‘Perhaps you can persuade her to buy a new one,’ I said. I was certain she swore under her breath before telling me to follow her.
We went along the same hallway that was a couple of coats of paint above gloomy, to the double doors of the sitting-room–office. Frau Lange, her chins and her dog were waiting for me on the same chaise longue, except that it had been recovered with a shade of material that was easy on the eye only if you had a piece of grit in there on which to concentrate. Having lots of money is no guarantee of good taste, but it can make the lack of it more glaringly obvious.
‘Don’t you own a telephone?’ she boomed through her cigarette smoke like a fog-horn. I heard her chuckle as she added: ‘I think you must have once been a debt-collector or something.’ Then, realizing what she had said, she clutched at one of her sagging jowls. ‘Oh God, I haven’t paid your bill, have I?’ She laughed again, and stood up. ‘I’m most awfully sorry.’
‘That’s all right,’ I said, watching her go to the desk and take out her cheque-book.
‘And I haven’t yet thanked you properly for the speedy way in which you handled things. I’ve told all my friends about how good you were.’ She handed me the cheque. ‘I’ve put a small bonus on there. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to have done with that terrible man. In your letter you said that it appeared as if he had hanged himself, Herr Gunther. Saved somebody else the trouble, eh?’ She laughed again, loudly, like an amateur actress performing rather too vigorously to be wholly credible. Her teeth were also false.
‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ I said. I didn’t see any point in telling her about my suspicion that Heydrich had had Klaus Hering killed with the aim of expediting my re-joining Kripo. Clients don’t much care for loose ends. I’m not all that fond of them myself.
It was now that she remembered that her case had also happened to cost Bruno Stahlecker his life. She let her laughter subside, and fixing a more serious expression to her face she set about expressing her condolences. This also involved her cheque-book. For a moment I thought about saying something noble to do with the hazards of the profession, but then I thought of Bruno’s widow and let her finish writing it.
‘Very generous,’ I said. ‘I’ll see that this gets to his wife and family.’
‘Please do,’ she said. ‘And if there’s anything else that I can do for them, you will let me know, won’t you?’
I said that I would.
‘There is something you can do for me, Herr Gunther,’ she said. ‘There are still the letters I gave you. My son asked me if those last few could be returned to him.’
‘Yes, of course. I’d forgotten.’ But what was that she said? Was it possible that she meant the letters I still held in the file back at my office were the only surviving letters? Or did she mean that Reinhard Lange already had the rest? In which case, how had he come by them? Certainly I had failed to find any more of the letters when I searched Hering’s apartment. What had become of them?
‘I’ll drop them round myself,’ I said. ‘Thank goodness he has the rest of them back safely.’
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ she said.
So there it was. He did have them.
I began to move towards the door. ‘Well, I’d better be getting along, Frau Lange.’ I waved the two cheques in the air and then slipped them into my wallet. ‘Thanks for your generosity.’
‘Not at all.’
I frowned as if something had occurred to me.
‘There is one thing that puzzles me,’ I said. ‘Something I meant to ask you about. What interest does your company have in the Rolf Vogelmann Detective Agency?’
‘Rolf Vogelmann?’ she repeated uncomfortably.
‘Yes. You see I learnt quite by accident that the Lange Publishing Company has been funding an advertising campaign for Rolf Vogelmann since July of this year. I was merely wondering why you should have hired me when you might with more reason have hired him?’
Frau Lange blinked deliberately and shook her head.
‘I’m afraid that I have absolutely no idea.’
I shrugged and allowed myself a little smile. ‘Well, as I say, it just puzzled me, that’s all. Nothing important. Do you sign all the company cheques, Frau Lange? I mean, I just wondered if this might be something your son could have done on his own without informing you. Like buying that magazine you told me about. Now what was its name? Urania.’