“Yes. Exactly as we found him.”
“Then I fear you are right to be suspicious, Herr Gunther. You see, my husband is wearing his pajama jacket in bed. He never wore a jacket when he was in bed. I used to pack him two pairs of pajamas, but he only ever wore the trousers. Someone else must have put the jacket on him. You see, he used to sweat a lot at night. Fat men often do. Which is why he never wore the jacket. Which reminds me. When the police returned his belongings, I received only one pajama jacket. Two pairs of pajama trousers but only one jacket. At the time I thought the police must have kept it or that perhaps they had lost it. Not that it seemed of any great importance. But now that I’ve seen this photograph, I rather think it must be important. Don’t you?”
“Yes. I do.” I lit another cigarette and stood up to help myself to a third drink. “If you don’t mind.”
She shook her head and carried on staring at the photograph.
“All right,” I said. “Someone must have put the jacket on him after he was dead, in order to make his death seem as natural as possible. But what prostitute would do such a thing? If he died while or immediately after having sex, any sensible party girl would have ripped a hole in the wall to get out of there.”
“Also, my husband was very heavy. So it’s hard to imagine a girl able to lift him up and put a jacket on him by herself. I know I couldn’t have done that. Once, when he was drunk, I tried to get his shirt off him, and it was almost impossible.”
“And yet there’s the evidence of the autopsy. The cause of death appeared to be natural. What else but a strenuous bout of lovemaking could bring about a cerebral aneurysm?”
“All lovemaking was strenuous for Heinrich. I can assure you of that. But what was it that first made you think his death might be a murder, Herr Gunther?”
“Something someone said. Tell me, do you know a man named Max Reles?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, he knew your husband.”
“And you think he might have had something to do with my husband’s death?”
“It’s not much more than a slight breeze I have, but yes. I do. Let me tell you why.”
“Wait. Have you eaten dinner?”
“I had a light supper at the hotel.”
She smiled kindly. “This is Franconia you’re in now, Herr Gunther. We don’t do light suppers in this state. What was it? That you ate?”
“Just a plate of cold ham and cheese. And a beer.”
“I thought as much. You’ll stay for dinner, then. Magda always cooks far too much anyway. It’ll be nice to have someone eat properly in this house again.”
“Now that I come to think of it, I am rather hungry. I’ve missed quite a few meals of late.”
THE HOUSE WAS TOO BIG FOR ONE. It would have been too big for a basketball team. Her two sons were grown up and gone away, to university, she said, but my money was on Magda’s cooking. Not that there was anything wrong with it. But any man there for any length of time was taking a big risk with his arteries. I was in that house for only a couple of hours, and I felt as fat as Hermann Goering. Every time I laid my knife and fork together, I was persuaded to have another helping. And if I wasn’t eating food, I was looking at it. All over the place there were paintings of dead game and cornucopias, and bulging fruit bowls, just in case anyone got peckish. Even the furniture looked like they fed it extra beeswax. It was big and heavy, and whenever she sat or leaned on any of it, Angelika Rubusch resembled Alice down the rabbit hole.
I guessed she was in her mid-forties, but she might have been older. She was a handsome woman, which is just a way of saying that she was aging better than a pretty one. And there were several reasons for suspecting she found me attractive, which is just a way of saying I had probably drunk too much.
After dinner I tried to gather my thoughts on what I knew about her husband: “Your husband owned a quarry, didn’t he?”
“That’s right. We supplied a wide range of natural stone to builders all over Europe. But mainly limestone. This part of Germany is famous for it. We call it beige limestone on account of the honey color. Most of the public buildings in Wurzburg are made of beige limestone. It’s uniquely German, which makes it popular with the Nazis. Since Hitler came to power, business has been booming. They can’t get enough of it. Every new public building in Germany seems to require beige Jura limestone. Before he died, Paul Troost, Hitler’s architect, actually came down here to look at our limestone for the new chancellery building.”
“What about the Olympics?”
“No, we didn’t get that contract. Not that it matters now. You see, I’m selling the business. My sons don’t have any interest in limestone. They are studying to become lawyers. I can’t run the business by myself. I’ve had a very good offer from another company here in Wurzburg. So I’m going to take the money and become a rich widow.”
“But you did bid for an Olympic contract?”
“Of course. That’s why Heinrich went to Berlin. He went several times, as a matter of fact. To discuss our tender with Werner March, the Olympic architect, and some other people from the Ministry of the Interior. The day before Heinrich died, he telephoned me from the Adlon to say we’d lost it. He was very agitated about losing it and said he was going to take the matter up with Walter March, who was keen on our stone. At the time, I remember telling him to watch his blood pressure. His face got very red when he was cross about something. So when he died, naturally, I already suspected it must have something to do with his health.”
“Can you think why Max Reles should have been in possession of a contract tender from your company?”
“Is he someone at the ministry?”
“Actually, no, he’s a German-American businessman.”
She shook her head.
I took the letter I’d found in the Chinese box and unfolded it on the dinner table. “I’d half suspected Max Reles was taking something off the top of supplier contracts. Like a finder’s fee, or a commission. But since your husband’s company didn’t actually get a contract, then I’m not so sure what the connection was. Or why Max Reles should have been worried that I was asking questions about your husband. Not that I ever was, you understand. Not until now. Not until someone else made a connection between Heinrich Rubusch and Isaac Deutsch. And assumed that I had already connected the two.” I let out a yawn. “When I hadn’t. Sorry, none of that is going to make any sense to you. I’m tired, I guess. And probably a little drunk.”
Angelika Rubusch wasn’t listening, and I didn’t blame her. She didn’t know anything about Isaac Deutsch and probably didn’t care. I was making less sense than a blind football team. Bernie Gunther, stumbling around in the dark and kicking at a ball that wasn’t even there. She was shaking her head, and I was about to apologize again when I saw that she was looking at her own letter of tender.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“That makes two of us. I haven’t understood anything for a while now. I’m just a guy to whom things happen. And I don’t know why. Some detective, huh?”
“Where did you get this?”
“Max Reles had it. He seems to have his fingers in a lot of Olympic pies. I found that paper in something else that belonged to him. An antique Chinese box that was lost for a while. While it was missing, I formed the distinct impression that he was very keen to have it returned to him.”
“I think I can understand why,” said Angelika Rubusch. “This isn’t our tender. It’s on our notepaper, but these aren’t our figures. This is way above the price we put in to supply this quantity of limestone. About twice as much. I’m looking at this and thinking that it’s no wonder we didn’t get the contract.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. I was my husband’s secretary. That was to stop him from… you know. Well, that’s not important now. I used to type all our correspondence, including the original letter of tender to the German Olympic Organizing Committee, and I can tell you that I certainly didn’t type this. For one thing, there’s a spelling mistake. There is no
“There isn’t?”
“Not if you come from Wurzburg, there isn’t. Also, the letter
In truth, my eyesight was feeling a little blurred, but I nodded all the same.
She held the notepaper up to the light. “And you know what? This isn’t even our notepaper. It looks like it, only the watermark is different.”
“I see.” And now I really did.
“Of course,” I said. “Max Reles must have been rigging bids. And I think that works like this: You put in a bid for something yourself and then make sure that competing bids are priced at an unreasonably high level. Either that or you chase off the other bidders, by whatever means necessary. If this is a fake bid, Max Reles must have an interest in the company that was awarded the contract to supply the limestone. Probably that was a high bid too, but crucially not as high as your husband’s bid. As a matter of fact, who did win the contract?”
“Wurzburg Jura Limestone,” she said dully. “Our major competitor. The same company I’ve agreed to sell to.”
“All right. Perhaps Reles had already asked Heinrich to put in a high bid so that your competitor would get the contract. If he’d agreed to do it, he’d have been paid a commission. And maybe even ended up supplying Wurzburg Jura himself. The advantage being that he could have been paid twice.”
“Heinrich may have been cheating on me as a husband,” she said, “but he wasn’t like that in business.”
“In which case, Max Reles must have tried and failed to put the thumbscrews on him. Or simply faked the bid from your husband’s company. Perhaps both. Either way, Heinrich found out about it. So Max Reles got rid of him. Quickly. Discreetly. But permanently. This all makes sense now. The first night I ever saw your husband was at a dinner hosted by Reles for a lot of businessmen where there was an argument. One of the other businessmen stormed out. Perhaps he was asked to supply an inflated bid for something else.”
“What are we going to do now?”
“Tomorrow morning I have an appointment with the local Gestapo. It seems I’m not the only one who’s interested in Max Reles. Perhaps they’ll tell me what they know, and perhaps I’ll tell them what I know, and maybe we’ll figure out a way forward from there. But I’m afraid all of that might mean another autopsy. Obviously the Berlin pathologist missed something. These days they often do. Forensic standards are no longer as rigorous as they used to be. Nothing is.”
YOU WALK UP TO A DOOR that is guarded by two steel-helmeted men wearing black uniforms and white gloves. I’m not sure about the purpose of the white gloves. Are they meant to persuade the rest of us that the SS is pure in heart and deed? If so, then I’m not convinced: this is the militia that murdered Ernst Rohm and God knows how many other SA men.
