more interesting parts. Rudel was famous for her scantily clad roles. In another photograph she was sitting at a table in a smart restaurant with the good Dr Goebbels; and in another, she was sparring with Max Schmelling. Then there was one in which she was being carried in a workman's arms, only the 'workman' just happened to be Emil Jannings, the famous actor. I recognized it as a still from The Builder's Hut. I like the book a lot better than I had liked the film.
At the hint of 4711 I turned around, and found myself shaking the beautiful film star by the hand.
'I see you've been looking at my little gallery,' she said, rearranging the photographs I had picked up and examined. 'You must think it terribly vain of me to have so many pictures of myself on display, but I simply can't abide albums.'
'Not at all,' I said. 'It's very interesting.'
She flashed me the smile that made thousands of German men, myself included, go weak at the chin.
'I'm so glad you approve.' She was wearing a pair of green-velvet lounging pyjamas with a long, gold, fringed sash, and high-heeled green morocco slippers.
Her blonde hair was done up in a braided knot at the back of her head, as was fashionable; but unlike most German women, she was also wearing makeup and smoking a cigarette. That sort of thing is frowned on by the BdM, the Women's League, as being inconsistent with the Nazi ideal of German Womanhood; however, I'm a city boy: plain, scrubbed, rosy faces may be just fine down on the farm, but like nearly all German men I prefer my women powdered and painted. Of course, Lise Rudel lived in a different world to other women. She probably thought the Nazi Women's League was a hockey association.
'I'm sorry about those two fellows on the door,' she said, 'but you see, Josef and Magda Goebbels have an apartment upstairs, so security has to be extra tight, as you can imagine. Which reminds me, I promised Josef that I'd try and listen to his speech, or at least a bit of it. Do you mind?'
It was not the sort of question that you ever asked; unless you happened to be on first-name terms with the Minister of Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment, and his lady wife. I shrugged.
'That's fine by me.'
'We'll only listen for a few minutes,' she said, switching on the Philco that stood on top of a walnut drinks cabinet. 'Now then. What can I get you to drink?' I asked for a whisky and she poured me one that was big enough for a set of false teeth. She poured herself a glass of Bowie, Berlin's favourite summer drink, from a tall, blue-glass pitcher, and joined me on a sofa that was the colour and contours of an underripe pineapple. We clinked glasses and, as the tubes of the radio set warmed up, the smooth tones of the man from upstairs slipped slowly into the room.
First of all, Goebbels singled out foreign journalists for criticism, and rebuked their 'biased' reporting of life in the new Germany. Some of his remarks were clever enough to draw laughter and then applause from his sycophantic audience. Rudel smiled uncertainly, but remained silent, and I wondered if she understood what her club-footed neighbour from upstairs was talking about. Then he raised his voice and proceeded to declaim against the traitors whoever they were, I didn't know who were trying to sabotage the national revolution. Here she stifled a yawn. Finally, when Joey got going on his favourite subject, the glorification of the Fuhrer, she jumped up and switched the radio off.
'Goodness me, I think we've heard enough from him for one evening.' She went over to the gramophone and picked up a disc.
'Do you like jazz?' she said, changing the subject. 'Oh, it's all right, it's not negro jazz. I love it, don't you?' Only non-negro jazz is permitted in Germany now, but I often wonder how they can tell the difference.
'I like any kind of jazz,' I said. She wound up the gramophone and put the needle into the groove. It was a nice relaxed sort of piece with a strong clarinet and a saxophonist who could have led a company of Italians across no man's land in a barrage.
I said: 'Do you mind me asking why you keep this place?'
She danced back to the sofa and sat down. 'Well, Herr Private Investigator, Hermann finds my friends a little trying. He does a lot of work from our house in Dahlem, and at all hours: I do most of my entertaining here, so as not to disturb him.'
'Sounds sensible enough,' I said. She blew a column of smoke at me from each exquisite nostril, and I took a deep breath of it; not because I enjoyed the smell of American cigarettes, which I do, but because it had come from inside her chest, and anything to do with that chest was all right by me. From the movement underneath her jacket I had already concluded that her breasts were large and unsupported.
'So,' I said, 'what was it that you wanted to see me about?' To my surprise, she touched me lightly on the knee.
'Relax,' she smiled. 'You're not in a hurry, are you?' I shook my head and watched her stub out her cigarette. There were already several butts in the ashtray, all heavily marked with lipstick, but none of them had been smoked for more than a few puffs, and it occurred to me that she was the one who needed to relax, and that maybe she was nervous about something. Me perhaps. As if confirming my theory she jumped up off the sofa, poured herself another glass of Bowie and changed the record.
'Are you all right with your drink?'
'Yes,' I said, and sipped some. It was good whisky, smooth and peaty, with no backburner in it. Then I asked her how well she had known Paul and Grete Pfarr.
I don't think the question surprised her. Instead, she sat close to me, so that we were actually touching, and smiled in a strange way.
'Oh, yes,' she said whimsically. 'I forgot. You're the man who's investigating the fire for Hermann, aren't you?' She didsome more grinning, and added: 'I suppose the case has the police baffled.' There was a note of sarcasm in her voice. 'And then you come along, the Great Detective, and find the clue that solves the whole mystery.'
'There's no mystery, FrSulein Rudel,' I said provocatively. It threw her only slightly.
'Why, surely the mystery is, who did it?' she said.
'A mystery is something that is beyond human knowledge and comprehension, which means that I should be wasting my time in even trying to investigate it. No, this case is nothing more than a puzzle, and I happen to like puzzles.'
'Oh, so do I,' she said, almost mocking me, I thought. 'And please, you must call me Lise while you're here. And I shall call you by your Christian name.
What is it?'
'Bernhard.'
'Bernhard,' she said, trying it for size, and then shortening it, 'Bernie.' She gulped a large mouthful of the champagne and sauterne mixture she was drinking, picked out a strawberry from the top of her glass and ate it. 'Well, Bernie, you must be a very good private investigator to be working for Hermann on something as important as this. I thought you were all seedy little men who followed husbands and looked through keyholes at what they got up to, and then told their wives.'
'Divorce cases are just about the one kind of business that I don't handle.'
'Is that a fact?' she said, smiling quietly to herself. It irritated me quite a bit, that smile; in part because I felt she was patronizing me, but also because I wanted desperately to stop it with a kiss. Failing that, the back of my hand.
'Tell me something. Do you make much money doing what you do?' Tapping me on the thigh to indicate that she hadn't finished her question, she added: 'I don't mean to sound rude. But what I want to know is, are you comfortable?'
I took note of my opulent surroundings before answering. 'Me, comfortable? Like a Bauhaus chair, I am.' She laughed at that. 'You didn't answer my question about the Pfarrs,' I said.
'Didn't I?'
'You know damn well you didn't.'
She shrugged. 'I knew them.'
'Well enough to know what Paul had against your husband?'
'Is that really what you're interested in?' she said.
