'It'll do for a start.'
She gave an impatient little sigh. 'Very well. We'll play your game, but only until I get bored of it.' She raised her eyebrows questioningly at me, and although I had no idea what she was talking about, I shrugged and said:
'That's fine by me.'
'It's true, they didn't get on, but I haven't the haziest why. When Paul and Grete first met, Hermann was against their getting married. He thought Paul wanted a nice platinum tooth you know, a rich wife. He tried to persuade Grete to drop him. But Grete wouldn't hear of it. After that, by all accounts they got on fine. At least until Hermann's first wife died. By then I'd been seeing him for some time. It was when we got married that things really started to cool off between the two of them. Grete started drinking. And their marriage seemed little more than a fig-leaf, for decency's sake Paul being at the Ministry and all that.'
'What did he do there, do you know?'
'No idea.'
'Did he nudge around?'
'With other women?' She laughed. 'Paul was good-looking, but a bit lame. He was dedicated to his work, not another woman. If he did, he kept it very quiet.'
'What about her?'
Rudel shook her golden head, and took a large gulp of her drink. 'Not her style.' But she paused for a moment and looked more thoughtful. 'Although ' She shrugged. 'It probably isn't anything.'
'Come on,' I said. 'Unpack it.'
'Well, there was one time in Dahlem, when I was left with just the tiniest suspicion that Grete might have had something going with HaupthSndler.' I raised an eyebrow. 'Hermann's private secretary. This would have been about the time when the Italians had entered Addis Ababa. I remember that only because I went to a party at the Italian Embassy.'
'That would have been early in May.'
'Yes. Anyway, Hermann was away on business, so I went by myself. I was filming at U F A the next morning and had to be up early. I decided to spend the night at Dahlem, so I would have a bit more time in the morning. It's a lot easier getting to Babelsberg from there. Anyway, when I got home I poked my head around the drawing-room door in search of a book I had left there, and who should I find sitting in the dark but Hjalmar HaupthSndler and Grete?'
'What were they doing?'
'Nothing. Nothing at all. That's what made it so damned suspicious. It was two o'clock in the morning and there they were, sitting at opposite ends of the same sofa like a couple of school children on their first date. I could tell they were embarrassed to see me. They gave me some cabbage about just chatting and was that really the time. But I didn't buy it.'
'Did you mention it to your husband?'
'No,' she said. 'Actually, I forgot about it. And even if I hadn't, I wouldn't have told him. Hermann is not the sort of person who could have just left it alone to sort itself out. Most rich men are like that, I think. Distrustful, and suspicious.'
'I'd say he must trust you a great deal to let you keep your own apartment.'
She laughed scornfully. 'God, what a joke. If you knew what I have to put up with. But then you probably know all about us, you being a private investigator.' She didn't let me answer. 'I've had to sack several of my maids because they were being bribed by him to spy on me. He's really a very jealous man.'
'Under similar circumstances I'd probably act the same way,' I told her. 'Most men would be jealous of a woman like you.' She looked me in the eye, and then at the rest of me. It was the sort of provocative look that only whores and phenomenally rich and beautiful film stars can get away with. It was meant to get me to climb aboard her bones like a creeper on to a trellis. A look that made me want to gore a hole in the rug. 'Frankly, you probably like to make a man jealous. You strike me as the kind of woman who holds out her hand to signal a left and then makes a right, just to keep him guessing. Are you ready to tell me why you asked me here tonight?'
'I've sent the maid home,' she said, 'so stop thrashing words and kiss me, you big idiot.' Normally I'm not too good at taking orders, but on this occasion I didn't quarrel. It's not every day that a film star tells you to kiss her. She gave me the soft, luscious inside of her lips, and I let myself equal their competence, just to be polite. After a minute I felt her body stir, and when she pulled her mouth away from my lamprey-like kiss her voice was hot and breathless.
'My, that was a real slow-burner.'
'I practise on my forearm.' She smiled and raised her mouth up to mine, kissing me like she intended to lose control of herself and so that I would stop holding something back from her. She was breathing through her nose, as if she needed more oxygen, gradually getting serious about it, and me keeping pace with her, until she said:
'I want you to fuck me, Bernie.' I heard each word in my fly. We stood up in silence, and taking me by the hand she led me to the bedroom.
'I've got to go to the bathroom first,' I said. She was pulling the pyjama-jacket over her head, her breasts wobbling: these were real film star's chicks and for a moment I couldn't take my eyes off them. Each brown nipple was like a British Tommy's helmet.
'Don't be too long, Bernie,' she said, dropping first her sash, and then the trousers, so that she stood there in just her knickers.
But in the bathroom I took a long, honest look in the mirror, which was one whole wall, and asked myself why a living goddess like the one turning down the white satin sheets needed me of all people to help justify an expensive laundry account. It wasn't my choirboy's face, or my sunny disposition. With my broken nose and my car-bumper of a jaw, I was handsome only by the standards of a fairground boxing-booth. I didn't imagine for a minute that my blond hair and blue eyes made me fashionable. She wanted something else besides a brush, and I had a shrewd idea what it was. The trouble was I had an erection that, temporarily at least, was very firmly in command.
Back in the bedroom, she was still standing there, waiting for me to come and help myself. Impatient of her, I snatched her knickers down, pulling her onto the bed, where I prised her sleek, tanned thighs apart like an excited scholar opening a priceless book. For quite a while I pored over the text, turning the pages with my fingers and feasting my eyes on what I had never dreamed of possessing.
We kept the light on, so that finally I had a perfect view of myself as I plugged into the crisp fluff between her legs. And afterwards she lay on top of me, breathing like a sleepy but contented dog, stroking my chest almost as if she was in awe of me.
'My, but you're a well-built man.'
'Mother was a blacksmith,' I said. 'She used to hammer a nail into a horse's shoe with the flat of her hand. I get my build from her.' She giggled.
'You don't say much, but when you do you like to joke, don't you?'
'There are an awful lot of dead people in Germany looking very serious.'
'And so very cynical. Why is that?'
'I used to be a priest.'
She fingered the small scar on my forehead where a piece of shrapnel had creased me. 'How did you get this?'
'After church on Sundays I'd box with the choirboys in the sacristy. You like boxing?' I remembered the photograph of Schmelling on the piano.
'I adore boxing,' she said. 'I love violent, physical men. I love going to the Busch Circus and watching them train before a big fight, just to see if they defend or attack, how they jab, if they've got guts.'
'Just like one of those noblewomen in ancient Rome,' I said, 'checking up on her gladiators to see if they're going to win before she puts a bet on.'
'But of course. I like winners. Now you '
'Yes?'
'I'd say you could take a good punch. Maybe take quite a few. You strike me as the durable, patient sort. Methodical. Prepared to soak up more than a little punishment. That makes you dangerous.'
'And you?' She bounced excitedly on my chest, her breasts wobbling engagingly, although, for the moment at
