down a long, gentle slope and into the cool shade cast by the dark pine trees lining its gravelled length.
In daylight Six's house was even more impressive, although I could see now that it was not one but two houses, standing close together: beautiful, solidly built Wilhelmine farmhouses.
I pulled up at the front door, where Lise Rudel had parked her BMW the night I had first seen her, and got out, leaving the door open just in case the two Dobermanns put in an appearance. Dogs are not at all keen on private investigators, and it's an antipathy that is entirely mutual.
I knocked on the door. I heard it echo in the hall and, seeing the closed shutters, I wondered if I'd had a wasted journey. I lit a cigarette and stood there, just leaning on the door, smoking and listening. The place was about as quiet as the sap in a gift-wrapped rubber tree. Then I heard some footsteps, and I straightened up as the door opened to reveal the Levantine head and round shoulders of the butler, Farraj.
'Good morning,' I said brightly. 'I was hoping that I'd find Herr HaupthSndler in.' Farraj looked at me with the clinical distaste of a chiropodist regarding a septic toenail.
'Do you have an appointment?' he asked.
'Not really,' I said, handing him my card. 'I was hoping he might give me five minutes, though. I was here the other night, to see Herr Six.' Farraj nodded silently, and returned my card.
'My apologies for not recognizing you, sir.' Still holding the door, he retreated into the hall, inviting me to enter. Having closed it behind him, he looked at my hat with something short of amusement.
'No doubt you will wish to keep your hat again, sir.'
'I think I had better, don't you?' Standing closer to him, I could detect the very definite smell of alcohol, and not the sort they serve in exclusive gentlemen's clubs.
'Very good, sir. If you'll just wait here for a moment, I'll find Herr HaupthSndler and ask him if he can see you.'
'Thanks,' I said. 'Do you have an ashtray?' I held my cigarette ash aloft like a hypodermic syringe.
'Yes, sir.' He produced one made of dark onyx that was the size of a church Bible, and which he held in both hands while I did the stubbing out. When my cigarette was extinguished he turned away and, still carrying the ashtray, he disappeared down the corridor, leaving me to wonder what I was going to say to HaupthSndler if he would see me. There was nothing in particular I had in mind, and not for one minute did I imagine that he would be prepared to discuss Lise Rudel's story about him and Grete Pfarr. I was just poking around. You ask ten people ten dumb questions, and sometimes you hit a raw nerve somewhere.
Sometimes, if you weren't too bored to notice, you managed to recognize that you were on to something. It was a bit like panning for gold. Every day you went down to the river and went through pan after pan of mud. And just occasionally, provided you kept your eyes peeled, you found a dirty little stone that was actually a nugget.
I went to the bottom of the stairs and looked up the stairwell. A large circular skylight illuminated the paintings on the scarlet-coloured walls. I was looking at a still life of a lobster and a pewter pot when I heard footsteps on the marble floor behind me.
'It's by Karl Schuch you know,' said HaupthSndler. 'Worth a great deal of money.' He paused, and added: 'But very, very dull. Please, come this way.' He led the way into Six's library.
'I'm afraid I can't give you very long. You see, I still have a great many things to do for the funeral tomorrow. I'm sure you understand.' I sat down on one of the sofas and lit a cigarette. HaupthSndler folded his arms, the leather of his nutmeg-brown sports jacket creaking across his sizeable shoulders, and leaned against his master's desk.
'Now what was it that you wished to see me about?'
'Actually, it's about the funeral,' I said, improvising on what he had given me.
'I wondered where it was to be held.'
'I must apologize, Herr Gunther,' he said. 'I'm afraid it hadn't occurred to me that Herr Six would wish you to attend. He's left all the arrangements to me while he's in the Ruhr, but he didn't think to leave any instructions regarding a list of mourners.'
I tried to look awkward. 'Oh, well,' I said, standing up. 'Naturally, with a client such as Herr Six I should like to have been able to pay my respects to his daughter. It is customary. But I'm sure he will understand.'
'Herr Gunther,' said HaupthSndler, after a short silence. 'Would you think it terrible of me if I were to give you an invitation now, by hand?'
'Not at all,' I said. 'If you are sure it won't inconvenience your arrangements.'
'It's no trouble,' he said. 'I have some cards here.' He walked around the desk and pulled open a drawer.
'Have you worked for Herr Six long?'
'About two years,' he said absently. 'Prior to that I was a diplomat with the German Consular Service.' He took out a pair of glasses from his breast pocket and placed them on the end of his nose before writing out the invitation.
'And did you know Grete Pfarr well?'
He glanced up at me briefly. 'I really didn't know her at all,' he said. 'Other than to say hallo to.'
'Do you know if she had any enemies, jealous lovers, that sort of thing?' He finished writing the card, and pressed it on the blotter.
'I'm quite sure she didn't,' he said crisply, removing his glasses and returning them to his pocket.
'Is that so? What about him? Paul.'
'I can tell you even less about him, I'm afraid,' he said, slipping the invitation into an envelope.
'Did he and Herr Six get on all right?'
'They weren't enemies, if that's what you're implying. Their differences were purely political.'
'Well, that amounts to something quite fundamental these days, wouldn't you say?'
'Not in this case, no. Now if you'll excuse me, Herr Gunther, I really must be getting on.'
'Yes, of course.' He handed me the invitation. 'Well, thanks for this,' I said, following him out into the hall. 'Do you live here too, Herr HaupthSndler?'
'No, I have an apartment in town.'
'Really? Where?' He hesitated for a moment.
'Kurfurstenstrasse,' he said eventually. 'Why do you ask?'
I shrugged. 'I ask too many questions, Herr HaupthSndler,' I said. 'Forgive me.
It's habit, I'm afraid. A suspicious nature goes with the job. Please don't be offended. Well, I must be going.' He smiled thinly, and as he showed me to the door he seemed relaxed; but I hoped I had said enough to put a few ripples on his pond.
The Hanomag seems to take an age to reach any sort of speed, so it was with a certain amount of misplaced optimism that I took the Avus 'Speedway' back to the centre of town. It costs a mark to get on this highway, but the Avus is worth it: ten kilometres without a curve, all the way from Potsdam to Kurfnrstendamm.
It's the one road in the city on which the driver who fancies himself as Carraciola, the great racing driver, can put his foot down and hit speeds of up to 150 kilometres an hour. At least, they could in the days before B V Aral, the low-octane substitute petrol that's not much better than meths. Now it was all I could do to get ninety out of the Hanomag's 1.3 litre engine.
I parked at the intersection of Kurfnrstendamm and Joachimsthaler Strasse, known as 'Grunfeld Corner' because of the department store of the same name which occupies it. When Grunfeld, a Jew, still owned his store, they used to serve free lemonade at the Fountain in the basement. But since the State dispossessed him, as it has with all the Jews who owned big stores, like Wertheim, Hermann Teitz and Israel, the days of free lemonade have gone. If that weren't bad enough, the lemonade you now have to pay for and once got free doesn't taste half as good, and you don't have to have the sharpest taste-buds in the world to realize that they're cutting down on the sugar. Just like they're cheating on everything else.
I sat drinking my lemonade and watching the lift go up and down the tubular glass shaft that allowed you to see out into the store as you rode from floor to floor, in two minds whether or not to go up to the stocking counter and see Carola, the girl from Dagmarr's wedding. It was the sour taste of the lemonade that put me in mind of my own debauched behaviour, and that decided me against it. Instead I left Grunfeld's and walked the short distance down Kurfnrstendamm and onto Schluterstrasse.
A jewellers is one of the few places in Berlin where you can expect to find people queueing to sell rather than to buy. Peter Neumaier's Antique Jewellers was no exception. When I got there the line wasn't quite outside the
