'Good God,' she gasped. 'How terrible. Whoever could do such a thing?'
'That's a good question,' I said. 'Do you know if either of them had any enemies?' She sighed deeply and then shook her head. 'Did you ever overhear either of them arguing with someone other than each other? On the telephone, perhaps? Somebody at the door? Anything.' She continued to shake her head.
'Wait a minute, though,' she said slowly. 'Yes, there was one occasion, several months ago. I heard Herr Pfarr arguing with another man in his study. It was pretty heated and, I can tell you, some of the language they used was not fit to be heard by decent folk. They were arguing about politics. At least I think it was politics. Herr Six was saying some terrible things about the Fuhrer which '
'Did you say Herr Six?'
'Yes,' she said. 'He was the other man. After a while he came storming out of the study and through the front door with a face like pig's liver. Nearly knocked me over he did.'
'Can you remember what else was said?'
'Only that each accused the other of trying to ruin him.'
'Where was Frau Pfarr when all this happened?'
'She was away, on one of her trips, I think.'
'Thank you,' I said. 'You've been most helpful. And now I must be getting back to Alexanderplatz.' I turned towards the door.
'Excuse me,' said Frau Schmidt. She pointed to the tailor's box. 'What shall I do with Herr Pfarr's uniform?'
'Mail it,' I said, putting a couple of marks on the table. 'To ReichsFuhrer Himmler, Prinz Albrecht Strasse, Number 9.'
Chapter 4
Simeonstrasse is only a couple of streets away from Neuenburger Strasse, but where the windows of the buildings in the latter are lacking paint, in Simeonstrasse they are lacking glass. Calling it a poor area is a bit like saying that Joey Goebbels has a problem finding his size in shoes.
Tenement buildings five- and six-storeys high closed in on a narrow crocodile's back of deep cobblestones like two granite cliffs, linked only by the rope-bridges of washing. Sullen youths, each one of them with a roll-up hanging in ashes from his thin lips like a trail of shit from a bowl-bored goldfish, buttressed the ragged corners of gloomy alleyways, staring blankly at the colony of snot-nosed children who hopped and skipped along the pavements. The children played noisily, oblivious to the presence of these older ones and taking no notice of the crudely daubed swastikas, hammers and sickles and general obscenities that marked the street walls and which were their elders' dividing dogmas. Below the level of the rubbish-strewn streets and under the shadow of the sun-eclipsing edifices which enclosed them were the cellars that contained the small shops and offices that served the area.
Not that it needs much in the way of service. There is no money in an area like this, and for most of these concerns business is about as brisk as a set of oak floorboards in a Lutheran church hall.
It was into one of these small shops, a pawnbroker, that I went, ignoring the large Star of David daubed on the wooden shutters that protected the shop window from breakage. A bell rang as I opened and shut the door. Doubly deprived of daylight, the shop's only source of illumination was an oil lamp hanging from the low ceiling, and the general effect was that of the inside of an old sailing ship. I browsed around, waiting for Weizmann, the proprietor, to appear from the back of the shop.
There was an old Pickelhaube helmet, a stuffed marmot, in a glass case, that looked as if it had perished of anthrax, and an old Siemens vacuum-cleaner; there were several cases full of military medals mostly second-class Iron Crosses like mine own, twenty odd volumes of Kohler's Naval Calendar, full of ships long since sunk or sent to the breaker's yard, a Blaupunkt radio, a chipped bust of Bismarck and an old Leica. I was inspecting the case of medals when a smell of tobacco, and Weizmann's familiar cough, announced his present appearance.
'You should look after yourself, Weizmann.'
'And what would I do with a long life?' The threat of Weizmann's wheezing cough was ever present in his speech. It lay in wait to trip him like a sleeping halberdier. Sometimes he managed to catch himself; but this time he fell into a spasm of coughing that sounded hardly human at all, more like someone trying to start a car with an almost flat battery, and as usual it seemed to afford him no relief whatsoever. Nor did it require him to remove the pipe from his tobacco-pouch of a mouth.
'You should try inhaling a little bit of air now and then,' I told him. 'Or at least something you haven't first set on fire.'
'Air,' he said. 'It goes straight to my head. Anyway, I'm training myself to do without it: there's no telling when they'll ban Jews from breathing oxygen.' He lifted the counter. 'Come into the back room, my friend, and tell me what service I can do for you.' I followed him round the counter, past an empty bookcase.
'Is business picking up then?' I said. He turned to look at me. 'What happened to all the books?' Weizmann shook his head sadly.
'Unfortunately, I had to remove them. The Nuremberg Laws ' he said with a scornful laugh, ' they forbid a Jew to sell books. Even secondhand ones.' He turned and passed on through to the back room. 'These days I believe in the law like I believe in Horst Wessel's heroism.'
'Horst Wessel?' I said. 'Never heard of him.'
Weizmann smiled and pointed at an old Jacquard sofa with the stem of his reeking pipe. 'Sit down, Bernie, and let me fix us a drink.'
'Well, what do you know? They still let Jews drink booze. I was almost feeling sorry for you back there when you told me about those books. Things are never as bad as they seem, just as long as there's a drink about.'
'That's the truth, my friend.' He opened a corner cabinet, found the bottle of schnapps and poured it carefully but generously. Handing me my glass he said, 'I'll tell you something. If it wasn't for all the people who drink, this country really would be in a hell of a state.' He raised his glass. 'Let us wish for more drunks and the frustration of an efficiently run National Socialist Germany.'
'To more drunks,' I said, watching him drink it, almost too gratefully. He had a shrewd face, with a mouth that wore a wry smile, even with the chimneystack. A large, fleshy nose separated eyes that were rather too closely set together, and supported a pair of thick, rimless glasses. The still-dark hair was brushed neatly to the right of a high forehead. Wearing his well-pressed blue pin-striped suit, Weizmann looked not unlike Ernst Lubitsch, the comic actor turned film director. He sat down at an old rolltop and turned sideways to face me.
'So what can I do for you?'
I showed him the photograph of Six's necklace. He wheezed a little as he looked at it, and then coughed his way into a remark.
'If it's real ' He smiled and nodded his head from side to side. 'Is it real?
Of course it's real, or why else would you be showing me such a nice photograph.
Well then, it looks like a very fine piece indeed.'
'It's been stolen,' I said.
'Bernie, with you sitting there I didn't think it was stuck up a tree waiting for the fire service.' He shrugged. 'But, such a fine-looking necklace what can I tell you about it that you don't already know?'
'Come on, Weizmann. Until you got caught thieving you were one of Friedlaender's best jewellers.'
'Ah, you put it so delicately.'
'After twenty years in the business you know bells like you know your own waistcoat pocket.'
'Twenty-two years,' he said quietly, and poured us both another glass. 'Very well. Ask your questions, Bernie, and we shall see what we shall see.'
'How would someone go about getting rid of it?'
'You mean some other way than just dropping it in the Landwehr Canal? For money?
It would depend.'
'On what?' I said patiently.
'On whether the person in possession was Jewish or Gentile.'
'Come on, Weizmann,' I said. 'You don't have to keep wringing the yarmulke for my benefit.'
'No, seriously, Bernie. Right now the market for gems is at rock bottom. There are lots of Jews leaving Germany who, to fund their emigration, must sell the family jewels. At least, those who are lucky enough to have any to sell. And, as you might expect, they get the lowest prices. A Gentile could afford to wait for the market to become more buoyant. A Jew could not.' Coughing in small explosive bursts, he took another, longer look at Six's
