anyway.'
'Maybe you should buy a newspaper,' I said.
'I got out of the habit,' she said. 'During the war.'
I took another look at her. I liked the glasses. They made her look as if she had probably read all the books on the shelves that lined the entrance to her apartment. If there's one thing I like, it's a woman who starts off looking plain but gets better-looking the more you look at her. Vera Messmann was that kind of woman. After a while I formed the impression that she was a rather beautiful woman. A beautiful woman who happened to wear glasses. Not that she herself was in much doubt about any of that. There was a quiet confidence about the way she carried herself and the way she spoke. If there had been a beauty pageant for lady librarians, Vera Messmann would have won it hands down. She wouldn't even have had to take off her glasses and unpin her brown hair.
We remained, a little awkwardly, in the entrance hall. I had yet to make her day, although from what she was saying, my just being there represented a welcome novelty.
'Since I haven't murdered anyone,' she said, 'or committed adultery--not since last summer, anyway--I'm intrigued as to what a private detective could want with me.'
'I don't do many murders,' I said. 'Not since I stopped being a bull. Mostly I get asked to look for missing persons.'
'Then you should have plenty of work to keep you busy.'
'It comes as rather a pleasant change to be the bearer of good news,' I said. 'My client, who wants to remain anonymous, wishes you to have some money. You don't have to do anything for it. Nothing at all except turn up at Spaengler's Bank tomorrow afternoon at three o'clock and sign a receipt for cash. And that's pretty much all that I'm allowed to tell you except the amount. It's twenty-five thousand schillings.'
'Twenty-five thousand schillings?' She took off her glasses, which let me see how right I had been. She was a peach. 'Are you sure there's not been some kind of mistake?'
'Not if you're Vera Messmann,' I said. 'You'll need some form of identity to prove who you are at the bank of course. Bankers are rather less trusting than detectives.' I smiled. 'Especially banks like Spaengler's. It's in Dorotheengasse. In the International Zone.'
'Look, Herr Gunther, if this is a joke,' she said, 'it's not a very funny one. Twenty-five thousand to someone like me. To anyone. That's serious money.'
'I can leave now, if you'd prefer,' I said. 'You won't ever see me again.' I shrugged. 'Listen, I can understand you being nervous about me coming here like this. Maybe I'd be nervous if I were you. So perhaps I should go, anyway. But just promise me you'll come to the bank at three. After all, what have you got to lose? Nothing.'
I turned and reached for the door handle.
'No, please don't leave yet.' She turned on her heel and walked into the living room. 'Take off your hat and coat and come on through.'
I did what I was told. I like doing what I'm told when there's a half-decent woman involved. There was a baby grand with the lid up and a piece by Schubert on the music stand. In front of the French window was a pair of silver gilt dolphin side chairs with blue tufted upholstery. Against one of the walls was a gilt-trimmed floral-design settee with roll arms. There were a couple of blackamoor pedestals that didn't seem to feel the cold, and a big carved cabinet with cupid heads on the door. There were plenty of old pictures and an expensive-looking Murano wall mirror that showed me up looking about as out of place as a wild boar in a toy shop. There was a French marble clock with a bronze fop reading a book. I guessed it wasn't a book by Agatha Christie. It was the kind of room where books were discussed more often than football, and women sat with their knees together and listened to plangent zither music on the radio. It told me that Vera Messmann didn't need the money as much as she needed the glasses. She put them on again and faced a neat little drinks table underneath the mirror.
'Drink?' she said. 'I have schnapps, cognac, and whiskey.'
'Schnapps,' I said. 'Thanks.'
'Please smoke if you want. I don't smoke myself but I enjoy the smell of it.' She handed me my drink and steered us to the blue chairs.
I sat down, took out my pipe, looked at it for a moment, and then slipped it back into my pocket. I was Bernie Gunther now, not Eric Gruen, and Bernie Gunther smoked cigarettes. I found some Reemtsmas and began a roll-up with the pipe tobacco.
'I love to watch a man make one of those,' she said, leaning forward on her chair.
'If my fingers weren't so cold,' I said, 'I might make a better job of it.'
'You're doing fine,' she said. 'I might have a puff of that when you're finished.' I finished with the makings, lit the cigarette, puffed it, and then handed it to her. She smoked it with genuine pleasure, as if it had been the choicest delicacy. Then she handed it back again. Without so much as a cough.
'Of course, I know who it is,' she said. 'My anonymous benefactor. It's Eric, isn't it?' She shook her head. 'It's all right. You don't have to say anything. But I know. It so happened that I did see a newspaper, a few days ago. There was something in it about his mother's death. You don't have to be Hercule Poirot to work out that particular chain of causation. He's got his hands on her money and now he wants to make amends. Always supposing that such a thing is possible after the dreadful thing he did. I'm not at all surprised that he sent you instead of coming here in person. I expect he doesn't dare show his face for fear of, whatever it is that someone like him is in fear of.' She shrugged and sipped some of her drink. 'Just for the record? When he ran out on me, in 1928, I was just eighteen years old. He wasn't much older, I suppose. I gave birth to a daughter. Magda.'
'Yes, I was going to ask about your daughter,' I said. 'I'm to give her the same sum as I've given you.'
'Well, you can't,' she said. 'Magda is dead. She was killed during an air raid, in 1944. A bomb hit her school.'
'I'm sorry,' I said.
Vera Messmann kicked off her shoes and folded her stockinged feet underneath her nicely curved behind. 'For what it's worth, I don't hold any of that against him. Compared with what happened during the war, it's not much of a crime, is it? To leave a girl with a bump in her road?'
'No, I suppose not,' I said.
'But I'm glad he sent you,' she said. 'I wouldn't want to see him again. Especially now Madga's dead. That would be too unpleasant. Also, I should be much more reluctant to take his money if it was him in person. But twenty-five thousand schillings . . . I can't say that wouldn't come in handy. Despite what you see here, I've not got much saved. All of this furniture is quite valuable, but it was my mother's, and this apartment is all that I've got to remind me of her. This apartment was hers. She had excellent taste.'
'Yes,' I said, glancing around, politely. 'She did indeed.'
'There's no point in selling any of it, though,' she said. 'Not right now. There's no money for this kind of stuff. Not even the Amis want it. Not yet. I'm waiting for the market to come back. But now'--she toasted me, silently--'now, maybe, I won't have to wait for the market at all.' She drank some more. 'And all I have to do is turn up at this bank and sign a receipt?'
'That's all. You won't even have to mention his name.'
'That's a relief,' she said.
'Just walk in the door and I'll be waiting for you. We'll go to a private room and I'll hand you the cash. Or a banker's draft, as you prefer. Simple as that.'
'It would be nice to think so,' she said. 'But nothing involving money is ever simple.'
'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth,' I said. 'That's my advice.'
'It's bad advice, Herr Gunther,' she said. 'Think about it. All those veterinary bills if the nag is no good. And let's not forget what happened to those poor dumb Trojans. Maybe if they had listened to Cassandra instead of Sinon they might have done just that. If they'd looked the Greek gift horse in the mouth they would have seen Odysseus and all his Greek friends huddled inside.' She smiled. 'Benefits of a classical education.'
'You have a point,' I said. 'But it's difficult to see how you could do it in this particular case.'
'That's because you're just a cop who's not a cop,' she said. 'Oh, I don't mean to be rude, but maybe if you had a little more imagination you could think of a way for me to get a closer look at the pony you walked in here.'
She removed the roll-up from my fingers and took another short puff on it before extinguishing it in an ashtray. Then she snatched off her glasses and leaned toward me until her mouth was just an inch or two away from mine.
