‘Yes, please gentlemen, be seated,’ said Heydrich.
I picked a chair in front of the Leader’s bust and, almost immediately, regretted it. I didn’t care for Hitler staring at the back of my head. If ever he learned about what was at the back of my mind I was in serious trouble. I reached into my fart-catcher’s pocket and took out my officer’s diary. It was more or less the same kind of diary the Gestapo had found on Franz Koci’s dead body in Kleist Park.
‘If you don’t mind,’ I said to Pomme, ‘I’ll make some notes.’
Pomme shook his head. ‘Why should I mind?’
I shrugged. ‘No good reason.’ I paused. ‘Whenever you’re ready, Captain Pomme.’
‘Well, Albert, that’s to say Captain Kuttner, was supposed to awaken me at six o’clock this morning. As usual. He awakens me, or Major Ploetz, or Captain Kluckholn, because it’s our job to awaken the General at six-thirty. I suppose that’s just the pecking order. Him being the fourth adjutant, you understand. However, this was no longer a satisfactory arrangement. Kuttner was never a good sleeper, and lately he’s been dosing himself with a sleeping pill, which meant he started to over-sleep in the morning. This made me late, and that made the General late. This morning was fairly typical in that respect. And anticipating some sort of a problem, I managed to awaken myself at six and then went to see if Kuttner was awake. He wasn’t; or so it seemed at the time. I knocked on the door several times, without success. Again, that wasn’t so very unusual. When he’s taken a pill it can be a while before he can be roused. But after ten minutes I was still knocking without a reply and, well, I suppose I began to worry a little.’
‘Couldn’t you just have gone in there and shaken him awake?’ I asked.
‘I’m sorry, Gunther, I didn’t make myself clear. He always locked his door. He was quite a nervous person, I think. Something to do with what happened to him in Latvia, he said. I don’t know. Anyway, the door was locked and when I bent down to take a look through the keyhole I saw that the key was still in the lock.’
Pomme was a handsome little martinet, not much more than thirty years old, lugubrious, with a wide but narrow-lipped mouth. In his white fencing jerkin he resembled a nervous dentist.
‘Having failed to awaken Kuttner I quickly awoke the General and then went to find Herr Kritzinger, to see if there was perhaps some other means of gaining entry to Kuttner’s room.’
‘What time was this?’ I asked.
‘It would have been about six-forty-five,’ said Pomme. He glanced at the butler, who was the only man in the room who remained standing, for verification.
The butler looked at me. ‘That is correct, sir,’ he said. ‘I went to find the spare key. I keep spare keys for all of the doors in my safe. I noticed the time on the clock on my mantelpiece when I was opening the safe. I went back upstairs with the room keys, but I was unsuccessful in using the spare to push the key out of the lock so that I could open Captain Kuttner’s door from the outside.’
I considered telling him about the key-turners we’d used at the Adlon Hotel for just such a situation but it hardly seemed relevant now.
‘I then instructed one of the footmen to go and find the gardener,’ said Kritzinger, ‘and have him fetch a ladder to take a look through the window and perhaps open it from outside the house.’
‘Meanwhile I resumed knocking on the door,’ explained Pomme. ‘And calling Captain Kuttner’s name. And by now I was late for my fencing bout with the General.’
Heydrich nodded. ‘Every morning I fence with one of the adjutants before breakfast. Kuttner was the best — he was outstanding with the sabre — but, of late, he had too much on his mind to be competitive. This morning when I arrived at the gymnasium there was no sign of Pomme, so I went to look for him and met the footman who’d been sent to fetch the gardener. When I asked him if he’d seen Captain Pomme he explained the situation. That would have been around six-fifty-five. So I went to see if I could assist and found Pomme still knocking on Kuttner’s door. It was now seven o’clock. I suppose I also became a little concerned for Kuttner’s safety. The fact is, he’d been rather depressed of late. And I ordered Pomme and Kritzinger to break down the door. Which they proceeded to do.’
‘That can’t have been very easy,’ I said. ‘The doors here are thick.’
Instinctively Pomme rubbed his shoulder. ‘It wasn’t. It took us all of five or ten minutes.’
‘And when the door was open what did you see?’
‘Very little,’ said Pomme. ‘The curtains were drawn and the room was quite dark.’
‘Was the window closed or open?’
‘Closed, sir,’ said Kritzinger. ‘The General ordered me to pull back the curtains so that we could see and I noticed then that the window was closed and bolted.’
‘Then I called Kuttner’s name,’ said Heydrich. ‘And hearing no reply I approached the bed. It was immediately clear to us all from his position that something was very wrong. He was still wearing his uniform and his sleep seemed abnormally sound to me. What with the sound of the door coming down and our voices, it didn’t seem right that he shouldn’t even stir. So I pressed my fingers on the side of his neck to look for a pulse and I noticed straight away that his skin was cold to the touch. Colder than it ought to have been. And then I noticed that there was no pulse. No pulse at all.’
‘Have you been trained to take a pulse like that?’ I asked.
Heydrich frowned. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘It’s a straightforward question, sir. You’d be amazed how many dead men turn up fit and well after someone has taken their pulse and pronounced them dead.’
‘Very well, yes, I have. During my Luftwaffe training at the Werneuchen Aerodrome, in 1939, I received basic training in first aid. And again in May 1940. That was in Stavanger.’ He shook his head. ‘There’s no question about it, Gunther. The man was quite dead. That would have been at approximately ten minutes past seven.’
Kritzinger was nodding.
‘What happened next?’ I asked him.
‘The General ordered me to telephone for an ambulance.’
‘Where did you call?’
‘The Bulovka Hospital is the nearest,’ he said. ‘It’s on the north-east outskirts of Prague, about ten kilometres away.’
‘I drive past it every morning,’ said Heydrich.
‘A Czech doctor called Honek attended,’ said Kritzinger. ‘In fact he’s still downstairs.’
‘And what did you do?’ I asked Pomme.
‘General Heydrich told me to go and fetch General Jury right away.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s a doctor, too,’ said Pomme.
‘Yes, I remember now. He was a specialist in tuberculosis, I believe. Before he joined the SS.’ I nodded. ‘So, you went to fetch him. What happened then?’
‘I’m afraid he was feeling rather the worse for wear after last night. It was at least another fifteen minutes before he was dressed and on the scene.’
I looked at Heydrich. ‘Meanwhile, sir, you were still in the room with Kuttner, isn’t that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you do while you were waiting for Doctor Jury?’
‘Let’s see now. I opened the window, to get some air. I was feeling a little queasy for some reason. No, that’s not fair. He was a friend of mine. I lit a cigarette, to calm my nerves. But I tossed the end out of the window when I was finished. The crime scene is substantially uncontaminated.’ He shook his head and then ran a thin hand through his short hair. ‘I can’t think of anything else. After a while Doctor Jury turned up with Pomme. The doctor was, as Pomme says, very hung over. But not so hung over that he was incapable of pronouncing poor Kuttner dead. After that I had Ploetz call you and the local police right away. At approximately seven-thirty.’
‘Where’s Doctor Jury now?’ I asked.
‘In the library, sir,’ said Kritzinger. ‘With Doctor Honek. He asked for a pot of strong black coffee to be brought to him there.’
‘Has Doctor Honek examined the body?’
‘No,’ said Heydrich firmly. ‘I decided that there was no urgency about doing so. I thought it might be better if he waited until you had had a chance to examine the body yourself.’
I nodded. ‘I’ll do that now, if I may.’
