‘So how about it, Hermann?’
Kluckholn shook his head. ‘Whatever you heard, Captain Gunther, I can assure you I did not murder Captain Kuttner. Perhaps my language was a little intemperate yesterday, in the library. But I had a better opinion of him than perhaps you heard me say.’
Kluckholn spoke as if his voice was being recorded on a gramophone disc.
I looked at Kahlo. ‘Kurt. Would you please close that door?’
Kahlo moved away from the piano and closed the door behind him quietly.
‘What are you hiding, Hermann?’
Kluckholn shook his head. ‘I can assure you, I’m not hiding anything.’
‘Sure you are, Hermann.’ I shrugged. ‘Everyone in this damned house is hiding something or other. Small secrets. Big secrets. Dirty secrets. And you’re no exception, Hermann.’
‘I would rather you did not call me Hermann in that familiar way. I prefer Kluckholn, or Captain Kluckholn. And your suggestion that I’m hiding something is not only nonsensical it is also insulting.’ Colouring with irritation and injured pride, Kluckholn moved toward the closed door. ‘And I am not going to remain here to endure your insinuations.’
‘Yes, you are, Hermann.’
I nodded at Kahlo, who quickly turned the key in the lock and then pocketed it.
Meanwhile Kluckholn looked as if I had just stood on his corn.
‘You really are a most vulgar, tiresome fellow, Gunther. Has anyone told you that?’
‘Many times. It must have something to do with all the vulgar murders I’ve investigated. Not to mention all the murders that I myself have been obliged to commit. Of course that hardly makes me unusual in this house. But like Captain Kuttner I found there was something about it I didn’t like. Which is the reason I’m here now, speaking to you instead of carrying on the good work out east with all the special action boys. By the way, how was it that you escaped that particular tour of duty, Hermann?’
‘I’m ordering you to unlock that door,’ Kluckholn told Kahlo.
Kahlo folded his arms and looked sad, as if disappointed that he couldn’t obey the order. I didn’t doubt that he was more than equal to the task of dealing with Kluckholn if the third adjutant decided to try and get tough with him. Kahlo looked tougher. Kahlo would have looked tough in a bath full of Turkish wrestlers.
‘Maybe you had vitamin B, too,’ I said. ‘Better still perhaps you had vitamin A. What’s the big name in Berlin that’s been helping you to keep your nice polished boots out of the murder pits of Minsk and Riga, Hermann?’
Kluckholn stood immediately in front of Kahlo and held out his hand. ‘As your superior officer I am ordering you to hand over that key.’
‘Why don’t you sit down and tell us what you’re hiding, Hermann? For example, why don’t we talk about this list of Captain Kuttner’s personal effects? It was you who compiled that, wasn’t it?’
‘Open that damn door, or you’ll regret it.’
‘The trouble is, I’m afraid, that you left some items off the list. And I don’t like it when people try to deceive me. You see I conducted a very swift search of the room before you tidied up. Which is how I know that this list doesn’t include those copies of Der Fuhrer magazine that were in Kuttner’s drawer.’
I felt Kahlo frown at me.
‘They’re not quite what you think,’ I told Kahlo. ‘ Der Fuhrer is or rather was a homosexual magazine. Used to be quite popular with some of Berlin’s warmer boys. So were the others in that drawer. Der Kreise and Der Insel. Lots of naked men playing with medicine balls or doing press-ups on top of each other.’ I shook my head. ‘You see the corrupting things I’ve had to deal with in my career as a police officer, Kurt? It’s a wonder I’m not in the cement myself, some of the filth I’ve seen.’
‘Lots of bums, was it, sir?’
‘Lots. Collector’s items now, on the Berlin black market, pornography being so hard to obtain these days. Expensive stuff. For connoisseurs of that kind of thing, you might say.’
Kahlo pulled a face that was a pantomime of disgust.
‘It’s a dirty job, sir. Being a detective.’
‘Don’t tell anyone, Kurt. Not in this house. They’ll all want to do it.’
Kluckholn had calmed down a bit and was looking a little less inclined to fight Kahlo for the key to the Morning Room door.
But another minute passed before he turned away and sat down on the sofa.
‘Of course,’ said Kahlo, ‘it’s possible the Captain here took those dirty magazines off the list not because he wanted to deceive you, sir, but because he wanted to keep them for himself.’
‘No,’ said Kluckholn, loudly.
‘I never thought of that, Kurt. Good thinking.’
Kahlo grinned, enjoying himself. There wasn’t much licence to insult senior officers in the Gestapo and SS, and he was going to take full advantage of it now.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘He took them to use while he was rubbing his own pipe.’
‘No,’ insisted Kluckholn. ‘No. I was merely trying to safeguard Kuttner’s reputation. Not to mention the reputation of the squadron.’
The squadron was what nice well-bred people like Kluckholn called the SS.
‘Kuttner wasn’t like that, I’m sure of it. He liked women. Those filthy magazines must have belonged to someone else. Perhaps they were already here when the house was taken over. Perhaps they belonged to the Jews who owned the place before von Neurath. After all, as far as I could tell, they were hardly recent copies.’ He shook his head. ‘Anyway, I talked it over with my own conscience and I decided that it was best to burn them. It was obvious they had no bearing on the case.’
‘You burned them?’
‘Yes, I burned them all. It was quite bad enough that Kuttner should be murdered, but we hardly wanted you questioning his reputation as an officer and a gentleman.’
‘We? You mean you and Ploetz burned them?’
‘Yes. And we certainly didn’t want those filthy magazines being sent to his parents in Halle, along with all his other personal effects.’
‘That much I can understand.’
‘I doubt that, Gunther. I really do.’
‘What makes you think he liked women, Hermann?’
‘Because he talked about a girl he’d met. A girl here in Prague. That’s why.’
‘This girl have a name?’
‘Grete. I don’t know her surname.’
‘She wouldn’t be the woman in the framed photograph that’s still listed among his possessions?’
‘No, that’s his mother.’
‘Maybe this Grete was just his black face,’ I said. ‘To help persuade you that he was as normal as the rest of you.’
‘Or maybe,’ offered Kahlo, ‘he was just dipping his toe into the water, to see if he liked it.’
‘Or maybe Hermann here is just making it up,’ I said. ‘To make his fellow adjutant seem like less of a queer in our eyes than he really was.’
‘Perhaps he’s a bit warm himself, sir. Perhaps he has to give Kuttner an alibi so he can have one, too. Could be that’s what they were arguing about. A lover’s tiff.’
Kluckholn stood up and stared angrily at Kahlo. ‘I don’t have to take that from you.’ He turned to glare at me. ‘I don’t have to take it from either of you.’
‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘Before I make you sit down.’
Kluckholn remained standing.
‘By the way,’ I said. ‘What other evidence did you destroy when you were burning Kuttner’s puppy mags?’
Kluckholn shook his head and sat down. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘A diary, perhaps, Some love letters? Photographs of the two of you on a nice trip to Rugen Island with all the boys?’
I wasn’t interested in any of these, although I might have been if I had ever supposed that they had been
