We went along the same hallway that was a couple of coats of paint above gloomy, to the double doors of the sitting-room-office. Frau Lange, her chins and her dog were waiting for me on the same chaise longue, except that it had been recovered with a shade of material that was easy on the eye only if you had a piece of grit in there on which to concentrate. Having lots of money is no guarantee of good taste, but it can make the lack of it more glaringly obvious.
‘Don’t you own a telephone?’ she boomed through her cigarette smoke like a fog-horn. I heard her chuckle as she added: ‘I think you must have once been a debt-collector or something.’ Then, realizing what she had said, she clutched at one of her sagging jowls. ‘Oh God, I haven’t paid your bill, have I?’ She laughed again, and stood up. ‘I’m most awfully sorry.’
“That’s all right,‘ I said, watching her go to the desk and take out her cheque-book.
‘And I haven’t yet thanked you properly for the speedy way in which you handled things. I’ve told all my friends about how good you were.’ She handed me the cheque. ‘I’ve put a small bonus on there. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to have done with that terrible man. In your letter you said that it appeared as if he had hanged himself, Herr Gunther. Saved somebody else the trouble, eh?’ She laughed again, loudly, like an amateur actress performing rather too vigorously to be wholly credible. Her teeth were also false.
‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ I said. I didn’t see any point in telling her about my suspicion that Heydrich had had Klaus Hering killed with the aim of expediting my rejoining Kripo. Clients don’t much care for loose ends. I’m not all that fond of them myself.
It was now that she remembered that her case had also happened to cost Bruno Stahlecker his life. She let her laughter subside, and fixing a more serious expression to her face she set about expressing her condolences. This also involved her cheque-book. For a moment I thought about saying something noble to do with the hazards of the profession, but then I thought of Bruno’s widow and let her finish writing it.
‘Very generous,’ I said. ‘I’ll see that this gets to his wife and family.’
‘Please do,’ she said. ‘And if there’s anything else that I can do for them, you will let me know, won’t you?’
I said that I would.
‘There is something you can do for me, Herr Gunther,’ she said. ‘There are still the letters I gave you. My son asked me if those last few could be returned to him.’
‘Yes, of course. I’d forgotten.’ But what was that she said? Was it possible that she meant the letters I still held in the file back at my office were the only surviving letters? Or did she mean that Reinhard Lange already had the rest? In which case, how had he come by them? Certainly I had failed to find any more of the letters when I searched Hering’s apartment. What had become of them?
‘I’ll drop them round myself,’ I said. ‘Thank goodness he has the rest of them back safely.’
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ she said.
So there it was. He did have them.
I began to move towards the door. ‘Well, I’d better be getting along, Frau Lange.’ I waved the two cheques in the air and then slipped them into my wallet. ‘Thanks for your generosity.’
‘Not at all.’
I frowned as if something had occurred to me.
‘There is one thing that puzzles me,’ I said. ‘Something I meant to ask you about. What interest does your company have in the Rolf Vogelmann Detective Agency?’
‘Rolf Vogelmann?’ she repeated uncomfortably.
‘Yes. You see I learnt quite by accident that the Lange Publishing Company has been funding an advertising campaign for Rolf Vogelmann since July of this year. I was merely wondering why you should have hired me when you might with more reason have hired him?’
Frau Lange blinked deliberately and shook her head.
‘I’m afraid that I have absolutely no idea.’
I shrugged and allowed myself a little smile. ‘Well, as I say, it just puzzled me, that’s all. Nothing important. Do you sign all the company cheques, Frau Lange? I mean, I just wondered if this might be something your son could have done on his own without informing you. Like buying that magazine you told me about. Now what was its name?
Clearly embarrassed, Frau Lange’s face was beginning to redden. She swallowed hard before answering.
‘Reinhard has signing power over a limited bank account which is supposed to cover his expenses as a company director. However, I’m at a loss to explain what this might relate to, Herr Gunther.’
‘Well, maybe he got tired of astrology. Maybe he decided to become a private investigator himself. To tell the truth, Frau Lange, there are times when a horoscope is as good a way of finding something out as any other.’
‘I shall make a point of asking Reinhard about this when I next see him. I’m indebted to you for the information. Would you mind telling me where you got it from?’
‘The information? Sorry, I make it a strict rule never to breach confidentiality. I’m sure you understand.’
She nodded curtly, and bade me good evening.
Back in the hall the black cauldron was still simmering over her floor.
‘You know what I’d recommend?’ I said.
‘What’s that?’ she said sullenly.
‘I think you should give Frau Lange’s son a call at his magazine. Maybe he can work up a magic spell to shift those marks.’
17
When I first suggested the idea to Hildegard Steininger, she had been less than enthusiastic.
‘Let me get this straight. You want to pose as my husband?’
‘That’s right.’
‘In the first place, my husband is dead. And in the second you don’t look anything like him, Herr Kommissar.’
‘In the first place I’m counting on this man not knowing that the real Herr Steininger is dead; and in the second, I don’t suppose that he would have any more idea of what your husband might have looked like than I do.’
‘Exactly who is this Rolf Vogelmann, anyway?’
‘An investigation like this one is nothing more than a search for a pattern, for a common factor. Here the common factor is that we’ve discovered Vogelmann was retained by the parents of two other girls.’
‘Two other victims, you mean,’ she said. ‘I know that other girls have disappeared and then been found murdered, you know. There may be nothing about it in the papers, but one hears things all the time.’
‘Two other victims, then,’ I admitted.
‘But surely that’s just a coincidence. Listen, I can tell you that I’ve thought of doing it myself, you know, paying someone to look for my daughter. After all, you still haven’t found a trace of her, have you?’
‘That’s true. But it may be more than just a coincidence. That’s what I’d like to find out.’
‘Supposing that he is involved. What could he hope to gain from it?’
‘We’re not necessarily talking about a rational person here. So I don’t know that gain will come into the equation.’
‘Well, it all sounds very dubious to me,’ she said. ‘I mean, how did he get in touch with these two families?’
‘He didn’t. They got in touch with him after seeing his newspaper advertisement.’
‘Doesn’t that show that if he is a common factor, then it’s not been through his own making?’
‘Perhaps he just wants it to look that way. I don’t know. All the same I’d like to find out more, even if it’s just to rule him out.’
