THE DILGER HOUSE was just fifteen minutes’ drive from the embassy. They parked beneath a dripping cedar on the opposite side of street.
‘Folksy,’ Thwaites observed. ‘Can you imagine him living in this place?’
‘Respectable American doctor living in a respectable part of town,’ Wolff declared, wiping condensation from the windscreen. Thwaites offered his cigarette case and they smoked and listened to the rain drumming on the motor car and trickling through a rip on to the rear seat. The patch of sky Wolff could see through the canopy of the cedar was many shades of grey. The lights were on in most homes already, glowing with contentment, even self- satisfaction. Behind new lace curtains and plush draperies, bankers’ wives padded through rooms without memories, furnished from the same stores in just the same way. The Dilger house was dark.
‘He’s gone, hasn’t he?’ Thwaites remarked, winding down his window a little to flick his cigarette end into the street.
Wolff rebuked him: ‘Wrong sort of neighbourhood,’ although he hardly cared. ‘Let’s take a look at the house.’
‘We’ll be soaked.’
‘This is a good time. If the sun comes out, so will the neighbours.’
‘All right,’ Thwaites muttered between gritted teeth.
Wolff’s jacket and trousers were wet through before they reached the porch and the rain had worked its way round the brim of his hat and inside his collar. They pulled the bell and waited a few minutes to be sure the place was empty. ‘Let’s look round the back. Friends of friends, if the neighbours have the temerity to ask.’
Kitchen, dining room, rented furniture and the walls were bare but for a large photograph in the sitting room. Five narrow steps down to a cellar door and two small windows. He squatted on his haunches and wiped the rain from the glass — empty but for a workbench, a sink and some rough shelving. How much more would the doctor need?
‘Anything?’ Thwaites asked. ‘If I bend to look I won’t get up again’.
‘I don’t know — perhaps.’
‘Has he gone?’
Wolff shrugged. ‘Probably.’ The Dilgers seemed to have made an effort with the garden, planting spring bulbs in the borders, and the earth at the back fence had been broken recently too.
‘I’ve looked at the door — we can force our way inside,’ said Thwaites, turning back to the house, ‘if you keep an eye…’ His mouth snapped shut in surprise. A woman was standing beneath the eaves in a winter coat and sou’wester.
‘Who are you?’ She was softly spoken, unmistakably of the South.
‘Frau Dilger?’ Wolff enquired.
‘Yes.’
‘My name is von Eck — my friend here is Mr Schmidt. If you’ll excuse the discourtesy, I’ll keep my hat on.’
She pretended to smile. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I hope I haven’t startled you. We’re friends of a friend — may we speak inside?’
‘Whatever your business, I’m sure it can’t be with me.’ She moved closer to the door, her face hidden by the sheet of water cascading from the roof. ‘Is it Dr Dilger you wish to see? My brother isn’t here, I’m afraid.’
Wolff took a couple of steps closer. ‘We’ve come from Baltimore — associates of Mr Hilken.’
She was considering him carefully. Perhaps she had a kind heart and would take pity on them. His jacket was clinging to his back. ‘Mr Hilken asked me to put your mind at rest on a few matters.’
‘Oh, I see,’ she said, taking a key from her pocket. ‘Then you better come inside.’
She invited them into her kitchen but no further, and she rejected Wolff’s offer of assistance with her coat. A handsome woman, early forties, a thin straight mouth like her brother’s, the same determined jawline and dimple in the chin.
‘We’re making a puddle on your floor.’ He smiled reassuringly.
‘I’m sorry if I appeared rude. I have to be careful now I’m on my own.’ Her voice shook a little and she wouldn’t look him in the eye.
‘Have we missed Dr Dilger?’
‘Yes.’
‘When do you expect…’
‘I don’t. You said you had a message. Please give it to me.’
‘For you
Her eyes flitted up to his face, then away. They were a warm brown-green colour. ‘He’s visiting Germany — Mr Hilken knows that.’ She shuffled to her left, perhaps consciously putting the broad oak table between them.
‘But not yet,’ Wolff remarked. ‘We were told he was here.’
‘Well, he’s gone.’ She was staring at Wolff defiantly now, unflinching, her small dry hands clasped beneath her chest. ‘I’d like you to go too.’
‘I’m sorry, Miss Dilger.’ Wolff slapped his wet hat down on the table. ‘I don’t want to inconvenience you, but we have a few questions.’
‘Leave.’ She glanced at the door.
‘Please don’t,’ he said in an aggrieved voice.
‘I’ll shout — my neighbours…’
‘No one will hear you,’ Wolff gestured to the rain beating at the window, ‘and it isn’t necessary.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Please sit down.’
She didn’t move.
‘Sit down,’ he repeated firmly, and this time she did.
‘Where is Dr Dilger?’
‘I’ve told you.’
‘I saw him myself only a few days ago,’ he lied.
‘He sailed from New York yesterday.’
‘The ship?’
‘The
Wolff nodded. ‘Did you know?’ Their eyes met, the colour rising in her cheeks. Then she looked down at her hands. ‘Know?’
‘Know what your brother was doing?’ He leant closer, forcing her to look up.
‘My brother’s a doctor. I don’t know who you are — but a doctor visiting his family — he’s on — was on — vacation, that’s all.’
‘Your brother was a cheap poisoner,’ Thwaites interjected harshly. ‘Instead of treating the sick he’s been culturing disease. Where? — here?’
She shook her head. ‘My brother’s a doctor.’
She denied it, refused to even countenance the possibility, but he read shame in her face, heard it in her voice. Not the details perhaps, but she’d guessed and turned a blind eye. It wasn’t so unusual, even among the God-fearing. Wolff touched Thwaites’ sleeve. ‘I’m going to look around.’
The main rooms of the house were empty of the past, just as he’d expected them to be. He found a photograph of the doctor on his sister’s bedside table and took it from its silver frame, and in the sitting room a family group with young Anton at the feet of the soldier-patriarch. Finally, he clomped down the stairs to the basement and was reaching for the door when he suddenly froze, his fingers just touching the handle. In the kitchen above, Thwaites’ abrasive German, then a sullen silence punctuated by the scraping of a chair leg and the rain at the window. But it wasn’t a voice, a noise, that had startled him; it was a smell — the faint but sharp odour of the slaughterhouse — or so he imagined it to be. This is the place, he thought, here beneath Miss Dilger’s kitchen. He pushed open the door and turned on the lights. White walls, sink, trelliswork bench, home-made shelves; just as he’d seen it through the window. Everything had been scrubbed with bleach and yet the sickly-sweet smell of
