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
I felt Kahlo frown at me.
‘They’re not quite what you think,’ I told Kahlo. ‘
‘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.’
