‘I’m only sure that’s what it’s meant to look like. Whether it is or not we’ll only know when a doctor gets him on the slab. You’d expect a powder burn on the skin if he really did press the gun to his forehead, and I didn’t see one, that’s all.’
The inspector nodded. He was a small man with small hands and a small way about him.
‘Like I said, this is one homicide I’m glad to leave to the Alex.’
Inge Bleyle had stopped crying. She was about thirty years old, tall – much taller than Ernst Udet – and good-looking in an understated way. She was wearing her fur coat and there was a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, neither of which looked like she’d paid much attention to them since they came her way.
I found an ashtray, held it under her cigarette and tapped the back of her hand. She looked up, smiled ruefully and then put out the cigarette in the ashtray while I continued holding it.
‘I’m Commissar Gunther. From the Alex. Feel like talking?’
She shrugged. ‘I guess so. I guess I have to, right? I mean, I found him, and I made the call, so someone has to start the ball rolling.’
‘I believe you told the other detective that you were on the telephone with Herr Udet when the shot was fired. Is that correct?’
She nodded.
‘What had you been talking about?’
‘When I first got to know him, well before the war, Ernst Udet was the life and soul of the party. Everyone liked him. He was a real gentleman. Kind, generous, impeccably well-mannered. But you couldn’t imagine he was even related to the Ernst Udet of recent memory. He drank, he was short-tempered, he was rude. He’d always drunk a lot. Half of those Great War pilots drank just to go up in those planes. But he always seemed like he could handle the drink. But lately he started drinking even more than usual. Mostly he drank because he was unhappy. Very unhappy. I’d left him because of his drinking, you see. And he wanted me back. And I didn’t want to come back because it was obvious that he was still drinking. As you have no doubt seen for yourself. It looks like a one-man house party in there.’
‘Why was he drinking? Any particular reason? I mean, before you left him.’
‘Yes, I understand. He was drinking because of what was happening at the Air Ministry. That Jew, Erhard Milch, was trying to undermine Ernst. All of the people in his department had been fired and Ernst took that very personally.’
‘Why were they fired?’
‘Because that bastard Göring didn’t have the guts to fire Ernst. He figured that if he fired all of Ernst’s people then Ernst’s sense of honour would compel him to resign. He blamed Ernst for the failure of our air attacks on Britain. That’s what he said to Hitler, to save his own skin. Of course it wasn’t true, not a damned word of it, but Hitler believed him anyway. But that was just one reason he was depressed.’
I groaned, inside. After Prague I needed this case like I needed a pair of silk stockings of the kind Inge Bleyle was wearing on her lovely legs.
‘And another reason?’
She shrugged. Suddenly she was looking evasive, as if it had dawned on her that she was talking to a cop.
‘What with the war in Russia, well that was getting him down too. Yes, he was depressed and drinking too much. Only – well, he wasn’t long back from a clinic in Bühlerhöhe. They’d dried him out. He did that for me, you know. Because he wanted me back and I’d made that a condition of our getting back together. But I wanted to wait a little, see? Just to see if it took – the cure.’ She sipped her whisky and grimaced. ‘I don’t like whisky.’
‘In this house? That’s not unusual.’ I took the glass and put it on the table between us.
‘Then, a couple of days ago, something happened to him. I don’t know what, exactly. Ploch, his chief of staff at the Ministry until Milch had him fired, had just returned from Kiev. He went to see Ernst and told him something. Something awful. Ernst wouldn’t say what it was, just that it was something happening in the East, in Russia, and that no one would ever believe it.’
I nodded. You didn’t have to be a detective to know what Ploch had probably told him. And it wasn’t anything to do with aeroplanes.
‘Because of that, Ernst had telephoned Göring to ask him about it and they’d argued. Badly. And Ernst threatened to tell someone at the American Embassy what Ploch had told him.’
‘He said that?’
‘Yes. He had a lot of American friends, you see? Ernst was very popular. Especially with the ladies. The late ambassador’s daughter – I mean the American ambassador’s daughter, Martha Dodds, she was a very close friend. Perhaps more than just a friend. I don’t know.’
She paused.
‘And he told you all of this on the telephone?’
‘Yes. We were talking. Ernst was crying some of the time. Begging me to come and see him. One thing I do remember him saying. It was that he could no longer believe in Germany; that Germany was a wicked country and deserved to lose the war.’
