Kuttner lay at an angle across the bed, as if he’d collapsed there. His eyes were closed. One of his arms lay neatly alongside his torso; the other was sticking straight out at right angles to the rest of his body, like a dead Christ. Well, half of a dead Christ anyway. But both hands were unscathed and empty. There were four buttons on his captain’s fart-catcher tunic with three of them unbuttoned from the top. He was wearing a white collarless shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, and no tie. It was easy to see how anyone could have missed the fact he’d been shot. It was only when you lifted the flap of the tunic that you could see the blood covering the shirt. He was still wearing his riding breeches, and just one boot. The monkey-swing – his adjutant’s braided rope – was off his top button but still attached to the right epaulette. He looked like a man who had been shot while he was still undressing.
‘Has anyone been over the floor yet?’ I asked Heydrich. ‘To look for evidence?’
‘No,’ said Heydrich.
I nodded at Kahlo who, without complaint, dropped onto his hands and knees and began to look for a bullet-shell, or perhaps something as yet unimagined.
I collected the P38 from Kuttner’s holster, sniffed the barrel and then checked the magazine. The gun was dirty and not well maintained, but clearly it hadn’t been fired in a while.
‘Your conclusions?’ asked Heydrich.
‘Beyond the fact that he was shot in the torso and that it hardly looks like a suicide I don’t yet have any,’ I said.
‘Why do you think it doesn’t look like a suicide?’ asked Pomme.
‘It’s unusual to shoot yourself and then neatly replace the weapon in the holster,’ I said. ‘Especially when you weren’t being neat about so much else. If you were going to shoot yourself, you would take off both boots, or neither of them. Quite apart from that his own pistol has a full magazine and hasn’t been fired in a while.’
I shrugged.
‘Then again there is no other gun in the room. But all the same it’s hard to imagine that he was shot, returned to his room, locked the door, lay down on the bed, took off one boot, and then quietly died. Even if that’s what it looks like.’
‘What I can’t understand,’ said Heydrich, ‘is why nobody seems to have heard a shot.’
‘Well, we don’t know that until we ask everyone,’ I said.
‘I can ask around, if you like,’ offered Pomme.
‘What I mean,’ Heydrich said firmly, ‘is that the sound of a shot would surely have raised the alarm. Especially here, in a house full of policemen.’
I nodded. ‘So the chances are that somehow the shot was muffled. Or someone did hear the shot and either chose to ignore it, or thought that it was something else.’
I went to the open window and put my head outside.
‘Today I can’t hear anything,’ I said. ‘But yesterday when I arrived here, at around the same time, someone was out there shooting birds. Rather a lot of birds.’
‘That would have been General von Eberstein,’ said Captain Pomme. ‘He likes to shoot.’
‘But not this morning,’ I observed.
‘This morning, he has a hangover,’ said Pomme. ‘Like General Jury.’
Kahlo stood up. ‘Apart from all of these pills, there’s nothing on this floor, sir,’ he said. ‘Not so much as a bloodspot.’
‘What, nothing at all?’ I frowned.
‘No sir. I’ll organize a more thorough search, after the body’s gone. But this floor is clean, sir.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a mystery. Maybe he shot himself, threw the gun out of the window, closed it again, and then collapsed on the bed and died.’
‘Good thinking,’ said Heydrich, sarcastically. ‘Or maybe Captain Kuttner was just shot by a man who could pass through solid walls.’
‘You’d better check outside, anyway,’ I told Kahlo.
He nodded and left the room.
Heydrich shook his head. ‘That man is an idiot.’
‘How well do you know this house, General?’
‘You mean, are there any false walls and secret passages?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea. I’ve not been here for very long at all. Von Neurath had the house before I did. He knows this place much better than me, so you’d better ask him that.’
Absently I drew open Kuttner’s drawers and found several shirts, a toilet bag, some underwear, a shoe-cleaning kit, some
‘Can I ask von Neurath something like that?’
‘As I told you already, Gunther, I expect everyone to cooperate. No matter who or what they are.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ I smiled. ‘Do I have to be polite? Or can I just be myself?’
‘Why change the habit of a lifetime? You’re the most insubordinate fellow I know, Gunther, but sometimes that yields results. It might however be a good idea if, while you were conducting your investigation, and practising your habitual impertinence, you wore civilian clothes. So that you can’t be accused of something that would get you court-martialled in a uniform. Yes. I think that might be best. Have you any civilian clothes with you?’
‘Yes sir. They’re in my room.’
