March Violets (10 page)

‘Not at all,' I said. ‘It's very interesting.' She flashed me the smile that made thousands of German men, myself included, go weak at the chin.

‘I'm so glad you approve.' She was wearing a pair of green-velvet lounging pyjamas with a long, gold, fringed sash, and high-heeled green morocco slippers. Her blonde hair was done up in a braided knot at the back of her head, as was fashionable; but unlike most German women, she was also wearing make-up and smoking a cigarette. That sort of thing is frowned on by the BdM, the Women's League, as being inconsistent with the Nazi ideal of German Womanhood; however, I'm a city boy: plain, scrubbed, rosy faces may be just fine down on the farm, but like nearly all German men I prefer my women powdered and painted. Of course, Ilse Rudel lived in a different world to other women. She probably thought the Nazi Women's League was a hockey association.

‘I'm sorry about those two fellows on the door,' she said, ‘but you see, Josef and Magda Goebbels have an apartment upstairs, so security has to be extra tight, as you can imagine. Which reminds me, I promised Josef that I'd try and listen to his speech, or at least a bit of it. Do you mind?'

It was not the sort of question that you ever asked; unless you happened to be on first-name terms with the Minister of Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment, and his lady wife. I shrugged.

‘That's fine by me.'

‘We'll only listen for a few minutes,' she said, switching on the Philco that stood on top of a walnut drinks cabinet. ‘Now then. What can I get you to drink?' I asked for a whisky and she poured me one that was big enough for a set of false teeth. She poured herself a glass of Bowle, Berlin's favourite summer drink, from a tall, blue-glass pitcher, and joined me on a sofa that was the colour and contours of an underripe pineapple. We clinked glasses and, as the tubes of the radio set warmed up, the smooth tones of the man from upstairs slipped slowly into the room.

First of all, Goebbels singled out foreign journalists for criticism, and rebuked their ‘biased' reporting of life in the new Germany. Some of his remarks were clever enough to draw laughter and then applause from his sycophantic audience. Rudel smiled uncertainly, but remained silent, and I wondered if she understood what her club-footed neighbour from upstairs was talking about. Then he raised his voice and proceeded to declaim against the traitors — whoever they were, I didn't know - who were trying to sabotage the national revolution. Here she stifled a yawn. Finally, when Joey got going on his favourite subject, the glorification of the Führer, she jumped up and switched the radio off.

‘Goodness me, I think we've heard enough from him for one evening.' She went over to the gramophone and picked up a disc.

‘Do you like jazz?' she said, changing the subject. ‘Oh, it's all right, it's not negro jazz. I love it, don't you?' Only non-negro jazz is permitted in Germany now, but I often wonder how they can tell the difference.

‘I like any kind of jazz,' I said. She wound up the gramophone and put the needle into the groove. It was a nice relaxed sort of piece with a strong clarinet and a saxophonist who could have led a company of Italians across no man's land in a barrage.

I said: ‘Do you mind me asking why you keep this place?'

She danced back to the sofa and sat down. ‘Well, Herr Private Investigator, Hermann finds my friends a little trying. He does a lot of work from our house in Dahlem, and at all hours: I do most of my entertaining here, so as not to disturb him.'

‘Sounds sensible enough,' I said. She blew a column of smoke at me from each exquisite nostril, and I took a deep breath of it; not because I enjoyed the smell of American cigarettes, which I do, but because it had come from inside her chest, and anything to do with that chest was all right by me. From the movement underneath her jacket I had already concluded that her breasts were large and unsupported.

‘So,' I said, ‘what was it that you wanted to see me about?' To my surprise, she touched me lightly on the knee.

‘Relax,' she smiled. ‘You're not in a hurry, are you?' I shook my head and watched her stub out her cigarette. There were already several butts in the ashtray, all heavily marked with lipstick, but none of them had been smoked for more than a few puffs, and it occurred to me that she was the one who needed to relax, and that maybe she was nervous about something. Me perhaps. As if confirming my theory she jumped up off the sofa, poured herself another glass of Bowle and changed the record.

‘Are you all right with your drink?'

‘Yes,' I said, and sipped some. It was good whisky, smooth and peaty, with no backburner in it. Then I asked her how well she had known Paul and Grete Pfarr. I don't think the question surprised her. Instead, she sat close to me, so that we were actually touching, and smiled in a strange way.

‘Oh, yes,' she said whimsically. ‘I forgot. You're the man who's investigating the fire for Hermann, aren't you?' She did some more grinning, and added: ‘I suppose the case has the police baffled.' There was a note of sarcasm in her voice. ‘And then you come along, the Great Detective, and find the clue that solves the whole mystery.'

‘There's no mystery, Fraulein Rudel,' I said provocatively. It threw her only slightly.

‘Why, surely the mystery is, who did it?' she said.

‘A mystery is something that is beyond human knowledge and comprehension, which means that I should be wasting my time in even trying to investigate it. No, this case is nothing more than a puzzle, and I happen to like puzzles.'

‘Oh, so do I,' she said, almost mocking me, I thought. ‘And please, you must call me Ilse while you're here. And I shall call you by your Christian name. What is it?'

‘Bernhard.'

‘Bernhard,' she said, trying it for size, and then shortening it, ‘Bernie.' She gulped a large mouthful of the champagne and sauterne mixture she was drinking, picked out a strawberry from the top of her glass and ate it. ‘Well, Bernie, you must be a very good private investigator to be working for Hermann on something as important as this. I thought you were all seedy little men who followed husbands and looked through keyholes at what they got up to, and then told their wives.'

‘Divorce cases are just about the one kind of business that I don't handle.'

‘Is that a fact?' she said, smiling quietly to herself. It irritated me quite a bit, that smile; in part because I felt she was patronizing me, but also because I wanted desperately to stop it with a kiss. Failing that, the back of my hand. ‘Tell me something. Do you make much money doing what you do?' Tapping me on the thigh to indicate that she hadn't finished her question, she added: ‘I don't mean to sound rude. But what I want to know is, are you comfortable?'

I took note of my opulent surroundings before answering. ‘Me, comfortable? Like a Bauhaus chair, I am.' She laughed at that. ‘You didn't answer my question about the Pfarrs,' I said.

‘Didn't I?'

‘You know damn well you didn't.'

She shrugged. ‘I knew them.'

‘Well enough to know what Paul had against your husband?'

‘Is that really what you're interested in?' she said.

‘It'll do for a start.'

She gave an impatient little sigh. ‘Very well. We'll play your game, but only until I get bored of it.' She raised her eyebrows questioningly at me, and although I had no idea what she was talking about, I shrugged and said:

‘That's fine by me.'

‘It's true, they didn't get on, but I haven't the haziest why. When Paul and Grete first met, Hermann was against their getting married. He thought Paul wanted a nice platinum tooth - you know, a rich wife. He tried to persuade Grete to drop him. But Grete wouldn't hear of it. After that, by all accounts they got on fine. At least until Hermann's first wife died. By then I'd been seeing him for some time. It was when we got married that things really started to cool off between the two of them. Grete started drinking. And their marriage seemed little more than a fig-leaf, for decency's sake - Paul being at the Ministry and all that.'

‘What did he do there, do you know?'

‘No idea.'

‘Did he nudge around?'

‘With other women?' She laughed. ‘Paul was good-looking, but a bit lame. He was dedicated to his work, not another woman. If he did, he kept it very quiet.'

‘What about her?'

Rudel shook her golden head, and took a large gulp of her drink. ‘Not her style.' But she paused for a moment and looked more thoughtful. ‘Although . . .' She shrugged. ‘It probably isn't anything.'

‘Come on,' I said. ‘Unpack it.'

‘Well, there was one time in Dahlem, when I was left with just the tiniest suspicion that Grete might have had something going with Haupthändler.' I raised an eyebrow. ‘Hermann's private secretary. This would have been about the time when the Italians had entered Addis Ababa. I remember that only because I went to a party at the Italian Embassy.'

‘That would have been early in May.'

‘Yes. Anyway, Hermann was away on business, so I went by myself. I was filming at U F A the next morning and had to be up early. I decided to spend the night at Dahlem, so I would have a bit more time in the morning. It's a lot easier getting to Babelsberg from there. Anyway, when I got home I poked my head around the drawing-room door in search of a book I had left there, and who should I find sitting in the dark but Hjalmar Haupthändler and Grete?'

‘What were they doing?'

‘Nothing. Nothing at all. That's what made it so damned suspicious. It was two o'clock in the morning and there they were, sitting at opposite ends of the same sofa like a couple of school children on their first date. I could tell they were embarrassed to see me. They gave me some cabbage about just chatting and was that really the time. But I didn't buy it.'

‘Did you mention it to your husband?'

‘No,' she said. ‘Actually, I forgot about it. And even if I hadn't, I wouldn't have told him. Hermann is not the sort of person who could have just left it alone to sort itself out. Most rich men are like that, I think. Distrustful, and suspicious.'

‘I'd say he must trust you a great deal to let you keep your own apartment.'

She laughed scornfully. ‘God, what a joke. If you knew what I have to put up with. But then you probably know all about us, you being a private investigator.' She didn't let me answer. ‘I've had to sack several of my maids because they were being bribed by him to spy on me. He's really a very jealous man.'

‘Under similar circumstances I'd probably act the same way,' I told her. ‘Most men would be jealous of a woman like you.' She looked me in the eye, and then at the rest of me. It was the sort of provocative look that only whores and phenomenally rich and beautiful film stars can get away with. It was meant to get me to climb aboard her bones like a creeper on to a trellis. A look that made me want to gore a hole in the rug. ‘Frankly, you probably like to make a man jealous. You strike me as the kind of woman who holds out her hand to signal a left and then makes a right, just to keep him guessing. Are you ready to tell me why you asked me here tonight?'

‘I've sent the maid home,' she said, ‘so stop thrashing words and kiss me, you big idiot.' Normally I'm not too good at taking orders, but on this occasion I didn't quarrel. It's not every day that a film star tells you to kiss her. She gave me the soft, luscious inside of her lips, and I let myself equal their competence, just to be polite. After a minute I felt her body stir, and when she pulled her mouth away from my lamprey-like kiss her voice was hot and breathless.

‘My, that was a real slow-burner.'

‘I practise on my forearm.' She smiled and raised her mouth up to mine, kissing me like she intended to lose control of herself and so that I would stop holding something back from her. She was breathing through her nose, as if she needed more oxygen, gradually getting serious about it, and me keeping pace with her, until she said:

‘I want you to fuck me, Bernie.' I heard each word in my fly. We stood up in silence, and taking me by the hand she led me to the bedroom.

‘I've got to go to the bathroom first,' I said. She was pulling the pyjama-jacket over her head, her breasts wobbling: these were real film star's chicks and for a moment I couldn't take my eyes off them. Each brown nipple was like a British Tommy's helmet.

‘Don't be too long, Bernie,' she said, dropping first her sash, and then the trousers, so that she stood there in just her knickers.

But in the bathroom I took a long, honest look in the mirror, which was one whole wall, and asked myself why a living goddess like the one turning down the white satin sheets needed me of all people to help justify an expensive laundry account. It wasn't my choirboy's face, or my sunny disposition. With my broken nose and my car-bumper of a jaw, I was handsome only by the standards of a fairground boxing-booth. I didn't imagine for a minute that my blond hair and blue eyes made me fashionable. She wanted something else besides a brush, and I had a shrewd idea what it was. The trouble was I had an erection that, temporarily at least, was very firmly in command.

Back in the bedroom, she was still standing there, waiting for me to come and help myself. Impatient of her, I snatched her knickers down, pulling her onto the bed, where I prised her sleek, tanned thighs apart like an excited scholar opening a priceless book. For quite a while I pored over the text, turning the pages with my fingers and feasting my eyes on what I had never dreamed of possessing.

We kept the light on, so that finally I had a perfect view of myself as I plugged into the crisp fluff between her legs. And afterwards she lay on top of me, breathing like a sleepy but contented dog, stroking my chest almost as if she was in awe of me.