Free If the Dead Rise Not by Philip Kerr Page B

is a very important guest.”
    “Oh, I know. I just heard him order a dozen bottles of champagne. All the same, he’s keeping some very ugly company.”
    “Nonsense,” Behlert said, and walked away to find the sommelier, shaking his head. “Nonsense, nonsense.”
    He was right, of course. After all, we were all of us keeping some very ugly company in Hitler’s new Germany. And perhaps the Leader was the ugliest of them all.

9
     
     
    R OOM 210 WAS ON THE SECOND FLOOR in the Wilhelmstrasse extension. It cost sixteen marks a night, and came with an en-suite bathroom. It was a nice room and a few meters bigger than my apartment.
    I got there at long past midday. Hanging on the door was a DO NOT DISTURB card and a pink form informing the room’s occupant that there was a message awaiting him at the front desk. His name was Herr Doctor Heinrich Rubusch, and the chambermaid usually would have left him alone, except that he was supposed to check out of the hotel at eleven. When she knocked at the door there was no reply, at which point she tried to enter the room, and found the key was still in the lock. After a great deal more fruitless knocking, she informed Herr Pieck, the assistant manager, who, fearing the worst, summoned me.
    I went to the hotel safe to fetch one of the key turners that we kept in there—a simple piece of metal about the size of tuning fork designed to fit an Adlon keyhole and turn a key from the other side. There were supposed to be six turners, but one was gone, which probably meant Muller, the other hotel detective, had it and had forgotten to put it back. This would have been quite typical. Muller was a bit of a drunk. I took another key turner from the safe and went up to the second floor.
    Herr Rubusch was still in bed. I hoped he’d wake up and shout at us to get out and let him get some sleep, but he didn’t. I put my fingers on the big vein on his neck, but there was so much fat on him that I soon gave up and, having opened his pajama jacket, pressed my ear to his cold ham of a chest.
    “Shall I call Dr. Küttner?” asked Pieck.
    “Yes. But tell him not to hurry. He’s dead.”
    “Dead?”
    I shrugged. “Staying in a hotel is a bit like life. At some stage you have to check out.”
    “Oh, dear me, are you sure?”
    “Baron Frankenstein couldn’t make this character move.”
    The chambermaid standing in the doorway started crossing herself gravely. Pieck told her to go and fetch the house doctor at once.
    I sniffed the water glass on his bedside table. It had water in it. The dead man’s fingernails were clean and polished as if he’d just had a manicure. There was no blood visible anywhere on his person or on his pillow. “Looks like natural causes, but we’d better wait for Küttner. I don’t get paid any extra for an on-the-spot diagnosis.”
    Pieck walked toward the window and started to open it.
    “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I said. “The police won’t like it.”
    “The police?”
    “When a dead body’s found, they like it if you tell them. That’s the law. Or at least it used to be. But, considering the number of bodies that turn up dead these days, who knows? In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a strong smell of perfume in the room. Blue Grass by Elizabeth Arden, if I’m not mistaken. Somehow I don’t see this gentleman choosing to wear it himself, which means there might have been someone with him when he stepped off the pavement. And that means the police will prefer things to be left the way they are now. With the window closed.”
    I went into the bathroom and glanced over a neat array of men’s toiletries. It was the usual out-of-town crap. One of the hand towels was smeared with makeup. In the wastebasket was a tissue with a lipstick mark. I opened his toilet bag and found a bottle of nitroglycerin pills and a packet of three Fromms. I opened up the packet, saw that one was missing, and took out a little folded slip on which was printed: