“I used to work in a hotel. The Adlon, in Berlin. And I learned a lot about what they do and what they don’t do in hotels. And one of the things they don’t do is to put fire extinguishers in the bedrooms. One reason is in case a guest gets drunk and decides to hose down the curtains. The other reason is that a lot of extinguishers are more dangerous than the fires they’re meant to deal with. It’s a funny thing, but when I arrived at the Lutetia I don’t recall there being an extinguisher in my room. But there was one there last night. If I hadn’t been drunk myself, I might have paid more attention to it.”

“Are you suggesting someone tampered with it?”

“It seems so obvious to me that I wonder why you should sound surprised.”

“Surprised? Yes, of course I’m surprised, Bernie. You’re implying that someone tried to murder you in a hotel full of policemen.”

“Tampering with a fire extinguisher is just the sort of thing a cop would know about. Besides, none of us at the Lutetia has a room key.”

“That’s because we’re all on the same side. You can’t mean a German tried to kill you.”

“I do mean.”

“But why not a Frenchman? We did just fight a war with these people, after all. Surely if it was anyone—and I’m not convinced it was anything but an accident—it would be one of them. A porter, perhaps. Or a patriotic waiter.”

“And among all of the bastards he could have killed, he just chose me at random, is that it?” I shook my head, which seemed to provoke another violent fit of coughing.

Kestner poured a glass of water and handed it to me.

I drank it and caught my breath.

“Thanks. Besides. The kind of staff a grand hotel employs? It goes against everything they believe in to kill a guest. Even a guest they might despise.”

Kestner went to the window and looked out. We were in a fourth-floor room in the high mansard roof of the hospital. You could see and sometimes hear the Gare du Nord just a few blocks away.

“But why would any German officer want to kill you? They would have to have a damn good motive.”

For a moment I considered suggesting one: Anyone who had already denounced me to the Gestapo as a mischling would, I thought, have reason enough to kill me. Instead, I said:

“I wasn’t always held in such good odor by our political masters. You remember what it was like in Kripo before 1933? Well, of course you do. You’re about the one person in Paris I can talk to about this, Paul. Who I can trust.”

“I’m relieved to hear it, Bernie. But just for the record, I spent most of last night at the One Twenty-two. The brothel.”