‘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.