Daniel looks worried. ‘Hmm, that doesn’t sound good. Have you spoken to Wagner again? He wanted to have a talk with the breeder.’

‘That’s true; it slipped my mind. I’ll call the surgery later.’

She doesn’t seem to want to tell Daniel about Wagner’s rescue operation. This whole thing is getting more and more mysterious. There were two whopping lies in only a handful of sentences. That’s not the Caroline I know. And to say things like that to Daniel! Even if she doesn’t want to have him as the man in her life, he’s still her friend! Why is she doing this?

I can’t help thinking of all those times von Eschersbach held forth on the subject of dishonesty. To him, dishonesty was one of the worst character flaws a human being could have – maybe even the very worst. Lying came well before greed and lack of discipline. Deceit and lies are signs of weakness! he often preached. The brave are honest, and dishonesty is the sister of cowardice. In a nutshell and in simple terms that any dachshund can grasp: bad people lie, good people tell the truth.

Still, we have to give bad people credit for coming up with the idea of telling lies on purpose. That is pretty clever, and I’m not sure whether something like that would occur to me on my own. But in the end, no matter how clever dishonest people may be, they are always bad. At the same time, that tells me that Caroline did not really lie, because there is no question that she is a great person. But if she didn’t lie, what was that? Maybe she’s suffering from a disease and has no clear recollection of what really happened with Jens and Dr Wagner?

Before I can continue to ponder this difficult topic, however, Caroline puts down a bowl for me with a heap of gourmet sausage cut into small pieces. I wolf most of it down in an instant – divine! We should take a closer look at this Jens after all. Maybe it was a mistake to sabotage his date with Caroline. After all, he seems to be a great lover of dogs, or at least someone who likes dogs. I put two more pieces in my mouth. Yummy! On the other hand, if the two of them had got together last night, I wouldn’t have had this delicious sausage. So it wasn’t a mistake. No more than a little detour.

•

‘Am I getting this right? The thing with Daniel is over and done with, and the new, hopeful candidate is named Jens, and he knows everything about dogs?’

‘Right.’

‘That tells me only one thing.’

‘What?’