“So expensive,” she repeated. “I’m eating now so that I don’t eat too much when we go in. It’s such a waste of money, I think. Just for dinner.” She started to eat another sandwich. “My son is the director of American Overseas Airlines, on Karlsplatz.”

“I know it,” I said.

“What do you do?”

“I’m a private detective.”

Her eyes lit up, and for a moment, I thought she was going to hire me to look for a missing pie. So it was fortunate that this was the moment Britta Warzok chose to come through the Marstallstrasse door.

She was wearing a black full-length skirt, a white tailored jacket gathered at the waist, long black gloves, white patent high-heeled shoes, and a white hat that looked like it had been borrowed from a well-dressed Chinese coolie. It shaded the scars on her cheek very effectively. Around her neck were five strings of pearls and hooked over her arm was a bamboo-handle handbag that she opened while she was still greeting me and retrieved a five-mark note. The note went to the maître d’, who greeted her with a subservience worthy of a courtier at the court of the electress of Hannover. While he was abasing himself even further, I glanced over her forearm at the contents of her bag. It was just long enough to see a bottle of Miss Dior, a Hamburger Kreditbank checkbook, and a .25-caliber automatic that looked like the little sister of the one I had in my coat pocket. I wasn’t sure which I was more concerned about—the fact she banked in Hamburg or the nickel-plated rattle she was carrying.

I followed her into the restaurant in a slipstream of perfume, deferential nods, and admiring glances. I didn’t blame anyone for looking. As well as the Miss Dior, she gave off an air of perfect self-assurance and poise, like a princess on her way to being crowned. I supposed it was her height that made her the automatic center of attention. It’s difficult to look regal when you’re no higher than a door handle. But it could just as easily have been her careful dress sense that got their attention. That and her natural beauty. It certainly wasn’t anything to do with the guy who was walking behind her and holding the brim of his hat like it was the train of her gown.

We sat down. The maître d’, who seemed to have met her before, handed us menus the size of kitchen doors. She said she wasn’t all that hungry. I was, but for her sake I said I wasn’t hungry either. It’s difficult to tell a client that her husband is dead when your mouth is full of sausage and sauerkraut. We ordered drinks.

“Do you come here very often?” I asked her.

“Quite often, before the war.”