Behind the first-floor reception desk sat a redhead with all the trimmings. I told her I was there to see Dr. Bekemeier. She asked me to take a seat in the waiting room. I walked over to a chair, ignored it, and stared out the window at the snow, the way you do when you’re wondering if you’re shoes are up to it. There was a fine pair of boots in Bretschneider’s that I and my expenses were thinking of getting acquainted with. Provided things worked out with the lawyer. I watched the snow as far as the window of the embroidery shop opposite, where Fanny Skolmann—according to the name painted on the window—and her several employees were stitching petit point in light that promised to make them blind in no time at all.

A throat cleared discreetly behind me and I turned to face a man wearing a neat, gray suit with a wing collar that looked as if it had been tailored by Pythagoras. Under white spats, his black shoes shone like the metalwork on a new bicycle. Or perhaps it was just more cream on top of yet more black coffee. He was a small man, and the smaller the man, the more carefully he seems to dress. This one was straight out of a shop window. He looked sharp. He couldn’t have been more than five feet tall and yet he had the look of a creature that killed weasels with his teeth. It was as if his mother had prayed for a baby terrier and changed her mind at the last minute.

“Dr. Gruen?” he asked.

For a moment I had to remind myself it was me he was talking to. I nodded. He bowed in a courtly kind of way.

“I am Dr. Bekemeier,” he said. He motioned me into the office behind him and continued speaking in a voice that creaked like the door on a Transylvanian castle. “Please, Herr Doktor. Step this way.”

I went into his office where a well-behaved fire was burning quietly, as fires in lawyers’ offices always do, for fear of being put out.

“May I take your coat?” he said.

I shrugged it off and watched him hang it on a mahogany hat stand. Then we sat down on opposite sides of a partner’s desk—I on a leather button-backed chair that was the little brother of the one he sat on.

“Before we proceed,” he said, “you will forgive me if I trouble you to confirm your identity, Herr Doktor. I am afraid that the sheer size of your late mother’s estate requires an extra amount of caution. Given these unusual circumstances I am sure you understand that it behooves me to be quite sure of your bona fides. May I look at your passport, please?”