I got to Liechtensteinstrasse, in the heart of the Ninth District, as the light began to fade, which is always the best time of day in Vienna. The bomb damage, which isn’t much when compared with Munich, and nothing at all compared with Berlin, stops being noticeable and it becomes easy to imagine the city as the grand imperial capital it used to be. The sky had turned a purple shade of gray and it had finally stopped snowing, although this did nothing to deter the enthusiasm of those people buying ski boots in Moritz, which was next door to the apartment building where Vera Messmann lived.

I went into the building and started up the steps, which would have been easy enough if I hadn’t been recovering from pneumonia and hadn’t had such an excellent lunch. Her apartment was on the top floor and, several times, I had to stop and catch my breath, or at least watch it billow out of my mouth in the plummeting temperatures. The metal handrail was sticky with cold. By the time I reached the top, it had started to snow again and the flakes were hitting the stairwell window like soft icy bullets from the rifle of some heavenly sniper. I leaned against the wall and waited for my breathing to slow down enough to allow me the power of speech. Then I knocked on Fräulein Messman’s door.

“My name’s Gunther, Bernie Gunther,” I said, removing my hat politely and presenting her with one of my Munich business cards. “It’s all right, I’m not selling anything.”

“That’s good,” she said. “Because I’m not buying anything.”

“Are you Vera Messmann?”

She flicked her eyes on my card and then at me. “That all depends,” she said.

“On what, for instance?”

“On whether you think I did it, or not.”

“Did what?” I didn’t mind her playing with me. It’s one of the perks of the job when an attractive brunette teases you.

“Oh, you know. Murdered Roger Ackroyd.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Agatha Christie,” she said.

“Never heard of her, either.”

“Don’t you read books, Herr—” She read the card again, teasing me some more. “Gunther.”

“Never,” I said. “It’s terribly bad for business to sound like I know more than my clients tell me. Mostly they want someone who is not a cop to behave like a cop. They don’t want someone who can quote Schiller.”

“Well, at least you’ve heard of him,” she said.

“Schiller? Sure. He’s the guy who said that truth lives on in the midst of deception. We keep that quotation over the office door. He’s the patron saint of detectives everywhere.”