“If my fingers weren’t so cold,” I said, “I might make a better job of it.”

“You’re doing fine,” she said. “I might have a puff of that when you’re finished.” I finished with the makings, lit the cigarette, puffed it, and then handed it to her. She smoked it with genuine pleasure, as if it had been the choicest delicacy. Then she handed it back again. Without so much as a cough.

“Of course, I know who it is,” she said. “My anonymous benefactor. It’s Eric, isn’t it?” She shook her head. “It’s all right. You don’t have to say anything. But I know. It so happened that I did see a newspaper, a few days ago. There was something in it about his mother’s death. You don’t have to be Hercule Poirot to work out that particular chain of causation. He’s got his hands on her money and now he wants to make amends. Always supposing that such a thing is possible after the dreadful thing he did. I’m not at all surprised that he sent you instead of coming here in person. I expect he doesn’t dare show his face for fear of, whatever it is that someone like him is in fear of.” She shrugged and sipped some of her drink. “Just for the record? When he ran out on me, in 1928, I was just eighteen years old. He wasn’t much older, I suppose. I gave birth to a daughter. Magda.”

“Yes, I was going to ask about your daughter,” I said. “I’m to give her the same sum as I’ve given you.”

“Well, you can’t,” she said. “Magda is dead. She was killed during an air raid, in 1944. A bomb hit her school.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Vera Messmann kicked off her shoes and folded her stockinged feet underneath her nicely curved behind. “For what it’s worth, I don’t hold any of that against him. Compared with what happened during the war, it’s not much of a crime, is it? To leave a girl with a bump in her road?”

“No, I suppose not,” I said.

“But I’m glad he sent you,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to see him again. Especially now Madga’s dead. That would be too unpleasant. Also, I should be much more reluctant to take his money if it was him in person. But twenty-five thousand schillings . . . I can’t say that wouldn’t come in handy. Despite what you see here, I’ve not got much saved. All of this furniture is quite valuable, but it was my mother’s, and this apartment is all that I’ve got to remind me of her. This apartment was hers. She had excellent taste.”

“Yes,” I said, glancing around, politely. “She did indeed.”