Krumper was bound to a wheelchair because of a hip injury he had received during one of Munich’s many air raids. Monocled and grouchy, with a cartoon voice and a pipe to match, he was shabby but competent. I liked him in spite of the fact that he had been born in Dachau and lived there all his life without ever having thought to inquire what was happening east of the town. Or so he said. He was very sorry to hear the news of Kirsten’s death. Lawyers are always sorry to lose a good client. I waited for the expressions of sympathy to subside and then asked if he thought I should drop the price of the hotel.

“I don’t think so,” he said carefully. “I’m sure somebody will buy it, although perhaps not as a hotel. As a matter of fact there was a woman here just yesterday asking about the place. She had some questions I wasn’t able to answer, and I took the liberty of giving her your business card. I hope that was all right, Herr Gunther.”

“Did she have a name?”

“She said her name was Frau Schmidt.” He put aside his pipe, flipped open the cigarette box on his desk, and invited me to take one. I lit us both as he continued. “A good-looking woman. Tall. Very tall. With three little scars on the side of her face. Shrapnel scars probably. Not that she seemed at all self-conscious of them. Most women would have grown their hair a bit so that you wouldn’t notice. Not her, though. And not that it really spoiled her looks at all. But then it’s not every woman who would feel confident of that, is it?”

Krumper had just described the woman who had turned up at my office the previous evening. And I had an idea that she wasn’t interested in buying a hotel.

“No indeed,” I said. “Maybe she’s in a dueling society, like the Teutonia Club. Bragging scars to make her more attractive to some lout with a rapier in his hand. What was that crap the kaiser used to say about those old clubs? The best education a young man can get for his future life.”

“You paint a very vivid picture, Herr Gunther,” said Krumper, fingering a small scar on his cheekbone as if he, too, had enjoyed the kind of education favored by the kaiser. For a moment or two he was silent, opening a file that lay on his overcrowded desk. “Your wife left a will,” he said. “Leaving everything to her father. She hadn’t made a new will since his death. But as her next of kin you inherit everything anyway. The hotel. A few hundred marks. Some pictures. And a car.”

“A car?” This was news to me. “Kirsten owned a car?”

“Her father’s. He kept it hidden throughout the war.”