“His health was completely broken after the Gestapo’s treatment. I kept up with him for a month or two after that, but then he was obliged to leave his house in Lichterfelde for lack of money and I’m afraid I lost touch with him. His eventual fate is unknown to me but it’s quite possible he also ended up in a concentration camp for one reason or another. By then the captain’s posh army friends were hardly in a position to prevent something like that from happening. Hitler had achieved his aims of becoming commander in chief and minister of War within the space of a few weeks. A few days after the von Fritsch verdict, Germany invaded Austria and von Blomberg and the von Fritsch case were immediately forgotten as almost all of Germany and Austria now hailed Adolf Hitler as the new Messiah. In Berlin not quite so much as in Vienna. In defense of my own city, I feel obliged to mention that left-leaning Berliners never took to Hitler the way the Austrians did. But that’s another, longer story.

“Harold Hennig was demoted and later transferred to the security police in Königsberg; we met again when I was transferred there from Berlin, in nineteen forty-four, but again, that’s another story, too. This man has been blackmailing men like you, sir, for more than twenty years. He’s a professional and he knows what he’s doing. We mustn’t expect him to make any mistakes of the kind that were typical of the way the Nazis handled the case against General von Fritsch. He won’t. In fact, it’s my guess he intends to put the squeeze on me, in a smaller way than with you, sir. After all, he knows my real identity and a great deal of my true history. I’d say that he’ll squeeze me not because he can make money out of me—I don’t have much—but just because he can. With him it’s a matter of inclination and habit. A way of demonstrating his power over another person.”

“I’m sorry.”

Maugham sipped his dry martini; I could smell the absinthe in his glass. It lent the cold vermouth and vodka a sort of corrupt edge, a bit like the inscrutable old man himself.

“Might I ask you a personal question?”

“You can ask but I may not answer.”

“Have you ever killed a man?”

“Killing’s legal in wartime. Or so we were often told.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. But do you think you could ever do it again?”

“It’s like having a drink. It’s hard to stop after just one. But it’s a lot more difficult to kill someone than it ever seems on the pages of a novel.”

“Ah, yes, where would art be without murder?”