If the Dead Rise Not by Philip Kerr Page A

Adlon. I was checking the duty roster when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hedda Adlon coming through the entrance hall talking to Pieck. This was my cue to hurry up and find out more before she could talk to me. Hedda Adlon seemed to have a high opinion of my abilities, and I wanted to keep it that way. The passkey to what I did for a living was having snappy answers to the questions other people hadn’t even thought about. An air of omniscience is a very useful quality in a god or, for that matter, a detective. Of course, with a detective, omniscience is just an illusion. Plato knew that. And it’s one of the things that made him a better writer than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
    Unseen by my employer, I stepped into the elevator car.
    “Which floor?” asked the boy. His name was Wolfgang, and he was a boy of about sixty.
    “Just drive.”
    Smoothly, Wolfgang’s white gloves went into motion, like a magician’s, and I felt my stomach lower inside my torso as we ascended into Lorenz Adlon’s idea of heaven.
    “Is there something on your mind, Herr Gunther?”
    “Last night, did you see any joy ladies go up to the second floor?”
    “A lot of ladies go up and down in this elevator car, Herr Gunther. Doris Duke, Barbara Hutton, the Soviet ambassador, the Queen of Siam, Princess Mafalda. It’s easy to see who and what they are. But some of these actresses, movie stars, showgirls, they all look like joy ladies to me. I guess that’s why I’m the elevator boy and not the house detective.”
    “You’re right, of course.”
    He grinned back at me. “A smart hotel’s a bit like a jeweler’s shop window. Everything is on show. Now that reminds me. I did see Herr Muller talking to a lady on the stairs at about two a.m. It’s possible she was a joy lady. Except for the fact she was wearing diamonds. Tiara, too. That makes me think she wasn’t a joy lady. I mean, if she could afford to be wearing mints, then why would she be letting people stroke her mouse? At the same time, if she was a little pinkie in the air, then what was she doing speaking to a sow’s bladder like Muller? No offense intended.”
    “None taken. He is a sow’s bladder. Was this lady blond or brunette?”
    “Blond. And plenty of it, too.”
    “I’m relieved to hear it,” I said, mentally eliminating from my list of possible suspects Dora Bauer. She had short brown hair and was hardly the type to afford a tiara.
    “ Anything else?”
    “She wore a lot of perfume. Smelled real nice. Like she was Aphrodite herself.”
    “I get the picture. Did you drive her?”
    “No. She must have used the stairs.”
    “Or maybe she just climbed on the back of a swan and flew straight out of the window. That’s what Aphrodite would have done.”
    “Are you calling me a liar, sir?”
    “No, not at all. Just an incurable romantic and lover of women in general.”
    Wolfgang grinned. “That I am, sir.”
    “Me, too.”
     
    MULLER WAS IN THE OFFICE we shared, which was about all we shared. He hated me and, if I’d cared enough, I might have hated him back. Before coming to the Adlon he’d been a leather hat with the Potsdam police—a uniformed bull with an instinctive dislike of detectives from the Alex like me. He was also ex-Freikorps and more right wing than the Nazis, which was another reason he hated me: he hated all Republicans the way a wheat farmer hates rats. But for his drinking, he might have remained in the police. Instead he took early retirement, climbed on the temperance wagon for as long as it took to find himself the job at the Adlon, and started drinking again. Most of the time he could hold it, too, I’ll say that for him. Most of the time. I might have figured it was part of my job to put him out of a job, but I didn’t. Leastways, I hadn’t done it yet. Of course, we both knew it wouldn’t be long before Behlert or one of the Adlons found him drunk on the job. And I hoped it would happen without any help from me. But I knew I