“But you’re not. You’re working here in this hotel, in which I am a guest. And, I might add, a big-spending guest. Herr Behlert, tell the sommelier to bring us six bottles of your finest champagne.”

Around the table there was a loud murmur of approval. But none of them wanted to meet my eye. Just a lot of well-fed and -watered faces intent on getting back to the trough. A Rembrandt group portrait with everyone looking the other way: The Syndics of the Clothmakers Guild. It was then that I saw him, seated at the far end of the room, like Mephisto waiting patiently for a quiet word with Faust. Like the others, he was wearing a tuxedo and, but for his satirically grotesque saddlebag of a face, and the fact that he was cleaning his fingernails with a switch-blade, he looked almost respectable. Like the wolf dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother.

I never forget a face. Especially the face on a man who’d once led a group of SA to carry out a gun attack against the members of a workers’ social club who were holding a dance party at the Eden Palace in Charlottenburg. Four dead, including a friend from my old school. Probably there were other killings for which he was responsible, but it was that one, on November 23, 1930, that I particularly recalled. And then I had his name: Gerhard Krempel. He’d served some time for that murder, at least until the Nazis got into government.

“Come to think of it, make it a dozen bottles.”

Ordinarily I might have said something to Krempel-a witty epithet, perhaps, or something worse-but Behlert wouldn’t have liked that. Punching a guest in the throat wasn’t the kind of hotel-keeping that read well in Baedeker. And, for all either of us knew, Krempel was the new minister for level playing fields and good sportsmanship. Besides, Behlert was already steering me out of the Raphael Room. That is, when he wasn’t bowing and apologizing to Max Reles.

At the Adlon, a guest is always given an apology rather than an excuse. That was another of Hedda Adlon’s maxims. But it was the first time I’d seen anyone in the hotel apologizing for interrupting a fight. Because I didn’t doubt that the man who had left earlier had been hit by Max Reles. And that he had hit Reles back. I certainly hoped that was the case. I wouldn’t have minded punching him myself.

Outside the Raphael Room, Behlert faced me irritably. “Please, Herr Gunther, I know you think you are doing your job, but do try to remember that Herr Reles occupies the Ducal suite. As such he is a very important guest.”

“Oh, I know. I just heard him order a dozen bottles of champagne. All the same, he’s keeping some very ugly company.”

“Nonsense,” Behlert said, and walked away to find the sommelier, shaking his head. “Nonsense, nonsense.”

He was right, of course. After all, we were all of us keeping some very ugly company in Hitler’s new Germany. And perhaps the Leader was the ugliest of them all.

ROOM 210 WAS ON THE SECOND FLOOR in the Wilhelmstrasse extension. It cost sixteen marks a night, and came with an en-suite bathroom. It was a nice room and a few meters bigger than my apartment.

I got there at long past midday. Hanging on the door was a DO NOT DISTURB card and a pink form informing the room’s occupant that there was a message awaiting him at the front desk. His name was Herr Doctor Heinrich Rubusch, and the chambermaid usually would have left him alone, except that he was supposed to check out of the hotel at eleven. When she knocked at the door there was no reply, at which point she tried to enter the room, and found the key was still in the lock. After a great deal more fruitless knocking, she informed Herr Pieck, the assistant manager, who, fearing the worst, summoned me.

I went to the hotel safe to fetch one of the key turners that we kept in there-a simple piece of metal about the size of tuning fork designed to fit an Adlon keyhole and turn a key from the other side. There were supposed to be six turners, but one was gone, which probably meant Muller, the other hotel detective, had it and had forgotten to put it back. This would have been quite typical. Muller was a bit of a drunk. I took another key turner from the safe and went up to the second floor.

Herr Rubusch was still in bed. I hoped he’d wake up and shout at us to get out and let him get some sleep, but he didn’t. I put my fingers on the big vein on his neck, but there was so much fat on him that I soon gave up and, having opened his pajama jacket, pressed my ear to his cold ham of a chest.

“Shall I call Dr. Küttner?” asked Pieck.

“Yes. But tell him not to hurry. He’s dead.”

“Dead?”

I shrugged. “Staying in a hotel is a bit like life. At some stage you have to check out.”

“Oh, dear me, are you sure?”

“Baron Frankenstein couldn’t make this character move.”

The chambermaid standing in the doorway started crossing herself gravely. Pieck told her to go and fetch the house doctor at once.

I sniffed the water glass on his bedside table. It had water in it. The dead man’s fingernails were clean and polished as if he’d just had a manicure. There was no blood visible anywhere on his person or on his pillow. “Looks like natural causes, but we’d better wait for Küttner. I don’t get paid any extra for an on-the-spot diagnosis.”

Pieck walked toward the window and started to open it.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I said. “The police won’t like it.”

“The police?”

“When a dead body’s found, they like it if you tell them. That’s the law. Or at least it used to be. But, considering the number of bodies that turn up dead these days, who knows? In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a strong smell of perfume in the room. Blue Grass by Elizabeth Arden, if I’m not mistaken. Somehow I don’t see this gentleman choosing to wear it himself, which means there might have been someone with him when he stepped off the pavement. And that means the police will prefer things to be left the way they are now. With the window closed.”

I went into the bathroom and glanced over a neat array of men’s toiletries. It was the usual out-of-town crap. One of the hand towels was smeared with makeup. In the wastebasket was a tissue with a lipstick mark. I opened his toilet bag and found a bottle of nitroglycerin pills and a packet of three Fromms. I opened up the packet, saw that one was missing, and took out a little folded slip on which was printed: “Please discreetly hand me a packet of Fromms.” I lifted the lid on the toilet seat and checked the water in the lavatory. There was nothing in the water. In a wastepaper basket by the desk I found an empty Fromm wrapper. I did all the things a real detective would have done except make a tasteless joke. I was going to leave that to Dr. Küttner.

By the time he came through the door I was about to ready to toss him a probable cause, but professional courtesy made me hang on to it until he’d earned his retainer.

“People in expensive hotels are seldom ever really ill, you know,” he said. “At sixteen marks a night they usually wait until they’re back home to be really ill.”

“This one won’t be going home,” I said.

“Dead, is he?” said Küttner.

“It’s beginning to look that way, Herr Doctor.”

“Makes a change to be doing something for my fee, I suppose.”

He took out a stethoscope and set about looking for a heartbeat. “I had better go and inform Frau Adlon,” Pieck said, and left the room.

While Küttner worked his trade, I took another look at the body. Rubusch was a big, heavy man with short, fair hair and a face as fat as a hundred-kilo baby. In bed, from the side, he looked like a foothill in the Harz Mountains. Without his clothes it was hard to place him, but I was sure there was a reason other than the fact that he was staying in the hotel why he seemed familiar to me.