A Quiet Flame

Colonel Montalbán introduced me to them. We all spoke in German, as if our meeting were taking place in some handsome villa in Dahlem. I uttered a few sympathetic noises. Fabienne had disappeared somewhere between Arenales and the cemetery at Recoleta, less than half a mile away. She often went there by herself to lay flowers on the steps of the von Bader family vault. It was where they kept their bodies, not their money. It seemed that Fabienne had been very close to her grandfather, who was buried there. They gave me some photographs to borrow. Fabienne looked like any other fourteen-year-old girl who was blond, beautiful, and rich. In one of the photographs, she was sitting on a white pony. The pony’s bridle was held by a gaucho, and behind this bucolic little trio was a ranch house against a backdrop of eucalyptus trees.

“That’s our weekend house,” explained the baron. “In Pilar. To the north of Buenos Aires.”

“Nice,” I said, and wondered where they went when they wanted a proper holiday from the demands of being very rich.

“Yes. Fabienne loved it there,” said her mother.

“I take it you’ve already looked for her at this and any other homes you might own.”

“Yes,” he said. “Of course we have.” He let out a sigh that was part patience and part anxiety. “There’s only the weekend house, Herr Gunther. I don’t own any other houses in Argentina.” He shook his head and took a puff on the cigarillo. “You make me sound like some stinking, plutocratic Jew. Isn’t that right, Colonel?”

“There are no yids in this part of Buenos Aires,” said Montalbán.

Von Bader’s wife winced. She didn’t seem to like that remark. Which was another reason why I liked her more than I liked her husband. She crossed her long legs and looked away for a moment. I liked her legs, too.

“It’s really not like her at all,” she said. She blew her nose delicately on the small handkerchief, tucked it into the sleeve of her dress, and smiled bravely. I admired her for that. “She’s never done this kind of thing before.”

“What about her friends?” I asked.

“Fabienne wasn’t like most girls of her age, Herr Gunther,” said von Bader. “She was more mature than her peers. Very much more sophisticated. I doubt that she would have shared a confidence with any of them.”

“But naturally we’ve questioned them,” added the colonel. “I don’t think it would help to question them again. They said nothing that might help.”

“Did she know the other girl?” I asked. “Grete Wohlauf?”

“No,” said von Bader.

“I’d like to see her room, if I may.” I was looking at the baroness. She was easier on the eye than her husband. Easier on the ear, too.

“Of course,” she said. Then she looked at her husband. “Would you mind showing him Fabienne’s room, dear? It upsets me to go in there at the moment.”

Von Bader walked me to a little wooden elevator that was set in an open, wrought-iron shaft and surrounded by a steep, curving marble staircase. It’s not every home that has its own elevator and, catching sight of my eloquently raised eyebrows, the baron felt obliged to offer an explanation.

“During the last years of her life, my mother was in a wheelchair,” he said, as if building an elevator was a solution available to everyone with an elderly parent.

It was just the two of us and the dog in the elevator car. I was close enough to smell the cologne on von Bader’s face and the oil in his gray hair, and yet he avoided my eye. Each time he spoke to me, he was looking somewhere else. I told myself he was preoccupied with his daughter’s possible fate. But all the same, I’d handled enough cases involving missing persons to know when I wasn’t getting the whole story.

“Montalbán says that back in Berlin, before the war, you were a top detective. With KRIPO and in private practice.”

He made being a private detective sound like being a top dentist. Maybe it was kind of similar to being a dentist, at that. Sometimes getting a client to tell you everything relevant was like pulling teeth.

“I’ve had my Archimedes moments,” I said. “With KRIPO and on my own.”

“Archimedes?”

“Eureka. I’ve found it.” I shrugged. “These days I’m more the traveling-salesman type.”

“Selling what, in particular?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. Not even now. I’ll do my best to find your daughter, sir, but I never was one for working miracles. Generally I do a lot better when people believe in me enough to give me all the facts.”

Von Bader colored a little. Maybe that was because he was trying to wrestle the elevator car door open. Or maybe it wasn’t. But he still wasn’t looking at me. “What makes you think you haven’t had them?”

“Call it a hunch.”

He nodded as if considering some kind of offer, which was odd, given that I hadn’t actually made him one.