I don’t suppose any heirs will come forward. And for us it’s just a burden…”

“Shall I put it in the bin,” suggested Liese.

He shook his head. “No, they’re too smart for that, Liese,” he said. “That’s their speciality, rummaging around in dirt! I’ll think of something. But in the meantime, you get on with the room. They could be here any minute!”

For now, though, they were still standing in the courtyard, with Borkhausen.

Borkhausen had got the first and the worst of the shock. He had been hanging around the courtyard from early morning, racked by his hatred of the Persickes and his lust for the lost things. He wanted to monitor events—and so he was keeping the staircase under constant supervision, the windows at the front…

Suddenly something fell very close to him, brushing past him from a great height. He was so shocked that he collapsed against the wall, and then he had to sit on the ground, because everything was going black in front of his eyes.

Then he jumped up again, because suddenly he was aware that Frau Rosenthal was lying next to him in the courtyard. God, so the old woman had thrown herself out of the window, and he knew who was to blame for it, too.

Borkhausen could see right away that the woman was dead. She had a little trickle of blood coming out of her mouth, but that barely disfigured her. On her face was an expression of such deep peace that the wretched little stoolie had to look away. Then his gaze lit on her hands, and he saw that she was holding something in one of them, a piece of jewelry, something with shining stones.

Borkhausen cast a suspicious look around him. If he was to do anything, he had to do it quickly. He stooped; then, turning away from the dead woman so that he didn’t have to look her in the face, he pulled the sapphire bracelet from her grip and dropped it into his pocket. Again, he looked around suspiciously. He had a sense of the kitchen window at the Quangels’ being gently closed.

And already there they came, running across the courtyard, three men, two of whom he recognized immediately. What was important now was that he manage to behave correctly from the start.

“Er, Inspector, Frau Rosenthal has just thrown herself out of the window,” he said, as though reporting a perfectly ordinary event. “She almost landed on top of me.”

“How do you know me?” asked the inspector casually, while he and Friedrich bent down over the body.

“I don’t know you at all, Inspector,” said Borkhausen. “I just thought maybe that’s what you were. Because I get to do little jobs for your colleague Inspector Escherich sometimes.”

“Is that right?” said the inspector. “Well, then. Perhaps you’ll stick around a bit. You, sir,” he turned to Persicke, “will you keep an eye on this lad, and make sure he doesn’t disappear off somewhere. Friedrich, see to it that no one comes into the courtyard. Tell the driver to block the front entrance. I’ll just go upstairs to your flat and make a phone call!”

By the time Inspector Rusch returned from telephoning, the situation in the courtyard had changed a little. In all the windows of the back building there were faces, there were even a couple of people up on the roof—but some way off. The corpse had been covered with a sheet, but the sheet was a little small, and Frau Rosenthal’s legs were exposed to the knees.

Herr Borkhausen meanwhile was looking a bit yellow, and was wearing a pair of handcuffs. Watching him silently from the side of the courtyard were his wife and five children.

“Inspector, I protest!” Borkhausen called out plaintively.