Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [34]
More translation. The three POWs were still eating with zest. But now their eyes were locked on the back of the German inspector as he spoke.
Dietrich turned from the window. "After your capture, each one of you was questioned at Auswertestell West at Oberursel. Techniques there are sophisticated and successful. I'm sure that you have discussed your experiences there, and now understand fully our interrogation techniques. You know the water glass trick, and the escape ruse, and the Red Cross questionnaire subterfuge, all designed to get new prisoners to divulge information."
Hornsby furrowed his brow at Heydekampf's translation, then glanced at Bell, who shrugged and reached for another cruller. Captain Davis licked icing from his fingers. They had no idea where the detective inspector was leading.
Dietrich continued, "So it would be impossible for me to trick you into divulging information about the American's escape."
"Too right," Davis said after Heydekampf's translation.
"But I don't need to." The inspector patted a bunk, then picked up a paperback copy of John Steinbeck's The Moon Is Down from a tray at the bunk's headboard. "I am going to tell you how you and the American did it."
Colonel Janssen blurted in German, "You know? How do you know?"
When Lieutenant Heydekampf translated, the three POWs stopped chewing in unison.
Ignoring the commandant, Dietrich lifted Jack Cray's baseball bat that had been leaning against a wall. He rolled it in his hands, examining it. "How do you hold this?"
Harry Bell wiped his hands on his pants before reaching for the bat. "You right-handed?"
When Heydekampf changed the words to German, Dietrich nodded.
"Right hand over left, feet a little wider than shoulder-width, a bit of a crouch." Bell swung the bat slowly a few times then passed it back. "I'd toss you a few easy ones, but we don't have a ball."
Dietrich swung awkwardly several times. He shook his head. "Balls should be struck with the feet, not a piece of wood."
Bell smiled at the interpretation, then lifted another cruller from the table.
SAO Hornsby said dryly, "You have succeeded in disarming us, Inspector Dietrich. Why don't you continue?"
Instead, Dietrich resumed his examination of the ward, not a wild flying-squad toss, but a visual inventory respecting the POWs' few possessions. He did not open the fruit crates that served as trunks near the bunks. He did not rifle through packets of letters. He stepped around a support post in the center of the ward. He still carried the American's bat. He came to the laundry bucket in which was floating a shirt. All eyes in the room followed him.
Dietrich dipped a finger into the wash bucket then brought the finger to his mouth. He inhaled sharply, then grimaced. "Needs a little more soap."
Heydekampf translated. Captain Davis laughed around a cruller.
Dietrich said, "Your challenge was to make Jack Cray look dead. A fractured skull — one smashed against cobblestones from a great height — has a certain damaged appearance."
Colonel Janssen protested, "It looks just like Cray's did."
"He had a ruptured eye socket, or so it seemed." Dietrich breathed on a hand. His cell on Prinz Albrecht Strasse had been warmer than the Colditz ward. "But what Cray did, or one of you did, was to pull down his lower eyelid and put a small slice on the inside of the eyelid with a knife. The tiny blood vessels there bleed profusely, and will fill the eye with blood. And, although Colonel Janssen and Lieutenant Heydekampf didn't report any blackening around the American's shattered eye, you POWs may have dabbed a little chimney soot on his cheekbones to make it look bruised. Altogether, it would have been a convincing replica of a ruptured eye socket."
Heydekampf had fallen into meter with the detective. He interpreted as Dietrich spoke, not waiting for pauses.
"Bleeding ears are a classic sign of a fractured