"He had flown me to his country retreat in Berchtesgaden, Germany. I was enchanted, naturally, very light in the head and in awe. He was a perfect gentleman. I was not lying when I said Hermann was my first, you understand. In fact, this beautiful man--he wasn't terribly handsome, but oh, very bright and beautiful--all he wanted to do was walk and talk, walk and talk. So we did. We walked and walked in the wilds behind his house and he even read me the Bible. It was magical. He was a very different man when he was apart from his war. Long after we parted, he's the one who sent this lovely radio to me. I believe he loved me for a very long time, possibly until he died.

And here is where the lady's story stopped. I remember when she stopped; she got up and wiped her eyes. I hadn't noticed her crying before that. I didn't know what to do, so I left. There's surely nothing I can do to bring old loves back.

Little Henry Himmler rushed a small stack of yellowed newspapers to my apartment that same day. He slammed them down on my counter--I was baking cookies for Mme. du Pont. He smiled widely and said, "I want you to meet my parents."

"Wonderful, Henry," I said. "You found someone."

"Absolutely, and it's none other than Heinrich Himmler, the great war hero."

"Is that right? Show me."

Little Henry had marked the pages he needed to refer to. As it turns out, he had stolen the newspapers from the special archives of the Pittsburgh Public Library. I guess that's how excited he was.

The first article he pointed me to was a single column, latter-pages blurb from a 1945 New York Times:

BOSTON, ENGLAND (AP)--Heinrich Himmler, infamous leader of the German Gestapo, has been named as the father of a child born in Boston, England on Friday. The mother, who has asked to be left anonymous of identity, is an American-born emigrant to England, who gave birth early Friday morning. Hospital officials say the woman admitted the name of the child's father only after police suspicion led to a short investigation. The woman plans to post the child for adoption.

That's all there was in the first article."Well," I said. And Henry said "Yeah."

"This is...you, then?"

"Well...yeah," Henry said, "Who else?"

"Hard to say," I answered.

"Well have a gander at this, then."

It was a second article, in the very next day's New York Times:

BERLIN, GERMANY (AP)--Heinrich Himmler, reichsfurhrer of the German SS, or Schutzstaffel, denied today that he is the father of an American child born in Boston, England last Friday. Named, under police pressure, by the child's mother, Himmler responded tersely, "I cannot be the father of such a thing, the idea is preposterous. The woman is likely a spy." The woman, whom the hospital has yet to reveal the identity of, spoke through representation. "I met with Mr. Himmler," her statement read, "in Moscow ten months ago. Only he can be the father." Himmler could not be reached for further response.

"Sounds like the tyke was his," I said to Henry. "But if that's you, how did you come to be named Henry Himmler instead of Henry...instead of being named after your mother?"

"I wondered that myself," Little Henry said, rifling through more papers, "but read on, my friend."

FROM THE LONDON TIMES: An American woman who birthed a child in Boston reports today that the alleged father has agreed to accept the child. Though the boy was once linked to Heinrich Himmler, reichsfuhrer of the German SS police and Gestapo, no mention of Himmler was made in the woman's report, released through hospital administration. The report did not divulge the father's name.

"So who was the father?" I asked Henry.

"Who's the father?" he said, "Heinrich Himmler's the father! Do you think he'd accept an English-born American unless he made certain the woman would mislead the press? You know, you're not so smart after all, Hotz."

"But Henry, how do you know that's even you?"

"How many Himmlers do you know that were raised in homes since they were born?"

"None."

"Yeah."

"But Henry," I said, chuckling a little, "why would he allow them to use his last name if he was so clandestine all the other times?"

"What all the other times?"

"So...secretive."

"Well," Henry said, " he wouldn't have been able to control that."

"Yes. Well, congratulations, Mr. Himmler," I said.

"Yeah, thanks," Henry said. There was a short silence until Henry began to reorganize his papers.

"Do you want something to drink?" I asked.

Henry looked up and said, "How about an RC Cola?"

I went to the kitchen for two RC Colas. I peeked my head around the refrigerator door and said, "Wouldn't it be something if my grandparents knew Himmler, too?"

"Yeah it would," said Henry.

I'll be damned if I didn't find out something about Madame du Pont that surprised me right out of my socks--course, if I knew anything about 20th century history I could have guessed it. Or if I'd wondered a little harder about the lady's plastic furniture, I might have been led to this peculiar answer. But no, I came by the answer to this mystery just as I come by everything else; somebody told me.

I had overheard Mme. du Pont speaking to Crank Faragut in the hallway of our building. This was the day after little Henry's discovery. I grabbed my tape recorder and recorded what they said. Mostly it was Mme. du Pont speaking, and speaking hotly and quickly. Crank Faragut, I'm sure, didn't understand a word more than I did, for he repeatedly tried to get the lady to draw or signal to him what the problem was.

At any rate, when I took the tape to my librarian friend, he was unable to hear the two well enough to crack the code, as it were. However, he did havesomething else for me. He had done some digging around of his own, it seems, and had learned a little something about good lady du Pont.

"Have you gotten your hooks into this old lady just yet, Thack?" he said.

"Nothing quite like that," I said.

"Well go ahead and put a move on then, hard to say when she'll kick over."

"I guess so," I said, and looked around.

"You don't quite know what I'm talking about, do you?" my friend asked.

"I thought I did..."

"Has your Madame du Pont told you about her husband?"

"He's dead, I think," I said.

"Yes," my friend said, "but before he died? He wasn't just Mr. du Pont. He was Lammont du Pont."

"Lammont du Pont," I said.

"That's right."

"Well that makes some sense," I said.

"It's pretty exciting, no?" he said.

"Pretty exciting, yes," I said. I was mostly excited because I had solved the case of the ornamental bathroom cleansers. They were mementos of her husband who, everyone knows, hated posing for photographs.

I walked home mulling over Lammont du Pont, brother of Pierre Samuel du Pont II and owner of what was at one time the most powerful firm in the synthetic chemicals industry, an industry the du Pont empire practically invented. How do I know all of this? Everybody in Pittsburgh knows about the du Ponts. And about the Carnegies, of course, and Henry Ford. Even the Lever brothers.

So Lammont, along with brother Irvin, became wildly triumphant businessmen by developing such synthetics as cellophane, rayon, neoprene, and nylon. Madame du Pont's furniture was almost unanimously molded from the nylon polymer. Moreover, it became obvious to me that if I played my cards right, so to speak, I'd never have to purchase cleaning products again. Mme. du Pont was no doubt up to her gills in a lifetime supply of foam bathroom cleansers. Is she indecently, horrifically wealthy? Who knows? She doesn't seem wealthy, though.

I was at home this very morning, writing a time line so as to figure out just when Madame du Pont had found the time to meet, fall in love with, and marry Lammont du Pont, Lover Number...well, Three. I have yet to accomplish this, though I have realized the real reason why the lady moved to America after allthose years in France. You'll recall she claimed apathy when I asked her that straight out: "I don't give two hoots what country I die in," she said. Well, she may not give two hoots about Pittsburgh, but she moved to Delaware, America to live with her husband at his compound in Wilmington.

The timeline was never finished, like I say. Not because I was having difficulty reconstructing the whole story--which I was--but because Mme. du Pont herself phoned me. Madame du Pont didn't phone anybody, even Crank Faragut, whom she solicited many times each week by rapping on her hardwood floor with a decorative walking cane.

But this morning, just as I was trying to piece together the events of her life, Madame du Pont phoned me and bade me come over with my tape recorder.

Her door was gaping open already and the inside of her apartment was completely dark excepting only the light from the hallway. I knocked on the door frame and the lady called out from well within her apartment.

"Entrez," she said. I walked slowly forward. I could see very little and walked only by memory of her place. The darkness made me nervous.

"Allumez l'ampoule," she said. I didn't know what it meant.

"Lumi'ere!" I still did not know. The lady came stomping toward me, straight out of the dark of the room beside me. She pushed past me violently and slammed her hand against the wall. The lights came on. "Allumer," she said.

And then she said "c'teindre," switching off the lights. She switched them right back on, "Allumer."

She winked, smiled broadly, and skittered down the hall toward the bathroom. She had just come out of the shower and was wrapped up in several mismatched towels. She disappeared into the bathroom for only a few seconds and emerged with a night-shirt on. It was blue and had a picture of Garfield the Cat on it. She marched straight up to me again, swiped my tape recorder from my hand, and pushed me gently out the door.