Hitler's Angel Page 15

  ‘I thought Hitler didn’t allow her to see anyone.’

  ‘He didn’t, usually, but he and I were having difficulties and he wanted to patch them up. Besides, Geli was keen to go, and he couldn’t take her. So he let me.’ He looked up, his eyes softening with the memory. ‘She was giddy with excitement. She would joke with me that I could drive her anyway and Hitler would not know. She drank a lot of champagne and instead of taking my car back to the apartment we walked through the English Garden. The air seemed to sober her up, and by the time we reached the Chinese Tower she clutched my arm and begged me to stop walking.’

  Fritz studied Strasser closely. The man spoke softly and occasionally made eye contact, but mostly he gazed at a point to his left. Fritz had seen the technique before, mostly with witnesses trying to recall moments exactly.

  ‘Her wrap had slipped off her shoulder, and she had a whip mark on her shoulder blade. I remarked on it as I brought the wrap up to cover her skin, and she started to cry.’

  Fritz had taken women to the Chinese Tower late at night in Mardi Gras. A woman’s wrap did not slip without help. But he was not going to interrupt the flow of Strasser’s story.

  ‘She said she didn’t want to go back. She said her uncle Alfie was a monster and she was afraid of him.’

  Strasser stopped. Fritz waited, but when it appeared that Strasser wasn’t going to say any more, Fritz asked, ‘Did she say why she was afraid of him?’

  Strasser nodded. He brought his right hand up and stroked his chin, covering his mouth as he did so, as if to keep the words inside. ‘She said … she said the whip wasn’t the worst of it. She was crying. She told me things I …’ Strasser shook his head. His fingers were over his lips. ‘… Things I knew only from college. Did you ever read Krafft-Ebing? Psychopathia Sexualis?’

  ‘I didn’t go to college,’ Fritz said, even though he had seen the book.

  ‘God,’ Strasser said. He stood and paced to the window, staring at the curtains as if he could see the street below. ‘This is going to be more difficult than I thought.’

  Fritz waited silently, neither encouraging nor discouraging. He wished he had eaten another slice of bread. His stomach was growling.

  Strasser continued to look at the curtains. He clasped his hands behind his back. ‘She said she couldn’t go back, that when she did, he would make her take off all her clothes and squat over him while he looked at her. Then he would … she would … he wanted her to … every night …’ Strasser leaned his head against the window frame. His voice was barely audible. ‘He wanted her to … to piss on him … and she would, and that would start it all.’ He shook his head, still pressing it against the wall. ‘She asked me to get her away from him. She said it was getting worse. He was thinking of more things, other things …’

  He sighed and stood. The frame had left a small red mark on his forehead. He shook his head again, his cheeks flushed and eyes a bit too bright.

  ‘God help me, I was so disgusted. I took her home.’

  Fritz didn’t move. He felt as if his own body were made of glass. Finally, he said, ‘Just because a man has unusual sexual practices does not mean he is a killer.’

  ‘My God, man,’ Strasser said. ‘She was afraid of him.’

  ‘But you took her back there,’ Fritz said. ‘She couldn’t have been that afraid.’

  ‘She was afraid,’ Strasser said.

  Fritz crossed his arms over his chest. ‘Let me see if I understand this. You take a girl to the English Garden during Mardi Gras, get her drunk, and then kiss her. While you slide her dress off her shoulder, she winces when you touch a bruise on her shoulder blade. Then she tells you that she is sleeping with her uncle, a man you are having a conflict with, and that his sexual practices are so onerous that you need to rescue her?’

  The flush in Strasser’s cheeks grew deeper.

  ‘And you expect me to believe this story because you have come to me of your own free will, all the way from Berlin. I should ignore the story in the Münchner Post that says your brother will lead the NSDAP, the party you were thrown out of a few short months after you “dated” Geli, and I should forget that you have disliked Hitler from the day you met him. I should also forget that you run political newspapers in Berlin and understand how important information is, especially in the right hands. I should forget that Hitler’s people are hinting that his enemies killed his niece to discredit him, and yet you come in here, to talk to me, to discredit Hitler.’

  ‘I am telling you the truth,’ Strasser said.

  ‘Perhaps you are,’ Fritz said. ‘But you have failed to connect Hitler’s undinism with your accusation of murder. It would seem to me, if the man is having sexual relations with the woman, that he would want her to live, especially if those relations call for participation.’

  ‘She was afraid of him,’ Strasser said.

  ‘A year and a half ago. Yet she continued to live with him, and you did nothing. If you were so convinced Hitler was going to kill her, why didn’t you help her get out? Her story of his appetites might have helped win the party back to you.’

  ‘He killed her,’ Strasser said.

  ‘Did he?’ Fritz asked. ‘He was in Nuremberg at the time.’

  ‘Are you so certain? Nuremberg isn’t that far away.’ Strasser pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. ‘Hitler’s people lie for him. They do it very well.’

  ‘If you have evidence that Hitler killed Geli, bring it to me and I will see that justice will be done.’

  Strasser smiled. The look was cold and bitter. ‘Justice? Then you will have to pay Franz Gürtner a higher bribe than NSDAP does.’

  ‘If you believe that I will have such trouble convicting Hitler of any crime, why did you come to me?’

  ‘Because the fact that you were conducting an investigation at all gave me hope.’ Strasser tightened his tie and clicked his heels together in the Brownshirt manner. ‘I can see now that my hope was misplaced. Good night to you, sir.’

  He went to the door and let himself out. Fritz waited a moment, half expecting Strasser to return with another story, another way to discredit Hitler. But he did not. Fritz locked the door and cooked himself dinner, before lying on his couch and dreaming of a beautiful brunette with a broken nose begging for his help.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘W hy didn’t you believe Strasser?’ she asks.

  Fritz’s hands are shaking. He has never said such things to a woman before, in any circumstance.

  ‘I believed his story. I did not believe his conclusions. I thought that a man who robs a house will probably not burn it. Sitting here forty years later, it is easy to draw links. Yes, Hitler was a man who had a quick temper, who beat women, who misused them sexually, a man who ordered an entire race of people to their deaths, who approved all sorts of experiments, who sacrificed millions of lives for his ambitions. I know that now. You listen to this, knowing that. It makes a difference.’

  ‘But?’ she asks.

  ‘But I did not know it then. He was a politician whose power was growing. He was not unlike so many others. We had no crystal balls. We did not know the kind of power he would gain.’

  ‘So I don’t understand,’ she says. ‘You didn’t believe Strasser because you liked Hitler?’

  ‘No,’ Fritz says. ‘I did not like Hitler. Nor did I like Ernst Thälmann, the Communist, or even Hindenburg himself. I was not a political man. I still am not. I do not see other men as the answers to our problems. I see them as a reflection of who we are, and who we were. In 1931, we were not a nice people.’

  ‘But Strasser,’ she says again. She clearly found his argument compelling.

  Fritz nods. Perhaps if he knew then what he knows now, he would have found Strasser’s argument equally compelling.

  ‘Strasser created many problems for me,’ Fritz says. ‘He was a well-known critic of Hitler. I also thought Strasser might have killed her to discredit Hitler and to put his own brother in power.
What better way to do that than to have Hitler arrested for murder?’

  ‘But he said that Hitler beat the girl and her body did have whip marks when you found it.’

  Fritz reaches for a cigarette. ‘And most of the NSDAP carried small whips with their uniforms. No one as yet had seen Hitler hit the girl. And all I had was one jealous man who claimed to have dated the girl, and that she told him that Hitler treated her badly.’

  The girl grips the edge of her notebook. Her knuckles are turning white. ‘What about the paintings?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Don’t they show Hitler’s unnatural relationship with his niece?’

  ‘Half-niece,’ Fritz says. ‘No one denied that he loved her. And the paintings, while explicit, showed nothing unnatural. In fact her body had no marks on it at all. I had enough information to confuse me, and nothing more.’

  ‘But you believed Eva Braun.’

  ‘I believed what she did not say.’ His smile is small, his stomach tight with tension. ‘Forgive me, but in those days it was not so unusual for a man to hit a woman.’

  She pulls the notebook closer to her stomach as if protecting it. ‘What a of the physical evidence? You have said nothing about it.’

  He shrugs. ‘Because there is little to tell. This case, unfortunately, was not Demmelmayer. It could not be solved with science. There was no gun. The fingerprints in the room were also from Geli, Hitler, Frau Winter, and Frau Reichert, and on the door were Max Amann’s as well as Rudolph Hess’s.’

  ‘But Hess never said he was there.’

  Fritz smiles. She is at last seeing some things on her own.

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘but I knew he was there. I knew from the beginning there was a third man, and I knew it had to be a Brownshirt. When he was with the body, it became clear that Hess had been in the apartment that morning.’

  The girl frowns, her fingers pulling at the spiral wire binding the notebook. ‘It seems to me that if Hitler’s prints were on the gun, then you have a case.’

  ‘And Frau Winter’s, and Geli’s. Remember we had an official suicide. So far nothing unusual in that.’ Then he smiles at her, taking pity on her frustration. He had felt the same. ‘No gun, no suspect, and a lot of motives. It would have been easier for all of us if her death had remained a suicide.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  Fritz awoke to a loud pounding. His right arm, draped over his eyes, was asleep, and he had a cramp in his neck. Sunlight had turned the curtains opaque, making the lamps which were still on seem like ineffective competition. The pounding resounded again. He sat up, blinked, and ran his left hand through his hair. The remains of last night’s dinner still sat on the table, and the room was too hot. His shirt clung to his slightly damp body.

  He got up, staggered across the room, and peered through the spyhole in the door. The man waiting in the hall was of medium height with a hawk nose and downward sloping eyes. Frown lines had formed around his mouth, making him appear unhappy, even with his face at rest.

  Fritz had never seen the man before.

  ‘What do you want?’ Fritz asked.

  ‘I am from NSDAP. I would like to see Detective Inspector Stecher.’

  ‘You may come to the precinct and do that later this morning.’

  ‘I was at the precinct. I understand the Inspector is on holiday. I would like to talk to him about the way he spends his free time.’

  Fritz tucked his shirt into his pants. ‘And who are you with the NSDAP?’

  ‘I am the party publisher.’

  Max Amann. One of the men who sent Geli’s body to Austria. Fritz pulled the door open. ‘You have five minutes.’

  ‘I would hope that I don’t have to spend them in the hall.’

  Fritz nodded and extended a hand. Amann came inside. Fritz closed the door behind him.

  ‘Inspector, I understand that you are conducting an investigation into the death of Geli Raubal.’ Amann walked to the centre of the room. He paused over the dirty dishes on the table, glanced at the rumpled cushions on the couch, and conveyed his disgust through his unwillingness to touch anything in the room.

  ‘It’s procedure,’ Fritz said.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Amann said. ‘We both know that the Kripo likes to harass the NSDAP. I’m sure that the Minister of Justice would love to know that a case he closed has been reopened by a lower division.’

  ‘The Kripo was called to the scene. The case was closed before we had a chance to complete the paperwork. I am merely trying to fill the file.’

  Amann raised his eyebrows. ‘On your off time?’

  Fritz said nothing. He took a glass from the cupboard and poured himself a drink of water from the tap.

  ‘Just between us, Inspector, let me know why you are hounding the NSDAP.’

  ‘Interesting choice of words, Herr Amann. “Hounding”. I would have nothing to do if you had left the poor girl’s body in her room, and allowed the Kripo to complete its paperwork.’

  ‘I am sure you would have found something,’ Amann said.

  ‘Not if she committed suicide.’ Fritz downed the glass of water, then wiped his mouth with the back of his arm.

  ‘Do you doubt the Minister of Justice’s ruling?’

  ‘I am curious as to whether or not he had all the facts.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘How the girl’s nose got broken. Why the gun she was holding disappeared. Simple questions. Obvious ones.’

  ‘Are you implying that someone killed her?’

  ‘No.’ Fritz set his glass on the counter. ‘I am merely curious, that’s all. Perhaps if you tell me your story, I might understand all of this. I understand you and two of your companions took the body to Dr Zehrt for a cursory autopsy, and then had it sent out of the country. I am curious how, between the time Frau Winter called the Kripo and Dr Zehrt viewed the body, the Minister of Justice was able to look and determine the poor girl killed herself.’

  Amann tugged on the lapels of his suit coat. His clothing had a military crispness. Even the tug did not dislodge the lines of his suit. ‘I would be happy to tell you, Inspector. It was clear to all of us that she had killed herself. Frau Reichert called me when she could not get Geli’s door open. I left a meeting with two of my companions, and when we arrived, we found Geli’s door locked. We tried to contact Frau Winter for a key, but we could not reach her, so we kicked in the door. Geli was inside, with the gun in her hand. Suicide. Even her window was closed. The meeting with Dr Zehrt was a mere formality so that we could send the body to Austria.’

  ‘And the gun?’ Fritz asked. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘We left it in her room.’

  ‘It was gone when I arrived.’

  ‘Perhaps it was back in the gun cabinet. Frau Winter is efficient.’

  ‘The gun is missing,’ Fritz said.

  Herr Amann shrugged, as if that did not concern him. ‘It was there when we removed the body.’

  Fritz crossed his arms. ‘If she committed suicide, why the cover-up?’

  ‘Cover-up is such a strong word, Inspector. There was no cover-up. There is potential embarrassment for our leader. We thought it best to keep the story from the papers.’

  Fritz swept his hand toward the papers on the floor. ‘And that didn’t work, did it?’

  Amann didn’t even glance at them. He shrugged instead. ‘There are no photographs. No one has seen our grieving Führer. It is better this way.’

  ‘All the innuendo about murder is better than a clear-cut case of suicide?’

  ‘I don’t expect you to understand, Inspector.’ Amann tugged the sleeves of his shirt so that they extended a half-inch from the sleeves of his coat. Diamond cufflinks gleamed in the faint light. ‘There would be innuendo, anyway. The press does not like to believe the NSDAP, even with evidence. So it is better to keep the most sensational aspects of the death away from them. That means no photographs, no chance to look at the Führer’s home, no chance to gawk at his life.’

>   ‘Ah, yes,’ Fritz said. ‘Herr Hitler. Where is he? He seems to have become a ghostly figure in all of this.’

  ‘He is shattered by grief.’ Amann said the sentence so matter-of-factly that Fritz had to pause before understanding what he had heard.

  ‘Geli was the most important person in his life.’

  Amann smiled. ‘Now you understand. Yes, indeed. He would do nothing to hurt her. He wanted everything for her.’

  Nothing to hurt her. A denial where none was required. ‘And yet you send her body to a country where Herr Hitler is not allowed, so that he cannot even attend the funeral.’

  ‘He was too distraught to travel.’

  ‘You knew that when you put the body on the train?’

  ‘Of course,’ Amann said.

  ‘But Hitler hadn’t even come back from Nuremberg yet.’

  ‘I spoke with his chauffeur by telephone. We have come into the twentieth century, you know, Inspector.’

  ‘I saw Hitler on Saturday night,’ Fritz said. ‘He looked as if he could travel.’

  Amann smiled a slight, small smile that deepened his frown lines. ‘You do not know him. He was probably startled to see you, since the case was closed.’

  ‘I need to speak with him, Herr Amann. Where is he?’

  ‘You have no reason to see the Führer, Inspector. The girl is buried and you can do nothing to change the Minister’s ruling.’

  ‘You have not heard me,’ Fritz said. ‘I do not want to change the Minister’s ruling. I merely want to have a complete file on the case.’

  ‘You will have to complete your file without the Führer. In fact, I would call the file complete now.’

  Fritz raised his chin so that he looked down his nose at Amann. ‘That sounds strangely like a threat, Herr Amann.’

  ‘It is no threat,’ Amann said. ‘It is advice.’

  ‘What are you afraid of?’ Fritz asked. ‘Closing my files should not bother you if all is as you say.’

  ‘The NSDAP is not popular with the authorities. Perhaps your report could be compromised.’