Hitler's Angel (13 page)

He feels as if he has told her too much already.

H
e bathed and changed clothes before leaving again, buying a cup of coffee from a late-night restaurant on his way to Prinzregentenplaz. The coffee revived him enough to make him alert, but not enough to wipe the gritty feeling from his eyes. Despite his best intentions, he would have to get some sleep. He would do no one any good if he could not think clearly.

He had made a mental list. He still had one eyewitness he hadn’t spoken to. After he spoke with the old woman, Frau Dachs, he would talk with Gregor Strasser, other members of the NSDAP, and Hitler himself.

First, Fritz went to Prinzregentenplaz. The old woman would have to be in so late at night. He would speak to her and get the letter. Then he would get some much needed rest.

Lights were on in the stone apartment building, but only one light burned on the second floor. He hoped it was Hitler’s.

Nothing had changed inside as Fritz climbed the stairs to the second floor. He almost expected to see reporters clamouring for a story, Brownshirts holding them away. But the entry and hall were eerily silent.

It took a long time for anyone to respond to his knock. He heard a vague rustling behind the door before it was pulled open and he made a mental note: the building was so silent at night that the smallest sounds, covered in the daytime by ambient noise, were made audible. The door opened slowly. Frau Reichert stood before him, holding a nightdress closed at her throat.

‘Forgive me for disturbing you, Frau Reichert,’ he said, ‘but I need to speak with your mother.’

Frau Reichert’s eyes were large on her face. She had deep shadows beneath them and her skin was pale. If anything, she looked even more haggard than she had on Saturday.

‘I am sorry, Detective Inspector,’ she said softly. ‘She does not want visitors.’

‘It’s important that I speak with her.’

‘She is an old woman. It is nearly midnight. She is already asleep.’

‘Wake her, please.’

Frau Reichert shook her head. ‘I cannot.’

‘Then let me.’

‘I am not to let anyone inside,’ she said. She glanced over her shoulder.

Fritz resisted the urge to push open the door. ‘Who is behind you?’

‘No one,’ Frau Reichert whispered.

‘You are alone here? What about Frau Winter?’

‘She has gone home.’

‘And what of Herr Hitler?’

‘He is not in.’

‘When do you expect him back?’

‘He is out of town.’

‘Has he gone back to Hamburg, then?’

She shook her head, then glanced over her shoulder again. ‘I do not know where he is.’

‘Frau Reichert, it is important that I speak to him.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘But he is not here.’

‘Where is Herr Hitler, Frau Reichert?’

‘I do not know!’ she cried. ‘Please, leave us be. Please.’

She was about to close the door when Fritz put his hand on it.

‘What are you so afraid of?’ His voice was soft, cajoling. ‘The Kripo can help you.’

‘The Kripo helps no one,’ she said. ‘Please, Inspector. It is not good to keep coming here.’

‘Why not, Frau Reichert? Will something happen to me?’

She shook her head, her knuckles white as her grip on her nightdress tightened. ‘It is just not good. Enough has happened already.’

‘Frau Reichert,’ Fritz said, keeping his voice soft, ‘why didn’t Herr Hitler go to Geli’s funeral?’

‘He could not,’ she said. ‘He could not. Her death has destroyed him.’

‘Destroyed him? Or his career?’

She glanced over her shoulder again. ‘Please leave, Inspector. You can learn nothing more here.’

Except the identity of the other person behind the door. He pushed just enough to force the door past Frau Reichert’s sturdy body. She was alone in the dark entry hall.

‘Who were you looking at, Frau Reichert?’

‘No one,’ she said. ‘I just do not like to be alone here.’

‘But you said your mother is with you.’

‘She is asleep, and I would like to be too. Frau Winter will be here in the morning. She may know where Herr Hitler is. Please, Inspector, I cannot help you.’

The tears welled in her eyes. She looked very frail, standing alone in the entryway, the unwilling guardian of a thousand secrets.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Please tell your mother and Frau Winter that I will see them tomorrow.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Frau Reichert said, and gently, ever so gently, closed the door.

Fritz stood before it, head bowed, for a long time. The Chief Inspector had assigned him a difficult task and then made it impossible. Even if he did gather enough evidence on the murder, what then? The Minister of Justice had already ruled on it. The case was closed.

Finally, Fritz sighed and went down the stairs. He too would get sleep. He could do nothing else until morning.

He stops, wipes his face. He is sweating even though the room is cool. The next part he has to tell her makes him uncomfortable. He had not thought of it at first. But now, now that he has come to this part of his tale, he finds that he cannot speak. The soup, which he is grateful for, has suddenly become a barrier between them. She has done something domestic, something female. She has cared for him. And it is not until this moment that he realises she is of a gentler breed. She is young enough to be his granddaughter. She has a purity in her face.

Like Gisela once did.

‘Are you all right?’ she asks.

‘I think I will have more soup,’ he says, to fortify himself. He will have to tell her. He cannot stop here. The tale is begun. He must finish it. Not for her, but for himself.

He pushes himself out of the chair, grabs his bowl, and ladles out more. She has made enough to feed ten men. As if her meagre efforts will aid him. He can take care of himself. He always has.

‘If you don’t mind, ‘she says as he sits back down, ‘I would like to leave a bit early this afternoon. I would like to see if I can get Photostats of those clips.’

He nods. He does not know how much more he can say today. It has been difficult for him so far, and it will only get more difficult.

‘Would you like to leave now?’ he asks.

‘No.’ She puts a new cassette in the recorder. ‘I think we have another hour or two.’

‘Well, then, ‘he says, stirring the vegetables with his spoon. ‘Let’s make the most of it.’

T
he caffeine had worn off by the time he reached his apartment. He could feel the stress of the long drive in his shoulders, the tension of the case in his back. He would have to set an alarm so that he could wake just after dawn, otherwise he would sleep the entire morning away.

He unlocked his apartment door, and the slap of paper against wood startled him. He looked down to see a large envelope – the kind the Kripo used for inter-office correspondence – lying across the threshold. He kicked the envelope inside, then looked to either side. He appeared to be alone in the hallway. With one swift movement he slipped inside the apartment, closed the door, and locked it.

The lights were still on and the paper was spread over his couch, just as he had left it. Nothing else was out of place. He slid his hand inside his sleeve, grabbed the envelope, took it to the table and sat, studying it.

The envelope was new, without markings, a dull brown identifying it as foreign – probably British. The glued end was sealed. For a moment he toyed with waiting until morning to open it, but it would serve no purpose. He was
conducting this investigation on his own, outside of the precinct, and he knew the procedures as well as any of them. He had helped develop those procedures.

He set the envelope on the table and went to his small chest of drawers, removing his thinnest pair of gloves. He slipped them on, the wool warming his already hot skin. Then he used the tip of his pocket knife to carefully slit the bottom of the envelope. He did not want to interfere with the upper seal, in case anything was caught in it.

He set the knife down, slipped his fingers inside the envelope, and pulled out six pieces of rag paper. They curled slightly when removed. He spread them out on the table and stared.

They were watercolours of a nude woman. In the first, she was standing Grecian style, a white robe held in her right hand flowed over her legs, as if she had just revealed her nakedness to someone. She was looking down, her expression sad. In the second, she reclined on a lounge, one leg bent at the knee, the other straight. Again, she was looking away from the artist.

All of the paintings were imitations of classic nudes, only without the delicate draping. The woman’s pubic hair showed in all of the paintings, her ski-jump breasts with their brown nipples a prominent feature. Only the sixth was done in a different style. In that painting, the woman was on her back, lying on rumpled sheets, one arm flung above her head, the other at her side. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open. Her legs were spread, and the artist spent loving time and detail on the pubic area. In fact, the woman’s pubis was
the centre of the painting. The rest of the details flowed from there.

The artist was marginally talented with an ability to mimic life. He appeared to have trouble with limbs. In all of the paintings, the woman’s arms were too long, and in the last, her legs had too much flesh between the thigh and knee. But he was good enough to make his subject recognisable.

Geli, without the bruises or the broken nose. Fritz recognised her more from the light dusting of pubic hair than from her facial features. This was the body he had seen, bloodless and lifeless in Vienna.

The paintings had been done by the same artist who had executed the watercolours in Hitler’s flat. The same use of colour, the same mistakes, were evident. Fritz thumbed through the watercolours looking for an artist’s signature. Most of them did not have signatures, but the one of the woman reclining on the lounge did. In the same mixed black-brown that filled in the legs of the lounge, the artist had written his name. The first name was almost unreadable – at first Fritz thought it said ‘by’ instead of a name at all – but the last name was clear.
Hitler
. A tiny, cramped signature that ran downhill. Fritz wondered what the graphologists would make of that. Then he was able to make out the loosely formed ‘A’ in Adolf, and the long lower-case ‘f’ with the bar on its tail.

Fritz put a gloved hand on his forehead. Someone had wanted him to have this. More information about the case, information someone didn’t want to tell him directly.

‘Why didn’t they take the paintings to the press?’ the girl asks. ‘They would have discredited Hitler immediately.’

Fritz shakes his head. ‘The papers were as easily discredited. We did not have the faith you Americans have in your media. We knew they could be bought and often were. No, I got the paintings because I was the only man in a position to do anything with them.’

Now he wished he had searched the hallway more carefully. Perhaps he would have found the person who had left the paintings. Although he doubted it. This was not the kind of information a man kept on a political figure without good reason.