Mister Wolf

by Chris Petit

  The woman was a perfect clothes horse. The tinted, permed blonde hair looked like it had just been set. The immaculate make-up was understated, with carefully applied lipstick in a cupid’s bow. The presentation was in calculated contrast to the natural look advocated for women, but Braun got away with it by being obviously trim and sporty, and generally alert. The impression was of brimming good health. Only the startled brightness of the eyes suggested it might be enhanced.

  Hoffmann said, ‘Fräulein Braun was my assistant at the time of Fräulein Raubal’s death. She still comes in when her other duties allow.’

  Morgen supposed this was the Fräulein Braun, described by Gestapo Müller as Hitler’s friend. The mutual dislike between her and Hoffmann was evident. Morgen noted straight seams on silk stockings as she turned away after agreeing to make coffee.

  The point of that was to show how it was properly done. They were called through to a set table, with silverware and a coffee aroma strong enough to turn their knees weak.

  Why the woman should be in the shop at all, Morgen could not decide. It was clearly beneath her. He suspected the silver service was to put Hoffmann in his place. The man gave every appearance of letting standards slip. Fräulein Braun served them as though she were conducting an etiquette lesson, with a saccharine overlay (cake and fake cream). She withdrew, closing the door behind her, after pointedly asking, ‘Is that all?’

  ‘What does Fräulein Braun do?’ enquired Morgen as they listened to her departing footsteps.

  ‘She supervises the Führer’s mountain retreat,’ said Hoffmann with sufficient innuendo to make his meaning clear. ‘She first met the Führer here in the shop when Herr Wolf came to visit.’ Hoffmann chuckled obsequiously. ‘He liked to present himself as a man of mystery and often went by that name. Fräulein Braun was up a ladder at the time and he admired her legs.’

  A brittle creature, thought Morgen, certainly with airs and graces, given the way she had just put them all in their place.

  ‘When did this historic meeting occur?’ he asked.

  ‘She was seventeen at the time, so fifteen years ago. In October, I do remember that. October was always a significant month for the Führer.’

  ‘I say, this coffee is really good,’ Morgen remarked conversationally. ‘Yet Fräulein Braun still works for you.’

  ‘When she’s in town she handles my photographic press. She likes to use the darkroom here as she is a photographer in her own right.’

  Hoffmann looked doubtful about that.

  So the woman lived in the mountains, kept a place in town and used her employer’s facilities; it didn’t strike Morgen as a particularly extravagant relationship between her and the Führer. Much younger. Nothing too grand. He wondered if the Führer had been running the two young women in tandem.

  ‘Did Fräulein Raubal and Fräulein Braun know each other?’ he asked.

  Hoffmann gave another chuckle. ‘Only as rivals.’

  Hoffmann served himself a large belt of schnapps from a sideboard, after half-heartedly offering it in the expectation of their refusing. Hoffmann took a mouthful, smacked his lips and set the glass down with the steadiness of a seasoned drunk. A sentimental one, too, Schlegel saw from the way the man’s eyes moistened at mention of the niece.

  Fräulein Braun, in a hat and putting on gloves, came through to tell Hoffman she was going out and might be back later. She barely glanced at Morgen and Schlegel as she swept past, saying only, ‘Gentlemen.’

  She was opening the door when Morgen called her name and she turned with a look that told him he was exceeding himself.

  ‘Well?’ she asked as she continued to fiddle with her gloves.

  ‘Were you at all familiar with Fräulein Raubal?’

  ‘I don’t see what business that is of yours.’

  ‘We are looking for her diary.’

  Even Hoffmann sat up at that.

  ‘I am sure I wouldn’t know. We never met. There was a mother and a brother, I believe,’ she said with affected vagueness. She remained by the door, dismissive and expectant. Morgen said nothing and finally she turned to Hoffmann. ‘Perhaps they are confusing me with Henny. She knew Fräulein Raubal well. Picnics and all that.’

  Henny was his daughter, Hoffmann chipped in, and she was now wife of the governor of Vienna. He sat back, the proud father.

  ‘Yes,’ concluded Fräulein Braun, ‘she would be the one to ask.’

  She left without further ado. Hoffmann muttered under his breath what sounded like, ‘Stuck-up bitch,’ but he would not be drawn further on the subject of Fräulein Braun. Instead he stood and said, ‘Come.’

  Hoffmann was an unstoppable show-off. He boasted that he was the only one who could talk the hind legs off the Führer. Although a man of immense self-regard, he was careful to make out he was just ‘a humble snapper’.

  They were shown photograph after photograph of the Führer. Boxes and boxes, albums and albums. Early selfconscious poses. Rallies. Speeches. Resting. Themed. And the books churned out! Hoffman reprised the story told to Schlegel by Goebbels, how in the earliest days an American agency had put a price on the Führer’s head.

  ‘A fabulous bounty for any photograph of the elusive, unsnapped Führer, and I got him too, only to have the film confiscated by his bodyguard.’ Hoffmann looked at them with buzzing delight. ‘What they don’t know is I nailed him again, without anyone noticing. Let me show you.’

  The photograph was proudly displayed: the young Führer leaving a building, accompanied by henchmen. Schlegel was struck by the strutting, naked thuggishness, with the entourage assuming the pose of gangsters.

  Schlegel asked Hoffmann if he knew the others in the picture. Hoffmann named them. On the right, next to the Führer: Emil Maurice. He wore a uniform and cap, which distracted from any proper impression. Young. They were all young men. Maurice looked wiry.

  Schlegel stared at the man who was supposed to have killed his father, yet apparently hadn’t. The dark eyes, if not murderous, suggested huge indifference towards the general welfare of his fellow man. Schlegel found he couldn’t look for long.

  He turned to the rest of the photograph, noted the dressing up, as though they were trying on an image. Everyone appeared strangely unformed, even the glaring Führer and Emil Maurice, who had the air of an aspiring matinee idol with his narrow little moustache. Unpressed uniforms but shiny boots. A huge sense of playacting. Those that grew moustaches and those that didn’t.

  Hoffmann said he had always remained popular with the Führer, who was amused and entertained by him, but not so Bormann. ‘You see, I shattered the wall of isolation that Bormann has been building around the Führer, so he plotted against me.’

  Bormann had recently insisted anyone exposed to the Führer be subjected to a medical checkup and in Hoffmann’s case rigged the results to show he was carrying a highly infectious strain of typhus, which disqualified him from any further contact.

  ‘What rot! I am as fit as a fiddle. Even Fräulein Braun supports me on this because she knows Bormann is capable of any dirty trick that suits his book.’

  Hoffmann turned back to the photographs with a bitter laugh, and said, ‘Now, here’s something. What’s unusual about this photograph?’

  ‘Two Führers,’ said Morgen.

  The occasion was the opening of an autobahn in 1936, when the man and one of his understudies had turned up for the same ceremony. One stood to the left, wearing a peaked cap, hands folded, as if protecting his crotch. He looked entertained, as did the senior Party officials around him, at the sight of an identical looking man cutting the tape, who wore the same cap and uniform, making it appear as though an act of teleportation had occurred.

  ‘Why two?’ asked Morgen.

  ‘Admin cock-up, which was good for me. I sold this for big bucks to Time magazine, which reported the story and the good-natured response of the Führer to the amusement of the crowd.’

  Living proof, thought Schlegel, of the existence of
doubles.

  ‘You must have photographed the niece too,’ Morgen said.

  ‘Never to my satisfaction. Something essential always seemed missing.’

  ‘We heard Fräulein Raubal was a great beauty,’ Morgen said.

  ‘In the room, undoubtedly. Such joie de vivre.’

  The photographs were disappointing. The subject over-projected. Hoffmann failed to hide a heavy jaw, or make much of her round face or capture any animation. The impression was of a pleasant-looking pudding of a young woman.

  Hoffmann sighed. ‘It’s like being a sharpshooter. You may miss a lot but you bag them in the end. I never did that with her. The closest I came was one afternoon on a picnic. There’s this one.’

  The photograph showed her in profile leaning back on the grass, wearing a summer dress with a bold print, and gazing in adoration at her uncle, who was zonked out in a deck chair, making the picture unintentionally comic.

  ‘And this one. A saucy moment,’ said Hoffmann.

  It showed her paddling on a lakeshore. She wore a pale sleeveless shift, and was standing up to her knees in water, turning to laugh at the lens.

  ‘I was trying to catch her unawares. She was staring at the water lost in thought, a quite wonderful expression, but then she caught me watching and lifted her skirt and flashed her thigh, giving me that daring look.’

  It was the only photograph in which she looked natural, Schlegel thought.

  Hoffmann said mournfully that you had to be with her to appreciate her. ‘Such spirit.’

  ‘Such a tragic end,’ said Morgen, with the air of a weary prompter. ‘You must have been one of the last people to have seen her alive when you collected the Führer on the Friday afternoon.’

  ‘Who could have known it would turn out like that when we said goodbye to her? I remember her leaning over the bannister as if it were yesterday. There had been a spat but nothing to suggest that she felt impelled to kill herself. The Führer admitted to me in the car that Fräulein Raubal had been in a mood because she thought he was neglecting her. He was embarrassed that staff had heard them arguing over lunch – he had asked the cook for spaghetti, one of his favourites, and a good meal was ruined by her running from the table and smashing things in her room, which could be heard all over the apartment. But nothing to suggest . . .’

  Schlegel pointed out that this was very different from the official statement which insisted there had been no disagreement between the Führer and his niece.

  Hoffmann said, ‘He only wished to protect her reputation.Well, she had confessed to me that she felt constrained and neglected . . .’

  Morgen asked what sort of constraints.

  ‘She liked parties and dancing.’ Hoffmann did a shimmy and gave them a glimpse of his act as life and soul of the party. ‘But Herr Wolf don’t boogie-woogie.’

  ‘You’re pretty light on your feet, Hoffmann,’ said Morgen.

  Hoffmann stopped, breathless, and smoothed down already smooth hair, passing both hands over his scalp, as he told them that the outcome of her social restrictions was a series of much older chaperones, himself included.

  ‘The innocent fun of such outings was quite spoiled.’ He assumed a serious expression to make up for the frivolity of a moment before. ‘Frau Winter confided to me that Geli was not happy about living in the apartment, and on that last afternoon, after we had gone, she remained disconsolate and angry, and complained, “I have nothing in common with my uncle.” ’

  ‘She told you that?’ Morgen exclaimed. ‘Frau Winter doesn’t strike me as the type to volunteer anything.’

  ‘To outsiders. When it came to the Führer’s welfare, she was fiercely protective.’

  Hoffmann and Winter’s combined versions made complete sense to Schlegel. That said, he couldn’t see Winter confiding anything to Hoffmann under normal circumstances: one a blabbermouth and the other a basilisk of discretion. Neither would speak ill of the niece – loyalty to the Führer would preclude that – but the impression was of a spoiled brat who was hard to handle. Although Schlegel didn’t actively question anything that either had said, he thought it might be because they had both learned their lines like actors for a play.

  ‘In the end, do you have any idea why she did it?’ Morgen asked.

  ‘The only thing I can think of is the letter,’ said Hoffmaback letter and the business of thenn.

  ‘What letter?’

  ‘I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead, but Fräulein Raubal must have gone through her uncle’s pockets after he had left, found it, read it and tore it up. Frau Winter discovered it later in the wastepaper basket and taped it back together.’ Hoffmann shrugged and said, ‘Geli could be a compulsive girl. The letter . . . and the Führer’s pistol to hand . . .’

  ‘A note from whom?’ asked Morgen.

  ‘Why, Fräulein Braun. Did I not say?’

  The Führer’s flame, the same woman who had just served them a fine cup of real coffee.

  The torn-up taped-back letter and the business of the dead canary – Schlegel thought them like clues in a thirdrate mystery. It occurred to him that for a woman who volunteered so little, Frau Winter had observed a lot.

  GELI

  31

  Anton Schlegel, August 1931

  In the summer of 1931, Anton Schlegel acquired a dog, and a central Munich apartment, which he house-sat, after being talked into taking care of the dog for a wealthy widow who had taken herself off on a long sea cruise. The dog was a wire-haired fox terrier and required her daily walk.

  Anton had spent much of the previous year travelling, mainly in South America, before returning to Munich to find that the Führer had become like a movie star, with fans and autograph hunters, and a huge publicity machine. Then there was the big complication of his ‘princess’ niece, with all the gossip about her, everything from angel to slut, from meadow in full bloom to a field everyone had ploughed.

  The niece declared herself in love with Anton’s dog when they ran into each other in the English Garden. By then they knew each other enough to say hello.

  ‘What an adorable dog!’ she exclaimed and declared how much cuter it was than her uncle’s German shepherds.

  The next day she was there again.

  Anton Schlegel found her uninhibited and uncensored. She said more or less straight away, ‘I have decided to trust you.’

  ‘What makes you think I am trustworthy?’

  ‘I didn’t say you were, just that I have decided to.’ She gave a delightful peal of laughter. ‘I may be lazy and not much up for work but I am not as stupid as I make out.’

  He supposed her somewhat theatrical as a result of being thrust into the limelight.

  They walked and talked most days. She asked if Anton knew her uncle.

  ‘I know him as Herr Wolf. We met first in 1925.’

  ‘Let’s call him Herr Wolf, then!’ she said, playing along.

  ‘Are you friends?’

  ‘We talk a lot.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Books and films mainly. The importance of a library. Cinema as a projection for mass entertainment, which modern leadership must learn to emulate.’

  She asked what he did.

  He said he didn’t have to do anything. ‘I’m a man of leisure. Well, some stocks and shares, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Money’s so boring. What films do you like?’

  He said he liked M, which had come out earlier than summer.

  She said, ‘Why would anyone want to see a film about a child murderer? What else do you like?’

  He said he had liked Dr Mabuse but it was an old film.

  ‘What was that about?’

  ‘A criminal mastermind.’

  She laughed and said, ‘Child killers and criminal masterminds! Tell me something properly interesting about yourself.’

  Anton Schlegel thought about that and said, ‘I suspect I am what Herr Wolf most wishes he were.’

  ‘What’s that?’


  ‘An orphan and a foundling. I have no idea who my real parents were and was raised by a wealthy, childless couple whom I detested. I find myself drawn to men who formed intense attachments to their mothers. I suspect it gives me – the motherless son – some kind of attraction to them.’

  ‘Life would be a lot easier without families!’ she said ruefully. She gave him a look as if to say he had passed some kind of test.

  On the third or fourth meeting she showed him the gun she had been given.

  ‘To protect myself in case I am attacked.’

  ‘Do you know how to use it?’

  It was a Walther. Hitler and his crew were security mad.

  ‘I do target practice on the range.’

  ‘Are you a good shot?’

  ‘A deadeye, so don’t mess with me.’ She laughed again – she was a great laugher – and said she would show him how to strip the gun. She made it sound sexually suggestive.

  The whole security malarkey Anton Schlegel suspected was just a way of keeping tabs on the girl.

  Her moods could be changeable and fleeting. One minute up, the next down, admitting she could not really say what she thought in case it was reported back.

  Anton Schlegel replied, ‘I don’t talk out of turn.’

  She seemed to take him at his word and over time he came to see how desperate she was to share without fear of censure.

  While expressing herself only in terms of gratitude towards her uncle, they both knew it was more complicated than that. She turned out to be more astute than Anton Schlegel was expecting.

  ‘He manipulates me terrifically,’ she admitted, ‘but I know how to work him back, and if sometimes he makes me do things I don’t want to do, that’s men, and it seems a small price to pay for everything he has given me.’

  ‘Do you believe that?’

  ‘Of course not. More often than not, the situation is close to intolerable.’

  He found he could tell when she was being honest and when she was rehearsing, to test how it sounded, as when she said during their one of their first meetings: ‘I would of course marry him as the drop of a hat if he asked, and there is nothing more I want than to be the mother of his child.’