by Chris Petit
He stuck stubbornly to his version then sighed deeply and said, ‘There is something else.’ He stopped as if unable to continue until prompted then added, ‘It’s an intimate detail.’
He took his time, visibly embarrassed, and finally offered that his daughter Henny had confided how Geli suffered terribly during her time of the month and dreaded its approach. Hoffman lowered his voice to a confidential whisper. ‘Feelings of deep sadness and despair, irritability and anger, frequent outbursts at loved ones. Feelings of anxiety, panic attacks, mood swings. Irrational behaviour.’
‘Including suicidal thoughts?’
‘Those, too.’ Hoffmann looked at them, morose and puzzled. ‘Women in the end are unfathomable, wouldn’t you say?’
Before either could answer they were interrupted by approaching footsteps and Fräulein Braun made a reappearance as if on cue, upstaging them all. She stopped in surprise at seeing them. More of a shock was the uniformed man standing behind her. Schlegel watched Morgen pale.
‘My brother-in-law,’ Fräulein Braun announced.
Fegelein smirked and said nothing. Morgen ignored Fegelein in return. Schlegel was aware of pungent eau de cologne competing with the woman’s scent.
‘We’re not stopping,’ said Fräulein Braun.
If Fegelein was thrown by seeing them he gave no sign.
‘Chasing shadows, gentlemen?’
Morgen asked, ‘What brings you?’
Fegelein, nonchalant as he inserted his cigarette into a holder, replied, ‘International Racing Week, don’t you know?’
Morgen wondered at such things still happening.
‘For sure. Big social event out at Riem.’
That was why all the hotels were booked, Schlegel realised.
Hoffmann seemed disconcerted by Fräulein Braun’s presence, as if it confirmed his fallen state, with Fegelein a further reminder of his exclusion.
Morgen said, ‘Fräulein Braun, a question if you please.’
‘Another time. We’re late.’
‘It will only take a moment. Did you write a letter to Fräulein Raubal’s uncle shortly before she died?’
She kept her composure, Schlegel had to say that for her.
‘A thank you note, plain and simple. It is only polite to write such letters after being taken out.’ She did her best to sound imperious but lacked the authority.
‘Fräulein Raubal found it and tore it up.’
Fegelein’s hooded eyes flared with delight at the spectacle.
Fräulein Braun sighed. ‘Whatever she may have read into it, there was nothing other than cordial politeness. I was well brought-up.’
‘I can vouch for that,’ Fegelein said. ‘Well, there we are. Shall we go?’
Fräulein Braun hadn’t finished. ‘She was like a child, everyone said, a spoiled brat, and like all such creatures became resentful when she was not the centre of attention. Her uncle had more important things on his mind.’
Morgen said, ‘I believe you tried to kill yourself, too.’ Fräulein Braun took a step back at that.
Fegelein continued to look entertained, composing himself only when Fräulein Braun exclaimed, ‘How dare you!’
‘Steady on,’ he said to Morgen.
Hoffmann rallied too. ‘What has this to do with anything?’
Fräulein Braun was determined to have the last word. ‘I was told the girl wrapped the gun in a flannel to muffle the report and shot herself in the mouth.’
‘Told by?’ asked Morgen.
‘The Führer, which is quite sufficient authority for you. Enough of this. Let’s go, Hermann.’
Fegelein turned to leave, paused and, sounding forgetful, asked, ‘Morgen, isn’t it?
Morgen didn’t grace him with a reply.
‘The thing is, you should come over for lunch later at the old riding academy. I can show you around.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Kurt Becher said you spoke fondly of me in Budapest.’
Seeing Fegelein and Fräulein Braun turned out like a starry society couple, Schlegel was reminded that Fegelein was supposed to have provided her with fur coats from Warsaw.
Fräulein Braun tapped her foot. Hoffmann started knocking back schnapps.
Schlegel suspected Fegelein’s invitation was gloating, disguised behind casual, impeccable manners.
‘Very well,’ Morgen said, with an attempt at equal manners.
Fegelein’s nastiness reasserted itself as they were leaving. ‘Just you. Not him,’ he said, pointing to Schlegel. ‘A bientôt.’
*
‘Nice chap, Hermann,’ said Hoffmann. It was impossible to tell if he was serious.
Morgen looked as disconcerted as Schlegel had ever seen him as Hoffmann reverted to blaming Bormann for his exclusion from the court of the Führer.
‘I was never hypocritical, unlike some. They all smoke behind the Führer’s back.’ He mimed smoke being blown away. ‘Bormann surrounds the Führer with creeps and toadies. Fräulein Braun is a cow to servants.’
Not much of a surprise there, thought Schlegel.
‘I have never seen anyone so desperate as Fräulein Braun to get her man,’ Hoffmann went on. ‘Of course, the fascination he held for women was quite astonishing. Old hags used to rave around him like young flappers. Married women wrote begging him to father their child. Others wrote in ways that revealed them to be quite deranged.’ Hoffmann tittered at the recollection. ‘I can tell you, there was a voluminous set of files in his office under the general title “Crackers!”.’
He snorted, started to laugh and couldn’t stop. The laugh became a hiccough that seemed about to turn to tears until a large slug of drink put him right.
‘That reminds me,’ he said. He fetched a box file standing alone on a shelf, on which someone had stuck a collage of pretty pictures. ‘Geli wrote to my daughter once about her uncle – here it is.’ He held up the letter. ‘I quote – “whose slightest action, whether it concerned a lawsuit about some mysterious funds from Italy or the administration of a dose of poison to an old Alsatian dog, assumed the vast proportions of an event in a Wagner opera,” unquote. It was all laughter or tears. Even the Führer could get quite weepy.’
Schlegel thought: or the administration of a dose of poison to an old Alsatian dog. Was this something uncles shared with their nieces? Let alone her knowledge of mysterious funds. Both suggested a woman who had her eyes about her.
Hoffmann ploughed on drunkenly, talking for the sake of it now. ‘Much of Geli’s charm was her Viennese accent. When she was together with her uncle, his own softened to become more like hers. He had worked hard on his voice, making himself sound proper. She said she despised stupid, blonde Bavarian girls.’ He rolled his eyes in the direction of the departed Fräulein Braun. ‘Geli was a terrific dresser. When I arrived to chaperone her to the Shrovetide Ball she appeared for her uncle’s inspection absolutely ravishing in a design by Ingo Schröder and was told in no uncertain terms it was far too revealing and to change into something more ordinary. And be back by eleven. It was Bormann who killed her, of course.’
Hoffmann stopped and looked surprised at himself.
Schlegel had seen it before, how people could break quite suddenly. Chase them fifteen times round the houses to no avail, then all of a sudden they dump it in your lap.
‘You had better tell us then,’ said Morgen, as though they were indulging in teatime conversation.
‘That calls for a drink,’ said Hoffman with false cheer and insisted they join him. Glasses were produced and clinked.
‘To victory!’ said Hoffmann. ‘Rockets will do their work yet.’
Killed her himself or had Bormann had her killed? wondered Schlegel. On the whole, the regime used others to do the job.
Bormann left little to chance, Hoffmann said. Even when quite low on the ladder he was able to throw his weight around because of his reputation as Mr Fix-it.
‘Bormann sees everything in terms of opportunity.’ Hoff
mann leaned forward. ‘Remember the 1939 anniversary meeting of the old guard when that bomb went off here in Munich in the Bürgerbräukeller?’
Hard not to. A huge story, talked up in terms of the man’s uncanny instinct for survival.
‘I was there,’ Hoffmann went on. ‘There was a panic over a security warning which had led to talk of cancelling. The Führer was crestfallen – it was one of the biggest dates in his calendar – until Bormann suggested it go ahead after all, but begin and end early to accommodate the Führer’s hectic schedule, which required him to catch the night train to Berlin. That was what was agreed. I was standing next to the Führer on the podium. He was bursting with pride and could barely make himself heard above the cheers. He spoke to a standing ovation and soon after we left the bomb was timed to go off.’
‘An inside job, then?’ prompted Morgen.
Hoffmann shrugged. ‘Circumstance. Timing. I have thought a lot about it since because if I hadn’t been travelling with the Führer that night I could have been among the dead. I am sure he never knew. Old Party faithfuls among those blown to shreds – he never would have condoned that. But to Bormann and the propaganda boys, what were eight or nine lives of deadbeat old fighters against such a shining example of the Führer’s infallibility?’
Controlled acts of apparent fate or chance made sense in terms of what Schlegel knew of Bormann. The recent bomb could be seen as a variation of the Bürgerbräukeller one, to prove the man’s indestructibility when everything else was going so badly. At the time of the Bürgerbräukeller the war was only a couple of months old and what better way to demonstrate the Führer’s invincibility and rally public support?
*
In his desperation to implicate Bormann, Hoffmann had to unpick his previous version, which he did without apology and in an astonishing volte face. His account now began in the middle of the night, with a telephone summons from Bormann to come to the Führer’s apartment.
‘In the early hours of the Friday?’ asked Morgen.
Hoffmann nodded, passed his hand over his sweating brow, inspected it and told them how earlier that night the Führer – not now out of town as previously claimed – had dined out with his niece before returning home late.
‘The Führer doesn’t bother with keys,’ said Hoffmann, ‘so the girl must have forgotten to lock the door because after he had gone to bed she was attacked by an intruder.’
Hoffmann didn’t look as if he believed that any more than they did.
‘What did you find?’ asked Morgen.
‘Bormann was there with Doctor Müller, the same one that later pronounced her dead.’
‘Did you see the girl?’ Morgen asked.
‘I was told she was sedated and resting.’
‘And the Führer?’
‘Sitting in the hall in a state of shock. He had been given a shot too.’
‘Did any of this strike you as strange?’ asked Morgen.
‘Except for the fact that I have rarely seen him touch a drop, I could see the man was plastered. Bormann put it down to the effect of the sedative, but no, he was definitely drunk, which is one thing I do know about.’
Hoffmann also believed someone else was in the apartment.
‘I had a sense of him being in the living room, listening, but no one came out.’
‘And what did Bormann expect of you?’
‘To take the Führer off and keep him safe at my place, then leave for Hamburg the next day as scheduled. Of course, we only got as far as Nuremberg.’
‘How was the Führer when you took him off?’
‘He was berating himself for dismissing the downstairs guard or the intruder would never have got in. He was still drunk.’
‘And you had never seen him in such a state before?’
‘Or since. The odd glass but no more. He loathes drunkenness. Funny that he puts up with me.’
Hoffmann looked like he was about to start crying.
‘Did Bormann kill her that night?’ asked Morgen. ‘According to your theory.’
‘He was forcing her to fuck him because he had dirt on her.’
‘What dirt?’ asked Morgen wearily. It was starting to sound like another turn of the merry-go-round. Hoffman’s drunken confidence slipped a notch.
‘She had a reputation for flightiness. Bormann likes beating women and must have gone too far and had to hush it up.’
‘So Bormann beat the girl, not this intruder or anyone else?’ asked Morgen, more sarcastic.
Hoffmann protested. ‘The Führer would never lay a hand on her.’
‘Are you saying Bormann shot her after you left?’ asked Schlegel.
‘I don’t know the details.’
‘Why are we sitting here pointing fingers when you saw nothing?’ asked Morgen.
‘Geli. Fräulein Raubal,’ said Hoffmann. ‘She said Bormann fucked people behind their backs.’
‘Not the same as killing.’
‘You’ll see I am right,’ said Hoffmann.
Schlegel suspected a pathetic attempt on Hoffmann’s part to implicate Bormann in revenge for being removed from the Führer’s inner circle.
Schlegel took over. ‘So lunch on the Friday and all the rest never happened. No spaghetti, no throwing things around in her room?’
‘We were told to say it to protect the Führer.’
‘By whom?’
‘Bormann, who else?’
Schlegel thought Hoffman was desperate to blame Bormann when it seemed more likely a case of an ambitious junior doing everything to protect his master.
Hoffmann threw up his hands. ‘Women! I ask you. Fräulein Braun was no better. One day, the summer after Geli’s death, Fräulein Braun didn’t come to work. I didn’t worry about it but, towards midday, my brother-in-law, a surgeon, came in looking very serious. “This is a bad business,” he said. “During the night, Fräulein Braun rang me. Speaking with great difficulty, she told me she had shot herself through the heart with a 6.35 pistol. She said she had felt so lonely and neglected that she wanted to end it.” ’
‘More and more bizarre,’ said Morgen. ‘She shoots herself through the heart, which, whatever she says to the contrary, is how the niece is supposed to have done it, using the same type of pistol.’
‘They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. My daughter said the difference between them was Geli was opera and Fräulein Braun light operetta.’
Schlegel thought: one gets her tragic end and the other a pale, botched job.
35
They bicycled over the river back to the apartment in Prinzregentplatz, where Frau Winter admitted them as far as the hall and stood in the half-light with her hands clasped in front of her and one ankle crossed behind the other. Schlegel thought her like the caretaker of an abandoned museum.
She regarded them in slow amazement when they asked about the intruder’s nocturnal attack on Fräulein Raubal.
‘Whoever told you that needs his head examining.’
Morgen said, ‘According to Hoffmann, the Führer left the apartment that night and didn’t return.’
Frau Winter scoffed, ‘Oh, Hoffmann!’ She dismissed it as another of his stale warmed-over stories.
‘Any revisions to your version?’ asked Morgen.
‘The Führer was many men to many people. Here was the one place he could put his feet up and be himself. I tell you he came on the Friday morning and left after the midday meal. The girl was being difficult. He took me aside to say he was worried about her agitated state.’
Schlegel didn’t know who to believe. He decided Frau Winter was probably better at dissembling than Hoffmann was at telling the truth.
She insisted she knew nothing of the Führer and his niece dining out the night before because she wasn’t live-in staff.
‘So on the whole, you didn’t know the Führer’s whereabouts?’ asked Morgen.
‘I knew when he was away and when he was here,’ she recited primly.
‘Yet Hoff
mann says the Führer never returned here on the Friday.’
‘Believe who you like. Hoffmann makes things up and gets confused.’
‘Drunk, you mean,’ said Morgen.
Frau Winter’s facade cracked a fraction. ‘Well, he can certainly pack it away.’
Morgen brought up the Führer’s drunkenness.
Frau Winter vehemently denied it.
‘Not even once?’
‘Hoffmann can talk! Most of the time he is so far gone it’s a wonder he can take a photograph.’
Schlegel thought: the tomblike discretion of the loyal servant whose silence spoke volumes. The Führer was above question.
Frau Winter changed tack, volunteering for once. ‘Fräulein Raubal’s moods were like clouds passing the sun, sometimes very dark—’
Morgen interrupted to ask, ‘From the state of the sheets would you say the relationship was a consummated one?’
The question was outrageous, as Morgen intended it to be. Winter held her ground. ‘Ask the laundress. Dirty linen is not my business.’
‘Did you like Fräulein Raubal, Frau Winter?’ Morgen asked.
‘Liking had nothing to do with it.’
‘Even so, you must have had an opinion.’
Frau Winter wrung her hands, her face contorting as she decided what to tell. Perhaps because she was unused to being asked, she gabbled, using the niece’s first name, which she hadn’t done before.
‘Geli was a flighty girl. She tried to seduce everybody, including her uncle when he merely wanted to protect her. She loved him in the way romantic films had taught her. She was always running after him. Naturally she wanted to become Frau Hitler. He was highly eligible but she flirted with everybody. She was not a serious girl.’
‘Stupid, would you say?’