“Very good.” The slender man glanced at her. Perspiration wet his high, pale forehead. “Please, Fräulein Müller, your presence could prove difficult to explain to the police. We must avoid any potential embarrassment for the Führer.”
Was it safer to break free and find the policemen or follow the men’s instructions? She thought of the fellow she had bribed so easily at the central station, and remembered Hitler laughing, saying the Party had little to fear from the police as many officers were becoming loyal National Socialists. There was no guarantee she could trust the officers entering the apartment.
Quietly, she followed Schwarz through the parlor. From the front hall, she heard a man talking to Frau Reichert, saying he and his partner had arrived to investigate the young lady’s death.
Gretchen and Schwarz reached the far end of the apartment. Maybe she should go to the police. Perhaps they were honest men. She started to turn, but Schwarz grabbed her arm and shoved her into a small room. The door slammed shut. She heard the scrape of a key in the lock, then the whisper of fading footsteps.
She sat on a chair and took several deep, steadying breaths. Then she glanced around the small, plain room. No telephone. No way to get word to Daniel. Even if she shouted, the policemen might not hear her because the apartment was so large. And Hitler’s men or servants might be standing nearby, keeping watch. Listening for her. She was trapped.
A memory swam into her mind. Sitting in the parlor, clutching a teacup in bruised hands, trying to see through a blackened eye. Geli’s casual words: Henny and I felt like characters out of a Western film.
Awareness shot through her. Geli and Henny Hoffman had been receiving weapons training at a shooting range outside Munich. Geli had shot Walthers before. She knew how to take them apart, clean them, and fire them properly.
Gretchen stilled. How could Geli have accidentally shot herself? It seemed impossible. . . .
A creaking floorboard pulled her into the present. The door opened. Frau Reichert peered inside.
“Are you all right, Fräulein Müller?” she asked. “Would you like luncheon? The cook is preparing sausage.”
Gretchen’s stomach revolted at the thought of food. Something must have shown in her face, for Frau Reichert stepped into the room and closed the door. “It is a terrible thing, Fräulein Raubal’s death,” she said quickly. “The investigation should soon be over, and you may return home. I hope you’ll be comfortable in my room for the time being.”
Then she was gone, the door snicking shut. Gretchen heard the tumblers click. She was locked in again.
One. Then two o’clock. Finally a quarter to three. She must have paced the room a hundred times by now. The door opened again. Schwarz stepped inside.
His quiet eyes blinked behind his spectacles. “The detectives have left,” he said. “They will return around three thirty to interview the Führer, who should have arrived by then. You’re free to leave, Fräulein Müller. And thank you for staying quiet. Your concealment could have proven difficult to explain to the police.”
She didn’t bother replying. There was nothing safe to say.
Schwarz ushered her into the corridor. All around them, the apartment breathed, silent and still. This was all wrong. There should have been people weeping in the parlor, servants preparing food for mourners, policemen searching Geli’s bedroom for clues. The apartment should have been busy as a train station at rush hour. Instead, it was a grave.
She stopped so abruptly that Schwarz ran into her. She mustn’t be afraid; Geli needed her friends now more than she ever had in life. “Tell me what the inspectors said.”
“Fräulein Müller, surely some matters are not proper for a young girl’s ears.” A faint flush tinged his cheeks. “It’s far better that you return home.”
“No, it’s far better that we honor Geli’s memory by ensuring the police are adequately investigating her death.” She watched as his narrow lips firmed. There was nothing he could say without losing face. “What did the inspectors say?”
“Not very much. There’s exceedingly little for them to do in clear cases of suicide. Clear cases, Fräulein Müller,” he repeated, still blinking owlishly behind his glasses. “The police doctor has come and gone, and he has confirmed that Fräulein Raubal died yesterday evening.”
“But how can he be so sure?”
“Rigor mortis set in several hours ago,” Schwarz said, and suddenly she felt sick, thinking of Geli’s body hardening and changing. “The single, fatal shot penetrated through her clothes to pass directly above her heart. It never exited her body, but remained lodged above her left hip, where it can be felt through the skin. Are you satisfied, Fräulein Müller?”
No. She would never be satisfied now that Geli was dead. What else could she do? Somehow, she forced one foot forward, then the next. It seemed so wrong to leave, but she didn’t know how to help.
They had reached the parlor. Gently, Schwarz took her arm as if to guide her toward the front hall, when they heard the sound of a doorknob turning, loud in the quiet. They looked at each other.
“It’s Herr Hitler,” Schwarz said. “He’s back.”
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SHE HEARD THE SHOUTING FIRST.
“Where is she?” From the front hall, Hitler’s voice seemed to fill the entire apartment. He sounded panicked. “Where is my Geli?”
“The Führer needs privacy in his grief,” Schwarz said, and he pushed Gretchen through a door just as four men charged into the parlor. She caught a glimpse of their pale faces—Hitler, Hoffmann, the chauffeur, and her brother—before she stumbled backward into the kitchen and the door slapped shut.
The servants stared at her. Frau Reichert and the butler were seated at the table, and the cook stood over the sink, peeling carrots.
“Herr Hitler has returned,” Gretchen said. Through the door, she heard his frantic cries. Not my beautiful princess, he was sobbing, and someone else, perhaps Hoffmann, murmured soothingly, like a mother to a sick and fretful child.
“He will need assistance.” Frau Reichert rose. “Herr Hess said the telephone disconnected before he finished delivering the message of Fräulein Raubal’s death, so Herr Hitler doesn’t know yet that she’s dead. He’ll be in a terrible state.”
Like drivers unable to look away from a bad auto accident, the other servants drifted after her, leaving the kitchen empty. This might be Gretchen’s only chance. She tucked her pocketbook under her arm and dashed to the telephone to dial the exchange for the Munich Post. But the door opened, and Reinhard peered in. She slammed the earpiece onto its hooked handle, her heart racing.
“What the devil are you doing here?” he asked.
She met his stare. “I could ask you the same thing.”
He stepped into the kitchen and leaned against the wall. He wore his brownshirt uniform. When he shoved his hands in his pockets, a ridge of muscle undulated along his shoulders and down his arms, pushing against the plain khaki-colored fabric. She had to swallow the nausea rising in her throat.
“I left for Nuremberg last night,” Reinhard said, “to inform Uncle Dolf about the traitor in our midst.” He paused. “The blood traitor.”
That could only mean her. The Aryan who had polluted her own blood with a Jew’s, for that was how Hitler would see it.
“I told him his beloved little sunshine has dirtied herself with a Jew.” Reinhard pushed himself off the wall, sliding his hands from his pockets. “He was most displeased.”
She felt numb. “That was unwise. Don’t you realize this could destroy you, too?”
“How? I’ve proven my loyalty by turning you in, and you’ve shown that you’re a race defiler.”
“Yes, you would see it that way, but he won’t. He’ll view the entire family as tainted by their association with me; he’ll secretly despise all of th
e Müllers and—”
“No, he won’t,” Reinhard said scornfully. “Haven’t you ever heard him talk about the Jew doctor who treated his mother for cancer? He’s still grateful to the fellow, more than twenty years later. Uncle Dolf can put his feelings into separate boxes when he needs to.”
Gretchen stared at him. Feelings. Separate boxes. The Günstlingjude, Hitler’s “favored Jew,” the doctor who had cared for his mother. Crumbling letters and an old newspaper photo. Dead cats and a dislocated shoulder and the men’s positions in the front line. The psychiatric diagnosis that only her father and Uncle Dolf had known about. Papa trailing after Hitler into the beer hall, desperately unhappy, and confiding to Gerlich that his old wartime memories were troubling him. Dying at the front line when he should have been in the rear unit. Only one person would have had the authority to order her father to march with the leaders. The same person who had known about the wartime diagnosis and wanted to shut her father up before he spilled the damaging secret. The man who could seal his hatred for Papa into a box and smile at her for years. Hitler himself.
At last, she knew who had killed her father.
She had to escape. Pushing past Reinhard, she threw the door open and raced into the parlor, staggering to a stop when Hitler appeared in the doorway. He moved like an old man, his shoulders rounded, his steps slow and unsteady, his face pale as paper.
“Gretchen,” he said hoarsely.
She couldn’t look at him; she couldn’t speak or they would guess the truth, that she finally knew what had happened on that November morning eight years ago. She must act ordinary; a few whispered words of condolence and she could be out the door.
“I’m so sorry about Geli—” she began, but Hitler shouted, “Do not speak her name! You are not fit to say it!”
Schwarz appeared behind him. “Herr Hitler, you must rest before the police return. We shall explain to them it was a terrible tragedy—that, of course, Fräulein Raubal’s death was an unfortunate accident.”
“Yes, an accident, yes, thank you!” Hitler sobbed, practically falling into Schwarz’s arms. “My beautiful Geli . . .”
Now was her chance. She sidled along the wall, toward the doorway leading to the front hall. Quickly, quietly, so they didn’t notice. Another second and she could run for the door. They wouldn’t dare stop her once she reached the street, she was sure.
A hand clapped over her wrist and jerked her back into the parlor. “Where do you think you’re going?” Reinhard breathed in her ear. “Uncle isn’t done with you. Uncle Dolf,” he said more loudly, “I believe you have my sister to deal with.”
Like a man awaking from a dream, Hitler swiveled out of Schwarz’s awkward embrace. “Yes.” A strange expression Gretchen had never seen before tightened his features. It might have been hurt.
Reinhard released her and walked away, joining the other men at the opposite end of the parlor. She stood alone before Hitler.
“You’re too trusting, Gretchen,” he said. “Everywhere, the Jew disguises himself to seduce pure German maidens. But he cannot transform his true self.”
There was nothing she could say, nothing that he could hear. Shaking, she raised her head so she could look at him—sheet-white and sweating, his eyes bloodshot and focused on the wall instead of her. No, there was one thing she could say to him.
“You’re wrong,” she said.
It was as though a switch had been thrown. He sprang forward. “Someday I shall have gallows upon gallows erected, and the Jews shall hang from them! All save for a few, who I shall keep alive so they may see that their race has been annihilated from the face of the earth.”
His face had flushed. Sweat had turned the strands of hair at his temples from brown to damp black. His eyes, that wild, piercing blue, fastened on her.
She stepped closer to him, so near she could smell his scents of sugar and toothpaste and hair pomade. The other men ranged about the far side of the parlor, Hoffmann, Schwarz, and the chauffeur shuffling their feet, clearly ill at ease, Reinhard perched on a chair’s arm, looking bored. They couldn’t hear her if she spoke quietly.
She looked at Hitler. They were eye to eye.
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SOFTLY, SHE SAID, “I KNOW WHAT YOU DID TO MY father.”
“What are you talking about?” Hitler stared at her. A tic pulled at the left side of his face—such a quick motion she nearly missed it.
“You killed him. He knew about the diagnosis you received at the hospital in Pomerania. He brought it up during the auto ride to the beer hall, cautioning you not to let your nerves become too overwrought again. That was why he was so upset that night. Because you were angry with him, and he couldn’t bear your disapproval.”
Her heart hammered against her ribs, so loudly she could scarcely hear her own hushed voice. Hitler continued staring at her, but he didn’t even open his mouth. He was speechless. She hadn’t known it was possible. She rushed on, the words tumbling out.
“You summoned him to the front line—it must have been you because no one else would have had the authority to move him from the back. I don’t think you planned on shooting him, for no one could have predicted you would walk directly into the waiting police.” She grabbed a quick breath, and Hitler remained silent, watching her. Glaring. “Perhaps you wanted your old war comrade near you again. It doesn’t matter. He marched with you until you reached the Residenzstrasse. The street is so narrow that you couldn’t walk together, so he stepped a little in front of the first line. When the bullets started, you saw your chance to eliminate an inconvenience.”
Hitler’s left cheek rippled from the tic. Above the undulating skin, his eyes were stone, as though the parts of his face belonged to different people.
“He was right in front of you,” Gretchen said. She kept her gaze locked on his. “It was easy to shoot him in the back. The force of the bullet made him fall into your path, taking the shots meant for you. The only man who knew you’d fired at my father was Max Scheubner-Richter, because his arm was linked with yours. But in the next second, he was shot, too. He died instantly, and your secret was safe. Everyone said that your shoulder was dislocated when Scheubner-Richter collapsed, pulling you down with him. But he was on your right side. It was your left shoulder that was injured. My father must have grabbed at you when he fell. Perhaps he realized what you had done, and was attacking you. Maybe he was reaching out for help. He seized your left arm, yanking you down with such force that your shoulder was wrenched from its socket. As usual, you were lucky—no one noticed the discrepancy in your story.”
Still Hitler said nothing. The tic had transformed his face, pulling so hard on the skin that she scarcely recognized him. At his sides, his arms hung tensely, the hands convulsing into fists. Behind him, the other men clustered together at the parlor’s far end, talking quietly to one another, obviously unaware of what was happening.
“It was your misfortune that he was credited with saving your life,” Gretchen said. “You had to honor his memory or your followers would wonder why you refused to acknowledge the martyr who protected you. By the time you were released from prison and the ban on your speaking in public had been lifted, the story of my father’s death had grown into legend. I’m certain you realized you could use the story to your advantage and show that you were someone worth dying for. But how it must have galled you, all these years, to pay homage to the man you had murdered.”
His eyes bulged. He stepped forward, his cheek still rippling. “You foolish girl.”
She turned and ran.
“You foul, loathsome liar!” Hitler shouted. She heard his footsteps thudding as he followed her into the front hall. She was moving so fast, she nearly tumbled over the chair in the corner, where he usually kept his cartridge belt and weapons. Her shin banged into the chair’s seat. Empty now. Wh
ich meant he was still wearing a whip and a gun. He could kill her right here.
“Somebody, stop her!” Hitler screamed. “Get the Müller girl!”
She spun away from the chair and raced across the front hall. Behind her she heard the whine of Hitler’s whip, drawing free from his belt, and the other men’s shouts and pounding footsteps. She flung open the door.
The tiled staircase spiraled below her. She ran down. She heard the men above her, and risked a glance over her shoulder. Reinhard and the chauffeur were following her. Hitler stood at the stairway landing, clutching his whip, sweat-darkened hair hanging over his forehead, shouting something unintelligible.
She whipped her head around. Down, down into the front lobby. She skidded across the polished floor, arms windmilling, ankles wobbling in high heels. She felt something touch her back—Reinhard, she was sure of it, she could tell by his cologne—and she swung her arm back, connecting hard with something soft and fleshy—she heard his startled gasp—and then she was twisting the door handle and shooting across the front steps, heading into the Prinzregentenstrasse, startling a flock of doves that shot toward the skies in a flutter of wings and cooing voices.
She raced down the street, legs pumping, ignoring the surprised pedestrians leaping out of her way, heading toward the river, running until she thought her lungs would explode, and every time she glanced over her shoulder, she saw Reinhard following her, his face grim with purpose.
Gretchen jumped onto a streetcar as it lurched forward. While she walked down the center aisle, past the seated housewives and children and burghers, she watched through the windows as Reinhard ran closer, shouting and waving his arms.
Don’t stop, don’t stop, she silently begged the driver, and her legs shook from relief when the car trundled on, picking up speed, leaving Reinhard behind.
She sank onto a seat. Hitler now knew they were enemies. She might die now. And yet she couldn’t regret what she had said. Hitler deserved to know that she had seen through him.