3
EVEN IN GARISH, UNFLATTERING death, Angela Maria “Geli” Raubal was beautiful. She lay prone on the rug of her bedroom floor, her face turned in profile, her right arm away from her body, soaked in blood. Not far from her outstretched hand was a Walther pistol.
Bauer started with a quick, first-impression look over the corner bedroom.
It was more than twice the size of his own, and unmistakably feminine in its décor.
A room of pastels, from the light green of the walls to the chiffon window treatments.
A large radio-phonograph rested on a linen-covered table with several dozen records in a bin just beneath it.
An antique writing desk had stylish pens lined up neatly, and a bin for stationery labeled A. Raubal.
Bauer poked his head into the dressing room, a spacious area lined with two levels of poles for dresses and other outfits, a good number of shoes for various occasions, and a narrow bureau with a dish of jewelry on top. Next to it in the corner sat a battered leather portmanteau.
Bauer moved to the corner, toward the girl’s dead body. Geli was lying near the queen-sized bed with its canopy of scalloped embroidery, matching sheets, and a half dozen pillows. Next to it, a vanity lined with makeup and hair products, with a pink chair nestled into it, faced a blank wall.
The room was well kept, pristine. Almost alarmingly so.
“She must have been out earlier last night,” Bauer said, noting the blue silk dress Geli was wearing. “That dress is not for staying in.”
Helldorff nodded as he scribbled a note on a small pad.
Bauer squatted down, gently moving a strand of curly locks from the victim’s face. “See the bruising? Discoloration by the eye? Her nose is broken.”
“Which could have happened from the fall.”
“Maybe,” Bauer conceded. “Not likely. Bruising doesn’t happen after death.”
“She could have lived for a while after the fall to the rug. Look there—she didn’t die from a head shot. She was shot… hard to tell, somewhere in the torso. So it could have taken a long time for her to die.”
“Maybe.” Bauer grimaced. “But once she hits that rug, falling face-first, she’s going to bleed out fast. Simple law of gravity. I don’t think she lives long enough for that much bruising to form. But the RM can tell us for sure.” The rechtsmediziner, he meant—the medical examiner.
“You think this will require a postmortem?”
Bauer didn’t answer. Lost in thought, he walked gingerly around the room, keeping a wide berth from the body.
He moved over by the bed, examined the walls and the floor, the dresser and vanity, leaning over and squatting down, peering and poking and checking matters from different angles.
He spent about ten minutes doing this before he turned to Helldorff.
“We’ll need the tatortfotograf,” he said.
Helldorff looked up from his notepad. “You’re already sure of that? We only take photographs if we suspect foul play.”
“Good for you, Hofmeister.” Bauer gestured toward the bed. “Blood spatter on the floor, beyond the rug. See that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hedwig, if you call me sir again, there will be two dead bodies. Call me Bauer.”
“Okay, Bauer. I see the blood spatter on the floor.”
“A bit on each side of the rug, right?” Bauer stood less than a foot from the bed, facing Helldorff, pointing down to each side of himself.
“Yes, okay, I see that.”
“So she was probably standing right here when the bullet enters. Blood spatter to the front and each side. The front, that’s the rug. She’s lying on top of it now. But to her sides would be… each side of the floor.”
“Right.”
“And look there,” said Bauer, pointing at the wall near the vanity.
“Blood spatter on the wall, too,” said Helldorff. “A few places.”
“Including here.” Bauer gestured to an area of the wall that looked cleaner than the rest of the light green paint. It was just above and centered over the vanity; the clean area was bordered by a boxy outline the size of a large picture frame. And near the top was a single nail hole.
“What is that?” asked Helldorff.
“What do you think it is?”
“Well, something was hung there. Something rectangular. Hung by a nail.”
“Probably a mirror,” said Bauer. “Right above the vanity? This is where she put on makeup, brushed her hair.” Bauer waved to the items on the vanity—hairbrush, makeup, and hair products of various kinds. “You do that stuff in front of a mirror.”
“Okay, so a mirror was there.”
“But now it’s not. So where did the mirror go?”
Helldorff shrugged. “Who can say?”
“Maybe it got knocked over.” Bauer looked him in the eye. “Maybe it got knocked off the wall during a struggle. It fell off its perch.”
“Maybe she knocked into the vanity after she shot herself, and the mirror fell off the wall.”
“After she shot herself?” Bauer pointed to the blood spatter in the middle of the rectangle. “Then the blood would have spattered onto the mirror, not the wall behind it. That mirror was not on the wall when she was shot.”
“Okay, that’s right, that’s right.” Helldorff chewed on his lip. “But we don’t know when that mirror came down. It could have been down for a long time. Days, weeks. It could have nothing to do with what happened last night.”
“Sure, maybe.” Bauer gave him a wry smile.
“Look here.” Helldorff gestured to the top of the vanity. “The vanity is spotless. If a mirror falls, it crashes down on top. It breaks into pieces. We would see shards of glass everywhere.”
Bauer nodded. “Unless…”
Helldorff was ready to finish that sentence. “Unless it was cleaned up afterward. But how do we prove that?”
“Oh, Heidelberg.” Bauer sighed. “We are inspectors, are we not? So let us inspect. Come closer. Careful of her body.”
Helldorff got as close as he could, approaching the vanity from the opposite side to Bauer.
Bauer placed a hand delicately on the pink chair tucked into the vanity. He rolled it backward, exposing to Helldorff’s view for the first time the remainder of the interior side of the chair, including the seat.
A few shards of glass sparkled from the overhead light.
“They cleaned up the vanity,” said Helldorff. “But they missed the glass that caught in the fabric of the chair. It would be easy to miss.”
“And this wasn’t days or weeks ago. I doubt Fr?ulein Raubal would have tolerated sitting on broken glass while she did her hair and makeup.”
“Agreed.” Helldorff nodded. “It just happened. The mirror just recently came off the wall. And it was just recently cleaned up.”
Bauer put his hands on his hips. “And why clean it up, Hofbrau?”
Helldorff stepped back from the vanity, shook his head. “To hide any sign of struggle before the gun went off. But,” he added, raising a finger, “playing the other side of this…”
“Good, yes—play the other side. You should always do that.”
“If the victim was in a state of depression, on the verge of suicide, she could have knocked the mirror off the wall.”
“Okay, but then why clean it up? Why remove all the glass entirely from the room? Why do any of that, if there’s nothing to conceal?”
Bauer walked around the corpse and reached Helldorff. He put a hand on his shoulder. “And if you were going to kill yourself,” he added, “why shoot yourself in the chest? Why choose a slow, painful death over a quick, easy head shot?”
Helldorff nodded. “So you want to bring in the full forensic team?”
“The full team,” said Bauer. “If this was a suicide, then I’m the king of Spain.”