27
A BLOCK AWAY FROM the Wirtshaus tavern, young officer Peter Helldorff sat in the front seat of a beige Stutz M coupe, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. He startled when the rear door opened and Bauer jumped in.
“Nice car. This is yours?”
Helldorff turned to face him. “Belongs to my parents. Where’s Maurice? I thought he was coming with you.”
“He is. He will.” Bauer pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his dirty face, tried to clean off his overcoat, too.
“Did you get into a fight with him, Bauer?”
“We had a spirited conversation.” Bauer looked out through the rear window.
“But you’re sure he’s coming?”
“Oh, he’ll be here.” Bauer regarded Helldorff a moment. He looked all of eighteen years old, with his straw hair and skinny neck. He was just a pup. Not for the first time, Bauer wondered if he should allow the kriminalassistent to be a part of this.
The rear door on the car’s opposite side opened, and Emil Maurice angled himself into the back seat next to Bauer. His lower jaw was already beginning to color into a bruised purple. His lip was split and swollen. “Who’s the driver?” he snarled.
“My associate.”
“No.” Maurice shook his head. “I will talk only to you. I do not agree to this.”
Bauer slapped his knee. “Well, damn, Emil, it’s too bad you don’t get to set the terms.”
“If anybody knows that I talked to you, I am as good as dead.”
“This is all confidential. We don’t reveal sources. Nobody will know.”
Maurice didn’t seem convinced. He looked out the side window, gently touching his wounded jaw.
“Did Adolf Hitler kill Geli Raubal?” Bauer asked. He didn’t want to waste any time. He didn’t know how long he could keep this man in the car.
Maurice quietly shook his head. “What do you think?”
“I think he did. But I can’t prove it.”
“Neither can I.” Maurice turned to him. “I wasn’t there.”
“Who was?”
“I don’t know, Inspector. How would I?”
“No, I mean—who would you expect to be there?”
Maurice thought about it, then shrugged. “That time of night? Only the servants. Anni and Georg. But they won’t talk to you. They know what would happen to them if they did.”
That was true enough. “Then tell me what you heard, Emil. There’s no chance the circle around Hitler hasn’t gossiped about this.”
Maurice blew out a nervous sigh. “I heard he called Rudolf Hess. Which sounds right. Hess would be his first call. And Hess’s first call would have been to Martin Bormann. My guess is Julius Schreck, who replaced me as chauffeur, would have been there but he might have stayed outside in the car.”
“So if someone cleaned up the place before calling the police, they would be part of it.”
“Hess and Bormann? Yes.” Maurice glanced up at Bauer, wincing as he did so. “But they will never tell you a thing. None of them will. Not Himmler, not Goebbels, not Goring, either.”
“Tell me what else you heard. Tell me about the cover-up.”
He threw up his hands. “They—there was a suitcase they unpacked. The clothes were put back in her drawers.”
Bauer remembered seeing the empty leather portmanteau.
“And the vanity by her bed. I heard that a lot of things were knocked over. A mirror came off the wall. There was a bunch of broken glass. All the trash was put into a bag and given to Julius to drive away.”
“Where did Julius dump it?”
Maurice shrugged. He didn’t know.
“Why the suitcase? Is it true she was going to Vienna?”
“She wanted to.” Maurice’s head dropped. He rested his elbows on his thighs. “The man she…” With that, he began to cry. This rough, burly man burst into tears and let out a high-pitched sob.
Bauer glanced at Helldorff, who returned an I-have-no-idea expression.
“Look, I know this is hard, Emil,” said Bauer. “I know you cared about her a—”
“I loved her!” he wailed. “But he wouldn’t let us marry. We waited, like he asked. But he would never let us. So eventually I told her she should…” He waved a hand.
“You told her she should move on.”
“Right.” Maurice drew a deep breath, wiped his face with the sleeve of his coat. “She met a man in Vienna. She wanted to marry him.”
“What’s this man’s name?” Bauer asked.
“I don’t know. He was an art teacher. I think he lived near Linz. That’s all I know.”
Bauer sat back in his seat. This was helpful information, but Maurice would never publicly testify to it. “Can anyone confirm any of this?” he asked.
“Nobody who would talk to you.”
“Then you haven’t given me anything I can use. Sorry, Emil. Our deal is off.”
“What?” Maurice shifted in his seat. “The deal was I tell you what I know. That’s what I know. It’s not my fault if none of the Führer’s closest advisers will talk to you.”
Bauer considered that for a moment. Maurice was right. The cover-up of Geli’s murder would be among close-knit loyalists. Even if some of the details leaked out via gossip to people on the fringe of the circle like Emil Maurice, nobody would ever admit to the crime.
Maybe he needed to back up one step. Start with a more fundamental fact.
“Well, perhaps the cover-up is sealed tight,” he said.
“But what about Hitler’s relationship with Geli?
That lasted for years, yes? There must be people outside Hitler’s inner circle who would know about that.
Geli must have talked to people about it.
She must have talked to you about it, Emil. Yes?”
Maurice steeled himself, eyes squeezed shut, gripping his greasy hair as if waging a battle against the memories.
“Yes,” he whispered. “But you wouldn’t believe the things she told me.”