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“God be with us all,” he added.

5

Munich Police Department

Directorate 22, the Bogenhausen District

THREE HOURS LATER, INSPECTOR Thomas Bauer closed the door to one of the interview rooms, where Anni and Georg Winter sat. Bauer had spent his time thus far examining the flat at Prinzregentenplatz 16 and directing the forensic team. He hadn’t wanted to speak with the Winters—Hitler’s only live-in servants—at the flat. He wanted them away from the aura of their boss, to sense the weight of the police presence, which might compel them to speak truthfully.

Anni, the housekeeper, was a pleasant-looking woman with cropped brown hair and a youthful face. At twenty-six, she was only three years older than Geli. She gathered a light shawl over her shoulders and kept her eyes down.

Her husband, Georg, was several years older, rather forgettable in appearance, thick in the shoulders with rough hands that spoke of manual labor, a grim-looking man with a trimmed beard and flyaway hair. He, too, kept his eyes low.

“Thank you for your patience,” Bauer said. “I thought it would be best if we spoke here.” He looked at each of them, though neither made eye contact. “Let’s start with last night. Herr Hitler and Fräulein Raubal were out, yes?”

Georg cleared his throat with a grimace. “Herr Hitler and Fräulein Raubal left the house around dinnertime. We did not serve them dinner, so we assume they ate at a restaurant. We did not hear them return. Herr Hitler was scheduled to leave last night for a campaign rally today. We assume he left, but we heard nothing. We were sleeping. Our work leaves us very tired at the end of the day.”

Well, Bauer thought, that was a well-prepared speech. The servant snuck over a glance, gauging a reaction, but Bauer only continued with his questioning. “Your quarters are on the same side as Geli’s bedroom, yes?”

“Yes, Inspector.”

“You heard no gunshot?”

He shook his head. “No, Inspector.”

“There was a row last night, I understand. An argument. Shouting.”

Bauer didn’t have that information. It was a prompt, a bluff.

“If they did, Inspector, we did not hear it.”

The more he let questions glide off him, the more Bauer’s suspicions hardened. He’s been well coached.

“Let’s come back to that,” Bauer said. “Who discovered Fräulein Raubal this morning?”

“I did,” said Georg. “Anni called out for her several times, but the bedroom doors were locked, you see.”

“The doors were locked?”

“Yes. At ten o’clock, I forced the double door open with a screwdriver.”

“It was you who forced the doors open,” Bauer clarified.

“Yes. I stepped into the room and found the young lady lying on the floor, dead. She’d shot herself. I can’t give any reason why she should have. But she did.”

Yet another expert on manner of death, Bauer thought.

“And what did you do?”

“I… well, Anni called Herr Hess.”

Anni made eye contact with Bauer and nodded. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying.

“Why was that your first call, Frau Winter?”

She cleared her throat and glanced at her husband, who nodded back. Permission to speak, apparently.

“I did not know how to reach the Führer. Herr Hess always knows how to reach him when he is traveling.”