by Thynne, Jane
‘Perfume! The Führer bought her a whole range of fragrances and she experiments, choosing a different scent for each person. She blends violet and lilac and jasmine and what have you. Or she chooses a perfume you’ve never heard of. You’ll never guess what she chose for me . . . Schiaparelli’s Shocking.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘I can’t imagine what that’s supposed to imply.’
‘She sounds happier, then.’ A few years previously, Eva Braun had attempted suicide.
‘Oh, one never gets the impression little Eva’s really happy. When we were there she was moaning because Hitler won’t let her ride horses. He says it’s unladylike. And she was nagging him endlessly about the way he dresses. She says, “Mussolini looks so dashing in his uniform, and you sit beside him in your little cap looking like a postman!” The senior men can hardly help themselves laughing.’
‘Who else was there?’
‘Let me think. The Himmlers, of course. I can’t really get on with her. Lina Heydrich calls Marga Himmler “Size Fifty”.’
‘Size Fifty?’
‘That’s the size of her undergarments. She does love her cream cakes.’ Emmy suppressed a giggle.
‘And did you see the Mitfords?’ Clara asked. ‘I met Unity and her sister the other day. They mentioned they were just back from the Berghof.’
‘Unity Mitford!’ Emmy Goering grimaced. ‘That girl with her staring saucer eyes and the Party badge on her heaving bosom. The men call her Mitfahrt – the travelling companion – because she’s always there. She absolutely dogged Hitler’s heels at the rally. She spends every lunchtime at the Osteria Bavaria in the hope of catching Hitler’s eye. She’s dreadfully jealous of Eva Braun, of course, terrified that Eva comes first in Hitler’s affections. I’ve told her, it’s a bit late to worry about that. Eva has her own room in the Reich Chancellery, doesn’t she?’
‘So Unity’s not popular then?’
‘No one can understand why the Führer likes her. Apparently he loves the fact that her middle name is Valkyrie. Eva says, well, she looks the part, especially the legs. Himmler hates her too. He thinks she might be a spy. He has a tame SS man follow her around, posing as a photographer. But I said to Heinrich, spies don’t go around dressed in a home-made storm trooper’s uniform, do they? They’d wear something a little more subtle. Mind you, this SS chap did catch Unity with a gun. Though when he asked her what it was for she said she was practising killing Jews.’
‘Do you think the Führer will marry Fräulein Braun?’
‘Ach, who has ever been able to fathom the Führer’s taste in women?’ Emmy drew even closer. ‘Hermann says the only way he will marry Fräulein Braun is if someone puts a gun to his head. And besides, he gets twelve thousand love letters a year so he’s not short of choice. Though they say . . .’ she lowered her voice, ‘he never recovered from the death of Geli. His niece, you know, who shot herself in his apartment. Hermann says Hitler used to treat Geli like a gardener with an exotic bloom.’
‘So why did she shoot herself?’
‘If we knew that, my dear . . .’ Emmy Goering gave her a significant look, but did not continue.
‘What about Diana Mitford? Does the Führer like her too?’
‘I think he’s really fond of her. He took a whole day off when she married in the Goebbels’ place, and for him, that’s quite unheard of. And he agreed to ban the von Ribbentrops from the wedding because Diana hates them. Annelies was furious when she heard because they’d already invited themselves, but frankly, Diana’s right. The Führer should never have made von Ribbentrop ambassador. He told Hermann that von Ribbentrop would be good because he knew absolutely everyone in England but Hermann said the problem was, everyone in England knew von Ribbentrop.’ For a moment, her husband’s wit caused a fond chuckle. ‘Still, it’s no good trying to fathom what you English think. You keep us all guessing.’
There was a knock on the door and the butler showed in the immaculate figure of the photographer Heinrich Hoffmann. As he greeted them, his gaze flickered over Clara curiously. He had seen her with the Goebbels only recently, and now she was here in the Goerings’ home. He was wondering what brought her here, Clara recognized, and attempting to assess her social standing.
It transpired that Hoffmann had been sent to photograph the presents. While he busied himself with unfolding the legs of his tripod and positioning lights, Emmy bore off the golden antlers imperiously.
‘I’m hiding these. They might lead to awkward questions. Hitler censors anything he doesn’t like, so why shouldn’t we?’
Hoffmann laughed. ‘Of course, Frau Reich Minister.’ Beneath his air of unctuous jollity was a steeliness common to professional photographers who are obliged to perform their job in a social setting.
‘What does Hitler censor?’ asked Clara casually as they walked to the other side of the room.
‘Oh, everything, darling! He won’t have any photograph of himself in spectacles, for a start. It suggests he might have the same human frailties as the rest of us. He will never bathe in public, in case anyone photographs him in a costume, and he can’t ever be seen in Lederhosen. I don’t know why because Hermann finds them perfectly manly.’
She regarded Hoffmann with a beady eye as he snapped and repositioned, and snapped again.
‘I’m surprised Hoffmann still needs the work, he’s so rich now,’ she murmured. ‘I mean, his pictures have sold round the world, haven’t they? Stamps, postcards, a book every week, it seems like. He keeps all the royalties. But then the Führer trusts Hoffmann with his life.’
‘Why is that?’
‘They go back a long way. They’ve been together since the beginning, since the Munich Putsch. When Hitler went to prison in 1924 Hoffmann smuggled his camera in and took some lovely shots. Then he gave Hitler his Munich studio in Schellingstrasse for the first Party headquarters and now Hoffmann has offices all round Europe. They call him Hitler’s shadow. I say the Führer has been his golden goose.’
She called across the room, ‘Where will these pictures be appearing, Heini?’
‘We shall circulate them to the news magazines,’ said Hoffmann. ‘The whole country shares the excitement about your news, Frau Goering.’
‘Hmm. Let’s wait and see,’ said Emmy, then more softly, ‘I’ll be surprised. Goebbels can’t stand any good news about us getting out. When we had a ball last January at the Opera House, we had the entire place redecorated in white satin and it looked stunning, but Goebbels refused to allow a single picture to be published. Not one.’
The rivalry between the Goerings and the Goebbels was longstanding. Both couples vied for closeness to the Führer. The main beneficiaries were the Nazi élite, who were invited to spectacular parties, each man striving to outdo the other in lavish and inventive entertaining. Goebbels’ Olympic party for two thousand guests at Peacock Island last year was a failed attempt to outdo Goering’s evening, as everyone present agreed.
The Reich Minister’s wife shrugged. ‘But then I suppose Joseph is a past master at censoring things. Remember all the antics with the film actresses who got drunk at his party last year? No one got to hear about that, did they? He’s absurdly prickly about public opinion. Quite the opposite of my husband. Hermann really has a sense of humour. Do you know he pays people three marks if they’ll tell him a joke about himself and he writes down the best ones in his leather book? He has hundreds!’
Emmy lowered her voice further.
‘While we’re on the subject of Goebbels. His wife . . .’
Clara had long realized that Emmy Goering, like Magda, needed to keep abreast of the gossip, the squabbles and the divisions that existed among the Nazi élite. Understanding the private tensions that lay beneath the surfaces of men’s lives was the first rule of politics. Clara knew that she was a valuable conduit between the two women. They were rivals, after all, for the status of First Lady of the Reich, and each was avid for details of the other’s progress.
‘. . . you’ve just se
en her. How is she?’
So Emmy knew that Clara had attended the Goebbels’ reception. She couldn’t think how.
‘She seems well.’
‘That poor woman. She is thoroughly fed up, apparently. She’s compiled a list of thirty women who’ve been intimate with her husband. He’s always been one for actresses. As far as he’s concerned the sluttier the better. But now it’s just that little Slav Lída Baarová. You’ll have heard all about it, I suppose? I imagine it’s the talk of the studios.’
‘I’ve heard the odd thing.’
It was never good to give an impression of being loose-tongued.
Emmy Goering sighed, shifted her pregnant belly and rubbed the small of her back.
‘He’s out every evening, I hear. He can’t bear to go home to Schwanenwerder and spend the evening sitting with Magda. He’s become so secretive about his movements, he even keeps his officials at the Ministry in the dark. He doesn’t want her to find out where he’s going. They say Magda tunes into Radio Moscow to hear what he’s up to.’
Clara laughed, as she was meant to.
‘Joseph’s getting very sensitive about it. Yet he’s the one who just proposed a ten-year sentence for adultery if the wronged husband demands it. Honestly! It’s the women I feel sorry for.’
She gave Clara a beady look, whose subtext Clara tried to ignore.
‘So? What about your love life, then?’ Emmy was always voracious about the details of other people’s private lives. ‘Any handsome Obersturmbannführers on the horizon? Any romances I should know about?’
Modestly Clara averted her eyes.
‘Well . . .’
‘There is? Go on! Tell me at once!’
‘It’s not a romance, but I did meet an interesting man. A Luftwaffe Oberst.’
‘Called?’
‘Arno Strauss. A friend of Ernst Udet.’
With almost comical speed the excitement on Frau Goering’s face turned to dismay.
‘Not the one with . . .?’ She performed a little mime, as though drawing a zip up one side of her face. ‘The scar?’
Clara nodded.
‘I don’t think Strauss likes women. I’ve never seen him with one.’ She frowned dubiously. ‘Not that I’m suggesting he’s . . . you know . . . I just thought he was a man’s man. But I daresay he’s perfectly pleasant underneath . . . well, underneath the skin. In fact, I’ve had a thought.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Clara, hoping it was the right thought.
Emmy Goering hesitated a moment. ‘We’re having a reception at Carinhall next weekend. For the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. I think Oberst Strauss will be there. Would you like to come?’
Clara remembered Archie Dyson’s warning. The instruction, almost an order, he had issued just a few evenings ago. The insistence that she avoid danger at all costs. Lie low. Don’t do anything. Then Ralph Sommers’ request. I want you to cultivate him.
She smiled. ‘I would love to come, thank you.’
Chapter Eighteen
The cleaver glinted in the morning sun as the man, a bloodstained apron straining over his enormous belly, held it aloft. Then he brought it down with a thwack on the flesh below, causing the blood to gush and spurt from the glutinous flesh, then slide into a glassy pool. Ilse felt herself gag.
Saturday generally offered a more relaxed regime at the Bride School. The lessons were replaced by simple household tasks and there was more time allotted to cultural pursuits. That morning, after her chores, which were laying the fire and bringing in the baskets of chopped wood, Ilse had gone to the kitchen to hear the talk about how to get the most out of a cheap cut of meat. The butcher showed them how to slice through a chunk of pork, swiftly and decisively, splitting it up into chops and smaller scraps for mincing. The blood leaching from the pale flesh coagulated into a dense crimson puddle on the table and the metallic smell made Ilse want to vomit. She had never been so sensitive before Anna was killed.
Afterwards, the pork was borne off by the brides on cooking rota to make lunch and the others took their cups of coffee in the garden. Some of them played with the Bride School’s newly arrived puppies, two squirming German Shepherds with baby teeth and claws, jumping at shadows on the dappled lawn. Everyone wanted German Shepherds now, mainly because the Führer liked them, yet the arrival of Prinz and Wolf at the Reich Bride School was more likely an unspoken response to the recent crime. A couple of lively guard dogs would be just the thing to help the girls feel safer.
Anyhow, Ilse recalled, it was in all respects a perfectly ordinary, normal weekend morning, which made everything that followed all the more unpleasant.
They were different men, this time, standing in the hall wanting to speak to her. The fact that they were wearing leather coats and full SS uniform meant it didn’t take Ilse long to work out that they were not the ordinary criminal police, the Kripo. These men were Gestapo. The secret police. The thought of it made her feel sick inside. Ilse had never even met a policeman before and now she had been interviewed by four of them in a couple of days.
Once they had been ushered into the supervisor’s office, the Gestapo men introduced themselves and told her that they had taken over the investigation from the Kripo, so there were a few questions they needed to go over. Kriminal Inspektor Wiedemann was a short, bald man, wearing glasses with a thin steel frame, behind which his lashless eyes had a reptilian appearance, like an iguana Ilse had seen at the zoo. Kriminal Kommissar Decker was older and tired, a chain smoker with a face grey as a wrecked battleship, craggy with frowns and angles. He had a moustache which sloped down his mournful face as if trying to leave it. There was no coffee and biscuits this time, no gentle joshing, no comments about Otto being lucky to have a pretty bride.
Wiedemann took the chair behind the supervisor’s desk as though he owned it and steepled his tight little hands into a sharp point. They had some more questions in connection with Anna’s killing, he said. Perhaps Ilse could help them. This time the tone was far less soothing. What did she know, Wiedemann enquired. Why was she covering up? What could she tell them? Anna had smuggled in her own lighter, despite the anti-smoking rule. What other secrets did Anna have?
Ilse gave a panicky glance around her. Through the window she could see a bride in the yard outside, beating a carpet as though she wanted to beat the truth out of it, the dust flying off into the air. Ilse felt abandoned. There was no supervisor around to help her, not even Fräulein Wolff. The staff here seemed determined to leave her to her fate.
Stutteringly, she said, ‘Anna didn’t have secrets.’
‘Come now. Everyone has secrets, don’t they?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ilse muttered dumbly, twisting her apron between her hands into a damp little rope.
‘Did she confide in you?’
‘I can’t remember.’
Wiedemann picked up a photograph of Gertrud Scholtz-Klink which the supervisor especially treasured, and stared at it with distaste before replacing it. ‘Then perhaps we need to think of a way to jog your memory,’ he said, levelly.
Decker leaned towards her, as if offering some friendly advice.
‘You must try harder, my dear.’
Ilse steadied her trembling hands against the back of a chair. Through her tears, the sight of Wiedemann licking his dry lips triggered a thought. Anna’s lipstick. Anna had found the rule against make-up at the Bride School especially hard. The other girls made do with biting their lips, or applying a slick of Vaseline. One girl had resourcefully turned to the red food colouring that was kept expressly for creating the swastika designs on wedding cakes. But Anna had smuggled in her own lipstick and used it daily.
‘I know one secret she had, sir! She kept her lipstick. Guerlain. She used make-up even though it’s forbidden here.’
Wiedemann’s face purpled, as though she had deliberately insulted him.
‘Are you trying to play me, girl? Lipstick? Don’t give me this nonsense.’
Decker intercede
d.
‘Fräulein Henning, perhaps I could explain more clearly. All we want to know is what Anna told you about her life. You were friends, you say. You must have talked. All women talk, don’t they? I know my wife never stops.’ He cast a weary glance at Wiedemann. ‘Anyone tries to bug my telephone, they’ll regret it.’
Then he turned back to Ilse. ‘Just tell us everything she told you about her life.’
Haltingly Ilse stumbled through Anna’s story, or what she knew of it. Anna was a dancer. She had been performing in a revue at the Wintergarten – the kind of revue where you didn’t keep many clothes on. She met Johann afterwards in a bar. It was love at first sight. (Ilse had always fervently believed in love at first sight, although Otto said it was rubbish, and she had been pleased when Anna revealed it was a genuine phenomenon.) Then Johann had been sent to Spain. Anna wrote to him at least once a week and he wrote even more than she did. Anna was always getting letters from Johann.
‘They were going to have a Christmas wedding. Johann’s family were organizing it. The Peters were a little starchy, she said, and rather old-fashioned, but Anna was so charming, she could make anyone love her. We had already started making her wedding dress. It was going to be embroidered with scarlet swastikas on the hem and—’
‘These letters,’ interrupted Wiedemann, ‘the ones from the fiancé. She kept them in a letter case, I hear. The one you gave the journalist. What other secrets did you say she had?’
‘I never said she kept secrets! All she had was love letters, I suppose.’
Decker stroked his moustache soothingly, like a pet. ‘This is not helping us, Ilse. I’m sorry that you don’t feel you can help us.’
There was an impasse. Kriminal Inspektor Wiedemann was accustomed to interrogating cowering men in badly disinfected cells at Gestapo headquarters. He was used to getting what he wanted, and he had a variety of techniques for the purpose. It may be that he would need to select something else from his toolbox, because right now he was getting nowhere with the idiot woman before him, who almost certainly knew something crucial without realizing that it was important. And orders had come down from the highest level to get this matter sorted out. That annoyed Wiedemann. He was an egalitarian in matters of crime. He suspected the top brass were outraged that a murder should despoil their little idyll. He had taken a good look at Schwanenwerder’s fancy cars and gated villas when he arrived, and he guessed the residents regarded the place as their own private island, immune from the murders and violence that permeated the rest of Berlin. Well frankly, they needed to open their eyes.
