Stein popped one into his mouth, crushed it between his teeth, tasted the sweet alcohol filling and reached for another before he swallowed.
‘Where do you buy them?’
‘Max has his business partner bring them over from Munich,’ said Mrs Breslow.
‘He didn’t tell me about his business partner in Munich,’ said Stein. He smiled at her. ‘But the chocolate-coated cherries are dandy, Mrs Breslow. Really dandy.’ He lifted the lid of the box high above his head so that he had to twist his neck to read the label. ‘Yes, sir.’ He helped himself to another as he replaced the box on the table.
‘You heard the story about them finding Hitler in São Paulo?’ said Stein suddenly, his mouth filled with chocolate and cherry. Everyone turned to look at him. ‘They ask him to come back and run Germany. No, he says, he won’t go. So they keep trying to persuade him. They bring in the public relations guys, and the ad agency men. They offer him money and anything he wants.’ Stein looked round to see if everyone was listening. They all were. ‘Hitler says he likes it in São Paulo. He’s got his mortgage almost paid, and a grown-up son and a married daughter by a second wife. He don’t want any part of going back to Germany, But finally he gives in. But before he goes back to be dictator of Germany again he insists on one thing… right!’ Stein waved a finger in the air in imitation of Hitler, and hoarsely yelled, ‘No more Mr Nice Guy!’ Stein laughed to show it was the punch line of the joke.
Stuart had heard the joke before but still he laughed. Somehow Stein had managed to imbue this thin story with all the pathos of his Jewish soul. When he told this joke it was outrageous and funny. He laughed loudly and Stuart joined in. But no one else laughed.
‘I got a million stories like that,’ said Stein.
The party broke up about eleven o’clock: the psychiatrist had an early patient and his wife had booked the tennis coach for 7.30 a.m. ‘Everybody wants him,’ she explained.
Boyd Stuart was getting up to go when he felt the heavy hand of Charles Stein on his shoulder. ‘Stay for another cup of coffee and a glass of something more,’ said Breslow, ‘We have some business to talk over, my dear,’ he explained to his wife.
‘I shall only yawn or say something silly,’ she told Stuart. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go right to bed.’
‘Of course, Mrs Breslow. Thank you for a wonderful meal, and a truly delightful evening.’
‘Switch the dishwasher on before you come to bed, darling,’ she told her husband.
Max Breslow gave his wife a perfunctory kiss before opening a door in the antique sideboard to get his best brandy. ‘Charles has something he wants to show us,’ he said over his shoulder. Stein went to the coat closet by the front door and came back straining under the weight of a rectangular carton. He undid the string with elaborate precision and drew out of the cardboard container a very old metal box. Such fire-resistant filing boxes had been used by the German army for documentation carried by regimental staffs or at battle-group level. This one was worn shiny at the corners but in the ancient green paintwork a six-figure letter-and-number combination and instructions about closing the fireproof lid could just be discerned. The traces of large letters which might have been BBO remained on the outside and there was a large shiny patch which looked as if something had been deliberately obliterated.
‘Can you read German, Mr Stuart?’
‘Well enough,’ said Stuart. Breslow nodded and exchanged a significant glance with Stein. The British would not be so foolish as to send a man who could not read German fluently.
‘Have you ever heard of Dr Morell?’ said Stein. ‘Dr Theodor Morell?’
‘Hitler’s personal physician?’
‘Good,’ said Stein, as a school teacher might approve the unusually bright answer of a backward pupil. He began removing from the metal box cardboard covers containing varying numbers of documents. ‘Not only Hitler’s personal physician but a man upon whom Hitler totally depended, who went everywhere with him and had even more influence on him than Martin Bormann. Hitler told everyone that Dr Morell had saved his life over and over again.’ Stein tapped the pile of papers. ‘These are Dr Morell’s medical files on his patient Adolf Hitler!’
Boyd Stuart picked up the top folder. The papers smelt musty and stale. They were not in chronological order. This file was dated January 1943. At the top corner someone, perhaps Morell himself, had scribbled in pencil, ‘The great disaster at Stalingrad ’. There was a log of medical prescriptions and injections, beginning with anti-depressants and sedatives. There was a note about the first use of prosta-crinum-manufactured from seminal vesicles and prostate glands-and an extra page, added at some later date, said that from this time onward the patient was given this drug every other day until the end of his life. There was a carbon copy of a long letter from Dr Morell to Hitler’s tailor, explaining that the Führer could not any longer endure bright light. Notes and a drawing, fixed to the page by means of a paperclip which had rusted and eaten deep into the paper, showed how the peaks of the Führer’s caps must henceforward be made larger.
Stein watched Boyd Stuart’s face as he flipped quickly through the medical file. ‘You find it interesting, eh?’ Nervously Stein reached for another of the chocolate-coated, brandied cherries and popped it into his mouth.
‘Where does it all start?’ said Stuart, turning the heavy dossiers over on the low coffee table at which the three men sat.
‘Here,’ said Max Breslow. He moved coffee cups and an ashtray to make more space. ‘But Hitler only comes in at the end of it.’
The file he had selected was a slimmer one, and quite different from the Chancellery file covers. Once red in colour, it was now faded to pink. It bore Dr Morell’s name and fashionable Berlin address on the cover in elegant script printing. The contents too were different: heavyweight stationery with engraved headings. Even the file cards were printed with Morell’s name and Kurfürstendamm address, although some of the patients were indicated only by initials. It was a precaution particularly important in a medical practice that specialized in treating venereal diseases and catered to some of Germany ’s most wealthy and famous personalities. Here were Berlin ’s nobility and industrialists and stars of the Berlin stage, film and theatre.
‘Hoffmann,’ said Stein pointing to a sheet. ‘Hitler’s personal photographer and a close friend.’ He picked up an ancient manilla envelope and took from it a desk diary. It had been used as a physician’s appointments book. It was dated 1936. ‘This is how Dr Morell first met Hitler,’ Stein said. ‘Hoffmann was sick-H.H. are Hoffmann’s initials, M.F. is Mein Führer-look at that!’
Morell had written, ‘Met M.F. at Hoffmann’s home, Munich.’ Then a page or so later, ‘M.F. provided his personal aircraft for professional visit to H.H. in his Munich home.’
Again Stein turned a page of the diary. ‘Now we come to Morell’s first professional opinion of Hitler,’ he said. He turned the diary so that Stuart could read it more easily. ‘Saw M.F. First impression of him shocking. Complains of headaches, stomach pains. Also ringing in the ears. Neurotic.’
Max Breslow went into the kitchen to make more coffee. Boyd Stuart turned the sheets to find Dr Morell’s first physical examination of Hitler. The report was dated January 3, 1937, and the medical took place at the Berghof, Hitler’s mountain retreat near Berchtesgaden. The doctor noted that, according to the patient, he had not submitted himself to a physical examination since he left the army in 1918. The record showed that Hitler-now referred to as ‘patient A’-weighed 67.04 kilos and stood 175.26 cm tall. Blood group A. The examination showed no abnormalities: pupillary reflexes were normal, good coordination, normal sensitivity to heat and cold and to sharp and blunt touch. His hair was dark and thinning slightly, and his tonsils had been removed when he was a child. A scarred leg was the result of shrapnel during the First World War. A badly mended fracture of the left shoulder blade-resulting from a fall when the police fired upon the Nazis during the 1923 putsch-had left patient A with a stiff shoulder so that he could neither rotate nor abduct his upper arm.