The Vengeance of Rome

I saw why so many favoured Strasser over Hitler as leader of the Nazi Party. Strasser’s hearty manner made everyone around him feel better. Röhm had told me how Strasser was the most popular man in the Reichstag these days. Even the socialists respected him. Once he heard my story, he would be bound to help me. Hastily I tried to force a passage through the tightly packed chairs towards him. However, fate intervened. We were not to meet. Even as I called his name and began to cross the lounge, pushing between a press of people taking tea, he turned away, clapping the seated man on the shoulder. ‘Herr Strasser,’ I shouted. But there were too many others creating a babble in the place. He turned, calling out to a top-hatted old gentleman to wait; he was on his way. And then he was gone.

‘He’s avoiding you, too, eh?’ said the strange creature to whom Strasser had been talking. I could guess easily who it was. I had heard of him from Röhm and some of the other SA.

I was brief with him. Clearly Strasser regarded him as a nuisance. Very few visitors to the Königshof wore a rough homespun monk’s habit or, indeed, had quite such filthy fingernails. Obviously the famous Father Bernhard Stempfle who belonged to the old German hermit order of St Hieronymous. His tastes, Röhm had told me, were not always solitary. A contributor to the anti-Jewish and -Catholic press, Stempfle was also employed by Amann, Hitler’s publisher. His work had a similar approach, though was a little narrower. When Amann needed someone to sharpen up Hitler’s rather rambling prose, the priest was the ideal candidate. In those days it was not unusual to be both a trained journalist and a man of the cloth.

Father Stempfle had been very influential in the early days of the movement. He was the one who acted as a middleman for Hitler when he was blackmailed. I think his mistake was to get too close to the Führer. He grew unwholesomely fascinated with Hitler’s private life. At my silent rebuff, he withdrew like some seedy tortoise first into his habit and then into the shadows of his seat so that it seemed someone had merely thrown an old garment down. I have never seen anyone disappear quite so naturally. The somewhat ostentatious wooden cross around his neck bounced on its rope, then his reptile head appeared above it again glaring at me in the most violent manner!

I had read some of his articles in the VB. He was a little fanatical on the question of Jews but basically sound. Like almost every founder member of the Nazi Party (which his vows did not allow him to join openly) he was of below average height, with brown hair and a somewhat unweathered skin. I had heard that he shared a taste for morphine with Göring and Co. His deep-set eyes and shaggy appearance reminded me a little of Lionel Barrymore in his wonderful (if not entirely accurate) rendering of Rasputin the Mad Monk. Father Stempfle had some kind of lair in the woods outside Munich.

His hand reached out to take my sleeve. His eyes betrayed a sort of malicious mirth. ‘Do you have some prejudice, young man, against people of my calling?’

‘Of course not, Father. I was not sure —’

‘That I would have anything to do with the likes of you?’

I shook my head. Rather than draw further attention to myself I let him draw me down to the chair beside him.

As soon as I was seated, he acted as if I were about to attack him, pulling himself back and looking wildly around for help. ‘Who are you? Explain yourself!’ Only when I introduced myself did he grow calmer, but in spite of initiating our meeting he remained strangely uncomfortable. I did not mind his refusal to shake hands. I think he suspected me of being Jewish. Indeed, I think he probably suspected everyone of being Jewish.

He began muttering to me in a nervous manner, and whenever I tried to lean forward to hear him better, he would flap his hands. His general behaviour was eccentric. I supposed it characteristic of hermits that they should not feel particularly at ease in large crowds, but he was by all accounts not the most reclusive of Hieronymites. He had spent time at Röhmannsvilla. I understood from Röhm that he only occasionally acted as a padre, usually when some sensitive party matter was involved.

Röhm and Stempfle, I recalled, did not get on particularly well. I could see why. I sensed something ungenerous and self-referential about the man. He was very brusque. When he did start to speak, he allowed no interruption. Stempfle, too, it emerged, was on the search for money. He had been to the Brown House and found it empty of anyone he knew. Claiming he didn’t have a penny, Strasser had told him to ask Amann. Stempfle had already been to Amann, who was out of town. The monk had been everywhere. They were threatening, he said, to cut off his electricity.

I was trying to think of a way of asking him why he did not move to a cheaper cave when the waiter came over and told me I had a long-distance telephone call. Did I wish to take it in my room? Glad of the opportunity to leave the miserable priest, with a quick apology I wished him luck and went swiftly up the stairs to my room on the first floor.

I picked up my instrument. It was full of static and half-heard conversations in a dozen languages. Somewhere in the background I could hear a woman’s voice, then a man speaking Italian, and then the woman again. I had expected Tom Morgan. But perhaps he had passed my number on.