She began speaking in good English. ‘I merely want you to know that he is not the man you seek. No longer the Führer of old. These past months . . . the loss. You can tell that he is not all there. These days he has long periods of silence, then rages. He plays with toy armies and watches those hideous films of the July traitors being executed. Over and over. He is fifty-six, but he might as well be eighty-six. He is not the man we loved.’

Wilde could believe it. This was certainly not the war leader who once held the whole of mainland Europe in his cruel grip of iron. ‘What are you to him, Frau Fuchs?’

‘Oh, nothing but an old forgotten friend from quieter days in Munich. I am a nobody.’

‘He still needs to face justice for his sins. You know that?’

‘God will judge him.’

Wilde stared at the bearded, bespectacled man. A hollowed-out monster.

‘Do you like music, Ami?’ Frau Fuchs continued. ‘Can I play a little Wagner on the gramophone? It soothes him, you see.’ She paused. ‘You must understand that this is his last meal. We are all going to die here. There is no way out. You do not have the stomach to kill children, and so Siggy and Hildy will kill us all rather than let you take him.’

‘Put the music on.’

She found the record immediately from a stack beneath a shelf, placed it gently on the player and dropped the needle into the groove. From the very first notes Wilde recognised it as the prelude to Götterdämmerung. ‘The Twilight of the Gods.’

Wilde saw a smile on the woman’s face for the first time. Hitler remained unmoved; he simply continued eating, slowly, chewing every mouthful with exaggerated care. It would not have been a surprise to see Frau Fuchs spooning the food into his mouth, but that didn’t happen.

When, at last, he had eaten enough, he pushed the plate away and Frau Fuchs stepped forward as if to pick it up.

Instead, she knelt before him and embraced him. ‘Forgive me, mein Führer,’ she said softly.

Wilde couldn’t work out what was happening, but then – when it was too late – he realised that she had slid a knife into him, for he let out a gasp and fell forward onto her. She didn’t attempt to move away, but held him closer to her breast, like a mother with a child. Blood was dripping from his mouth and he became still.

She smoothed his hair with her palm, stroking him gently, whispering to his dead body. Then she pulled herself away. The bloody carving knife in her hand. It had a long blade and must have gone deep beneath Hitler’s ribcage into his heart, killing him within moments. A clean death, not the agony-filled, screaming one he deserved. She dropped the knife.