The Milliner's Secret

by Natalie Meg Evans

  Coralie clinked glasses then looked away, locking eyes with Lorienne Royer.

  The other woman’s social smile fell away. Flaxen hair soaked up pink light and her eyes set hard.

  ‘I’m popping to the Ladies,’ Coralie murmured. She was an inch away from red mist. Lorienne’s letter, describing the arrest of Madame Thomas and Violaine, had been an act of barbarism that, even after a slow passage of time, demanded redress. Except that Coralie did not know how to go about getting it, unless with fists and teeth. ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Fritzi.

  In the Ladies, Coralie ran cold water over her wrists and watched Fritzi adjusting her evening hat, lowering it so it obscured one eyebrow. Too low. ‘Let me.’ Coralie unpinned it and resettled it higher. ‘Confession time, Fritzi. Who have you left me for?’

  Colour tinted Fritzi’s cheeks. ‘I love your hats, but after that awful confrontation here with Serge Martel and Reiniger, Kurt felt we had to be careful. We should not meet too often.’

  ‘We haven’t met at all.’

  Fritzi appeared to steel herself. ‘The truth? Kurt fears that Dietrich is not as influential as he was. That business with the Gestapo damaged him.’

  ‘It was Martel who looked most guilty, as I recall. And Dietrich has powerful friends in Germany.’

  ‘You refer to Reichsmarschall Göring?’

  The door swung open and two women entered, followed by an attendant bringing in a pile of fresh hand towels. Fritzi said no more. They left the room.

  In the lobby, Fritzi hung back. ‘Coralie, allow me to know more about the inner workings of German high command than you. Believe me, Göring is not as powerful as he used to be either. Things are not going well for Germany in the war and Göring’s command of the Russian campaign is much criticised in some quarters. Oh, I am not speaking treason. We will turn events around. In the end, we will win.’

  Coralie looked at her friend in astonishment. ‘I thought you wanted peace with honour.’

  In reply, Fritzi lifted Coralie’s hand, gazing expressionlessly at the ruby ring. ‘So I do. Let me warn you as a friend, do not step aboard a ship that may sink. Besides, Dietrich is married and you have already a husband. Where is he, incidentally?’

  ‘Ramon? Down south, working on the railways.’

  ‘I do not like to lie, so I will tell you a truth. I stopped coming to you for hats partly because of this husband who comes and goes. And because I discovered you employed Jewish women.’

  Coralie gasped. Fritzi seemed not to hear.

  ‘Since then, I have heard also a rumour that you design hats to make German women look ugly and that you laugh at us in private. For that, you know, you could be arrested. It is sabotage. It is foolish and dangerous.’

  ‘I’d never do that to you.’

  Fritzi put a finger to her lips. Lorienne Royer had come into the lobby.

  ‘Frau Kleber, what a pleasure, what an honour.’ Coralie might not have been there. ‘But one moment,’ Lorienne chided. ‘Your hat is designed to be worn over the eye.’

  ‘So she can bump into things? And I’m accused of making people look daft!’

  Lorienne ignored Coralie. Fritzi, looking from one woman to the other, said decidedly, ‘Perhaps you would be kind enough to correct it for me, Mademoiselle Royer.’

  Coralie watched them return to the Ladies. Little electric shocks jumped from her breast to her throat. She touched the snuff bottle at her neck. Fritzi Kleber had turned coat. Dietrich is not as influential as he was. Kurt felt we should not meet . . .

  Walking back into the club, she paused to watch Dietrich and Kurt Kleber in conversation. A pair of Martel’s tarts approached and she saw the men dismiss them. The girls lingered. They were dismissed again and walked slowly away, hips rolling.

  Kurt filled two glasses, and lifted his. Another toast in the making, Coralie presumed. To friendship, to a future without Hitler? She thought, I could walk alongside Dietrich towards any destiny. For him, and for the hope of humanity. But not for the honour of Germany. I cannot embrace a horrible death for a country that strafed cowering refugees on French roads. That has taken away Violaine, Una, Amélie and her child.

  And if this plot failed, if she and Dietrich were arrested, would she have the courage to bite on her pill, invite potassium cyanide into her system? You will kill, a Gypsy palmist had promised her. It had not occurred to her that it might be herself by herself. She didn’t want to die. Noëlle needed her. She had to live.

  Dietrich was beckoning a waiter. He is human, she thought. Dangerously human. Aryan and Jewish. It didn’t matter to her, but it would matter to Fritzi Kleber. It would matter to Göring, Göring, fat as a herring. It would matter to the Gestapo.

  If Dietrich’s star was falling, and the Gestapo ever questioned her, could she keep his secret? If they arrested her for her Resistance activities – beat her or pulled out her nails, like they’d done to poor Jan Brommersma – would she keep silent?

  Not a chance. She’d crack like cheap china. She’d point them to Dietrich and they’d arrest him, throw him in a salad wagon, abuse him, send him to Drancy or another holding camp, then eastwards to God knew what. Her Dietrich.

  Pulling off the hat that made her as visible as the Eiffel Tower, she made her way to the stairs. Up in the foyer, she asked the cloakroom attendant for paper and a pen and wrote:

  It’s over. I do care, but Fritzi reminded me that we’re both married. Don’t come calling –

  What phrase would wound that Prussian pride so deeply that he would never come looking for her?

  because my husband is a bigger man than you.

  She signed it ‘C’ and wrapped the note around the ruby ring, twisting each end, like a sweet-paper.

  She gave the girl a hundred francs to give it to Generalmajor von Elbing when he came upstairs for his cap and his coat. ‘If that ring’s not in it, you’ll spend the next five years in La Santé prison. Got it?’

  Astonishingly, snow was swirling as she stepped outside. She walked along boulevard de Clichy, making for the Métro. Unable to hold her hat in place while keeping her hands in her pockets, she took it off and spiked it, like a cocktail sausage, on a railing. Snow would cover it, white on white. A fitting end and, one day, she might make Ottilia a replacement. One day, she might explain her desertion to Dietrich. And he might understand.

  CHAPTER 34

  At dawn on Monday, 8 March, Hiltrud von Elbing arrived in Paris.

  Her father had arranged for her to be chaperoned on the journey, not trusting her to travel alone. She hadn’t dared to admit that Dietrich knew nothing of her plans to join him. Ernst Osterberg had discovered that a member of the gauleiter of Brandenberg’s staff was to visit Paris on official business, and had entrusted Hiltrud to the official’s female secretary. She’d had the indignity of overhearing her father telling the secretary that his daughter had been unwell. An infirmity of the mind, for which she took pills twice a day.

  ‘If she weeps, pay no heed, but if she goes white and cannot breathe, use smelling salts on her. You will answer for her well-being. Her husband, Graf von Elbing, is a close friend of Reichsmarschall Göring.’

  No wonder her chaperones had regarded her with wary resentment throughout the entire exhausting trip. They had been delayed in Germany by bomb-damaged rails, in France by an unexplained hold-up involving armed soldiers and lots of shouting, and then by snow. The train had finally limped into the station at four in the morning. Seeing all the people sitting where they were, making no attempt to leave the carriage, she assumed there was another delay. But then somebody mentioned that it was to do with a curfew. French passengers could not venture on to the streets until five a.m.

  Being German, her party was not subject to such restrictions. A liaison officer from Army Headquarters was waiting on the platform. Such obedience. Such love of duty. Hiltrud’s spirits rose, and as they drove through dark streets, wet snow smacking against the windscreen, she looked about with curiosity. For som
e reason, she’d expected sunny weather. A good thing she’d worn her thickest coat and a woollen hat. Not at all stylish, but if it was good enough for Hohen Neuendorf, it was good enough for Paris.

  The gauleiter’s representative and his secretary were dropped off at a sprawling palace of a building. It seemed to occupy one side of a square, though Hiltrud couldn’t see much. Snow whirled out of a pewter sky, as thickly as at home. Though where was home? Berlin, where she’d been born, had whole districts of burned rubble. Women like her and even women with babies lived outdoors in the cold. The northern suburbs had been pounded and she dreamed often of Hohen Neuendorf being swallowed by a firestorm. No signs of bombing in Paris. Claudia and her father must be correct. Paris had been spared because even those in top authority were seduced by her wicked luxury.

  After waiting an hour, the car took Hiltrud on towards her destination. Rue de Vaugirard.

  As they crossed a river, the driver said, ‘The Seine, gnädige Dame. A fine river.’

  ‘It is not as beautiful as the Spree or the Havel.’

  On the far side of the river, the streets felt darker, even though the sky was quite light now. She began to cough. ‘Why is the air so thick?’

  Because Parisians had responded to the lack of heating fuel by installing stoves in their apartments, the driver said. They burned anything they could get their hands on, and because many of them had no fireplaces or chimneys, they shoved stove pipes through holes they made in the wall. Of course, being near the ground, the fumes did not disperse.

  ‘How unsanitary. They should be stopped.’

  The car drew up at a house with an imposing door. To the sound of sentries tramping alongside the railings opposite, her driver rang the doorbell. After a short delay, they were let in. Her driver departed and she said to the man who had opened the door, ‘I am Generalmajor von Elbing’s wife, Gräfin von Elbing. Will you show me up to his apartment?’

  The man took her to the lift, pressed a floor button for her and said, ‘Generalmajor von Elbing came in very late last night.’

  As the lift rose, she heard him mutter under his breath, ‘Good luck.’

  She would have Dietrich deal with him. Once upon a time she would have dealt with the man herself. But so often, these days, she felt like a small creature shut inside an over-large body. Her voice was in there but it didn’t always come out. Other times, she would erupt in a rage that frightened even her. She must find the right voice if she was to get Dietrich to listen, to come home.

  Stepping out of the lift, she knocked on the only door in the hallway. It was opened by a man in a canvas apron, whose sooty hands told her that he was making a fire.

  ‘What time d’you call this, woman? Cleaning duty started an hour ago. And where are your polishing rags?’

  She gave him her name, adding, ‘And you may inform whoever employs you that you are dismissed.’

  The man stammered an apology. Sorry, gracious lady, no idea that the Gräfin was expected. The Generalmajor had said nothing. Was expecting extra cleaning help this morning and thought that you—

  ‘Go back to your task.’ She went to find Dietrich.

  She discovered him in the bedroom, lying on his front on the bed, clothing thrown about. When she shook his shoulder, he didn’t stir. She sniffed . . . Foreign perfume and alcohol. She shook him again and he mumbled something.

  He was dead drunk.

  She sorted through his clothes, and found among his things a woman’s knitted winter stocking, and a pair of ankle socks. She found underwear too, lace-trimmed slipper satin. In the wardrobe, she found more coats and dresses than she’d ever possessed in her life. On the dressing-table – a frippery thing of mother-of-pearl and slender drawers – she found hatpins. And a hairbrush with blonde hairs caught in it.

  Also on the dressing-table was Dietrich’s Pour le Mérite. She picked it up and kissed it. How proud she had been of it, of him, when they were both young. Running her thumb along its ribbon, she felt something and, turning the medal over, saw that somebody had sewn a patch. Cleverly done, so that whatever it concealed could be squeezed out like a pea from a pod.

  A moment later, she was holding a brown glass bead. She knew exactly what it was. Her daughter Claudia, who worked with prisoners of the Reich, had shown her one that she’d taken from a female spy. The woman had tried to hide it in her underarm hair but a search had found it. It was a death-pill. So, her mother-in-law had not been exaggerating. Dietrich was indeed planning something that might lead to his capture: even with his hands tied he would be able to get the cyanide capsule between his teeth.

  Though not if she had anything to do with it.

  Slipping the capsule into her coat, Hiltrud broke the pearl head off one of the hatpins lying on the dressing table, and inserted that into the ribbon pocket. She would do all she could to bring Dietrich back to faith with her, and with the Führer. If she failed, he would not have the luxury of taking the coward’s way out.

  She found the kitchen. It was tidy, too tidy. Nobody cooked there. She could hear somebody clanking in another room and found the orderly who had insulted her at the door. He sprang to his feet.

  ‘Get on with your work,’ she told him, ‘and then get out.’ She discovered she was in a handsome room. Silk wallpaper. A damask sofa, wide enough to seat four. Ornate mirrors, a chandelier dripping crystal. She admired the carved legs of a drum table, and saw a letter on it. And a ring; the von Elbing ruby, hers by right. Where was Dietrich’s Frenchwoman?

  Where was the female who had turned her husband into a drunkard and a criminal? She knew the handwriting to be his, though she couldn’t read the letter because it was in French.

  Some words she made out: amour. That was “love”. Honneur. Turning the page over, she found some lines in German, as if Dietrich had written first in his own language.

  I cannot believe what you have done. My love for you transcends reason, politics, law and religion. It transcends everything but honour. If it did not yield to honour, it would be worthless. I still believe that I will one day marry you. I do not know how, but that does not undermine the belief that we will have a son together, even if I cannot live to see him grow. I so long for a son with you.

  Hiltrud’s roar ripped through the walls. Outside, the sentries stopped and tilted their guns in the direction of the sound.

  Dietrich woke, catching the tail-end. He put his feet to the floor, tried to stand but everything was spinning. Last night, he had reached for a bottle, needing oblivion.

  ‘Coralie?’ A woman had come into his room. He blinked, not believing what he saw. Not believing who was in front of him, holding a kitchen knife.

  He believed it when she slashed his face, tearing a line from cheekbone to chin. He believed it when she made another thrust into his leg above the knee, then deep into his arm. Knowing he was fighting for his life, he managed to wrench her arm into the air, twisting until the knife fell. He got her out of the flat, slipping in his own blood, then half pushed her, half fell with her, down one flight of stairs.

  Out on the street, he shouted for help and sentries came rushing towards him, guns levelled.

  He came round in hospital and learned that it was now 11 March, and he had received two blood transfusions. ‘Where is she?’ he asked.

  His doctor assumed he meant his wife. ‘Transferred to a clinic outside Paris, Generalmajor. Le Cloȋtre. The doctors specialise in brain injuries and –’ the man gave an awkward cough ‘– other mental disorders. She will receive the most compassionate care. Poor lady, it seems her mind was overturned by the death of your son. Sons are irreplaceable to mothers, are they not? I believe the lad was killed in the bombing of your home town?’

  Dietrich grunted. Let them think that. The agony in his face and shoulder, radiating into his back, was good evidence that he was still alive. He wished he wasn’t. The shock of Hiltrud’s blade was nothing compared to the shock of Coralie’s betrayal.

  PART SIX

 
; CHAPTER 35

  A note from Fritzi Kleber informed Coralie that Dietrich had been murdered by his wife. Gräfin von Elbing had arrived unexpectedly in Paris, Fritzi wrote, and for reasons unknown had attacked Dietrich.

  It was lucky, Coralie thought later, that she’d forgotten about the cyanide pill hanging from her neck because she’d have bitten it then. Instead, she threw herself on her bed, beyond tears, until roused by persistent knocking. It was Kurt Kleber, bringing her the news that Dietrich was alive, and had been transferred to a hospital in Germany. ‘Perhaps it is a good thing that all our plans are so much in the air, no?’

  She was too busy picturing Dietrich in hospital, thinking hateful thoughts of his wife, to listen properly. She nearly said, ‘Yes,’ but caution stepped in. ‘What plans?’

  Kurt smiled. ‘Good girl.’

  As summer and autumn of 1943 dragged past, she longed to get the truth to Dietrich. I only left you because I feared I might betray what you are and for ever bear the guilt. But Kurt refused to send letters on her behalf.

  ‘Let him be, Coralie, for his sake and your own. And no,’ he added, in response to her persistent questioning, ‘I don’t know what flared between Dietrich and his wife, or even why Hiltrud was in Paris.’

  ‘Might he have asked her for a divorce?’

  Kurt sighed. ‘Men of honour do not pitch their infirm wives into the gutter to please another woman. Will you excuse me?’ Coralie had once again interrupted him at work at the Hȏtel Marigny. She should thank him and leave, she knew, but she needed more. Grudgingly, Kurt obliged.

  ‘To dismiss a man like Dietrich von Elbing with a crude note is wantonly to open a Pandora’s box. Do not be surprised at what flies out. Why in heaven’s name did you do it?’

  She couldn’t tell him and went home. Looking back over her life, she saw how her impulses had caused disaster after disaster. Stealing Sheila Flynn’s clothes. Taking on her dad one time too many. Singing ‘The Lambeth Walk’ in a French nightclub in her true cockney voice. Filling Henriette’s salon window with red, white and blue. Turfing Lorienne Royer out of La Passerinette. Even backing Manna at the 1925 Derby – that had lost her the mother she’d loved. ‘People desert me. No wonder,’ she told herself.