by Jan Harvey
‘What do you mean?’ A chill shuddered through her, his voice was wrong, not normal.
‘Nothing,’ he replied. He took in a deep breath. ‘Walk with me.’
‘I’ve been dreaming of this,’ said Claudette as they made their way along the avenue of trees to the west of the gardens. ‘Of being with you.’ She slipped her arm into his.
‘Enjoy it, my sweet, because it’s all going to end.’
‘Are the Germans losing heart?’
‘We’re losing the fight to your friends, the Resistance,’ he told her. ‘Hitler is losing his mind and we are on the back foot.’
‘What will happen?’
‘I have no idea. I have offered one strategy and that is to move out to the edges of Paris and protect the centre, but to go no further. Others have different ideas. We cannot support further losses, because every soldier worth his salt was sent to Russia. We’re dealing with what is left, whilst the French, who have laid down and played dead for four years, have suddenly found they have something worth fighting for, Paris.’
‘You can’t blame us, we’ve been through an ordeal.’
He placed his hand over her arm. ‘All I can think is how much I want to make love to you,’ he said quietly. Maybe it was the illness, maybe the end of what was happening here, but he had lost any air of the authority or superiority about him.
‘You’re wasted as a maid picking up titbits of information for them, they should have you on sabotage or underground newspapers. You’re very bright for a country girl. Do something after this mess that counts, promise me.’
‘Maybe I’m a country girl, but I’ve grown up fast.’
‘It strikes me you must have been class star at school?’
‘There were the three of us, one wanted to become a doctor, one was going to become a scientist and I wanted to be a historian.’
‘What happened?’
‘Well, a squad of your men shot the student doctor last year, the scientist is scouring France for his wife and the historian is here thinking she would give up everything if she could find a very predictable life.’
‘I’m going to book the Private Room for this week. I’ll leave a note for you under the base of the lamp in reception when I want to see you. I need you.’ He looked incredibly forlorn.
She was about to turn and kiss him when her attention was drawn to the sound of marching feet, not neat and rhythmic like the Nazis but odd and irregular. It was a ramshackle group of French workers, shovels over their shoulders, humiliation about being marched by their own police written clearly on their faces. All eyes fell upon her as they passed by, she was wearing Nannette’s red scarf and a grey coat. On her head was a hat that Sophie had thrown away and she carried an expensive handbag, a gift from under the tree. Her hair was the colour of burnished conker, thanks to Nannette.
She was looking at the men, willing them to do something rather than capitulate, to have some pride in themselves, but they were tired, stooped and slovenly, and some of them had bruised faces and dried blood on their lips.
Keber looked towards them, his back straightened, the ingrained power in him just below the surface. He drew their attention and then with their eyes on him he leaned down and kissed her very forcefully and at odds with his behaviour until then.
She struggled and pulled away, but they had all seen it and she was furious. ‘You only did that to show off, it was horrible.’ She was panting and pushing against his chest. She tried to turn away, but he was too strong.
‘I know, that was bad of me, but it’s in our training,’ he said. ‘Suppress the Frenchman by screwing his woman. We can’t help it.’
She stared at him, wondering how she could possibly be with a man like this. What he had just said left her feeling cold and she knew all at once that this affair must end now. She looked at the red ribbon tucked into his jacket, at the silver decorations on his shoulders and then up to his eyes. They were fired up, searing into her. He pulled her to him and held her so tightly she felt she might never breath again. Her line of sight fell on the ragged platoon of men.
At the last second one of them turned round and delivered a look so venomous it made her heart clutch behind her ribs. The eyes were intense under dark brows, the anger in them so hot it could have burned her. The eyes belonged to Maurice Joubert.
Chapter Thirty Five
‘Your father?’
‘Yes,’ replied Daniel. ‘He was a man called Fredrik, or as everyone knew him, Fritz Keber. He was a reluctant Nazi, but, trust me, I make no excuses for what he did. His actions were, as with all Nazi war crimes, deplorable.’ A very impolite part of me wanted to ask what he’d done but Matt was shooting me a cautionary look. ‘It is important that we never, never forget what they did.’ He shook his head, I even thought a tear might follow because he looked so sad.
‘And your mother?’ Matt asked gently. ‘What about her?’
‘She died when I was almost two. Her life was in turmoil and she couldn’t bear it and so I was brought up by my aunt in Interlaken. That is where I lived until she died, when I was nineteen. Then I returned to Paris and took my degree in modern history. I made it my job to study the war and its causes and to dedicate the rest of my life to preventing war from happening again in Europe. I still advise the EU on security, but at a very boring level, no James Bond activity, not even an expense account.’ A ghost of a smile touched his lips.
‘When did your father pass away?’ asked Matt, putting his empty glass down on the table and leaning forward to take some cheese.
‘Three years ago, in the summer.’
‘Only three years ago?’
‘Yes,’ said Daniel. He stood up and reached for the bottle of Pineau, topping up first my glass and then replenishing Matt’s. ‘He had a very long life.’
‘Were you in touch with him?’
‘From time to time, but not for some years now, I’m afraid. He became very ill, mentally ill, as well as decrepit in the end, like any nonagenarian person. He still walked on the hills around Interlaken until he was into his late seventies. A very fit man, although following a bout of pneumonia during the war, he did have weak lungs, which brought him low at times. Still, it didn’t hold him back.’
‘So you stopped having contact?’
‘We were never a father and son in the traditional sense. Our personalities clashed, for one thing. He could never talk to me, he always preferred to keep me at a distance. I blame the fact that I reminded him of my mother. It must have been so hard for him, he obviously adored her. Then, twenty years ago there was a serious argument between us, I don’t want to go into it. As I say, he suffered ill health and put up a barrier. Sometimes it’s best to leave things where they are.’
‘Was he bipolar?’ I asked.
‘Possibly, but of course that was before we all became so understanding. Mental health has always been so very difficult for people to comprehend.’ I imagined that was where Freddy had got it from and wondered about Daniel too, but it was a question too far.
‘Wasn’t he tried? Lots of the German officers were executed if they didn’t….’ I paused, wondering what the right word to use might be.
‘Top themselves?’ He sat back down, his glass refreshed too.
‘Yes, that’s what I was going to say, I mean was he ever brought to trial?’
‘No, the Allies lost heart for taking it out on officers who had simply done as they had been directed, after they had paraded the major criminals at Nuremburg, that is. The mess they got themselves into trying to bring those evil monsters to account had to be seen to be believed. Also, in my father’s case, it is thought that the Resistance spoke up for him in France, they even say he betrayed the High Command in Paris. Well, that was the rumour, he would never be drawn on the subject.’
‘And he never married?’<
br />
‘No, as I said, I believe he was very much in love with my mother and there could be no equal in his eyes. I am pretty certain it was the root of his mental health problems.’
‘So I am very confused,’ I admitted.
‘Was Freddy’s father German?’
‘I really don’t know, if he was,I suspect there is a strong possibility it was my father. You see, the strange thing is, our mothers shared the same name, Madeleine March, and Freddy and I share the name March. That’s why I gave him the Dietrich photograph, I thought if we did have the same father he should have something of him. I’m very sorry, but I’ve never got to the bottom of this, without a birth certificate you can’t get very far. I had to pull a lot of strings to be recognised as it is.’
‘So you don’t know if you are related to Freddy by blood?’
‘Neither my aunt nor my father would ever talk about it, or the war. That’s why I was so intrigued when you two turned up with a special interest in it all.’
‘Your mothers had the same name?’ I asked incredulously.
‘Both March?’ said Matt, with a hand stroking his chin. ‘But not relatives? Neither sisters nor cousins?’
‘I don’t think so, and I can tell you that Freddy had no idea if they were related either. He knew his mother was in Paris during the war, as was mine, of course, but it’s all confusing. They can’t have been the same person and yet they had the same name.’
‘But how did you make contact with him?’ I asked.
‘I attended the opening night of one of his plays in Paris, the one called ‘Documentation’. It was extraordinary and I made a beeline for him at the final curtain. With our surnames being the same, him English, me French, it was a great way of introducing myself. The play had made me think, little things in it, the kind of references he made to the Resistance and the Occupation. I had to know why he was so obviously hung up on it all. He told me his mother never recovered from losing his father, that he wrote everything as a tribute to her.’
‘And did you keep in touch?’
‘Yes, I wrote to him. I visited from time to time and we would have a meal together. We often talked it through, whether my father was his or not, but we simply had no idea. Freddy asked to see him, but my father always said no. I asked my father once, tried to clear it up, but he simply refused to speak. He told me I should never mention the war, that it was unforgivable to speak of it.’
I felt annoyed that Daniel had given up so easily, it could have been so simple to have found the answers we needed from him.
‘Freddy was such a lovely, lovely man,’ he said, ‘I was so pleased he remembered me in his will, after all this time.’
‘What did you get?’ I asked, without thinking how direct I sounded.
After a short pause, Daniel said: ‘He left me a watch and a pair of cufflinks that were kept in a safe deposit box in London. Nothing remarkable in value, but obviously he had treasured them and that was enough for me. I believe they were Elwyn’s.’
‘Did you ever do a DNA sample?’ asked Matt.
‘No, no, we were acquaintances a long time before such things. I thought the coincidence of our names, and our mother’s names, was just that.’
‘He was writing to your father.’ I told him.
‘Really?’ He was surprised.
‘Yes, letters imploring him to get in touch.’
‘I never knew.’ Daniel looked crestfallen. ‘I had no idea, he never said a word.’
‘It would appear that he never received a reply, either,’ I said.
‘Something obviously led him to believe your father and his were one and the same.’ said Matt, puzzled. ‘I wonder what it was?’
‘I did wonder, at one time, if our mothers had worked in a hotel in the Latin Quarter, but I don’t know if it’s true,’ Daniel said thoughtfully. ‘I found a wage slip in my mother’s belongings, I tend to suspect they were both maids there. It is quite possible they took the name of the hotel proprietor, they may have been illegal immigrants or perhaps Jews in hiding. It was a very disturbed and brutal city in the war. My aunt would never tell me, she said the past should stay in the past. I’m certain she knew everything, but she was never one to look back.’
‘Was she Jewish?’
‘No, but I also wonder now if she was an aunt by marriage, or if she just took me in. She told me that my mother would have loved me very much.’ He looked down at his shirtsleeve and picked up a piece of lint, flicking it away between thumb and finger. He was stalling for time, this was obviously difficult for him.
‘What was the address?’ I asked, interrupting his thoughts.
‘It was in the Rue Ercol, but I have no idea where, it’s a long street and certainly has no traces of any hotels that I can see and yes, I’ve Googled.’ Daniel said.
‘And the Marlene Dietrich connection?’ I asked, coming back to where we started.
‘Ah yes, my father spent a year in Paris before the war. He was from very wealthy Austrian stock, hence I own this apartment and my little place in Antibes, and I am lucky enough to have no money worries.’ He continued after a short pause. ‘Well, during that time, being what I think you English call “ooray ‘enrys”, my father visited a very famous restaurant called Le Beouf à la Ficelle, where the waitresses served wearing only an apron and a pair of high heels, if you understand.’ For a moment I thought he was going to wink, but he seemed to change his mind. ‘Who knows what went on there? They probably got up to all sorts, him and his loud, excited friends. In your country they become Prime Ministers and Mayors, am I right? In the war we sent our young men to fight for us, only to end up in work camps in darkest Germany.’
‘And that’s were he met Marlene Dietrich?’ ask Matt.
‘He told me that one night she walked in and eventually he introduced himself, probably as a bet with all his friends watching. I should imagine he was totally bewitched by her, I know I was when I saw her in concert in the sixties. It would seem they talked for quite some time. He told me she was very sad about the war and she had been one of the first Germans of note to openly oppose Hitler and what he was doing. Everyone in Germany at that time had committed to Hitler’s plan because they were all caught up in the propaganda. Did you know the most convinced of them were, in the most part, women and young boys? They saw him as a god and they hero-worshipped him. If not that, then they experienced the pure fear of a wicked regime. My father told me she gave him a fresh perspective on everything, it made him question. Anybody who makes you question your beliefs and values has done good work.’ He paused. ‘It’s what you choose to do next. Fight for them, examine them or continue to follow them blindly.’
‘Like religion,’ said Matt.
‘Exactly so, Matt. So many of us stick with what we are told is true, we never ask ourselves if it is really true. People give away their minds so easily to a belief or a doctrine. It diminishes a person’s ability to make well-informed decisions. Like the church that gets its claws into you before the age of five, or the regime that indoctrinates you at school and makes you wear a brown shirt. Only the very strong kick against the system.’
‘And your father?’
‘He wasn’t strong, I’m afraid. His conscience was overpowered like so many others. I think the nagging doubts tore him apart and that was thanks to a famous film star, but the Nazi machine and its terrible desires was the real winner.’
‘Unless, as you say, he betrayed them at the end.’ I suggested.
‘Precisely, someone must have got to him if that was the case. I can only think it was my mother.’
‘Do you have a picture of her?’
‘Yes, one from her passport.’ He stood up, fetched the ancient French passport and handed it to me. I opened it with great care; it was on its last legs and I had seen the English version of it before, bac
k in Freddy’s shed. Matt leaned over.
The picture was of Freddy’s mother.
Chapter Thirty Six
The shot rang out clearly in the night. The short sharp sound had no echo, it was inside the house. There was silence, an awful, grating silence. Claudette sat up in bed, listening as hard as she could for another sound, anything that might orientate her to where it had come from. Was it best to stay where she was? She remembered Marie’s warning. Was it some sort of raid? Surely there would have been more shots? Could she barricade herself in on this floor? She scrambled around for an idea. The door clicked open and she held her breath; they were already here, it was too late.
It was Marie. She looked like a ghost in the pool of moonlight that lit up the room. ‘Did you hear that?’ she whispered. ‘It was a gun shot.’ Claudette crawled out of bed and pulled on her grey coat and shoes. Marie stood shivering in her white cotton nightdress and an old shawl.
‘Stay behind me,’ she told Marie. ‘Stay absolutely silent.’ They tiptoed along the corridor, beneath them floor five was quiet, deserted as usual. They crept downstairs to the fourth floor. Bella, Lilia and Pollo were standing on the stairs, peering down into the lift shaft, quietly listening.
‘Is it a raid?’ Claudette spoke as quietly as possible.
‘No, there’s only one car outside, and one driver,’ Bella whispered back.
‘Rechtstein’s driver,’ whispered Pollo. ‘He’s still here.’ They stalked carefully down the stairs where the other women were standing on their landings. They were a cascade of colour tumbling down the stairs, the colours of their gowns and negligées like a bank of extraordinary wild flowers.
Outside Eva’s landing Jacques was standing with his back to the double doors, his hands clenched around a pistol. Madame Odile was standing adjacent to him, her back against the wall on the opposite side of the door. She was wearing a thick cotton nightdress, her hair in a single, long plait. He used his head to indicate to them all to back away and then he turned and slipped through the double doors.