They dined together at the Ritz, then went on to the Rose Noire. Fritzi desperately wanted to listen to authentic jazz, which was banned in Germany now.
Sipping her champagne, Coralie stroked the choker of pewter-grey satin around her neck. From it hung a silver bottle the size of a wren’s egg, bought from an antiques shop on the Left Bank. The bottle was hinged like a clam shell and would once have contained a single measure of snuff. Its present cargo was far more lethal.
Dietrich wore uniform, complete with the Pour le Mérite the Kaiser had awarded him in 1917. She’d done as he’d asked and sewn a false back to the ribbon to provide a secure hiding-place for a bead of potassium cyanide. In the car, she’d whispered, ‘Why are we going anywhere near Serge Martel?’
‘Because we are dealing with a wolf, with a wolf’s ruthlessness but also its fear of confrontation. We will show it that it cannot win, and first, we must tempt it from its lair.’
It was just gone eleven p.m., and the club was thinly populated. Unsurprising, for a Wednesday night. Had her last visit here really been two years ago? The place had changed, the dance floor reduced in size, extra tables crammed in. French clientele huddled near the bar, or sat at the outer tables. The best, predictably, were occupied by German military. A lot of girls about the place, too. Single girls in cheap dresses.
The Vagabonds were onstage, playing a tune called ‘Swing 42’. Coralie waved, but they didn’t respond because it was impossible to see beyond the first row of tables.
Would Dietrich want to dance? How long since she’d really danced? She was dressed for it, in an evening gown of lemon silk jersey, which she’d bought from Una, who was also here. Coralie waved and received a blown kiss in return. Una was with a couple Coralie had met a few times, a husband and wife who worked at the American Hospital.
‘We can invite them to join us, if you wish,’ Dietrich offered.
Coralie shook her head. ‘They work such long hours that they never stay anywhere late and, to be honest, we’re not friends like we used to be.’ That wasn’t true. She and Una were as close as ever but they maintained a show of distance because Una had joined the Resistance, turning the flat on rue de Seine into a safe house. She took in refugees and stranded British airmen, whose planes had come down over Belgium or France, and who had to be moved, stage by stage, to the Spanish border. Coralie sometimes made hats, or altered clothes, to fit these evaders, working covertly, communicating with Una only when strictly necessary.
‘Mesdames, messieurs, the Rose Noire welcomes you as it always welcomes beauty.’ Félix Peyron, bent and hobbling after two of the bitterest winters on record, parroted his time-worn salute, and took their order for coffee and brandy. The Klebers got up to dance.
Félix suddenly remembered something. ‘Monsieur Clisson bids me say good evening to “the Queen of Hats”.’
‘Teddy’s here?’ Why hadn’t he come over in person? ‘Mind if I go and say hello?’
‘Not at all,’ Dietrich answered. ‘I won’t – he is still angry with me.’
‘Why?’
‘I persuaded him not to offer for some modern paintings stored at the Jeu de Paume gallery, and now he resents it.’
Skirting the dance floor, Coralie was touched by the way Fritzi looked into her husband’s disfigured face with steady love as they danced. Dietrich had told her they’d been childhood sweethearts.
At her approach, Teddy rose with exclamations of pleasure. But even as he planted kisses, she felt his reserve. Was he angry at Dietrich’s most recent interference, or with her because she’d failed to secure those Dürer engravings for him? She’d really tried, but it was one of the subjects upon which Dietrich was utterly immovable.
Teddy introduced her first to the two women in his group, types Coralie put down as ‘middle-aged sophisticates’. They had deep suntans under their makeup. Before the war, they’d probably lived six months of the year in Nice or Cap d’Antibes. They eyed her cocktail hat, a posy of parachute-silk lilies, acquisitively. Two men in dinner jackets sat with them. Teddy introduced the elder of the two as ‘my firmest of friends’ and the second as ‘a very beautiful boy’.
Known to be utterly safe in female company, Teddy was always in demand to squire divorced or married women around cabarets and clubs, often so they could meet their lovers. It struck her now that these women might be acting as his smokescreen too, protecting him from gossip. As Coralie shook hands, the two women squabbled good-naturedly over who should buy the lilies directly off her head.
‘Not for sale, Mesdames. Come and see me on boulevard de la Madeleine.’ She held out a hand to Teddy. ‘Lunch soon?’
‘I’ll be devastated if we don’t. A bientôt! Kiss Noëlle for me.’
Back at their table, she said to Dietrich, ‘Couldn’t you have let him have one little painting from the Jeu de Paume, to keep him happy?’
‘Not mine to give and, anyway, they have been burned.’
Suddenly she felt weary. ‘Let’s not stay too late.’
‘We can’t go yet. This is a special visit for Fritzi, her first to Paris. And, likely, her last.’
‘Why her last?’
‘Hold tight. Here comes the wolf.’
Serge Martel approached with a girl on his arm. Not Julie, Coralie noticed.
‘Herr Graf von Elbing, Mademoiselle de Lirac.’ Martel’s smile glided over them to rest on the occupants of a table a short distance away. Coralie pressed her foot against Dietrich’s. The same men had tried to arrest Ottilia. Gestapo. They wore loose civilian suits, and while two had forgettable features, the one with the bullet-shaped head she would remember for the rest of her life. He’d been the first to grab Ottilia’s arm. As for the one in charge, she’d never forget the puckered scar running down one cheek or his mean, steel-framed spectacles.
Martel accepted Dietrich’s offer to join them in a brandy. He didn’t pull out a chair for his companion, Coralie noticed, or offer her a drink. Seeing the Klebers dancing, he asked Dietrich, ‘How did your friend blow his face off?’
Dietrich let a beat pass, then said, ‘He is – was – an explosives expert with the Luftwaffe and was injured in a laboratory accident. The friends who care for him no longer notice his injuries.’
Brandy arrived. Martel impatiently waved Félix away as the old man began one of his automatic compliments to the mute female companion who had found herself a seat. ‘Kleber should be careful,’ he said to Dietrich. ‘Didn’t some fellow in Germany try to blow up your leader? He failed and came to a nasty end.’
‘You mean Elser, who planted a bomb at the Munich beer cellar in 1939?’
‘Imagine if he’d succeeded.’
‘Imagine.’
‘Do you think there are other conspirators?’ Martel stared at Dietrich over the rim of his brandy glass, as if sharing a dangerous idea. ‘Other plots for your leader to worry about?’
‘My friend, you are flirting with the firing-squad, voicing such ideas.’
Martel laughed and leaned back, his white tuxedo gaping. He was putting on weight, Coralie saw. About the only person in Paris who was. She turned to the girl beside him, who had still not spoken, and said, ‘I like your dress. Lovely colour.’
The girl stared, sullen, fearful.
‘Is it green or blue? Hard to tell in this light.’
The girl blinked and Coralie realised she didn’t understand. She had butter-blonde hair – natural, not peroxide – and round cheeks. The paint on her nails was chipped, as if she gnawed them.
Martel downed his brandy with showy machismo. ‘I don’t fear the firing-squad. I work with your boys. Look.’
Dietrich looked. ‘Not with them, Martel. For them. The Gestapo do not team up with such as you.’
Coralie tried to kick Dietrich under the table because this game scared her, but the girl squealed in pain instead, and squealed aga
in as another woman came up behind her and twisted her ear.
‘Get upstairs.’ Julie Fourcade tipped the chair sideways and the butter-blonde girl said something angry. Flemish, Coralie reckoned.
Martel jerked a thumb. ‘She’s right. Get upstairs, Marijke.’
Julie took the girl’s chair, snuggling up to Martel. She wore a greenish orchid as a corsage. The flower could only have come from Spain – another of the luxury goods defying borders – and Coralie felt a rush of outrage. Children were being taken into hospitals perilously underweight. Everyone had dry skin due to the lack of fats in the diet. Yet fuel was being wasted to ship in fancy flowers.
Even as she let her outrage flow, the honest part of her soul acknowledged that she was doing better than most. Her child got meat four times a week, courtesy of the Luftwaffe HQ kitchen.
‘Married now, you two?’ she asked Julie.
Martel answered, without looking at her, ‘Not yet.’ He turned back to Dietrich. ‘You know, von Elbing, I think you’re one of those aristocrats who want Germany to lose the war.’
‘Which aristocrats are those?’
‘The ones who want to replace Hitler with one of your own kind. Dachterrasse.’
Dietrich had picked up his brandy, but now he put the glass down. Looked first at Serge, then at Julie. ‘If you believe you have something on me, turn me in.’ He held them in an unblinking stare. ‘My only regret would be to have wasted a fine evening in a badly run brothel.’
‘I run no brothel.’ Martel’s colour rose.
‘That this is a whorehouse would be obvious to a fifteen-year-old farm boy on his first visit to the city.’
‘I am not running a brothel.’ Martel spoke through clenched teeth.
Dietrich concentrated his gaze on Julie. ‘Do you live here with this man?’
Julie squeaked, ‘What are you suggesting?’
‘That you should do a better job of protecting him. It is illegal for a man to be in charge of a brothel. To be so would render him a pimp. It follows that, if you are Martel’s fiancée, his consort, you are the madame. That makes you liable for the good order of the place.’
‘What’s he saying, Serge?’ Julie hooked a curl off her brow and twisted it nervously.
Martel muttered something. A threat, a denial.
‘You are breaking two laws, Mademoiselle Fourcade.’ Dietrich took a long sip of brandy and Coralie thought, He’s good at making people squirm. I can vouch for that. ‘One, you employ foreign girls. That is verboten. Second, you have not subjected them to the required medical checks.’
‘How d’you know?’ Martel flashed back.
‘Because I consulted with the chief medical superintendent of Paris only yesterday. You are violating every law there is.’
Serge Martel searched inside his tuxedo and, a moment later, handed Dietrich a card.
Dietrich glanced at it. ‘Gestapo membership. I heard they are taking anybody, these days.’ He held the card in the candle flame, even as the flame bent around his fingers.
Martel stood up and shouted.
‘He’s bringing those buggers over,’ Coralie warned.
‘Let them come.’ Dietrich dropped the flaming card into an ashtray, and clicked his fingers at Félix Peyron, who had stayed close by and seemed to be enjoying the spectacle of his employer trying to put out the flames.
Seeing him, Martel roared, ‘Do something, you old fool!’
To Martel’s horror, Félix pointed a soda siphon, spraying liquid and ash everywhere.
‘Idiot. Get out of my sight!’ Martel screamed first at Félix, then at Dietrich. ‘You will answer for this, von Elbing. I have friends who will make you answer.’
‘Understand one thing, Martel.’ Dietrich did not lower his voice, though people at nearby tables were straining to catch his words. ‘The Gestapo have great power, but it is not limitless. Even they know that it is the Wehrmacht, the army, who will fight and win this war. They know also that the army has three enemies: Russia, the Western allies . . .’ he savoured the moment ‘. . . and foreign brothels peddling venereal diseases to our troops. To catch the pox is one of the greatest dishonours that can befall a German soldier. For the pimp and the madame supplying contaminated girls,’ he turned to Julie, who looked bewildered, ‘there is even less mercy.’
‘Is there some disagreement?’ The Gestapo officer with the scar and spectacles had come over. He stated in German, ‘Something was burning just now.’
‘Major Reiniger, good evening.’ Dietrich met the major’s practised scrutiny without flinching. The Pour le Mérite hung over the collar of his shirt and Coralie saw Reiniger take stock of it and mentally change tack. ‘Herr Generalmajor. Apologies, I thought, perhaps, there was a difficulty.’
The shaven-headed subordinate standing behind his major regarded Dietrich with almost fanatical respect.
‘There is no difficulty,’ Dietrich said. ‘Merely that Monsieur Martel has accused me of plotting to murder the Führer.’
Martel gulped, then stammered something. His broken nose, old injury though it was, must be impeding his oxygen flow because he changed colour and spittle joined the soda water and charred paper on his tuxedo. Coralie began to see that Dietrich was not, perhaps, entirely mad.
Dietrich continued, ‘By insulting me, he insults our army and the air force upon which the Führer’s vision of a greater Germany depend. He insults my war record and my name, which, in honour, I must defend.’
Major Reiniger stared at Serge Martel, his lenses shining like the eyes of a fox in the dark. ‘You are drunk, Martel. Why else would you insult a German officer?’
Martel pointed at Julie. ‘She gave me the information.’
Julie stared, slack-mouthed, at Martel, evidently waiting for him to announce the joke. Coralie said quietly to her, ‘Admit you made a mistake. Say you’re sorry and we’ll all go away.’
Julie thrust a finger at Coralie. ‘She’s a spy!’
At that moment, the Klebers joined them, seemingly shocked at finding the table they’d left ten minutes earlier ringed by tense bodies. Reiniger and Kurt Kleber already knew each other, and as Kurt introduced his wife, Coralie allowed herself to hope that the situation would dissolve into friendly handshakes.
The Vagabonds had completed their first set and people were streaming off the dance floor. ‘You have an office where we can discuss this privately?’ Reiniger asked Martel.
A minute later, eight of them were climbing concrete stairs to an upper storey.
*
Martel’s office was untidy, a surprise – Coralie had always judged him on the evidence of a spotless tuxedo. Papers covered his desk and a greasy telephone suggested he made calls while eating.
Julie was blank with shock, and started crying when Reiniger snapped at her in German: ‘Explain what information you have heard of Generalmajor von Elbing.’ He repeated the question in French. Slowly.
‘My fiancé said that he – Graf von Elbing – wants to sacrifice himself to save Germany.’
They all looked to Dietrich, who raised an eyebrow. ‘I may well have said that. You may have said the self-same words, Reiniger.’
‘I mean, he wants to kill Hitler,’ Julie explained desperately. ‘Sacrifice himself by killing Hitler. Somebody told my fiancé, somebody who knows him.’
‘Who?’ demanded Reiniger, but Julie shook her head.
‘I don’t know.’
A silence followed, so intense Coralie could hear somebody’s watch ticking.
Martel was leaning against a wall, arms folded so tightly his knuckles were bloodless. ‘You’ve got it wrong, Julie. Tell Major Reiniger that you always get things wrong. What Herr Graf von Elbing has been overheard saying is that he wants to sacrifice himself for Hitler.’
‘That’s not what you told me!’ Patches were forming under Juli
e’s arms, darkening her satin dress. ‘He made one attempt and failed. You told me that.’ She stepped towards Martel, her fingers knotted in a distorted prayer.
‘Gentlemen, my fiancée,’ Martel pinched his mouth in distaste, ‘my former fiancée, has a weakness. She invents things to make herself the centre of attention.’
Coralie knew it was over for Julie when Reiniger said to her, ‘You accuse an officer of the German air force of this most disgusting, shameful crime for your own amusement?’ He rapped to his colleague, ‘Get her out of my sight.’
Julie’s screams ripped along the corridor, before stopping abruptly. Coralie saw Kurt and Fritzi Kleber move closer to each other. She sought Dietrich’s eye but he was gazing beyond her, his expression empty. She looked at Martel, who had thrown a girl he supposedly cared for off a cliff.
Martel made an appeasing motion of the hands. ‘If you gentlemen—’
But Dietrich pushed him back against the wall. ‘Your woman made accusations against Mademoiselle de Lirac. A spy, she said.’ Coralie froze. ‘Has she special reason to suspect her of espionage?’
Dietrich stepped back and Martel scuttled over to a filing cabinet. He reached deep inside and brought out a white card. ‘Julie found it in one of Mademoiselle de Lirac’s handbags, but I’m sure it’s nothing important.’
‘Why keep it, then?’
‘I – I had meant to tear it up.’
So there had been something in the bag. Something of hers or of Sheila Flynn’s? Or something she’d picked up on her journey to Paris with Dietrich?
Dietrich took the card, staring at it for a good half-minute, an aeon to Coralie. He said, ‘It is a race card, from an English racetrack. The Derby Stakes.’ He passed it to Reiniger, who gave it to Coralie. Who dropped it, picked it up but could hardly read it, she was trembling so badly.
Priced sixpence. She and Donal had bought one each.
‘You were at that race?’ Reiniger asked her.
Coralie sought Dietrich’s eye but he was staring past her. Her choker ribbon felt suddenly too tight. ‘I can’t entirely remember.’
The Girl Who Dreamed of Paris Page 33