The Queen's Accomplice
Page 31
Sarah looked to the brooch on Miss Lynd’s lapel, a graceful gold iris set with sapphires, amethysts, and emeralds. “You’re so clever, Miss Lynd. Even though we’re at war, you always make sure to wear something pretty. It does help with morale.”
Miss Lynd responded by unpinning it. “The iris is the national flower of France,” she said, offering it to Sarah. “The fleur-de-lis. May it bring you luck.” She pinned it on the younger woman’s lapel.
A large Army station wagon arrived at the hangar, and the party was driven out to the tarmac in the bright moonlight, where the Lysander waited, casting shadows.
The group got out of the car and huddled together, backs to the icy wind. As Philby reiterated takeoff procedures, their luggage was stowed under hinged wooden seats. When Philby was finished, Miss Lynd moved forward. She embraced Sarah and shook Hugh’s hand. She gave a loud sniff, blinked hard, then took several paces back as the pilot signaled for Sarah and Hugh to climb into the plane.
“This is it,” Hugh told Sarah. “Are you ready?”
She smiled. “Let’s give those bloody Nazis some Wellie, shall we?”
They climbed the ladder into the plane. The engines started and were left ticking over for several minutes. As the pilots carried out their checks, they briefly opened up to full throttle, then returned to fine pitch. Miss Lynd, motionless on the tarmac, looked up toward the windows, her eyes inscrutable.
Before the workmen could remove the ladder and close the plane’s door, there was a blaring of horns and the blink of headlights.
“What on earth?” fumed Miss Lynd, glaring at the driver. The car in question was a black and burgundy Bentley with no license plate. Instead of the Bentley’s usual Flying B bonnet ornament, there was a silver figurine of St. George on a horse, preparing to fight the dragon.
As the car screeched to a stop, a door flew open. Maggie emerged, resplendent in Chanel.
Miss Lynd’s jaw dropped, a singular occurrence. “Miss Hope!” she squeaked. “What are you doing here?”
Maggie gave her a Mona Lisa smile. “Room for one more?”
“Certainly not,” Miss Lynd said, drawing herself up to her full, imperious height.
The car’s driver walked around to open the other passenger door.
He extended his hand and out, onto the tarmac, stepped the Queen, Durgin behind her.
Miss Lynd went pale. “Your Majesty,” she murmured, bobbing a curtsy. “I—I…” It was the first time Maggie had ever seen Miss Lynd at a loss for words.
“Good evening, Miss Lynd—it is Miss Lynd, isn’t it?” the Queen asked as if she were at a garden party, not on freezing cold tarmac in the dead of night. “I already know a bit about you and your organization.”
“Yes, er, yes, ma’am,” Miss Lynd managed.
“And now Miss Margaret Hope has important business—Royal business, top secret, of course—in Paris.” She fixed clear blue eyes on Miss Lynd. “And it is imperative she take this flight.”
“Your Majesty,” Miss Lynd began, “this is highly—”
“—unusual, yes, of course,” the Queen interrupted with a wave of her plump gloved hand. “However, this is wartime—and extraordinary circumstances seem to abound these days, don’t they?” She looked to Maggie. “Well, go on then, Miss Hope.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” Maggie gave a deep curtsy. Then she turned to Durgin. “Thank you—for everything.”
“You promised you’d go to dinner with me,” he said, stepping forward, hugging Maggie tight. “I’m going to hold you to that, when you get back.”
She kissed his cheek. “It’s a date.” Maggie picked up her suitcase, then turned to the plane.
“By the way, Miss Lynd,” the Queen declared, her voice rising above the noise of the engines. “I had an interesting discussion with Miss Hope about female agents and their pay and pensions. I understand you’re the person with whom to follow up? I’d like to see some of these issues sorted, and sooner rather than later.” Her lips pursed. “We shall have a meeting.”
“Y-yes, ma’am.”
Maggie took the stairs two by two, thinking of both Erica Calvert and her half sister Elise. She stopped at the top rung and turned back, calling into the wind, “Vive la France!”
In memory of Violette Szabo
June 26, 1921–February 5, 1945
Posthumously awarded the George Cross
and the Croix de Guerre, and among the
117 SOE agents who did not survive
their missions to France
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Noel MacNeal and Matthew MacNeal for their support and patience.
Thanks to editor extraordinaire Kate Miciak at Penguin Random House, as well as Julia Maguire, Allyson Lord, Maggie Oberrender, Kim Hovey, Victoria Allen, Vincent La Scala, and Dana Blanchette, a.k.a. Team Maggie. Special thanks to deputy copy chief Dennis Ambrose. I am, as always, grateful to the intrepid Penguin Random House sales force.
I’m always appreciative of Victoria “Agent V” Skurnick, Lindsay Edgecombe, and Stephanie Rostan at Levine Greenberg Rosten Literary Agency.
Special thanks to readers Idria Barone Knecht; Scott Cameron; historian Ronald Granieri; Meredith Norris, M.D.; police officer Rick Peach; and Blitz-suvivor Phyllis Brooks Schafer. As well as Rebecca Danos and Michael T. Feeley for probability theory and Rossmo’s formula. Thanks to Caitlin Sims for the French and Tom Gold for ballet help. A special thanks to Lily Peta for knowledge of pointe shoes.
And cheers to fellow Jungle Red Writers: Rhys Bowen, Lucy Burdette, Deborah Crombie, Hallie Ephron, Julia Spencer Fleming, Hank Phillipi Ryan. Thanks to you all.
Sources
One tool…men and women have for displaying power is some degree of control over the narratives about sex and gender.
—CATHERINE R. STIMPSON, FOREWORD TO CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT: NARRATIVES OF SEXUAL DANGER IN LATE-VICTORIAN LONDON, BY JUDITH R. WALKOWITZ
Alas, I didn’t have to go far to find “inspiration” for a misogynistic murderer, even today. (Especially today?) If you’d like to know more, look up Anders Behring Breivik, Marc Lépine, Elliot Rodger, the anonymous posters of “Gamergate”—all fearful of women and women’s increasing public power.
There really was a serial killer (sequential murderer) in London during the Blackout. His story is different from that of Nicholas Reitter and May Frank, but you can read about it in Simon Read’s In the Dark: The True Story of the Blackout Ripper.
—
Books consulted on Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother:
Behind Palace Doors: My True Adventures as the Queen Mother’s Equerry, by Colin Burgess, with Paul Carter
Elizabeth: The Queen Mother: A Twentieth Century Life, by Grania Forbes
My Darling Buffy: The Early Life of the Queen Mother, by Grania Forbes
H.M. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, by Ian A. Morrison
The Queen Mother, by Ann Morrow
Queen Mother, by Penelope Mortimer
The Private Life of the Queen: By a Member of the Royal Household, by C. Arthur Pearson
Backstairs Billy: The Life of William Tallon, the Queen Mother’s Most Devoted Servant, by Tom Quinn
Counting One’s Blessings: The Selected Letters of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, edited by William Shawcross
The Queen Mother: The Official Biography, by William Shawcross
Books about crime, forensics, and serial killers:
The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime, by Judith Flanders
Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris, by David King
Dr. H. H. Holmes and the Whitechapel Ripper, by Dane Ladwig
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, by Erik Larson
Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime, by Val McDermid
A Serial Killer in Nazi Berlin: The Chilli
ng True Story of the S-Bahn Murderer, by Scott Andrew Selby
The Complete History of Jack the Ripper, by Philip Sugden
City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London, by Judith R. Walkowitz
SOE Books:
Women Heroes of World War II: Twenty-six Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue, by Kathryn J. Atwood
The Women Who Lived for Danger: The Agents of the Special Operations Executive, by Marcus Binney
Nancy Wake: SOE’s Greatest Heroine, by Russell Braddon
SOE Agent: Churchill’s Secret Warriors, by Terry Crowdy
The Beaulieu Finishing School for Secret Agents, by Cyril Cunningham
SOE in France: An Account of the Work of the British Special Operations Executive in France 1940–1944, by M. R. D. Foot
A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII, by Sarah Helm
Flames in the Field: The Story of Four SOE Agents in Occupied France, by Rita Kramer
Christine: SOE Agent and Churchill’s Favourite Spy, by Madeleine Masson
A Cool and Lonely Courage: The Untold Story of Sister Spies in Occupied France, by Susan Ottaway
Violette Szabo: The Life That I Have, by Susan Ottaway
My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy, by Kim Philby
How to Be a Spy: The World War II SOE Training Manual, by Denis Rigden
Odette: World War Two’s Darling Spy, by Penny Starns
Spymistress: The Life of Vera Atkins, the Greatest Female Secret Agent of World War II, by William Stevenson
Odette: The Story of a British Agent, by Jerrard Tickell
About World War II Germany and Ravensbrück camp:
Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau, by Jean Bernard; translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider
The Blessed Abyss: Inmate #6582 in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp for Women, by Nanda Herbermann; edited by Hester Baer and Elizabeth R. Baer; translated by Hester Baer
The Dawn of Hope: A Memoir of Ravensbrück, by Geneviève De Gaulle Anthonioz; translated by Richard Seaver
Four Women from Ravensbrück: Five Stories from the Shoa, by Roberta Kalechofsky
Berlin at War, by Roger Moorhouse
What Was It Like in the Concentration Camp at Dachau? An Attempt to Come Closer to the Truth, by Johannes Neuhäusler
Books about London during World War II:
The Love-charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War, by Lara Feigel
Few Eggs and No Oranges: The Diaries of Vere Hodgson 1940–45, by Vere Hodgson; preface by Jenny Hartley
Inside Buckingham Palace, by Andrew Morton
Buckingham Palace: The Official Illustrated History, by John Martin Robinson
Fashion on the Ration: Style in the Second World War, by Julie Summers
Exhibits:
Beaulieu Abbey, Beaulieu, England
Beaulieu Estate, Beaulieu, England
Imperial War Museums exhibit, “Fashion on the Ration,” London, England
Wellcome Collection’s “Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime,” London, England
“Women’s Land Army at Exbury,” New Forest National Park, Beaulieu, England
Documentaries:
H. H. Holmes: America’s First Serial Killer
How Sherlock Changed the World
Secrets of Scotland Yard
If you enjoyed The Queen’s Accomplice, you won’t want
to miss the next suspenseful novel in the Maggie Hope series.
Read on for an exciting preview of
THE PARIS SPY
by Susan Elia MacNeal
Coming soon from Bantam Books
Prologue
Only a single small sparrow, hiding in the branches of a budding chestnut tree on Avenue Fochs, dared to pierce the street’s eerie silence with her chirps and trills.
Even though it was midafternoon, there was no traffic on Baron Haussmann’s grand neoclassical boulevard, which linked the Arc de Triomphe to the Bois de Boulogne. The vélo-taxis avoided the wide street itself, while pedestrians and bicyclists sidestepped its contre-allée—the inner road separated from the boulevard by a green ribbon of verdant lawn, dotted with blooming forsythia bushes and budding irises.
There were few cars in Paris in the spring of 1942, and the large black Citroëns and Mercedes favored by the Gestapo that dared to make their way down Avenue Fochs seemed to glide silently. Without traffic, the air on Avenue Fochs was unexpectedly sweet and fresh.
The ornate cream-colored Lutetian limestone façades, with their wrought-iron balconies, tall windows, and mansard roofs, were considered the height of Parisian elegance. However, there was a more ominous factor behind Haussmann’s design—some of the architect’s critics opined that the real purpose of his grand boulevards was to make it easier for the military and police to maneuver, and to suppress armed uprisings. They argued that the small number of large, open intersections allowed easy control by a minimal force. In addition, buildings set back from the street could not be used so easily as fortifications.
The distinctive Haussmannian architecture had also made it easier for the Nazis to invade Paris during the Battle of France in June 1940.
On the section of Avenue Fochs closer to Porte Dauphine stood several anonymous buildings that gave the street its chilling reputation, which resulted in its isolation. Nos. 82 and 84 housed the Paris headquarters of the Gestapo—the abbreviation for Geheime Staatspolizei, or secret state police, founded in 1933 by Hermann Goering and controlled by Heinrich Himmler. The Gestapo leaders had chosen Avenue Fochs deliberately for their headquarters of terror: it was named after the French general Marshall Fochs, to whom the Germans surrendered in November 1918.
Inside No. 84, in a large office on the first floor with high ceilings, elaborate crown moldings, and a glittering cage chandelier, light refracting through its spear- and point-cut crystals. A large reproduction of Nicolas Poussin’s Rape of the Sabine Women hung on one wall. Obersturmbannführer Wolfgang von Waltz’s ears pricked at the low growl of a car piercing the silence of the street. From his desk, he looked out the window over Avenue Fochs to see a gleaming black Benz pull up to the curb. Two SS officers in black emerged with a young brunette in handcuffs.
Obersturmbannführer von Waltz was in his early forties, handsome and immaculately groomed, with golden-blond hair and silvery sideburns. Only his middling height and a pointed, jutting chin kept him from looking like the Nordic gods of Nazi propaganda posters. Despite his SS rank, he wore a double-breasted gray-striped suit, silk Hermès tie and pocket square, and handmade alligator shoes. He wore civilian clothes on purpose—to disarm and put at ease prisoners. He left the actual torture to the SS henchmen in No. 84’s soundproofed basement.
Von Waltz was the chief for France’s section IV Counterespionage division and of the Sicherheitsdienst, the German security service, answering directly to Himmler himself. Technically, he was the third-ranking Nazi officer in Paris, overseeing the task of arresting and interrogating foreign agents. Before the war, he’d received his doctorate in Romance languages and had been a professor at the University of Vienna. He’d volunteered as the conductor for the St. Stephen’s Cathedral boys choir and was known for his graceful dancing, especially the fox-trot.
He lifted the heavy black Bakelite telephone receiver with immaculately manicured hands and dialed his secretary. “Frau Schmidt,” he crooned in honeyed tones, “our guest has arrived from the Rouen office. Please put on coffee for our meeting.” Coffee—real coffee—not the ersatz coffee made from chicory or roasted acorns, was as precious as gold or diamonds in occupied Paris.
Hertha Schmidt did as she was told, but she didn’t like it, not one bit. A German woman in her twenties, she relished the many luxuries, such as coffee and chocolates, that working for the SS in Paris afforded her. “Terroristen,” she muttered as she measured out the ground beans, resentful that the enemy would be treated to a cup of the office’s precious brew. “E
nglisch Terroristen.”
As von Waltz heard the heavy iron courtyard gate clank shut, he looked up from the file in front of him, sent to him by motorcycle courier, containing all the information gathered on the captured agent. He heard footsteps on the staircase, then a rap at his office door. He smiled, eyes shining. “Come in!” he called in Austrian-inflected French.
The two SS officers who opened the door looked grotesquely large, towering over their captive. The petite woman trembled violently and looked as if she might faint.
Von Waltz rose, clicked his heels, and bowed. “Please sit down, Mademoiselle,” he said in gentle tones, indicating a fragile gilt chair. “Would you like a drink? Coffee is on the way, but I can get you something stronger if you’d like. You look as if you could use it.”
He gestured to the two men. “Take those off,” he ordered, indicating the heavy cuffs shackling the woman’s delicate wrists. Once they did as they were told, he dismissed them.
“That’s better now, isn’t it?” Von Waltz took the seat across from the woman instead of returning to his desk chair. Her face was swollen beyond recognition; eyes slits in the battered flesh. Impassively, he noted her matted and dirty hair, the bruises on her neck, and the stench of sweat and urine. Three of her fingernails had been torn off. Her stained and ripped dress concealed whatever else she’d endured. She moved slowly to rub some life back into her hands.
He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “I see you’ve shown the poor judgment to resist in Rouen. I do trust you will do better here. Ah, coffee!” he cried as Frau Schmidt entered bearing a silver tray piled with a silver sugar bowl, creamer, and plate with pastries. “I do love the ones with the hazelnut crème filling,” he confided as the secretary set it on the table between the Obersturmbannführer and his prisoner. “Of course, German pastry is the best, but there is something special about Parisian pastry that makes it a very close second.”