by Pat Shipman
Clunet sent another pro forma letter to Bouchardon on June 3, asking for her provisional liberty, and yet another on June 8.
On June 5, Mata Hari wrote the most revealing letter yet. She was certainly in the throes of a nervous breakdown: disoriented, obsessed, terrified, and then strangely optimistic for brief periods. Yet her intelligence still functioned; she could perceive clearly the horror of what was happening to her.
There is still something which I beg you to take into consideration, it is that Mata Hari and Madame Zelle MacLeod are two completely different women.
Today, because of the war, I am obliged to live under the name of Zelle, and sign it, but this is a woman unknown to most people.
As for me, I consider myself to be Mata Hari. For twelve years, I have lived under this name. I am known in all the countries and I have friends everywhere.
That which is permitted to Mata Hari—dancer—is certainly not permitted to Madame Zelle MacLeod. That which happens to Mata Hari, these are events that do not happen to Madame Zelle. Those who address one do not address the other. In their actions and their manner of living Mata Hari and Madame Zelle cannot be the same. For this reason, my captain, do not be astonished at that which has befallen me….
Mata Hari is obliged to defend herself. I learned this to my downfall. Everywhere that I dance, I am celebrated, I love my jewels, furs. I am everywhere pursued by the vendors who work at the theaters. The lawsuits are numerous, the seizures are immediate, and to avoid this, it is I or a lover who “pays” or else I leave my coveted possessions in the hands of others.
I know that there is nothing to do about it. It is the life of the famous, of all women of the theater. These are things of which one does not speak.
But, one makes up the loss when the occasion presents itself. And that is what happened to me, with my furs in Berlin when the war broke out. I assure you, my captain, at eight o’clock in the morning, when the Berlin police went to every hotel, knocked on every door to see who lived there, that morning of the declaration of war, the bank seized the deposits and valuables of foreigners. All the vendors presented their notes and since no one could pay, they seized the trunks, the stored furs. That is what happened to me, and happened to others. And since they pretended that I had lived more than ten years in France, and that I had lost my Dutch nationality, I was treated harshly…. And so, when Mata Hari had the occasion to take a little reimbursement [from the Germans], she did it.
All this letter is to point out to you that everything has happened to Mata Hari—and not to Madame Zelle.
It was Mata Hari who was obliged to go to Paris to protect her interests.
Madame Zelle had nothing to do there. I beg you, my captain, take this into consideration and do not be so hard on me. Realize that I have lived all my adult life as Mata Hari, that I think and I act as her. I have lost the notion of travel, of distances, of dangers, nothing exists for me now. Even the difference between races [has vanished]. Everywhere, I encounter rascals and brave people. I lose—I win—I defend myself when I am attacked—I take—sometimes I am taken. But I beg you to believe me that I never did a single act of espionage against France. Never, never.
And I beg you, my captain, I have suffered enough. Let me leave Saint-Lazare. It is not just to keep me locked up. I have never carried out any espionage.
Arguing that she was two different people, which she was in a real sense, did nothing to influence Bouchardon. Indeed, he took it as evidence of her insincerity, almost as playacting. He later recalled this time, saying:
To forget that she was a woman and beautiful, I had to remember all the evil that her treasons had inflicted on our heroic soldiers. In the course of our interrogation, Mata Hari played all the great emotions of the theater: the tears, the smile, the disdain, the coquetry, the anger, the feminine dignity…. By turns, she was familiar and pathetic, always nervous, she spoke surprising words…. I have never known a woman more cultivated nor a linguist more astonishing.
He left her growing sicker and more desperately anxious in her cell. She wrote Bouchardon letter after letter, grasping at tiny details, trying to conjure up a vision of innocence and misunderstanding that Bouchardon could embrace, but he never would. Bouchardon questioned her again on June 12 but discovered no new information.
On June 9, Clunet’s appeal for provisional liberty for Mata Hari was again denied.
Inspector Curnier compiled a report on Mata Hari’s expenditures, amounting to an astounding 13,000 francs in a few months, the equivalent of about $1,000 a week. Not surprisingly, he also uncovered unpaid bills all over Paris; she may have spent nearly $35,000, but she certainly did not pay it out.
In fact, on June 27 she received in prison a communication forwarded by her Dutch lawyers to the consulate in Paris, who sent it on to her in prison. The subject was a large bill (3,211 guilders and 80 cents, the equivalent of about $25,000 today) that had been outstanding at a couturier in The Hague since 1915. The couturier was threatening to seize and sell the furnishings of her house in The Hague in lieu of payment. Despite her dire circumstances, Mata Hari sent off a feisty letter through the consulate, asking that her Dutch attorney, Mr. Hijmans, be informed of what had happened to her. The letter has all the dash and style of Mata Hari before her imprisonment.
I have the impression they do not know in Holland [what has happened to me]…. They think I am in Paris to amuse myself and that I do not intend to come back…. I suppose nothing serious can happen to me, the more so because I have a charming house in The Hague and have no other debts than this one with the couturier, which happens to every woman. The couturier has to wait. I cannot accept a bill which is five hundred guilders too high, and on which seven hundred guilders have already been paid, without first checking the various bills which I have from them, and on which most likely some other items have also been paid already. The couturier does not have to worry. He will receive the money I owe him, with interest, if necessary, but I am in prison on account of a war accident…. It is impossible for me to handle my affairs at this moment….
What has happened to me is terrible, but I am innocent, so it will all be cleared up.
On June 21, Bouchardon questioned Mata Hari for the last time, in the presence of Clunet, as required by law. He told her it was “a case of en flagrant délit,” for she had been caught in the act like an adulterous lover. She responded with a pretty speech about her plans for carrying off a great espionage coup for France so she could marry Vadime. She had intended to reestablish contact with a former lover, the duke of Cumberland, who had renounced the throne of Hanover but whom she hoped to convince to try to reclaim it. She was foiled by her arrest in England and being sent back to Spain, but she still tried to gather proofs for Ladoux. What she learned, she gave to Denvignes, who betrayed her. Summing up the circumstances, she commented acidly: “As the situation is now, he gets all the honor, and I am in prison.”
The long process of interrogation and investigation was over. There remained only the waiting, the trial, and the execution.
21
The Kangaroo Court
ON JULY 24, Bouchardon completed his official report on his investigation of Mata Hari. It was an extraordinary document that spelled out his formal conclusions and unwittingly revealed his deep prejudices against any woman as openly sexual as Mata Hari. Indeed, her sexuality and her guilt were inseparably intertwined in his mind. In the very first paragraph, Bouchardon wrote that she “descended on the Grand Hotel where she really set her snares. Ignoring the other inhabitants of the hotel, no matter how rich they were, she selected as her victims a certain number of officers of the Allied armies, one by one as they came along.”
He was convinced that she was a predatory woman, deliberately tricking men.
He accepted Ladoux’s version of events, that she presented herself at his office at 282, boulevard Saint-Germain offering to become a spy, and endorsed Ladoux’s claim that his acute intuition told him from the first t
hat Mata Hari was already an enemy agent. The mission Ladoux suggested for France was not an actual mission but only a means of entrapment. Much was made, too, of the check Mata Hari received for five thousand francs through the Dutch consulate in November of 1916. Bouchardon assumed that this money had been pay from German intelligence, but no one ever carried out the simple and obvious step of contacting Bunge or Baron van der Capellan to ascertain the source of those funds—for reasons of security, it was said.
Bouchardon mentioned that Mata Hari went to Kalle, “a formidable adversary [of France] in espionage matters,” in Madrid. Only a few days later, “after freshening up from her coquetries, she entered…into relations with our military attaché Colonel Denvignes, telling him she was in our service and brought to him certain intelligence that she had so skillfully, she pretended, obtained from Kalle.”
To be a coquette and indulge in coquetries had a far more sexual connotation in 1917 than it does today; the slang term for a prostitute, cocotte, was probably derived from coquette. His phrases make it sound as if she hopped immediately from Kalle’s bed to Denvignes’s. Bouchardon’s disapproval of Mata Hari’s free-loving ways was obvious. During questioning, he wrote:
Her long stories left us skeptical. This woman set herself up as a sort of Messalina [the sexually voracious wife of Claudius I], dragging a throng of adorers behind her chariot, on the triumphant road of the theatrical success…. She appears to be as one of these international women—the word is her own—who have become so dangerous since the outbreak of hostilities. The ease with which she expresses herself in several languages, in French especially, her innumerable affairs, the flexibility of her finances, her style, her remarkable intelligence, her immorality, born or acquired, all contributed to make her suspect. It was not possible that the enemy, who searched the five parts of the world to find agents, would leave untouched one with these exceptional qualities and when, after two years of war, the woman Zelle entered into the office of Captain Ladoux, it was certain that she was no virgin in espionage matters.
Though Bouchardon’s opinion was strongly stated in this report, his evidence was very thin. Aside from her intelligence, linguistic skills, immorality, sexual rapacity, and style—none of which indicated that she was a spy—there were only three types of evidence against her. One was the contents of the intercepted telegrams about agent H21; a second was her receipt of monies through the Dutch consulate, the source of which had not been traced; the third was her admission that she had taken money from Kroemer, the German consul, who wanted her to spy for Germany. There was no frequenting of suspicious places, no excessive interest in military matters during her liaisons with officers, no invisible ink, no evidence of particular plans or secrets that had been leaked to the Germans, no demonstrated access to such secrets.
The telegrams were the strongest evidence against her. Considered objectively, if they were real, they were surprisingly rich in unimportant detail and amazingly poor in actual intelligence. With the exception of assertions that H21 was an agent, nothing in the telegrams indicated that she was.
That Mata Hari received money from sources outside of France was very weak evidence because there was no identification of those sources. Many foreign nationals traveling in France during the war had money sent to them from their homeland via their embassy. This was in no way a crime.
As for the twenty thousand francs Mata Hari accepted from Kroemer, her explanation is perfectly in line with her character and her eccentric views about debts and money, to which Bouchardon had had abundant exposure. Moreover, neither Bouchardon nor anyone else could point to a single piece of information that had been given to the Germans to earn the twenty thousand francs. Considering the gross hyperbole that the prosecution later used during Mata Hari’s trial—she was blamed for the deaths of fifty thousand Frenchmen—it is especially revealing that no one ever identified any specific defeat or leak of information that could be blamed on her.
Had Mata Hari been able to withstand the pressures of questioning, isolation, and imprisonment—had she not confessed to taking money from Kroemer—Bouchardon would probably never have discovered that she accepted money from the Germans. Even with modern methods of investigation and intelligence, spies can rarely be convicted unless they break down and confess.
Bouchardon had been convinced of her guilt before he questioned her for the first time, and close exposure to the story of Mata Hari’s life had only hardened his feelings against her. Toward the end of his report, his moral prejudices again became dominant. His wholesale condemnation of Mata Hari drew upon his notes during her interrogation.
One can see that a woman such as Mata Hari, with her successive liaisons, could play a useful role in obtaining the half-secrets that fit together. It is in vain that her partners tried to keep up their guard. In the battle of the sexes, men, so skilled in other things that they are usually the victors, are always defeated.
This dangerous creature is even more so because her primary education permitted her, when she wished, to speak and hold herself correctly in order to create an illusion. Speaking several languages, having lovers in all the capitals of Europe, spread across all the world, there finding discreet collaborations, she flatters herself that she is, in her own words, an “international woman.”
He recommended remanding her for a trial on the charges that she
1. Entered the entrenched camp [war zone] of Paris in December of 1915, in any case within the statute of limitations, in order to obtain documents or information in the interest of Germany, an enemy power.
2. In Holland,…notably during the first half of 1916, procured for Germany, an enemy power, notably in the person of Consul Kroemer, documents or information susceptible to damaging the operations of the army or of compromising the security of places, posts, or other military establishments.
3. In Holland, in May 1916…maintained contact with Germany, an enemy power, in the person of the aforementioned Kroemer, in order to facilitate the enterprises of the enemy.
4. Entered the entrenched camp of war in Paris in June 1916…in order to secure there documents or information in the interests of Germany….
5. In Paris, since May 1916…maintained contact with Germany, with the aim of assisting the enterprises of the aforementioned enemy….
6. In Madrid, in December 1916…maintained contact with Germany…in the person of military attaché Kalle, with the aim of assisting the enterprises of the enemy.
7. In the same circumstances of time and place…delivered to Germany…in the person of military attaché Kalle, documents susceptible to damaging the operations of the army or of endangering the security of places, posts, or other military establishments, said documents or information dealing in particular with interior politics, the spring offensive, the discovery by the French of the secret of German invisible ink, and the disclosure of the name of an agent in the service of England.
8. In Paris, in January 1917…maintained contact with Germany…with the aim of assisting the enterprises of the aforementioned enemy.
There is something strongly religious, almost catechismal, about the litany of “sins of intentionality” allegedly committed by Mata Hari. There are no secrets specified to have been passed, no military operations compromised, no concrete assistance given to the enemy: only intentions and presence in “entrenched camps” such as the city of Paris. Although the charges seem remarkably vague to modern eyes, the military governor of Paris agreed with Bouchardon’s conclusion. He forwarded Mata Hari’s case and charges to the Third Council of War for action.
In the meantime, Mata Hari must have sensed that she was headed for trial, but she still managed to generate occasional bursts of hope. She switched her attention from Bouchardon to Lieutenant André Mornet, her prosecutor, who seemed to have power over her at this point. On June 25 she asked, in a brief sentimental note, if she might be allowed a photograph of Vadime—“one…just one for me?”—out of the many in her possession at the t
ime of her arrest. She also begged him not to call Vadime to testify in court, because she could not see him without weeping.
Over the weeks that passed until her trial, she wrote Mornet asking for clean lingerie, for copies of documents for Clunet, for money so she might marginally improve her life in Saint-Lazare, and for permission to communicate with the outside world, all of which were refused. She also wanted to have additional funds sent from the Netherlands, to help pay her legal costs, arguing: “It is shocking, my lieutenant, how you behave toward me…. If 200 francs is needed to pay the copyist [so that Clunet can have access to documents], take my gold cigarette case which is worth 400 francs. But leave me my lawyer and do not prevent me from defending myself.”
She complained to Mornet, bitterly and frequently, about the filthy conditions and the appalling food, which had not improved:
I am scandalously malnourished…they dare to give us rice water to eat that is so dirty that dogs would refuse it. Each day the quantity of bread grows smaller and smaller…. I cry at this moment from shame that one dares to give me such squalid rations.
The women who are here can again cry out or revolt but I can only weep. The beds are full of vermin. Hunger every day.
I cannot take any more…. Why, my lieutenant, make me suffer this great misery? You can interrogate me but I am always a woman.
On June 30, at long last, the Dutch government expressed some interest in and concern about their long-interred citizen. Only then did the secretary-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs contact Clunet, asking to be kept closely informed of developments and remarking that there had been a number of articles about Mata Hari in Dutch newspapers. Seemingly no diplomatic pressure was brought to bear on the French government for arresting a Dutch citizen without notifying them or for keeping her in prison under horrendous conditions for five months.