Her Darkest Hour: Beautiful and heartbreaking World War 2 historical fiction

by Sharon Maas

  ‘I need you, Victoire. I need you as much as the vendange needs you. Please! There’s the whole aftermath. The police. I need support. What do I tell them?’

  ‘It won’t be a problem, I promise. Remember what the police told you when Silke’s husband killed himself: they’re dropping like flies. Everyone knows the game is up. It was suicide. That’s all you have to say. That he’s been depressed and panicky lately and killed himself. I promise you it’ll be fine.’

  ‘But he won’t have left a letter. Silke’s Klaus did. Apparently, most of them do.’

  ‘Not Kurtz. Kurtz is far too proud to think of you when he commits suicide. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘Still… Stay with me, Victoire. Please. I can’t do this alone.’

  Victoire thought in silence. ‘You’re right, I suppose. You’re too nervous; I’d better stay. Maybe I can get a message to Jacques, tell him to go home for the vendange.’

  She was silent again, and then looked up.

  ‘I’ll do it, I’ll stay. It was my idea, my plan; I need to see it through with you. I can’t let you do this alone.’

  Marie-Claire breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Thank God! I’m really a coward, when it’s all boiled down.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You’ve been very brave, Marie-Claire, and you’ve gone through enough. It’s too much to ask of you, especially since it was all my idea.’

  ‘It’s quite brilliant, though! So simple.’

  ‘Brilliant in its simplicity, right? I’m quite the little devil, it turns out.’

  She removed the pill box from her bag, opened it. The capsule lay in a bed of cotton wool.

  ‘Where did you get it from?’

  ‘Jacques, of course. And he got it from an English girl sent to Alsace as an agent to help the Resistance. Apparently, they give all their agents these deadly pills – suicide pills. They work instantly. She gave one to Jacques, and he gave it to me.’

  She held it up gingerly, between thumb and forefinger. ‘They call it the L-pill, lethal pill. Cyanide. The agents hold it in their gums if they get caught, and if it comes to the crunch – ugh, quite literally, the crunch! – they bite into it and it cracks open and the poison works immediately.’

  ‘It sounds so dangerous! What if they swallow it by mistake?’

  Victoire shook her head. ‘No. See, it has a thin rubber hull. If they do swallow it without cracking it open, it passes through the body without releasing the poison. It’s quite ingenious. Better than being tortured by the Gestapo and possibly giving away vital secrets.’

  Marie-Claire shuddered. ‘I don’t think I could ever do that.’

  ‘If you were an agent, you could…’

  Victoire looked at her and laughed. ‘You look as if you’re about to go to the gallows!’

  ‘It feels like it.’

  It shouldn’t, Marie-Claire. This is the right thing to do. It’s the only thing to do. We can’t let him escape, and escape he will if we allow him to live. He’s still far too powerful. It’s your duty! You must see that!’

  Marie-Claire gulped and nodded. ‘I do see it. It’s just… it’s just such a big thing! Murder!’

  ‘No, it’s not. There’s not much for you to do, really. Just do what you always do, like a devoted wife. So let’s go through it again. You said, when he comes home he first takes a bath?’

  ‘Yes. He has a strict routine on Fridays. He comes home late – he always has dinner before, either at the camp or in the Black Ox in Natzwiller with his colleagues. Then he disappears into his study with a stiff drink to read the week’s Stürmer. He brings that back from the camp. An awful magazine! Full of Nazi propaganda! A real rag.’ Marie-Claire shuddered, and continued. ‘And then he has a bath. Thank goodness for that at least. I don’t have to sleep with the smell of the camp. But you know, I swear, the smell of death is ingrained in his skin. Not even the hottest bath, the sweetest bath salts, can get it all out.’

  ‘And then he goes to bed?’

  ‘Yes. He expects me to be waiting there for him. And then this stiff cold statue of a man turns into a rampant beast forcing himself on me. I don’t want to talk about it. No, don’t look at me with pity. I’ve learnt to deal with it. I can handle it. I can shut myself off while it’s happening. Mercifully, it’s quickly over. And then he falls on his back and goes to sleep immediately.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I lie awake for a few hours more, thinking about it all.’

  ‘But you always prepare his glass of water in advance, right?’

  ‘Yes. He wakes up at about 2 a.m. He goes to the toilet, and then he returns, sits on the side of the bed and drinks it all down. A whole glass.’

  ‘Always?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Bien. As I thought. Well, tonight, you will prepare a very special glass for him.’

  She plunged her hand into her handbag once again and pulled out a small brown paper envelope. She handed it to Marie-Claire.

  ‘Keep this safely. You’ll empty it into the water when you prepare the glass. It’s a strong but tasteless sedative. It’ll put him to sleep in a few minutes. He’ll nod off like a baby.’

  ‘Victoire! Where did you get this?’

  Victoire shrugged. ‘I have friends who work at the hospital, a friend at the hospital pharmacie. I told him it was to kill a Nazi. He was only too willing to help.’

  ‘So,’ said Marie-Claire. ‘I have to prepare the glass, put it on the night table. And then…’ she shuddered.

  Victoire’s eyes gleamed with mirth. ‘And then, Marie-Claire, you will perform your so-called wifely duties for the very last time. I’m sorry, but you must do it, but take comfort in the fact that it will be the very last time. He’ll drop off to sleep as usual. He will wake up, as usual for his nightly bathroom visit. At about 2 a.m., you said.’

  Marie-Claire, deathly white, nodded.

  ‘When he’s fast asleep, you get up and fetch me. I’ll do the rest. I’ll be the killer. You’ll be free, Marie-Claire.’

  Marie-Claire still looked as if the world was about to end. Victoire turned to her and folded her into her arms.

  ‘I know you’re scared. It’s going to be all right. We have to do this.’

  ‘Jacques knows what we’re going to do?’

  For some reason, it was important to her that Jacques should know, that Jacques should be there with her tonight, in spirit.

  Victoire nodded. ‘He knows, and he approves. Jacques said he always knew your heart was in the right place.’

  ‘Jacques said that?’

  ‘He did. He always believed in you, Marie-Claire, even when everyone else doubted, thought you’d turned into a Nazi. Jacques kept faith in you.’

  ‘I suppose I let you all down. I was such a fool.’

  ‘Don’t say such things. That’s in the past. We all make mistakes. The main thing is to learn from them, and grow.’

  ‘You’re so wise, for your eighteen years!’

  Victoire laughed. ‘That’s because I’m the youngest, and able to watch you all making your mistakes! What will he say when you tell him your sister’s staying for the weekend?’

  ‘Frankly, I don’t care. I’ve put up with his friends coming and going all these years. It’s about time I had my own guest. And you’re my sister. He can hardly object.’

  * * *

  Kurtz didn’t object. He came home late that night and barely nodded at Victoire when Marie-Claire introduced her and said she’d be staying the night. He stretched out a stiff hand and shook hers. His grip was cold, hard, almost painful. His face might have been carved from stone. His eyes bored through her without actually acknowledging her. He nodded again and disappeared into his study.

  Marie-Claire fussed around for a while, tidying things, placing his greatcoat on a hanger in the hall, and finally running his bath. After that, she and Victoire sat together in the sitting room, sipping wine and chatting, the picture of placid domesticity. But Marie-Claire’s heart hammered inside
her as she waited, and Victoire, for once, found it hard to keep up a stream of empty chatter on a night like this, on a night when murder had been planned and the victim sat unsuspectingly just metres away. But it had to be done.

  At last he emerged from his study, approached them to say goodnight, shook Victoire’s hand again, and disappeared into the corridor that led to the bedrooms and the bathroom. It was time. The thing had to be done. Marie-Claire stood up. She reached out to Victoire, who clasped her hand and nodded. She walked to the kitchen, then opened the cupboard where the glasses were kept. She filled the water glass and emptied the sachet of powder into it. The water turned cloudy for a moment, but in a few seconds the powder dissolved. The water was as clear as ever.

  Marie-Claire walked into the bedroom and placed the glass, as always, on the night table next to Kurtz’s side of the bed. As always, she placed a folded handkerchief on top of it. Such a simple, basic task, and yet, tonight, it was the first step in a murder plot.

  She walked back to the sitting room. Victoire was waiting for her.

  ‘I’m not ready for bed yet,’ said Victoire. ‘I’ll read a little and then go to bed in about an hour.’

  The sisters hugged and went their separate ways.

  Marie-Claire put on her nightdress and moved over to the washbasin in the corner of the bedroom. She cleaned off her make-up, washed her face, and brushed her teeth. And then she went to bed to wait.

  He came. Her heartbeat, as ever, began to gallop as he approached the bed. He climbed in next to her, but a moment later he was on top of her, heaving, heaving, a rutting brute. As always. But, as always, it was over in less than a minute thankfully. As always, she endured it with eyes shut tight, teeth clamped and breath held. Thank goodness, over the years his needs had reduced and now it was only the one time, not all night long intermittently as it had been at the start of their marriage. She could take it now.

  But this was the last time. The very last time.

  She lay awake for about an hour after he had finished. A sense of calm drifted through her. It was over. The nightmare was over. She could sleep in peace. She drifted off but her sleep was light and nervous and when he got up in the middle of the night, her heart began to madly thump, so loud she was sure he could hear it. Yet all was as normal. He stood up, walked to the door, into the corridor, closed the bedroom door. This was it then. Off to have his nightly wee. The last one ever.

  She waited, struggling to control her nervousness, to keep from trembling. Waited for his return. Her heart hammered palpably. She waited. And waited. The wait, tonight, seemed endless. It was endless. Something wasn’t right, surely. Something wasn’t normal. As she waited, she felt her heart thundering away within her chest, as if it knew, it understood – tonight was different.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours, but might only have been minutes in her heightened state of alarm, she heard the click of the door opening. He was back. She held her breath, but then forced herself to breath slowly, rhythmically, as if she were asleep. No break in the routine, Victoire had said, but he had already broken the routine by this unusually long visit to the bathroom – or was that just her imagination? She couldn’t tell. She must pretend to be asleep, though she was sure that he, too, must hear the hammering from inside her. She tried to breathe slowly, rhythmically. Audibly.

  He sat down on the bedside. It took tremendous effort now not to change the rhythm of her breathing, yet again, not to sigh in relief. And now – she could almost hear him reaching for the glass. Yes, he had done it. He had raised it to his lips. She couldn’t see, turned away from him as she was, but she heard him take a sip, and then swallow, gulping it all down. Glug, glug, glug. It was done.

  He climbed back into bed, pulled the covers over himself. She listened to his breathing. To the rhythm, the depth of it. As each breath grew longer, so did hers. For her, it was a slow melting of her body into relief as he breathed his way into a deep, dark sleep. He began to snore. It was done. Tentatively she turned over in the bed, reached out and touched him. He did not stir. She grasped his arm and shook him, daring him to wake up, ravage her again, but he slept on, heavy as a log, unconscious, lost to the world. It was time.

  She slipped out of bed, ran to the guest room, opened the door, and cried out, ‘Victoire, Victoire! It’s done! He’s asleep! We’ve done it!’

  But Victoire did not leap from her bed and run to the door, she did not seem in a hurry at all to complete the deed. A soft groan came from the bed, and then a sob, and then the whispered words, ‘D’accord. I’m coming.’

  Marie-Claire, standing at the door, watched as Victoire slowly got out of bed, and in the darkness – for only the hallway light was on – opened the night table drawer, removed an object and closed it again.

  Victoire was now at her side, in her nightdress, brushing past her into the hallway, but something was wrong. Very wrong. They should be exchanging hugs and words of triumph and conspiratorial grins of glee by now. They should be giggling in nervous excitement, or in exultation – Kurtz would be dead in a matter of minutes! – but Victoire was silent as she hurried ahead of Marie-Claire, her face hidden from view, her hair, a mass of tangled curls that fell forward as she hastened ahead. There was something odd about Victoire’s movements, her haste: jerky, vehement, almost manic. This was not the cool, collected Victoire of earlier. Something was very wrong.

  Victoire strode ahead of Marie-Claire into the bedroom, her face still hidden from view by shadows and by that wild mane of hair and by movements that somehow seemed unnatural, though Marie-Claire could not tell exactly how. It was a feeling more than a logical observation. Everything felt wrong, and suddenly, Marie-Claire felt a cold chill run through her, and she was terrified.

  They reached the bed. Kurtz lay there, fast asleep, his face relaxed, his mouth slightly open. A dribble of spittle lay on his bottom lip. His jaw hung loose.

  Without looking up, Victoire signalled to Marie-Claire and said, ‘Come behind me, and hold up his head for me. Hold it steady. It’s crucial.’ Her voice was strangely slurred, her vocals unclear, almost muffled, and her face still turned away.

  ‘No! I can’t! I can’t touch him! Not his head!’ Marie-Claire cried.

  ‘Don’t be such a chicken!’ cried Victoire. ‘We’re in this together! Look at me!’

  Only now did Victoire turn her face and looked Marie-Claire straight in the eye. Marie-Claire gasped. Across Victoire’s cheek was a huge red splodge, in the vague shape of a hand. A bruise had formed beneath one of her eyes; and yet, both eyes shone with something beyond pain, beyond anger. They shone with triumph.

  ‘Yes,’ said Victoire, her eyes meeting Marie-Claire’s. ‘Yes, he came to me. And yes, I fought him off, but in the end he won the fight, and had his way with me. Or so he thought. Because he is about to breathe his last. Hold his head up!’

  She opened her hand to show Marie-Claire the thing she had retrieved from the drawer: the tiny cyanide capsule.

  And again, stunned with the realisation of the unplanned horrors of the night, Marie-Claire did as she was told. She held Kurtz’s head steady. Victoire pulled latex gloves over her hands. She held the capsule carefully in the fingers of her right hand while gently pulling open his jaw with her left. She placed the capsule between his back teeth and pressed his jaw together.

  ‘For Juliette,’ Victoire whispered. ‘And all the others.’

  The glass crunched as it broke between his teeth.

  ‘Now you can let go,’ she said to Marie-Claire, who did so with a shudder of revulsion.

  Kurtz’s head fell back, and now lay heavy against the pillow. They watched in silence, arms wrapped tightly around each other. His breathing stuttered, his body gave a slight jerk, and then there was stillness. Victoire let go of Marie-Claire, bent over him and pulled a sheet over his head. She then picked up the glass from the night table and handed it to Marie-Claire.

  ‘Wash it out thoroughly, and put it back on the night table, full
of water. Your story is: he must have woken up in the night as usual, gone to the lavatory, lay down again and taken the capsule, and bit into it, without water. They’ll find splinters from the crushed capsule in his mouth; they’ll know it was a suicide pill. You heard nothing; as always, you slept like a log. You only found him when you woke up this morning. You screamed in horror, tried to wake him, shook his head, his body, but he was dead. All you did then was pull a sheet over his head. That’s your story, Marie-Claire, and you must stick to it. It’s vital.’

  Marie-Claire nodded. She started to speak. ‘But—’

  ‘But listen. I can’t stay with you as planned. I can’t let them see me like this. It will raise questions.’ She pointed to her face. ‘We have to avoid questions. So, in a few hours I will slip out of the house, before dawn. You will tell them I had to catch the first train back to Colmar. For the vendange.’

  ‘I… I can help a bit,’ said Marie-Claire. ‘I have some make-up, concealer. I… I sometimes used it, when he got rough and my face was bruised the next day. It doesn’t hide everything, but it helps.’

  ‘Good idea, thanks. We’ll do that in a while. I’ll take the stairs down, so as not to wake the concierge with that clanking lift. I’ll let myself out the front door. Perhaps you can come down, and lock it behind me?’

  Marie-Claire nodded.

  Victoire continued, giving instructions as if ticking off the programme, as if, in the minutes after her assault, she had simply rescheduled the night. ‘Right. Then, at about eight o’clock, you will call the police. You will be in hysterics – you just found your husband dead in your bed! But your story will ring true, and they will believe you.

  ‘But now, we will both go back to bed and try to get a few hours’ sleep. No, Marie-Claire; don’t weep. You don’t have to stay with him. You can come and sleep in my bed; this one’s polluted. Remember, when you were very small, how I would crawl into your bed at night and you would throw me out, and then I would crawl to Juliette’s bed and she would let me sleep with her?’ She chuckled wryly. ‘Now it’s the reverse, isn’t it! You’ll come into my bed. Come on, big sister, come with me. Everything’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right. Leave that piece of scum behind.’