Gabby started in that direction, but the redhead yanked her back, her fingers wrapped tightly around Gabby’s upper arm. “Not that way.” She jabbed her finger toward the next room along. “In there.” Then she stalked into the drawing room and slammed the door in Gabby’s face.
So she wasn’t to see Rafael? What did that mean? Was it Berger behind that door? Gabby wiped her palms on her skirt and licked her lips. This is for Jack, she reminded herself. Then she took a deep breath and approached the room the redhead had indicated.
Before she could knock, the door opened and a Nazi officer in a uniform she did not recognize loomed before her. He was large, of middle age. Not Gestapo, but not a military man, either. Was he there for her? She stumbled back, heart hammering.
His eyes narrowed. They were a cold, lucent green and she couldn’t help but feel he read her mind. Then he smiled and courteously stepped aside to let her pass. Tossing a laughing comment in German over his shoulder to Berger, the officer left.
“Well, don’t just stand there. Come in.” Berger’s lair was vast, with a high ceiling and the kind of gilt-edged paneling you saw in palaces. Still shaken from her encounter with the German officer, Gabby crossed the polished parquet floor toward the enormous desk at which Berger sat, her footsteps echoing through the space.
Berger might have been cast as a gangster in a movie. His eyes were narrow and sunken beneath black brows, his nose had been broken at least once, and his lips were thick and laced with a sneer. He leaned back in his chair and threw down his pen. “The concierge from the rue Royale.”
Nerves jangling, Gabby clutched her purse tightly. “I think Rafael must have told you about the medicine I need. He promised to get it for me.” She licked her lips. “I—I can pay.”
“It is true, mademoiselle,” said Berger, “that there is very little I cannot obtain.” He took out a gold case, drew a cigarette from it, and stuck it in his mouth, then offered the case to her.
She leaned across the desk to select a cigarette, equally from politeness and from a hope that the nicotine might calm her nerves. From a distance at the café, the gang leader had seemed affluent and smooth as oil. Only up close did she note the unsettling void behind his eyes.
When he snapped the case shut, she saw that it bore a coat of arms. Not his, she presumed.
A cry split the air. This time, there was no mistaking the noise from below. It was definitely a masculine scream. Gabby’s hand shook so hard as she raised it to get a light that Berger grabbed her wrist to steady her.
His gaze lifted to hers and the lighter flame danced in his dark eyes. The cigarette tip flared to life and Gabby drew smoke deep into her lungs, fighting the urge to cough. Berger released her wrist. “Are you here to waste my time, mademoiselle?”
“Of course not. Please, I . . .” She fished in her purse and brought out a small velvet bag. “I have—”
“Put that away.” He seemed annoyed at her. “I don’t trade with the likes of you. Sit down.”
She did as she was told, sinking onto a chair opposite him.
“What I need,” said Berger, steepling his fingers together, “is not some little trinket from your grandmother’s jewel box, but information. As the concierge of a large apartment building, surely you see things. Hear things, too.”
An icicle pierced her chest. He wanted her to inform on her tenants. Did he mean to torture the truth out of her? She thought of the screams she’d heard and inwardly shuddered.
She tried not to let her terror show. “My tenants are a dull, solidly bourgeois lot, Monsieur Berger. Anyone who is left in that building is either too old for intrigue or too comfortable with the occupation to make trouble.”
After a pause, Berger asked, “You are a patriot, mademoiselle?”
“I am a survivor, monsieur. And there is one very dear to me who needs that medicine. Name your price. I will do anything, inform on anyone, but I cannot make things up or tell you what I do not know.”
Had she been wrong to offer him nothing at all? Could she not have reported the way Madame Vasseur had violated the blackout restrictions on too many occasions to count, or those who secretly listened to the British wireless broadcasts when they visited a certain restaurant on the rue de Rivoli?
But Jack would never forgive her if she traded some innocent person’s safety for his. She would never forgive herself. She had to find another way.
“I can’t give you what you want,” she said. “Believe me, I wish I could.” She leaned forward to stub out her cigarette in the ashtray on his desk and rose, unsteadily, to her feet.
Berger shrugged. “Until you bring me information of value, Mademoiselle Foucher, I am afraid I cannot help you.” He flicked a hand in dismissal. “Now get out.”
As soon as Gabby left the apartment, her knees went. She grabbed the bannister for support. Her legs were like jelly, but she had to get out of there.
No more screams now. Why had they stopped? Had the victim passed out? Had they killed him? She eased down the staircase on tiptoe, like a child in a storybook afraid of waking the monster. At the foot of the stairs, she made a beeline for the street door, but she didn’t quite reach it. A hand gripped her arm in a bruising hold. Sheer terror shot through her. She opened her mouth to scream, but a gloved hand clamped down upon it.
“Apologies for scaring you, mademoiselle,” drawled a voice in her ear, “but I think I have what you need.”
Chantilly, June 1944
YVETTE
The day Yvette left for Chantilly, there were a few German patrols but little other traffic north of Paris on the roads. The atmosphere was tense inside the motorcar. Yvette was still stewing over Vidar. His warning about Chantilly played on her mind, chiming as it did with Monsieur Lelong’s reservations—and, of course, with her own fears. Had she made a mistake coming along?
But Catherine Dior had been called away to Callian for an indefinite period. There was no courier work for Yvette without Catherine. She couldn’t remain idle in Paris while this opportunity presented itself, could she? Even if she achieved nothing in Chantilly, she couldn’t be worse off than she was in Paris.
Louise Dulac’s German maid was coldly furious at Yvette’s accompanying her mistress on this jaunt. However, the actress did not seem to notice. She made Helga sit up front with Gruber’s driver, while she and Yvette occupied the back, deepening Helga’s displeasure.
The movie star did not speak but sank into reverie, gazing out of the window from behind white-framed sunglasses. Yvette had no choice but to do the same. At least Gruber had not come with them, having business in Paris to conclude before motoring up later.
Acting as a courier should have been enough of a challenge for any girl. Why hadn’t it been enough for Yvette? Was it the glamor of the movie star and her wealthy, powerful friends that drew her? Maybe at first. But really, it was the opportunity to use her brain, the chance to actually understand the information she passed along, the chance to make a real difference instead of remaining a small cog in a large machine. Vanity, Gabby would say. Perhaps she’d be right.
They approached the Chantilly hippodrome, slowing to a crawl behind a queue of vehicles that were cruising toward the racecourse, searching for parking. Yvette peered out at the top-hat-and-tailed gentlemen, the ladies who stepped daintily over the lawns in their exquisite ensembles: floaty summer dresses or suits with flaring peplums and straight skirts to just below the knee, their hats sporting large bows or feathers or netting. All were drifting toward an arena that looked more like a small kingdom than a racecourse, with its ornate stone grandstands and view of the magnificent Chantilly Castle beyond.
Did these people ever think about their starving compatriots, who had been reduced to eating horse meat in the days when there was any to be had?
“Some things never change,” murmured Dulac, and Yvette wondered if she detected irony in her tone. “I’ll be attending the races tomorrow. Yvette, I rely on you to help me look my best.”
“At last,” said Louise Dulac as they turned off the main road, onto an avenue of chestnut trees. Ahead, Yvette saw a formal gatehouse with an armed patrol of German soldiers.
As the guards checked their papers, Yvette craned her neck to catch a glimpse of their destination. Beyond a stream with a pretty stone bridge lay the Château de Saint Firmin. It was not a vast, fortified palace like Chantilly but an elegantly proportioned mansion with white walls and a blue roof dotted with dormer windows and chimneys. The house was surrounded by lush green countryside, and it felt like the most peaceful place in the world—if you didn’t count the sentries with machine guns, of course.
The guards waved them through. Yvette’s anticipation built as the tires of the big black Citroën crunched discreetly along the avenue, before rolling to a stop outside the front entrance to the château. Might she discover something here that would make a real difference? Surely at such a time, with the Allies having landed at Normandy, the German ambassador would not plan a gathering at his country house solely for pleasure?
A lady Yvette thought must be the ambassador’s wife came out to greet Louise, but Herr Abetz himself was not there. As the driver came around to open the door for Louise to get out, Helga remained where she was, so Yvette followed suit.
When the hostess and her guest had moved into the house, Helga alighted. Yvette slid from the car and stretched, looking around with interest. The wide shutters on the doors and windows lent the house an elegantly casual air. A peaceful retreat from the tension in Paris. She could see why King Otto chose to spend time here.
“Let me take those.” Yvette took a couple of hatboxes the German maid had been struggling with but received a withering stare in return. The housekeeper, a tall, buxom woman with an air of command, met them at the entrance and exchanged some conversation with Helga in German as she showed them into the house.
As they moved through the hall and up the staircase, Yvette noticed gilt-framed portraits crowding the walls and more gilding swirling in bas-relief semicircles above pocket doors. It was all very grand yet somehow casual, too. A couple strolled past them in the corridor, dressed all in summer whites, as if on their way to a game of tennis.
Entering the movie star’s bedchamber was like stepping into a mermaid’s grotto, with its sea-foam walls and clamshell bed with oyster satin sheets. A fitting setting for a screen goddess, perhaps, but not to Yvette’s taste.
The room had a spectacular view that stretched over lawns and woods to the rooftops of Chantilly Castle. Yvette opened a window and inhaled deeply the fresh country air, then chuckled to herself. Definitely a distinct whiff of manure, so perhaps not so fresh. They were close to the Chantilly racing stables, after all.
A table was set up on the terrace below, and guests milled about, playing boules on the lawn or refreshing themselves with champagne cocktails from the bar cart. Everyone was dressed in cream or white, like the couple they’d passed in the corridor. They looked as if they hadn’t a care in the world, as if the war didn’t exist. Perhaps she’d been wrong to imagine that important business might be transacted here.
When Dulac’s trunks were delivered to the room, Yvette helped Helga unpack. She slid a glance at the other woman, who was roughly sorting through Dulac’s couture garments as if they were burlap sacks. A far cry from the reverence with which the seamstresses and vendeuses at Lelong treated the creations of Balmain and Dior. Yvette curled her lip at the Chanel costumes mademoiselle had brought. Everyone knew the famous designer had taken a German officer as a lover.
However, she refrained from comment, and the two of them worked in silence for over an hour before Helga stabbed a finger at an outfit and gabbled at Yvette in German.
Yvette blinked at her. “I don’t understand.”
Scowling, Helga repeated what she had said, only louder, as if that would help. This behavior was particularly annoying when Yvette knew Dulac spoke to the maid in French half the time and Helga seemed to understand everything her mistress said.
Eventually, Yvette figured out that Helga was asking which costume Dulac should change into when she came upstairs. “This one, I think.” Yvette pointed to the grey silk, a perfect cocktail gown. “Show me what jewels she has brought.”
They went on like that for more than a week, dressing and undressing the movie star. Yvette had begun to think she had misjudged the situation entirely. She had done her best to watch the guests in her spare moments, but her German was almost nonexistent, so she was forced to admit that she was not much use as a spy in this setting. She tried to memorize the guest list and to observe who conducted private meetings with whom, but that was about all she could think of to do while she waited for Louise Dulac to put her to good use.
She was a little surprised that Herr Abetz had not asked for her, since it was at his request that she had come to Chantilly in the first place. However, when she raised the issue on one of the rare occasions she and Louise Dulac were alone, Louise replied, “His Excellency has a lot on his mind. He seems to have forgotten about you, for the moment. I’d like to keep it that way.”
One evening, Yvette laid out an ice-blue gown, designed for Louise Dulac by none other than Monsieur Dior himself, and chose a spectacular parure of diamonds to go with it.
“Too showy,” said the actress when she saw the jewels Yvette had chosen. “I want to wear the pearls tonight.”
With a smirk of triumph at her rival, Helga swapped the diamonds for the pearls. Yvette wondered why the actress had brought the diamonds if she didn’t intend to wear them, but she was almost past caring what Louise Dulac wore. She wanted to go home. This had all been a waste of time.
Louise went to the mirror and checked her reflection, smoothing her finely plucked eyebrows with her little finger and touching up her lipstick. But as she began to undress, her manner underwent an abrupt change.
She snapped at Helga over trivialities. Hadn’t she laundered yesterday’s linen yet? She was a lazy good-for-nothing. Where was her tourmaline ring? “And just look at this gown. It’s crushed!” She held up one of the sleeves of the gown they’d laid out. It was riddled with creases.
The maid stammered, “Aber—”
The actress put up a hand. “Don’t give me excuses. You must take it downstairs and press it properly.” As the maid, flushing with mortification, snatched up the cocktail dress, the actress said, “Run my bath first, you stupid girl.”
Yvette couldn’t help feeling sympathy for Helga. She had seen Dulac deliberately crush the sleeve of the gown in her fist while Helga had bent to pick up the clothes the actress had been strewing around the floor.
Completely unself-conscious, Louise stripped naked and put on the green silk dressing gown Helga had laid out for her.
When the bath was running, the maid took the cocktail gown and draped it over her arm.
“Oh, and press the cream blouse for tomorrow while you’re there,” ordered Dulac over her shoulder as she stalked into the en suite. “Come in, Yvette, and shut the door. Here, take my robe.” Yvette held the garment for her as she slipped out of it and stepped into the tub.
Yvette folded the robe neatly and placed it on the vanity. As Dulac sank down low in the deep, luxurious tub, bubbles billowed and fluffed around her, but she did not relax. She appeared on edge, her jaw tense.
Yvette reached for the taps to turn off the flow but Dulac said in a low voice, “Keep the water running. We need to talk.”
She obeyed, hope surging. Here it was. The moment she’d been waiting for.
Fixing her gaze on Yvette’s, Louise said, “There’s something I need you to take back to Paris. There is a bicycle for you in the stables, ready to go—” She broke off as the door to her suite opened and shut. “That was quick.”
However, it was not Helga who entered the steamy
en suite but Gruber. He glanced at Yvette. “Out.” He said it in German, but there was no mistaking his meaning.
Dulac assumed her brilliant, glittering smile. “Thank you, Yvette. You are dismissed.”
Chapter Seventeen
Chantilly, June 1944
YVETTE
When Yvette returned to Dulac’s bedchamber to help her dress for dinner, Gruber was still there, lounging at his ease, a cigarette burning in the same hand that held a glass of amber liquid.
Dulac was already dressed. Perhaps she had not summoned Yvette again because of Gruber’s presence. The movie star sent a quick glance her way, but she didn’t need to signal a warning. Yvette wasn’t about to betray her to that Nazi.
When Helga had finished with her mistress’s hair, she brought the pearls she had chosen to wear. The maid opened the diamond clasp and secured the rope of lustrous gems around Dulac’s throat.
“Not like that!” snapped Dulac, her earlier bad temper resurfacing. “I want them wound three times, like a choker.”
The maid unclasped the pearls and began winding them around the movie star’s elegant neck.
“What are you trying to do, strangle me?” Louise slid her index finger between her throat and the pearls and gave a sharp tug.
The string broke. The necklace flew from Louise’s neck, landing on the polished wood floor with a clatter. A couple of the pearls came loose and rolled beneath the couch. Louise swore with amazing fluency, using words Yvette had never heard a lady say before.
With a cry, Helga bent to snatch up the fallen necklace. Luckily, each pearl was secured with an individual knot, so only two of them came off. Yvette felt around beneath the couch until she found them.
As she stood up, Yvette glanced at Gruber, but he seemed preoccupied, as if their small crisis was of little consequence compared with what was on his mind. He finished his drink, stubbed out his cigarette, and left the room.
Sisters of the Resistance Page 19
