The Milliner's Secret

by Natalie Meg Evans

  ‘A victory parade. That is the noise of a thousand goose-stepping boots.’

  ‘Noëlle, no!’ Coralie stopped the child from reaching out to pet the man’s dog, a wiry terrier. Friends were always telling her that she was over-protective. How stupid to be afraid of a dog when armed soldiers were about to engulf them. La Passerinette was so close. She could see the Madeleine at the top of rue Royale. A trick of perspective put it right between the French naval headquarters and the Hôtel de Crillon. Five minutes’ walk at most.

  The old man followed her gaze. ‘The Crillon’s theirs now, headquarters to the German commander of Paris. German commander of Paris.’ He turned away, calling his dog to heel.

  Coralie’s nerve broke. ‘Let’s get home.’

  It was five days before she tried again. A little after midday, alone this time, she unlocked La Passerinette’s front door and called, ‘Violaine? It’s me.’

  A terrible stench stopped her dead.

  She thanked the caution that had made her leave Noëlle at home. Swatting through a wall of flies, she went straight upstairs to Violaine’s flat. Getting no answer to her knock, she tried the door. It was unlocked. ‘Violaine?’ Dust on the dining-table and a pot of mould-pocked coffee suggested the place had been empty for some time. Had Violaine joined the mass exodus after all? It seemed so unlikely – a stampeding crowd would be Violaine’s worst scenario – but she might have been swept along in the frenzy . . . But that smell, and the flies . . . A more probable story offered itself. Tying a silk scarf around her lower face, Coralie went downstairs to face the inevitable.

  At the door to the ground-floor workroom, Coralie selected a key from the bunch in her hand. She unlocked, pushed, stepped in. An outrush of flies and a stupefying reek made her gag.

  Violaine lay curled on the floor. A basket was upended, something vile oozing out of it. Mackerel, rotting. Afraid to touch, even to look, Coralie darted a glance around a room as familiar to her as the back of her hand. It was empty. Hats, blocks, machines and tools, gone. Rolls of fabric, gone. Another story began to form in Coralie’s mind. Robbers, looters. Violaine knocked down, locked in.

  The workroom had no window, just louvred slats that sucked light from a walled courtyard beyond. The slats were open and a chair had been pulled up beneath them. Violaine must have screamed for help but, with a million people leaving town all at once, her cries had gone unheard. Without water—

  Muttering unintelligible prayers, Coralie crouched beside her assistant. She brushed the hair off Violaine’s face and felt warm flesh. Lifting an eyelid, she saw the pupil flicker. ‘Violaine? Thank God! I’ll get help. No – water first.’ Upstairs, she filled the first suitable vessel she found and a minute later was spooning water between cracked lips. ‘I’m going to get help. Stay here.’

  Stay here? Shock made you say the most stupid things. ‘It may take a little while because—’ No. Not the moment to reveal that Paris had become German. She considered knocking on doors higher up the building, but brooding silence hinted at abandonment. Only Violaine still lived there, she realised.

  A minute later, she was haring down rue Royale towards place de la Concorde, wishing she’d put on flat sandals and a more sensible hat. At least she’d worn a loose summer dress. She could have gone to the nearest police préfecture, but knowing Violaine needed help fast meant she was going to the one place she knew had working telephones. The day after the invasion, German soldiers had been seen laying cables across the courtyard of the American Embassy on avenue Gabriel in order to connect the Hôtel de Crillon to the exchange. Let the Germans call an ambulance.

  Sunshine lanced off the rifle barrels of the guards marching up and down in front of the Crillon. Coralie approached, eyes lowered. So far, she’d found the Germans to be polite, respectful, even. She supposed that finding Paris open to them, they felt more like guests than conquerors. And they were men, after all. At just the right moment, she’d look up and smile. The hat she was wearing, which Una had christened ‘Daytime Seduction’, would declare her to be the opposite of a threat. She’d be waved into the gilded lobby.

  ‘Halt, nicht weiter!’

  Gun barrels pointed at her. Not sure whether she was meant to raise her hands, she explained the emergency in the German she’d learned in her time with Dietrich. She was told to go to the nearest police prefecture, talk to her own people. She stood her ground, mostly because she was afraid to turn her back on those guns. ‘I need an ambulance or a car.’

  Go to your own people.

  ‘But it’s urgent! My friend is—’ She stopped as a new voice demanded to know what the disturbance was. The guards leaped to attention

  ‘Generalmajor!’ the soldier rattled out, in a defensive volley. ‘This woman—’

  ‘Stand aside. Let me see her.’

  A tall man in a blue-grey uniform strung with medals, a high-peaked cap and black leather boots subjected Coralie to a long stare. The silver eagle above his breast pocket, the Iron Cross in the apex of his collar, the blue and gold cross hanging over the breastbone marked out his rank. But it was his eyes, firing with recognition beneath his black visor, that told her the waiting was over. He was back.

  She said in German, ‘I need help.’ She so nearly added, ‘Dietrich.’

  ‘Come.’ He indicated she should follow him into the hotel.

  ‘It’s Violaine,’ she said. She was addressing his back. ‘At La Passerinette?’

  He walked on, boots hard on chequered marble, forcing her to keep up until they reached an inner office, where military men and a few young women in uniform sat in front of banks of telephones. He called one of the men over, rattled out an instruction, then left.

  She tried to follow but the telephone operator caught her arm. Her German deserted her, so she explained her dilemma in slow French. The man clearly grasped her meaning because he noted down her request for medical assistance, asking for the precise address on boulevard de la Madeleine. He would deal with the matter, he said, but she must stay here. ‘Order of Generalmajor von Elbing.’

  ‘But my friend’s lying on the floor. I have to go to her.’

  ‘You do not understand, Fräulein. You are under arrest.’

  CHAPTER 16

  She took the seat offered to her, assuming the tidy posture she’d learned in Javier’s salon, and wondered what Dietrich would say to the idiot who’d misunderstood his orders. Arrested? For wearing a pillbox hat with a rose silk tassel? For running in a pink dress with a frivolous pattern of navy-blue cherries? Or because her skirt revealed tanned legs from the knee down? Perhaps she’d offended a new puritan code. Judging by those girls in their uniforms, chic had not made its way into Germany. But, actually, the dress was a boon, with sunshine pouring through west-facing windows. She ignored disapproving glances from the buttoned-up female operators, and she felt like saying, ‘You’re in Paris now. Get used to us.’

  Poor girls, though. In grey smocks, ankle socks and black lace-up shoes, they looked as if they’d been dragged out of reform school and forbidden to smile.

  She amused herself by wondering what Javier would have designed for them. When that palled, she twisted the coral bracelet that had been Ramon’s wedding gift to her. Irritably, then anxiously. Perhaps an hour after she’d sat down – she hadn’t worn her watch that day – her name was called. Two men in plain suits stood in the doorway. One beckoned.

  She got up eagerly. ‘Where is D— I mean, Generalmajor von Elbing?’ she asked in German.

  They said nothing, but ushered her down a corridor and on to rue Royale. The sight of a black car swallowed her concerns for Violaine, replacing them with inward-pointing fear. ‘Where are you taking me?’

  ‘Please get in, Fräulein.’

  It was a long time since she’d ridden so comfortably, but all she could do was envisage a series of ever more menacing destinations. Every street now had a German name sign. She took stock of them as they drove towards the river. At pont de la Concorde, a moto
rcycle sentry signalled them on. Once over the bridge, they swept down boulevard Saint-Germain.

  Then they were on boulevard Raspail and in a moment, they’d reach the intersection with rue de Vaugirard. The hairs rose on the back of her neck. Had Dietrich come to Paris to deal with Ottilia’s art collection? Had he found signs of Ottilia living in the house? And . . . Oh, God. What if Ottilia had given more pictures away and Dietrich thought she, Coralie, was to blame? That would account for his frigidity.

  To her relief, the car stopped in boulevard Raspail, in front of the Hôtel Lutetia. A swish place. She’d been there a couple of times with Teddy and, suddenly, she was glad she’d worn high heels and a snazzy hat. If Dietrich meant to meet her here for a drink, she didn’t want to look like a drab who had spent two years pining for him. She intended to rage at him, let him know what she thought of him, while appearing peerlessly groomed.

  A haven for foreign refugee artists, the Lutetia had been very much Teddy’s kind of place. But as she climbed out of the car, she saw that it had suffered the same fate as other grand hotels. From its windows spewed elongated swastikas, like stair carpet spat out to dry.

  In the marble foyer, icons of Nazism were everywhere, superimposed on the lush decor. An immaculately suited man was being walked towards them in the grip of two soldiers, and for a moment, Coralie thought they’d collide. His face was sheened with sweat. She’d seen such a face once on Tooley Street, when a man had been knocked down by a tram. Shock. Shock and a haywire heartbeat. As he was dragged past, the stranger mumbled in a strong Spanish accent, ‘This is wrong! So wrong!’

  ‘Come.’ One of her escorts urged her forward. From the heart of the building came the clink of crockery, the growl of voices, alerting her to the fact that the dining room was nearby and she was hungry – until the smell of baked fish collided with the recent memory of Violaine’s shopping basket.Those flies. Her gorge rose and she wasn’t sure she’d hold it down if they took her nearer the kitchen.

  No – they were ushering her up the central staircase, then up another set of stairs, and another, to where the decor was plainer, the corridors narrower. She felt every passing stranger’s scrutiny and wondered how she looked to them. Flushed pink, probably, to match her outfit. She’d walked, then run, on a hot June day and sat in a stuffy room without a mouthful of water. And another thing – ‘Gentlemen, if you don’t mind, I need the Ladies.’

  Instead, she found herself in a room whose single window was blanked out with brown paper. One of the men switched on a light, revealing two chairs and a desk. Not wasting money on furniture, obviously. They hadn’t even run to a lampshade.

  A moment later, the door closed and she was alone.

  Locked in. Hammering, she shouted, ‘My friend is dying. Let me out!’

  She was still shouting when a key turned and Dietrich came into the room. He was still in uniform, his cap under his arm. ‘Sit down,’ he said.

  What happened to ‘please’? She’d comply when he asked nicely.

  He took the seat at the far side of the desk and laid a book in front of him. It reminded Coralie of the ledger they’d compiled together in rue de Vaugirard.

  He said in French, ‘Stand, if you like, but you will be here longer.’

  ‘Did you call an ambulance?’

  ‘Sit down, Fräulein.’

  Fräulein? Had he forgotten their hours in bed together? But she sat, making a show of smoothing her skirt so he’d think she was irritated, not scared. Dietrich leaned forward, clasping his hands in front of him. He had on the same watch as before, an aviator’s watch, with its well-worn strap. Bare light sucked definition from his face and she couldn’t tell if he’d aged in the thirty-five months they’d been apart. Only that his hair seemed a little greyer.

  ‘Who’s going to start the conversation?’

  ‘This is not a conversation. Your full name, Fräulein.’

  All right. Silly games it is. She opened her bag, to extract her identity card. The bag he’d bought her, from Hermès.

  ‘I said, state your name.’

  Shocked, she stammered, ‘Coralie de—’ No, stop. He meant her real name, the one he’d invented for her. ‘Marie-Caroline de—’ Stop again. Her card bore a different identity, these days. ‘Cazaubon. I am Madame Cazaubon.’

  Hazel eyes that had so often laughed with her, so often dilated with excitement or softened in passion, bored into her. ‘You are married but you wear no ring.’

  Stupid to look down, as if a gold band might materialise. ‘It lives in a drawer. We’re separated.’

  ‘Your husband’s name?’

  Ah . . . was this about Ramon’s political affiliations? Some of the groups he’d supported in Paris had been quite extreme. ‘I told you, we’re not together.’

  ‘If you don’t tell me his name, it will be easy enough to find out, but it might take several hours. If you are content to remain—’

  ‘Ramon. Ramon Cazaubon.’

  ‘Has he a middle name?’

  ‘Course he has. He’s French, isn’t he?’ She hadn’t meant to sound quite so insolent, but her mouth was so dry she could taste her tongue. A glass of water would be nice, if a cup of tea was out of the question. ‘Maurice André.’ Or was it the other way round? She’d only heard Ramon’s full set of names on their wedding day and when registering Noëlle’s birth.

  Dietrich unscrewed the top of a fountain pen and wrote down her reply. ‘Your date of birth?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have to tell you that.’

  ‘Date of birth.’

  ‘Eighth of November, 19 . . .’ Her mind went blank. In the end, she had to look at her identity card. ‘1915. You’re making me nervous and I’m worried about Mademoiselle Beaumont. I need a drink, too. I mean, a glass—’

  ‘Your place of birth?’

  ‘Um, Nivelles.’ Or was it Tubize? ‘Nivelles, in Brabant, Belgium. But you know that already, Dietrich!’

  ‘Address me as Generalmajor von Elbing.’

  She stared at him. Were they playing a game of pretending to be strangers?

  More rapid questions followed. Her parents’ professions, her place of baptism, her schooling, her training. After that, questions about Ramon. Age, date of birth – thank God that was easy to remember, being 31 October, All Saints’ Eve. Hallowe’en. She’d often told Ramon he was her nightmare.

  ‘His profession?’

  ‘Um . . . the army, just now.’ Ramon’s civilian job had carried a long-winded title which she’d never managed to capture. ‘Before, he worked for SNCF – for the railways? He was an engineer. To do with bridges and tunnels.’

  ‘A maintenance engineer?’

  ‘He . . . No. He made drawings with calculations . . . I didn’t really understand it.’

  Something touched Dietrich’s lips. A smile? ‘Shall we say he is a structural surveyor, Frau Cazaubon?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry. I don’t know where he’s posted, I swear it. We don’t hear from him.’

  The shutters fell back down. ‘We?’

  ‘I have a daughter.’

  ‘Name.’

  ‘Noëlle Una.’ Watching Dietrich’s pen, fear spread to her nerve endings. Her child’s existence was now on paper. ‘Why are you writing that down? Who are you now?’

  ‘What I always was.’ Dietrich wrote on for a minute or so, then laid down his pen. ‘Why, if you live south of the river, were you at the Hôtel de Crillon?’

  She told him that La Passerinette now belonged to her. ‘You know it’s on Madeleine, so when I needed a working telephone, I ran to place de la Concorde. I told your people that.’

  ‘You bought La Passerinette from the Baronne von Silberstrom? Where is she?’

  A warning bell tolled. Dietrich’s features remained smooth, but what of the soul within? As Teddy had once brutally pointed out, she knew nothing about this man.

  This interview might not be about Ramon at all. Perhaps Dietrich wanted Ottilia, who had been on a Nazi death-list since the
mid-1930s. Stranded in Paris, Jewish and a refugee, her situation was fragile. We’ll get her out, Coralie decided there and then. Back to England, God knows how. ‘I’ve no idea where she is.’

  Dietrich’s gaze roamed to Coralie’s neck, then her face, then to ‘Daytime Seduction’, so named because its silky tassels entwined with the wearer’s curls. ‘So you did not buy the hat shop from her?’

  ‘No, from Lorienne Royer. She’s moved away, though.’ And could therefore not be roped in to contradict. ‘Can I have a drink of water, before I faint?’

  Dietrich leaned back in his chair and she waited for the words that would bring the interrogation to a close, and allow her to escape to the lavatory, which was becoming even more urgent than the need for water. The silence went on so long, she broke it.

  ‘What else can I tell you? My shoe size? You already know how many sugars I put in my tea and which side of the bed I like to sleep on.’

  A twitch. A reaction. So, he wasn’t a completely frozen fish. Without taking her eyes from him, she summoned a picture of their Duet bed, placed herself on it wearing nothing at all, and brought him into the scene. She remembered how he had sighed her name as she caressed his body from breastbone to navel and lower . . . She watched the real Dietrich and knew that he was fighting arousal. The muscles of his face and neck were taut as piano wire. She leaned across the desk, laid her hand over his and said, ‘Boo!’

  She waited for the smile, the surrender. It was so close. When he picked up his pen, she wondered that it didn’t snap in two. But all he said was ‘Let us go through these questions again.’

  ‘How utterly dreadful. Oh, darling, how fearfully humiliating. Dietrich von Elbing did this to you? Ottilia’s hero? Should we tell her?’

  Coralie gulped down the tea Una had made for her. ‘I don’t want to think of him ever again. Though I say it myself, I performed one of the great heroic walks of history. I finally got through to him that I was about to burst, and never did a man shift so fast.’