‘Understand one thing, Martel.’ Dietrich did not lower his voice, though people at nearby tables were straining to catch his words. ‘The Gestapo have great power, but it is not limitless. Even they know that it is the Wehrmacht, the army, who will fight and win this war. They know also that the army has three enemies: Russia, the Western allies . . .’ he savoured the moment ‘. . . and foreign brothels peddling venereal diseases to our troops. To catch the pox is one of the greatest dishonours that can befall a German soldier. For the pimp and the madame supplying contaminated girls,’ he turned to Julie, who looked bewildered, ‘there is even less mercy.’
‘Is there some disagreement?’ The Gestapo officer with the scar and spectacles had come over. He stated in German, ‘Something was burning just now.’
‘Major Reiniger, good evening.’ Dietrich met the major’s practised scrutiny without flinching. The Pour le Mérite hung over the collar of his shirt and Coralie saw Reiniger take stock of it and mentally change tack. ‘Herr Generalmajor. Apologies, I thought, perhaps, there was a difficulty.’
The shaven-headed subordinate standing behind his major regarded Dietrich with almost fanatical respect.
‘There is no difficulty,’ Dietrich said. ‘Merely that Monsieur Martel has accused me of plotting to murder the Führer.’
Martel gulped, then stammered something. His broken nose, old injury though it was, must be impeding his oxygen flow because he changed colour and spittle joined the soda water and charred paper on his tuxedo. Coralie began to see that Dietrich was not, perhaps, entirely mad.
Dietrich continued, ‘By insulting me, he insults our army and the air force upon which the Führer’s vision of a greater Germany depend. He insults my war record and my name, which, in honour, I must defend.’
Major Reiniger stared at Serge Martel, his lenses shining like the eyes of a fox in the dark. ‘You are drunk, Martel. Why else would you insult a German officer?’
Martel pointed at Julie. ‘She gave me the information.’
Julie stared, slack-mouthed, at Martel, evidently waiting for him to announce the joke. Coralie said quietly to her, ‘Admit you made a mistake. Say you’re sorry and we’ll all go away.’
Julie thrust a finger at Coralie. ‘She’s a spy!’
At that moment, the Klebers joined them, seemingly shocked at finding the table they’d left ten minutes earlier ringed by tense bodies. Reiniger and Kurt Kleber already knew each other, and as Kurt introduced his wife, Coralie allowed herself to hope that the situation would dissolve into friendly handshakes.
The Vagabonds had completed their first set and people were streaming off the dance floor. ‘You have an office where we can discuss this privately?’ Reiniger asked Martel.
A minute later, eight of them were climbing concrete stairs to an upper storey.
Martel’s office was untidy, a surprise – Coralie had always judged him on the evidence of a spotless tuxedo. Papers covered his desk and a greasy telephone suggested he made calls while eating.
Julie was blank with shock, and started crying when Reiniger snapped at her in German: ‘Explain what information you have heard of Generalmajor von Elbing.’ He repeated the question in French. Slowly.
‘My fiancé said that he – Graf von Elbing – wants to sacrifice himself to save Germany.’
They all looked to Dietrich, who raised an eyebrow. ‘I may well have said that. You may have said the self-same words, Reiniger.’
‘I mean, he wants to kill Hitler,’ Julie explained desperately. ‘Sacrifice himself by killing Hitler. Somebody told my fiancé, somebody who knows him.’
‘Who?’ demanded Reiniger, but Julie shook her head.
‘I don’t know.’
A silence followed, so intense Coralie could hear somebody’s watch ticking.
Martel was leaning against a wall, arms folded so tightly his knuckles were bloodless. ‘You’ve got it wrong, Julie. Tell Major Reiniger that you always get things wrong. What Herr Graf von Elbing has been overheard saying is that he wants to sacrifice himself for Hitler.’
‘That’s not what you told me!’ Patches were forming under Julie’s arms, darkening her satin dress. ‘He made one attempt and failed. You told me that.’ She stepped towards Martel, her fingers knotted in a distorted prayer.
‘Gentlemen, my fiancée,’ Martel pinched his mouth in distaste, ‘my former fiancée, has a weakness. She invents things to make herself the centre of attention.’
Coralie knew it was over for Julie when Reiniger said to her, ‘You accuse an officer of the German air force of this most disgusting, shameful crime for your own amusement?’ He rapped to his colleague, ‘Get her out of my sight.’
Julie’s screams ripped along the corridor, before stopping abruptly. Coralie saw Kurt and Fritzi Kleber move closer to each other. She sought Dietrich’s eye but he was gazing beyond her, his expression empty. She looked at Martel, who had thrown a girl he supposedly cared for off a cliff.
Martel made an appeasing motion of the hands. ‘If you gentlemen—’
But Dietrich pushed him back against the wall. ‘Your woman made accusations against Mademoiselle de Lirac. A spy, she said.’ Coralie froze. ‘Has she special reason to suspect her of espionage?’
Dietrich stepped back and Martel scuttled over to a filing cabinet. He reached deep inside and brought out a white card. ‘Julie found it in one of Mademoiselle de Lirac’s handbags, but I’m sure it’s nothing important.’
‘Why keep it, then?’
‘I – I had meant to tear it up.’
So there had been something in the bag. Something of hers or of Sheila Flynn’s? Or something she’d picked up on her journey to Paris with Dietrich?
Dietrich took the card, staring at it for a good half-minute, an aeon to Coralie. He said, ‘It is a race card, from an English racetrack. The Derby Stakes.’ He passed it to Reiniger, who gave it to Coralie. Who dropped it, picked it up but could hardly read it, she was trembling so badly.
Priced sixpence. She and Donal had bought one each.
‘You were at that race?’ Reiniger asked her.
Coralie sought Dietrich’s eye but he was staring past her. Her choker ribbon felt suddenly too tight. ‘I can’t entirely remember.’
‘She was there, Major Reiniger, as my guest.’ Dietrich shrugged. ‘It was 1937 so no crime for either of us. I was there on business—’
‘What business, Generalmajor?’
Dietrich gave a small smile. ‘The business of art. Using my position, my title, to get invitations to as many great English houses as I could. I made discreet inventories of their art treasures so that when we invade Britain I can ensure that the best pieces are reserved for the enrichment of the German people and the personal pleasure of the Führer.’
‘Why take Mademoiselle de Lirac? Why take a Frenchwoman?’
Dietrich laughed out loud. ‘You need ask? Because I adored her, as I still do.’
Reiniger clicked his fingers for the race card. Coralie realised from the way he inspected it, his lips slowly moving, that he must also have some command of English. Handing the card to Kleber, he said in German, ‘I want to know which horse she backed. One of them is marked.’
Without giving Kleber time to read the list of runners, Coralie said, ‘Mid-day Sun.’
‘Ridiculous choice,’ Dietrich said. ‘The odds were impossible.’
‘And yet he won,’ she said. ‘Graf von Elbing backed a horse called Le Ksar. Russian, isn’t it? Why don’t you accuse him of spying for the Soviets?’
‘Generalmajor, Oberleutnant, gnädige Damen,’ Reiniger was stiff with apology, ‘you have been subjected to filthy slurs. I beg you, accept my deep regret and return to your table. I wish to speak alone with Monsieur Martel.’
Back in Dietrich’s flat, they gravitated to the fireplace because the night had turned cold. Tepid ash told of a fire that had burned itself out hours ago. They stood in a circle, holding hands. Dietrich, Coralie and the Klebers. It was F
ritzi Kleber who finally said, ‘That felt like showing a policeman a dead body and daring him to accuse you of murder.’
Dietrich agreed. ‘It was the only way, Fritzi. Martel had his moment and lost it.’
Kurt said thoughtfully, ‘He can never make the same accusation again and be believed.’
‘Poor, poor Julie,’ Coralie said. ‘What will happen to her?’
Fritzi sighed. ‘You are sorry for her, yet she would have seen you dragged off without a shrug.’
‘But Martel . . . I mean, not a word in her defence.’
They digested it, then Kurt said, ‘We need to know how Martel got his information. Who knows about Dachterrasse? Who knows of our plans?’
Plans? Understanding crept slowly towards Coralie and she told herself that she was mad or had misunderstood Kurt. She’d presumed they’d all been victims of a distasteful joke spawned from Martel’s warped mind. ‘Plans?’ she echoed belatedly. ‘Dietrich, Kurt, you mean you really want to kill Hitler?’
CHAPTER 27
‘Not yet.’ Dietrich broke the circle and picked kindling out of the fire basket. He clumped the sticks together, held them out. ‘One or two can be snapped, but a bundle is unbreakable. Only when we have an unbreakable circle can we act. We have learned hard lessons from previous failure, from poor planning. We call ourselves the Dachterrasse Circle, after the roof garden at the German pavilion, but now we work with others elsewhere, and to them, we are the Paris cell.’
‘Is it wise, involving this woman?’ Fritzi looked from Coralie to Dietrich.
Am I? Coralie wondered. Involved? ‘If you succeed, the war will be over?’
Dietrich answered, ‘Only if the right men seize power in Hitler’s place. Then we might make an honourable peace, but there can be no surrender for Germany. There can be no illegal and unjust terms as in 1918. We would fight on, if necessary.’
‘Unjust’ triggered Coralie’s anger. ‘You’re making France pay millions of francs for the honour of being invaded. You bomb other people’s cities and take their lands. Why can’t you be satisfied with the country you’ve got and leave the rest of us alone?’
‘Enough. Do not speak of what you cannot understand. You know nothing of our history.’
‘You’ve started two bloody wars, I know that.’
‘Coralie. Enough.’
‘Dietrich, she’s in shock.’ Fritzi’s gentle voice cut through the tension. ‘That poor Julie – we all stood by.’
Dietrich made a quick gesture of apology. ‘As you say, though Julie Fourcade would have sent all of us to the same fate and, in a few days, would have been wearing Coralie’s hats about town.’
Coralie doubted she’d banish Julie’s screams from her mind so easily.
‘We haven’t answered the most important question.’ Kurt had his arm around his wife’s shoulders, but he was looking at Coralie. ‘Who is Martel’s informant? Who overheard our conversations or listened in on our meetings? It has to be somebody who knows German and who knows Serge Martel. Who is that person?’
Coralie felt doubt stealing into the room. The Klebers looked at each other. Dietrich, at the floor. Out of nowhere, a memory barrelled into her mind. A café table on the Champs-Élysées. Herself and Teddy Clisson talking about Dietrich, she insisting he wasn’t a Nazi.
‘He certainly salutes like one,’ Teddy had drawled, adding, ‘I was waiting in the pavilion when you arrived . . . I watched him greeting his brethren.’ Could Teddy be the informant? It would make him a collaborator of the worst kind, prepared to betray a friend. But did Teddy see Dietrich as a friend, or as a source of valuable artworks? Perhaps he resented being denied the pick of Ottilia’s collection, and had taken his revenge by tickling Martel’s ear with vague suspicions, knowing they would quickly reach the Gestapo.
She blurted out, ‘Teddy was at the Expo when you all met. You, Kurt and that other man.’
‘Who is Teddy?’ Kurt asked.
‘Thierry-Edgar Clisson,’ Dietrich said. ‘An art dealer, a friend. Go on, Coralie.’
‘We were talking about you once and Teddy said he’d watched you that day, admiring your looks. He remembered “a deliciously handsome young German, named Claus von Something”.’ Hearing in-drawn breaths, Coralie suddenly wished she’d kept her mouth shut. Selfish and vain as he was, Teddy could not be a Nazi sympathiser. His pattern of living was the very antithesis of the Nazi creed. Neither would he turn over a friend. She of all people should know that. ‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘He understands German, this man?’ Kurt asked.
Dietrich nodded. ‘His mother married a German, and they lived in Berlin. Teddy visited fairly often. His German is more than adequate. Fluent, would you not say, Coralie?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said miserably. She’d give anything to retract. ‘What I do know is that Teddy is kind.’ Not good, exactly. ‘Kind.’
‘And he has always spoken so well of me, Coralie. Not so?’ A sad smile touched Dietrich’s lips. ‘I do not want to think of Teddy as false. Yet he is one of the few people in Paris who knows me well enough to make sense of my friendships and my public actions, match them against a thread of overheard conversation and come to the truth. And he was at the club tonight. Coincidence?’
‘From what I’ve just heard, I feel certain that this is the man who has betrayed us. We must deal with him.’ Kurt Kleber spoke lightly, but his un-shuttered eye glinted. ‘Where is he likely to be?’
Coralie shrugged, trying desperately to think of a way to throw the men off the scent.
‘When you spoke to him earlier this evening,’ Dietrich asked her, ‘had you the impression he’d stay late?’
‘Yes, definitely.’ Actually, he would almost certainly have left the Rose Noire by now. Teddy never stayed anywhere beyond the midnight curfew. If Dietrich and Kurt were to drive out to boulevard de Clichy, which even through empty streets would take some time, there was a chance she could reach rue de Seine ahead of them. Guilty or not, she must warn Teddy, because a stark alternative was in front of her. Fritzi Kleber had opened her evening bag and withdrawn a small pistol. She handed it to her husband.
Coralie expected Fritzi to leave with her husband and Dietrich, to be dropped at home on the way to boulevard de Clichy. But when Fritzi said, ‘Coralie and I will wait here for your return,’ her heart plummeted.
The men left, and a minute later Coralie heard a car engine being fired. The hunt for Teddy Clisson had begun.
Fritzi was in talkative mood, jarring Coralie’s nerves. She asked about La Passerinette, apparently unoffended by Coralie’s monosyllabic replies. ‘Paris styles have such mystique and, my dear, you would have stared at me in Munich.’ She chuckled. ‘So behind the mode! I hardly dared step outside during my first week here – though, naturally, I had the darling hat you made me.’
Coralie’s fingernails curled into her palms as Fritzi exclaimed, ‘Mein Gott, it is past midnight. It is April the twenty-third.’
‘Is that important?’
‘Three days ago was the Führer’s birthday. Belatedly, we must celebrate with a drink.’
‘Must we?’
Fritzi’s beautiful face became a picture of incredulity. ‘Do you not believe in us, Coralie? Do you not realise that it might be the last chance?’
‘Of course.’ An idea struck Coralie. ‘There’s a new bottle of schnapps in the kitchen. Shall I fetch it?’ She walked out, leaving Fritzi trying to poke some life into the fire. In the kitchen, Coralie took a couple of glasses and poured a measure of peach schnapps into each. Then, slipping into the bathroom, she located veronal, the sleeping powders Dietrich had introduced her to and which she occasionally relied on when the stresses of a collection got to her. A generous spoonful went into Fritzi’s drink.
‘You’ll excuse me if I don’t join you in the toast,’ she said when she returned to the living room. ‘I’ll drink to “absent friends”.’ She passed Fritzi a glass.
‘To Germany,’ said Fritzi, and downed hers in one.
‘Health and happiness.’ Coralie took a dainty sip.
It took twenty minutes for Fritzi to fall asleep. After standing over her for a few moments, Coralie went to the telephone in the corridor. When the operator answered, she gave Teddy’s number as quietly as she could.
At Teddy’s end, the telephone rang and rang. ‘Pick up, pick up.’ Dietrich and Kurt had had almost enough time to get across town, to find Teddy gone from the Rose Noire and to have crossed back over the river. Even now, they might be turning into rue de Seine. Pick up. Pick up.
Somebody did. A male voice, a little raspy, said, ‘Yes, hello?’
Hers was an urgent whisper. ‘Teddy, you have to leave Paris, now! They believe you betrayed them, Dietrich and Kurt Kleber. They’re coming for you. You have to get out now.’
‘Thank you, Coralie. Message understood.’ The line went dead. Coralie stood frozen to the spot, understanding dawning.
Teddy hadn’t answered. Dietrich had.
CHAPTER 28
To be out after curfew was to risk arrest. To be out after curfew in a lemon evening dress was to risk arrest while catching a dreadful chill. Doing it with a child in your arms was perhaps a stroke of genius. If stopped, Coralie could claim that she needed a doctor for a choking infant. Leaving the telephone dangling in Dietrich’s flat, she’d run upstairs and slung a few essentials into a bag.
No time to write a note for Micheline, who was sleeping on a divan in the sitting room. Time only to snatch up her everyday handbag, the one containing keys, bank books and other essential documents, and wrap a sleeping Noëlle in a blanket. As she tiptoed down the stairs with her, Coralie reflected on her daughter’s ability to slumber through virtually every crisis.
No fixing this latest blunder. Tonight, she had chosen sides – Teddy over Dietrich. And, yes, she might be wrecking Dietrich and Kurt’s plan to rid the world of a tyrant for the sake of a man who preferred cats to people, and who might be a despicable collaborator. But when push came to shove, she’d chosen Teddy because he’d reached out to her when she was desperate. She couldn’t explain it to herself, except that loyalty had trumped love.
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