The Milliner's Secret

by Natalie Meg Evans

  Somehow, he’d got himself back to rue de Vaugirard where an orderly informed him that the matron at Le Cloȋtre had telephoned. Could he call back urgently? He’d learned his wife was missing. A plane had crashed nearby, a bomber, and everybody had run out to see if there were survivors. Unfortunately, somebody had neglected to lock the doors. Would he motor down to Fontainebleau at once?

  ‘No, Madame, I will not. If you had adhered to your duty, my wife could not have walked out. Send out a search party, alert the local police. It is unlikely she has gone far.’

  He was going to search Paris until he found Coralie, alive or dead. He was preparing to leave again when the telephone rang. This time, it was the commissariat of police for the Madeleine quarter, requesting he go to the mortuary on quai de la Rapée to identify a body.

  That trip, the longest of his life. The surge of joy when he found himself looking down not at Coralie, but at a blue-white Hiltrud had expressed itself in ‘Gott sei dank’ followed by deep shame.

  Returning home, he’d been in time to pick up a call from Le Cloȋtre, informing him of the shocking news that his wife’s body had been found. ‘Paris police have just called us. They identified her by a bag belonging to one of the clinic nurses—’

  ‘Hanging around her neck. They dragged her from the Seine. I have just identified her body and you are two hours late calling me with this news.’

  ‘Believe me, Generalmajor, the police only just informed us.’

  ‘Then how did they get my number, if you didn’t give it to them? Do not lie, Madame. Do not attempt to shift blame. Were you a member of an army unit, you would be court-martialled.’

  He had hung up and mixed himself a fizzing analgesic to dull the pain in his leg and a throbbing headache. He was dehydrated. He drank several glasses of water, and then the telephone rang again. This time, it was Friedrich Olbricht, chief of the General Army Office, calling from Berlin.

  ‘The day of action comes closer, von Elbing. Are you with us still?’

  Why this, now? ‘Count on my loyalty, General.’ In Berlin, he had sworn allegiance to Valkyrie, a conspiracy of army officers, including an old friend, Claus von Stauffenberg, to carry out the decisive stroke against Hitler and his closest henchmen. Valkyrie would trigger cataclysmic events, and the stopwatch had just started ticking. He’d hung up, thinking, Death or freedom. But without Coralie, neither seemed to matter. Where was she?

  The physical present had intruded just then, with violent hammering at street level. The orderly must have opened up pretty swiftly because, within seconds, Major Reiniger had his boot over Dietrich’s threshold, demanding to search.

  Reiniger had four armed thugs with him, and Dietrich’s fears swung to Valkyrie. Was his telephone line under surveillance?

  ‘Your mistress has been seen in the company of two wanted men, Generalmajor, the terrorist Ramon Cazaubon and a suspected British evader.’ They had escaped from their Right Bank hideout, Reiniger informed him, and Cazaubon was known to be in bad shape. ‘Hand her over.’

  So she was alive – but with Cazaubon? After everything he had said? ‘I assure you, Major Reiniger, she is not here.’

  ‘Then you will not object to a search.’

  ‘I object violently, but you will do it anyway.’

  They’d found a hat of Coralie’s in the bedroom, which in their eyes was proof of his collusion with French criminals. They could not arrest him on such limited evidence, but Dietrich had no doubt that he now topped Reiniger’s list of men to bring down. Would Valkyrie be triggered in time to save him?

  Now, in Louise Deveau’s genteel sitting room, he knew that taking Ramon Cazaubon at gunpoint to Gestapo HQ would restore his good standing, but such action was beneath him. Cazaubon would get a clean bullet. Dietrich positioned the Walther behind Cazaubon’s ear and, with his free hand, searched the Frenchman for weapons, finding a veteran Lebel revolver that he pushed into his own belt.

  ‘Vive la France,’ Cazaubon said hoarsely.

  Dietrich steadied his hand, bent his finger—

  ‘Do it, and I’ll kill you.’ Coralie was pointing a revolver at him, a heavier piece than his short-coupled Walther. Though her grip shook discernibly, her expression promised no waver.

  ‘An interesting triangle, Liebchen.’

  ‘I mean it, Dietrich. I can do it.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Cora.’ The English pilot was visibly outraged. ‘You’ve taken my gun. That’s military issue.’

  ‘You were always dead easy to rob, Donal. And don’t come any nearer because I might just shoot you instead.’

  Unperturbed, Donal moved and Dietrich fired into the floor at his feet, sending him back. An armed Coralie he could deal with. Probably. Two armed men in one room would be deadly – which of them would back down? And though there was only a deaf old concierge on the top floor, gunshots would bring the police eventually.

  ‘Back to the wall,’ he ordered Donal, who reluctantly obeyed. ‘Coralie, you will probably miss me even at this range. Those Enfields are poor aimers.’

  He saw Donal Flynn open his mouth to object, think better of it and say, ‘He’s right, Cora. Sometimes they even fire backwards.’

  Ramon Cazaubon was chuckling as if the farce surrounding his own death tickled him, though as far as Dietrich knew, he would have understood nothing that had been said. Perhaps it was like watching a film without subtitles. Nestling his gun right inside Cazaubon’s ear, he said in French, ‘It will be quick. Better than being carried, crippled, to a firing-squad after the Gestapo are done with you.’ To Coralie: ‘They will get him, you know that.’

  Coralie lowered the Enfield.

  He said, ‘Put it down on the floor.’

  But she didn’t. ‘Shoot Ramon, you’ll have murdered both of us.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Like this.’ She pressed the Enfield’s barrel against her own temple.

  ‘Coralie, no!’

  ‘Cora, put it down!’ Donal Flynn stepped forward.

  A vision flooded Dietrich’s mind, Coralie in his arms, asking him not to withdraw. She had wanted his child. ‘Cazaubon is not worth the sacrifice and you might be pregnant. It is possible.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to have the child of a murderer. I grew up with one. My dad used to boast how he’d pulped a Frenchman when he was over here, and his eyes would brighten like mine do when I’m describing a new hat. Why kill Ramon? His debt will have been paid by now, you can be sure of it, in blood against a wall in a town square. Murder him, and you’ll have my death in your dreams every night, I promise you. I will do it.’

  Dietrich stepped away from Ramon. ‘Coralie, I thought I had you cornered but you always slip past me.’ His desire to laugh was, he suspected, the result of multiple shocks. Only Coralie could get all three of her men together in one room, through a trail of fire and blood, and seize the moral high ground. Determined not to yield, he made his features iron. But she’d won, and she knew it.

  ‘Swear you won’t hurt Ramon?’

  He sighed. ‘I will not shoot him. Lower your gun.’

  ‘Or turn him in?’

  ‘I will not turn him in. He is free to go, your London friend too.’ He switched to English, saying, ‘Go, Warrant Officer, and take this Mistkerl with you. Say goodbye to Coralie and take your chances.’

  Coralie stamped a foot. ‘Don’t be daft. Ramon needs a hospital.’

  Ramon, understanding ‘hospital’ cried, ‘No! They will give me ether and I will be trapped.’

  ‘You’ve got spreading gangrene. It’ll go into your bloodstream.’

  Ramon showed her his mangled finger. ‘Cut it off. He’s got a knife.’ He meant Donal.

  ‘I can’t— Oh, damn you!’

  She swore because Dietrich had wrestled the Enfield off her. She swore at him again, then gave up, seeming not to care that he now had all three guns. ‘All right, Ramon, I’ll cut your finger off, but give me permission in front of witnesses.’

 
‘Permission granted. Get on with it, ma chérie.’

  Dietrich watched Coralie and Donal prepare an operating table of cushions laid on the floor, and pull a reading lamp close. He heard Coralie ask for a knife.

  Donal Flynn bared the blade, but wouldn’t hand it over. ‘It’s not woman’s work, Cora. You hold him down.’

  Dietrich saw how Flynn looked at her. Such love in his eyes, but it sparked no new jealousy. Just the acid of despair.

  ‘I shan’t be able to, Donal. You hold him, I’ll cut.’

  ‘You won’t have the strength to go through bone.’

  This could go on all night, Dietrich thought. Holstering his Walther and locking the two foreign guns in the china cabinet, he took the knife from Flynn’s hand. He said to Coralie, ‘Find cloths. See if there is a bottle of wine in the kitchen. Louise always kept a stock.’ When she came back with both, he said, ‘Soak a cloth in wine, to put between his teeth. You, Warrant Officer, pinion him across his shoulders. Kneel on his back if you have to. However hard he screams, don’t let him move.’

  Coralie sought Dietrich’s gaze. ‘Thank you.’

  He said – or did he think it? – ‘I want you only for whatever time we have left, but for that time, I want the whole of you.’

  CHAPTER 39

  FRAUEN-KONZ-LAGER RAVENSBRÜCK, NORTHERN GERMANY

  Cleaning the windows of the secretaries’ building was one of the softer tasks at the camp. Bright afternoon sun sharpened the strokes of her vinegar-soaked cloth, and for the first time in months, Una felt warm. She kept her movements slow but consistent. Since being released from the Hell of the sewing factory, where a broken thread was punished with the whip, she had existed in a state of bated breath. Eyes were everywhere. To be seen to slack, even for a moment, might get her sent back there. Or, worse, to the infirmary, where inmates were assessed for fitness. Fitness to live. To be weak was to be condemned.

  From this window, she could see the chimneys of the crematorium breathing white smoke into a perfect sky. June had arrived, in azure. June was the month her spoiled, rich self had always thought of as the end of little-Paris-summer, July and August being spent at Cap d’Antibes. She liked to keep track of the months, though she let the days run one into the next, just as she blurred her eyes to the barracks where she and uncountable other women lived, slept and starved. Likewise, she tried not to see the punishment block or the interrogation block, or the white tent in which the Hungarian Jewesses had frozen last winter. She always tried to talk her nose out of noticing the stench, just as she tried to empty her ears of the wailing screams that marked the days when the trucks transported condemned women away.

  How thin she’d grown. She looked almost in wonder at the wrist protruding from her striped sleeve. Every bone showed, and her blotchy skin was covered with a fine blonde fur. She’d caught scabies as soon as she arrived here last fall, from Vittel, and she still carried the crusts on her wrists and hands. Throughout the nightmare journey here, she’d feared her Resistance work had caught up with her. The first few days, she’d moved like a drunkard, shallow-breathing, trying not to catch anybody’s eye. Every shout, every door kicked open, had sounded like her name. Except, of course, they took your name from you. Later, because she was fit, they’d put her to work in the sewing factory.

  At some point, she’d learned that she had the Abwehr to thank for this imprisonment. German military intelligence had discovered she was married to the Scottish shipping magnate Gregory Kilpin, who had generously loaned his vessels to the British fleet. It made her a bona fide enemy.

  She’d cursed Gregory. Then, a few weeks back, she’d been summoned before the Kommandant and interrogated about her husband’s friendship with Winston Churchill. She’d almost blurted out, ‘You’re kidding, aren’t you? Gregory doesn’t have friends.’ Thankfully, she’d held back, and by the time she’d finished, the Kommandant believed that Gregory and Winston were old school buddies who did the Times crossword together over the telephone every night.

  They’d moved her to a less-crowded block, given her this soft job and slightly better rations. They were scared. Scared they were losing the war and that, one day, Winston Churchill would come here and look at their handiwork.

  It made her feel almost tender towards Gregory. It had kept her alive because this was a selection camp, the selection being ‘work or die’. She shared her extra food and used her nursing skills discreetly. She was teaching English to French, Polish and Russian prisoners. And deportment, how to curtsy and walk into a room in such a way that everybody would turn to look. Maybe not such an advisable skill right here. She liked to think she was scattering rose petals upon the dunghill. To laugh was a miracle. To smile, a godsend, but was it right to try to cheer up girls you knew would soon be selected to die?

  The snarling of dogs outside the window warned Una that SS-Aufseherin von Elbing was nearby. Sweet, lovely Claudia kept her Alsatians hungry, tormented them with promises of food, so that when she walked among the prisoners she had demented creatures to terrify them with. Una moved on to the next window and averted her eyes.

  One of the secretaries got up from her typewriter and went to the door calling, ‘Fräulein? A letter has arrived for you.’

  Una watched Claudia come in. How she swaggered, young as she was, clearly loving her connection to the SS – though, in reality, she was as much a civilian as the typists. Dietrich von Elbing’s daughter could have been something, Una reckoned. That auburn hair . . . a few months in Paris, well-cut clothes and a decent coiffure. What was it with German women and plaits? And those boots, with a dirndl skirt on the knee? Dear Lord, no.

  It was whispered that Claudia blamed her lack of promotion on her father’s lukewarm relationship with the Nazi Party. Well, the kid was making up for that.

  Una saw her frown at the envelope, then tear into it. That the letter contained a shock was evident from the cry of ‘Mutti!’ and the way Claudia let go of her dogs’ leads. Any normal dogs would have run off to search for food. Claudia’s dropped to their bellies and waited.

  At six thirty a.m. on 6 June 1944, Allied forces landed on five beaches in Normandy while bombers destroyed roads, bridges and railways to slow the enemy’s response. All over France, Resistance units sprang into action to sabotage and hamper.

  Paris basked in heat. Iron chairs under the trees in the Jardin du Luxembourg seemed to have been forged for just such a day as this, the fountains too. Coralie was trying to read a letter but couldn’t concentrate. Dietrich had taken a worrying telephone call from Berlin that morning.

  He’d come to find Coralie. ‘The Berlin Gestapo are on ¬Valkyrie’s scent. They have made arrests throughout Germany.’

  He’d told her about Valkyrie. More than a plan to assassinate Hitler, it would trigger a military coup that would usher in a new government, and change the leadership of the army. Naturally, the Gestapo wanted to smash it.

  ‘Does that mean it’s going to be abandoned?’

  Dietrich had managed a wan smile. ‘Valkyrie is more than ever necessary. We must show the world that there is resistance to Hitler’s Reich.’

  They had come into the park in the guise of carefree lovers, held motionless in a long afternoon, waiting for the clap of thunder announcing the storm. Dietrich held out his hand to her. ‘I have been selfish, wrapped up in my anxieties. Something oppresses you. You are missing your English boy?’

  She folded up her letter, which was from Teddy, who always wrote his news in the style of a cascading brook, weeks’ worth of thoughts without punctuation. ‘I’m worried about Donal, course I am.’ And about Ramon, who had taken his amputation ¬stoically, and would be back in the Auvergne, assuming he’d survived all the identity checks on the way. ‘But, like you said, Donal has to take his chances. With luck, the Gestapo and the police will be too overwhelmed by military mobilisation to bother with one lone traveller. Or with us, for that matter.’

  Dietrich gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. ‘Reiniger
is at Dreux, at the military airfield, snuffing out a conspiracy to dynamite aircraft on the ground. While he chases terrorists over there, we are safe. Soon, if fortune is with us, wolves such as him will be stripped of their power. Now talk to me,Liebchen, in a stream of consciousness like Teddy, or that wretched American woman.’

  ‘Who, Una?’

  ‘I mean Gertrude Stein, who writes as she talks as she thinks. Tell me everything.’

  Pushing her chair right up to his, she tilted her head so the brim of her straw hat meshed with the brim of his and their faces were hidden. She told him how she’d overseen the changing of locks at La Passerinette, picked up her mail and closed the place. The same at rue de Seine. ‘Can you tell that I mean to concentrate on you, and you alone?’

  She told him how, on the way back from La Passerinette, she’d bumped into Loulou, the milliner’s assistant at Henriette Junot, who’d told her about Lorienne’s funeral requiem. ‘Everyone was shocked at her death, and nobody understands why she was out on the street with one of my hatboxes. We know, and so does Georges Blanchard. Robbing me. I haven’t said anything, and I don’t intend to. Lorienne betrayed Violaine from pure malice and it makes me hope there’s a God and a seat of judgement. But I wonder what made her walk into the path of a car.’

  Dietrich grunted. ‘The driver claimed she threw herself down in front of him. So it said in the newspaper.’

  ‘Well, the driver would say that. Some of your lot drive at us as though we’re pigeons. And guess who has stepped into Lorienne’s shoes? It’s now Georges Blanchard pour Henriette Junot. What d’you think of that?’

  ‘That treachery pays in the short term. But life is a long arc and every betrayal sows the seeds of our separation from all that we love, all that makes us human. Not a happy subject. It reminds me how deeply I failed Hiltrud.’

  ‘She nearly killed you!’