The Betrayal

by Kate Furnivall

  Antoine Bernard Duchamps. Born 5 September 1878 in Chartres. Studied physics at the Sorbonne and worked for a manufacturer of telescopes.

  All this Romy knew as a child. There was a telescope in the bathroom for viewing the night sky.

  When the Great War started in 1914 he trained as a pilot officer in L’Armée de l’Air, the French Air Force.

  ‘No, Léo, no, you’ve got it wrong. Look again,’ she’d told him.

  She was adamant. Her father had worked at a quiet Paris desk job throughout the war. That’s what he’d told her. Why would he lie?

  Léo had looked again. ‘Come here, Romy.’

  She’d knelt on the floor next to the bed, her head close to his. She’d considered snatching the sheet of paper from his hand and tearing it to pieces. ‘It’s a lie, Léo.’

  ‘That may be true, Romy. But you should listen.’

  Antoine Duchamps was shot down in a SPAD French biplane fighter behind German lines by a Fokker Eindecker. He received medical care and was interned in a prisoner-of-war camp in Magdeburg in 1916. There he became friends with a German army officer and after the war he visited Germany regularly.

  Romy had listened, her throat burning with unspoken words. Papa was a pilot? Yet he’d never said a word. No mention of flying, the sheer joy of it. Nor of the horror of being shot down. No framed photographs on the piano of Papa in uniform posing proudly next to his SPAD.

  ‘Why?’ she’d murmured. ‘Why didn’t he tell me? It doesn’t make sense. He knew I loved fliers.’

  Martel had put down the paper on the bed and taken her hand in his. ‘There are a number of reasons why a man might choose to keep his war exploits secret.’ His thumb had fretted at her nails, trying to rub the pain away from under them. ‘Some find it too painful to talk about. Especially the plane crash. I can relate to that.’ He’d given her a lopsided smile. ‘It seems to me that he wanted to put it all behind him. It says here that your father never flew again, so perhaps he didn’t want you to fly either. It was too dangerous.’

  ‘He could have flown. He wasn’t permanently injured.’

  Martel had lightly touched her heart. ‘He was injured here.’

  Alone now in her room Romy sat immobile, her thoughts fighting over every word Martel had translated. The documents reported that after the war in 1918 her father had found himself employment at Breguet Aviation, but he soon transferred to a job at the Ministry for Aviation and then the Ministry of Defence. Which is where he worked for the rest of his life.

  How could she not have known that? How was it possible?

  He’d worked for the government, he’d said. A boring desk job. Dealing with transport. To do with railways, he had hinted. Nothing of interest.

  Did Maman know? Did Florence? Probably.

  She felt excluded and betrayed. She started writing again furiously. The file from Müller’s office listed details of his life that no one should know. The friends he saw, the clubs he frequented, names of at least three mistresses – Marianne, Giselle and Fifi. With photographs. It listed his children – Florence and Romaine – his servants and even his dentist and doctor. Worse, far worse, it listed his trips to Germany.

  So many. Why so many?

  To Berlin. To the industrial Ruhr. To German aircraft factories – Junkers, Fokker, Hansa-Brandenburg, Bavarian Aircraft works – as well as visits to French aircraft factories – Avions Dewoitine, Avions Caudron, SPAD, Voisin. Again and again Gustav Müller accompanied him. But it was not his secret aircraft knowledge that wrenched all faith in her father out of her. It was his secret meetings. With Adolf Hitler. Two were listed in the file. One in Nuremberg. One in Berlin. Private one-to-one sessions with the head of the Nazi Party before Hitler took over as Führer.

  But why?

  A sound reached Romy from the hall. The front door closing. Someone entering the apartment. Relief swept through her and she leaped to her feet, ran out into the corridor.

  ‘Florence!’ she called.

  There are times in life when a chasm opens up in front of you and you blindly step in it. It happened to Romy that day eight years ago in the study and it happened again now.

  It wasn’t Florence.

  It was Roland.

  And in that moment she became certain her sister was dead. Romy stood in the hall, drowning in the sickly scent of roses, convinced she would never see her twin sister again. There was something about her brother-in-law tonight as he threw off his coat that she hadn’t seen in him before. A darkness. It belonged in another world, one where life and death were cheap. She had seen that look at poker games, it was the look of a winner. Winner takes all.

  ‘What the hell are you doing up at this hour, Romaine?’

  ‘I could ask you the same.’

  His tie was askew, a shirt button unfastened, his cuffs hanging open. This from the man who normally went into a panic if a hair was out of place.

  ‘What have you done with Florence, Roland?’

  His eyes narrowed to weary slits. ‘Don’t be such a fool, Romaine.’ He turned to his room and that was when she saw the lipstick on the side of his neck.

  ‘How dare you, Roland? How dare you go with another woman when my sister is not yet cold.’

  ‘My behaviour is not your concern.’

  ‘It is, Roland. Because I intend to find Florence wherever you’ve hidden her . . .’

  ‘Go to bed. Get out of my sight.’

  ‘Why do you hate me so much, Roland? Is it because you had to lie for me?’

  He sighed and almost against his will he shook his head. ‘It is because she always loved you more than me. You don’t deserve it.’

  Romy stood in the hall, stunned into silence. Because she realised what he’d said. He said loved. Not loves. Past tense. Florence was dead. Yet Romy’s heart didn’t split in two. Instead it hung in her chest, numb and unfeeling.

  He opened his bedroom door – Florence’s bedroom door – and at the last minute said over his shoulder, ‘The police will be coming to speak to you later in the morning.’

  ‘Why? What can they want to ask me?’

  She pictured the fire in Müller’s office and the bodies of the two guards in the street, one with no face. Roland shut his bedroom door, leaving Romy with no answers. She looked down and saw blood on her skirt.

  ‘You have no idea where your sister might have gone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did she ever express a desire to leave?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mademoiselle Duchamps, I realise this is not easy for you, but I have to ask about Madame Roussel’s relationship with her husband. Was there any trouble that you know of between them?’

  ‘No, none.’

  ‘She wasn’t planning on leaving him?’

  ‘No.’

  The police officer’s patience was wearing thin. He looked young and ambitious and probably wanted to be out catching robbers and murderers. Romy wanted to tell him that murderers come in all shapes and sizes.

  ‘My sister would never abandon her daughter. Never. Something bad has happened to her.’

  The officer looked at her the way you’d look at a dog that has presented you with a particularly dirty bone. He jotted something on his pad.

  ‘Thank you, mademoiselle. Just one last thing.’

  Romy arranged her face so that it didn’t betray alarm. ‘Yes? What’s that?’

  ‘I need to speak to Madame Roussel’s mother. She may know more. May I have her address, please?’

  ‘Is that necessary? I wouldn’t want her worried without cause.’

  ‘It’s best to cover all possibilities.’

  He couldn’t quite suppress the smallest of smiles. It was quite obvious that he was just going through the motions, nothing more. He claimed to have turned up no witnesses to two women meeting in Place Pigalle and it was obvious he believed Florence had run off with a new lover. It happened all the time. But he didn’t know Florence.

  Did anyone know Flore
nce?

  ‘Maman?’

  ‘Romaine, what’s wrong?’

  A telephone call from her daughter and immediately she assumed something was wrong. That made Romy feel bad.

  ‘You might be getting a visit from the police, Maman.’

  A faint clicking came down the line. When her mother was worried about something she tapped her fingernails against her teeth, a pecking sound that had punctuated Romy’s childhood.

  ‘Don’t worry, Maman. It will just be a few questions, nothing to—’

  ‘It’s Florence, isn’t it?’

  Romy couldn’t lie. Not this time. ‘Yes, she is missing and we don’t know where she is, but—’

  ‘I told you something was wrong with your sister.’

  ‘No, Maman, I don’t think—’

  ‘What do you know?’ her mother said with a hitch in her voice.

  ‘It seems I know very little, Maman.’

  The tapping came down the line. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I mean that things happened at the house the day Papa died that you must have known about but which you have never told me.’

  Only silence came back at her.

  ‘Maman?’

  ‘Sometimes, Romaine, it is better not to know things. You are headstrong and emotional, so sure you know what is right, just like your father. You are not to be trusted.’ Oddly her voice was gentle, almost a caress. ‘I love you, Romaine, but we both know that you caused trouble in the study that day. But that is an end to it. Leave it in the past. It is better for all of us that way. I don’t wish to discuss it again.’

  The silence returned. Romy could hear only the stunned throb of her pulse in her ear.

  ‘Tell me, Maman, did you see the German who was there?’

  ‘Find Florence, Romaine.’

  Her mother hung up.

  Romy leaned against the window of the apartment and looked down on Avenue Kléber six storeys below. Overhead the sky was ice-white, draining the colour from the world, and on the broad leafy avenue, beyond the constant rush of cars and Parisians hurrying about their business, stood a lone figure in a black suit. It was Martel. His left arm in a sling.

  Léo, what are you doing here? You should be in hiding. Müller will be coming for you now.

  Her instinct was to race down the stairs, across the boulevard and into his arms, but she didn’t. If she did, she would have to tell him about the secret Arsenal plans and the silencer in her brother-in-law’s desk drawer. She would be forced to admit that she now suspected that Roland was Cupid, not Horst Baumeister, and made a habit of putting a bullet in the brain of his enemies. Enemies like Grégory, François and Diane.

  Sweat trickled down her temple. She wiped it away with the heel of her hand.

  There was more.

  She would tell Léo she believed her brother-in-law had killed his wife, though she didn’t know why. That he had buried her and was now in the throes of an affair with another woman. Then Léo – or one of his friends like Noam – would kill Roland.

  She couldn’t allow that.

  Eight years ago Roland had saved her life. He had stood up in court and lied for her. Under oath. However much she loathed the man, she couldn’t let them kill him.

  She would have to do it herself.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Security was tight. Gendarmes stood around in pairs looking bored. The building looked inoffensive, though its grandness was marred by the feathery black smears around three of its ground-floor windows, as if someone had left dirty handprints on the stonework and forgotten to wash them off.

  Romy was wearing one of Florence’s outfits, a simple summer dress in a fine ivory cotton lawn that floated when she moved. She had added a navy Chanel handbag and shoes, dusted her sister’s make-up over her bruises, and chosen a single strand of pearls for the final touch. She looked so respectable, she’d be thrown out of her usual bars.

  She approached the huge stone archway of the front entrance but was stopped by a gendarme before she came too close. He was armed, but young and relaxed, happy to talk to a pretty girl.

  ‘You can’t go in here, mademoiselle.’

  Romy assumed Florence’s authoritative manner, polite but entitled. ‘Why not, officer?’

  ‘This building is closed today.’

  She looked pointedly at the black smears. ‘Mon dieu, has there been a fire?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. Last night. Made a filthy mess.’

  ‘Was it an accident?’

  He lowered his voice. ‘There’s talk of arson.’

  ‘Have they caught whoever did it?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  She smiled at him with blatant admiration. ‘I’m sure you will.’

  He allowed himself a smile and pushed back his cap. ‘How can I help you, mademoiselle?’

  ‘I’ve come to see Herr Müller.’

  Instantly the young officer’s stance changed. It became stiffer, his smile more guarded. ‘He’s not here. It was Monsieur Müller’s office that was most damaged.’

  ‘Oh, poor Herr Müller. Do you know where he is?’

  He glanced around, as though about to convey privileged information. ‘He’s three doors further up. Until his office is repaired.’

  Romy inspected the building that he indicated to her right. Not quite as grand. But just as unmarked.

  ‘Thank you.’ She gave him a genuine smile this time. ‘You have been most kind.’

  The second one was tougher. The guard placed himself solidly in her path and manoeuvred her away from the entrance with his rifle butt.

  ‘Move on, mademoiselle.’

  But Romy stood her ground. ‘Will you please inform Herr Müller that Madame Roussel is here to see him?’

  ‘Herr Müller is seeing no one today.’

  ‘I can imagine he is not in the best of moods but tell him I have a black notebook that he will be interested in.’

  The guard was reluctant to leave his post.

  ‘He will not be pleased,’ Romy added, ‘if he hears that you have turned me away.’

  He scuttled inside the building and Romy was left to cool her heels for a good twenty minutes, at the end of which a smart middle-aged woman who spoke impeccable French but with a German accent swept the door open and invited her inside.

  ‘My apologies,’ she said, ‘for keeping you waiting, Madame Roussel. I’m afraid Herr Müller is extremely busy today after last night’s disaster.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The woman in her neat black skirt and white blouse led Romy across a crowded entrance hall and up an elaborate flight of stairs to an upper floor where she came to a halt outside a pair of double doors.

  ‘Five minutes, Madame Roussel, that is all.’

  Five minutes. To save a life.

  Müller did not look pleased when Romy walked into his new office.

  ‘Madame Roussel,’ he said with irony, ‘you’ve changed the colour of your eyes.’

  She stood in the centre of the room. ‘But I have not changed the colour of my spots.’

  His steel grey eyes regarded her with annoyance but not yet with alarm. He was seated behind a vast inlaid table as his desk and the room seemed to be filled with images of him. It must once have been a ballroom because the walls were lined with gilt-edged mirrors that threw Müller’s reflection to each other, disconcerting to anyone standing in the centre of them. She suspected that was why he had chosen the room. To outnumber any visitor.

  He held a fountain pen in his hand and pointed it at her. ‘Get to the point.’

  He did not invite her to sit down. Nevertheless, she settled herself in the chair opposite him, but decided against taking a cigarette from the ivory box open in front of her in case her hand shook.

  ‘Say what you have to say and get out,’ he ordered sharply.

  The far ends of the table were stacked with files, some of them charred, she noticed. So they had managed to save a few.

  ‘I am here to ma
ke a deal.’

  For the first time he looked at her with interest. ‘So, Fräulein Duchamps. Now you are ready to give me the information you withheld when we met last time in the police station. About your comrades in the Resistance.’

  ‘No.’

  He laid down his pen and folded his hands together. Romy had a sense of a man trying to hold himself together. The events of last night had pushed him to the edge.

  ‘Explain,’ he snapped.

  ‘You corrupted my father into betraying his country and now you have corrupted my brother-in-law into doing the same. I am certain Colonel Roux at the French BCR Intelligence Bureau will be more than interested.’

  ‘You are fantasising, mademoiselle.’

  ‘I have proof.’

  Müller did not move a muscle. He didn’t blink, he didn’t speak, but stared at Romy intently as if he could see right inside her head. He waited in silence for more.

  ‘I went to see my mother and she gave me Papa’s watch. A fine gold Patek Philippe.’

  ‘So?’

  She threw in a lie alongside the truth. ‘And a diary.’

  ‘A diary? Your father was never fool enough to keep a diary.’

  ‘I pawned the watch. The diary was in code, but I am good at puzzles and deciphered it easily. He mentions you.’

  One of Müller’s hands crept up and rubbed a spot at his temple. Romy could see it throbbing.

  ‘It contains details,’ she expanded, ‘of meetings with Hitler in Germany. It also states that he was involved in the forging of the Zinoviev letter that toppled the left-wing British Prime Minister MacDonald and replaced him with the Conservative Stanley Baldwin.’

  She pinned a smile on her face, taut as a tightrope. Müller wasn’t smiling. She could see the anger behind the cold, calculating stare. She had to keep him guessing. Like sitting at a gaming table, alert to nervous tells in your adversary. Who is bluffing? Who is double-bluffing?