The Milliner's Secret (47 page)

‘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.

Dietrich might never forgive her. Knowing what she now knew of his double life, he might not even be inclined to spare her. But there was no going back.

Luck was with her as she stepped on to rue de Vaugirard. The moon was behind cloud and the Luftwaffe sentries at the furthest point of their patrol, in rue Guynemer. With Noëlle heavy in her arms, she took the opposite direction, into rue Tournon. A true moment of fear came when headlights flared at the junction of Tournon and rue de Seine. Coming towards her. She ducked into a doorway and Noëlle whimpered.

‘It’s all right, darling. We’re going to Tante Nou-Nou’s and we’ll pop you into that big warm bed.’

On rue de Seine, Arkady opened the street door at the second rap and it was clear that he’d only just come home. He wore his outdoor coat, his violin case in his hand. ‘All right!’ He raised his arms, as if fending off ill luck, then dropped them as he recognised her. ‘You! Sorry, I thought I was in trouble for breaking curfew. I walk home always after work, because I must get out of the Rose Noire. Filthy place. But what is wrong? Noëlle is ill?’

‘No, but I’m in a terrible fix.’

He ushered her up the stairs, where they found Una dozing on the sofa, a candlewick housecoat over her evening dress, her hair in sponge rollers. She sat up, saying muzzily, ‘Darling – oh, my stars, what’s up?’

Coralie gave them a filleted version of events. Nothing about the assassination plot or of Martel’s foiled attempt to denounce Dietrich. All she said was that Teddy had fallen foul of the German authorities and that Dietrich had gone, with another man, to settle the score.

‘Settle how?’

‘They took a gun.’

Una pulled in a breath. ‘I heard a car shortly after I was dropped home this evening. A door slammed and I had three heart attacks because I thought – well, we always think they’re coming for us, don’t we? Then I heard hard knocking just down the street. Yellow-belly that I am, I kept the lights off and my back to the wall. It was Teddy they were after? Dietrich was part of it? Why?’

‘I’m not sure.’ She wanted to tell Una and Arkady everything but she was ashamed of her own part in the situation, and of Dietrich’s readiness to exact revenge.

‘We know why.’ Arkady was stirring up the fire, adding chunks of broken-up vegetable crate. ‘His life is not natural. He goes to bed with men.’

‘We don’t judge, honey.’ Una made space on the sofa so Coralie could lay Noëlle down.

‘We do not judge so hard, but they do. Often Teddy is seen dining with young men. You want tea, Coralie, or chicory mud?’

‘Neither, thanks. Did you hear –’ she hated to say it ‘– a shot?’

‘Gunshot?’ Una shook her head. ‘I heard doors slamming, and men’s voices.’

‘Shouting, arguing?’

‘Fear. I heard fear.’

Arkady offered Coralie a cigarette, and when she refused, said, ‘Sorry, I forget. You can stay here as long as you need. I go back up into the roof to sleep, yes?’ He gave a rueful grin. ‘Excuse me, I am very tired.’

‘One more thing.’ Just one little thing. ‘The Gestapo took Julie tonight.’

Getting no response, Coralie wondered if they grasped what that meant. ‘She will talk and she knows that you escaped from the camp at Gurs, Arkady. She was here when you and Florian arrived, one suitcase between you. She knows you fought in Spain for the anti-Fascists and she knows your origins. Florian’s too.’

‘You think they will arrest me, this Gestapo, because I am manouche? Or because I fight on the losing side in Spain?’ Arkady took matches from his pocket, only to find the box empty. ‘A mean-face woman came up to me the other day. Demanded to know if I was Gypsy. I said, “Are you witch?”’

Una pulled her knees up, hugging her chest. ‘It’s true, what Coralie says. We sat at this table, talking about costumes for the Vagabonds.’

Coralie nodded. ‘And I kept going on about big Gypsy sleeves and playing up the romantic foreigner. At least Ramon should be safe – the Auvergne’s a big place. You know he and Julie lived together?’ Seeing a glance pass between the others, she slowly nodded. ‘Clearly, you did.’

Una admitted it. ‘Arkady’s shoulder is the one Florian cries on and, yes, we should have told you, but I said you had enough on your plate.’

Coralie reflected that it hardly mattered any more who was in bed with whom. ‘I’m scared for you,’ she told Arkady. ‘They have camps for Gypsies now, just as they have them for Jews.’

‘Your German tells you that?’ Arkady found a lighter in another pocket and snapped down on it, getting a short-lived flash each time. ‘Damn and hell. Out of fuel. Everything runs out but trouble.’

‘Here, emergency supply.’ Una took a box of matches from under a sofa cushion and struck a light. Arkady crouched in front of her, cigarette glued to his bottom lip, and Coralie watched a tender ceremony take place between them. A moment later, tobacco smoke hit her, transporting her back to her father’s yard in Bermondsey. To an iron chair by a wall where Jac would smoke his Navy Cut. She frowned at Arkady. ‘Where’d you get that English cigarette from?’

It was Una who replied. ‘Nose like a bloodhound. One of our guests left it.’

‘Guests . . . an evader, you mean? English?’

‘A tail-gunner. “Tail-end Charlies”, they call them. His plane crashed just this side of the Belgian border but don’t ask more.’

Arkady went to sit by the window, opening it slightly to let his smoke drift outside. Full as she was of brawling emotions, Coralie appreciated his consideration. He returned her look. ‘I am not leaving. Who will protect Una if I go away?’