Silent in an Evil Time (11 page)

He made his way to the clinic and explained his mission to Edith. She nodded and gave de Roy a form to sign. The form was for an operation. De Roy was puzzled.

“But, Madame,” he said to Edith, “I don't need an operation. I want you to get me across the border.”

Edith gave de Roy a smile. “That, young man,” she said, “is the operation!”

Edith was only partly joking. While it was true that the clinic had no intention of performing an operation on de Roy with many of the escaping men, Edith put their names into the book where she kept her official list of real medical operations. Then, opposite the names, she wrote imaginary treatments that the men received for fictitious ailments and illnesses. If the Germans happened to ask Edith why certain men had stayed at the clinic, she could produce the book as explanation. No record exists today that reveals whether Edith ever used the operations book to get herself out of tight spots, but it was typical of her careful and methodical planning that she prepared herself for every possible trouble.

Young Raoul de Roy stayed at the clinic for three days before leaving with a party of three or four other men for the trip into Holland. At the border, they ran into a problem. Strands of barbed wire guarded that section of the frontier, and beneath the barbed wire, hand grenades were buried in the sand. De Roy and the others solved the difficulty by stepping on the least thick barbed wire and performing a balancing act to keep from falling on the grenades. De Roy reached England, where he joined the 7th Artillery Regiment. Just as he had dreamed, he fought the Germans for the rest of the war.

Like all of the soldiers who passed through the clinic, de Roy never forgot his debt to Edith. During his three days on Rue de la Culture, he talked with her several times and formed a lasting impression of Edith. To de Roy she was an easy person to get on with. But she was more than that; she had “spontaneity.” Even in the period of her growing worry, Edith was generous to the men who were under her care.

On June 14, a man named Otto Mayer came to Edith's office at number 149. His appearance in the clinic represented the worst nightmare Edith could have imagined. Mayer worked for Bergan and Pinkhoff of the German political police. Although he was a German civilian, not an army
man, Mayer had assets that made him valuable to Bergan and Pinkhoff. Unlike them, he spoke English as well as German and French. Like them, he was expert at double-dealing, a skilled sneak who would be effective on the Cavell case.

On the June day when Mayer showed up at Edith's office, she was over on Rue Brussels, checking on the construction of the new clinic. It's possible that Mayer chose this time when Edith was absent for his surprise visit, hoping that the less experienced nurses would crumble under his questioning. Elisabeth Wilkins, an Englishwoman in her late twenties, was sitting at Edith's desk the moment Mayer walked in. It was lucky for Edith that, of all the nurses, Wilkins was the one on duty. She had senior status, and she was more assured under pressure than the others.

“May I do something for you?” she asked Mayer.

He answered with a brusque question. “Have you got any more?”

Wilkins thought the man must be referring to nurses. The clinic had received several requests for nursing staff, and Mayer, who was dressed in civilian clothes, seemed to be on the same errand.

“I'm sorry,” she said, “we have no nurses available.”

“I'm not talking about nurses,” Mayer snapped, turning around the lapel on his jacket to reveal the badge of the German political police. “Have you any more British soldiers in the clinic?”

Wilkins kept her composure. She knew that two British soldiers had left the clinic just the day before, and that no more British were there at the moment. But on the floor above her, two French and two Belgian soldiers were waiting in a ward to leave for Holland. In the desk where Wilkins was sitting, her Matron's desk, Edith kept names and records of the soldiers who had passed through the clinic. These weren't just lists of operations performed, but detailed accounts of British escapees. At all costs, Wilkins had to get Mayer out of number 149.

“We have no British soldiers here,” she said. “If you don't believe me, come over to my room. You can go through my desk and look anywhere else in the house you want.”

Mayer followed Wilkins to number 145, where he made a search of her desk. Then he questioned the patients in the ward. Wilkins knew Mayer would find nothing; her desk held no incriminating records, and the men in the beds were Belgian civilians. While Mayer searched and interrogated, Wilkins slipped back to 149. She sent the two French and two Belgian soldiers to safe houses in the neighborhood, then she hid Edith's records in a toilet tank.

After Mayer finished with Wilkins' building, he demanded to look through everything in Edith's office and in the ward above. Wilkins told him to go ahead. Mayer wouldn't come across anything damaging – unless he was such a meticulous detective that he examined the toilet tank. Wilkins took a deep breath and watched in relief as Mayer walked past the toilet. He was a disappointed man when he left the clinic. And he warned Wilkins that he would be back.

That night in her office, Edith wrote the last letter to her mother that ever reached Mrs. Cavell. Edith chose her words carefully. She wrote about everyday events, about the little garden at the new clinic, about the hot weather and severe thunderstorms in Brussels. But, in the course of the letter, she included remarks that tried to warn her mother of Edith's fears for the future. She wrote of “very serious” things happening, the “very” underlined, and she emphasized that “I am not sure of having another occasion of sending [letters].”

Otto Mayer's search of the clinic had shaken Edith more than anything the Germans had so far done, and she was trying to let Mrs. Cavell know that Edith believed she could be arrested at any moment. She had endured searches in the past by regular German army officers, but Mayer represented a threat on a far more serious level. Mayer and the others in the German political police were certain to be more purposeful: It was their job to keep after the secret network until they caught all of its
members. Edith was pessimistic about what lay ahead, and she needed to prepare her mother for the bad news that was sure to come.

In the next few days, Edith was distracted – something that was out of the ordinary for such a self-contained person. A Belgian surgeon whom she assisted in an operation told Edith that she was “jumpy.” She developed the habit of peeking around the curtains in the front windows of the clinic, examining the street for signs of German activity. Edith was on edge.

And then another search team from the German political police arrived at the clinic. Edith was in a second-floor ward. Once again she heard the sound of German boots pounding up the stairs. In an instant, she threw the documents she was holding into a fireplace and put a match to them. Earlier that month, right after Mayer's visit, Edith had burned several of her papers listing the names and details of British soldiers. But she still kept many more documents in different places around the clinic. It may seem puzzling that Edith saved records that were guaranteed to get her in trouble with the Germans. But to her, it made sense to keep the paperwork. When the war was over, she would be required to account for every part of the clinic's operation to her boss, Antoine Depage. The material about the British soldiers was part of the record, and to destroy the documents offended her sense of responsibility. She would almost rather be imprisoned than fail in her duty to Dr. Depage.

Soon Princess Marie de Croy traveled from Bellignies to the clinic for a discussion about the secret organization's work. The visit took place just one day after the latest German raid, and Edith, who wasn't expecting the princess, was shocked to find her waiting in the office.

“I wish you hadn't come,” she said. “I am evidently suspect.”

She led Princess Marie to the office window overlooking the street in front of the clinic. Edith pointed to a group of men who were standing around a spot in the pavement that apparently needed repairs.

“Those men have been outside for days,” she said. “They hardly work at all. I'm certain they've been sent to watch me.”

The princess told Edith that the reason for her visit was to call an end to the network's activities. She said the Germans appeared to have almost everyone under surveillance. Bellignies had been raided several times. Now was the time to stop.

Edith agreed, but she had a question. “Are there any more hidden men?”

“About thirty,” the princess answered. Louise Thuliez had found the thirty soldiers hiding near a village named Cambrai.

“Then we can't stop just yet,” Edith said. “If one of those men were taken and shot, it would be our fault.”

The two women came to an understanding. They would carry on until the last thirty soldiers were out of Belgium. But they wouldn't take the thirty by way of Bellignies or the clinic. With the Germans watching both places, that would be foolish. By the time the princess left Edith's office, both knew that the secret network was still in business, at least for another month.