The Milliner's Secret (67 page)

She tried every argument. ‘You are passerine. You perch, you fly off. So let’s fly off.’

‘I lied. I am not that way at all. My home-hopping and country-hopping was due to an unhappy marriage, to my need to find saleable art, and it was the price I paid for rejecting the Nazi religion. It is hard to live in one place when you cannot speak and think the same as everybody else. As for leaving Paris now, I cannot. I knew from the start what I was risking, and had we succeeded, I would have shared in power. I cannot now desert General von Stülpnagel, or the Abwehr and Luftwaffe officers who have jumped side. Kurt was right in one thing. There will be reprisals.’

‘I won’t let you sacrifice yourself. I love you too much.’

It was just gone three a.m. when they left the Rose Noire.

He would have preferred silence on the journey home, but Coralie had the fidgets. She was planning.

‘We’ll go to Dreux, to Teddy’s château.’

‘Dreux is being bombed. The Allies want to wipe out the airbase there.’

‘South, then, to Spain.’

‘The Wehrmacht is surging north. You have never seen armed columns on the move, Coralie. They are being attacked by the Free French Army, and strafed from above by Allied fighters. It would be suicidal. You will take a train to Annemasse, the French side of the Swiss border, then cross into Geneva. God willing, we will meet there when it is all over.’

She demanded he show her the cyanide capsule in the ribbon of his Pour le Mérite. ‘I need to know you have it.’

‘You no longer have yours. How can I use mine, knowing you cannot?’

‘It’s different for me. I couldn’t take it anyway, not now. I could be pregnant.’

He let her unfasten the ribbon so she could peer at the stitches she’d put in four years ago. He made no objection when she knocked on the soundproof glass behind the driver’s head and asked to borrow a cigarette lighter. He had booked a car tonight because he’d been so certain that, by dawn, he would be travelling in dignity to Army Headquarters.

The driver handed over a lighter, before turning the car on to the pont au Change. The river gleamed mirror-black because tonight was the dark of the moon. Had Stauffenberg’s bomb been closer, or more powerful, a new moon might have risen on a world remade.

‘This isn’t my work.’

‘Mm?’ Dietrich drew his gaze from the river, and saw what Coralie was showing him. ‘I watched you make that pocket, and we discussed how many stitches would make the pill secure, while allowing me to bite through.’

‘These are not my stitches. They’re half as big again as mine.’ She kept a chatelaine in her bag, a sewing kit on a chain with a dainty pair of scissors. A minute later, she was holding something. The pearl head off a hatpin. ‘Explain.’

‘I did not put it there. If you did not . . . Hiltrud.’ A last poke from his wife, from the grave, telling him he was a coward? He flicked the pearl out of the window. ‘That takes care of that. At home, we will pack a case for you and this car will take you on to Gare de Lyon. You will be safer there than with me.’

‘No, Dietrich.’

‘By tomorrow night you will be with Ottilia and Max, Teddy and Noëlle.’

‘Please come too.’

He kissed her face, tasting salt tears. ‘In Berlin, I gave General Olbricht my oath of allegiance, and I am Prussian. To me, such an oath is unbreakable. Valkyrie struck at the heart of power, and there has been no leniency for Stauffenberg, for Olbricht.’ He did not want to say, ‘And there will be none for me,’ but why lie to himself? He had staked everything for Germany’s honour, and the account remained to be paid.

Coralie watched Dietrich put her suitcase by the door. He’d had to pack for her and now he put a coat around her shoulders, one of Ottilia’s, quilt-lined with deep pockets that engulfed the wad of francs he gave her now. ‘Keep some in your shoe in case your coat is taken from you. You have your papers?’

She nodded. ‘Please come too, before it’s too late.’

He ignored her. ‘I need to tell you something important, something you must pass on to Max von Silberstrom. Are you listening?’

‘Yes.’

‘He must not let Ottilia sell any of the Dutch masters from her art collection because, like the Dürers, they are all fakes. Their grandfather was cheated into buying some of the best forgeries on the market, and I have kept the fact secret for years.’

Astonishment momentarily lifted her misery. ‘I always thought you were trying to nab them for yourself!’

‘I know you did, my darling, fuelled by Teddy, who could never understand why I sold only select items, and none that he wanted. You see, the perceived value of the collection underpins Max’s credit with the Swiss banks. If fakes slip into the market, he will be ruined. Tell him, but not Ottilia. Promise me.’

It was she who heard the sound. The soft click of a closing door. She said, ‘There’s someone in the building.’

He went still and listened. ‘Get your evening bag, quick.’

A panicked search, until she found it on the sofa in the sitting room. Dietrich extracted the Walther and replaced the Enfield in his holster. The Enfield, he shoved under the sofa whose decorative fringe flopped back over it.

Feet on the service stairs. A moment later, the apartment door yielded to a splintering crash. Reiniger was in the room. Three men were with him, pointing handguns. They all wore creased suits and Reiniger’s collar was torn. No longer that air of clerical reserve. His face twisted with triumph.

‘Generalmajor von Elbing, you joined a criminal conspiracy to overthrow our beloved Führer and subvert the army. You are under arrest for treason.’ He came right up to Dietrich and slapped him hard around the face. ‘I thank you for the very uncomfortable night I have spent under sentence of death. Believe me, it will give me the greatest pleasure to repay the compliment.’

Coralie cried out as Reiniger tore off Dietrich’s Pour le Mérite, striking his throat so that one of its swallow-tail points drew blood. ‘I will smash one bone in your body for every year you had the insolence to wear this medal. When I have finished, I will drag your broken, naked body down the Champs-Élysées as a warning to every stinking traitor and terrorist in this city.’ He spat in Dietrich’s face.

Dietrich kept his back straight, but his voice betrayed his shock. ‘I will come with you, Reiniger, but I expect to be treated as a military officer and, dare I suggest, as innocent until trial.’

Reiniger laughed in mock-disbelief. ‘We will conduct our trial at avenue Foch. We’ll have fun there, and finally find out if your whore really is English, after all.’

Dietrich stepped in front of Coralie. ‘Leave her. She has had no part in your humiliation. She is a civilian, a non-combatant.’

How many years had she dreaded this moment? Her legs had turned to cold jelly. Her lungs wouldn’t fill properly. But her mind raced ahead. Dietrich wanted to protect her, but his power was gone, soaking away, like the blood into his shirt collar. Of course she’d confess to being English. She might hold out a brave hour or two, but sooner or later, she would talk. She would betray Dietrich, and Ramon, and Bonnet, Louise Deveau, Arkady and Una, and anybody else whose name came in on the tide of her terror. When the pain grew intolerable, she would betray Dietrich’s last secret. She could hear herself, voice stretched to an animal rasp: ‘Ask him why he’s circumcised.’

How Reiniger would relish that. The aristocrat who had made a fool of him was the ultimate torturer’s plaything – a traitor and a Jew.

Dawn light was stealing through the window. Dietrich stood in its aura, once again her St George. Bloodied and doomed, but so beloved. So human.

He caught her looking and hazel eyes sent her everything she needed to know. He touched his throat, where his medal had hung, a gesture of hopelessness. He caught her eye again and, for a moment, she saw a plea in his own. You always did have the last word, Coralie. Lawless and unsinkable, pulling keys out of pockets and rabbits out of hats. Can you do something for us now?

She couldn’t see any way out. Those cyanide pills had been their insurance against this moment, and they’d lost them, discarded them, because they had never truly believed it would come. All they had now was whatever they could pull from their human armoury. Defiance, courage . . . Dietrich must have read her mind because he found a smile and mouthed, ‘You are brave.’

Brave enough to pull off one last trick? To slam the lid on Reiniger’s triumph? Fire a shot into the heart of the Nazi regime? To kill?

Could she . . . Dare she? A Gypsy had told her she would.

‘I’m going to be sick,’ she said, and plumped down on the sofa, dropping her head between her knees. She reached down through the silken fringe and pulled out the Enfield.

She pointed it and pulled the trigger.

Dietrich von Elbing died instantly.

CHAPTER 40

28 APRIL 1945

They would have invoked pity from all but the most war-hardened hearts. Hundreds of women with haunted eyes, the marks of abuse on their flesh. Shapeless coats disguised malnourished shoulders. Knotted scarves kept the wind from emaciated faces.

Two women walked so slowly, they got separated from the main group. One was grey-haired, with anxious grooves running from her nose to the sides of her mouth. Wearing mismatched ankle socks and heavy shoes, she hobbled across the concrete dock, each step a painful kiss. A younger blonde woman waddled after her, breathing in short gasps. She was so pregnant, her coat gaped open. The ragged dress beneath, filling with sea wind, ballooned over her belly. She was supported by two Swedish Red Cross nurses. They’d wanted to carry her off the ferry on a stretcher. She’d refused. ‘My feet want to feel free ground.’

As they came in sight of the white buses that would take them to reception centres, to baths, clean beds and nourishing food, the older woman began to sob. ‘Why me? What did I ever do in my lousy life to deserve this luck?’

‘Can’t think, Una.’ Coralie dug a knuckle into her swollen waist to dispel a deep, driving pain. The journey from Ravensbrück concentration camp into Denmark had ended months of nightmare. A short sea crossing had brought them to neutral ground, while behind them, Germany was being pounded to destruction. She knew what Una meant. They’d been plucked from likely death because they were French and American. ‘Whatever kept you going kept me going. You saved me, Una—’ The word dissolved into a wail as Coralie’s pelvic muscles went into a violent contraction. She panted, ‘It’s coming.’

‘The baby? Right now? Hey, it’ll be a Swedish citizen.’

Coralie didn’t care. All she knew was that this baby was skipping an entire stage of labour. Having hung on for friendly soil, he or she could wait no longer. She was going to give birth to Dietrich’s child on a bare dock.

EPILOGUE

Excerpt from
In My Fashion
, the autobiography of Una, Viscountess Kilpin, first published in London, 1960.

It now behoves me to say something about hats, and to introduce you to a dear friend and fellow beater-of-odds, Coralie de Lirac. Who, when not rustling up delicious frivolities in her salon on London’s Bond Street, goes by the name of Mrs Donal Flynn. These two ladies are not one and the same and beware anybody who calls her Mrs Flynn at work or Mademoiselle de Lirac at home.

I put her success down to her complete understanding that a superb hat makes a plain woman lovely, a lovely woman beautiful, but is always subordinate to the woman herself. She will not sell a hat off the shelf. Should you go in demanding ‘one the same as so-and-so’ you will not get it. Bribery and tears won’t work.

Let me reveal an insider’s titbit: Mademoiselle de Lirac employs only the best technicians and rewards them well, never stealing the credit for their efforts. A working partnership with Miss Jean McCullum of the long-extinct Pettrew & Lofthouse resulted in many scintillating collections. Recently, following Miss McCullum’s retirement, Salon de Lirac employed its first male premier in the youthful shape of Alexandre Zénon, who is the grandson of a well-respected première with whom Mademoiselle de Lirac worked for some years in Paris.