It was at once the room of a chamber-maid or scullery girl. Gabrielle had deliberately chosen to make her statement that this was how she was perceived by the Countess and therefore this was how it should be.
Since the murder in Fontainebleau Forest, things had improved but still there would be reservations on both sides, old insults and opinions. For those, they needed time.
A soft brown velvet bag with a drawstring of twisted gold thread had held eighteen uncut diamonds, each of five or six carats. Emerald green, yellow, a soft and frosted pink, a blue, some clear white stones … Russian diamonds Gabrielle had brought from Leningrad as a girl of fourteen and had kept no matter what and always in the hope her family would have survived to be reunited with her.
Diamonds then, and diamonds now.
There were some newspapers on the bed and he wondered at them for they were new. The Volkischer Beobachter, the Pariser Zeitung and a copy of Signal, the picture magazine – the January 1943 issue and photos of Gabrielle at the Club Mirage, entertaining the troops. There were shots of her with laughing soldier boys on leave or boarding the train back to the front, others of her with generals. A collage of her with von Ribbentrop and with the General Heinrich von Stulpnagel, the Military Governor of France, occupied a centrefold.
A smiling, cigar-smoking Otto Abetz, the ambassador, had his arm about her waist, she laughing. Dr Karl Epting, the Director of the Deutsche Institut was more staid, as was the General Ernst von Schaumburg, Old Shatter Hand, the Kommandant von Gross Paris.
In page after page she was seen with the high and mighty of the Third Reich. There were bits and pieces of her private life both in Paris and here on the Loire. Shots of the chateau showed her with her son.
Lying under the newspapers, there was a letter of commendation signed by Hitler himself, 10 January 1943. She had brought the newspapers and the magazine with her on the twelfth to show the Countess but had left them here.
‘Sonderbehandlung,’ Herr Max had warned. He must have known the article had already been published and the magazine distributed not just in France but in every occupied country and wherever the troops were fighting.
She was revered by thousands. Front-line soldiers heard her singing via broadcasts that were picked up live from the club. There had been several requests for her to visit the troops but so far she had been able to put these off.
The Resistance … a reseau … She had said she’d join up, and he had agreed and had included himself but why had she let the Occupier do this to her unless desperate and thinking it would protect the reseau? Every hot-headed resistant in the country would be after her.
When Rene Yvon-Paul came to find him, the boy, who looked a lot like his mother but had the dark brown eyes and hair of his father, gravely said, ‘You must tell maman we cannot possibly accept any packages at this time. Things are far too difficult for us. She must listen to grand-mere in the matter and not argue with those who love her.’
‘What sort of packages?’
The boy burst into tears. ‘Was it a suitcase?’ asked St-Cyr gently.
‘No! It … it was someone she wanted us to hide for a few days, just until things could be finalized.’
‘Who? Rene, you must tell me if I’m to help her.’
‘A gitan, a nomade. She said he had some work to do for them in Paris and then they … they would send him to us for “delivery” to others.’
‘And were these others to help him on from here?’
‘Yes!’
Longing for a cigarette, they drove in silence. St-Cyr shut his eyes. He wished he could peacefully gaze at the countryside, but the roads … ‘There’s a convoy up ahead, Hermann!’
‘Where? There’s no convoy.’
‘Ah nom de Jesus-Christ, idiot, trust me!’
Trust … wasn’t that what this whole affair was all about? wondered Kohler uncomfortably. Trust between friends and partners, trust between a man and his Vaterland, and trust between the members of a reseau and two detectives who should have known better than to have meddled with them in the first place but had been ordered to!
The brakes were hit. The Citroen slewed sideways. At about 90 kilometres an hour, it sped broadside towards the rear lorry. They did a complete circle. Another and another … ‘Hermann!’
The car pulled out of its spin and they found themselves at the side of the road.
‘So, Louis, why not tell me what you found out, eh? Why keep me in suspense?’
‘The Resistance in Vouvray were to pass the Gypsy on to others once he had finished his work in Paris. De Vries will know of this, Hermann. Gabrielle will have told him of it.’
‘Then it’s even worse than we thought. The son of a bitch will turn them all in if he has to.’
‘And if not him, then Tshaya.’
At Beaugency they stopped for the prix fixe of watery soup, sour wine, stuffed cabbage leaves but stuffed with what – more of the infamous ‘mystery’ meat? – and prunes aux vinaigre. There wasn’t a single one of the Occupier in the restaurant except for Hermann and there were stares from all others.
At OrleBuilt on the right bans they headed north towards Paris, the meal not sitting well. Neither of them had any tobacco. Even their megoi tins, where all cigarette butts, found or otherwise were kept, held only ashes.
At a control, the car was flagged down and they had to go through the motions. Cartes d’identite were handed over, their laissez-passers and sauf-conduits. Cold stares from the burly Feldwebel in charge were received by the Surete. Always there was this little panic, this fluttering of the heart only more so now.
But it didn’t happen. Louis wasn’t asked to get out, and soon they were on their way again, Kohler heaving a sigh of relief. ‘Berlin must be tearing their hair,’ he said.
‘Himmler’s, I think, and Herr Max’s.’
‘Boemelburg’s too.’ Kohler floored the car as they passed a farm wagon that was driven by an old woman whose black shawl was suddenly caught by the wind. ‘Nana must have hoped and prayed De Vries had escaped to England in 1940, Louis. The Norwegians let a lot of prisoners go just before the Defeat. She would have been ready to believe he’d been parachuted into France, but even so, would have been surprised to learn he had arrived on her doorstep to do the very thing they wanted.’
Had they asked specifically for him? they both wondered, but thought it doubtful if for no other reason than security. Instead, they must have asked simply for help and then found an expert had been sent.
Wind-drift was carrying the snow across a ploughed field. Sunlight, rare for this time of year, was breaking through the clouds to be caught among the crystals …
‘If De Vries is now having to get his nitro from dynamite, Louis, then how much of it did those three women find for him? Berlin and Herr Max wouldn’t have given him any, no matter what they fed them by wireless, so don’t start thinking they did.’
‘But does Herr Max know for certain it’s them, Hermann, or does he only suspect it is?’
The airwaves, the distance factor, the difficulties of pinning a transceiver down. Was there still a particle of hope or was all lost?