Others came. The traffic in and out was intermittent. Most arrived on foot to slip as unobtrusively as possible through the darkened entrance above whose double doors a faint blue light shone.
Studio Pleyel No. 6. Tango, waltz, etc., and all the latest ballroom dances. Madame Jesequel, Professeur Diplome et Mademoiselle Nana Theleme, danseuse eleclriaue de flamenco.
Edith Piaf sang ‘Parlez-moi d’amour’, a recording, and then, as Kohler went up the stairs ahead of Louis, ‘L’Etranger’, a song about a man with dreamy eyes who was very gentle and with gold in his hair and the smile of an angel! Verdammt! no Schmeissers, eh? No jackboots? he snorted inwardly. No Gypsy either!
Round and round the dance floor the couples circled. Stiff backed Prussian generals with monocles, colonels, majors, Luftwaffe fighter pilots, Kriegsmarine U-boat captains; corporals, sergeants and noncoms, all looking painfully uncomfortable and very out of place. Mein Gott, it was a cross-section. Franz Breker of the Deutsche Institut was here, also Hugo Krause of the Militarbefehlshaber in Frankreich, Weber of the Kommandantur and Ilse Unger of the Propaganda Staffel. Wealthy industrialists and big black marketeers had joined them, minor Vichy politicians too, and financiers.
There were perhaps sixty students, mostly male but with a sprinkling of Blitzmadels and other females of the Occupier. Not nearly enough instructresses were available. Some of the clients did have to wait in the wings and dutifully watch as Nana Theleme and Madame Jesequel gracefully moved among the dancers, getting those big Boches’ feet right, male or female.
The old, the grey, the fat, the thin – most were a head and shoulders above the petites Parisiennes with the flashing dark brown eyes who wore woollen frocks and double sweaters, thick woollen stockings under ankle socks and the ever-present wooden-soled high-heels with their imitation leather uppers.
The hands of the instructresses were clad in fingerless gloves because, even with all the exercise, the studio was freezing.
‘Inspectors, to what do I owe this intrusion?’
Madame Jesequel was in her late forties. Tall, thin and supple, and with her greying jet black hair pinned into a tight chignon, she was made-up, and the dark brown, olive eyes were hard in resolve but wary.
Nana had stopped to look across the floor at them. Her height, her shoulders, eyes and jet black hair – the very way she stood – were the same.
‘Inspectors, am I not to be granted an answer or are you so struck by my daughter’s likeness to me, you have lost the power of speech?’
A tough one, she had once been a promising ballet dancer but the former child out on the floor had ended that career. A ‘bayonet divorce’ had come early in 1914 and ever since then she had run this studio.
‘Your daughter,’ said Kohler. ‘We have to talk to her.’
‘Then wait. Don’t embarrass us. Hang up your coats and hats. Take a girl. Learn a little so as to silence all questions.’
They’ve come for me, said Nana Theleme to herself in despair. It’s over. ‘Loosen up a little, Colonel. Try not to cling so much.’
Somehow she managed to smile and to laugh a little, but had they finally met her in all of her guises? wondered St-Cyr. Gypsy singer, mother of the son of Janwillem De Vries, finder of diamonds for the Reich, hauler of explosives, purchaser of flypapers and member of a reseau, two of whom were now incarcerated in the Neuilly villa of Gestapo Boemelburg.
Foster mother to the daughter of Tshaya and the Gypsy.
Nana was nearly as tall as her partner and, as the couple circled about the floor, she did it effortlessly but what, really, was running through her mind?
My purse, she said to herself, passing near to them. Will they search it and find the revolver, or can I get to it before they do?
Suzanne-Cecilia had been taken this afternoon. Gabrielle had been arrested yesterday. Everything was falling in on them. They had not realized what had really been going on. They had stupidly thought they could pull it off. Idiots that they had been, they had not thought janwillem would go against them, but had thought only of what they could contribute to the cause.
‘Inspectors, what is it you want of me?’
She had broken off her dancing to stride through the couples. In rapid Spanish she said, ‘Mother, don’t! You’re not involved. Stay out of it. We’ll go into the office.’
‘What have you done, Isabella?’
‘Nothing, idiot! Stay here and teach. Do what you’ve always done. Don’t interfere.’
‘You fool. I warned you to stay away from Janwillem but you wouldn’t listen. He’s never been any good for you and now … now what am I supposed to do? Bury the daughter I sacrificed my life for and raise your son as I raised you?’
Nana stamped a foot. ‘Mother, please, I’m begging you. Leave it. You’ve already said too much.’
In French the woman said, ‘When my daughter was nine, I sent her to live with my father and my brothers in Cordoba so that she could learn to dance and sing. Now look how she repays me!’
The recording changed. Maurice Chevalier sang ‘Boum!’. Nana closed the door to the tiny, cluttered office where billboard posters and press photographs announced her debut at the Scheherazade in 1924.
‘Inspectors, what am I supposed to do? Lead you to Janwillem when I don’t even know where he is and he won’t have anything to do with me?’
Was she still being evasive, or had Gestapo Paris bugged the room? ‘You’re our only link,’ said Kohler.
‘We have to find him,’ pleaded St-Cyr. ‘Someone has to be helping him, not just Tshaya.’
They had come for her and she could see it in their eyes. ‘And you think it’s me?’
‘Exactly how much did the Generalmajor Wehrle tell you of the Reich’s need for diamonds?’ sighed St-Cyr.
‘Nothing!. How could he have? Hans had security clearances you’d be proud to carry.’
Seizing a scrap of paper, he scribbled, Did you relay even that information to London?.
Her eyes leapt. ‘How could I have? Merde, you’re fools! We had a working relationship, that was all. Hans paid me to help him buy diamonds from those who had hidden them away.’
Even this would have been intelligence the British could have used. Kohler hauled her out of the office and into the music. ‘He knew everything about our needs for diamonds. That’s one of the reasons Berlin are so concerned. Now give, before it’s too late.’
‘Then why not ask him? Why not bring us face to face and let him tell you how wrong you are!’
She would get her scarf and coat. She would tell them nothing further since they looked as if ready to arrest her.
She would try to reach the revolver in her purse.
When she went to get her handbag, Kohler was ahead of her and picked it up. ‘Merci,’ she said as she snatched it from him, but had he felt the weight of it, had he realized what it must contain? ‘Now, please, a moment to say goodbye to that kindest and wisest of women. The bane of my existence, but the heart and soul of my life.’
The caviar and the champagne, the Taittinger 1934, were the same: untouched as if waiting yet again for the couple to get together. But a celebration for what reason this time? wondered Engelmann.
Seen from the balcony, the surface of the Ritz’s swimming pool was mirror calm. Wehrle’s body, clad in navy blue bathing trunks, floated face down in the centre to throw its darkened shadow on the decorative tiles below.