The Ghosts of Paris, page 17
“Not a detective. I’m a private inquiry agent. And I’m terribly sorry if I’ve shocked you,” she shot back. “The man hurt some people dear to me, including a client, as if I needed any more reason to dislike a Nazi, let alone one with his track record.” She wasn’t sorry if she shocked them, not at all actually, though she suspected that when the dust settled and she woke in her hotel room she might regret having spoken quite so plainly when her plan had been to charm her way into their circle. She smiled, raised her glass to Hessmann’s demise, then took a sip.
“My dear girl,” Basil said, looking quite appalled. “You think this kind of work is appropriate for a woman?”
“Well, yes, Basil, I do. I grant it’s not for everyone, but it’s appropriate for plenty of women and men, given the chance,” she said, left hand in a fist, trying not to let being called his “dear girl” grate too much. “In fact, I was rather hoping some of you gentlemen might know something of how he got to Australia. It would have been around the end of the war, or shortly after, and I’m quite sure he did not act alone. He would have got his papers somewhere.”
“Still on the case, are we? The war is over, my dear.” It was Harold now, returning, having overheard some of their awkward exchange. “I should say none of us would know a thing about it.”
“I, for one, find this woman’s plucky courage quite inspiring,” Charlie said, intervening on her behalf. “Perhaps we ought to drink to that? And the war being over, certainly.”
“To victory.”
“To victory,” the group said in unison.
Billie clinked glasses with the men, having felt the drink go sour in her stomach.
“Did you read they are even sentencing the women to death now?” Harold told the group. “Frightful business. Those women guards from one of the camps were executed a few days ago. How ghastly.”
He was right on that score. Thirty-eight defendants of the Hamburg Ravensbrück trials were being tried in seven separate trials held by the British. Of the thirty-eight, twenty-one of the defendants were women. Ravensbrück had been a concentration camp almost entirely for women prisoners and their children, and female Nazi guards were trained up there. It seemed many of those guards had been keen to prove their dedication to the Nazi cause with unbridled brutality against their charges. The trials of sixteen defendants had just ended, all being found guilty and most sentenced to death for their crimes. Three of the female guards from Ravensbrück had just been hanged, according to the article Sam had shown her back in Sydney. Wardens, medical doctors, and a nurse from the notorious camp had also been hanged. This was where the postwar focus was—on the trials and the debate about them.
The camp commandant had escaped, his whereabouts unknown until Billie and Shyla had found him. Hessmann had escaped the trials, but not justice, of a sort, she thought, picturing his contorted face, his outreached hand as he fell.
“Are you quite well, Ms. Walker?” Charlie asked her quietly, obviously aware of how ill at ease she had become.
Billie nodded. “It’s a sorry affair. All of it,” she said softly.
“These are nothing more than show trials—high politics masquerading as law,” Harold persisted, speaking over her. “You know Kesselring was just sentenced to death by firing squad . . . more honorable than hanging, I suppose. I’m not a lawyer but I do think it’s terribly un-British to put people on trial for crimes that didn’t exist when they committed them. Beastly people, no doubt, but is this kind of show really what we want? Hanging women?”
“Perhaps these acts should have explicitly been crimes in law before this, yes? You know the details, don’t you? And if we can hang men for these war crimes, we can hang women for them,” Billie reasoned in a low, deadly serious voice. “This is the Ravensbrück camp we’re talking about. These people, women or not, weren’t simply guarding the women and children in their care, they were torturing them, working them to death, starving them intentionally. Death as a punishment is a complex topic, I’ll grant you, but as for the public trials, they seem quite necessary. How else would most people even know what had gone on? One could argue that without bringing these Nazis to some kind of justice for torturing and murdering innocent civilians, en masse no less, one sets a very poor precedent for what is considered acceptable in wartime—”
“The war is over, my dear,” Basil said dismissively, “and that Nazi from back home is dead now.”
“He didn’t act alone,” she declared angrily.
“Let me get you another drink,” Charlie cut in, pulling her away from the group. “Excuse us for a moment.”
The group stared at Billie as Charlie steered her away. She felt her cheeks burning at the intrusion into her space, the interruption of her view on something so passionately, righteously felt. She was angry, and at that moment not good at hiding it. Losing her cool was not something she often did, let alone in a professional context, but why should she have to hide this? Were they really in an argument about the seriousness of Nazi war crimes? At Ravensbrück of all places? Surely not. This was Australia House, not the German embassy.
Billie shook off Charlie’s hand, which he’d placed on her elbow. “I had better go,” she said, noticing her glass was empty, along with her patience for Harold and his colleagues. “Perhaps the travel is catching up with me.”
“I’m sorry about those two. They’re a bit set in their ways, is all. I’m sure it wasn’t easy, what happened last year,” he said, and she softened slightly.
“Nothing worth doing is easy,” she said simply. “But I’ll not listen to anyone play down what those people did in those evil camps.” And there would be others, surely, who were living lives off the broken backs of the concentration camp victims they’d murdered. “Do you think anyone here might have seen Hessmann’s paperwork? Surely it must have passed through these offices at some point.”
“I admire your determination, Billie. Let me walk you back to your hotel,” he suggested, ignoring her question.
“I’ll catch a taxicab.” Or perhaps she’d walk the Strand in the moonlight, let off some steam, she thought. “Thank you for tonight. Really. I do appreciate your help, Charlie. And I am sorry if my views . . . ruined the party.”
“I’m only sorry more of them don’t remember this man you’re looking for. And they are rather too caught up in politics, especially old Harold, as you’ve noticed.” He shook his head.
“It’s quite fine,” she said, and walked back to the group, who were all having their champagne glasses refilled. “It has been a long day. I have work to do early tomorrow, and so will bid you all good night. Thank you for your hospitality. Perhaps we’ll meet again.” She smiled graciously, shook a few hands, and explained that she would be at the Strand Palace for the next couple of days.
“Let me know if you remember anything else about Montgomery,” Billie told Basil and Harold, managing one of her professional smiles.
She gathered her red coat from the coat check—it was cut to resemble Dior’s New Look style, a home-sewn knock-off but still significantly more modern than what anyone else was wearing—and she departed the Boomerang Club with her head high, Charlie trailing behind to see her out onto the cool street. As far as she was concerned, the bubbly had gone flat hours ago.
Sixteen
Billie was uncharacteristically quiet over breakfast with Sam on Tuesday morning as she ate her toast and margarine over a strong cup of black tea. She had slept well enough, considering the earlier-than- usual wake-up, but was caught up in her thoughts, mulling over the telegram she’d received from Shyla that morning, and her discomfort about the conversation the evening before.
The war is over, my dear . . .
“You look especially wonderful today,” Sam said.
“I’m dressed to impress,” she said absently, talking into her cup. She’d chosen her carefully pressed navy silk trousers, and an off-white buttoned blouse, worn with a belt, and a scarf of gold, ruby, navy, and white, going for the effect of a country toff in springtime. On Billie, though, it was perhaps more reminiscent of Katharine Hepburn. She had packed a bag with supplies—a basket of food for two, some beer for Sam, and a pair of gumboots in case things got more physical—or wet.
“Aren’t you always dressed to impress? By the way, did everything go okay last night?”
Billie took a breath and leaned back in her chair. “Yes and no, dear Sam,” she said, frowning and taking another sip of her tea. “I did meet a couple of older gentlemen, Basil and Harold, who actually met and still recall Montgomery, but frankly I was disappointed by how little of an impression the man made at Australia House. So many people have moved on. Perhaps my hopes had been too high, considering the time that’s elapsed. Basil remembered him being entrepreneurial, and they had heard that he’d decided to stay on in Paris for a while, but that was everything I got, really. I suppose it might have been assumed that Montgomery would head back home from there, perhaps after a short holiday. In any event, there were no alarm bells when he didn’t return to London.”
“I would have stayed on to see Paris,” Sam offered.
“Indeed. Though Montgomery would have needed to travel through London to get the return flight to Australia. Unfortunately, a lot of the staff I met last night had only started at Australia House recently.” She frowned again, her eyes drifting over the finely cracked marble wall next to her. “I’m not sure what I expected to learn, Sam, but I no longer hold high hopes of finding anyone there who knew him well. Certainly no one has been holding a vigil in his absence.”
Sam looked like he didn’t know whether to laugh or not.
“Also, I may have offended my hosts,” she added.
“You?”
“Me,” she confirmed.
In fact, she was left with the feeling that she had been off her game. Where she had hoped to draw them in and convince them to help her, she had instead been drawn into a combative discussion about politics. She stood by her words, yes, but usually knew better than to let that happen when she was on the job. Was it being here, being back in Europe, that was making her feel too strongly, with the ghosts of the past constantly plaguing her thoughts? Or was it the mention of Nazi war criminals and what they had done? At least she had resisted slapping Harold, whom she had found quite infuriating. That was a win, she supposed.
“It was not as successful an evening as I’d hoped,” Billie confessed. “But never mind all of that.” She waved a hand. “I told you I wanted to leave by nine this morning, and I do. The sun is out, dear Sam, and we have a full day ahead, and some interesting new information out of Australia as well. This does shed some . . . interesting . . . new light on our man, as a matter of fact.” Billie put down her teacup and reached for the telegram in her handbag. She’d been mulling over the ramifications since it had arrived in the early hours.
“It seems Shyla has been busy on our behalf, and our respectable businessman Mr. Montgomery may have been working some not-so-respectable angles in Sydney.” Shyla really was an inquiry agent at heart. Billie knew it. “She got some great information for us. Oh, Richard is a photographer all right, but he’s not just a ladies’ man using that eye of his to lure in pretty young mannequins for photographic sessions. No, it looks like he’s also a bona fide blackmailer.” She handed over the telegram for Sam to peruse.
“A blackmailer? Blackmailing whom? Do we know?”
“A man who he caught in a situation,” she said. Billie thought she might know what kind of situation. “I don’t doubt it is true, somehow, especially as this information came through an associate of Robert Charles, who seems genuinely grateful for our . . . solution. This kind of thing may well be how Montgomery supplemented his income until his disappearance and kept Vera in the lifestyle she was accustomed to—whether she knew it or not.” Those mysterious deposit stubs. “A blackmailer.”
“Golly. He seemed so successful, especially given his involvement in the exposition. I didn’t pick him as a blackmailer.”
“Indeed. But we must remember we’ve only really had his wife’s view,” Billie reminded him. It was quite possible Vera had been wearing rose-colored glasses when it came to Richard, and didn’t know everything about his activities. That was all too common, as anyone in her trade quickly came to realize. “He was likely pretty good at keeping up appearances, especially considering his profession in the advertising world.”
“Shyla got this information? I thought you said she’d refused you when you wanted her to become an investigator.”
“She did. But maybe we’re rubbing off on her.” Billie smiled. “I couldn’t be more pleased if that’s the case. In any event, I’d say we might not have had this information until we returned to Sydney if she hadn’t taken up the cause.” It was unlikely Mr. Charles’s associate, whoever he was, would have been happy to telegram Billie with such sensitive information.
“Oh, I tried Richard’s mother, Mrs. Montgomery, this morning, early, and left a message with one of her staff. Who knows, perhaps she’ll be less difficult than Vera imagines? One thing is for certain, though; the Caversham-Smithes are being difficult. Mr. Caversham-Smithe is already out for lunch, apparently.” Billie looked again at the clock. “Heading out for lunch on a Tuesday, this early? Unlikely, unless he’ll be supping at Balmoral,” she quipped. “I tried over the weekend, and again yesterday, and I’m always told they’ll pass on my message, and he’s at some kind of meal. The man is constantly eating. With such an appetite there are only two explanations. I’m either unwelcome or he has a tapeworm.”
Sam nearly spat out his tea.
“It’s been four days since my first call to them from the hotel. I know Vera sent a telegram as well, so they are quite aware that we’re here, and we won’t be in town forever. I’m rapidly forming the opinion that I’m getting fobbed off, and I won’t have it. I’d also like to know why.”
“I’m beginning to understand your outfit.”
“We’ll be showing up at their country estate today, Sam,” she confirmed. It had been easy enough to check the address Vera had given them, the estate having been established over centuries of family ownership. “They’re in Malmesbury. It’s about three hours each way to that part of the Cotswolds. I think we might want to catch Mrs. Caversham-Smithe alone, if her husband really is out. And if not, all the better, I suppose. I must say, it seems a fine day for it.”
Indeed, the sun was even showing itself, which was not something London was famous for.
Sam’s eyes lit up. “The Cotswolds! That sounds a dream, Ms. Walker. Though of course I know we’ll be on the job,” he hastened to add.
Billie thought again of those photographs of the Caversham-Smithe girl. She was beautiful, and there was something in the eyes. Something that seemed to be for the photographer alone, a kind of intimacy. It had given Billie a strange feeling.
“I organized a fine car for us, Sam. Are you up for a drive?”
* * *
Billie stepped out of the Strand Palace at nine sharp, looking stylish in her navy driving coat, the silk scarf tied over her hair, and chic round cheaters sitting over her eyes. Since breakfast she’d added a fine set of pearls to her outfit and repainted her Fighting Red, and she now looked like something out of a catalog or British Vogue. Sam was at Billie’s side, in his best pressed suit, and would look the part nicely, she felt. Immediately she saw the motorcar that had been organized by the blushing young hotel concierge who had been most helpful. It was impossible to miss the beast. She’d ordered something special to catch the eye of the Caversham-Smithes—an estate car that would fit into the conservative and moneyed area of the Cotswolds they were visiting—and what she got was an Armstrong Siddeley Hurricane, named for the fighter plane.
“Well, isn’t this just the tonic,” Billie said under her breath as she walked toward the waiting automobile, grinning from ear to ear.
Black and glistening, it was a two-door, four-seater drophead coupe with a handsome front grille, suicide doors, and a canopy. As an inducement to attract tourists, they had been allowed extra petrol coupons. Billie fully intended to use them.
“This car suits you,” Sam said. “You dressed especially for this visit.”
Billie nodded. “Quite right, Sam. You must dress for the job you want, or in this case what the job needs. We have to slide into the Caversham-Smithes’ world today.”
“Am I dressed okay?” he asked.
She nodded, then thanked the porter, who automatically passed Sam the motorcar keys. Irritated by this predictable error, she nonetheless allowed herself to be helped into the driver’s seat by Sam, who knew full well there was no question of who would be at the wheel. He handed her the keys to the motorcar and went around to the passenger side while the porter watched.
“Top down, shall we?” Billie suggested from behind the wheel.
“Of course.” Sam signaled to the porter and the pair of them worked on rolling up and lowering the Hurricane’s canopy.
With a little thrill, Billie pulled her driving gloves out of her handbag. A woman should never be without them, she felt. Though many left the driving up to others—including her own mother, who had nonetheless bought her daughter that glorious Willys Roadster—to Billie’s mind being at the wheel of a fast motorcar was something every woman should experience, as often as she could. It was a rare thrill that was both legal and didn’t leave a woman with hangovers, social embarrassment, unwanted pregnancies, or male attachments. Who could argue with virtues such as those? With a grin Billie felt the foreign automobile warm to her presence, and when the time was right and her passenger was ready, she pulled out into the traffic, leaving the gaping hotel staff in their stylish wake.
