Faith and Beauty (22 page)

Epstein opened the shutters with a rattle, prompting the cat to bolt, and switched from French to German.

‘I hope you don’t mind coming here. I could use the
Vogue
studios on the Champs-Elysées, but this place is miraculously cheap. A hundred francs a month and the only catch is I vacate it between five and seven every day so the landlord can sublet for amorous purposes. Please. Sit down.’

He gestured to the grubby chaise longue and Clara sat uncertainly, still unsure what this meeting entailed. She knew Epstein would convey her message to Major Grand, but was the fashion feature in
Vogue
magazine genuine, or simply an elaborate façade?

‘Are we actually going to do a photograph?’

‘But of course! I love to shoot beautiful women. I live for elegance. It is a religion to me. The more elegance we have in the world, the less horror.’

He picked up a piece of silk and draped it experimentally over her face, then removed it, muttered to himself and disappeared for a moment behind a Chinese screen, reappearing with a piece of material trailing dark ribbons.

‘Here, Miss Vine, is your costume.’

She gave an audible intake of breath.

It was a corset. A piece of blush-pink silk, with inky black ribboned laces and stiff bones. The only corsets Clara had ever seen came from the Ufa costume department and were generally stained with old make-up and sweat from repeated use in historical epics, but this one was exquisitely stitched, like a piece of haute couture, and the silk had a pearly sheen to it which shimmered in her hands.

‘Just this?’

‘Certainly. It will be subtle, of course. I like to strike a balance between modesty and eroticism. To both reveal and conceal. And this is not just any corset. Mainbocher showed it in this year’s collections. Please.’

He motioned Clara behind the Chinese screen where she took off her dress, folded it carefully and wriggled into the corset. It was a sensation she had never had before, to be so transformed by a single piece of clothing, to feel the material enfold her, cool and liquid against her skin.

When she emerged Epstein fussed about, leaving the top of the corset unlaced, and then positioned Clara with her back towards him, her face inclined slightly away.

‘You mean you’re going to take a picture of my back?’

‘Precisely. We don’t want to see your face, delightful though it is. We only want a glimpse, half in shadow and half in the light. That seems appropriate, doesn’t it? In the circumstances? And please don’t move. Hold that position. I want you emerging from that corset like a rose from its bud.’

Not for the first time, Clara wondered how Angela had ever managed a career as a fashion mannequin. Acting came instinctively to her, but modelling seemed so much less natural. She could practically feel her limbs seize up in self-conscious stiffness. Epstein fiddled with his camera and tripod, muttering to himself all the while, the cigarette perched permanently in the corner of his mouth.

Yet while Clara’s body was rigid, her mind was in perpetual motion. She had arrived here with an important decision – to stay in Germany in the event of war – yet Thomas Epstein seemed not the least bit curious. How long would it be before he got to the substance of their meeting, rather than merely requiring her to sit still and not fidget?

Epstein continued photographing, issuing brief instructions to turn slightly or raise her shoulder, and occasionally darting out from behind the tripod to twirl at the corset’s laces, or reposition Clara’s arm.

‘The corset is a miraculous garment, don’t you think? There is something so enticing about it. It implies at once revelation and concealment. Freedom and restraint.’

Not to Joseph Goebbels, it wouldn’t. God knows what he would make of the picture if he ever came to see it. The idea of a Reich actress, the representative of the Reich Chamber of Culture, posing for a French magazine dressed only in a corset, could probably land her in jail. Only the previous year he had unleashed a clampdown on actresses who portrayed themselves as ‘vamps’. Women like that were a poison to the German nation. Goebbels’ favourite costume for an actress was an apron.

Clara consoled herself with the thought that the picture was only a ruse. It would probably never appear in
Vogue
at all. After all, what had Leni Riefenstahl said?
The September issue! That’s ambitious. Who knows what will be happening when September comes?

To divert herself, she asked, ‘You’re a Berliner too, aren’t you, Herr Epstein?’

‘My accent, of course. That part of the identity is impossible to erase. You’re right, I was born in Dahlem. A wonderful artistic family. They gave me my first camera at the age of ten – a nine by twelve with an ultra-rapid anastigmatic lens, since you ask – and I began my career at sixteen working as an assistant to Yva. The illustrious photographer, you know? She was a superb teacher. She encouraged me to follow my instincts, wherever they led me. Not to be crushed by the narrow morality of the brown plague. Unfortunately, that was almost my undoing.’

‘How so?’

‘I had been working for seven years. I was a confident young man, almost cocky you might say, and I thought no subject was beyond me, no matter what the Nazis might say. I had taken a portrait of a woman embracing a black man. Very sexy, you know? But it came to the attention of some Nazi, and I received a very unpleasant visit. I would have to leave. Fortunately a doctor friend of mine had a clinic in Paris and agreed to exhibit some of my pictures on his wall with the result that I received a call from
Vogue
. So I joined the exodus. I hope for the sake of her future Yva will do the same.’

He paused and peered around the camera, eyebrow raised.

‘But it’s
your
future, Miss Vine, that concerns us now. And whether you may be able to help our mutual friends.’

‘I’m not sure . . . I hope I can.’

‘Good.’

He put down his camera abruptly and motioned her to dress.

‘But have you finished? Did you get the photographs you want?’

‘I did. Let’s talk.’

The flirtatious jollity had gone, to be replaced with a deadly seriousness. Suddenly, Clara could see what made British Intelligence trust a person like Epstein with its secrets.

‘You’re familiar with the terms live and dead letter boxes?’

She nodded. Live letter boxes were places agents met to pass on messages. Stations, cafés and tourist traps were popular, because it was easier to meet there without attracting undue attention. Dead letterboxes, on the other hand, were locations known to both parties where messages could be left.

‘We have a number of dead letter boxes in Berlin, but in this instance you will use a live letter box. When you have something to communicate to us, you can take it there. Have you ever learned a book code?’

‘Afraid not.’

‘Give me the name of a book you like.’

‘Any book?’

‘Your favourite novel, perhaps. All that matters is that you must have a copy in your possession. And we must have one precisely the same. Do you have a book with you?’

Clara’s hand went to her bag and she couldn’t suppress a wry laugh as she found the copy of
The Thirty-Nine Steps
.

‘A comedy, is it? Something by your Mr P.G. Wodehouse?’

‘No, it’s not that. You see, this book couldn’t be more appropriate. I’ve had this novel for a long time, but it’s not mine. Years ago, I was invited to the von Ribbentrops’ home. They were ardent Anglophiles at the time and they kept a large library of English books. Frau von Ribbentrop invited me to borrow one and I chose this, but somehow I’ve never had the opportunity to return it.’

She held it out to him.

‘It’s a first edition. Published by Blackwoods.’

He gave it a peremptory glance.

‘Good. Now listen carefully. When you have a message to convey, find the words you want to use, select the page number, followed by the line, followed by the place that word occurs in the line. That way your message will be condensed into a set of figures and the figures operate as a code that can only be decrypted by someone using precisely the same book.’

Clara murmured these instructions to herself the way she learned her lines.

‘It should delay any attempt at encryption should our message fall into the wrong hands. It is fairly simplistic, but it’s all we have time for right now.’

‘So where is this live letter box?’

‘The Ritz.’

He laughed at her puzzlement.

‘The
Berlin
Ritz. It’s a bar in Mulackstrasse. In the Scheunenviertel. Do you know it?’

‘I’ve been there once or twice.’

‘There’s a bartender there. His name is Benno Kurtz.’

‘How will I recognize him?’

‘He’s in his sixties, has a grey moustache. He was a good-looking fellow in his time and he still thinks a lot of himself. You’ll understand when you see him.’ Epstein grinned. ‘Benno’s very useful to us. When you find him, ask for a gin and tonic made in the English way.’

‘I’m not sure what that is.’

‘Something diabolical no doubt, knowing the English and their drinks. But no matter. Benno will understand. In the meantime,’ he turned casually, and hunted for something in a drawer, ‘Major Grand asked me to give you this. It’s a Derringer.’

It was a silver pistol, less than five inches long, gleaming treacherously in her hand as if it belonged there. The handle was made of smooth, burled wood, its silver inlay decorated with elaborate swirls of engraving. It looked as beautiful as an elegant, finely worked piece of jewellery. Simply the feel of it made her shudder. How strange that something so deadly should possess such dangerous glamour.

‘We call it a stocking gun.’

‘It’s tiny.’

‘It needs to be if you’re going to conceal it. But the size means it can only be deadly at short range. There’s no room for an automatic mechanism – that would only increase its weight – so you carry it loaded with the hammer at half cock. When you want to use it you move the hammer back to full cock position and pull the trigger. If you misfire, you can pull the hammer back and try again, but it only holds two bullets so there’s only the chance for two shots. You can only make one mistake.’

It had such a tactile quality. Clara traced her fingers over the whorled wood and the cool swirls of silver engraving, trying to imagine what went through the mind of the man who fashioned it.

‘That pistol has an illustrious history. It was a Derringer that killed Abraham Lincoln.’

‘Not so illustrious then.’

He laughed. ‘Here’s the holster. I suppose you don’t want me to show you how to attach it?’

She examined the piece of silky calfskin attached to an elasticated garter.

‘I think I can work it out. But Herr Epstein . . . I don’t need a gun. I can’t imagine that I ever would.’

The smile vanished from Epstein’s eyes.

‘Only an amateur is unprepared. Keep it with you at all times.’

He watched as she buried it in her bag.

‘Our friend in London reminds you that time is pressing. He wants you to contact him within four weeks with whatever information you have obtained.’

‘Four weeks is far too soon.’

‘On the contrary. Let’s hope it’s not too late.’

Epstein went over and leaned out of the window, watching the people in the café across the road.

‘Look at them down there. Do they have any idea what’s coming towards them?’

‘Do you?’

‘I hear the Germans are planning to mass their tanks on the Polish border by the beginning of September. But Hitler won’t stop there. He will certainly look to the west. Belgium, Holland, France. They’ll all collapse like a pack of cards. None of them has a chance against a rearmed Germany.’

He lit another Gitane and blew it into the wind.

‘Have they any idea of the cruelty, the efficiency, of these Nazis? I have. I tried to leave the fear of it behind, but I suspect I haven’t left it far enough. Perhaps it will never leave me. Perhaps it lives inside me.’

‘What will you do?’

‘I’ll be all right. I have my camera and besides, I’m off to America very soon. I’ve had enough of
Vogue
. The editor, Michel de Brunhoff, swears he would not publish the magazine if the Nazis turn up, but most of the
Vogue
lot are frightful snobs. They’re only interested in you if you have a title or a perversion and I suspect they’ll be perfectly happy when a bunch of high-born Nazis arrive to occupy their city. Just so long as they’re immaculately dressed.’

‘So you really believe that the Nazis will occupy Paris?’

‘For sure. My concierge friend tells me that some German officers have already made reservations at the Ritz.’

The Ritz. That cocoon of velvet opulence, where women still sat taking tea in Limoges china and choosing between mille-feuilles and éclairs. Where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor kept a suite and Noël Coward regularly dropped in. Clara thought of her brief visit to Coco Chanel’s mirrored salon the previous year and wondered if her powder-blue Rolls Royce was still parked outside.

‘Does Chanel still live there?’

He laughed. ‘She has room 302. Chanel may have liberated women’s bodies from corsets but she can’t liberate herself from the Nazis. You know about her German boyfriend, of course.’

Chanel’s association with Spatz Dincklage was the talk of Paris.

‘But surely . . . if it came to an occupation? A famous Frenchwoman like Chanel?’

‘Nothing would change. Chanel says she doesn’t believe in anything. She only believes in fashion.’

He spun around, all traces of gloom vanished and his lively face transformed.

‘You’re staying the night, I hope?’

‘Just one night. I wish it was more.’

‘Then you must come to a party.’

‘What kind of party?’

‘Does it matter? There are parties every night now. We’re making the most of it. It’s a reception at the Dingo Bar. There will be all kinds of faces there. Will you come?’

‘Why not?’

‘In that case I have something for you.’

He went behind the screen and returned again with an armful of shimmering silk which he shook out to reveal a halter-neck evening gown, a fluid drape of deep blue satin, with a backless plunge that culminated in a bow and fell from the waist in sleek Grecian pleats. Clara’s eyes widened.