Coco at the Ritz, page 24
The Interrogator looked up from the document he was reading but ignored Coco’s letter. He had another matter he was eager to pursue. “You bought a lot of petrol,” he said.
Coco frowned. “So?”
“It was severely rationed, yet you went way beyond the limits. How did that happen?”
“I have no idea. My driver bought it. I gave him the money, and he found it.”
“You didn’t think that was strange?”
“I didn’t ask. He’s very enterprising.”
The Interrogator studied her for a moment, then returned to his files. A few moments later, he asked, “Did you use the gas to take trips in your Rolls-Royce?”
“The Rolls stayed in the garage.” As soon as Coco said this, she realized she was caught. How else could she explain the gas? So she quickly added, “We took it out a couple of times, when I went to the country.”
“Did you have a permit?” The Interrogator narrowed his eyes. “The Germans issued only a few thousand auto permits, and only to doctors, midwives, and firefighters.”
“I don’t know,” Coco said. “Ask my driver.” Then, after a pause, “No, I didn’t have a permit.”
“But you never got stopped when he drove you around?”
“That’s correct.”
“Wasn’t it strange that you were able to drive around in a car, unlike almost every other French citizen?”
“Young man, everything about the last four years was strange.”
The Interrogator dove back into his files for a moment, then lifted his head abruptly. “Did you ever consider paying a bribe to get the Germans to release your nephew André Palasse?” he asked, as if the idea had suddenly struck him.
“No!” Coco grimaced. “Why would I?”
The Interrogator shrugged. “People did.”
“I wouldn’t know where to begin. Besides, Spatz was working on André’s release.”
“But it moved slowly, didn’t it?”
Coco sighed and ran her hands along her thighs, smoothing the wrinkles in her skirt. “You know the way the Germans operated,” she said. “Everything very precise and official. Their bureaucracy worked slowly, like all bureaucracies.”
The Interrogator lifted a file out of the box and fanned some documents on the table in front of him. “Why did you write a five-thousand-franc check to Countess Virginie de Fontenay?”
Coco’s pulse jumped. He had her bank records! She couldn’t believe the effort these barbarians had put into excavating her past. “I give away a lot of money. It may be hard for you to understand, but I believe in charity.”
“She’s a countess. She doesn’t sound like a charity case.”
“If you didn’t notice, a lot of formerly wealthy people have fallen on hard times. Virginie worked as a newspaperwoman, but she couldn’t do that during the Occupation.”
“You only wrote the check on July 18 of this year, as the Allies were closing in on Paris. You didn’t by any chance give her the money so she wouldn’t write about you and von Dincklage?”
“No!” cried Coco, stamping out her half-smoked cigarette on the floor. “The countess visited my apartment, crying—she didn’t even have enough money to buy bread. She was desperate.” As she spoke, Coco recalled that rainy morning, several weeks earlier, when Virginie de Fontenay had shown up at the Ritz in tears. Coco went immediately to her desk and took out her checkbook. Of course, it had passed through her mind that the countess would never dare write a cruel word about her now. But nothing was ever said to cinch such an arrangement. It was just a passing thought. Coco told the Interrogator, “Your fury at the Nazis has warped your views of all mankind. You find the worst possible motive for every action. Sometimes people are simply kind. Can’t you accept that?”
The Interrogator’s demeanor remained impenetrable. “Mademoiselle, it’s hard to accept kindness as a motivating principle from someone who spent the last four years living with a Nazi.”
Coco’s panic rose again. Everything she had done, everything she now said, would be twisted to cast her in an evil light. She nodded to the documents on the table. “If you have my bank records, you’ll see that I wrote many checks to people in need. For many years I’ve been the chief benefactress of the Asylum of Saint-Agnes Orphanage. I’m always willing to share what I have.”
The Interrogator pulled a stack of checks from a box on the floor and flipped through them. “A lot of these checks went to your friends who were higher than you on the social ladder. Jean Cocteau, Misia Sert.”
Coco bristled at the idea that Misia and Cocteau were higher than she, but she held her tongue. “I gave help where it was needed,” she said, pointing to her bank records. “You’ll find lots of checks to Max Jacob there. He was hardly of high social standing. And he was a Jew.”
The Interrogator continued to ask questions about Coco’s finances—detailed, tedious queries on specific checks and deposits. Her payments to the Ritz, outlays for wine, royalties from her company, checks she wrote to people she now couldn’t even identify. Was Felix LeClair the upholsterer? Or the man she hired to clean the drapes in the rue Cambon apartment? Coco’s patience quickly wore down. “How am I supposed to remember now?” she demanded. “That was years ago, and we’ve all had a lot on our minds.”
Ignoring her complaint, the Interrogator ran through several more payments. When he finally stopped, he meticulously gathered the checks and other documents into a neat pile on the table but didn’t return them to the box. The boy took advantage of the pause to shake his arm, relaxing it after an hour of steady note-taking.
For a moment, Coco let herself hope they were finished with her. Then the Interrogator asked evenly, “Why do you think von Dincklage was interested in you?”
Coco frowned. “That’s an idiotic question.”
“He’s a strapping, handsome fellow with a history of pursuing women. Even when he was married, he had many affairs. You’ve heard of Hélène Dessoffy?”
“What are you getting at?” Coco said icily.
“Why would such a dashing rake take up with a much older woman?”
Coco’s rage roiled her stomach. She felt red blotches heating her cheeks. She knew what the Interrogator was trying to do—provoke her into an incriminating outburst. She took a deep breath and responded calmly, “I’ve had men after me my entire life.”
The Interrogator nodded, as if accepting Coco’s boast. “What exactly did von Dincklage tell you about his work?”
Coco snorted. “Work? Spatz didn’t work.”
“Didn’t he go out every day? What did he do?”
“He saw his friends. They played cards. Lunched. Smoked cigars. Sometimes they went golfing.”
“Weren’t there times when you dined with von Dincklage’s friends?”
“Not often.”
“When you did, you must have listened to some interesting conversations—perhaps you heard talk about Nazi business?”
“Yes, they discussed military maneuvers with me because couturiers are expert in such matters.”
“Did you ever tell them things that would be useful to the Nazis?”
“I have no idea what would be useful to a Nazi. No, I never told them a thing.”
“You don’t think von Dincklage was using you?”
Coco swallowed and shifted in her seat. “I am my own person,” she said. “No one uses me.”
The Interrogator pressed. “It looks to me like a quid pro quo. Von Dincklage smoothed life for you in Occupied Paris. You helped him spy on your countrymen.”
“That’s absurd!” shouted Coco. “I hated having the Germans here. I gave them nothing. They didn’t turn me into a collaborator!”
Cries and banging rang up from the courtyard below. The Interrogator and the boy looked at each other, and the boy scurried to the window. “They’re bringing the women in now,” he reported.
The Interrogator strode over and looked out. “The crowd is back—bigger than before. The citizens are demanding justice.” He returned to the table and, opening one of his files, examined a note inside. “Why did you have a German visa issued for Madrid?” he asked.
He doesn’t know about Berlin and Modellhut, Coco thought with relief. She could explain away Madrid. Coco pursed her lips, then spoke in a measured tone. “I had to go to Spain to discuss business with the people who distributed my perfume.”
“You weren’t spying for von Dincklage?”
“No!”
“You didn’t report back to him about what you’d heard?”
“I told him I’d been to a lot of long, loathsome dinners.”
“I understand you livened up a few of those dinners. At the home of Christopher Whittlespoon you said some pretty nasty things about France.”
“You can’t believe gossip,” she said.
“This was reported by a member of de Gaulle’s Free French Intelligence Service.”
“He needs a hearing aid, or was it a woman who made that up? You can’t trust women. I know, I’ve been dealing with them my entire life.”
“You’re a woman—are you lying?”
“I never lie.”
“While you were in Madrid, did you meet any members of von Dincklage’s spy network?”
“Almost everyone I met was British.”
The Interrogator pulled another folder from his pile of evidence, opened it, and stabbed his finger on a document inside. “After you got back, on November 4, 1941 didn’t you go to the avenue Kléber offices of the German military command?”
“How can I possibly remember what I did that day?”
The Interrogator’s eyes roamed quickly over the document. “You spoke to Kurt Blanke, the German official in charge of ridding the French economy of Jews. You argued that since your partner Pierre Wertheimer was a Jew, the company you jointly owned, Chanel Parfums, should revert wholly to you, a Christian French woman.”
“Wertheimer was taking 90 percent of the profits!” Coco said in a loud, shrill voice.
“You went to the Gestapo for blood!”
“Oh, please. Wertheimer and his family were safe in New York. They fled as soon as the Germans arrived. I never would have reported Pierre if I thought he was in physical danger.”
“Your denunciation could have sent Wertheimer to his death.”
“Pierre didn’t die, and I didn’t get my company back.”
“Why not?”
“The Germans couldn’t see through Pierre’s ruse. Or else they were corrupt, like everyone else.”
“You thought sleeping with von Dincklage would get you everything you wanted,” the Interrogator said.
“Spatz only wanted to protect me and keep me safe. We weren’t hurting anyone.”
“Just a typical couple,” the Interrogator said snidely.
“Have you ever been in love?” Coco asked.
The Interrogator’s expression darkened, and Coco sensed the sorrow beneath his hard façade. “What happened? You were in love with a girl in the Resistance, and it turned out badly?”
The Interrogator stared at Coco with his mouth clenched, his lower lip peeking out from his mustache. His steeliness rattled her, and she reacted in a burst of words, filling up the silence with chatter. “Maybe your girl wasn’t in the Resistance. Maybe she left you because you wouldn’t quit. You young men are all alike. You want to be heroes. You’d rather throw petrol bombs in the Métro than make love.”
When Coco stopped talking, the Interrogator kept his gaze on her for a moment. Then he opened a file and ran his fingers along a thick sheaf of papers, causing them to flutter.
Coco was growing fatigued from fending off the Interrogator’s questions. Did he really not care that she had friends in high places? “Churchill understood my work. Whenever he came to Paris he visited me in my atelier. He sat on a little footstool and watched me drape and pin. He was fascinated by my creations—and it didn’t hurt that he got to see the mannequins in their underwear.” Coco paused a moment and nodded toward the packet of letters. “You don’t believe Winston and I are good friends, do you? Read that one on top.” Coco pointed to the letter she’d pulled out before. She hoped the Interrogator didn’t notice her trembling finger.
The Interrogator unfolded the letter and looked it over.
“Winston always said I was the smartest woman he knew,” said Coco. “You need to release me. I’ve shown you that I have important friends. What kind of future will you have, once I tell them how you’ve treated me?”
The Interrogator tossed the creamy sheet of stationery back onto the table. “I’m not going to waste my time reading this,” he said.
“Then I’ll read it to you.” Coco snatched up the paper. “ ‘My Dearest Coco,’ ” she began in heavily accented English.
The Interrogator lurched across the table and grabbed her wrist. “Drop the letter,” he ordered.
Coco tried to pull her hand away, but the Interrogator stood, shoving the table and scattering his files on the floor.
“Serge!” cried the boy, springing up.
The Interrogator’s grip was strong and painful. His eyes flashed. Coco dropped the letter. The Interrogator fell back into his seat as the boy hurried to pick up the spilled files and place them again on the table. Before sitting down, he said quietly, “Serge, can I talk to you a minute?”
The Interrogator scowled. “Not now.”
“Just for a minute.”
The Interrogator nodded toward a corner of the room, and he and the boy walked there. Though taller and bulkier than the Interrogator, the boy slouched and whispered nervously in his boss’s ear. The Interrogator responded angrily. The conversation went back and forth like that for a minute or so.
Coco tried to overhear but could make out nothing. She sensed that the boy was taking her side, maybe urging her release or at least arguing that they hold off on further action until the mysterious major appeared. She thought she might find an opportunity and called out in a light voice, “What are you two whispering about? You know, I’m used to men whispering about me. There was a time I couldn’t go anywhere without them following me down the street.”
The Interrogator and the boy stopped talking and stared at Coco. Her tone turned solicitous. “I have a lot of admirers. Who would you like to meet? Churchill? It would be difficult, but I could arrange it.”
The boy looked to the Interrogator, but he just glared at Coco. She added quickly, “Someday this madness will end. Then what will you do? There are a lot of people I could introduce you to. I know everyone.”
“Yes, all the high-ranking Nazis who occupied Paris.”
Coco shook her head in exasperation.
The Interrogator returned to the table with fury sparking in his eyes. For a moment, Coco thought he might hit her.
“You didn’t meet Goering and Goebbels? Himmler? Did you meet Hitler when he came to town?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
The Interrogator stretched back in his chair, watching Coco. She was pale and wide-eyed, sitting rigidly with her hands tightly clenched. When she spoke again, she forced herself to sound calm. “I’m a patriot just like you.”
“You are nothing like me,” snarled the Interrogator.
Coco unclenched her hands and leaned slightly forward in her chair. “No, I would never presume to play God.”
“This is about collaboration, not religion.”
“Ask his uncle about collaboration,” said Coco, pointing her chin toward the boy, who was slumped in his seat taking notes. He looked up and stared at Coco with a panicked expression. “Ask Monsieur Lebel why the Germans allowed him a special permit to drive on Sundays.”
“He had to work! He needed the income to live!” the boy shouted, canting up suddenly from his seat.
“On Sunday?” Coco snorted. Even she didn’t work on Sundays during the years her fashion house was open.
A plane rumbled overhead. An Allied fighter jet flying low, throwing a shadow across the window. How long had Coco been inside this room? An hour? Two? She felt the day slipping away, and with it her freedom, her life. She thought about what she would be doing now at home, probably reading a book and smoking. A surge of nicotine need hit her, and she reached into her pocket for her cigarette case. The small gold rectangle encrusted with diamonds felt solid in her hands. Boy Capel had given it to her. After he was killed, she wanted to forget him, so she’d given the case to Misia, who’d admired it one night while they were dining in her apartment. “It’s yours,” Coco had said, placing the case in Misia’s hands. It pleased her to be generous with her money and possessions—one of her few truly good qualities.
But soon after making a gift of the cigarette case, Coco realized she didn’t want to forget Capel after all. So, one day, when Misia pulled out the lovely object during a fitting in Coco’s studio, the couturière had demanded it back. Misia had thrown the case at Coco’s feet and stormed out. The two friends hadn’t spoken for several weeks after that.
What she should have done, Coco thought now, was to have simply asked for the gold case, instead of making a scene in front of the mannequins and giving them something to gossip about behind her back. Why did she sabotage herself? The Interrogator was right. She should have sat out the war at La Pausa, or better yet, gone to Switzerland. She could have avoided arrest entirely. She would never have encountered Spatz.
Coco inhaled a long, calming drag, then pointed her cigarette at the Interrogator. “At least I was trying to do something positive.”
The Interrogator snorted loudly. “You call consorting with Nazis positive?”
“I resisted in my own way. I certainly didn’t contribute to the killing, which is more than either army or you and your colleagues can say. All those lives lost, innocent lives. You know, I almost got killed myself. I’d just left Bignon’s on the night of the massacre.”
At the mention of Bignon’s, the Interrogator flinched, then lashed out at Coco. “Why is it everyone who knows you says you’re a bitch?” he demanded.
