Nancy marched up the steps of the handsome villa on Rue Paradis, her heels striking the curving marble steps. She was giving herself a run up, letting her fury build and blossom. One thing she had learned since she started working for the Resistance was that even Gestapo officers thought twice when confronted with a French housewife in a virtuous rage.
What do they know? What do they know? Perhaps they’d just heard rumors about the money pouring out from Henri’s bank accounts and, seeing the Resistance well funded, had put two and two together. Mademoiselle Boyer, who had phoned her with news of the arrest, had heard that a drunk, sacked a few weeks ago, had been spreading rumors and swearing revenge. Miss Boyer had also assured her that the company books “were correct, Madame,” with nervous pride but a slight tremor in her voice. If Henri Fiocca, one of the most respected and respectable businessmen in the city, was being held solely on the basis of the word of a vengeful drunk, there was a chance she could shame the evil bastards into releasing him. But what if they knew more? Worst case—they had been told Nancy was the White Mouse and were using Henri as cheese to bait the trap. Fine. She’d deliver herself to them with a fucking bow around her waist if that got him out. But until she knew for sure, she was playing outraged Society Lady.
She threw open the doors and strode across the marble flooring, looking neither right nor left. She had a vague impression of men and women waiting on the benches set round the edge of the room, all looking shit-scared or sick with worry, and a couple of uniformed Germans by the door. The rich, arrogant, innocent French wife of a powerful man would have ignored them all, so that’s what Nancy did. By the time she reached the desk, which looked like the reception to a better class of hotel, she was convinced that was exactly who she was.
She bore down on the blond, slick-looking clerk. He was sneering at a nervous-looking older man, a square-bodied fellow in his sixties wearing the overalls of a manual worker. He held the photograph of a young man delicately in his massive hands. The care he was taking of the snapshot almost stopped her in her tracks. Was the boy missing? Shipped off to work in Germany, in prison, a hostage? The poor kid had probably been caught with an anti-fascist leaflet in his pocket and been disappeared.
Enough, Nancy. Outraged Society Wife does not care about the fate of some worker’s boy. Focus.
She slammed her very expensive little handbag onto the counter top and the worker withdrew meekly to one side.
“How dare you arrest my husband?” she said in her most carrying voice. “Are you completely mad? Good God, he is a close friend of the mayor! I demand you release him at once and I want an immediate, written apology.”
The clerk flicked his eyes toward her, then back down to the form he was filling in. “Take a number from the clerk at the door, Madame,” he said in passable but heavily accented French.
The clerk at the door had followed Nancy meekly across the foyer, and tried to hand her a cloakroom ticket with an obsequious smile. Nancy looked at him as if he were offering her his used handkerchief.
“I most certainly will not! Do you have any idea who I am?”
She leaned across the polished counter top, her palms flat on the polished rosewood.
“Take a number, and I shall find out in due course,” the clerk replied, continuing to write.
Nancy reached over, plucked the pen from his hand and threw it over her shoulder. It skittered and spun across the tiles.
“Look at me when I speak to you, young man!” He did. “I am Mrs. Henri Fiocca and I demand to see my husband at once. Do not—do not make me ask a third time.”
He was obviously older than her, truth be told, but it felt right.
“That is impossible, your husband is being questioned…”
“Questioned? How dare you question him!” Nancy shouted.
“Madame!”
“Henri!” She yelled his name loud enough to make the windows rattle.
The clerk looked over her shoulder and she heard the sound of the polished boots of the guards approaching. Had she overplayed it? Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. If they dragged her out and threw her down the steps she could charge around the city showing off her laddered stockings and outraged virtue to every official in town. It would be a nightmare for the Gestapo and they’d have to release Henri and send him home. Perfect. She sucked in her breath ready to really make a show of it.
A door to the right of the desk opened and an officer walked slowly out into the foyer. Nancy could never follow these ranks, but he was obviously someone important. The approaching footsteps behind her came to a sudden halt and the slick fellow behind the desk shot to his feet. The officer waved away the guards, then nodded to the clerk who sat down and selected a new pen from one of the little drawers in front of him.
“No need for hysterics, Madame Fiocca,” the officer said, again in French. “Major Böhm, at your service.”
Nancy blinked at him. He was in his early forties perhaps, slim in build. If he weren’t wearing that disgusting uniform, he’d be handsome. And he’d just taken the wind out of her sails, the bastard.
“My husband?” Nancy said, looking down her nose at him.
He bowed. “I shall take you to him at once. Follow me.”
He turned back through the door and held it open for her. Nancy picked up her bag, straightened her shoulders and followed him. She’d lost her audience now. Damn. Böhm led her down the corridor away from the foyer with long smooth strides. Nancy’s skirt was fashionably tight, and between it and her heels she could only take little steps. She had to trot along behind him like a toy dog. Time to regain the initiative.
“Major Böhm, this is utterly disgraceful, how dare you cart Henri off like some common criminal? I can only imagine what the mayor will say.”
Böhm didn’t reply, just came to a halt outside an ordinary-looking door and opened it, inviting her in.
She stepped inside. A clean, orderly little room. Probably the office of one of the senior household staff before the Nazis had taken over the building. The window was shuttered, but the afternoon light still filtered into the room. The walls were painted a pale green and hung with engravings of the coastline in simple black frames. The old furniture had been removed though, and in the center of the small space was a rough wooden table and a pair of rickety-looking metal fold-up chairs. On one of them, his back to the window, sat Henri.
He lifted his head and smiled at her gently, sadly. He looked, for the first time since Nancy had met him, old. Her heart felt as if it had been squeezed suddenly dry. She was aware of Major Böhm in the doorway behind her. Play the role, Nancy.
“Henri, what on earth is this nonsense? Mademoiselle Boyer called me from the factory sounding as if she was about to drop in a dead faint, saying these monsters had marched you out of your own office. It’s an absolute scandal.”
He lifted his hand, palm out, shook his head. “My dear, do not distress yourself. My lawyers are on their way, and you know they are the best that money can buy. All good friends of the Vichy government.”
“What are you charged with?” This was better. She was getting back into her stride.
“Some misunderstanding, I’m sure. Do not worry yourself.” He was staring at her, drinking her in even though his words were light and ordinary. That scared her.
She spun round to Böhm, who had stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. “What are the charges against my husband, Major?”
Böhm made her wait, nodding as if she was still speaking for a moment, and when he answered his voice was calm and reasonable.
“One of your husband’s employees alerted us to a conspiracy at Fiocca Shipping. It seems a large sum of money is missing.”
Nancy lifted her chin. “I’m sure Henri has nothing to do with that.”
Böhm’s expression shifted to one of polite interest. “Then I take it that you’re familiar with his finances?”
“I do not appreciate your tone,” Nancy said, channeling Henri’s awful stuck-up sister and grateful for the first time ever that the woman existed.
“Because we have reason to believe that this money has been funneled to the Resistance—”
“That’s absurd,” Nancy said with a toss of her head.
Böhm observed her, his head on one side, as if amused at being interrupted.
“The only thing my wife knows about my money is how to spend it on herself,” Henri said with a sigh.
Nancy turned away from Böhm and looked at him again, into his eyes.
“Go home, my dear,” he continued. “Let the major and me sort this out between us like gentlemen.”
If that was how he had decided to play it, she had to go along with it. He didn’t want her to be the enraged matron, but the frivolous society wife, too foolish and pretty and spendthrift to know anything of her husband’s business. She managed a slightly sulky pout.
“You know best, Henri.”
Major Böhm cleared his throat. “Just one more thing, Madame Fiocca. Please don’t leave Marseille—I may have questions for you too.”
He opened the door again, ready to show her out. No. Too soon. She couldn’t just leave Henri here.
“You think I’m the type of woman who takes a holiday while my husband’s being railroaded by the Gestapo? Henri, I’m not going anywhere without you.”
It gave her the chance to look at him again. Her rock. Her refuge. Her husband. Her Henri. He smiled at her, warm and encouraging. “Of course not, darling.”
OK. He knew what he was doing. She had been fretting unnecessarily. Henri had a dozen lawyers and oodles of cash to bribe his way out of anywhere, up to and including the Gestapo headquarters. She began to walk toward the door.
“Nancy?”
She turned back. The darling man. She would cook him dinner tonight all by herself, whether he liked it or not. And she still had some decent wine in the cellar.
“Tell my mother not to worry.”
No. Not that. That was what they agreed would be his code if… Not good. Very, very bad. Panic seized her. She couldn’t move. She thought about screaming, about confessing, about spitting in these bastards’ faces… oh, but she knew seeing her dragged off by these apes would kill Henri. After everything else she’d done to him, she couldn’t do that too. This was his choice. But no, no, no. This can’t happen; this isn’t happening. Her voice sounded hoarse in her throat.
“I’ll tell her you love her.”
For one, two, three beats of her heart they looked at each other, tried to tell each other everything that could be said, share and celebrate a lifetime, to make their promises and keep them. One, two, three.
“Madame Fiocca?” Böhm was waiting.
She walked past him and out into the corridor. He followed her, closing the door behind him. If he said anything to her as he led her back to the foyer, she didn’t hear him.