Leaving hospital early in 1946, Peulevé thought that he might return to the BBC after his imminent demobilization, but the plan was short-lived. At the start of the war, employees at Alexandra Palace had been told that the Corporation would top up their pay whilst serving to equal their previous salary. Unfortunately Peulevé's elevation in rank1 since 1939 meant that he had no longer been eligible for this money and consequently was requested to refund every penny. Resenting their small-mindedness in the light of what he had suffered, he refused to comply and lost any chance of returning to his old job. However, another opportunity soon presented itself: before its dissolution F Section had managed to find him an industrial relations role with Shell at one of their oil camps in Venezuela. This good news coincided with appointments of a different kind when he was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur and was presented with the Croix de Guerre avec Palme for his clandestine work with the Resistance. Several weeks later he was also awarded the Distinguished Service Order, which he received at Buckingham Palace on 26 February.2
Moving to South America was in many ways a relief for Peulevé, taking him away from the problems of war-torn Europe and offering the chance to build a new life. However, he encountered a serious obstacle when Shell accommodated him at an apartment of the Bellavista country club within the huge complex at Maracaibo – hundreds of expatriate workers and their families lived within the confines of the compound, and to maintain security the company employed guards to patrol the barbed-wire perimeter. With the memories of captivity still fresh in his mind, the distress caused by having to live and work in this environment made his early days very difficult; he suffered from vivid nightmares and his family suspected that he relied on drink to assuage them.
Despite these problems he managed to hold the job down, and it took him little time to find his feet and develop a circle of friends. In the spring of 1947 Peulevé returned to England, spending some time touring around the Corrèze accompanied by Vera Atkins; a year later he returned to attend a memorial service in Brive on the anniversary of D-Day, joined by former SOE chief Colin Gubbins and maquis leaders René Vaujour and Gontrand Royer. Wreaths were laid in the Hotel de Ville in memory of the children of Brive who had died during the war and Peulevé was awarded the Medaille de la Résistance by Brive's most famous son, Edmond Michelet, who had survived Dachau concentration camp after his arrest in 1943.
The details of Peulevé's movements between 1948 and 1950 are hazy, although it is known that Shell transferred him to Bogota, Columbia in 1949, and he occasionally returned to the UK to see his family. In 1951 Peulevé's term in South America came to an end and by August he was back in London, staying at the Special Forces Club in Knightsbridge, which had been established in 1946 to support SOE's former agents and personnel. The plan was to start a new tour with Shell in Tunisia at the beginning of the following year, leaving him some time to catch up with friends on the Côte d'Azur, including Arthur Larking, who now spent much of his time at the Hotel Astoria in Menton. In early October he flew back from Nice, whiling away his time at the club and seeing Cyril Watney, who was recovering from a serious car accident. Though Cyril and Peulevé had remained firm friends, Watney's family was unfortunately less impressed by Peulevé's presence, considering their long evenings in the bar detrimental to Cyril's convalescence.
Towards the end of the month Catriona Sopper, one of Peulevé's SOE friends and a regular at the club, introduced him to Marie-Louise Jahn, a beautiful 24-year-old secretary who worked just around the corner at the Danish Consulate-General. He wasted no time in inviting her out to dinner and within a few weeks their romance became a constant source of gossip amongst their friends. They travelled to Denmark for Christmas, staying at Marie-Louise's parents’ home in an affluent area of Odense, a quiet provincial town best known as the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen. Spending much of their time wandering through the snow-covered woods nearby, Peulevé's thoughts inevitably turned to the future and the prospect of returning to work for Shell without her; now very much in love, she agreed to follow him to his new posting.
After a brief spell in London, Peulevé left for Tunisia on 30 January 1952, Marie-Louise joining him shortly after. The French colonial atmosphere of Tunis was a pleasant alternative to the wintry streets of post-war London, and having moved into an attractive penthouse flat on the palm-lined Avenue Carnot they made friends with many French expatriates, living comfortably on what Peulevé earned. On 29 March they married at the British Consulate-General, a low-key ceremony with only the bride's parents and a few friends in attendance; their first child, Madeleine Anna Maria, was born at the end of the year, with Christopher Burney acting as her godfather.
Having established his position with Shell, Peulevé also seemed to be adapting well to his new life as a family man, but at the beginning of 1954 he was transferred to a new post as Assistant Manager for Administration at another refinery in Suez, which housed a large number of expatriate Britons. After his time in Venezuela, Peulevé knew what to expect of life in a compound, but for his wife the transition was more difficult and she inevitably found it restrictive. Although they were suitably accommodated in their own house and often spent Sundays together on the shores of the Red Sea, Marie-Louise's daily trip with Madeleine to the stretch of greenery surrounding the Shell club could not compare with the golden beaches and city life of Tunis they had known before. Now expecting their second child, they took a welcome break in England and travelled on to Odense in July, where Marie-Louise gave birth to a boy, Jean-Pierre Leonard.
Despite his growing responsibilities, Peulevé had clearly benefited from the stabilizing influence of family life. The nightmares and frustrations from his darker days had largely disappeared, and his marriage provided him with an important source of support that had previously been absent. However, long working hours increasingly led to more time being spent socializing with colleagues, and his commitments to his wife and children soon conflicted with a need for more independence. Though there seemed to be no question mark over his fidelity, Peulevé's reluctance to settle down completely began to distance him from his young family, and it was apparent that he and Marie-Louise were slowly drifting apart.
President Nasser's expansionist policies led to increasing tensions between Egypt and Israel during the following year, and by the spring of 1956 Shell had begun to evacuate of some of its workers' families out of the country. Marie-Louise and the children returned to Denmark in May, but Peulevé decided to stay behind, and for the next couple of months almost nothing was heard from him. Concerns for his safety increased when Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company in July – not only did this seriously threaten British and French interests, but also increased the Egyptian Government's scrutiny of foreign nationals, and many began to suspect that they were victims of phone tapping and other police surveillance.
On 9 August one of Peulevé's colleagues, Edgar Hawke, was arrested at his local golf club on orders from the Ministry of the Interior, suspected of spying for the British Government. On hearing the news, Peulevé went to the police to enquire about what had happened but was then detained as well. No explanation was given, both men being told only that they would be deported within twenty-four hours and that they could take one suitcase each with them. One of Peulevé's Egyptian friends was able to get permission for him to collect a few more items from his home, but was unable to withdraw the balance of his bank account. The following day both men were taken to Port Said, photographed on the quay and put aboard the Panamanian tanker Caprella, bound for Liverpool.
Whilst Peulevé's SOE background might have been considered a security threat, the growing tensions in the region meant that many expatriate workers faced similar treatment, and the Foreign Office made a formal protest on 11 August over a number of reports by British employees of intimidation. In some respects he was comparatively fortunate to have avoided being held for any longer, though his forced exit meant that most of his money and possessions were lost. In typical fashion Peulevé concealed his emotions and kept to the facts when being interviewed by the Daily Express via the ship's radio, and he showed nothing of his frustrations in his telegram to Annette: ‘All well expect arrive 19th looking forward see you soon love – Henry’.3
Giving his story to several newspaper reporters after disembarking at Liverpool docks, he travelled down to London and stayed at the Special Forces Club before flying to Denmark. Although they had only been apart for a few months, Peulevé's absence had offered Marie-Louise a welcome respite from the strains of their now loveless marriage, and she had begun plans for a teaching career with a view to bringing up Madeleine and Jean-Pierre in Odense. Not wishing to return to an empty relationship and an uncertain future, Marie-Louise told him that she wanted a divorce on the grounds of incompatibility, and Peulevé made his way alone back to Copenhagen three days later. Feeling a need to get away from his problems, he spent September and October in New York City, Toronto and Montreal visiting friends; however, the combined effects of the separation and the Suez incident had affected him deeply. A friend of Vera Atkins was shaken to see Peulevé ‘in such a state of depression’4 at the club, although he did return to Denmark briefly to see the children in the first days of the New Year.
In the early part of 1957 Peulevé found a job with the Haiti branch of Dexion, a company selling storage and shelving products, a post he faced little competition for considering the country's unstable political situation. He arrived in April and moved into a pleasant villa, but it was not enough, and the absence of family ties inevitably left more time for him to brood on the past; though some memories had faded, others, such as the lingering responsibility he felt for the deaths of Delsanti, Bertheau and Roland Malraux (Delsanti and Bertheau had both left young families behind) and the demons of Buchenwald and Schönebeck had lost none of their ability to torment. He appealed to his wife to join him, but it was clearly too late for reconciliation and Marie-Louise was adamant that she and the children would remain in Odense. He returned to Canada in June to visit friends, but stayed in Haiti for the rest of the year.
During the 1950s an increasing interest in SOE's exploits led to a number of films, books, radio and television programmes, some of which inevitably sought to romanticize the lives of its agents. Buckmaster, Christopher Burney, the Newton brothers, Peter Churchill and Yeo-Thomas all became public figures after accounts of their experiences were published, but Peulevé preferred to remain in the background – aside from a need for privacy, he harboured little desire to see his life in print, even though Buck-master had chosen to include (largely muddled) tales of his heroism in his second book They Fought Alone.
During his time in Suez the writer and film producer R.J. Minney had contacted Peulevé to research material for a biography of Violette, who had become one of SOE's best-known figures following her posthumous award of the George Cross in 1946. Minney was granted an interview, though his investigations placed Peulevé in an awkward position, as Minney had been informed that Peulevé was the source of the assertion in Violette's George Cross citation that she had been ‘continuously and atrociously’ tortured during her time at Avenue Foch. In fact there was no clear evidence for this claim and Minney later recalled how Peulevé had been evasive on this matter, commenting in a letter to the Sunday Times how:
The words ‘spoke hardly at all about the tortures she had been made to suffer’ [quoting Peulevé during his earlier interview with Minney] seem to imply that she had been tortured. I was conscious, while he spoke, that Captain Peulevé, who had earlier confessed to me that he had been in love with Violette, was reluctant to dwell on this; nor was I prepared to press him to do so.5
Rather than let such obstacles get in the way of a good story, Minney chose to present a dramatized description of Violette's time at the hands of the SD; it may not have been historically accurate, but the British public's insatiable appetite for tales of wartime heroes and heroines ensured the book's success. Published towards the end of 1956, Carve Her Name with Pride became a best-seller and work began on a film adaptation the following year, starring Virginia McKenna as Violette and Paul Scofield as fictional character ‘Tony Fraser’, merging Liewer's and Peulevé's real-life roles. Directed by Lewis Gilbert and released in 1958, it was well received, with McKenna being nominated for a BAFTA for her performance.
Uncomfortable with Minney's depiction, Peulevé corresponded with a more critical SOE biographer, Elizabeth Nicholas, who had already published a biography of Noor Inayat Khan and was researching the lives of several other female agents, confirming to her that he had not stated that Violette had been tortured. However, in 1958 the publication of Nicholas’ Death Not Be Proud, coinciding with the release of Jean Overton Fuller's investigation of double agent Henri Déricourt entitled Double Webs, now raised more serious and far-reaching questions about Baker Street's operations, accusing Buckmaster and other former SOE officers of incompetence, negligence and even the cold-blooded sacrifice of their own agents for strategic gain. Supporting calls for a government response to these allegations, Conservative MP Dame Irene Ward tabled a motion in the House of Commons asking for an official examination to be launched into SOE's activities, which was eventually begun in the early 1960s, though many former agents in Britain and France felt saddened by the backbiting and squabbling that had in part provoked it. For Peulevé the whole episode served as a compelling reason to keep his distance from any further controversy, with his decision to remain overseas making it far easier to avoid any more public attention.
The election of Haiti dictator Papa Doc Duvalier prompted him to leave Dexion, finding work with a Monaco-based company called Albion, which sold tax-free motor cars to the American naval fleets that frequented the ports of the Mediterreanean. Peulevé was recruited to manage its Spanish division and was based for a time near Gibraltar, but although the surroundings were pleasant enough the job failed to hold his interest for long. Resigning in September 1959, he once more found himself at a loose end and decided to spend a week in Paris, during which time he went to see Yeo-Thomas at his flat in the rue des Eaux, overlooking the Passy metro where he had been arrested in 1944. Yeo-Thomas, whose story had been published under the title of The White Rabbit in 1952, had begun to suffer from blackouts and other health problems caused by his time in captivity, though he was delighted to see his friend again. He had also kept in contact with Dietzsch in Germany and Peulevé asked him to send on his best wishes.
Peulevé's exact movements during the first half of 1960 aren't known, though in July his father Leonard lost his battle with throat cancer, and he returned to the UK to make the funeral arrangements. Picking up his mother and Annette from her house in Tonbridge, it was a particularly sad affair, with only the three of them in attendance at the crematorium. Eva sold their bungalow at Peacehaven to move to a residential home in Tunbridge Wells near Annette, though she had not quite lost her restless nature and continued searching for better accommodation, always being critical of the management and other residents.
Looking for a new job, Peulevé was introduced by a friend to Handy Angle, a company in the same line as Dexion. Taking on the role of overseas manager for Latin America and the Caribbean, he began work in September 1960, travelling through Jamaica, Venezuela, Trinidad, Curaçao, Peru, British Guyana, Ecuador and Guatemala before the end of the year, living out of a suitcase and often spending no more than a few days in each country before moving on. This itinerant life carried on through 1961, though he returned to the UK to see the family briefly during April. Through the summer he toured the islands from Puerto Rico down to Trinidad, and except for two brief trips to Canada he never appeared to stop. However the combined stresses of the job and the effects of his psychological war wounds were to eventually manifest themselves when Peulevé suffered a major heart attack whilst in Jamaica. After several weeks recuperating he returned to work, but took some time off in April 1962 to visit friends in France, including Arthur Larking at Menton. Arriving unannounced he received a warm welcome, though later Arthur confided to Annette that Peulevé's nightmares had recently returned with a vengeance and he was now drinking heavily in order to deal with them.
Peulevé's mother maintained that he rarely spoke about his wartime days and that her knowledge of what had really happened only came from second-hand sources; repeated attempts made by Vera Atkins and his closest friends to persuade him to talk also proved fruitless. For some, at least, the atrocities of the camps went beyond verbal description, and for Peulevé there was simply nothing to be said, no adequate means by which these intensely personal experiences could be approached. A similar reaction was witnessed by Stephen Hastings, a post-war friend of Yeo-Thomas, who had introduced him to another inmate of Buchenwald whilst on a visit to Paris. Expecting some sense of camaraderie to develop between them he was taken aback when, after exchanging some brief words to ascertain a few details, the two men turned to stare at him in silence. Hastings suddenly realized his error: ‘I had conceived in my ignorance that their shared experience would develop into comradeship, that they would dive happily into reminiscence, but there was nothing whatsoever for them to say. In that instant I knew the depth of the terrible experiences they shared. They were not as other men and I was far removed from them.’6
After a few days with Arthur, Peulevé visited Annette and Eva in Tonbridge before flying to Copenhagen in May, seeing Marie-Louise and the children for what would be the last time. Once back in London he stayed for several days at the Special Forces Club, expecting to leave for Jamaica at the beginning of June. He was dismayed at the airport to find the flight delayed, though when he returned to the club he ran into Yeo-Thomas and his partner Barbara, who had just arrived from Paris. Yeo-Thomas’ health had continued to worsen since their last meeting and he had come to London for more tests, but Peulevé suggested that the delay to his travel plans was perhaps fate bringing them together again. He accompanied both of them to the hospital and visited the next day, taking Barbara to lunch afterwards in an effort to lift her spirits.
Eventually managing to make his way to Kingston, Jamaica, Peulevé was straight back into another hectic work schedule three days later. Although the demands of his job were obviously taking their toll on his health, they did not prevent him from travelling continually over the next four months, visiting Miami, Curaçao, Jamaica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, the Cayman Islands, Brazil and Peru before finally landing in Jamaica at the end of October. Vague plans had been made with Yeo-Thomas to spend New Year's Eve in Paris, but they came to nothing.
In January 1963, Peulevé switched to become Handy Angle's manager for Western Europe and began by spending some time in Lisbon during January before moving to Milan, staying at the Hotel Gallia which he would use as a base for several weeks. Suffering from a bout of flu, he took the time to write to his mother early the following month, mentioning that his new job was no less strenuous and that he planned ‘to be in Portugal by April, but everything might change before then’.7 Whilst in Italy he made frequent trips to factories in France and had problems with the company's Italian partners, though he was soon on the move, passing through Gibraltar, Malta and Libya before returning to Milan in March.
With more business to attend to in Spain, he drove across the southern coast of France with his young Spanish assistant, Señor Maguregui, eventually arriving in Seville after two days’ non-stop travelling. They checked into the opulent Hotel Alfonso XIII on the evening of 18 March and, after a few drinks with some friends, Peulevé said he was feeling unwell and wanted to retire early. Saying goodnight to his colleague, he went upstairs to his room to type a report to send to head office the next day.
The next morning the maid knocked on the door but received no response. As there was no sign outside she entered and found Peulevé's body lying on the floor. The hotel manager called the British Consul-General, Malcolm Walker, and a local doctor, who concluded that Peulevé had probably undressed and suffered a heart attack as he was about to get into bed. A brief, quiet burial service was arranged for the late afternoon of 20 March at the British Cemetery, in the village of San Jerónimo on the outskirts of the city, and was attended by Mr Walker, two of his staff and an American Protestant chaplain from the nearby US Air Force base. Annette remembered how her brother had mentioned that, when his time came, he would like to die in Seville.
Peulevé's death at the age of just forty-seven came as a great shock to many and he was unreservedly saluted by those who had known him. Buckmaster, writing his obituary, remarked that ‘His modesty and charm won him innumerable friends throughout the world; he was assured of a warm welcome wherever his many journeys took him, and he will be very greatly missed in many countries, not least by his friends in London.’8 He also wrote to the family, commenting that: ‘So many people loved him, he was a very attractive man and his great fund of common sense and humour endeared him to us all.’9 Others from F Section also paid tributes: Denis Rake wrote to his mother, remembering Peulevé's courage, generosity and charm being a ‘comforting thing in the dark times when we were together’10 when in Spain during 1943; and Vera Atkins, who had never quite lost touch with Peulevé, remembered him as someone who was ‘always at the centre of things’,11 though she also acknowledged that he had never fully recovered from his time in the camps. Barbara described how she managed to keep Peulevé's death from Yeo-Thomas, for fear of the effect it might have on his failing health; however a mutual friend accidentally told him some time later and he ‘wept bitterly’12 at the news. A man equally haunted by his experiences and disillusioned with post-war life, Yeo-Thomas would die less than a year later, in February 1964.
On 30 March a memorial service was arranged in Tunbridge Wells; aside from family members and friends, it was attended by Buckmaster, George Hiller, Cyril Watney, George Whitehead (who had served with RF section), Denis Rake, a group representing the Special Forces Club and a number of Handy Angle's employees.
Today the small cemetery at San Jerónimo has largely been forgotten and rarely attracts visitors; established in the mid-nineteenth century as a burial ground for drowned British sailors, it gradually fell into disuse as the city's main San Fernando cemetery began admitting non-Catholics, and the site is currently under threat from developers wanting to build on the land. Many of the tombs and headstones are now completely hidden underneath tall grasses and overgrown bushes, while others still visible have been vandalized by trespassers. A few have survived, however, and Peulevé's resting place can still be found, tiled in white with a simple black cross and a small plaque above.