The Paris Spy (Maggie Hope Mystery #7)(32)
“How do you do?” they each said in turn. Dincklage was in his mid-to late forties, with blond hair, steady eyes, and a suave manner.
“Mademoiselle Paige Kelly,” the couturiere continued, introducing Maggie with a petulant look at odds with her age. Maggie noticed how Dincklage stroked the small of Chanel’s back and whispered something in her ear that made the older woman smile.
“See, another Frenchwoman who’s taken up with a German,” called Arletty from the table, pointing at Chanel and confirming Maggie’s suspicion.
As the designer peeled off her gloves, revealing nicotine-stained fingers, she quipped, “Really—a woman of my age who has the chance of a lover cannot be expected to review his passport.”
Arletty raised her glass of wine. “War is no time to be alone.”
“Sit, sit!” Lifar urged, as gilt chairs were brought over and more places set. “Any friend of Coco’s is a friend of ours.” The table was already covered with food—caviar on ice with mother-of pearl spoons, paté de foie gras, escargot swimming in butter and fresh parsley, rack of lamb, red lobsters, eel in aspic, roast chicken and crispy skinned duck, coupes of sparkling Champagne. After months of watery soup and hard bread, Maggie was nearly dizzy from hunger.
“Waiter!” Lifar snapped his fingers. “Menus for the ladies!”
The leather-bound menu looked as if it were the one from prewar days, offering oysters, different sorts of fish, bouillabaisse, rabbit, and chicken. Everyone, including the Germans, was speaking in French. A hedgehog-like Nazi officer with beady, dark eyes urged Maggie to try one of his oysters: “In times like these, my dear, to eat well and to eat often gives you a tremendous feeling of power.”
Maggie demurred. Then he offered one to Chanel; she declined as well, but for other reasons: “I only eat oysters during months with the letter r in them.”
“Well then, more for me!” he crowed, slurping one greedily, washing it down with gulps of Champagne. Maggie forced a smile.
“Mademoiselle?” A waiter appeared at Chanel’s elbow, a starched white linen cloth draped over his forearm. “What may I bring you?”
“Soup,” she stated. “Clear. A plate of white asparagus with no butter, if it’s still in season. And a glass of Bordeaux—Chateau Lafite Rothschild, ’twenty-eight, if you have it.”
“And you, mademoiselle?”
Maggie was in no mood to feast when the rest of Paris was getting by on stewed cat. “Nothing for me, thank you.” The waiter bowed and took their menus.
“I eat lightly,” Chanel said by way of explanation. Maggie didn’t respond, as she’d caught a glimpse of Hugh and Sarah arrive arm in arm, with a large, fat German in uniform, his face like marzipan. They didn’t notice her.
“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost, my dear.”
Maggie took a sip of Champagne to cover her distress.
“I recently got a gorgeous fur coat—belonged to a Jew,” Arletty was saying. “Long. Pure sable.”
“I hear many of the Jews have gone into hiding,” added Cocteau, as he lit a cigarette with long, tapering fingers.
“Ah, they may hide,” said the hedgehog-like German, slurping at another oyster, “but we’ll find them. You can count on it.”
“Not many of them made it out of the country before the surrender, so there must be lots of them still around,” Chanel observed.
The German lifted his glass. “There’s another big roundup to come.”
“Now we real French can control our businesses and economy,” Chanel said. To Maggie, she explained, “The Wertheimers, my so-called business partners, tried to take over my perfume business. Swindled me out of every penny, the dirty Jewish swine. But I’ll use my new status as an Aryan French citizen to get back what they stole.” She looked to Dincklage with a smile. “Occupation has some advantages, after all.”
Maggie blinked, stunned at the venom spewing from Chanel’s red-painted lips and at the enthusiastic reception by the others at the table. “I really had no idea the Jews were as bad as all that, mademoiselle.”
“You look shocked, my dear,” said the dark-haired German. “But you, thank heavens, have few Jews in Ireland. You don’t know them the way we do. And whether one hates the Jews for the Dreyfus affair and betraying France, or for killing Christ, or for cheating you in a business deal”—he looked to Chanel, who nodded with approval—“all Frenchmen—and women—are anti-Semites in one way or another.”
“France even now doesn’t know what’s hit her,” Chanel agreed, her wineglass smeared with the crimson print of her lipstick, a half kiss on glittering crystal. “She’s still in a daze, but has already come to sufficiently move her eyes and see what is going on around her. Soon she’ll recover the use of her limbs, and then the trouble will start. I want to get my business back from those dirty Jews and under my control now, while I still can.”
“Ah,” Maggie said, rising, wanting with all her heart to leave the table and escape these monsters. “I see the conductor—and must go and congratulate him. Please excuse me.”
Chanel looked up with a gimlet eye. “Enjoy, ma chérie.”
Chapter Seven