The Queen's Accomplice (Maggie Hope Mystery #6)(105)
Berlin at War, by Roger Moorhouse
What Was It Like in the Concentration Camp at Dachau? An Attempt to Come Closer to the Truth, by Johannes Neuh?usler
Books about London during World War II:
The Love-charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War, by Lara Feigel Few Eggs and No Oranges: The Diaries of Vere Hodgson 1940–45, by Vere Hodgson; preface by Jenny Hartley Inside Buckingham Palace, by Andrew Morton
Buckingham Palace: The Official Illustrated History, by John Martin Robinson Fashion on the Ration: Style in the Second World War, by Julie Summers
Exhibits:
Beaulieu Abbey, Beaulieu, England
Beaulieu Estate, Beaulieu, England
Imperial War Museums exhibit, “Fashion on the Ration,” London, England
Wellcome Collection’s “Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime,” London, England
“Women’s Land Army at Exbury,” New Forest National Park, Beaulieu, England
Documentaries:
H. H. Holmes: America’s First Serial Killer
How Sherlock Changed the World
Secrets of Scotland Yard
If you enjoyed The Queen’s Accomplice, you won’t want
to miss the next suspenseful novel in the Maggie Hope series.
Read on for an exciting preview of
THE PARIS SPY
by Susan Elia MacNeal
Coming soon from Bantam Books
Prologue
Only a single small sparrow, hiding in the branches of a budding chestnut tree on Avenue Fochs, dared to pierce the street’s eerie silence with her chirps and trills.
Even though it was midafternoon, there was no traffic on Baron Haussmann’s grand neoclassical boulevard, which linked the Arc de Triomphe to the Bois de Boulogne. The vélo-taxis avoided the wide street itself, while pedestrians and bicyclists sidestepped its contre-allée—the inner road separated from the boulevard by a green ribbon of verdant lawn, dotted with blooming forsythia bushes and budding irises.
There were few cars in Paris in the spring of 1942, and the large black Citro?ns and Mercedes favored by the Gestapo that dared to make their way down Avenue Fochs seemed to glide silently. Without traffic, the air on Avenue Fochs was unexpectedly sweet and fresh.
The ornate cream-colored Lutetian limestone fa?ades, with their wrought-iron balconies, tall windows, and mansard roofs, were considered the height of Parisian elegance. However, there was a more ominous factor behind Haussmann’s design—some of the architect’s critics opined that the real purpose of his grand boulevards was to make it easier for the military and police to maneuver, and to suppress armed uprisings. They argued that the small number of large, open intersections allowed easy control by a minimal force. In addition, buildings set back from the street could not be used so easily as fortifications.
The distinctive Haussmannian architecture had also made it easier for the Nazis to invade Paris during the Battle of France in June 1940.
On the section of Avenue Fochs closer to Porte Dauphine stood several anonymous buildings that gave the street its chilling reputation, which resulted in its isolation. Nos. 82 and 84 housed the Paris headquarters of the Gestapo—the abbreviation for Geheime Staatspolizei, or secret state police, founded in 1933 by Hermann Goering and controlled by Heinrich Himmler. The Gestapo leaders had chosen Avenue Fochs deliberately for their headquarters of terror: it was named after the French general Marshall Fochs, to whom the Germans surrendered in November 1918.
Inside No. 84, in a large office on the first floor with high ceilings, elaborate crown moldings, and a glittering cage chandelier, light refracting through its spear-and point-cut crystals. A large reproduction of Nicolas Poussin’s Rape of the Sabine Women hung on one wall. Obersturmbannführer Wolfgang von Waltz’s ears pricked at the low growl of a car piercing the silence of the street. From his desk, he looked out the window over Avenue Fochs to see a gleaming black Benz pull up to the curb. Two SS officers in black emerged with a young brunette in handcuffs.
Obersturmbannführer von Waltz was in his early forties, handsome and immaculately groomed, with golden-blond hair and silvery sideburns. Only his middling height and a pointed, jutting chin kept him from looking like the Nordic gods of Nazi propaganda posters. Despite his SS rank, he wore a double-breasted gray-striped suit, silk Hermès tie and pocket square, and handmade alligator shoes. He wore civilian clothes on purpose—to disarm and put at ease prisoners. He left the actual torture to the SS henchmen in No. 84’s soundproofed basement.
Von Waltz was the chief for France’s section IV Counterespionage division and of the Sicherheitsdienst, the German security service, answering directly to Himmler himself. Technically, he was the third-ranking Nazi officer in Paris, overseeing the task of arresting and interrogating foreign agents. Before the war, he’d received his doctorate in Romance languages and had been a professor at the University of Vienna. He’d volunteered as the conductor for the St. Stephen’s Cathedral boys choir and was known for his graceful dancing, especially the fox-trot.
He lifted the heavy black Bakelite telephone receiver with immaculately manicured hands and dialed his secretary. “Frau Schmidt,” he crooned in honeyed tones, “our guest has arrived from the Rouen office. Please put on coffee for our meeting.” Coffee—real coffee—not the ersatz coffee made from chicory or roasted acorns, was as precious as gold or diamonds in occupied Paris.