The matter of Louise’s conviction and what evidence the Germans had on her remains debatable. She refused to give away anything during her months of imprisonment; the Germans finally got her cellmate Mlle. Tellier to pass on some letters Louise had written, but it’s difficult to say if they got anything incriminating from those letters. I have arranged the existing conflicting reports to make a clearer climax, but Louise de Bettignies may have been convicted on very little hard evidence at all besides being caught with multiple identification cards while trying to sneak past a checkpoint on a borrowed pass.
The sequence of events around Louise’s death is another place I have condensed the narrative. Her operation for pleural abscesses happened somewhat earlier that year, as she did not die immediately after surgery but managed to survive for some months as an invalid—another example of her remarkable toughness, since according to La Guerre des Femmes, Louise’s operation lasted four agonizing hours in an unheated and inadequately-disinfected room of the notorious Siegburg infirmary that had recently housed a typhus epidemic. It’s impossible to say if the Siegburg officials intended for that surgery to kill her; the infirmary’s lack of hygiene and proper medical care killed many patients even without extra malice intended. But Louise was certainly a problem prisoner for the Germans, and they had little compassion for her dying days, refusing her final request to be sent to die in her mother’s care, and ultimately sending her from Siegburg to a lonely deathbed in Cologne, away from her loyal friends and fellow prisoners. I dearly wished I could have changed history and given Louise a better fate; I confess I condensed her post-operation suffering. Louise’s grand funeral took place in 1920 rather than 1919, when her body was finally repatriated.
The female spies of World War I are largely forgotten today. As much as their contributions during the war were appreciated, there was a certain unease with how to treat them afterward. Women who entered the active zone of combat were generally viewed by the public in one of two ways: as females who shed all womanliness and became hardened and mannish thanks to the dangers of war, or as gallant little women forced by duty to take up dangerous burdens, but still fragile flowers at heart. Louise de Bettignies was admired, praised, and heaped with medals, but her contemporaries focused far less on her toughness and bravery than on her tiny stature, her femininity, her patriotism. “Louise was the most womanly woman one could imagine . . . There was nothing of the Amazon about her.” Matters were no different after World War II, when Charlie St. Clair would have been seeing the calls for Rosie the Riveter to put down the burdens of war and return to hearth and home where she belonged. Clearly, women in active fighting zones unsettled their contemporaries, but they still left a legacy behind. Girls of the ’30s and ’40s joined the SOE to train as spies against the Nazis because they had been inspired by books and stories about women like Louise de Bettignies—and they weren’t inspired by her feminine graces. They were inspired by her courage, her toughness, and her unflinching drive, just as I imagined Charlie being inspired by Eve’s. Such women were fleurs du mal indeed—with steel, with endurance, and with flair, they thrived in evil and inspired others in doing so.
Acknowledgments
I owe heartfelt thanks to many people who helped in the writing of this book. My mother, who hashed out countless plot tangles with me over long walks and even longer phone conversations. My husband, who fine-tuned Eve’s stammer in every scene and frequently told me, “You keep writing, I’ll make dinner.” My wonderful critique partners, Stephanie Dray and Sophie Perinot, whose red pencils and insights proved absolutely invaluable. My agent, Kevan Lyon, and editors, Amanda Bergeron and Tessa Woodward, cheerleaders par excellence. My MRW chapter mate, Lisa Christie, and her husband, Eric, for answering my questions about classic cars, fact-checking my mechanical details, and providing me with a tour of the wonderful Henry Petronis car collection. And finally, Annalori Ferrell, whose bilingual talents aided immeasurably in translating French research documents and teaching me suitably colorful French curses, and who provided an insider’s look at the World War I occupation of northern France under which past generations of her family lived. It is with the permission of Anna and her family that the letter by her great-great uncle