Somehow, Wilde managed a couple of hours’ sleep. In the morning, after a bath and shave, he took breakfast in the kitchens with the estate workers. No one mentioned the Frenchman. He had been conveniently removed. That was the way things happened in totalitarian police states and it gave him no comfort; the same thing could just as easily happen to him.

He met Sunny on the forecourt at 8.30. If she knew that he had seen her in bed with Anton Offenbach, it did not register on her face.

‘The car is being brought around, Monsieur Sable,’ she said.

‘Where’s Klara?’

‘Frau Göring will bring her out. Be careful to salute her properly and with deference. You can manage that, can’t you?’

He rather thought she was mocking him, but he let it pass.

‘In the night I saw them taking the French blackmailer away,’ he said.

‘Yes, I heard he had been arrested. Apparently he was listening to a foreign wireless station – the BBC, I believe. That’s a serious offence.’

‘So he’ll end up in Sachsenhausen?’

‘I believe not. It seems he begged to stop because he was desperate to relieve himself when they were driving through a dense part of the woods. Being gentlemen, the officers agreed to his request – but then he tried to make a run for it. I’m afraid he was shot dead. Very sad, don’t you think?’

Wilde paled. ‘You mean they murdered him?’

‘He would have done the same to you,’ she said with a shrug. Here . . .’ She opened her bag, took out a purse, and removed a bundle of banknotes. ‘These were found on him. I believe they’re yours. Now do you trust me?’

*

Emmy Göring walked out of the front door with a child clutching each hand and a lion cub padding along at her side. A liveried servant accompanied her, holding a large umbrella over their heads. Emmy had a grand position to maintain as First Lady and always had to look her best, even in the light rain now falling. Wilde knew she had been a famous actress in the past, but her glamour days were gone and despite the best efforts of her tailor and coiffeuse to maintain her reputation as the best-dressed woman in Germany, she had the look of a frumpy Hausfrau who thought she was the lady of the manor, and the mixture didn’t quite work.

Wilde bowed to her with great deference, wondering whether she also required the Hitler salute. As she did not proffer one, he decided he wouldn’t either.

‘Herr Sable,’ she said.

He wasn’t certain how to respond. Frau Reichsmarschall? Frau Göring? Meine Dame? Instead, he simply bowed again.