He said that he liked her best in the odd hours . . . exhausted in her dressing room, lounging backstage with friends. He said that they often discussed literature that she had never read, and art that she did not understand. He also said that she lied compulsively, never paid her debts, and slept with almost everyone. But that she was not a spy.

Gray's account of Mata Hari's death had an intensity that always left visitors unsettled. He claimed that there had never been a genuine investigation, only a scheme. He claimed that there had been no attempt to establish the truth, only a shoddy myth. Witnesses were silenced while the trial continued grinding on with an awful inevitability, and in the end they did not execute her for a crime—they murdered her for their own reasons.

Chapter One

Chapter One

HE first saw her in a photograph, a thin girl astride a bicycle. One hand rested on a bare thigh, the other seemed poised above her breasts. Her hair and eyes were very dark, the lips slightly parted. All this had been in the spring of 1904, in a Paris that we shall always remember.

The photograph had been taken by a Russian friend, a pale youth named Vadime de Massloff. Like Gray, he had originally entered this city the year before, after failing to meet expectations at Oxford. By winter they were living across a narrow courtyard from one another, and often meeting for drinks in the evenings. Although a gifted photographer, de Massloff often found himself photographing nudes to pay the rent . . . hence this obviously suggestive portrait of the young Mata Hari.

In retrospect these days would always come back to Gray in terms of specific impressions: a subdued conversation in a cheap cafe, the skyline in blue light, the feel of a cane in a gloved hand. It had been a cold year, with a premature frost in October. Then came March with hard rain, then at long last April.

According to de Massloff, she first appeared in the last week of April, on a clear day filled with the scent of new blossoms. He had just returned from a midmorning break to find her seated on a low settee in the corner of his studio. She wore a black dress, brown shoes, and a beige coat.

There were theatrical props along the far wall, and at first he had her pose beside an Oriental vase. Next he had her kneel on a cushion with her arms laced across her breasts, her nipples faintly highlighted with rouge. Finally he had her stand beside that bicycle, simply gazing into the camera.

When it was over she quickly put on her clothes, collected her money, and left by a side door. Although she had actually posed for seven photographs, only the one with the bicycle survived the darkroom.