At the same time, Estelle Allard was also completing renovations to her own apartment. The work was carried out with the same sort of urgency but that was where the similarities stopped. In Estelle’s apartment, the alterations had been completed surreptitiously by a single individual aside from herself, a small space annexed from the existing layout and cleverly concealed. In the Ritz’s Imperial Suite, with its multiple salons and bedrooms, its maids’ quarters and formal dining room, crews had worked tirelessly to improve the palatial atmosphere and meet the demands of its new occupant.

The men on the crews, when questioned discreetly once the work had been completed, had described the extraordinarily large bathtub Göring had ordered. The hotel staff, when questioned guilelessly after the Reichsmarschall had taken up residence, had described a great deal more. The tub, they said, on their way to the suite with stacks of towels and trays upon trays of food, was part of a cure for the Luftwaffe general’s addiction to morphine. A doctor came, they said, to submerge the man in water, give him a series of injections, and then submerge him again. But in a hotel where the staff was long used to providing unflappable, unquestioning service to exacting, difficult guests, these changes and demands seemed to be taken in stride.

That type of service, coupled with the hotel’s lavishness, had made the Ritz as popular with the occupying Germans as it had always been with its preceding clientele. Estelle’s own parents had favoured the Ritz, especially when they wished to host a soiree while staying in Paris. They liked being at the center of the social elite, and the Allard fortune, having the benefit of being both French and vast, had always been welcomed warmly, as had their daughter. Estelle, in fact, had celebrated her eighteenth birthday in the Ritz’s grand dining room, on one of the rare occasions her parents were in Paris on her birthday. They had thrown a party for their friends, treated Estelle to caviar, given her a necklace with eighteen glittering emeralds set in gold, and presented her with a dark green Mercedes roadster to match. At the end of the evening, they had toasted her with champagne, careful to ensure that a photographer for the Paris-Soir captured the moment. Appearances, after all, were paramount.

So the return of Estelle Allard, heiress, socialite, and patron of the Parisian art landscape, to the dining rooms and bars of the Ritz Hotel that September did not raise eyebrows. It was not at all remarkable that she had not been in Paris prior to the Germans’ arrival—even Coco Chanel had fled south before returning—and one could not be faulted for being prudent. And the newly installed inhabitants of the Ritz Hotel were delighted when the young Frenchwoman drifted gracefully through the grand salons. Beautiful Frenchwomen were always appreciated by the officers of the Luftwaffe.