Landru's Secret Read online

  ***

  Autumn turned to winter. As the New Year came, no one could imagine that France would be at war with Germany in eight months’ time – least of all Jeanne, as she scoured the lonely hearts adverts in the newspapers for a monsieur who might make a husband.

  One Saturday in February, Jeanne burst into Folvary’s shop with some startling news. She was engaged to a widowed industrialist from northern France called Monsieur Diard, now settled in Paris, and was handing in her notice. Folvary was astonished and asked Jeanne when they were going to marry. Jeanne hesitated before giving her reply. Unfortunately there was a minor hitch, she explained, because Diard had lost his military identity card while performing his obligatory national service in French Indo-China some years ago. He had just applied for a replacement since he would need to produce the document in order to register their marriage.

  The helpful Folvary had an idea. He had a well-connected officer friend in the army who might be able to speed up the process. All Folvary required from Jeanne was Diard’s full name and birth details and the dates of his military service in Indo-China. Jeanne thanked Folvary and said she would pass on this information to her fiancé.

  Several days later she returned to the shop and told Folvary abruptly that Diard’s identity card had in fact been lost in the Philippines. Furthermore, Jeanne went on, Diard did not need any assistance from Folvary in getting a new one. With that, she hurried out of the shop before Folvary could ask any more questions.

  ***

  Jeanne had an elder sister called Philomène, a concierge who lived and worked on the left bank of the Seine, near the Jardin du Luxembourg. Philomène, 44, was childless, having married late to a bookstore employee called Georges Friedman; both she and her rather prim husband deplored Jeanne’s mildly disreputable love life. Every so often, Philomène made a point of seeing Jeanne to dispense some sisterly advice about men, to no avail. Jeanne refused to take heed and frequently she and Philomène were not on speaking terms.

  This may explain why it was Georges Friedman, not Philomène, who first met Diard at Jeanne’s apartment. According to Friedman, he was instantly suspicious of Jeanne’s fiancé.

  In his mid-forties, Diard was stocky, muscular and bald, with a luxuriant dark brown beard, flecked with grey, and deep-set, piercing eyes. He spoke with a drawling, faintly lower-class accent, yet he dressed like the respectable businessman he claimed to be, in a sober dark suit, starched white shirt and cravat. Diard was difficult to place, one moment talking knowledgeably about stocks and shares, the next performing his party trick of standing on one hand to show off his physical strength.

  Friedman’s doubts were aroused when Diard casually mentioned that he had done his military service in Indo-China. Friedman had also served in Indo-China, but when he remarked on this coincidence, Diard rapidly changed the subject. It seemed clear to Friedman that Diard had never been anywhere near the colony.

  Friedman and Philomène could not talk Jeanne out of the relationship, although there seemed no immediate prospect of a marriage because Diard was still waiting for his new military identity card. Jeanne even told Philomène that she had made a scanty sky-blue nightdress to please her fiancé in bed. The prudish Philomène did not approve.

  ***

  In April 1914, Jeanne and Diard suddenly moved from Paris to the village of La Chaussée, 50 kilometres north of the city. André stayed behind at Jeanne’s apartment near the Gare de l’Est, working at “Fashionable House” and fooling around with Max and the lads. Jeanne imposed one condition on André’s newly won independence: every Saturday, after work, André had to catch the train to the town of Chantilly, near La Chaussée, to spend Sunday with his mother and future stepfather.

  A century ago, La Chaussée was little more than a street of houses set back from a bend in the river Oise. It was a quiet hamlet, where strangers were soon noticed.

  “Monsieur and Mme Diard”, as they called themselves, were spotted immediately, rattling into La Chaussée one day in a grey tradesman’s delivery van or camionnette driven by the husband. They did not bring much – just a couple of old beds, some bed linen and a few kitchen utensils – which they installed in the ground-floor rooms Diard had rented in a house on the edge of the village. From the beginning, Diard was downright rude to his new neighbours, rarely bothering to return their greetings on the street. Jeanne was polite enough when she went shopping in the village but never got into a conversation. It was as if the two of them had something to hide.

  Mme Hardy, a housewife in her late thirties, lived with her husband and children upstairs from the Diards. One Sunday, when André was visiting, Mme Hardy’s curiosity got the better of her. There was a hole in her living room floor board and as she peered through it, Mme Hardy saw her new neighbours sitting down to lunch. She was struck by how frightened the boy seemed of Diard: “[he] did not dare serve himself and did not talk and it was Diard who invited him to eat.”

  Mme Hardy thought André looked like a son who could not wait to get away from his somewhat menacing father and catch the evening train to Paris for another week of relative independence. Jeanne’s behaviour was harder to interpret. She did not say much to her surly “husband”, yet nor did Jeanne appear cowed by him. Over the next few weeks, as Mme Hardy gradually managed to make small talk with Jeanne, she came across as a woman of some sangfroid: cool, a little distant, but quite capable of looking after herself. Jeanne seemed like a wife who might have married Diard for reasons other than love.

  In early June, Diard opened a bank account in his name at the Société Générale branch in Chantilly, depositing 5,609 francs. This was roughly what Jeanne had earned in a year as a seamstress and far more than her own paltry savings. Later that month, Jeanne finally steeled herself to invite her sister to come to La Chaussée for a day in the country so Philomène could meet her future brother-in-law.

  Philomène was dismayed by the shabby, barely furnished apartment and appalled by Diard. He did not speak at all during a walk in the country and was just as unpleasant over dinner at a nearby restaurant. Philomène returned by train to Paris that evening with a “strong aversion” to Jeanne’s disagreeable fiancé.

  Life in La Chaussée continued its settled routine in the first three weeks of July, undisturbed by anything more dramatic than the arrival of the Paris newspapers each afternoon. On Saturday, 18 July, Le Petit Parisien reported that the music hall starlet Suzanne Darby was in hospital after being shot in “mysterious conditions” by a boyfriend, one “Henri Z…” Less interestingly, France’s president was sailing to Russia for a state visit. “Everything is fine on board” ran the headline for this dull diplomatic story.

  Sometime that weekend, Mme Hardy watched Diard drive out of La Chaussée in his camionnette, leaving Jeanne alone at the villa. He headed firstly to Paris, where he collected his 46-year-old wife at a pre-arranged rendezvous, and then drove north-west to the port of Le Havre, one of the main crossing points to England.

  On 22 July, Diard drove back to Chantilly, bypassing La Chaussée, and withdrew 2,000 francs from his bank account. He probably returned directly to Le Havre, where on Sunday, 26 July he and his wife set off in the camionnette to return to Paris.

  At about 5.00 pm they were speeding down a hill outside the Normandy village of Gournay-en-Bray when Diard lost control of the camionnette and crashed into a poplar tree. Neither Diard nor his wife was hurt but the car needed repairing. Diard did a quick deal with a local farmer who had seen the accident and the couple stayed the night in the farmhouse. They carried on to Paris next morning by train, leaving the car at the farm for Diard to come back and mend.

  Two days later, as Austria declared war on Serbia, Diard caught the train from Paris to Chantilly and withdrew the remaining 2,000 francs from his bank account. He still avoided Jeanne, returning directly to Paris by train.

  On 29 July, a week after the crash, Diard showed up at the farm, accompanied by a young man who helped him fix the camionnette. Di
ard explained to the farmer that the situation in Paris “did not look good” and war seemed likely. He asked if it would be possible to bring his wife and children to stay on the farm for a month or so, in exchange for more money. After some negotiation, the farmer and his wife agreed.

  On Saturday, 1 August, as France began to mobilise, Diard made two round trips in his camionnette from Paris to the farm outside Gournay. In the morning he delivered his eldest son (who had helped repair the vehicle) and his 18-year-old daughter. By late evening, Diard had returned with his wife, his 25-year-old daughter, his 14-year-old son, and the family’s pet dog, which the farmer remembered as a “ratty” little animal.

  All this time, Jeanne had remained in La Chaussée. It was only on the weekend of 1–2 August, as France mobilised, that Mme Hardy noticed Jeanne becoming fretful. Her anxiety was easy for a mother like Mme Hardy to grasp. Jeanne was marooned in La Chaussée, while in Paris patriotic youths like André could not wait to fight the hated “Boches”.

  On Sunday morning (2 August), Diard at last showed up at the apartment in his camionnette. He did not stay long. Shortly afterwards, Mme Hardy saw him drive Jeanne off to the station in Chantilly, where she caught the train alone to Paris and returned to her old apartment. After his summer of independence, André was firmly back in Jeanne’s care.

  Diard drove back to La Chaussée, where word was starting to spread that he might be a German spy. Several villagers remarked that he came and went in his van at all hours of the day and night; and besides, Diard never spoke to anyone, and no one had a clue what he did for a living. Mme Hardy decided to redouble her surveillance of this potentially dangerous enemy agent.

  On Monday, 3 August, the day France formally declared war on Germany, Mme Hardy noticed Diard becoming increasingly agitated at Jeanne’s failure to return from Paris. At last she appeared on Tuesday, without André. A day or two later, Mme Hardy observed Diard and Jeanne get into the camionnette and head out of the village. This time, Diard did not come back to La Chaussée, leaving Mme Hardy to suppose that he must have driven Jeanne all the way to Paris.

  ***

  Something now happened to cause Jeanne serious alarm. Diard vanished soon after their arrival in Paris, giving no indication of where he had gone. Jeanne assumed that he was lying low in La Chaussée but in fact he had gone back to his wife and children at the farmhouse near Gournay to check that they were safe.

  Jeanne faced a dilemma. She was desperate to find out if Diard was in La Chaussée but seems to have feared a confrontation. She also appears to have been nervous about leaving André on his own in Paris, given the number of patriotic teenage boys who were trying to volunteer illegally for the army by pretending they were 18, the minimum age for enlisting. Swallowing her pride, Jeanne asked Philomène’s husband Georges Friedman if he would travel to La Chaussée on her behalf.

  When Friedman got to La Chaussée on Sunday, 9 August, he asked Mme Hardy if she knew where Diard had gone. Mme Hardy said she did not, adding that she had heard a rumour that Diard was a German spy. Friedman told her he would “check it out”. Before leaving, Friedman informed Mme Hardy that Jeanne’s real surname was Cuchet, not Diard.

  A week later, on Sunday, 16 August, Friedman came back to La Chaussée with Jeanne and André. Mme Hardy watched them go in and when they emerged sometime later, she saw that Jeanne had “an annoyed air”. The trio left in a hurry, without saying anything to Mme Hardy.

  The reason for Jeanne’s annoyance lay inside a small locked chest belonging to Diard that he had left behind at the villa. When Jeanne prised it open, she discovered a cache of papers, including the identity document of one Henri Désiré Landru, born in Paris in 1869. “Raymond Diard”, an industrialist from northern France, was an imposter. The same livret de famille showed that Landru had a wife, Marie-Catherine, born in 1868, and four children: Marie (1891), Maurice (1894), Suzanne (1896) and Charles (1900). In addition, Jeanne found a number of blank identity documents and automobile licences, the stock-in-trade of a conman.

  Georges Friedman insisted on taking Jeanne and André straight back to his and Philomène’s apartment in Paris, where he convened a family council of war. In front of André, Jeanne agreed that she would break off all relations with Landru, alias Diard. She was crying when she and André returned late that evening to Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, telling her concierge that “Monsieur Diard would never set foot in her apartment again.”

  Next day, Philomène made Jeanne accompany her to Landru’s abandoned address in Malakoff, where they soon learned from neighbours the most shocking news of all. Landru was a convicted swindler on the run from the law, having just been tried and sentenced in absentia to exile for life with hard labour on the French Pacific island of New Caledonia. Following the trial, Mme Landru and her children had also vanished, leaving no contact details. Seemingly chastened, Jeanne assured Philomène that she had split for good from Landru.

  Jeanne went home, finally free of Philomène, and reflected on her troubles: unemployed, almost broke, abandoned by her fiancé, with a naïvely patriotic son who seemed intent on getting himself killed by the Germans. Sometime in the next couple of days she made two decisions. First, Jeanne asked her concierge not to allow the Friedmans into the building or let them know if she was at home. Next, she wrote a letter to Mme Hardy.

  Chapter 2

  The Lodge at Vernouillet

  Jeanne wanted to know whether “Monsieur Diard” had returned yet to the villa. Mme Hardy replied that she had no news at all.

  Two days later, on the evening of 20 August, Landru arrived in the dark on a bicycle. He lost his temper when Mme Hardy showed him Jeanne’s letter, stuffing it in his pocket. In the morning Mme Hardy saw him cycle off to the station at Chantilly.

  Another week passed, as Jeanne sat tight in Paris. From her fifth-floor window, she could watch André set off for work after breakfast, turning south down the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis towards his shirt factory rather than north towards the cheering crowds on the forecourt of the Gare de l’Est. Every hour, boys barely older than André were kissing their mothers and sisters goodbye and clambering onto the troop trains that snaked out of the station towards the front.

  Towards the end of August, a young woman who had briefly worked for Jeanne as an assistant seamstress passed by the apartment. She found Jeanne in some distress, complaining that her fiancé was an imposter who used false identity papers and that the villagers in La Chaussée thought he was an enemy spy. Jeanne did not reveal Landru’s name or the fact that he was a criminal on the run. Instead, she claimed that he had disappeared shortly after being “mobilised” and then turned up out of the blue at her apartment while he was on “military leave”. According to Jeanne, he had confessed to her that he was married with children, but was divorcing his wife, whom he did not love; meanwhile, his feelings for Jeanne were unchanged.

  Jeanne’s visitor left with the impression that Jeanne had refused to forgive her fiancé and had ended the relationship. It was not true. Shortly before or after this visit, Mme Hardy saw Landru and Jeanne arrive at the villa in La Chaussée on foot, having walked from the station in Chantilly. They only stayed for a day or two, and to Mme Hardy’s frustration, she could not engage Jeanne in a neighbourly chat. “She was not the same as before, she appeared sad,” Mme Hardy recalled.

  Jeanne brought a bundle of dirty linen back to Paris, grumbling to her concierge that soldiers had created “havoc” by dossing down in the villa; for La Chaussée now lay directly in the path of troops marching towards an alarmingly fluid front. This “allied offensive”, dutifully reported by the censored press, was in reality a series of murderous, mobile engagements that killed around 40,000 French soldiers in one week alone.

  Sometime in early September, Landru appeared again on his bike in La Chaussée and stayed for several days. Mme Hardy resumed her surveillance, still worried that Diard was spying for the Germans. In her motherly way, Mme Hardy also fretted that André might be a
mong the French casualties. Here, perhaps, lay the cause of Jeanne’s evident sadness, Mme Hardy thought.

  “He has been called up,” Landru lied, when Mme Hardy dared to broach the subject of André with him.

  Mme Hardy remarked that André was still “very young”, unaware that at 17 he could not even volunteer.

  “It is necessary that he does his military service like everyone else,” Landru said curtly, sounding pleased to have got the boy off his hands.

  ***

  One by one, the “Fashionable House” lads were going off to the war. On Saturday, 29 August, André stood on the platform at Paris’s Gare de Montparnasse, waving goodbye to his best friend Max. Lucky Max, André thought: at 18, Max was just old enough to volunteer for the mounted infantry and was bound for a training camp near Bordeaux.

  As the train crawled out of the station, Max’s mother, standing next to André, noticed this boy’s “great sorrow” through her own tears. Putting on a brave face, André now kept an eye on Mme Morin, as Max had asked him to do.

  “I accompanied your mother all the way to her home,” André wrote shortly afterwards to Max, “reassuring her as best I could about your destiny, and telling her that I will come and give her news about you as soon as possible.” It did not occur to André that Max might also be writing to his mother.

  At his training camp, Max was soon learning how to ride his first horse, much to André’s envy. Meanwhile, “Fashionable House” had collapsed, because the owners of the business had been mobilised. “I’m currently unemployed, the factory closed last Thursday, you cannot even imagine how time drags,” André lamented to Max in early September.

  Max’s gang of “Fashionable House” mates, who had let André tag along with them, had also gone off to barracks or training camps.