The Dominafuhrer - THE GODMOTHER

Episode 67 - A Spy At The Door

London, October 1937

“Blimey, I hope I never come up before that Beak again. I’d remember him wearing only that pink whalebone corset, laugh and get a week in the pokey for contempt of court. At least he didn’t recognise me in my uniform.”

Miss Spiteful nodded at Juanita’s remarks; she had many clients from the Judiciary and the Legal Profession who needed her services to cope with their disgust at the crimes that they encountered and their guilt over the injustices and inequalities in the criminal justice system. She was preoccupied however with what she believed was her own imminent arrest and arraignment for stabbing de Hoone to reply to her maid.

In her night of lesbian passion with Brown Sugar, Miss Spiteful had been able to put the incident at the back of her mind but in the morning, once Brown Sugar had met Juanita, to whom the new situation had been explained, and then departed, the impending sense of doom had returned. Yet the Police had not come to question her; there had been no phone calls apart from clients requesting appointments nor had there been any mention in the three evening newspapers that Miss Spiteful had sent Juanita out to buy. Her puzzlement had only increased her fears and her anger at herself for losing control had resulted in her brooding silence and severe beatings for her clients. She wished that she was able to seek advice from her friend Sir Hartley but he was somewhere in the English Channel on an ocean liner bound for New York.

“Right, I’ve made up the bed in the spare room and given it a good clean for your new lady love.” Juanita had suggested that looking after two mistresses warranted an increase in wages which Miss Spiteful had countered with her own suggestion that she examine the shopping bills more closely; bringing the exchange to an end but the maid had continued to make remarks about the relationship between the two women. Miss Spiteful did not rise to the bait and Juanita, dressed in male attire to go home, looked disappointed.

“Your fish’n’chips are in the oven and they’ve given you a whopping big piece tonight. So, if there’s nothing else Mistress, I’m off.”

Despite her love of fine dining, Miss Spiteful had taken up the British habit of eating fish and chips on a Friday evening, unless she had been invited out but, in her usual methodical way, had sampled all of the local establishments before finding one that she liked best. Unfortunately it was at the far end of Queensway and, even if Juanita returned on a bus, the fish supper needed to be reheated in the oven before Miss Spiteful could enjoy it.

Less than five minutes after the front door had slammed shut behind Juanita, a series of loud knocks on it startled Miss Spiteful out of her contemplation of food followed by a nice hot shower and then bed. Puzzled and cautious, Miss Spiteful put on a silk robe and approached the door; she was not expecting any visitors and clients were discouraged from calling without appointments. Besides, there was an intercom on the street door through which callers had to identify themselves before gaining admittance. Miss Spiteful remembered Juanita mentioning that the maid who serviced the rooms of the other tenants, stockbrokers, bankers, barristers and an aspiring artist in the basement, had said that they were all away until Sunday. That meant that not only was she alone in the house but no one else could have opened the street door for her mystery visitor.

Regretting that she had never installed a spy hole, Miss Spiteful lifted the cricket stump that she kept for personal protection from the umbrella stand and opened the door slightly so that she could peer around the edge.

Despite a blue trench coat and blue tie with a thin red stripe replacing the dinner jacket and bow tie, she recognised the fair headed young man who had been in the night club the previous evening. He angled his head to match that of Miss Spiteful’s and gave a slight smile.

“Fraulien Kathi Boshaft?” His German grammar was faultless but with a flat English accent. “My name is Alan Forbes, you sent a message that you wanted to talk to me.”

“Come in”, Miss Spiteful replied in English and opened the door wider. His eyebrows rose as he saw the cricket stump in her hand and she dropped it back into the stand as she closed the door behind him.

“I should tell you that the cricket season does not start again until next April”, his lips twitched into a smile which Miss Spiteful did respond to. She had expected the Police to call but not the British Secret Police.

“What are you, Special Branch or MI5?” she asked.

“Something like that,” he replied and waved a small leather wallet at her but she caught only a brief glance of a buff card embossed with a blue crown before the wallet snapped shut again.

“Do take a seat,” she said as she led the way into her living room and settled herself into one of her armchairs, draping the folds of her robe over her long stockinged legs.

Forbes unbuttoned his coat as he took the armchair opposite to her, revealing a smart sports jacket and neatly pressed grey trousers.

“Have you come to arrest me?” Miss Spiteful asked.

Forbes gave his little smile again. “I was going to until I saw you stab a German spy. Now I am curious; are you a spy or just a very unusual lady?”

“I am not a spy and I am certainly unusual but why have the Police not questioned me about de Hoone? A wound that serious must have been reported.”

“It was,” Forbes’s smile stayed on his lips but his pale blue eyes lacked any humour. “I saw it all and told the management and the Police that it was a terrible accident. de Hoone had not noticed that his fork was tangled in his napkin, which he had dropped on the seat of his chair, and when he sat down the prongs of the fork went into his leg. His own weight drove it in further as he writhed about. All physically impossible but the management and Sir Douglas and his other guests all seemed happy to accept it. I tipped the wink to the Met Police who I was; they took my statement and there the matter ends. Your presence was not even mentioned.”

Miss Spiteful’s head spun with the news.

“I do not understand; why did you do that?”

“Because it would not be in our interests to put you in the dock for that crime. As I said, we are not sure what to make of you. You left Berlin where you moved in the highest circles of the Nazi party; indeed you were reputed to be a favourite of Goebbels himself. You soon built up a clientele In Paris, from the members of the Government and their Armed Forces, any of whom could pass you information of interest to the Germans. You had as a client our most recent King which could prove extremely embarrassing for our Royal Family and then you carry out a brutal attack on a visitor from the Argentine.”

“He tried to rape me,” Miss Spiteful said defiantly. “I made sure that he will not do it again.”
”Indeed,” Forbes agreed. “He declined to make a complaint and sailed for home as soon as he was discharged from hospital but the Examining Magistrate has issued a warrant for your arrest and extradition. It is currently awaiting the signature of the Home Secretary before it can be executed here.”

Miss Spiteful paled but said nothing.

“So”, Forbes continued. “You arrived here and once again swiftly insinuated yourself into the top echelons of power and society and became associated with one of the most dangerous agents of the Germans in Britain.”

Miss Spiteful went even paler, berating herself silently for not accepting what she suspected about Sir Douglas Bradshaw.

“And yet within weeks of your arrival you carry out yet another assault, this time on the German Ambassador, and last night stabbed an agent for the Germans. We are puzzled; are you a very clever or a very clumsy spy or perhaps you are an agent provocateur whose mission is to embarrass the Governments and citizens of Britain and France?

“In fact,” Forbes continued before Miss Spiteful could reply. “It is the latter possibility that worries us the most and the most likely reason that I shall have to arrest you and have you deported back to Germany or maybe even to France.” 

Miss Spiteful decided to defend herself and sat upright in her armchair. As she did so, her silk robe opened at the front to give Forbes a full view of her breasts and torso crammed into a tight black and red basque and long black suspenders crossing her thighs to the black silk stockings on her long shapely legs.

Forbes started and goggled but Miss Spiteful barely noticed his reaction.

“What must I do to convince you that I am not a spy?” Miss Spiteful asked in exasperation. “Yes, I had a lot of top Nazis as my clients but they are the ones in Germany with the money just like your Tory Peers who visit me here but I am not a Nazi or a Conservative. I care about money not politics; the Nazis arrested me for having a Communist as a client so I have no love for them and I really do not like Communists. But they all paid for my services and if I refused anyone because I do not like their politics I would soon be out of business. I left Germany because I believe those lunatics are leading the country into war and I do not want to be around for it.”

Forbes seemed unimpressed and Miss Spiteful continued.

“Look, if I was a Nazi spy would I have jammed a bottle up Von Ribbentrop’s rectum?”

Forbes suddenly laughed and relaxed.

“Oh, that was wonderful! The Foreign Office had this telephone call from the Embassy requesting and ambulance and a Police escort to St George’s Hospital. He was carried out of the residence face down on the stretcher between two lines of Policemen to prevent any photographs being taken of the big mound in the blanket over his backside. Diplomatic immunity was claimed and all they would tell the Doctor was that the Ambassador had slipped and fell on the bottle. They even claimed the bottle back as soon as it had been extricated. His Majesty’s Government is at least grateful that you drove Von Brickendrop out of London; officially he is still the Ambassador but we do not think that we will be seeing much more of him. However, we know that he is not popular with some of the Nazi hierarchy in Berlin and you could have been acting under their orders to force his removal.”

Miss Spiteful shook her head but she noticed that Forbes final sentence did not seem to be an accusation.

“Any spy would be gathering information such as the gun calibre of your Navy’s new battleships, or the thickness of the armoured flight deck of the new aircraft carriers, your Royal Air Force’s new monoplane fighters, their gun sights or the new radio location system that you are experimenting with and passing it back to Germany. But I have not sent any messages with any intelligence and do not intend to do so.”

Forbes jaw had dropped and for a moment he was lost for words.

“I could put you in Holloway Prison tonight just for possessing any of that knowledge,” he almost spluttered.

“Unsinn!” Miss Spiteful was trying to keep her temper. “I did not hear any of that in this apartment. It all came from conversations I overheard in restaurants here in London. If you or your men have been following me you know who I dine out with and where. Their reports will probably tell you who was sitting at the next table each time. The only ones I didn’t overhear any secrets from are your Generals because all they talk about are horses. In Paris, the main topic of conversation was gossip about other men or women’s lovers. I could spot the Deuxieme Bureau Agents tailing me because they were the only ones not trying to catch my eye.”

Forbes shifted uncomfortably as Miss Spiteful pressed on. “I suppose you are reading my correspondence and listening into my telephone conversations. Have I sent one coded message or made a suspicious call?”

“Well,” Forbes cleared his throat. “You did place a call to Dusseldorf this morning that contained some unusual sentences which we think might have hidden meanings.”

“I’m willing to bet that only men have listened to the recording,” Miss Spiteful giggled. “Play it to a woman, especially one who is a mother. She will explain exactly what my mentor and I were talking about. I have a friend who is pregnant and I was seeking advice on motherhood and how to train her as a Dominatrix.”

Forbes blushed and Miss Spiteful tried not to laugh out loud at his discomfort.

“Anyway, enough about spying; it seems that there is nothing else that I can do or say to convince you but let me then reassure you about causing any embarrassment to the British Crown or Government. The members of my profession are not prostitutes; we provide a discreet service to men and women and we would soon be out of business if we exposed or blackmailed our clients. I have never revealed any secrets and would only do so if that client threatened me. Yes, I have a temper and I have perhaps over reacted a couple of times but only in defence of myself. Any resultant publicity was not my wish or of my doing.”

Forbes had recovered his composure and was about to speak when Miss Spiteful cut him off.

“I’m not stupid, I’m told that I’m even a little paranoid and I think carefully about any clients I take on, that’s why I spotted your agents and those of the French. So let me put your mind at rest; yes, I have received an invitation to a house party in Kent but I have refused it because I know drugs will be used there and, if you have done any research, you will know that I will not get involved in that their trade or their use. I also heard that one of the guests might be a member of your Royalty and having had unwelcome publicity for beating your last king in Paris, I will not be doing that again. I suggest you do something about the Royal circle of friends and not persecute me. Further, no doubt you will know that the Editor of the News of the World has offered me one thousand pounds for any scandalous information that I have. I will not be taking their money; that would be the end of my career.”

Forbes let out a sigh of relief and was raising a finger to point at Miss Spiteful when he frowned and sniffed the air.

“Ach, mein Gott!” Miss Spiteful leapt up from her chair. “Mein fisch und pommes frites!”

She ran into the kitchen, past an open mouthed Forbes, reappearing a couple of moments later.

“They are all right, but I must eat them now, will you join me?”

It was when Forbes gaped, swallowed and then nodded Miss Spiteful realised that her gown was hanging open and the British Agent was getting an eyeful of her semi naked body in tight black basque, suspenders, stockings and high heeled boots.

To continue this story, click I Spy, You Spy



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