John Pearson - James Bond - The Authorised Biography

Like many of her kind, Marthe de Brandt was something of a spy. It was not hard for her to gather information from her guests and it was mere common sense to sell it to the highest bidder. At the time that James Bond met her she was already in her late twenties and a little past her prime – small, very blonde, with a determined mouth and periwinkle eyes. She was very rich. As far as one can be precise about such things, she worked mainly for the Eastern powers.

It is hard to know what such a woman can have seen in young James Bond. Hardly sex – she must have had enough of that. Nor love – the idea seemed absurd. At the time the general explanation was that she wanted someone to corrupt. If by corruption in this context one means teaching a younger person every known form of copulation, then Marthe de Brandt corrupted him. But there was more to the relationship than this. Both of them must have found something they needed in each other. For James Bond she may have been the amorous equivalent of the Aiguilli run. For her the precocious English boy was probably the son she wanted.

The strange thing is that she fell for him at once. Even young Brinton was surprised at the apologetic way this famous woman treated him, reprimanding the unfortunate doorman, summoning the girl, and, after slapping her face, dismissing her on the spot. Then Marthe de Brandt promised Bond that he would have his property returned the morning after, when she had finished her inquiries.

Bond spent the night at the Brinton flat on the Boulevard Haussmann. When he awoke a messenger had already brought him an envelope. Inside was his pocket book. It contained two crisp ten-thousand franc notes – also a letter from Marthe de Brandt inviting him to supper.

The remainder of that Easter holiday is something Bond won't talk about. His friends, the Brintons, saw little of him. Nor did Aunt Charmian. Marthe had a small flat in the tiny Place Furstenburg off the Rue Jacob. For the next few months this became his home.

He obsessed her as no man had done before. She obsessed him as no woman would again. His studies suffered – so did her business. Neither of them seemed to notice. The amour fou between Marthe de Brandt and her young Englishman became the talk of Paris.

It was a Cherie-like affaire . She indulged and spoiled him. He appeared to be her creature. During that Paris spring-time they went everywhere together – to see the horses run at Longchamp (where he was bored), to watch the twenty-four-hour race at Le Mans (where he wanted to drive) and to the latest show at Le Boeuf sur le Toit (where, for the first time in her life, she felt jealous). They drank a lot, fought a lot and loved a lot. She had his suits made by a famous tailor in the Rue de Rivoli, arranged him boxing lessons with Charpentier. When they felt bored, they drove down to Antibes where she had a wistaria-covered villa hidden among the pines. She bought him the famous Bentley with the Villiers supercharger. (Fleming got the details of the purchase slightly wrong – also, of course, the date, one of a number of inaccuracies which have caused Bond subsequent embarrassment.)

Despite their difference of age, they seemed to have appeared a well-matched couple; she was so small and fair and doll-like, he so tall and mature for his age. For these few months they led a charmed existence, almost oblivious of others. Aunt Charmian wrote anxious letters until old Gregor Bond told her he would get over it. Burglar's father tried to warn him of a woman like de Brandt. One night, as they were dining in the crowded Restaurant des Beaux Arts, they heard a drunk American call out, ‘Here is the lovely Marthe and her English poodle.’ It was a well-known brawler called Sailor Hendrix. Bond hit him very hard between the eyes, then pushed his head into his onion soup.

Another time he thought that she had been unfaithful with a former lover, a distinguished figure on the Paris Bourse. The following night she invited the man to their apartment and made him watch as she and Bond made love.

In fact there was only one man in the whole of Paris who could come between them. James Bond met him early that summer. His name was Maddox. He was a curious, dry, bespectacled man of totally indeterminate age, tough as a prewar army boot, and very rich. Bond met him through the Brintons. He appeared a typical wealthy foreigner, a collector of paintings and of pretty women, gourmet and wit and friend of many politicians. Officially, he was military attache at the British Embassy. Unofficially, he ran the British Secret Service inside France. As an old lover of Marthe de Brandt, he had observed Bond's success with interest. A methodical man, he had checked on him as matter of routine. Then he decided he should get to know him better. But Maddox was a cold fish. Having met James Bond he did what he often did with people he thought might prove useful – he pigeon-holed him carefully away, but kept his tabs on him.

Maddox was always proud of his ability to use unlikely people for his work. A good judge of character, he used to claim that he had rarely been let down. He used to talk about his ‘cellar’ of potential agents. ‘Let them mature,’ he'd say, ‘wait until they're ready to be drunk.’ For James Bond this moment came quicker than Maddox had expected.

At the beginning of 1937 the British Secret Service faced a sudden crisis. For the past year the energies of the British government had been directed to cementing ties with France and with out-manoeuvring the extreme right wing which was pro-German, anti-British and which later formed the main support for Pierre Laval and Vichy France. The British had been having considerable success. As the German menace grew, there had been discreet cooperation between the French and British High Commands, who were unofficially exchanging plans and information. This was all very secret, but in January reports reached London that this information was known in Berlin. Rumours were picked up in Paris and soon published in the right-wing press. Official French Government denials followed.

Two days later came the bombshell. A Berlin newspaper published photographs of French High Command documents together with comments by the British General Staff. They were repudiated by the French, but in Paris the right wing was in full cry. The President was said to be distressed, and behind the scenes the whole policy of military cooperation between France and Britain now seemed threatened. Maddox had frantic messages from London. However the leak of documents had happened, it must be found and blocked. Immediately. Maddox had several suspects. One of the major ones was Marthe de Brandt. Von Schutz, the German military attache, was an habitue of the Elysee. Marthe had done business with him in the past. Maddox was informed that she was the source this time. She needed money for her fancy boy. He half suspected her already. Even so, normally he would have checked more thoroughly. There was no time with London clamouring for action. That same evening Maddox had dinner with James Bond.

Maddox wrote later that he found him quite insufferable – arrogant, ill-educated and drinking far too much. (How much simple jealousy was motivating Maddox is anybody's guess.) But Maddox found no difficulty breaking down the arrogance. He probably enjoyed doing it. He seems to have played upon Bond's anxiety for a purpose in his life. He claimed to have known his father. He got him talking and then asked him if this life was really what he wanted – acting the kept man to a notorious tart.

Normally Bond would have hit him as he once hit Sailor Hendrix, but Maddox had handled situations of this sort before. Besides, he wasn't drunk. Bond was. Maddox asked him why he stayed with a woman who was flagrantly unfaithful to him. Bond asked him what he meant. And, in reply, Maddox produced photographs of Marthe de Brandt with a variety of men. They were not the sort of pictures that one enjoys seeing of the woman one loves. Bond was too shocked to realize that they had all been taken at least two years earlier.