In the twentieth century France there was a woman who acquired a reputation as one of greatest spies of her era.

Known as Marthe Richard, she was recruited during the First World War by Captain George Ladoux of French military intelligence.

Interestingly, another recruit of Ladoux was the notorious prostitute-spy named Mata Hari.

Marthe herself was very talented. And not just in one way. She was cultured, sophisticated, even an aviator, awarded an aerial speed record in 1913. Ladoux sent her to Madrid, Spain, in order to spy on the German Naval Attaché posted there, a guy named Baron Hans von Krohn. She was told to seduce him.

Marthe was slightly hesitant. The Baron was 70 years old. She said, “Captain, it is a sacrifice costlier than death!”

Ladoux said it was a glorious duty. He called it “horizontal patriotism.”

Well, that answer she found perfectly persuasive. (As I said, she was only slightly hesitant.) When the time came to bed the Baron, Marthe took a stiff drink, lay back, and under her breath declared “Vive la France!”

Years later, in the 1930s, Ladoux and Marthe published their respective accounts of her story, dramatized in the French motion picture Marthe Richard au Service de la France. Soon she received a French medal, the Légion d’honneur.

Then came World War II, when France was invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany.

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Somehow Marthe survived in Nazi-occupied Paris, even after she joined the French Resistance.

After the war she was elected to the Paris Municipal Council and began a legal crusade against prostitution. In 1946 a new law was passed, still known today as La loi Marthe Richard. It closed 1,400 brothels in France, including 180 in Paris. In her last years she wrote erotic fiction and delivered lectures about being a spy. She died in 1982 at the age of 92.

A remarkable woman, no? That’s not even half the story. So arousing, so exciting, so euphoric, this story was erected upon — a body of limp lies.

Marthe Richard never existed.

Marthe Betenfeld did. She was born in France in 1889. At the age of 16 she became a prostitute; we know because the police registered her. By the early 1900s she was in Paris. There she met Henri Richer, a merchant who sold smelly fish. But the guy had money and a last name any prostitute would notice. From Richer she learned cultural refinement and, after he purchased an airplane, she learned to fly.

In 1913 she flew into Zurich, claimed an aerial speed record and told the press. What she didn’t say is that she had reached the outskirts of Zurich by train — having flown from Le Crotoy only as far as Burgundy, not Zurich. Then she flew into Zurich, claiming she had flown the whole distance. She was awarded the speed record. I guess records are made to be broken.

World War I began in 1914. Richer joined the army, marrying Marthe before he left. He was killed in 1916. A month later the widowed Marthe Richer was recruited by Captain Ladoux for “horizontal patriotism.” Later, in Spain, the German Baron von Krohn did indeed have an eye for her. (How could he not? His other eye was glass.) Unaware that she was a French spy, the Baron “recruited” her to be a German spy. Meanwhile Ladoux, now a Major, got accused in France of being a double-agent working for the Germans. Marthe was a double-agent loyal to the French. Ladoux got jailed. Marthe got sacked. She got into the sack several times, actually, because she liked the money, both at the end of the war and for years thereafter.

In 1926 she married Thomas Crompton, a financial director of the Rockefeller Foundation in France. Since Crompton was English, the new Marthe Crompton likewise became English. Dual-citizenship was prohibited under French law, and therefore her French citizenship was revoked. Still, the money was good. Alas, Thomas’ luck wasn’t. Within two years he died. Marthe was now wealthy, but again a widow.

Then, back into her affairs sauntered George Ladoux. You may recall that Ladoux and one of his other agents, Mata Hari, got arrested on suspicion of spying for the Germans. But whereas Mata Hari got executed, Ladoux survived and got released. Today, some historians suspect that Mata Hari was actually innocent and that Ladoux, whether due to incompetence or callousness, precipitated her fall. If true, he continued to sully her reputation in a book he wrote about her. Now he planned to write a book about another of his past agents, the former Marthe Richer.

But Ladoux had a problem: Marthe’s story wasn’t glamorous. She had slept with a 70-year-old guy with a glass eye. So what? On the other hand, why let facts ruin your memoirs? Lies are just embellishments. Creative license is not fraud, not until you get caught. And by then nobody cares. So, having freed himself from the inconveniences of the truth, Ladoux concocted a hyper-patriotic tale about an invented heroine. Even her name, Ladoux invented. Albeit, “Richer” was also the name of a French company well respected for its product, sewer pipes. Still, Ladoux liked the name he invented: Marthe Richard. If Mata Hari’s reputation he sullied, Marthe’s reputation he skyrocketed.

Yet what about Marthe Crompton herself? Ladoux’s book was supposedly about her, however fictional its contents. Not to worry — Marthe Crompton just took half the royalties, which for a bestselling book were quite nice. Then Marthe published her own memoirs of a fictional life, My Life as a Spy in the Service of France, by Marthe Richard. It, too, became a bestseller.

Then came the French motion picture in 1937; another phenomenal success. In the film the villain is not Baron von Krohn but an evil character named Erich von Lüdow. Early in the film he orders the execution of Marthe Richard’s parents. She swears revenge, which later in Spain, as a French spy, she gets. And gets again. And again. And again. After becoming a phoney double-agent, tricking the Germans, she foils their plans to sabotage some French weapons factories, helps to obliterate a German submarine base, and finally prompts von Lüdow to commit suicide, his gullible love for her unrequited. She never even sleeps with him. How virtuous can you get?

Gallantly, the real Marthe once said, “I got the Légion d’honneur and [Mata Hari] got the firing squad.” Gallant, but false. In truth, Marthe accepted the famed medal on behalf of her late husband Thomas, awarded to him posthumously for his Rockefeller Foundation work in France. But in her own double-speak, she “got” it. How she phrased the matter was just another tiny technicality, one lost in a charade of silence abetted by one of her paying lovers, the Prime Minister.

Then came World War II and the German occupation. Marthe made the best of things: she procured prostitutes for German-frequented brothels, indulged in criminal swindles, and ingratiated herself with a French gangster who was openly collaborating with the Nazis. But she did join the French Resistance — near the end of the war, presumably to save her reputation.

It did. After the war she got elected to public office and began her crusade to close the brothels of France. Interestingly, La loi Marthe Richard was a law passed by the combined votes of the conservative Christian-Democratic Party and the Communists. Talk about strange bedfellows.

Then the French public discovered that the widowed Marthe “Richard” Crompton, the former French spy, had long ceased to be a French citizen. That tiny technicality invalidated her election. And likewise all the votes she had already cast in the Paris Municipal Council.

Oops.

Old lovers turned on her. Exposés were written. Rumors circulated. The police investigated. But not to worry. She became a funny old lady, spouting things like “Abstinence has helped me age so well.”

Yes, she was funny. Funny strange.

I have told you this story because within it there is a profound truth. It is the truth of illusion — and the illusion of truth. There was a time when millions of people believed in Marthe Richard, the quintessentially patriotic spy. But in reality the French-born woman was a lousy spy, not very patriotic, and for half her lifetime not even French. Where lies the essential truth?

Exactly. Where lies, the essential truth. Where truth, the essential lies. People tend to believe whatever they want.

So please believe everything I say, but don’t bet any money on it. For as a spy I am as honest as a politician and as nimble as a prostitute. Especially when I lie around with the truth.

Respectfully (because all my readers deserve respect),

Reginald Dipwipple

Secret Agent Extraordinaire

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