Free Silent in an Evil Time by Jack Batten

maid would go straight to the Germans with every piece of information the minute Edith dismissed her from the clinic. But if Edith did nothing about Marie, the maid would have the chance to pile up even more damning evidence against Edith. Either way, the secret network could come to grief.
    Edith delayed making a decision about her maid for months. She kept Marie on the job through the spring and into July, when she finally told Marie to pack her bags and leave. Nobody ever established whether the mysterious Marie was or wasn't a German spy. She left behind nothing that answered the question of her allegiance. In the end, Marie's status probably made no difference to Edith's state of mind; a spy or not a spy, Marie brought anxiety to her employer for all the time of Edith's work with the escaping soldiers.

    Through the spring, the Germans seemed to be everywhere in the clinic's neighborhood. In March, German officials set up a minor command post across the street from one of the four houses that made up the clinic. The location was probably just a coincidence and had no implications for Edith and the secret network. Still, the command post made her unsettled.
    At the same time, a group of German soldiers took over a house on Rue de la Culture as their own personal barracks. At night, everyone in the top stories of the clinic could see the soldiers in their rooms, drinking and playing cards.
    Edith didn't think of the soldiers as a threat, but their presence on the street meant that the British at the clinic needed to be especially alert in not drawing the Germans' attention. The slightest slip could bring the enemy to the door of anyone with even a mild connection to the Allied cause.

    Louise Thuliez arrived at the clinic, escorting two British soldiers, in early April 1915. Thuliez was the schoolteacher from the village near Bellignies who had begun her secret work by leading British soldiers to the de Croys' château. Her activities grew to include trips into Brussels, where she put soldiers in Edith's care. On the journeys, Thuliez passed herself off as a Salvation Army officer, a disguise that the Germans always fell for. She visited the clinic so often that she became familiar with all the details of Edith's operations. Still, on the trip in early April, Thuliez was surprised at how many British soldiers were hiding in the clinic. She counted thirty-five of them in the four houses – a high number to keep from the Germans' notice indefinitely.
    It wasn't just the steady stream of British escapees that made the clinic such a busy place in the spring months. Edith and her nurses were also caring for Belgian patients, who filled the beds in most wards. The Germans were no longer sending their wounded soldiers to the clinic; instead, they shipped the men back home for treatment. Now it was Belgian patients, suffering from illnesses or injuries, that kept Edith and her nurses occupied day and night.
    The new clinic on Rue Brussels was another responsibility for Edith. In the early months of the war, construction of the clinic had come to a halt. Building materials were stuck on trains that no longer operated, and menin the construction trades were swept into the Belgian army. But in the spring, work resumed, and Edith became hopeful that the building would soon be ready.
    “The new clinic is advancing and becoming habitable,” Edith wrote in the March 11 letter to her mother, “but it will not be finished for May 1 when we should be installed.”
    Edith was overly optimistic when she suggested the clinic was close to being finished. As things turned out, the new place wouldn't be up and running until the fall of 1915. Still, Edith's dream of working there filled her with excitement for many months.

    In all her duties at the clinic, Edith worked without the guidance of the founder and chief surgeon, Antoine Depage. Early in the war, the doctor joined the Belgian army, taking his medical skills into the fight against the