Betty Pack: All’s Fair in Love and War

Built way back in 990AD, the Château de Castelnou has survived sieges, crusades, family feuds and wars. It has also been the base of one of the most successful Allied spies of World War II, American debutante and sexy séductrice Betty Pack, alias Cynthia, agent for Britain’s MI-6 and America’s OSS .

This ‘femme fatale’ with ‘radiant smile and emerald-green eyes’ used beauty and brains to seduce diplomats and officials across the globe in exchange for their bedroom secrets, including vital information about Vichy collaborators, naval codes for the Vichy flotilla, and even Germany’s famous Enigma code machines.

Described as having a ‘shaky moral compass’, she seduced her way into many a collaborator’s bed during the Occupation of France.

One of these was Charles Brousse, press attaché at the Vichy French embassy in Washington, who she later married. After the Armistice, they came back to settle in the Château de Castelnou. She died in 1963 and is buried along with her two dogs in a discreet corner of the castle’s grounds. In 1970 Brousse was electrocuted by his electric blanket, a fire which damaged much of the castle, which his chauffeur inherited but was unable to maintain. The castle was abandoned, sold, resold until it was finally bought by the Department of the Pyrénées Orientales in 2018.

When asked after the war about her questionable morals, she said “My superiors told me that the results of my work saved thousands of British and American lives. Wars are not won by respectable methods.’

‘The Last Goodnight’ by Howard Blum uses personal diaries and unclassified files to look back on the life of the glamorous, determined, yet troubled and unsung World War II heroine who became known as the Blonde Bond. He describes his book as ‘as much a psychological detective story as a suspenseful non-fiction spy thriller’.