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By war's end, Christine's bravery had earned her a medal from Poland, the French Croix de Guerre, the Order of the British Empire, and Britain's George Medal for Special Services. But with peace, it seemed, Britain had no more need of her bravery. As Christine Granville (one of her undercover aliases), she took a room in a respectable Kensington family hotel and started job hunting. Too proud to mention either her medals or her war service, she was turned down time & again . as a foreigner. She worked for a while as a $14-a-week salesgirl in Harrod's department store and as a cloakroom attendant in a Paddington hotel. Last year she got a job as a tourist-class stewardess on a ship running to Australia and New Zealand.
A Dog in the Manger. Her boss on the ship was a small, dark fellow named Dennis George Muldowney. In his rough-cut way, Dennis tried to make her job a little pleasanter. When at last she quit after refusing to clean out the passengers' lavatories, Dennis followed her to London, where he hung around her like a stray dog. In time he became a pest. Christine complained to the police.
Last week, with Dennis presumably out of the way, 37-year-old Christine made final plans to fly to Brussels and join her old wartime companion Andrew Kowerski, now Major Andrew Kennedy of British Intelligence. At midnight, after dining with a few friends, she went back to her hotel. She had just started upstairs when she heard her name called. She turned around, began talking to the man who addressed her. Then the night porter heard her scream: "Get him off me!" The porter and two other men rushed up, but too late. There on the floor at the foot of the stairs lay Christine Skarbek, heroine, a wooden-handled knife thrust in her chest.
"I killed her," said Dennis George Muldowney to the police when they came. "Let's get away from here and get it over quick."