by Iain Pears
It was murderously hard to say it, of course; like it or not, this frail old invalid was their last hope of working out what had been happening in the past week or so, and it was formidably difficult to give up any possibility of a solution. But as Flavia uttered the words, she meant them. If the woman had said, OK then, go away, she would have stood up and left. Then they could have gone back to Rome and confessed their failure. Argyll, at least, would be pleased about that.
Fortunately her offer was not accepted. Mrs Richards wiped her eyes, and slowly the mournful sobbing ebbed away and then stopped.
‘Jean?’ she asked. ‘You know this?’ You’re certain?’
Flavia nodded. ‘It seems so.’
‘If he’s in danger, you must save him.’
‘We can’t do much if we don’t know what’s going on.’
She shook her head.
‘If I help you’ll promise?’
‘Very well.’
‘Tell me about these others first. This – what are they called? Ellman? Muller? Who are they? And what is their connection to Jean?’
‘Ellman is a German who apparently changed his name from Schmidt. Muller also changed his name; he was originally called Hartung.’
If mentioning Rouxel had been like hitting Mrs Richards, the name of Hartung had a similar effect. She stared at Flavia silently for a few seconds, then shook her head.
‘Arthur?’ she whispered. ‘Did you say Arthur was dead?’
‘Yes. He was tortured, then shot. We now think by this Ellman man. For a painting stolen from Rouxel, as far as we can tell. Why – well, that’s what we were hoping you could tell us. How did you know his name was Arthur?’
‘He was my son,’ she said simply.
Both Flavia and Argyll were stopped in their tracks by this one; neither had the slightest idea of what to say. And so they said nothing at all. Fortunately, Mrs Richards wasn’t listening anyway; she was off on her own path now.
‘I ended up in England by accident, I suppose you could say. When the Allies liberated Paris, they found me, and evacuated me, to England for treatment. They did that for some people. I was in hospital for several years, and met Harry there. He treated me, did his best to put me back together again. As you see, he didn’t have much to work on. But eventually he asked me to marry him. I had no ties anymore to France, and he was good to me. Kind. So I agreed, and he brought me here.
‘I didn’t love him; I couldn’t. He knew that and accepted it. As I say, he was a good man, much better than I deserved. He tried to help me bury the past, and instead let me bury myself in the countryside.’
She looked at them and gave them a little smile, a sad little effort with no amusement behind it. ‘And here I’ve stayed, with death eluding me. Everybody I’ve ever cared for had died first, and they deserved it much less than I did. I’ve earned it. Except for Jean, and he should live. Even poor Arthur is dead. That goes against nature, don’t you think? Sons should outlive their mothers.’
‘But –’
‘Harry was my second husband. My first was Jules Hartung.’
‘But I was told you were dead,’ Flavia said a little tactlessly.
‘I know. I should be. You seem confused.’
‘You could say that.’
‘I’ll start at the beginning then, shall I? I don’t suppose you’ll find it at all interesting, but if there’s anything that can help Jean, you’ll be welcome to it. You will help him, won’t you?’
‘If he needs it.’
‘Good. As I say, my first husband was Jules Hartung. We married in 1938, and I was lucky to have him. Or at least, that’s what I was told. I was born into a family that lost everything in the Depression. We’d had a good life – servants, holidays, a large apartment on the Boulevard St-Germain – but with the collapse, it all began to disappear. My father was used to high society and gave it up unwillingly; his expenses always exceeded his income, and progressively we got poorer. The servants went, to be replaced by lodgers. Even my father ultimately saw the need to get a job, although he waited until my mother had got one first.
‘Eventually I met Jules, who seemed to fall in love with me. Or at least, he thought I would be a suitable wife and mother. He proposed – to my parents, not to me, and they accepted. That was that. He was nearly thirty years older than I was. It was a marriage without any passion or tenderness; very formal – we used to call each other vous and were always very respectful. I don’t mean that he was a bad man, far from it. At least to me, he was always correct, courteous and, I suppose, even devoted in his way. You see I am telling you my story without the benefit of hindsight.
‘I was eighteen and he was nearly fifty. I was exuberant and I suppose very immature, he was middle-aged, responsible, and a serious man of business. He ran his companies, made money, collected his art and read his books. I liked to go dancing, to sit in cafés and talk; and, of course I had the politics of youth whereas Jules had the outlook of the middle-aged industrialist.
‘I found myself visiting my parents more and more often; not to see them, of course, they were as dull as Jules and not half as kind, but to spend time with the lodgers and students who increasingly filled up their house.
‘My father, you see, had assumed that once I was married, a nice flow of money would pour from my new husband and restore him to his accustomed style of life. Jules didn’t see it like that. He didn’t like my father and had not the slightest intention of supporting someone who openly despised him.
‘He was an odd man in many ways. For a start, I wasn’t Jewish, and for him to marry me was something of a scandal. But he went ahead anyway, saying he was too old to worry about what other people thought. He was also quite easy-going; wanted me to go with him to functions and act as his hostess, but otherwise let me be. I liked him; he provided everything I needed, except love.
‘And I needed that; I needed to be in love. Then the war came.
‘We were going to leave, the moment that it became clear the whole thing would be a disaster. Jules saw it; whatever his limitations, he was perceptive. He knew the French had no stomach for a fight, and knew that people like him would get rough treatment. He’d prepared for it, and we were about to head for Spain when I went into labour.
‘It was a bad birth; I was bed-bound for several weeks in dreadful conditions; everybody had left Paris, the hospitals weren’t working properly and were overflowing with wounded. Few nurses, fewer doctors, little medicine. I couldn’t move and Arthur was so fragile he would have died. So Jules stayed too, to be with me, and by the time we could go it was too late; you couldn’t get out without permission and someone like him couldn’t get it.
‘And life sort of drifted back – not to normality, obviously, but to something which seemed understandable and bearable. Jules became wrapped up in trying to preserve his business, and I went back to my life with students. And we sat and decided we should do something to fight back. The government and the army had failed us, so now it was time for us to show what being French was all about.
‘Not everyone thought like us; in fact very few people did. Jules, as I say, merely wanted to keep out of trouble; in the case of my parents – well, they had always been on the right. Bit by bit the students departed, to be replaced by German officers billeted on them. They liked that, my parents. Getting in well with the new order. Their natural tendencies had been reinforced by Jules’s refusal to hand over money; now it was encouraged, they became openly anti-Semitic as well.
‘About a year after the armistice, there was only one student left, a young lawyer who’d been there for years. I’d always liked him, had introduced him to Jules, and they’d taken to each other like father and son. Jean was just the sort of son Jules had always wanted. Handsome, strong, honest, intelligent, open-minded; he had everything except a decent family, and Jules set about providing that. He paid his fees until he qualified; encouraged him in every way; introduced him to important people; set about giving him the chances he
needed and deserved. Even gave him presents. They got on so very well. It was wonderful while it lasted.’
‘This was Rouxel, I take it?’ Flavia asked quietly.
She nodded. ‘Yes. We were about the same age. He took a room at my parents’ and I saw a lot of him. If it hadn’t been for Jules, I imagine we would have been married; as it was, we had to content ourselves with being lovers. The first man I loved. In a sense, I suppose, the last as well. With Jules – well, what passion he had was used up shortly after we married. And Harry was a good man; but not like that, and it was too late then anyway.
‘I imagine you find that – what? Surprising? Disgusting even, to look at me now. An old wizened cripple as I am. I was different then. Another person, you might say. Do you smoke?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Do you smoke? Do you have any cigarettes?’
‘Ah, well. Yes, I do. Why?’
‘Give me one.’
Somewhat surprised by this departure from the way the conversation had developed thus far, Flavia fished around in her bag and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. She handed them over and gave one to the woman, who tugged it awkwardly from the packet with her gloved hands.
‘Thank you,’ she said when it was lit. Then she broke into an appalling hacking cough. ‘I haven’t had a cigarette for years.’
Argyll and Flavia looked at each other with raised eyebrows wondering if they’d lost her for good. If she drifted off the subject now, it might be impossible to steer her back on to it.
‘I gave up when I was in the asylum,’ she said after smelling the burning cigarette with interest for a while. It was strange; her voice had become louder, more solid in tone now that she had begun to talk.
‘Don’t look like that,’ she went on after a while. ‘I know. No one ever knows what to say. So don’t say anything. I went mad. It was simple enough. I spent two years in there, in between operations. Harry did his best to look after me. He was a very good man, so kind and gentle. I missed him when he died.
‘I got the best of treatment, you know. No expense spared. I have no complaints at all. The finest doctors, the best private asylum. We were looked after as well as possible. Many soldiers got much rougher treatment.’
‘May I ask why?’
‘I will tell you. As the war went on, Jean began to become more enthusiastic about the Resistance, more convinced the Germans could be beaten. He became the effective leader of this group called Pilot; established links with England, worked out targets and strategies. He was a wonderful man. He lived in the most appalling danger constantly. And yet he was always there to reassure, encourage. Once he was picked up by the Germans and held for a few days, then he escaped. It was Christmas Day 1942, and the guards were lax. He just walked out and had vanished before anyone noticed. Extraordinary man; he had real style, you know. But he was changed after that: very much more serious and wary. He guarded us carefully, often refusing to sanction operations he judged too dangerous, always keeping at least one step ahead of the Germans.
‘Of course they knew we existed, and they were after us. But they had no success. At times it was almost like a game; sometimes we ended up laughing uproariously about what we were doing.
‘And all the time he was there: calm, assured and utterly confident that we would win. I can’t tell you how rare that was in Paris then. We would win. Not a wish, or a calculation, or a hope. Just a simple certainty. He was an inspiration to us. To me particularly.’
She switched her attention back to Flavia, this time with the faintest shadow of a sad smile.
‘When I was with him, in his arms, I felt superhuman. I could do anything, take any risks, court any danger. He strengthened me and would always protect me. He told me that. Whatever happened, he said, he’d look after me. Sooner or later something would go wrong, but he’d make sure I got a head start.
‘Without him, it would have been so different. Someone would have slipped up and been caught much sooner. And eventually it was too much even for him. He was too caring. That was our downfall.
‘We needed places to hide, money, equipment, all that sort of thing, and we had to approach people on the outside, hoping they could be trusted. One of these was Jules. He was worried about our activities, and even discouraged them because he was afraid, but Jean tried to persuade him to help. Jules agreed, but very reluctantly.
‘Jules was terrified about what would happen if the Germans ever discovered him. He was Jewish after all, and many of his people had vanished already. He survived – so he said – by paying out massive bribes, and slowly giving up his possessions. A fighting retreat, he called it. Of course he had his final option of running, but he didn’t want to leave until he had to. So he said.
‘Anyway, things started going wrong. We were being betrayed, and it was clear it was coming from inside. The speed and accuracy of the German reaction was just too neat. They had to have inside knowledge. Jean was desperate. For a start it was clear we were all in danger; him in particular, as he felt he was being followed. Nothing concrete, but he had this strong feeling of a noose tightening around him. Then when he finally accepted we had a traitor, he took it personally. He couldn’t believe a friend of his, someone he trusted, could do such a thing. So he prepared a trap. Bits of information given out to different people, to see where the leak was coming from.
‘One operation – a very simple pick-up of equipment – went wrong: the Germans were there. Only Jules had been told about it.’
Here Flavia wanted to break in, but she was transfixed by the story and dared not interrupt in case the flow was broken. The old woman probably wouldn’t have heard her anyway.
‘Jean was devastated, and so was I. Jules had been playing his own survival game and kept his distance – for our sake as much as his, he said – but nobody ever suspected he might sell us to preserve himself. Doubt remained, but one evening, after a confrontation with Jean in his little lawyer’s office, he fled to Spain and the Germans swooped down on us.
‘They just rolled us up. Fast, efficiently and brutally. I don’t know how many of us there were, maybe fifty or sixty. Maybe more.
‘I remember that day. Every second of every minute of it. In effect it was the last day of my life. I spent the night with Jean and got back home about seven in the morning. Jules had gone. It was a Sunday. The twenty-seventh of June 1943. A beautiful morning. I thought Jules had just gone to the office or something, so I had a bath and went to bed. I was still asleep an hour or so later when the door was kicked in.’
‘And Rouxel?’
‘I assumed he’d been killed. He was too courageous to last long. But apparently not: it seemed that by mere good fortune he slipped through their net. Unlike most people he stayed in Paris rather than run, and began to reorganize.
‘In a sense I was lucky, if you can call it that. A lot of them were shot or sent off to a death camp. I wasn’t. For the first three months I was treated quite well. Solitary confinement and being beaten up alternated with good food and gentle persuasion.
‘They wanted everything I knew, and to make sure I gave it, they told me everything they did know already. There was little I could add. They had a complete picture. Drop-points, meeting-points, names, addresses, numbers. I couldn’t believe it. Then they told me how they’d got it all. Your husband, they said. He told us everything. Jules must have been spying on us and listening and reading scraps of paper for months to have accumulated it all. It was a systematic, complete and cold betrayal. And he got out, scot-free.’
‘Who told you all this?’ Flavia said with sudden urgency.
‘The interrogating officer,’ she said. ‘Sergeant Franz Schmidt.’
Another pause greeted this remark as the old woman coolly assessed how they were taking her story, and whether it was being believed. Eventually she felt able to go on.
‘I never said anything, and they were prepared to take their time. But at the start of 1944 that changed. They were getting mo
re panicked. They knew the invasion was on its way soon and they needed any result fast. Schmidt stepped up the pressure.’
She stopped, and in the half-light of the room pulled off the glove from her left hand. Flavia felt her throat rising in protest at the sight. Argyll looked, then turned away quickly.
‘Fifteen operations in all, I think it was, and Harry was the best there was. They wanted to give him a knighthood for his expertise. This hand was his greatest success with me. As for the rest …’
With enormous difficulty, she pulled the glove over the hand again. Even when the scarred, brown claw with its two remaining misshapen fingers had vanished underneath its covering, Flavia could still see it, and still felt sick. Nothing could bring her to offer any assistance.
‘But I survived, after a fashion. I was still in Paris at the Liberation. They couldn’t be bothered to send me east, and didn’t have time to shoot me before the troops arrived. As quickly as possible, I was shipped to England. To the hospital, the asylum, and finally here. Then you come; to remind me, and tell me it’s not all over yet.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Flavia said in a whisper.
‘I know. You needed information, and I’ve told you what I know. Now you must repay me by helping Jean.’
‘What happened afterwards? To your husband?’
She shrugged. ‘He got let off lightly. He came back to France after the war, expecting that nobody would know what had happened. But Jean and I had survived. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I couldn’t see him. Jean was behind the push to get him brought to justice. Not for revenge, but for the sake of the people who’d died. Despite everything, he felt it was like condemning his own father. The commission wrote to me; very reluctantly, I agreed to give evidence.
‘Fortunately it wasn’t necessary. When he was confronted with the facts and the promise of our testimony, Jules killed himself. Simple as that.’