Emergency in the Pyrenees

by Ann Bridge

  ‘C’est bien Monsieur Nick? You made this loan to my husband—he wished it to be repaid, when the occasion offered.’

  Dick was flabbergasted.

  ‘Have you seen him?’ he asked—after all, only yesterday his Mother had been scolding Bonnecourt in Tardets, miles away. ‘No. He sent word, and the money, and said I should seek occasion to repay you—and this morning I have seen the Countess at Mass, so I imagined that she has returned. I was coming tomorrow, but now I see you here, and come at once.’

  Luzia had rather taken to Mme. Bonnecourt when she met her before, and guessed that she did not have too easy a life; she would have liked, now, to say something reassuring, but before she could think of any innocuous sentence the rather faded little blonde said—‘A thousand congratulations to Madame Jimmison on the birth of her son! I am sorry that you do not return to Larége.’ And before either of them could reply she hurried away downhill, across the fields, to the hunter’s house.

  Chapter 11

  Much earlier that morning, when Nick Heriot went to fetch Colonel Jamieson off the night train, he had been agreeably surprised to find, at last, no agent at the front door; he had left the Dauphine in the drive overnight. On their way back from the station he mentioned this—‘And no wretched agent at the Victoire either, yesterday evening, so Monro’s car is usable again. Fast work, Sir, if I may say so.’

  ‘Oh, old Jean did do his stuff, did he? Good.’ The Colonel kept silent on his private opinion of Major Monteith and his advice. Then he asked whether Bonnecourt had got to Pamplona? Nick, giggling a little, reported his Mother’s raid on Tardets the previous day, and its outcome; Jamieson was irritated. ‘Well really, what a bore the man is!’

  ‘Actually, you know, he isn’t really; he’s more of a card. Anyhow he promised Her Ladyship to stay put till you came, and I sent a message—he and I fixed a code—by his sister Pauline at the épicerie to say that you would be here first thing this morning.’

  ‘Oh, thank you. Well I don’t think I’ll go over immediately—this afternoon will be plenty of time.’ Major Monteith had failed to secure him a sleeper, and after sitting up all night among more pilgrims to Lourdes—the richer ones invade even the firstclass carriages—Philip decided to sleep in, in the bedroom offered by Nick. This twin arranged for him to be called in time for lunch, and promised to drive him round afterwards to collect Colin’s car at the Victoire—then, Philip thought, he would be able to look in on his wife before driving over to see this unknown, tiresome, but apparently so valuable Bonnecourt. He had spoken to London from Paris, and been given a free hand to get the hunter out by whatever means seemed best to him. ‘When he does turn up at P., probably simplest to drive him down to Gib, and have him flown back from there’ Major Hartley said. ‘Especially since you think you can lay on this cover-job for him in the Highlands. Ghillie-ing should be right up his street!’

  But the day didn’t work out quite as he planned. First Dick came in to ask about the key of the Larége house, just as he was getting off to sleep; after that he slept, and heard nothing of Nick’s setting out with his parents to the English Church. But rather later old Jeanne, intensely embarrassed, roused him to say that a very ancient Professor had called, and desired most urgently to see him immediately. ‘He will take no denial—I told him that M. le Colonel could not be disturbed, but it was of no use.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ Philip asked, sleepily and irritably.

  ‘I think, of some Saint—Professor Bernard, could it have been?’ poor Jeanne said. ‘I am agitated; I cannot recall! But Milord and Miladi are out, and Monsieur Nick also. If M. le Colonel could come to see him?’

  Very reluctantly, M. le Colonel got up, pulled on his clothes, and went out to the hall, where Jeanne ushered him into the salon, announcing—‘Le Colonel Jimmison.’

  A very old man in a shabby black suit, with grey hair, a grey beard, and thick pebble glasses, got up slowly and carefully, as the old do, out of a chair. As Jeanne retired, shutting the door, he asked—as the nurse had done at the Victoire two nights before—‘C’est bien le Colonel Jimmison?’

  ‘Yes!’ Philip said sharply. ‘But may I ask who you are, and what the devil you want?’ He was intensely irritated at having been awakened from much-needed sleep to see this doddering old creature.

  To his astonishment, the old man burst out into loud laughter. ‘Ah, c’est bien le Colonel Anglais!’ As he spoke he pulled off the pebble-spectacles, the grey wig and beard, revealing a young-middle-aged face, full of intelligence and gaiety. He went forward with his hand held out. ‘Bonnecourt’ he said. ‘I thought to save Monsieur the Colonel a drive to Tardets—my sister Pauline brought me over. But I left a message with my sister Marceline, Mme. Bertrand, to say that I had come here, en cas que. Lady Heriot said that you wished to see me.’

  Vexed as he was by this sudden change of the agreed plan, Jamieson’s first reaction was one of admiration for Bonnecourt as an actor: that slow effort to get up out of his chair, the shambling old man’s steps across the room. This man could do anything in the way of impersonation.

  ‘Yes, I do wish to see you’ he said. ‘I was coming over, as you arranged with Lady Heriot—a little later.’ Jamieson spoke repressively; he was still rather annoyed. ‘But since you are here, we may as well discuss matters at once. Of course you can’t stay in France for the present—de Lassalle’s disappearance has made that impossible.’ Bonnecourt nodded. He expected some questioning from the Englishman about this episode, but none came; the Colonel passed it over as an accomplished fact, earning Bonnecourt’s respect.

  ‘Now I have a proposition to put to you’ Jamieson went on. ‘As you cannot remain here, I assume that you will want some occupation. If you would still care to play the old game with us, as you did in the past—with what success!—there is always work for someone with your qualifications; will you come and join us again?’

  He studied the hunter’s face as he waited for his reply: it showed first emotion, then eagerness.

  ‘But yes. This could be marvellous! Where should I go?’

  ‘Your assignments would be settled presently by the office, of course. Immediately you would go to a place in Scotland belonging to cousins of my wife—they need a stalker at once.’

  ‘A ghillie!’ Bonnecourt interjected—‘and to stalk the red deer! Splendid.’

  ‘Yes, that would be your apparent work, between jobs abroad. But you would have a house, regular occupation, and a small but certain income—and very pleasant quarters for Madame.’

  ‘She could come too?’

  ‘Not with you; we must get you out as fast as we can. But certainly she can join you there later, and Madame Reeder—she is the sister of Mr. Monro—would do everything to make things easy for her in new surroundings.’

  ‘This forest belongs to Mr. Monnro’s sister?’ the hunter asked, startling Jamieson by his knowledge of Scottish terms—although usually composed mainly of naked hills, the Scots speak of a ‘deer forest’ as they do, more accurately, of a ‘grouse moor’.

  ‘No—actually it belongs to Monro himself Jamieson replied, amused. ‘But while he is working, his sister and her husband live there, and look after the place.’

  ‘Tiens! This young Monnro a propriètaire? One would never suspect it—he is so’—the man hesitated for a word—‘modest.’

  ‘Well never mind about Monro’ Philip said, rather impatiently—his own word for Colin was not modest, but wet. ‘Listen, Bonnecourt—if you take on our job, and you and Madame Bonnecourt go to Glentoran, you will have to make her understand that there will be times when for reasons that you cannot explain to her you will just have to disappear, at short notice, for weeks at a time, when we need you. Can you guarantee this? Are you prepared to make it a bargain?’ Philip was worrying, not unnaturally, at the prospect of some wretched Frenchwoman, stranded in Argyll and suddenly deserted by her husband, going to the local police, or ‘creating’ in some way.

  Bonnecourt
’s answer, which came without the slightest hesitation, surprised Jamieson as much as it reassured him.

  ‘Monsieur le Colonel, I see that you do not realise—how should you?—that my poor wife has had long experience of sudden, and unexplained, disappearances on my part! She will be enchantée to know, when we are in Scotland, that they are for, and with, your people—not those others! She has always loved the English—and hated the Communists!’ he added, in a burst of frankness.

  ‘Good’ Philip said briefly.

  ‘But—excuse the question—what about my employers in Scotland? Will they accept my sudden disappearances, if they should happen at an inconvenient time? And would my wife receive my salary when I was absent?’

  ‘Look, Bonnecourt, I’ve told you that Mrs. Reeder is Colin Monro’s sister’ Philip said, this time patiently. Concerned as he was at the moment with trying to combine marriage and the Secret Service himself, he could sympathise with the Frenchman’s anxieties. ‘She knows all about Intelligence, and will understand why you are being sent there, and under what conditions. I must try to arrange with the Office that you are not sent away during the stalking season!’ he added, smiling. ‘And of course your salary will be paid all the year round; it is really an Office responsibility, but the Reeders are very well off, Office or no.’

  ‘Have the Reeders agreed to this plan?’ Bonnecourt asked.

  ‘Not yet; they haven’t even been told—no time. It is my wife’s idea—she knows they are short of stalkers at Glentoran, and suggested this as a cover-job for you, at once; in fact they need an extra ghillie now.’

  The hunter’s face glowed, suddenly.

  ‘It is Madame who thought of this solution for us? After all she has been through! She is wonderful.’

  Philip was startled by this tribute to Julia, and a little disconcerted.

  ‘She’s very practical’ he said temperately—‘and she does know the situation at Glentoran backwards; she was partly brought up there—that’s why this plan occurred to her.’ But now Philip himself reverted to the practical aspect.

  ‘I think I would prefer to have you flown out to Spain’ he said. ‘I gather you rather come and go as you choose across the frontier, but we don’t want any slip-up this time, and the whole place is alerted.’

  ‘Their alerts will not disturb me!’ Bonnecourt said.

  ‘I dare say not. But if you agree to work with British Intelligence again’—the hunter nodded—‘at present you are under my orders.’ He spoke firmly. ‘Can you get back to your sister’s house in Tardets, in that dotty disguise of yours? Where is the car that drove you over? Here?’

  ‘My sister Pauline waits in a small place close by. But where do I meet the plane?’

  ‘I haven’t settled that yet. I only returned from Paris this morning at a quarter to six, and in fact I was getting some sleep when you came’ Philip said, in a rather chilly tone. He felt that Bonnecourt, valuable as he could be to the Service, was enough of a ‘card’ to require rather repressive measures; it would be no good giving him any rope at all, or he would get completely out of control. ‘I had intended to come over and see you this afternoon’ he said, with intention, ‘at the address where Lady Heriot understood that you were to be found.’

  Bonnecourt took the point instantly.

  ‘I regret. I apologise. I had hoped to save you a journey.’ He paused. ‘Would the Colonel allow me to make a suggestion, in spite of my gaffe in coming here, after my promise to remain at Tardets?’

  ‘What about?’ Philip asked cautiously.

  ‘This affair of being flown out. Doubtless the Colonel knows that there is a flying-club at Pau; the members fly small private planes: Éméraudes, Jodels, Piper Cubs and Vagabonds Piper. Nick and Dick have several friends who fly such planes: small two-seaters, with a range of 500 kilometres.’

  Philip didn’t know any of this, and was interested; it could be quite useful. A private plane, on a private flight, would be much less conspicuous than a helicopter.

  ‘Would 500 kilometres get to Spain and back?’ he asked.

  ‘Easily. This is what I wished to suggest. And there is a place at no great distance from Tardets—but remote, remote, right up in the mountains—where one could land and take off, for which such planes require so little space: the Plateau de Permounat.’

  ‘I’ll make a note of that’ Philip was saying, when a crunch of tyres on the gravel of the drive outside indicated the arrival of a car—he went to the open window and looked out.

  ‘That’s the family, coming back from Church’ he said, turning into the room again. To his amusement Bonnecourt was hurriedly adjusting his wig and beard in front of a Venetian mirror—he was having trouble with the beard.

  ‘Come to my room—you’ll never get that done in time’ Philip said, and led the hunter to his bedroom; as he closed the door after him he heard the click of the lift as it stopped in the hall. ‘Or perhaps you would like to see them?’ he asked.

  ‘Mon Dieu, no. Miladi would kill me if she knew that I had done this, breaking my promise. Colonel, for the love of God, do not tell her!’ All this time Bonnecourt was arranging his wig and refractory beard in front of the shaving-glass—Jamieson laughed at his dismay.

  ‘All right. I suppose I can talk to the boys about the Flying-Club, and this place you mentioned?—what was the name, by the way?’ He drew out his tiny note-book, and wrote down ‘Le Plateau de Permounat.’

  ‘There are other places too’ Bonnecourt said, putting on his pebble glasses; he was satisfied with his beard at last. ‘The Plateau de Barthaz, or the Cirque de Crauste. They are all small “valleys of elevation”, as I believe the scientists call them, with a smooth grass surface, level, affording sufficient space for one of these little planes to land and take off again. But Permounat is especially convenient in the matter of distance, because it is so near both to Tardets and to Berdun.’

  ‘What is Berdun?’ Jamieson asked. But he never heard the answer, because at that moment there was a knock on the door, and Nick’s voice outside asking—‘Colonel! Have you surfaced yet?’

  Bonnecourt shot into the bathroom like a scalded cat.

  ‘Surfacing—half-dressed’ Jamieson called back. ‘I’ll be with you in about ten minutes. That do?’

  ‘Perfectly—no hurry.’ Nick’s steps were audible retreating down the passage; Philip opened the bathroom door.

  ‘He’s gone. How shall you get out?’ he asked Bonnecourt.

  ‘I descend by the escalier de service, and tell Jeanne that I could not make the lift function’ the hunter said, with a grin; as he spoke he resumed his old man’s attitude, bent his shoulders, and shuffled slowly towards the door. ‘Then I rejoin Pauline.’

  ‘And you really will stay put this time?’ Jamieson asked. ‘It’s essential, you know; we might even fix this flyout for tomorrow. The sooner you’re out of this country, the better.’

  ‘I remain where I told Miladi.’ Suddenly he laid a hand on Jamieson’s arm. ‘But one thing I forget—ma voiture! What is to become of it? At present it is in one of the garages here, but unless it is run from time to time, it will be ruined.’

  Philip considered. He summoned back into his mind what Colin had told him, and what he had heard in Paris, from Montieth and de Monceau, about de Lassalle’s escape.

  ‘But surely that’s the car you picked that young O.A.S. man up in, after the accident?’ he said. ‘And drove him off towards Larége? Both the Sureté and the D.B. are firm on that—a Bugatti, isn’t it? Listen, Bonnecourt—that car is completely compromised anyhow; even if we arrange for you to come back eventually, you could never use it again in France.’

  ‘Could you get it to Scotland for me?’

  ‘No’ Philip pronounced emphatically. But he was touched, as well as irritated, by the expression on the hunter’s face when he said that. ‘How old is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Nineteen years!’

  ‘Yes—that’s an old friend. Well if you work for us for a
bit we’ll give you another car; I can’t promise a Bugatti, don’t know if they’re still being made, but how about a Bentley?’

  ‘Ah, a Bentley would be marvellous! But what becomes of the old one?’

  ‘Let’s leave that to the twins—they will think of a suitable burial for it.’

  ‘They could drive it into the Gave!—in a deep place. But I do not want it broken up, or sold to some brute who will murder the engine.’

  Philip looked at his watch.

  ‘I’m sure you can trust them’ he said. ‘Now, hadn’t you better get off to meet your sister? At what time will you reach home?’

  ‘Let us say 15.30 hours.’

  ‘Right.’ He watched with admiring satisfaction as Bonnecourt, with his old man’s shuffle, moved to the door and along the corridor to the back stairs.

  In the salon he thanked Lady Heriot for putting him up. ‘However now I can return to the Victoire—all my stuff is there, and it is close to the Clinique.’

  ‘How d’you mean you “can” return?’ Lord Heriot asked. ‘I thought you were there before you went to Paris.’

  ‘Yes, but then it was all over agents, tailing him; now it’s been de-loused, just like this place’ Nick said.

  ‘Ah, yes—a comfort, that. Pierre is in much better form today’ Lord Heriot said. ‘Did you arrange that in Paris?’ he asked Jamieson.

  ‘Friends of mine saw to it’ Philip said.

  ‘And how is your wife? Did you manage to see her this morning?’ Lady Heriot enquired.

  ‘I’m ashamed to say I didn’t; I overslept. I must go round the moment after lunch.’ In fact Philip was longing to see Julia, and was planning the afternoon in his head; recalling his doubts in the train up to Paris, he had been speculating which to do first—see Julia, or tackle Nick about getting Bonnecourt flown out?