‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. This we will have to determine.’
The ride home in darkness was long, and it wasn’t until they had reached the house on the outskirts of Abbeville that Ledieu and Father Nicolas examined the pencil.
When unrolled and warmed at a low heat, the cigarette paper that had been inside it yielded: You will be contacted. It was enough. The request to see the boy in a week only confirmed things.
‘Martin, did you remove the cigarette paper Herr Dirksen put in monsieur le maire’s pencil? He was showing me how it had been used. Ah! So much has happened since, I forgot to tell the mayor and Father Nicolas.’
Alarmed, he rapidly shook his head. She frowned and then said, ‘It was just one from the packet he had in his pocket. It couldn’t have had anything written on it.’
Tenderly she brushed a hand over his hair. Leaning closely, she kissed his brow and the kiss was warm, the bed was warm, the pillows soft and caring, and he could feel her breasts pushing against the rough cotton nightgown she wore.
‘You’re so like your father,’ she said and smiled softly. ‘What will I do when I meet him, eh? Go crazy, I think. Drink him in and love him so hard, he will have to forgive me for shouting at him like that and saying those things.’
Her eyes closed, and in that moment, he thought she was beautiful. Her breath came slowly, evenly now and she was at peace, she must be. Noting the curve of her chin and neck, that of a partly hidden shoulder as well, he thought she could be quite alluring. He had seen her naked lots of times—necessity did make such a thing possible, had even scrubbed her back and she his own, but she had lied to him about his father. A big lie, a huge one. Repeatedly she had said, ‘Your father’s in England. You have to believe this, chéri. Now don’t cry anymore. Please don’t.’
The nightmare had come, the sounds of the cannon shells so real as when they had rained hard along that road to the screams and cries and the killing of people, the spattering of brains and guts and blood. Then the ME-109s had left and a silence like no other had come, but after it the shrieks of despair and much weeping, yes, yes, and the stench of cordite, burning rubber and death.
‘Martin … Martin, what were you thinking?’
She had opened her eyes and was looking intently at him. Nothing, he let his lips tell her, and turning away, hid his eyes from her.
‘Ah, mon Dieu, don’t take it so hard. Everything has to get better now. Your father and his friends will come. I know they will. Maybe they’ll take us to the Haute-Savoie, maybe to Perpignan and we’ll cross over into Spain. We’ll be out of here, chéri. We’ll be able to sleep in peace and have anything we want to eat. We’ll never have to worry about men like Kraus or Dirksen again, Gestapo Munk too.’
Lies and more lies. She hadn’t yet said a word about Isabelle Moncontre, and none whatsoever about Bois Carré.
Reaching under the pillows, he found the wedding ring and brought it to his lips, a woman that they knew nothing about, only that the SS of the avenue Foch must have drowned her.
Sometime later Angélique heard it fall onto the carpet and roll until it reached the stone floor to topple over. ‘Martin …’ she began, only to realize that he was fast asleep.
The wind began to rise, and in the stillness of the night, it picked up the dust among the ruins, causing Marie-Hélène de Fleury to blink and duck her head as the hammering of hobnailed boots passed by.
The mayor and his friends had gone on before the patrol. They were now in among the ruins of the warehouses that here stretched alongside the canals in Abbeville’s former industrial heartland.
She waited. The wind tended to hide the sound of things she needed to know. Among the ruins, it caused sudden noises. A brick or chunk of mortar falling, the banging of sheet-metal roofing, the rolling back and forth of an empty oil drum.
She started out again. Walking with the bike was difficult, for there was rubble scattered everywhere. She had to confront them, had to convince them—Kraus had left her no other choice, so, too, had that “priest” Châlus and his novice and that elderly nun. The sooner she got this over, the better.
They would worry about her having followed them—she’d have to say she had only followed the mayor and the curé from the mayor’s house on the outskirts of town. She’d have to convince them that she had thought they had been arrested and that she had taken one hell of a chance in staking out that house of his and waiting.
Why didn’t you speak to us then?—she knew they would ask her.
I was afraid someone might have seen me. I didn’t want to endanger anyone.
Your papers—Bitte, Fräulein, euere Papiere—would they try that one? Speaking in Deutsch to catch her out?
My name is Isabelle Moncontre and I come to you from Paris at the request of Raymond Châlus who is the leader of the réseau to which myself and Dr. Vergès belong.
Convincing them wasn’t going to be easy. She wished she had a gun, but would having one not also cause suspicion? Guns were still so rare, women in the Résistance seldom if ever carried them.
Would they have her searched?
In her mind she quickly went over her clothes. The shoes had been inexpensive and were from the Trois Quartiers, from before the Occupation; the skirt was from the Galeries Lafayette, another of the giant department stores, also purchased before the war. The blouse and sweater were from Le Printemps, in the boulevard Haussmann—prewar also and, yes, from another of the department stores. She had had so little money then. The woven straw bag? she asked. Ah! it was like so many others. Spanish, yes, but she was certain it had no name-tag.
Hans had bought it for her in Perpignan after they had shut down the Mirabeau escape line, all 239 of them arrested.
Her step-ins were from the Bon Marché department store, the brassiere and half-slip from La Samaritaine. All prewar also and not in the best of condition now. Lots of mending, so okay there as well.
Me, I’m fine, but oh for sure, messieurs, I come as a scythe because that is the way it has to be. Moi-même contre vous.
When she found them, she found their bicycles first in an adjoining shed. Unguarded—were they such fools, such innocents as not to have posted a lookout?
Everything that was in her handbag was mentally ticked off and only then did she realize that she had left the towel with the body of Véronique Dussart.
Pulling out the face cloth, she hurriedly dug as deep a hole as possible in the rubble at her feet and buried it. Then she straightened up, felt the knots, the ropes that tied the suitcase to her bike and, leaving it and the bike behind with the others, picked her way through the darkness and rubble and went in to interrupt their little gathering.
No guns, no lookout here either. Sacré nom de nom, how could grown men be such fools?
The muffled voices of four came from behind the coal-fired boiler of the steam plant that had once powered this mill. Light from a kerosene lantern shone on the dusty, cobwebbed ceiling and walls. There were no windows.
‘I’m telling you it was Véronique.’
‘Non. C’est impossible. Ma nièce—you’re crazy, Monsieur le Maire. Me, I deny it to your face!’
‘Now calm down. If it was her, a tribunal will be held to deal with the matter in the usual way.’ One of the other two had said this. The voice was deeper, but it, too, had the ring of being accustomed to authority.
‘We’ll arrange the trial for the day after tomorrow,’ said the mayor. ‘Father, you and sous-préfet Allard can be the ones, and you, yourself, Eugène. Let us have you as the third voice. That is only fair.’
‘Bon. I accept with pleasure for I know the good name of my family will be cleared.’
A stuffed shirt, was he, that one? she wondered.
‘Now let us pass on to Bois Carré and the parachutist the Germans believe has landed.’
What they said next she didn’t h
ear, for the muzzle of a gun had been jammed into the small of her back. For perhaps ten seconds all sense was lost. She caught a breath and fought for sanity, dragged in another breath and felt the man’s lips against an ear. Châlus … was it Châlus? she silently cried, seeing herself lying face down in the woods dead!
He didn’t say anything, this one behind her. He simply let her feel his breath against her ear.
Blindfolded, for someone else tied a wet towel over her eyes—yes, a wet towel, but was it hers? she cried. She was taken by the arms and forced to walk the last few steps silently crying out, Hans … Hans, I told you it was Châlus.
Someone forced her into a chair. Someone else dumped her straw bag onto a table. At last a young man’s voice broke through. ‘Your name?’
Somehow she found her voice—he was too young to have been Châlus. ‘It’s on my carte d’identité and the visitors residence permit.’
A tough one, was she? wondered Honoré Ledieu, looking her over. She was young, about twenty-eight, and plainly dressed, though this last could mean nothing. Her dark brown hair was thick and worn in waves that were pinned back by inexpensive barrettes. Of medium height, she sat straight up but no longer gripped the edges of the chair.
‘Isabelle Moncontre,’ said someone—she couldn’t tell who and assumed it was the one who had blindfolded her. Was that one Châlus? she wondered. The voice was older, more mature than the one with the gun, but younger, she thought, than those of the mayor and the sous-préfet.
The identity card must have been passed to someone else, for a different voice said, ‘Born 18 September 1915, in Toulon.’
‘Yes, my father was a ship’s captain.’
‘You don’t have the Toulon accent,’ said someone else, the curé she felt.
‘Of course I don’t. When I was two, he died in the Far East, off Mindanao, in a typhoon. Mother took my sister and me to live in Paris with her father. I grew up in Saint-Ouen. Grand-papa had a stall in the Marché aux Puces, on the impasse Simon, the Paul-Bert stalls—secondhand things. His specialty.’
She had what seemed the right accent for Montmartre, thought Father Nicolas but where, please, was the patois, the slang? A pretty girl could so often be far more dangerous than a plain-looking one.
He wished she had been plain.
‘Present address?’ asked another of the older men.
‘Numéro cinq, troisième étage, l’appartement sept. Three flights of stairs. I live alone with my mother. Téléphone 56:42:13. Why not ask her, if you are foolish enough to telephone? The concierge, Madame Aumont, will bitch about having to go up those stairs but she’ll do it if you prevail on her enough.’
There was a pause, and perhaps they looked questioningly at one another, but then one of them said dryly, ‘When we need a lecture, mademoiselle, we’ll hire a hall for you and invite your friends.’
‘Bien sûr, monsieur, please do. They’re not the Boches.’
‘We didn’t say they were.’
She had been talking to the sous-préfet Allard. She was certain of it.
Someone spun the cylinder of a revolver and when it had stopped, everyone waited for the trigger to be pulled. ‘Don’t do that, idiot!’ cried the one named Eugéne. Was he the nervous one? The weakest link? The stuffed shirt.
‘Look, messieurs, we don’t have much time. I’m just a courier. Wouldn’t it be best if you were to examine the little present my people in Paris asked me to bring you? At considerable risk, I might add. Yes, it was considerable.’
She waited. She didn’t turn her head so as to attempt to fathom their individual reactions. Finally someone said, ‘What present?’
That had been the young one with the gun, the spinner of revolver cylinders. A tough guy—was this what he thought of himself? And what of the one who had blindfolded her? What of Châlus? Could that one still be him? ‘It … it’s tied to the carrier of my bike.’
Someone, the mayor perhaps or the sous-préfet, must have indicated that the little gift should be fetched, for tough guy left the revolver on the table. She was certain of this and that really had been a mistake for she could have been followed. Others could be waiting out there. Others.
Châlus would never have been so careless. The two who had caught her must have come upon her unexpectedly.
The suitcase was set on the table and the catches sprung. The smell of cigarette smoke and kerosene mingled with that of the bricks—all such bombed-out places had that taint, this one of coal dust too.
‘Ah, grâce à Dieu, mon Père, it’s a gift from heaven,’ exclaimed the mayor.
‘A British Mark One transceiver,’ said Allard with more caution. ‘You’re full of surprises, mademoiselle.’
It was the mayor who brushed this aside. ‘Jean-Pierre, please remove the blindfold. She has passed the test with flying colours, eh, mes amis? The answer to all our prayers.’
The candle had gone out. The wind had picked up. Wide awake, her heart racing, Angélique lay in bed listening to the night, straining to hear what had awakened her. Only then did it dawn on her that Martin had gone outside. The call of nature. Bravery was needed at any time but in winter, real courage.
The toilet, the dump, the cave—King Louis’s chair—was jammed between cowshed and piggery so that the stench became unbearable in summer, and in the heat, the flies and mosquitoes a torture, the wasps also.
When he didn’t return, she crawled out of bed, grabbed a shawl, did not put on her shoes, and went after him.
He wasn’t in the toilet, nor at the pump where in winter one had to break the ice to freeze with the shock of the douche.
In summer, the mud was always there.
Crossing the yard, she went out into the surrounding fields, newly ploughed and furrowed in ruts so deep, Marieka in her state must have heaved at the harness.
‘Martin …’ She tried to keep her voice low. ‘Martin …’ she called.
Nothing. Only the sound of the wind. A sigh. ‘Ooo … Ooo …’ and then two short, sharp barks. Not those of a dog, she thought. A fox was out there in the darkness, hunting for voles and mice. ‘Martin,’ she called more strongly.
The barking ceased. ‘Martin, come back to bed. I can’t have you tired out. Not when I need your wits about me.’
She was really worried. He could see the dark silhouette of her standing against the star-filled sky.
‘Martin, please don’t try to spy on that poor vixen. Let her hunt in peace. She has enough worries of her own.’
A loner, a creature of the wild sometimes, he had become accustomed to stealing away for hours, causing much dispute about lost labour and, yes, much concern.
When he joined her, he wrapped his arms about her waist and hugged her dearly, knowing he would be forgiven.
I am of my father, aren’t I? he said, looking up at her and holding her by the hands, knowing too, that she couldn’t read his lips. You heard me, Angélique. That was me who was making the sound of that vixen.
Hiking her nightgown, she squatted to pee and he listened to the blessing she gave the dark and heavy clods of clay. As always she excused herself by saying, ‘The earth needs it more than I do.’
They went back but just before the entrance to the yard, they both turned as if at some mutual signal and looked off towards the northwest, towards Bois Carré which was on a distant rise. ‘Félix will be harvesting the maize soon,’ she said. Nothing else but that. The maize.
Hand in hand they went in, each to wash and dry the feet before bed.
In the morning Martin was gone. This time a note had been left, but with only one thing on it, his little parachute. He had taken command. He had been dropped into France from the belly of a British Halifax bomber. He was, in his imagination, the enemy agent the Germans were looking for.
8
There was fog still in the valley, dew on the leaves
, and this made the ground a cushion so that their steps, as they climbed to the body of Véronique Dussart, were muffled. Sous-préfet Allard was in the lead, Father Nicolas behind him, and then the mayor, Honoré Ledieu. Back at the road they had left the one who had found her and the two men Allard had delegated to keep the scandalmongers at bay.
Without a word, they continued uphill, the sound of the spring seeming to fill the air, until at last …
‘Well,’ breathed Allard, grimly, ‘whoever did this left no doubt about her.’
‘Exactly who did it?’ asked Father Nicolas in a whisper.
‘Yes, who?’ said Ledieu bleakly. ‘The Committee …’
‘We are the “Committee”,’ said Allard impatiently.
‘We didn’t authorize this,’ went on the mayor, crossing himself and muttering the Our Father only to be interrupted by the touch of Father Nicolas’s hand.
Allard was of medium height, and when he dragged off his fedora, one saw at once that he was all but bald. The big, flat nose, wide-set, large brown eyes, massively furrowed brow and down-turned lips were all a part of the world’s greatest doubter, Ledieu told himself, but cautioned that this was good and had saved them many times.
The nostrils were flared, the face broad, the big, thick ears not always those of a listener.
That double chin was favoured in thought. The scar, the fold, the cleft that ran from beneath the lower lip well back and to the right and up the line of Théodore’s jaw, had been the work of trench warfare, and ever since then his razor had attempted to harvest the seam, but unsuccessfully.
‘Rigor has set in,’ he said. ‘Let’s give it four hours to begin and add to those, the hours of the night plus two.’
‘Then she was killed just after work and before returning home,’ said Ledieu.
‘But by whom?’ insisted Father Nicolas, reaching down to pick up the towel, only to hear Théodore saying, ‘Don’t touch a thing.’
The towel was in the water. Ah! there was blood all over it.
‘A rock,’ grunted Allard, nodding to indicate the boulder.
The Little Parachute Page 22