‘Have you been drinking? Theo, you’re drunk.’
He had fallen into bed in a haze of spirits, having succeeded in removing his clothes, but without any thought of washing.
‘I hope I am not so drunk that I forget everything in the morning.’
‘Forget what?’
But he was already on the edge of a heavy alcoholic slumber and did not reply.
When he woke, the strength of the light penetrating his crusted eyelids told him that it was already mid-morning. The gilded clock in front of the mirror confirmed this by striking eleven. He lifted his head from the pillow and with a groan allowed it to fall back. He closed his eyes again. He had a vision of Nikola out in the wind, chopping his wood, shrugging off the effects of vodka as if it had been no more than water.
The Russian was such an odd mixture of prejudice, shrewdness and emotion that it was hard to interpret his evidence with proper Gallic reason and balance. He must ask Ariane what she made of him.
He went to the kitchen for a bowl of ersatz coffee. Micheline glanced at him and went to her cupboard of preserves.
‘I’ll make my special receipt for what’s wrong with you.’
‘No, thank you, Micheline. I’m not strong enough for it yet. Chicory will be enough.’
‘This will do you much more good.’
She made him drink several glasses of water while she concocted a mixture of raw eggs, beaten with walnut spirits and a ladleful of chicken stock. To his surprise, twenty minutes later he began to feel a little better. He remained seated peacefully in the ladder-backed chair by the fire, watching Micheline moving round the kitchen preparing lunch. She did not talk and neither did he. As his head eased, he thought about the problem of Sabine.
The story that he had heard last night from Nikola appeared to have nothing to do with what had happened to his daughter. Yet he wondered whether a link between the two events, the death of Henri and the attack on the child, might not emerge. When you scraped the surface, you exposed a tissue of conflicts far more complex than you expected.
The kitchen door opened and Florence entered. ‘The schoolmaster’s here. I’ve just lit the fire in the library, so I put him in there. Shall I tell Madame Ariane, or will you see him?’
‘You mean Monsieur Vernhes?’
She looked at him compassionately, in the way that all the women of the household regarded him that day, with a kind of reproachful sympathy. ‘Yes,’ she said patiently, ‘Monsieur Vernhes.’
Theo rose. ‘I’ll see him. I need to speak to him.’
In the library the thin flames of the new fire leaped at the logs without sending out much heat. The two men shook hands and took their seats with the formality and caution of a diplomatic encounter between Metternich and Talleyrand. This was their third meeting, Theo calculated, and he was, at last, properly informed about whom he faced. He might not have exposed his need for knowledge in quite such a blatant way last time if he had known what he knew now. This time they were both on their guard, armed to probe for information or weakness.
‘I came to ask how Sabine was,’ Vernhes began. He saw Theo’s look of surprise and went on, ‘I heard she had been badly hurt in some accident. I taught her for two years, you know,’ he added, as if some explanation for his concern was needed.
Theo had dismissed the enquiry as an excuse for the meeting, nothing more. Vernhes must have some other, less easily declarable, reason for his appearance at Bonnemort.
‘Very well, thank you,’ he replied automatically and saw Vernhes look surprised in his turn. ‘That is, she was very severely injured, and not by an accident, but she’s progressing well.’ He did not believe in long recitals of accident and illness. Everyone in his family was always well or getting better until they actually died.
‘I am pleased to hear it.’ Vernhes persisted in the subject of Sabine. ‘I understood she could neither speak nor move and it had been decided it was too dangerous to try to take her to hospital in Racines.’
‘She’s doing very well,’ Theo repeated.
Vernhes hesitated and Theo decided that, rather than wait for him to produce the real reason for coming, he would ask his own questions.
‘Last time we met,’ he said, ‘you gave me the details of the attack on my wife in August. I wonder if you can help me with more information about the events of those days, which are rather more complicated than I realised when I arrived back from exile. This time I’m interested in the death of the SS officer who was billeted here during the period June to August. Major Udo Knecht, he was called, I believe.’
‘What do you want to know about him?’ Vernhes’ grey eyes behind their steel-framed spectacles were wary.
‘I wanted to know if you killed him.’
Vernhes replied smoothly, ‘You’re asking me to confess to murder?’
‘I wouldn’t call it a confession. There are no witnesses; no statement would have any legal force.’
‘In the heat of last summer, many actions were taken by the United Resistance, fully justified by the cruelty and illegality of the enemy, which are now being called into question by the military courts. In some cases, the forces of fascism have already regained the upper hand, and some Resistance fighters have been accused and even condemned for their actions during the liberation. And de Gaulle now commutes the sentences of traitors and criminals like Beraud, who spent the war denouncing communists, Jews and Anglo-Saxons in the newspapers.’
Theo was familiar with the technique, employed by communists of every nation, of evading a specific point by enlarging the field to include other people’s failures.
‘My question wasn’t a trick,’ he said calmly. ‘I’ve always assumed it was a revenge killing for the hangings in Lepech Perdrissou, or for other atrocities that he had committed in his time in the region. I wondered, since the Secret Army was decimated by his action that day, whether the FTP had decided to dispense justice before the Germans fled.’
Like Nikola when he was asked this question, Vernhes hesitated, probably for the same reason. Would he claim the killing, for the glory of the action? Had he done it, in truth? It would have been a form of justice, but if he had really colluded with the major to destroy Henri, as Nikola had suggested, it would have been very useful for Vernhes to have the major dead, never able to bear witness against him. Vernhes had excellent reasons for killing the SS man.
‘No,’ Vernhes said. ‘I didn’t kill him, nor did I order his execution by the FTP. Although I knew the Germans couldn’t remain here indefinitely, I didn’t know that they were on the point of departure. I was reluctant to attack them, and I have to say it, I thought Henri Menesplier’s action that day was unwise, because of the danger of reprisals. Look what happened: Henri shot, six others hanged, not to mention the numbers of those killed earlier that day at Lepech and Bonnemort. We were lucky that the major didn’t decide to shoot the men who dug the graves, or to set fire to the church, which he seemed to be planning to do at one stage.’
Theo found that he believed him. Vernhes might have liked to have organised the killing of the man who had tyrannised the neighbourhood for more than two months, but he had not done so. His statement was credible, but not for the reasons he gave, which were Henri’s own arguments turned against him. Now that Henri was dead, Vernhes could be the protector of the people as well as the scourge of the Germans. The schoolmaster was a much harder character to read than Nikola. The latter’s prejudices were declared; they ran right through his personality like the rings through a tree trunk. Vernhes was protean; he would change any opinion or action from one moment to the next to achieve his advantage.
They paused, each assessing how the points should be distributed before the next round.
‘Have a glass of wine?’ Theo offered. He poured two glasses of Saussignac and handed one to his adversary. His own he put beside him without drinking.
‘You’re evidently not satisfied with what you have discovered so far,’ Vernhes commented. ‘Are your
enquiries official, or personal?’
‘Oh, personal,’ Theo replied. ‘I have no official mandate, I assure you. Although if I discovered something out of the ordinary, beyond the usual rough and tumble of the liberation days, I would have no hesitation in directing the attention of the authorities to it. The executions of the maquisards may well make up part of the dossier of war crimes that I have no doubt is already being drawn up to the account of Major Knecht and his men, but that’s not my concern.’
‘Insofar as your investigations may have official repercussions,’ Vernhes said, ‘I suggest you concentrate on the Vichy fascists and other notorious collaborators. These people persecuted patriots of the Party for four years and are still lying low, a fifth column waiting for its moment to regain power. All the hounding of the Resistance for the rough and tumble of the liberation, as you call it, shows that the fascists still have power in the organs of the administration. If, on the other hand, you’re following a purely personal trail, I have some information for you which you may not care to hear, but you should certainly put into the total balance of your discoveries.’
Theo’s head, which for a while under the influence of Micheline’s receipt, had cleared, was aching again. He considered whether wine would help, and decided that it would not. ‘And that information is?’ he said politely, his tone suggesting that he would listen, but would not guarantee to believe what he heard.
‘Last time we spoke, I told you of what happened to your wife after the liberation. It was a factual account. I made no comment about the justice of what was done; indeed, I believed it to be unjust, but unpreventable …’
‘Such actions are unlawful, whether the victims are guilty or not of their supposed crimes,’ Theo interrupted sharply.
‘Ah, there I can’t agree. The people’s anger sometimes has to be expressed in revolutionary justice. However, that was my opinion at the time. I have since had cause to change it.’
‘And what does that mean?’ Theo stood up. The contents of his skull rose with him, but more slowly, belatedly catching up and colliding with the roof of his head.
Vernhes also rose. ‘It means that I’ve since learned that the suspicions of the people were correct, that your wife was guilty of a specific sort of collaboration. To put it bluntly, the commander of the SS unit here at Bonnemort was her lover.’
To hear what he had feared, known and rejected, now put into words hit Theo like a blow, winding him, leaving him without words. Before he could speak, to contradict, to vindicate Ariane’s Resistance record, pre-dating that of this self-righteous prick, Vernhes spoke again.
‘If you think very carefully about this information I’ve just given you, you may reach some conclusion about the death of Henri Menesplier and where responsibility for it lies.’
Only with difficulty did Theo control the upsurge of rage, the physical impulse to strike. He said, very drily, ‘This is a very neat trap. She was ordered to act as a double agent, and now you denounce her for it. It’s the perfect crime, and she’s the perfect victim.’
Vernhes was as cold as Theo, colder, for he saw himself in the winning position. ‘That’s not how things were, whatever she may have told you. Let me reassure you, however, that I’ve no intention of destroying her reputation. I don’t wish to make any of this public. I pass the information on to you for your researches. The accommodation that you make between you is none of my business. I just want you to bear this in mind in any plans you may have to take your enquiries to the authorities, as one of the elements of the situation.’ He stopped short, as if he could say more but had decided against doing so.
‘Where did this calumny come from, that changed your opinion?’ Theo demanded scathingly, indicating that he thought Vernhes had fabricated it on the instant.
‘From an excellent source, within your own family: your daughter. I’ll leave you now.’
Chapter Thirty
Theo made no attempt to see Vernhes out of the house. He sank back into his chair and closed his eyes. On his return from exile he had immediately accepted his wife’s guilt on the sole evidence of her shaven head. It had taken him months to convince himself of her innocence, and now, confronted once again with an assertion of her crime, he found that he could not stop himself from believing it. Vernhes’ words, on his daughter’s authority, carried total conviction. He could not persuade himself that the man had made up the story for his own purposes. Yet this time Theo regarded the charge in a different light. He no longer saw in it, as he had the first time, the seduction of the conqueror. He had come to understand something of the complexity of the Occupation, of Ariane’s role in passing information backwards and forwards between the Germans and the Resistance. He could imagine that she had been trapped, blackmailed, threatened, even ordered. Or had she simply consented? He did not know how he would ever find out. He was never going to achieve certainty unless she told him what happened. This she seemed unlikely to do; she had shown a marked reluctance to talk about the period when the Germans were at Bonnemort.
In dealing with Vernhes it hardly mattered what was true or false, for the story of Ariane and the major, with the shaving of her head to lend it veracity, whispered in the right places inside the Party hierarchy, circulated among the political class in Paris, would ruin him as surely as it would ruin Ariane. Vernhes meant it to be a double threat, against her and against him. What he could not understand was why Vernhes felt it necessary to threaten him. Why had he decided to make his accusation against Ariane now? There was a missing piece to this jigsaw. Perhaps the general was right. What had he said? It would be a disaster to rummage through the injustices of four years to try to put right every wrong. We must put the past behind us. Theo had not wanted to accept it then; now he saw things differently. The truth was indecipherable. Neither France nor his family could stand too much of it.
If he sat motionless, the thumping in his head was stilled. This was to condemn his wife without a hearing, to accept a calumny because it was impossible to counter it. And Henri: the stupidity and wastefulness of his death was tragic. Had it been Henri’s own fault, the result of his rashness or of his inexperience as a soldier? He hoped that it was not just his loyalty that rejected this idea. At the very least Henri and his men had been let down; perhaps they had even been betrayed, driven, like Ariane, into a trap from which there was no escape. He doubted if he would ever have evidence sufficient to accuse anyone, but he would not give up his search.
The door opened and Ariane came in. She said, with an anxious note in her voice, ‘What’s the matter, Theo?’
‘Vodka.’
‘Apart from your hangover, I mean.’
‘I’m fine.’ It didn’t answer her question, and he could see that she wasn’t reassured.
‘Florence told me that Vernhes came this morning. What did he want?’
‘To ask after Sabine.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Does it surprise you?’
‘That won’t have been his real reason for coming.’
‘No.’
She sat down beside him.
‘Is it very bad?’ she asked.
‘Terrible.’
‘You were away about twelve hours; were you drinking vodka all that time?’
‘Not all the time. Tea to start with.’
‘And what were you talking about in this marathon drinking session?’
‘The exploits of the Resistance. Its hatreds and rivalries. Nikola told me about the bad relations between Group Rainbow and the FTP Group Noix. Is it true?’
‘Yes, it is. You didn’t have to drink a bottle of vodka to learn that; I could have told you. Nikola doesn’t know even half the story, because he never tried to work with them.’
‘Whereas you were the liaison officer between the Secret Army and the FTP.’
‘Giving me a title like that makes it sound much more … real than it was. I tried to persuade the FTP not to do things, or not to do them in a certain way. And to convinc
e Henri that certain things had to be done, for the sake of good relations, if nothing else. I don’t think I ever succeeded. Each group did what it intended to do anyway. This wasn’t an army in any sense that you would recognise, Theo.’
‘My problem is that I don’t know whether Nikola is a man with persecution mania and a strong gift for fantasy, or whether he has got something. He says that Henri was betrayed, that someone alerted the Germans to the plan to liberate Lepech. His theory is that it was the communists.’
‘The communists?’ Her astonishment was unmistakable. ‘Yes, he meant Vernhes.’
‘Vernhes betrayed him? How?’
‘You thought it was someone else?’
‘No, no. Go on.’
‘Nikola thinks that on the day that the Resistance took over Lepech Perdrissou, which was the day before liberation, you remember, the arrival of the Germans was too pat.’
‘This is paranoia,’ Ariane objected. ‘The FTP were there as well. It was my supreme triumph of co-operation. He can’t use that as evidence of an attempt to get rid of Henri.’
‘It’s more complicated than that. According to Nikola the FTP disappeared from the scene as soon as the Germans began shooting; they suffered no injuries, no casualties, no captives. Then he claims that he was present when Vernhes proposed to support Henri in an attempt to rescue the two prisoners, Pierre Rouget and Philippe Boysse. Henri went ahead with the plan that they made, but Vernhes and his men failed to turn up and do their share. Instead, the rest of the German unit caught them in the rear. As a result, Henri and five others were captured and seven of his men were killed. Only six got away. Those are heavy losses for an afternoon’s parade. He says that Vernhes now denies ever suggesting a rescue attempt.’
‘Do you believe this?’
‘Wait. There’s more. So far the story is that Henri was let down by an ally. But Nikola’s paranoia goes deeper than that. It is not just that Vernhes did not assist Henri; Nikola claims that he invited the Germans to do the job of wiping him out, if I picked up all his dark hints and suspicions. So after agreeing the rescue plan with Henri, Vernhes tipped off the Germans and retired quietly home with his men, leaving Henri and his men to be massacred.’
A Good Death Page 23