In at the Kill

by Alexander Fullerton

  ‘Sorry you’ve been lumbered with this. Even taking me to Troyes was a bit over the odds.’

  ‘In for a penny, Rosie.’ A sideways glance at her. ‘In for a penny… But – it’s a pleasure. Truly is.’

  Bumping over a railway crossing – the line from Troyes to Sens. Until now it had been on the right-hand side of the road. Rosie said as they picked up speed again, ‘Wasn’t such fun at Dufay’s though, was it?’

  Having had time to appreciate how close a call it had been. If that young sergeant hadn’t been feeling harassed, for whatever reason: if he’d taken the time to check her papers, as he should have done, or even had a close look at her – at the dark make-up camouflaging scars. With a Gestapo officer there to refer to: doubtless with ready access to their file of ‘Wanteds’.

  She’d have been where Dufay was now, and this time it’d be for keeps.

  Any cigarettes left?’

  ‘Masses. Well – to be precise, three. Two for you, one for me.’ Extracting two, and lighting them. ‘I really will try to get you a few packets at the auberge. Even if Sunday’s not a legal day for selling them. Please, don’t let me forget?’

  ‘Tell me about the uncle who gave you a motorbike. How old were you?’

  ‘Sixteen – the legal age for it. I’d been on about saving up for one. My mother took a dim view, I may say. He’s a sweet man, though.’

  ‘Your mother’s brother?’

  ‘Yes. But nothing like her. He’s lived on one lung since 1918, when he got caught in German gas.’

  ‘Poor devil.’

  ‘Half his platoon died of it.’

  Shaking his head. ‘Hasn’t been used in this war, thank God. Although we have huge stocks, and I’m sure they must have too. Tell me, how old were you when you married?’

  ‘Twenty-one. In May of ’thirty-nine. Johnny was a regular – squadron leader, when he was killed.’

  ‘Rotten luck again, Rosie.’

  ‘For him, yes. Well – for us both, maybe. Things could have got better, I suppose. What I’m saying is it wasn’t any great shakes as a marriage. Doesn’t make his being shot down a happy event exactly, don’t get me wrong, I’m only saying – well, I survived it all right, that’s all.’

  Estissac, when they got to it, wasn’t much. The Vanne put in its first appearance here though, several strands of it merging and then looping westward, now and then but by no means always in sight of the road. It was in a dip on the left – where the railway line was now too – with the land rising on its far side towards forest. Forêt d’Othe: inhabited by Maquis, Michel had said.

  She was smoking slowly – trying to – to make this one last. Recalling that last night she’d been smoking Marilyn’s Senior Service. Seemed an age ago now, a distant, momentary – respite, almost.

  ‘Funny to think of Marilyn at her desk in Baker Street now, isn’t it?’

  ‘Work on Sundays, do they?’ He shrugged. ‘Of course, they must.’

  ‘She’ll have reported to Buck this morning, and apart from any other crises looming, she’s bound to have work to catch up on. This business will have taken up several days, and she’s very conscientious. But she’ll have spoken to Lise by now too. At length, in fact – Lise was going to be at Tempsford. To welcome me back, was the idea.’

  And Lise would have spoken to Ben. Who’d know she, Rosie, was alive. He’d have to break it to the Stack woman. Preferably not feeling too sorry for her. Ben was a kind man and when he felt sorry for anyone – for an attractive female, anyway – he’d been known to take it rather to excess, especially if he felt himself responsible in some way. In what way, precisely, in the case of Joan Stack, was a matter for speculation. Marilyn, Rosie thought, might have been a little guarded – or diplomatic, she’d have called it – in her account of whatever Lise had said about Ben and Joan. One line in particular stuck in her memory and seemed to call for elucidation: He’s been crushed, remember. Might seem like – I don’t know, but when you’re – you know, floundering…

  Sounded like apologizing for him, excusing him for something. Suggesting that she, Rosie, should make allowances.

  There was a crossing in sight ahead, the first for several miles, a route blanche leading up into forest on the left and over cornfields on the right. Children at the roadside waved; she and Guillaume both waved back to them. The bridge there across the Vanne was decked with railway sleepers.

  All dry as a bone. Hadn’t rained here, this morning.

  It wouldn’t matter, about Ben and Joan Stack. It would be over, now. Tough on la Stack, no doubt, but – finis.

  ‘When you go on the air, Rosie – one, this morning’s troop movement, two, tell them about Dufay? It might get to Michel via Baker Street more quickly than through de Plesse on the home ground here.’

  ‘You’re right. Might even be worth a transmission on its own. Guillaume – something coming up behind us.’

  ‘Snap.’

  He’d seen it in the same moment. Car, coming fast, at this moment just about where those kids had been.

  ‘Nothing to do with us.’

  ‘Couldn’t be.’

  ‘But if it was – same story. Farmer near Villeneuve-l’Archevêque. Can you see any place a few k’s off this road but near there?’

  ‘Courgenay. A right turn – at Villeneuve-l’Archevêque.’

  ‘OK. We’d be turning short of St Valéry anyway. In case there’s any sensitivity over Marchéval’s. I mean arising from Dufay’s recent interest in the place. Christ, there’s an outrider, too…’

  ‘Aiming to turn right at Villeneuve, then, making for this place about five kilometres north of there.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘There’s a flag on the car!’

  ‘Pendant. Boche general, probably.’ He was keeping well in to the right, tyres almost on the grass verge, and he’d slowed a bit to make it easier for the car to pass. The hedgerow was taller here, you couldn’t see far ahead although the bend looked shallow. Telling her, ‘Definitely not after us. Generals hardly ever—’

  ‘Two outriders!’

  The first flashed past them. Car fifty metres behind. Khaki-greenish paintwork, red-and-white triangular pennant whipping on a staff on the left-front mudguard. Guillaume said, ‘Must be bloody Rommel…’

  ‘Isn’t he in Normandy?’

  There were two men in the back: one in uniform, details undistinguishable, and the other in plain clothes. In front, a soldier-driver with an officer of sorts beside him. Young: and the only one who went so far as to turn his head and look at them. Actually, at Rosie. Second outrider now – taking no interest in them: blast of sound, and he was gone. Guillaume murmured, easing the gazo further out into the road, ‘May not be long before the bugger’s coming the other way just as fast if not faster. But listen – I was thinking – if I get back tonight I’ll ask Léonie to report Dufay’s arrest. You may well not be in a position to transmit this soon – and the sooner we do—’

  ‘I’ll still mention it when I go on the air.’

  ‘Yes. Good.’

  * * *

  Another route blanche crossing. On the right, a lot of the corn had been cut. Harvesters either at lunch or sleeping it off, she supposed. In the countryside people didn’t do so badly – hence the townspeople who came foraging for chickens, rabbits, game, eggs, anything they could get. Women and girls on bicycles with capacious baskets, mainly. With so few able-bodied men about, women were the providers, had to do whatever they could to feed their broods.

  They passed through several villages before Villeneuve. One was unidentifiable, and seemed not to be marked on the map: another with a roadside sign still legible as Benoist-sur-Vanne. The river was still down-slope on the left, in the dip and at this stage not visible. Then a place called Vulaines: not much of it. At Villeneuve-l’Archevêque – a much larger place, dull and gloomy, could even have been deserted, but with an interesting old church off the road to the left – they trundled over the railway track, putti
ng it to the north of the road thereafter.

  Beyond it – and to the south as well, over the river – was woodland. Guillaume muttered, picking up speed again after the railway crossing, ‘River’s closer to the road now.’ Eyes front again as he steered around two slow-moving hay-carts. It wasn’t a wide road. ‘Heck, what’s this metropolis coming up?’

  When they’d barely left the strung-out glories of Villeneuve… Rosie checking the map. ‘Must be – Molinons. They’re joined, almost. See what you mean about the river, we really are sur Vanne here, aren’t we?’

  ‘And tout de suite will be in St Valéry?’

  ‘Not all that tout de suite.’ Glancing up from the map: the narrow road shaving around a crumbly old church that was virtually right on it. Back to the map – such as it was… ‘About three kilometres, Poissy-sur-Vanne, and our turning’s about half a k beyond it.’

  ‘Switch to Dufay’s sketch, then.’

  ‘Yes.’ The thought of Dufay again, what might be happening to him. The most common start would be a general beating up, the prisoner with his hands tied and a thug, or team of thugs, using fists and boots – and buckets of water to bring him round when he passed out. SOE’s standard expectation was for an agent to hold out for forty-eight hours before telling them anything, the object being to give his or her colleagues that much time in which to disappear.

  But if you had a job to do, how could you?

  * * *

  Passing through Poissy-sur-Vanne. Turnings to right and left matched those shown on the map.

  ‘Half a kilometre, you said.’

  ‘Probably a bit more than that.’

  She flicked the small, damp stub of her last cigarette away, and took another look at the pencil sketch. There was going to be a turn-off to the left, a bridge over the Vanne after about a hundred metres, then a fork; bearing right would bring them into St Valéry, and the Craillots’ pub would be well into the middle of the village on the right. She asked Guillaume, ‘What if the Herr General’s car’s parked outside L’Auberge la Couronne?’

  An airy gesture… ‘What d’you think? Let its tyres down and sing “God Save the King”?’

  ‘Seriously, though. There are Boches living in the manor, he could be visiting them – rocket-casing business?’

  ‘More likely still he’d have been on his way through Sens to Fontainebleau and Paris. Coming from, say, the Dijon, Chaumont direction, it’s the route you would take.’

  Dijon where Michel had said he’d be. She remembered also that Marilyn had said Baker Street knew what Michel was doing: she’d meant to ask about it when they’d covered the essentials, but it had slipped her mind.

  Marilyn might not have told her anyway. Since Michel’s activities weren’t any of her business now. Guillaume was slowing, railway line crossing the road ahead again. ‘Rosie – I’m praying this’ll go well for you.’ The gazo jarring over… ‘In case we don’t get a chance to speak alone again – be bloody careful, eh?’

  ‘Bet I will.’ Glancing at him: those last words, he’d sounded just like Ben. Really, could have been Ben. She said, ‘Hope your end goes right too. But listen – to get anywhere with the Craillots we’re going to have to put all our cards on the table, aren’t we? Barring any mention of André Marchéval, that is. But the option of bombing, for instance – there’d be no other answer, or reason I’d have come. Be fatal to give them some flimflam that won’t stand up – d’you think?’

  ‘Agreed. But start by telling ’em about Dufay.’ Pointing forward with his head: ‘Looks like the turn.’

  Also what looked like a German military sign on the corner of the side-road, a square of tin painted yellow with the numerals 18 on it in black. Guillaume slowing, turning – right-angle turn into a much narrower road, but the corners had been cut back and gravelled, presumably to make it easier for larger vehicles. On a down-gradient then, with a stone bridge in sight fifty or sixty metres ahead. Shifting gear again, and humping slowly over it. Forty metres of bridge: say thirty of river under it. Wider than she’d expected. And pretty – a shallow, tumbling fall of water over rocks – clear, clean-looking water, and further downstream on this side – the right – a parting of the ways where it split in two around a small island. Guillaume said, ‘Trout in it, bet your boots.’

  ‘Are you a fisherman?’

  ‘Have been. May be again, touch wood. But here we are, Rosie – St Valéry-sur-Vanne. Doesn’t look like a place you’d build a factory, does it?’

  Little hideaway place. Trees and undergrowth thick along the verges of both road and river. After the bridge, a lush-looking field around which the lane curved right-handed: the fork off to the left would lead to a place called Sièges, according to Dufay. Apple orchard now on this side, then a row of cottages with cabbages, tomatoes and what looked like currant bushes crowding their front gardens. All very compact and close together then, the village’s component features coming up fast although Guillaume was driving very slowly. Another half-dozen cottages on the right here, and a larger house on its own amongst trees and shrubs on the other side. This side again – the right – a church set up on a rise some way back from the road, and a track leading away through trees. On Guillaume’s side, an alleyway led off at right-angles between a terrace of small houses – workers’ houses, as shown on Dufay’s plan – and a high brick wall that was the eastern enclosure of the factory area. On the right, a yellowish building that looked semi-derelict – flaking plaster and rotten woodwork. There was no sign on it, but Dufay’s sketch identified it as the Hôtel Poste. It was across the road from the market square – after the front wall and entrance to the factory – at which she was looking back, attempting a double-take – at human activity around that entrance; having hardly registered it at first glance, since it was on Guillaume’s side and she’d been trying to look both ways at once, had now a retrospective impression of people dressed for work – not just Sunday strollers – crowding through a door set in one of the big timber gates. Anyway – too late. Market square now: cobbled, with a roofed structure like a band-stand in the centre. The impression was even more strongly of a tight-packed, tightly enclosed village – walls, trees, house-fronts all crowding in on and around this narrow street; virtually the only open space had been that market square. Too small, too compact – recalling Michel’s comment There’d be women and children killed… There surely would be. Another quote – Michel quoting Dufay, describing St Valéry as a little place with Marchéval’s as its beating heart. That described it well too – the village was virtually wrapped around that factory.

  Factory at work – at lunchtime on a Sunday, in rural France?

  School – on the left here, the corner after the market square. So obviously a school that you could almost smell the chalk and ink. A lane ran down beside it, edging the square. Some more of the factory wall was visible again down there. The rectangular market ‘square’ was in fact a corner cut out of a larger square comprising the factory area. This was clearer on Dufay’s plan of the village layout than it was from a passing view of the place at ground level. Had passed it now; on the right, Rosie’s side, was a terrace of maybe half a dozen small dwellings, stone frontage patched pale-greenish and fronting on to a pavement no more than a metre or so wide. As wide a pavement as the street could spare: any more so and two vehicles could hardly have scraped past each other.

  Guillaume pointed: ‘There’s your pub, Rosie.’

  L’Auberge la Couronne. On the right, this side – an oldish, not antique but attractively weathered building. Clinker-strewn track up this side of it between it and that row of houses – to a yard and/or maybe outbuildings behind. Guillaume passed that, drew in and parked behind a trap with a tired-looking grey pony in its shafts. He’d bumped two wheels up on the narrow pavement: she’d have barely enough room to get her door open. Just enough actually to peer up through the wound-down window at the frontage of creeper-covered stone and an inn-sign above the door depicting a golden crown. Making
a quick check then in the rear-view mirror – the pancake make-up, and the pads in her cheeks. Hair OK – more or less… She brushed cigarette ash off her skirt, and squeezed out. Not all that much squeeze about it though; she wasn’t the skeleton she’d been in her pre-Thérèse period, but there wasn’t any excess of flesh on her either.

  Never had been – or would be, if she could help it. Pulling her clothes straight, tucking the blouse in: feeling for, and finding, the small shape of one cyanide pill in its hem. Looking up at the auberge, meanwhile, seeing there was one upper floor of bedroom windows and smaller ones above them. Couldn’t have many rooms. Unpainted wooden shutters, and Virginia creeper. Really quite attractive.

  ‘Not bad, eh?’ Guillaume was standing in the road; speaking French for the first time in hours. ‘See if they can do us lunch, shall we?’

  ‘Let’s.’ She came round the front of the car to join him. ‘Did you notice the factory’s at work?’

  ‘Seemed to-be, didn’t it. Overtime.’ He changed the subject: a wave of one hand: ‘Pleasant outlook too.’ Looking across the road, over a low wall and a paddock in which a carthorse and a pony grazed. Trees thick to the left: going by Dufay’s sketch, hiding a wall that surrounded the manor-house. Some distance along the road to the right one could see there was a much higher wall… There was a stream down there in front though, with more fields and woods beyond it, patches and fingers of woodland which in the further, hilly distance massed together into forest. The stream had to pass close behind the factory; they’d get whatever water they needed from it. An offshoot of the Vanne, she supposed: glancing to her left as a gazogène puttered by. White-haired, red-faced driver with a white-haired, white-faced woman beside him. Then voices from the auberge, and two men emerging from its front door: a priest first – thin, dark-faced, sharp nose and chin, whites of his eyes showing as he glanced up at the patchy grey overhead. Turning: ‘Thank you, Jacques. Excellent meal, as always.’

  ‘Oh, next to nothing, Father!’