In at the Kill

by Alexander Fullerton

  Staring at her: then closing his eyes. A murmur: ‘Obviously you know a certain amount already.’

  ‘Tell me what I don’t know?’

  ‘All right.’ A sigh. ‘They got Joseph through me. Not betrayal by me – they trailed Huguette – his wife – back to the safe-house where she’d arranged to meet him. She’d been with me, yes. Supposed to have been with her sick father in Neuilly – some of the time she had. So – they caught him and her, then threatened me with what they’d do to her. Oh, also that they’d tell her I’d informed on Joseph.’

  ‘Sure you didn’t?’

  ‘I’m telling you the truth!’

  ‘Why would they need such leverage when you were already working for them?’

  ‘I was not. They were using me, but – I’ve explained this to you, at least once – only as far as I knew in relation to the escape line in which my sister—’

  ‘Wait.’

  Shifting sideways a little…

  ‘The Oberleutnant’s coming out. Klebermann too – and the trooper. Door’s been shut from the inside – Briards staying put, therefore. They’re talking at the truck. Going on now – Klebermann and the other – round to the front of the house, I suppose. Yes – rounding the corner. Could have taken a short-cut through here, maybe he doesn’t know that.’

  ‘Leaving the two with the truck to watch us.’

  ‘Watch this end, and the Briards maybe. You don’t exist.’ She thought: one non-existent, and one brain-damaged: why watch them? Moving to the door: ‘I’m going. Tell me quickly – the Lamberts – it was her, was it, not your sister—’

  ‘The threat to my sister was to keep my father in line – because of the security importance of the new product. But over my head—’

  ‘Huguette Lambert.’

  A movement of acquiescence. Then: ‘Guesswork, or—’

  ‘I think it was Lambert who told Baker Street you’d been turned.’

  ‘Oh, very likely – but purely out of malice, I had not been—’

  ‘That’s what you told Baker Street, I know. Your mother’s friend Bob Hallowell, to be precise.’

  ‘Christ – you did come briefed!’

  ‘But réseaux with which you’d been in contact were being blown, agents were disappearing – that was the factual background to Lambert’s report. What happened to your sister?’

  ‘I don’t know. Well – sent east, I suppose. Some camp…’

  ‘Don’t you care?’

  ‘Of course I care. Simply was not allowed to know. Whereas Huguette Lambert – they told me where they were holding her, frequently assured me she was all right and being well treated—’

  ‘So eventually you and she would live happily ever after.’

  ‘We were in love. Completely – lost… I don’t know if you’ve ever been in that – condition—’

  ‘You don’t, do you?’ The truck was still down there: one man leaning against it, smoking, the other one inside. She looked back at André. ‘If we got out of this, would you still come back with me?’

  Acquiescence again… ‘Except if the balloon went up before that, I’d rejoin Guichard.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be fit to. We’re talking about the next two or three days: and in England you’d go straight into hospital. In any case you’ve made your mark with Guichard – it was a successful operation and you led it – right?’

  Peering: nodding, then. ‘Yes. One might hope…’

  ‘It’s fact. Even in London, at least to some extent—’

  ‘All right. If as you say, in the next two or three days—’

  ‘This a promise?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Because I might arrange the pick-up before I see you again. A Hudson with a doctor, maybe. Could save your life, you know!’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘But in case it doesn’t work out—’

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘Can’t bank on it exactly, can we?’ She’d handed him a white handkerchief. He looked up from it questioningly, and she showed him: ‘Cyanide – in this corner. Observe the deft needlework?’

  Tongue-tip moistening cracked lips: ‘Sure the needlewoman won’t need it?’

  ‘She’s got another one.’

  Nodding slowly… ‘It’s for yourself of course that you’re concerned.’

  ‘Also for Jacques and Colette. Even young Saurrat. You said you had doubts about withstanding torture – and Christ, who doesn’t—’

  His head more trembling than shaking: ‘I’d sooner take my chances.’

  ‘You mean let us take our chances.’

  ‘The truth is I’d never use it.’ Poking at the capsule’s outline. ‘I’ve thought about it, often. I’ve dropped more than one down storm-drains.’ A shrug – faint gleam of humour, even: ‘See your way of looking at it, of course: heads you win—’

  ‘André –’ frowning into eyes like cracks in greasy plaster – ‘the odds are we won’t get out of this. Unless this SS creature’s stupid – which unfortunately he can’t be—’

  ‘I still don’t want it.’

  ‘Then you’re stupid.’ He was also ‘Hector’, for Christ’s sake. Looking back at him from the doorway, reminding herself of that.

  * * *

  Third start at making so-called coffee, and this time she hadn’t been interrupted. Fairly foul, but strengthening. Eight forty now – felt more like midday. She’d left a broom and a dust-pan in the hallway as evidence of work in progress, and a duster on the rather ugly side-table on which Linscheidt’s cap had been when she’d got here. Sipping the hot, strong-tasting ‘coffee’: thinking that if nothing had happened by say nine o’clock, Justine Quérier would probably make tracks for the auberge – having started here just before seven, the agreement being for two hours’ work each day, and having no idea at all what was happening. Although maybe concerned for Monsieur Henri – for instance the question of whether he’d want her to bring him a meal from the auberge…

  She finished the chicory-mixture, rinsed the mug out and left it on the draining-board. The only dishcloths were rags, better ones having been taken upstairs for André’s use. If he survived without getting those burns infected, she thought – guessed – he’d be very lucky. Even if in a day or two’s time she was able to arrange a Hudson pick-up – with a quack on board and an ambulance standing by at Tempsford.

  Not that he’d necessarily keep his promise. Unless he was really scared for himself by then.

  Well – he might be.

  Justine probably wouldn’t scrub the kitchen floor now, although it needed it. Take too long. Rosie didn’t bloody well intend to, was the truth. Push a broom around in the hallway instead maybe: or dust in the petit salon. She was standing in its doorway, duster, dust-pan and broom at the ready, gazing critically at the over-abundance of rather ghastly furniture without which the room wouldn’t have looked nearly so small, when she heard them coming. Like noises-off in some play: a tramp of boots growing louder, coming from the corridor beyond the connecting door: she was facing it, her line of sight actually just past the foot of the stairs, when the sergeant who’d come with Klebermann barged it open again, came through pointing at the nails, warning those behind him – two SS men half dragging Monsieur Henri, and the Oberleutnant behind them, glaring around – at her, briefly, but at the hallway and its furniture generally, before pointing at one heavy-timbered, high-backed chair. For Monsieur Henri: they dumped him on it. Rosie – Justine – struck dumb, turning in alarm and utter confusion from that slumped figure to this new, brisk one, the Sturmbannführer: less evidently insane perhaps than the Oberleutnant but similarly ruthless, savage-looking. Linscheidt then, and Klebermann. The room seemed full of them. Le deluge, she thought. Not après moi but autour de moi – and with a horrifying sense of inevitability, the remorseless unfolding of what Lise would call Fate. Because I shouldn’t have been here in the first place. Like being in a pit that was filling up – swastikas, jackboots, belts with Gott mit Uns in gilt
on their buckles, sound-effects in that brutal-sounding language.

  Monsieur Henri slumped unconscious or semi-conscious in the chair with its thick, ornately carved arms: Justine started towards him as if to help in some way but then stopped – frightened, uncertain whether she should still have been here or what was happening or about to happen – and the Sturmbannführer suddenly noticing her, pointing at her and asking Linscheidt who or what – despite the duster she had in one hand, dust-pan in the other, which she thought might have given him some clue – and others including the Oberleutnant turning to look at her while Linscheidt explained – including the bit about her being simple, she hoped. Open-mouthed, glancing nervously from face to face but then back at her employer – still motionless, eyes shut – maybe breathing, maybe not. She couldn’t see any broken skin or blood: if they’d beaten him, which she assumed they would have, the blows would have been to his body – ribs, belly, diaphragm, kidneys. He wouldn’t have had much resistance to it. She moved quickly out of the Sturmbannführer’s way as he strode into the petit salon, glanced around it and came out again. His overriding expression, whether natural or assumed, was of contempt more than of anger. Jerking his head towards the other door – the room le patron had said he used as an office: the Oberleutnant threw that door open and looked in, glared around, came out shouting something like ‘No, nobody, nothing…’

  Linscheidt then – addressing Monsieur Henri in his not-bad French, ‘Sturmbannführer Kroll asks: do you still maintain that you have not had visitors during the hours of darkness?’

  No reaction, no reply. He hadn’t opened his eyes, mightn’t even have heard. Linscheidt repeated the question in the same tone, and the trooper on Monsieur Henri’s left punched him behind the ear, knocking him sideways in the chair. Linscheidt tight-faced, looking away – exchanging glances with Klebermann, she noticed: the Oberleutnant’s vicious stare was directed at him, then. She’d never been exactly fond of any Boches, but there were two distinct varieties in here, she realized. Monsieur Henri’s eyes had opened: he was straightening himself slightly, or trying to. Wincing at the effort: they obviously had been knocking him about. Stammering weakly, ‘There have been no visitors. Please.’ Licking his thin lips; there were tear-streaks on his face. Tears welling in his eyes again as he added – lifting a limp hand as if requesting permission to speak in class – ‘Madame Briard only tells you what she hopes will make things bad for me.’

  Linscheidt put that into German, and Kroll growled something – angry, threatening – which was then interpreted as ‘The Sturmbannführer says you should remember that the penalty for answering his questions with lies is death!’ And in reply to that, she saw, another movement of that hand: a dismissive gesture. She thought, Incredible… Then reassessing: it might have been less dismissive than submissive – recognition of there being no answer or way out, that his helplessness was absolute. She caught her breath then – startled by a bark of German addressed, it seemed to her – and which Linscheidt then took up in his capacity of interpreter: ‘Mam’selle Quérier: the Sturmbannführer asks, are you aware of persons having visited Monsieur Marchéval during the night?’

  She shook her head – mystified… ‘I’m not here at night, M’sieur. Two hours a day only – and this is my first day, as you know.’ Gabbling, as Justine would: ‘I’ve been here longer than two hours now, but that’s only because I don’t know – understand – and I thought Monsieur Marchéval when he came might want me to—’

  Tailing off… With the thought – sudden flash of hope – They’re looking for evidence of someone having been here, not guessing anyone might be here now. Why should they – why would anyone have been so crazy as to hang around?

  Kroll was braying again to Linscheidt, though; who translated, ‘You would have noticed in the course of your work whether bedrooms have been used, for instance.’

  ‘No, M’sieur – not bedrooms. Only the kitchen and in here a little.’ Nodding towards the petit salon: ‘And in there, I was about to—’

  ‘Raschler.’ The Oberleutnant jerked to attention: Kroll told him – with the accompanying gesture his meaning was obvious – ‘Search the whole place.’ Maybe having realized his mistake or slowness in about the same moment she’d begun to hope. Monsieur Henri’s eyes, she saw, were on her – pleading, the way a dog’s eyes plead. But so much for hopes… Kroll had shouted at Raschler to hurry: now he was leading Linscheidt into the petit salon. He was quite a short man – strongly built, athletic-looking, walked with a springy strut – but Linscheidt towered over him, following him through that doorway. Monsieur Henri’s gaze still on her. She remembered again his anguished appeal, There has to be some way, some answer… If there was, she wished to God she could see it. Her notion of pinning the guilt on Legrand obviously hadn’t got him anywhere.

  The Oberleutnant having checked the kitchen, pantry and cloakroom came more or less at the double across the hall to the stairs, jerking his head at one of the troopers to go with him. Rosie bracing herself for disaster now: with only Justine’s ignorance and simplicity, total lack of complicity or guile to cling to – and no faith whatsoever in André keeping his mouth shut. Monsieur Henri still watching her – at least, watching this way – through tears and spasms of trembling. She guessed that his endurance this far – the fact he wasn’t on his knees begging for mercy, or whatever – would be rooted in desperation to protect his son. His eyes and Rosie’s – and others’ – shifting to Kroll and Linscheidt emerging from the petit salon – having discussed God only knew what, but Linscheidt certainly wasn’t looking any happier for it; he’d beckoned to Klebermann, was sending him to the telephone. While upstairs, doors were being wrenched open and slammed shut: now a shouted order from the Oberleutnant and a series of crashes: kicking a door open – she knew which door. Anyway kicking at it; it was a well-built house and the woodwork wasn’t flimsy. Meanwhile from behind her Klebermann was having to shout into the telephone: she heard, ‘Oui – veux parler avec Captaine Wachtel: Vite, s’il vous plait!’ From upstairs though, another crash – of a different kind, those two together she guessed putting their shoulders to it. Klebermann was shouting in German now, presumably with Wachtel on the line. Most others were looking upward – as if it were their eyes they used for listening – and at the next heavy thump she heard the door give – splintering, cracking timber, door smashing back and a shout of Germanic triumph. Kroll pushed past Linscheidt, dashed up the stairs: the other SS trooper went up close behind him and the sergeant moved to stand beside Monsieur Henri – whom Linscheidt was asking from that straight-backed but slightly forward-leaning stance of his, in a lower, confidential tone, ‘You have known all the time there was some person up there?’

  Wide, wet eyes staring up – wandering towards Rosie then back to Linscheidt: a deep breath, and a nod.

  ‘My son.’

  ‘Your – son?’

  Klebermann – back from the telephone – intervening: ‘His son and daughter were arrested – some months ago. We had the report from Geheime Staatspolizei in Paris – remember, Herr Major? It was by way of—’

  ‘I remember what it was by way of.’ Expression of distaste on Linscheidt’s gaunt features. Distaste for the Marchéval family, Rosie wondered, or for Gestapo methods of ensuring collaboration? There’d been shouting up there, and now a racket of boots clattering on the stairs. Linscheidt inclining closer to Monsieur Henri: ‘You lied to the Sturmbannführer – despite his warning. Couldn’t you have guessed he’d have the place searched?’ Le patron mouthing – gasping, almost retching – as if he was trying very hard to speak and couldn’t. Linscheidt glanced towards the stairs and then at Rosie: ‘Glass of water!’ Back to the old man then: ‘For God’s sake, save your life, from here on answer truthfully!’ Hearing this as she moved away, hurrying to the kitchen: remembering Colette telling her there was a degree of rapport between those two. Because of the Gestapo blackmail? Filling a tumbler from the tap, she heard the SS party coming o
ff the stairs – with André, obviously. She dreaded whatever was to follow. Hands shaking, heart racing. Kroll’s voice out there high, insistent, a longer, quieter utterance from Linscheidt and then Kroll again, that peremptory tone, and Linscheidt’s interpretation: ‘You collected the keys from your father and returned them to him later in the night – is that correct?’

  ‘Yes.’ André’s voice was husky. ‘It was my scheme, not his. I persuaded him.’

  Plain statement of fact. Maybe he was going to answer truthfully. In which case… She took the glass of water in with her – although it was unlikely Monsieur Henri would get any now. They’d put André in his striped pyjamas in a lower chair turned away from his father’s, she saw – so they couldn’t easily see each other, especially as each had an SS thug in close attendance. The others were grouped mainly behind Kroll, except for Linscheidt who was beside him. Kroll screaming at André again – apparently straight at him, although it was again for Linscheidt to interpret: ‘Sturmbannführer Kroll demands the names of those who were with you in the sabotage action against the factory!’

  ‘They were Maquisards. I never met them before, don’t know their names.’

  More German, then: Linscheidt’s translation and Kroll’s fury. Which was dangerous – as Linscheidt obviously realized, and she could see. Pent-up, barely restrained violence visible in both him and the Oberleutnant – Raschler. She had a vision of their unit’s defeat in battle, military humiliation, the fury and bloodlust stemming from that, maybe. And/or frustration at being diverted to this backwater: maybe that most of all. Waiting with her glass of water in both hands – she’d had to drink some – behind Linscheidt and Klebermann and their sergeant; she could see Monsieur Henri between Klebermann and the sergeant, but not André. Linscheidt interpreting again: ‘The Sturmbannführer says there must have been participation by individuals in the village. You were caught in the blast of an explosion, it’s plain enough that you could not have made your way here without assistance. In any case we have information that at about one o’clock this morning voices were heard outside there. You would be wise to answer truthfully this time: who brought you here?’