In at the Kill

by Alexander Fullerton

  Kroll had been talking to Linscheidt, and now the megaphone came up again.

  ‘Attention! The prisoner – André Marchéval – knows he can make it easier for himself by naming the persons concerned. I am instructed to inform you that any of you who may be able to name them can do him the same favour – he could ask to die by a bullet instead of – in great discomfort. And you could then go home.’

  Kroll speaking again. Behind him were Wachtel and Oberleutnant Raschler. Linscheidt, she saw suddenly, seemed to be arguing with Kroll: maybe questioning whatever he’d just said. And the others – Klebermann there too now – watching and listening with tense expressions. Kroll’s voice high-pitched again, insistent on – whatever… Linscheidt staring at him until he’d finished: then still hesitant, but turning back this way.

  Hesitating again, then, with the megaphone half up and his one eye blinking steadily – as if driven by his doubts. Glancing round at Kroll again: finally shrugging, turning back. He cleared his throat.

  ‘In the event of guilty persons not being identified either by the prisoner or by others, Sturmbannführer Kroll warns that hostages may be taken from amongst you and – summarily executed. Now – you have one minute—’

  André kicked the table away from under him. Understanding his move in retrospect – the only way, since the moment itself had been virtually explosive, instantaneous, totally unexpected – he’d folded suddenly at the knees, dropping his full weight on to the cord so that it jerked bar-taut and wrenched his head back, while in the same convulsive movement he kicked out with his legs – sending the thing crashing over. A roar from the crowd… The thin cord had torn the skin of his neck – she saw blood running – and the body dancing, threshing around on the jerking cord, legs still kicking wildly a few feet above the cobbles. The crowd’s reaction – shock, women’s screams – was cut off by a blare of fire from a Schmeisser: which was in Raschler’s hands, the Oberleutnant firing over the people’s heads. Some were on their knees: mothers crouching with hands over their children’s eyes. The body already moving less though – twitching more than jerking, and turning on the cord, André bringing his tied wrists into Rosie’s view as if he might have been showing them to her. See, no hands?

  But Linscheidt was prominent suddenly – had his back to the still slowly turning body, long arms spread horizontally to bar the approach of the SS guards. Who’d have taken André’s weight off the cord, no doubt – maybe so ordered by Kroll, the programme being slow and perhaps intermittent strangulation, not the quicker death André had chosen. Kroll was face to face with Linscheidt now – he had that Walther out of its holster, brandishing it. Linscheidt weaponless, fists on his hips – the two guards had backed off – he was talking down at the smaller man and pushing his authority even further by gesturing to the Oberleutnant to return that Schmeisser to the trooper from whom he’d borrowed it. She’d thought that was what he’d done, but people who’d had a clearer view from other angles said later that he – Linscheidt – had actually grabbed it, presumably having had reason to feel threatened by it – which was close enough to the truth but not definitively so, according to Gaspard Legrand, who it transpired spoke and understood German and had been able to hear as well as see it all. He told Jacques later that it had been Kroll screaming an order to the SS men in respect of André that had sparked it off, then Oberleutnant Raschler’s threatening behaviour with the machine pistol: Linscheidt hadn’t ‘grabbed’ it, only calmly and authoritatively put his hand on the stubby barrel and depressed it: rather like telling a child not to point guns. But Linscheidt hadn’t been prepared to stomach either the prisoner being sadistically kept alive or Kroll’s plan for others to be taken and shot: he’d told Kroll that in his view the investigation and punishment had been completed satisfactorily and that he’d not stand for any further killing. Both Marchévals had clearly been involved and had been dealt with in accordance with the Sturmbannführer’s brief, but no evidence had emerged of other villagers having taken part; if Madame Briard – who anyway was known to be a liar and to have borne a grudge against Henri Marchéval – if she had heard voices in the stable-yard, they could well have been those of Maquisards, who’d still have had half an hour in which to get away before the moon rose. Therefore, further punitive action as proposed would amount to murder – to which he, Linscheidt, would bear witness if necessary. And finally, when Kroll had insisted furiously that such decisions were for him alone to make et cetera, Linscheidt had challenged him with ‘In that case you’d better be prepared also to shoot me and my officers.’

  Jacques queried, ‘But that SS thing backing down – did he think up some way of saving face?’

  Legrand nodded. ‘That it suited him very well not to be delayed here. If Major Linscheidt was so easily satisfied…’

  They were sitting, by this time – all of them, several hundred people – and had been for the past hour. André’s corpse still dangled – no ‘niceties’ were being observed as yet – but it was understood, Sergeant Hannant had told Legrand, that once all the SS had pulled out, the people were to be dispersed back to their homes. Holding them here for the time being was for their own safety, on Linscheidt’s orders.

  Chapter 19

  She’d coded her message to Baker Street and was waiting for midnight to send it off – from her bedroom in the auberge, Jacques having agreed that there was very little danger in it now. A dangerous assumption maybe, but there were certainly no detector-vans around and it was a happy thought that the technicians in the Reichssicherheitshauptamt’s radio-monitoring centre in Paris would very likely be getting ready to draw stumps by now. As to danger, she’d tentatively suggested a gazo lift into the woods in the afternoon or early evening to get this signal out, but Jacques had turned her down, seeing a possibility of anti-Maquis patrols from Sens for instance, following the Maquis action here, maybe even SS remnants still in the deep field. For the same reasons he’d decided to wait a day before trying to contact Guichard or Guichard’s people: he was impatient to, although another factor was that with any luck he’d have more to tell them tomorrow, the crucial issue being that Linscheidt and company might have pulled out by then. Sergeant Hannant had confided that it was on the cards.

  Getting towards the magic hour. Transceiver ready – plugged in, night-time crystal fitted, aerial wire looping from the window. She’d set Yvette’s alarm-clock, in case she dropped off, to wake in panic in the dawn. Wouldn’t take much doing – snoozing off – after the strains and stresses of the day and very little sleep last night. Eyelids tending to close: and thought processes muzzy. The enciphering was all done and checked anyway – she’d seen to that as soon as she’d got up here, while she still could think straight, the plain-language draft reading:

  Destruction of all V2 casings and associated machinery at Marchévals carried out successfully night Wednesday August ninth. Operation was planned and led by former SOE agent ‘Hector’. ‘Hector’ hanged and his father shot by SS in reprisal today Thursday. SS unit has since withdrawn eastward and original German garrison unit is expected to depart tomorrow Friday, after which Maquis under Tamerlan plan to occupy St Valéry with headquarters in the manor. Tamerlan’s intention being to interdict use by enemy of the Sens-Troyes road and railway. Request pick-up for myself from Parnassus field soonest, confirming either by signal or message personnel previously agreed. Will listen out from noon to 1300 Friday in hope of early confirmation.

  In other words, Get cracking, Marilyn dear…

  They’d cut André down eventually, and by special dispensation from Linscheidt his body was in the custody of Doctor Simonot, Sergeant Hannant and the curé – to whom Rosie had been introduced by Colette in the market square this morning. There was to be a funeral Mass for the pair of them, father and son together, within the next few days, subject to the departure before that of the Boches. One could envisage the graveyard black with people – every man, woman and child from the village and surrounding neighbourhood, a
nd doubtless Maquis from the forests – honouring ‘Hector’, whom she’d come here prepared to kill and whom hundreds had seen die heroically.

  Instead of talking – shopping her and the Craillots. Which admittedly wouldn’t have saved his life: but for the quick way out, that bullet in the head. You could ask yourself for evermore what he’d been proving to whom – to the village, SOE, even to her.

  She’d tell them all she knew, in England, and if asked for her own view would advise that ‘F’ Section SOE should keep its own counsel, maybe destroy the Marchéval file. Nobody’d be brought back to life by keeping it; and here in France nothing would prevent André Marchéval becoming a Hero of the Resistance. She’d attend the funeral Mass herself if it took place before the Hudson came for her.

  Would Edna, Daphne, Maureen object? Or Lise, or Noally?

  If so, apologies. And love, and deep, deep regret. But there’d be no point in trying to swim against that tide.

  Red-headed Daphne’s brittle laugh: ‘You mean fart against that wind?’

  ‘But you see –’ explaining herself to them, as the train rushed on – as in her memory and imagination it always would – never arriving, only for ever rocking, drumming east – explaining, ‘You see, what we know we’d have to prove – what that crowd know is what they saw!’

  She didn’t know if they’d heard. Anyway was slipping into dream, the train’s racket fading and the women’s images blurring, seeing instead – as she would soon, maybe even at Tempsford if Marilyn brought him with her – well, crikey, a nod as good as a wink – there! Large as life and bursting with it, bellowing and waving at her across the airfield in the day’s first light, and herself running – racing – howling hello, my darling, hello! No more goodbyes, Ben darling—

  Alarm-bell…

  Bloody thing. Cursing, reaching to shut it off, reaching then for the Mark III’s headset and settling the ’phones over her ears. Checking routinely – switches to ‘on’ and to ‘send’ – and the message coded into its five-letter groups propped in the raised lid of the carrying-case. All set: a glance at the ammeter as her fingers found their own way to the Morse key. But pausing there – hovering just clear of its plastic knob as a new thought hit her: Last piano solo ever?

  First published in the United Kingdom in 1999 by Little, Brown

  This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by

  Canelo Digital Publishing Limited

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  Copyright © Alexander Fullerton, 1999

  The moral right of Alexander Fullerton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781788630375

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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