by Susan Lewis
‘Someone has to be; it seems the whole damned lot of you have lost your senses. Do you know how many Résistants have been arrested in Touraine during the past four weeks? No, I didn’t think you did. Over twenty. And while we’re here I’d better tell you that you have a traitor in your midst. The escape-line has to close down, Claudine, before you’re all arrested. Has anyone told you that you haven’t got one pilot, one agent or one escaped prisoner through in the past three weeks?’
‘What!’
‘The Gestapo have got them all. They’re picking them up at Poitiers.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me sooner?’
‘I’ve only just found out. There’s a weak link in your chain.’
‘Do you know where?’
‘No, but I don’t think it’s here, it seems to be further down the line. Nevertheless, if they’ve got one link in the chain they can trace the whole thing. So I’m telling you, my mother is to stop carrying messages and so is Liliane. Don’t argue!’ he roared as she started to protest. ‘Shut down that escape-line and tell Lucien I want to see him.’
He stalked off then, and she knew better than to go after him when he was in that mood.
When Lucien returned from Paris a week later, and she finally got the two of them together, there was another bitter row. In the end Lucien capitulated and told Solange that she wouldn’t be able to run any more errands. Solange meekly agreed, then informed Claudine that she was at her disposal as usual.
‘François is right about the escape-line,’ Lucien said to Claudine later that night, as they stood together just inside the forest at the back of the château, ‘If the Germans have managed to infiltrate it, we have to close it down. The problem is, we have a pilot in Neuville who needs to be moved. He can’t go on, because we think our “weak link” is just beyond Neuville. I suggest we bring him back here for a while. Can we put him in the cottage?’
‘I don’t see why not. For how long?’
‘A few days, no more.’
But it turned out to be a lot longer than that. While the pilot and his guide were on their way back to Lorvoire they ran into a German patrol and were challenged. The guide panicked and pulled out a gun. The pilot followed suit, shot one of the German officers, and in the mêlée that followed the guide was killed. The pilot, by some miracle, managed to escape and make his way into the forest of Fontevraud, where he was picked up by other fugitives who managed to get word to Lucien. What Lucien didn’t discover until he arrived at Fontevraud was that the pilot had been shot in the leg and shoulder. By the time he got him to Lorvoire, the man had lost so much blood that Doctor Lebrun seriously doubted his chances of survival.
The shooting of the German officer had immediate repercussions. Posters were pasted on every wall and lamp-post informing those responsible that if they didn’t come forward, twenty of the prisoners held in the cellars of the Hôtel Boule d’Or would be shot. No one doubted that the threat was real; no one had forgotten what had happened at Nantes and Bordeaux.
Those early days of March were the darkest any of them had known, for many people in Chinon and the surrounding villages had loved-ones in the German cells. Most were there for crimes as petty as breaking curfew or failing to salute a German officer, but the Germans had not yet named those who were to be shot. Neighbour suspected neighbour; fights broke out on the street as prisoners’ relatives accused lifelong friends of harbouring the culprit.
For Claudine and Lucien the dilemma was terrible. The pilot, Squadron Leader Jack Bingham, remained unconscious, and the idea of handing him over to the Gestapo was utterly abhorrent. But so too was the prospect of seeing innocent men go to their deaths.
In the end Claudine turned to François for help. As she expected, he was furious even to be told that she had the pilot in their cottage, and that Monique and Estelle were nursing him round the clock didn’t please him either. Nevertheless, two days after she told him, the threatening notices started to come down. How he managed to achieve this François refused to tell her; he wasn’t proud of the fact that he had turned the Germans’ attention to a group of Communist Résistants he knew to be planning the sabotage of a train out of Tours sometime during the next week. The man they were looking for, he told his colleagues, was with them.
The FTP did sabotage the train, and managed to secure themselves hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel bound for Germany. Their success was due to the fact that they struck a day before the Germans expected them to, and further back on the line, near Chemille.
François hadn’t tipped them off; he was fairly certain the informer was a cleaning woman at the Château d’Artigny, who had been sweeping outside his office when he told his fellow-officers of the FTP plan. He was grateful to her for doing it – but the FTP coup also filled him with a gnawing dread. He would have a lot of questions to answer when he met von Liebermann in Vichy. This was just the sort of incident that would prompt the General to start moving the pieces again in his iniquitous game of human chess.
The very next day François was ordered to present himself at the Hôtel Louis XV in Vichy the following Wednesday, at fifteen hundred hours precisely.
Halunke watched from the grime-covered windows of the fishing hut. At the moment there was nothing to see, but he knew that de Lorvoire and his wife were on the point of leaving old Thomas’ hut. It was Tuesday morning, the day before François was due to go to Vichy, and though Halunke had managed to overhear very little of their conversation, he knew that de Lorvoire had told his wife a lie. He had told her that he was meeting von Liebermann at nine o’clock in the morning. There was probably a good reason for the lie, and Halunke was fairly certain he knew what it was, but it didn’t concern him. All that concerned him was that von Liebermann had given his authorization for another strike while de Lorvoire was away – and de Lorvoire was leaving at noon.
Halunke jerked his head back from the window as the door to the next hut opened and de Lorvoire came out. A few minutes later Claudine followed, by which time de Lorvoire had already disappeared into the tunnel leading back to the château’s inner cellar. Careless of him to have left her alone like that, Halunke mused, but of course she always carried a gun, and she certainly knew how to use it. She hadn’t brought her horse today, which meant that as she started back through the forest, Halunke was able to follow. He kept at a safe distance all the way, and not once did she turn round – which surprised him, given that curious sixth sense of hers. When she reached the meadow in front of the châuteau, Halunke stayed in the forest, circled the meadow under cover of the trees, made the steep climb to the back of the château and waited.
Half an hour later he heard de Lorvoire drive off, and not long after that Claudine came out onto the bridge, looked around, then started the trek to the cottage. Again Halunke followed.
‘Are you sure you don’t mind staying on?’ Claudine said, wiping down the table in the kitchen and glancing over her shoulder at Monique.
‘No, of course I don’t,’ Monique answered, sitting back in the chair she had pulled up to Jack Bingham’s bedside, ‘I like sitting here with him. It’s restful.’
‘I imagine it is,’ Claudine said, with some irony. ‘He’s still unconscious.’
‘But improving,’ Monique reminded her.
Claudine started drying the few dishes she and Monique had used for their lunch. ‘Are you warm enough?’ she said, shivering suddenly. ‘There’s not much wood on the fire. Shall I put some more on for you?’
‘Yes, please.’ Monique leaned over the pilot and tucked the blankets closer round his face. ‘He’s American, you know,’ she said.
‘American?’ Claudine turned round in surprise. ‘But he’s an RAF pilot.’
‘That doesn’t preclude him from being an American, does it?’ Monique smiled. ‘I found a letter from his mother in his wallet, she lives in a place called Missouri. And look, he’s got a photograph of his wife and three children too.’
Claudine took the small, disinte
grating snapshot and stared at the laughing faces of Bingham’s family. Then suddenly she shivered again. This time she cast a nervous glance towards the window, but there was nothing to see.
Monique was looking at the pilot again, and Claudine watched as she stroked a wisp of fair hair from his forehead. It was odd, Claudine thought, how she hadn’t noticed his looks before, perhaps because he had been so deathly pale when he arrived. But now that a little colour had returned to his cheeks she could see that he was really quite handsome in, come to think of it, an extremely American way. Her eyes moved to Monique’s face, and immediately her heart sank.
François had talked to Monique, some time ago now, about her feelings for Lucien. Exactly what he had said Claudine wasn’t sure, but he had seemed satisfied with the way the conversation had gone. Now however, seeing Monique gaze so adoringly at Jack, Claudine was very much afraid that François had not managed to get through to her at all.
‘Monique,’ she said softly.
Monique looked up, and her wide amber eyes seemed so innocent in her fragile white face that it was all Claudine could do to make herself go on. ‘Monique,’ she said again, perching on the edge of the bed and taking her hand. ‘He’s married, chérie.’
‘I know,’ Monique answered, smiling.
‘When he’s well he will have to return to his family, or to the war.’
‘Yes, I know that too.’ Then squeezing Claudine’s hands, she said, ‘Don’t worry. It’s only concern I feel.’ She turned to look at him. ‘And perhaps gratitude.’
‘Gratitude?’
Monique nodded. ‘He was there to listen and not judge when I needed to talk.’ She laughed quietly. ‘I’ve told him about Lucien, and about all the men I’ve … Well, it doesn’t matter now, it’s in the past. But François made me see how misguided I had been, how there had been no need to search so desperately for love just to convince myself I didn’t want Lucien in the way I thought I did. Of course, Jack couldn’t hear what I was saying, but it helps sometimes to speak things aloud, don’t you think?’
Claudine smiled, then leaned forward to kiss Monique’s forehead. ‘Estelle should be here soon,’ she said, picking up her coat and checking her pocket for the gun. ‘Doctor Lebrun said he would stop by later, too. Invite him to join us for dinner this evening, will you?’
‘Will anyone else be there?’
‘Besides us, only Blomberg.’
Monique grinned. ‘What a pity François won’t be there. I so enjoy the way Blomberg squirms every time he brings up the subject of German culture. I’m sure François does it on purpose.’
‘Well, the Colonel can rest easy tonight,’ Claudine said, laughing.
‘If you can call putting up with you, resting easy,’ Monique remarked. ‘You’re as bad as François. And the way you look at him sometimes, Claudine, is enough to make anyone think you’d just scraped him off the bottom of your shoe.’
Again Claudine laughed, and Monique watched her as she buttoned her coat and pulled her fur hat down over her ears. ‘Did something happen between you and Blomberg, Claudine,’ she said carefully. ‘Something you haven’t told me about?’
‘The short answer is yes,’ Claudine answered. ‘Please don’t ask for the long one, and don’t mention it to François either.’
‘I won’t if you don’t want me to, but François asked me that very question himself just after he came back from Germany. I couldn’t help wondering at the time why he didn’t ask you.’
‘He did, but I didn’t give him a straight answer.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he would have taken matters into his own hands – and I’m determined to deal with Blomberg myself, the very minute the opportunity presents itself.’
‘You’re a mean woman, Claudine,’ Monique grinned.
Claudine pointed her fingers at Monique like a gun and made a firing noise. Then, smiling, she let herself out into the forest.
In the little clearing outside the cottage, the sun was bright, making her eyes water. She took a deep breath of the crisp autumn air, slid her hand into her pocket to take firm hold of the gun, and set off into the trees.
She had gone only a few steps when she heard something behind her. In one movement she whipped out the gun and spun round, her nerves like needles and her heart in her throat. Then she saw that it was Lucien, standing at the other side of the clearing. She was about to shout at him for making her jump when Estelle walked out from behind him.
Imagine, Claudine thought as she turned back into the forest, shy little Estelle flirting with Lucien! But then she no longer found it quite so amusing. Armand had had a lot of bad luck where women were concerned, and Lucien had plenty of women fawning after him without having to add Estelle to their number.
She tried to concentrate on this as she walked on through the trees; anything to keep her mind away from the terrible misgivings she had about François’ visit to Vichy, and to dispel the sense of uncase that had started just after she left Thomas’ hut that morning. But her hand on the gun was as tight as the tension in her head. He was back, she knew it. She could feel his eyes on her as surely as she could hear her own voice humming its tuneless melody.
She took the gun out of her pocket and quickened her pace. She should go back, ask Lucien to walk her to the château, but her feet kept moving her deeper into the forest. Everything was so still, not even a breeze moved the branches above her.
Suddenly she slipped in the mud, and as she righted herself a bird fluttered from a branch. She jerked the gun upwards and fired. Then, hearing footsteps behind her, she swung round, both hands on the gun. Again she squeezed the trigger, but there was nothing there. Something slithered in the undergrowth, only feet away. She jerked the gun towards it, slipped and fell. Another bird flew screeching from a tree, and she fired, the din of it drowning the beating drum in her head. Terrified, she pulled herself to her feet, her eyes hunting the shadows. Then suddenly she knew that someone was there, standing behind her. She turned. She tried to fire, but her hands were shaking. She looked up into his face and then her legs buckled under her. ‘Armand,’ she choked. ‘Oh, Armand!’
‘Were you expecting someone else?’ he said, putting a hand under her arm to help her up and apparently quite unruffled by the fact that she had almost shot him.
‘He’s back!’ she sobbed. ‘Armand, he’s here. I know it. I can feel it.’ She looked up into his face, and suddenly her eyes dilated. ‘Armand, why are you looking at me like that?’ she cried.
‘Ssh!’ he hissed.
Then she heard it too. Someone running. They spun round as Lucien came racing through the trees.
‘What is it?’ he cried. ‘What’s happening? I heard a shot …’ He looked at Claudine’s white face, then at the gun hanging limply in her hand.
‘It’s all right,’ Armand told him. ‘No one’s been hurt.’
‘But what happened, for God’s sake!’
‘It’s Halunke,’ Claudine interrupted. ‘He’s back.’
Lucien’s eyes shot to Armand, and Claudine turned to look at him too. Then she moved her gaze to Lucien, and in that instant, as she stared up at their strikingly handsome faces, the world around them started to spin. The gun slipped from her fingers and there was a terrible cacophony in her ears. She covered them with her hands, shaking her head as the two faces seemed to whirl about her, faster and faster, ballooning and shrivelling, writhing and twisting. And through it all the long-forgotton words of the old fairground gypsy returned to her.
She started to back away. She stumbled, picked herself up, then turned and ran. She could hear them coming after her, shouting her name, their voices drowning the terrible words in her head. ‘… He will be like a brother,’ the old woman had said. ‘Or perhaps it will be his brother.’
– 30 –
THE REASON FRANÇOIS had lied to Claudine about the time he was expected at Vichy was because he had promised to spend the night with Elise. She was now living in the uppe
r two storeys of a town house in Montbazon, overlooking the river Indre, which he had taken for her and Béatrice soon after returning to Lorvoire. The house was forty kilometres from Lorvoire, but little more than a stone’s throw from the Château d’Artigny.
When he arrived in the middle of the afternoon, letting himself in with his own key, it was to find Béatrice sitting alone knitting and looking every bit the middle-aged woman she was. How deceptive appearances could be, he thought wryly. Béatrice was as dangerous as her Secret Service name suggested: the Alligator, they had called her.
‘It’s good to see you, monsieur.’ She smiled warmly, setting aside her needles. ‘We weren’t expecting you until a little later. Élise is taking a nap. I’ll fetch some coffee.’
‘How is she?’ François asked when she returned a few minutes later. He took a sip of coffee, and could not hide his distaste. ‘Acorns?’ he said.
‘All there is, I’m afraid,’ Béatrice laughed. ‘Revolting, isn’t it?’ She took up her knitting again. ‘Élise is much the same. There has been no real change.’
‘Has anyone called recently?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ Béatrice sighed.
François’ face darkened. He jerked himself to his feet and walked to the window.
They had been in Montbazon only three weeks when Béatrice first told him that Abwehr officers were paying calls again on a regular basis. François had been livid, but Béatrice had begged for tolerance. Debasing as it was, she told him, Élise needed to do it. It was all part of the fantasy that gave her a reason for living: the services she performed for the Germans were to persuade them to enter into a plot to kill Claudine. If it wasn’t so pathetic, François thought bitterly, gazing down at the people milling about on the bridge below, it would be laughable.