by Susan Lewis
After that, it had been quiet. Then, an hour or more ago, there had been some kind of commotion at the other end of the passage – footsteps up and down the stone steps, heavy whispers and the clanging of doors. She wondered where Yves and Thomas were being held, and her heart filled with pity for the two old men who had been drawn into this horrifying web of revenge.
She still had no idea what motivated Armand. Certainly he hated her for the way he felt she had treated him, but there was something else, something darker and deeper. She had been nothing more than an instrument of his revenge – but how he must have enjoyed it that François de Lorvoire’s wife had given herself to him so willingly! And her usefulness as a means of inflicting pain on François was certainly not exhausted yet. She would be tortured, and François, when he heard of it, would find that even more insupportable than his own sufferings at the hands of the Abwehr.
She tensed suddenly. In the distance she heard a door open and close, a heavy, echoing tread in the stone passage outside. She knew, even before the bolts were scraped back on her door, that they were coming for her.
The door creaked open, and only then did she hear the other, lighter footsteps. The uniformed guard snapped at her to get up, and obediently she forced her aching legs to move. She could smell the foul odour of her clothes as she unwound her arms and dragged her head from the pillow, and once again her stomach was gripped with nausea.
‘You may remain seated,’ a voice barked as she started to pull herself to her feet, and looking up, she saw her interrogators standing at the door. There was no mistaking the Gestapo, she thought grimly, in their black Homburg hats and leather overcoats.
Now that fear was starting to pump adrenalin through her body, she was feeling stronger. She watched as the man who had spoken to her clicked his fingers at his companion, and pointed to a spot beside the bed. Immediately a chair was produced, and the guard bolted the door.
Claudine studied the face of the man who sat down beside her. His skin was pale and slightly pockmarked, his eyes a translucent blue and his mouth a narrow band of concentration. There was no hint of the brutishness she had expected to see, but there was no trace of compassion either.
He smiled, revealing an ugly gap in his front teeth. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you are the Comtesse de Lorvoire. I have heard a great deal about you, madame.’
She said nothing, and he smiled again. Then they both turned as the grid in the door scraped open and the guard’s face appeared.
‘Everything is ready, Herr Schmidt.’
The grid remained open and Schmidt’s companion went to stand beside it. Schmidt folded his arms, crossed one leg casually over the other and said, ‘Léopard.’
Claudine stared at him.
‘All you have to tell us, madame, is Léopard’s identity and the location of his camp. Then you may go home.’
Claudine was astonished. Surely Armand had already told them all about Lucien? And as for going home, the circumstances of her arrest proved she was a Résistante, and Résistants were never released – unless of course they turned collaborator.
‘I should tell you, madame,’ Schmidt continued, ‘that you will make it much easier on your vigneron if you co-operate.’
Her eyes narrowed for an instant, then she smiled. They were simply trying to throw her off the scent. Well, let them go ahead with their macabre pantomime. Unless she saw Armand suffer with her own eyes, she wasn’t buying it.
‘I repeat, madame,’ Schmidt said affably, ‘Léopard’s identity and the location of his camp, if you please.’
Claudine’s face was expressionless as she gazed back at him.
Schmidt cast a look at his accomplice, who nodded to the guard. A few moments later she heard Armand scream.
She flinched, and waited for the echo to die away before turning back to Schmidt. She was on the point of telling him that she was not convinced, when she stopped. If she let them know that she knew who Armand really was, they would undoubtedly abandon this farce and subject her to a much more personal method of torture.
‘We know, madame,’ Schmidt said, ‘that you are in regular contact with Léopard. So please, think of your vigneron and tell us where we can find him.’
Her silence brought another scream of pain from the adjacent cell. Schmidt looked at her expectantly, but when she still remained silent he scratched his nose and said, ‘Perhaps I should tell you exactly what my colleagues are doing to your vigneron.’ He raised his eyebrows questioningly, and she did the same. ‘They are removing his teeth,’ he said bluntly.
Claudine suppressed a shudder and reminded herself that this was all a sham.
‘All right,’ Schmidt sighed, uncrossing his legs. ‘Let’s talk about the destination of the British agents who landed outside Brossay the other night. Where were you intending to take them?’
‘Home,’ Claudine answered.
‘Ah, a joke. Very amusing. Shall we see if your vigneron, your ex-lover, is entertained by your misguided sense of humour?’
Armand’s cry howled through the cells. Claudine visibly blanched as she heard him cough and splutter, as though choking on his own blood.
‘Where were you taking them!’ Schmidt barked.
‘Nowhere!’ she shouted back.
‘Where were you taking them?’
‘Nowhere!’
Armand screamed again.
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know!’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know!’
Armand’s agony bounced from the walls. The noise was unbearable, Claudine covered her ears.
‘Names and addresses!’
‘I don’t know!’
It went on like that, a steady crescendo of interrogation, denial, agony. The screams became inhuman. Scream after scream after scream, a never-ending explosion of noise.
At last Schmidt stood up. ‘You have until five o’clock this afternoon to tell us what we want to know,’ he said, looking down at Claudine’s bowed head, ‘If you do not tell us, the vigneron will be shot.’
The door swung open and he left. The other man stayed, no doubt to await her confession. But shaken as she was, her resolve was as firm now as it had been when they began. She hadn’t been taken in, not even for a moment. It was all a farce! Why else were they torturing him in another cell? And nothing short of seeing Armand drop before the firing squad would convince her now that he wasn’t Halunke.
Helber was standing just inside the door of François’ hotel room. François himself was seated in a winged armchair near the window, his head almost imperceptibly bowed. Helber was watching de Lorvoire’s face very closely. It gave nothing away, but Helber knew he was on extremely dangerous ground now, for he had just informed de Lorvoire of his wife’s arrest.
If he had been able to look inside François’ mind he would have seen the final pieces of an almost complete jigsaw being fitted into the unholy pattern that made up Halunke’s revenge – until the only piece missing was the one that gave Halunke his motive. Only that piece would tell François for certain whether his suspicion was correct. It was a suspicion that had taken root in his mind some time ago now; a suspicion so abhorrent, so devastating, that he had refused to give it the nourishment of thought.
At last he turned to look up at Helber, almost paralysing him with his terrible eyes. Helber could feel the hatred as though it were twisting round his neck. After a while François spoke. ‘You say my brother was arrested too?’
‘And your vigneron.’
François turned to stare sightlessly at the bed where his luggage was piled ready for his departure. Then, in his deep steady voice he said, ‘It’s one of them isn’t it?’
Helber nodded.
There was a long, asphyxiating silence. ‘How do I know I can trust you?’ François said.
‘You have no choice,’ Helber answered. ‘But I give you my word I will tell you.’
François threw him a look of such violent loathing that Helber
’s pulsating erection momentarily lost its urgency. ‘And if I tell you that I am not prepared to do what you want, you will remind me that you are holding my wife?’
Helber only looked at him.
François stood up, towering monstrously over Helber’s plump little body. ‘Then we’d best get on with it,’ he said, and turned to pull the curtains, shutting the daylight from the room.
Twenty minutes later François emerged, fully clothed, from the bathroom. His face was strained, his mouth compressed with loathing. Helber was sitting on the edge of the tousled bed, still naked, and to François’ unutterable disgust the man’s flabby penis started to respond to his presence. His eyes bored into Helber’s, and Helber knew that if de Lorvoire’s wife had not been in captivity, his genitals would have undergone a very different experience from the one they just had. As it was the ravishment of François de Lorvoire’s body, inanimate as it had remained throughout, had surpassed all expectation. Helber’s only regret was that it would never happen again.
François picked up his luggage and moved it to the door. He wasn’t sure why von Liebermann, using Helber as his messenger, had decided to tell him now who Halunke was, but he could guess. He had long outlived his usefulness to the Abwehr, so the execution order he had been expecting must have arrived. Which could only mean that von Liebermann wanted to bring Halunke’s revenge to its climax.
He turned to face Helber. Helber looked up at him, and every cell in François’ body suddenly recoiled from hearing the word Helber was about to speak. It was unthinkable that Halunke should be either of them, but worst of all was that it should be Lucien. Why should he, why should either of them, feel the need to exact such a terrible revenge? What in God’s name had he done?
Then, from the darkest corner of his mind, a terrible flame of suspicion suddenly roared like the inferno of hell. It was as though Erich von Pappen were standing there in the room with him, telling him that it was all because of Hortense de Bourchain’s death. And if that was true … But it couldn’t be! Lucien could not possibly have inflicted the kind of mutilation Élise had suffered; he could never have gunned von Pappen down in cold blood, terrorized his own family – killed his own father.
But he had, Helber had just confirmed it.
– 32 –
BLOMBERG WAS CONTEMPLATING a map of Touraine, propped on an easel in front of him, when Hans knocked on his office door. Scowling, Blomberg barked admittance, but when he saw who was standing on the threshold his face visibly brightened. ‘Ah, Madame la Comtesse,’ he said, ‘come in. Thank you, Hans, you may go.’
Claudine took a few paces into the room and stopped. The only colour in her face, apart from the caked blood and dirt along her hairline, was the blueish-black of the swelling over her left eye, where the German soldier had hit her with the butt of his rifle the night she was captured. Her jacket had been taken away from her before she entered the room, and now she wore only her jodhpurs, boots and a thick sweater. She smelt dirty and stale, and her hair fell in matted strands about her shoulders.
Blomberg walked to his desk and sat down, not taking his eyes off her for a moment. Beneath her feet, sunlight dappled the thick blue carpet, and particles of dust floated in the rays that streamed across her body. The room was long and airy, and the tall windows behind her looked out onto gardens which sloped in tiers down to the River Indre.
Claudine knew where she was; they had driven through the outskirts of Montbazon to get here. Of course she might have guessed, when they’d come to get her from her cell an hour ago, that they were bringing her here – to the Château d’Artigny, to Blomberg – but weary and worn down as she was, she hadn’t really cared where they were taking her.
She had lain awake all the previous night, too numb to think beyond the gnawing pangs of her hunger. Just before five in the afternoon they had come to take Armand from his cell. Schmidt had been with her then, giving her the chance, right up to the last, to change her mind and talk. But she had remained silent, still not for one minute believing that any of it was real.
The firing squad had assembled in the yard above her cell, so she had heard every command, every footstep – and every shot. She was too tired even to be amused by the lengths they were going to to convince her that Armand was paying the price of her silence. Though the gunfire, when it came, had shaken her. But not enough to shatter her resolve, and when Schmidt finally left her he had told her not to make the mistake of believing her ordeal was over.
In the hours that followed she had tried to close her ears to the sickening sounds of torture going on in cells around her. She knew she must try to sleep because she would need all the strength she could muster to face her own when it came. But every time she closed her eyes, the sounds of gunfire seemed to echo mercilessly through her brain. It wasn’t that she believed they had shot Armand; on the contrary, to her the sound meant that he had been released – and now there was nothing and no one to stop him, because no one, apart from her, knew who he was. She had wept for a while, feeling like a child and longing for the comfort and safety of François’ arms. But she wasn’t going to give the Germans the satisfaction of seeing her weakness, so she had let the tears dry on her cheeks and lain quietly on the bed, praying that François would come …
Blomberg’s scrutiny continued. His desk was at the other end of the room, beneath a massive portrait of the Führer, and despite the ache in her neck she held her head high as she regarded him, not bothering to hide her repugnance.
‘Come forward,’ he said eventually.
Keeping her eyes defiantly on his, she walked towards the desk.
‘Good,’ he said, his protuberant bottom lip trembling as he smiled. He dropped the pen he was holding and sat back in his chair. Then, taking a sheet of paper from the drawer in front of him, he put it on the desk and said, ‘Herr Schmidt informs me that you do not believe we have shot the vigneron.’
Claudine’s nostrils flared over an insolent smile.
‘Perhaps you will tell me why you refuse to believe this?’ he said, folding his hands over his belly.
‘I’m not a fool.’ she said, biting out the words.
‘Perhaps not. But I must inform you that you are gravely mistaken in your refusal to believe he was shot.’
‘I’ll believe it when you show me the body.’
Blomberg sucked his bottom lip thoughtfully. ‘Would I be correct in thinking that you suspect him to be the man who is avenging himself on your husband?’
Now how would they know that, she thought, unless Armand had told them? ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t suspect it. I know it.’
Blomberg’s body rocked back and forth as he nodded. ‘You seem very certain, madame. Are you equally certain of your husdand’s fidelity? That Monsieur le Comte puts your safety above all else? That he loves you, madame?’
Her eyes darted to his. ‘Yes,’ she said carefully, wondering what this could possibly have to do with anything.
‘I see.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘And if I were to tell you,’ he continued, raising his head until his malicious eyes connected with hers, ‘that for the past ten months your husband has been regularly visiting his mistress, Élise Pascale, who now resides in a house he has leased for her in Montbazon, what would you say then?’
‘I would say you were lying,’ Claudine snapped.
‘But I am not lying,’ Blomberg smiled pleasantly. ‘And I shall prove it.’
She stared at him. Weak with hunger as she was, her legs began to tremble with the effort of holding her steady.
‘Your husband told you, did he not,’ Blomberg continued, ‘that his rendezvous in Vichy was at nine o’clock in the morning. It was a lie, I’m afraid.’ He leaned forward and pushed the sheet of paper across the desk. ‘There is the memorandum instructing him to present himself at three in the afternoon, six hours later than he told you. He lied so that he could spend an uninterrupted night with his mistress. Oh dear, you look a little shaken. Would you like to si
t down, madame?’
Claudine glared at him, inwardly struggling to fight back the panic – and persuade herself that it was only tiredness that was making her react like this.
‘Suit yourself,’ Blomberg shrugged. ‘But maybe you will change your mind when I tell you that not long after your husband arrived at Élise Pascale’s house, on the afternoon when you supposed him to be travelling to Vichy, Élise Pascale informed him of our intention to arrest you. She knew, because I had told her myself. Your husband had ample opportunity then to return home and try to prevent it happening, but as you know, madame, he continued on to Vichy. Now, are you still as firm in your belief that your husband loves you?’
She wished her head would stop spinning, then she would be able to think. As it was, tears were welling in her eyes, bitter, desperate tears. But she wouldn’t listen to him. He was lying. François would never …
‘No, of course you aren’t,’ Blomberg answered for her. ‘So now I return to the matter of Armand St Jacques, though I am sure it must have already occurred to you, madame, that you may have made a terrible mistake there too.’
Everything inside her suddenly froze. Her lips were parted to scream the denial, but nothing came out. She mustn’t listen to him. She must trust her instincts, and every instinct in her body screamed that he was lying. Why, then, was she suddenly so afraid?
Blomberg got up from his chair and walked round his desk. ‘I see you are not quite so sure of yourself now, madame,’ he said, his little round eyes gleaming with pleasure. ‘What is more, you appear to have mislaid that arrogance I find so offensive. And what has happened, I wonder, to that acerbic tongue? The one you used with such contempt when addressing me, an officer of the Reich. Perhaps you do not feel so superior now. Perhaps you are beginning to understand what it means to ridicule a German officer. You surely didn’t think you were going to get away with it, did you?’