The Brightest Day

by Christopher Nicole

  “You did not miss anything,” Liane told him when she returned. “He’s a pompous bore. But he gave me this.” The cross of the Legion d’honneur was pinned to her bodice.

  “Oh, that’s lovely!” Amalie cried. “Do I get one too?”

  “We’ll have to work on that. Now, James, I have something to show you.” She took them to her apartment. The concierge remembered her and gave her the key. “Is it all right?” she asked. “Up there?”

  “It is fine, mademoiselle. I cleaned it up myself. There is no sign of, well… anything unpleasant. You will find it exactly as it was, well, before you had to leave.”

  “I am quite scared,” she confessed to James and Amalie as they went up the stairs. “Even if…” She unlocked the door, hesitated and then went in.

  “It even smells sweet,” Amalie said, prowling through the rooms. “Where did it happen? Where did you kill Biedermann?”

  “In the bedroom.” Liane watched her hurry off. “She won’t find anything.”

  James took her in his arms. “But here is where it all began.”

  “Well… I suppose it really began on the day I drove you and Pierre and Henri Burstein up to the border.”

  “With Joanna.”

  “With Joanna. James, you will find out what happened to her?”

  “I’ll try.” He hesitated, and she smiled.

  “But I think it all began the night before, when we slept together for the first time. I don’t think, without that, anything else would have happened.”

  “You’re going to marry me.”

  She made a move. “I am known as a professional killer. I have been a whore. And I have had a lesbian lover. Do you think you can turn me into a housewife?”

  “It’ll be fun trying. Now, my darling, I simply have to contact London, let them know I’m alive and get instructions on what I do next.”

  “They’ll want you back there.”

  “Probably. But you’ll come with me. I think you should meet the brigadier, and there may even be another gong in it.”

  “Um. But there is someone we must see first. Constance.”

  “Ah.”

  “She has been a faithful friend for four years. She has operated the Paris part of the Route for your evaders.”

  “And you trust her.”

  “Of course I do.” She frowned. “Why should I not?”

  “Well… she didn’t seem too happy about my turning out all Paris to rescue you, so when I left the brothel last Saturday afternoon, I tied her to the attic bed.”

  “My God! That was three days’ ago. She’ll be splitting mad.” “I’m sure the girls will have released her by now.”

  “She’ll still be angry. Listen, you will come with me, and we’ll make it up with her. We’ll invite her to our wedding. She’ll like that.”

  *

  Amalie preferred to stay in the flat and wallow in luxury. Liane and James made their way through the still hysterical crowds, James having his back slapped and his hands wrung time and again and Liane being repeatedly hugged and kissed. They felt quite exhausted by the time they reached the brothel, which stood stark and lonely as always and apparently deserted. “It is always like this in the middle of the afternoon,” Liane explained. “It is when they sleep.” She went up the steps and rang the bell, and again.

  The bolt rasped and the door swung in. “We are closed,” Marguerite said. “Go—” she gazed at Liane and her jaw dropped.

  “Didn’t you expect us to come back?” Liane asked.

  Marguerite had closed her mouth. Now it opened again. “Go,” she whispered. “Quickly. Run! Colonel Roess—”

  She was wrenched away from the door and sent sprawling across the floor. Then the door was slammed to, but James had stepped past Liane and hurled his shoulder against it, and it struck him and swung back in. Off balance, he fell forward, behind Marguerite, which probably saved his life, as a pistol exploded and the bullet slammed into the wall above his head.

  “James!” Liane screamed, unsure whether he had been hit. But James had drawn his revolver and returned fire, blind as his eyes were not accustomed to the gloom. As he did so, he rolled across the floor.

  “Keep clear!” he shouted.

  But Liane was already inside, slamming the door behind her and throwing herself full length beside Marguerite, who was now screaming herself. The man behind the door had been sent staggering by James’ charge, but now he recovered his balance and fired again several times. James felt the impact of a bullet striking him, but there was no immediate pain. Yet when he attempted to fire he could not squeeze the trigger. Only dimly he heard the sound of more shots, and then Liane was cradling him in her arms. “James,” she said. “James.”

  “Who… who was that?” he whispered.

  “A man called Marach. A Gestapo officer.”

  “Here?”

  Liane looked at Marguerite, who was getting to her hands and knees.

  “He came with Roess.”

  “Where is Roess?”

  “Upstairs.”

  Liane looked at the stairs, which remained empty. “Help me,” she said.

  Marguerite was a big, strong woman, and between them they half lifted, half dragged James to the office.

  “Listen,” he said. “Marach—”

  “Is dead.” Liane closed and locked the door, and they laid James on the floor. Liane tore open his shirt, sucking breath between her teeth.

  “How bad?” he asked.

  “There is no air. Your lungs are all right, but it is not good. We have to bind this up, Marguerite, until we can get a doctor.”

  “But we have nothing.”

  “Take off your dress and tear it into strips.” Liane took off her own shirt and set an example.

  “Listen,” James said. And then gasped as the pain began.

  “I know,” she said. “Marguerite, Madame Constance keeps a bottle of brandy in her desk. You stay here with Major Barron and feed him, a little at a time. You say Roess is upstairs? How many men are with him?”

  “There is no one with him, mademoiselle. There was only Captain Marach.”

  “And where is Madame Constance? Upstairs with Roess?”

  “Madame Constance is dead, mademoiselle. Roess shot her in front of me, in front of the girls. It was to frighten us into obeying him.”

  “And he succeeded. Now James—”

  “You must get help,” James muttered.

  “To deal with Roess? That is a pleasure I have promised myself for too long. I will soon be back. And then we will get help for you.”

  “Liane…”

  She blew him a kiss and closed the door behind herself.

  *

  She knew that Roess and everyone in the house had to have heard the shots, and indeed she was aware of a stealthy rustle of sound from above her. But no one was venturing on to the stairs… as yet, because only a few moments had passed since the exchange. She checked her magazine; there were three shots left. Hastily she crossed the hall and picked up Marach’s gun. He had only fired twice and had nine cartridges left. She tucked the pistol into her waistband and looked up the stairs. Once she started climbing, she was totally exposed. But there was also the service staircase, used by the girls to take their clients up to the bedrooms. There too she would be exposed, but even Roess could not watch them both at the same time, and they were some distance apart.

  Much would depend on how many of the girls had survived and whose side they would be on. Although she had used the house regularly throughout the War and had even serviced the clients from time to time in her search for information, she did not know any of the girls, other than Constance herself, at all well. She did know that they had resented her presence, both on account of her superior brains and beauty, the way Constance had always treated her as someone different and superior and, above all, as they knew who she was, as someone whose presence meant danger for them all. On the other hand, they had to know that Roess was a fugitive, living on b
orrowed time. They were not stupid.

  She opened the door to the reception room, which was empty, returned to the hall and fired a single shot up the stairs. She listened to some crashing and shrieks, and darted through the reception room to the second staircase. This she took in a series of leaps before realizing that there was someone at the top, half hidden in the shadows, panting. It was Claudine. “Not a sound,” Liane whispered.

  “But…” She had obviously been placed there as a sentry. “He will kill me.”

  “Go downstairs,” Liane told her and moved along the corridor. At the far end, Louise was also on sentry duty. She turned to look at her and uttered a shriek. Instantly, the door of Constance’s own bedroom opened. Liane fired three times and then her bolt clicked on the empty chamber. The sound was loud enough to reach the bedroom, and the door swung open to reveal Roess, his lips drawn back in a wolfish snarl.

  “Well, mademoiselle,” he said. “No more bullets? That was careless of you. But then, you are only a woman.” Liane dropped her empty gun. “Now I am going to send you where I sent your sister. I watched her die, you know, drowning in a bath of ice-cold water. Oh, it was a petty sight.” He levelled his gun. “In the gut, I think. The womb.”

  Liane threw herself to one side, at the same time drawing Marach’s pistol and firing three times. There was a chorus of screams from the girls as Roess fell to his knees, half turned away from her by the impact of the shots. He was gasping and bleeding from three wounds, one in his arm and two in his body, but she could see that none of them was fatal. She went forward and stood above him, surrounded now by the girls.

  “Bitch,” Roess gasped. “Bitch from hell.”

  “Where you are going,” she said and shot him in the stomach. “From Madeleine,” she said.

  He gave a shriek and drew up his legs.

  Liane used her toe to roll him on to his back and shot him in the groin. “That is for Amalie, four years ago.”

  Another shriek, but now he was dying. Liane shot him in the head. “And that is for France.”

  *

  “Oh, sir! Is it really true?” Rachel threw both arms round the brigadier’s neck and hugged him.

  “I say, sergeant,” he protested. “Steady on.”

  “But you say the wound is not life threatening. He’s alive. And he’s going to stay alive.”

  “It would appear so, yes.”

  “And he’s coming home?”

  “Within the week. You won’t believe this, but he’s bringing that de Gruchy woman with him. They are both quite heros, you know.”

  “They always were, sir.”

  “Yes. Well, I actually am looking forward to meeting the famous Liane at last. Even if, well…”

  Rachel frowned. “She’s not wounded too?”

  “No, no. But it seems James has married her. A bedside ceremony, what? Isn’t that odd. Now, I must be off.” He bustled through the door.

  Rachel sat behind James’ desk. She felt curiously winded. But hadn’t she always known that James and Liane would marry? If they both survived. And they had done that. So… The door opened. She stared at Joanna.

  “I thought I’d better keep out of sight until that old buzzard left,” Joanna said. “Mrs Hotchkin was giving me a cup of tea.”

  “But you’re alive. And out of Germany. Everybody’s alive. Have you heard about James? And Liane?” Rachel got up and Joanna sat down.

  “Yes,” she said. “Maybe I’ll get to congratulate them some time. I’m going to need those letters of absolution.”

  “Of course. I still have them. Well…”

  They gazed at each other.

  “I’m at the Dorchester,” Joanna said. “Why don’t you shut up shop and come over there with me. We could have lunch. And, well, maybe tea as well.”

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  About the Author

  Alan Savage is one of the many pseudonyms used by Christopher Nicole. Born and raised in Georgetown, Guyana, he later attended colleges in Guyana and in Barbados. He worked for sometime with both the Candian Bankers association and the Royal Bank of Canada before moving to Guernsy in 1957 – where he still currently resides. That same year, he published his first book. Since then Nicole has published over 200 novels and non-fiction work and continues to write to this day.