The Madagaskar Plan

by Guy Saville

  He replaced the receiver.

  “We assumed you’d come here; they’re only minutes away.” He sipped his brandy. “There will be a guilty verdict, Major, and a noose. Personally, I’d rather you rot in prison for the rest of your days, but the law is the law. Whatever reputation you might have had will be ground into dirt. Worth nothing.”

  Burton listened to those final words, the unrestrained thrill of them. “And in the dock, I’ll tell them what you did to Madeleine.”

  “Which was?”

  “You had her murdered.”

  “No. She’s alive.”

  He showed his wedding ring as if it were proof.

  Burton felt a murmur of hope before dismissing it. Cranley was toying with him. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Of course I thought about it. How it would feel—that final, pleading look in her eyes.” Another sip of brandy. “But as I said, I don’t believe in death penalties. They’re too kind. A bullet, or a rope, and it’s done. But a lifetime of torment: that is retribution.”

  “So you sent her to the madhouse?”

  “Is that what they’re saying?” Cranley clapped his leg, the sparkle in his eyes genuine. “One can always rely on the tittle-tattle of society women!”

  “Then where is she?”

  From outside came the sound of an engine.

  Keeping the Browning pointed at Burton, Cranley stepped to the curtains. “The police, two cars.”

  Burton twisted his wrist: just a few more inches.

  “There’s one last thing I have to tell you,” said Cranley, returning to his perch. “Something for you to dwell upon in the months before you choke. The real reason why I couldn’t kill her.” He leaned in close, whispered as he prodded the Browning into Burton’s ribs. “It’s my baby.”

  “You hadn’t touched her in months.”

  “Only an idiot would believe a woman who lived a double life. Every time she returned from your trysts, I visited her room, smelled you on her.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Cranley’s next words emerged with complete assurance: “She never loved you, no matter what she professed. I hope you understand that.”

  Burton tore at the rope. When it didn’t give, he hurled himself forward with such ferocity that the chair toppled over and they smashed into each other. The wood around his stump splintered, allowing him to free his arm. Burton grabbed the tie around his feet, forced it over his boots, and released his legs. Next he reached for the rope that bound his right wrist to the armrest. His stump was useless against the knot.

  Cranley rose. He watched Burton struggle but made no attempt to stop him. “After your telegrams, I had the security improved. The house is locked like a fortress. Even if you could get past this”—he poked the air with the Browning—“you’d have no way out.”

  “It isn’t loaded.”

  Cranley pointed the pistol at Burton and fired. An empty snap. “You’re right: it’s not.” He placed the weapon on the table, his poise unaffected.

  Burton would enjoy beating the confidence out of him. He gave up on the rope and got to his feet, the chair still secured to his arm; its seat caught the backs of his knees, making him stand like a hunchback. He stepped toward Cranley, who made no move to retreat.

  Outside the engines stopped; doors opened and were carefully shut. The click of shoes as men hurried to the house.

  Burton heaved the chair above his head and swung.

  It came crashing down as Cranley slipped out of range. Burton lifted it again and smashed it against the table. On the third blow it broke into pieces, freeing him, though the armrest remained bound to him like a baton. He spun round as Cranley charged.

  Burton toppled onto the table, dragging Cranley with him. They smashed into serving dishes and glasses. There was a burst of crockery; uneaten puddings splattered everywhere. Cranley grabbed a champagne bottle and slammed it down. The impact reverberated through the table, inches from Burton’s skull. The bottle flashed again, now a jagged neck of glass. Burton raised his hand to shield himself, the armrest deflecting the blow. He staggered to stand.

  A fist cracked him in the ribs; then a second, harder punch to the gut, all knuckles.

  Cranley hadn’t learned this at the Colonial Office, thought Burton as the blows continued. Somewhere in his past he’d been a brawler.

  He was lifted up and punched across the table. Slid right over it, falling to the ground on the far side in a cascade of broken plates. His back arched as he dropped next to the fireplace.

  Cranley walked round the table, snatched up the poker, and swiped it theatrically like a rapier. He grasped it in both hands and raised it above his head: no longer a sword but an axe. His mouth was stretched with fury.

  Burton kicked the grate.

  Coals tumbled everywhere, spewing fire across the carpet. The hems of Cranley’s trousers ignited. He dropped the poker and slapped at them till his hands smoked. Burton sought a flameless spot in which to lever himself up. From the hallway came the musical clanging of the doorbell.

  Cranley retreated from the fire to the liquor cabinet and toppled it onto Burton. Alcohol fattened the flames. Burton forced the cabinet off and rolled beneath the table. In front of him was his discarded Browning. He picked it up and searched for his haversack. Across the room, Cranley had reached the door. He produced a master key and grasped the handle.

  Burton saw what was about to happen, screwed himself into a ball. Covered his head.

  There was a throaty noise as if someone had gulped sharply in his ear. Fresh oxygen was sucked into the room, the air sweet and lethal. A wave of fire rolled across the ceiling. The walls and furniture erupted in flames.

  Burton’s face felt like it had been plunged into frying oil. He got to his feet and slammed a clip into the Browning. Cranley had been knocked to the ground by the blast. Burton stood over him and fired an inch from his head. Recocked the hammer.

  “Where is she?”

  “You’ll never find her.”

  He dropped to his knees, pinning Cranley down, and whipped the Browning against his face.

  “Where?” he roared.

  When he received no reply, he struck a second time. A gash spread from Cranley’s brow to his cheekbone, the metal of the pistol coming away sticky. Each new blow was more frenzied and frustrated.

  A pinging. Pieces of the chandelier fired into the room; it jerked from its fitting.

  Burton stuffed the pistol into his waistband, grabbed Cranley by the throat, and dragged him deeper into the room, cocooning them in flames. He twisted the other man’s face into the blazing heat.

  “Last chance,” said Burton. Each word charred his throat.

  “I’d rather burn than let you see her again.”

  “I’ll track her down.”

  “All the records are gone. Immigration, marriage. She never existed—”

  The chandelier plunged from the ceiling. Baubles of molten glass spat everywhere.

  Cranley threw his arms around Burton, clutched him in a tight embrace, and rolled them both into the inferno. Burton’s jacket smoldered around his body, the ferocity of the heat searing his skin. The stink of scorched hair.

  He cracked his head into Cranley’s face and freed himself. A blazing barrier separated them. Through the flames he glimpsed his Browning on the floor, out of reach. Cranley crawled to retrieve it.

  Burton stumbled backward till he found the open door. He took the key from the lock, singeing his fingers, stepped into the hallway, and slammed the door shut. Seconds later Cranley’s fists were pounding on the other side. Burton turned the key and hurled it into the smoke.

  Flames were creeping through the entire house. Burton covered his mouth and groped his way down the stairs, toward the front door. Mrs. Anderson was opening it, yelling in his direction. Three men hurried through: two in police uniforms, the other wearing a trench coat and carrying a tommy gun. Bullets sprayed the walls around him.

  Burton doubled b
ack to the mezzanine level, past a grandfather clock; it clanged crazily as its innards distorted in the heat. There was a pair of windows overlooking the street. He tried the first, found it locked and bolted. Through the glass he saw impenetrable fog, tinged orange; it had shrunk from the house as if it feared being scorched. The other window was similarly barred. Over the crackle of the fire, he heard Mrs. Anderson baying for him; one of the policemen barked orders. And between their voices he caught another: a cry from upstairs.

  For an instant his heart skipped: Cranley had lied, Madeleine was imprisoned somewhere inside the house. Then he realized who he had heard. He scrambled to the main staircase and peered into the gathering smoke.

  Not Madeleine. Alice.

  CHAPTER NINE

  BURTON AND MADELEINE became lovers in a grubby, second-class train compartment. Earlier they had talked themselves empty and decided not to see each other again. Better to end it when the only intimacies were grim tales of their pasts that they had never shared with anyone else and cautious kisses. Madeleine had wept too much to mean it. Through his own tears, Burton agreed with her reasons for the split—and, driving to the station, countered every one. They sat in silence on the train. Burton felt heartsick, pitted. He was thinking about a ruby he’d been given to save a Belgian industrialist from the Afrika Korps’ advance on Stanleyville. He would have traded the gem in an instant to read Madeleine’s mind.

  “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  She rested her hand on his thigh, the movement unconscious; from early on she’d had an easy manner about touching him. At first he relished it; then he grew jealous, until he saw her around other men and realized how proper she was. Her fingers were cold through his trousers. He took her hand to warm it—she resisted briefly—and, when he failed, put it to his mouth and offered his breath. This time she didn’t struggle.

  “I don’t want the train to arrive,” she said. They were due in London by nightfall. Outside, marshland trundled by, the smoky sunlight glittering on the water like tinsel.

  Madeleine took her hand back, hesitated, then twisted to cup his face. Her dress crinkled loudly as she moved. She put her lips to his, tentative at first, before an angry passion took hold. Their tongues met but not like previous times; he understood the abandonment in her, reckless and resigned. When he ran out of breath, Burton stood and stepped to the door. The corridor was empty; some of the overhead lamps had failed. He drew down the blinds and forced Madeleine’s umbrella beneath the handle.

  She had shrugged off her coat, loosened the buttons around her throat; her skin was flushed from her cheeks to her scalp. Madeleine carefully took off her pearl earrings. They kissed again, slipping down on the seats, with their dusty reek and layer of grime. He pressed his body against hers, eased up her dress, his palm catching on the clasp of her stockings. Her thighs encircled him.

  Suddenly, she pushed him away. “What about Alice?”

  It was only in the months that followed that Burton realized the significance of that question; he’d never fallen in love before. But on the train, aware of the heat surging through him, he was unsure how to reply.

  “I won’t leave her,” breathed Madeleine. “Whatever happens, never ask me that.” She spoke those last words in German. He didn’t meet Alice for a long time after.

  In the spring of 1952, Burton followed Madeleine on a trip she took with her husband to Germania. At a café on the Kurfürstendamm, they had discussed everything: her leaving Cranley, the end of Burton’s adventures abroad, finding a home, the life they wanted together, everything except her daughter, perhaps because both were afraid that their hopes might vanish before a five-year-old girl.

  “It’s time you met Alice,” said Madeleine several months later, as they cleared out the attic in the farmhouse.

  Burton had sensed something unspoken in her all day, a stiffness to her good humor. Marriage had taught her to be cautious of sharing thoughts too openly, a habit she wasn’t free of yet.

  “We could have a day out,” he replied, picturing families on the beach, ice creams, normality—that bright overworld that was so foreign to him. “Go to the seaside.”

  “I want her to come here.”

  Burton set down the box he was moving. “That’s not a good idea. Not yet.”

  “One day this will be her home.”

  “What if she says something?”

  “She won’t—she’s too young to understand.”

  “But if she does?”

  Madeleine considered his words. “What’s the worst that could happen? There’s a scandal, people gossip. The Jewish maid is used to that.”

  “It’s not right that he finds out that way.”

  But Burton relented and on the morning of Alice’s first visit had gone to the local village to buy sticky buns and the linzer tortes that were colonizing bakeries throughout the country. It seemed the duty of every Briton to carp about them even as they consumed the cakes in vast quantities. Later the three of them sat at the kitchen table, divided by teacups. Maybe it was because he sensed so much of Madeleine in her, but Burton was surprised to find a burl of affection for the girl; he wanted to befriend her. She sat tight to her mother, swinging her legs, in a velvet dress that looked more expensive than every stitch Burton owned. She kept her hands fastened together, her eyes darting at the peeling window frames and ramshackle furniture, nose twitching at the damp. With Madeleine’s encouragement, he managed to coax a few words from her.

  When Burton was alone again, he threw away the leftover tea things. Alice hadn’t inherited her mother’s sweet tooth and had ignored the cakes, apart from a squeak of horror when a bluebottle settled on the icing. How much simpler it would be, he thought, if Madeleine didn’t have a child.

  A coldness swilled in him. He wondered whether his mother had ever felt the same way.

  * * *

  The policeman with the tommy gun emerged from the blaze in the hallway, Mrs. Anderson at his side.

  She pointed at Burton. “That’s him.”

  Burton toppled the grandfather clock across the stairs to bar the way—a din of crashing cogs and chimes—then raced up the main staircase, into the smoke. A breath later and the air was fiery, mountain-thin, like when Hochburg burned down Burton’s childhood home; he remembered how rapidly the flames consumed the building. Alice’s cries had stopped, but he recalled that her room was on the third floor. By the time he reached it, the door was warping in its frame. He forced it open and found an empty bed, neatly stacked toys.

  “Alice?”

  He checked under the bed, then behind the curtains; the window was bolted. Burton glanced through it at a thirty-foot drop onto a brick patio. Protruding from the floor below was a downpipe. He resumed his search and opened the wardrobe, finding a mound of coats and blankets at the bottom. He lifted the top one. Alice was in her nightdress, the same dark hair as her mother’s straggling over her face, eyes gummy with tears and squeezed tight.

  “Alice,” he said softly.

  Her eyes remained shut.

  “Alice, it’s Burton.” He reached for her. “You have to come with me.”

  The air was thickening with smoke. She shrank deeper into the blankets, but Burton grabbed a skinny wrist and lifted her out.

  Over the years, plenty of parents had weighted his palm to carry their children, but this was the first time he’d held Alice. She was a squirming bundle, heavier than he’d expected. He smelled sleep on her and smoky laundry and, hidden inside these scents, the faintest trace of Madeleine. He buried his nose in her hair, hugged her tight.

  She fought him off. “You’re a spook!”

  “No, I’m real.”

  “Daddy said you were dead. But not in heaven. You’d gone to the place for bad people.”

  “What about Mummy? Did he tell you where she was?”

  She started to cough.

  Burton let go of her and dropped to his knees so they were
at eye level. “Alice, it’s very dangerous,” he said. He had no natural manner with children, feared that his words sounded like orders. “You have to come with me, do as I tell you.”

  “I want Daddy.”

  He wrapped a coat round her, clumsily fastening the buttons with his stump. When she saw the end of his wrist, she backed away and finished them herself. The coat had a fur collar; he told her to cover her mouth and breathe through it. Then he grasped her hand and tugged her from the room, into clouds of swirling black tar. Burton used the banister to guide them to the floor below; beyond that, the stairs descended into flame.

  “Where’s the bathroom?” he asked.

  Before he could stop her, Alice broke from his grip and darted to the end of the corridor; Burton followed. Once they were inside, he began running a bath. The air was less noxious. He threw some towels into the water, rolled them into sopping coils, and blocked the gaps round the door frame. Next he checked the window: like all the others in the house, it was bolted shut. Burton wrenched the towel rail from the wall and pounded it against the lock.

  The metal rattled—but didn’t give.

  Below them there was an explosion, shaking the whole room. Tiles pinged off the walls. The floor buckled, dropping several inches. Alice screamed over the sound of crashing timbers. A gash opened beneath the door; within seconds the air was blackening.

  Burton smashed the lock again, battering it ferociously, till the window burst outward. He sucked in gulps of air. The garden flickered below: a shifting semicircle of lawn that vanished into the fog. The previous time he’d visited the house, even though it had been empty, he hadn’t relaxed until he knew how to get out. An escape route! joked Madeleine as he checked a path from the scullery to the rear of the property. It was bordered by a wall with a door that led directly to the heath.

  Burton leaned out the window and found that he was able to reach the downpipe he’d seen from Alice’s room, its iron damp and slippery. He turned to take her hand.