To all the other questions he gave the stock answers which were now second nature to him, adding for full measure references to many of his well-known acquaintances in Paris and descriptions of some of the outstanding scenes he had witnessed there during the Revolution. Since he spoke without the slightest hesitation and in French that was beyond reproach, he felt confident by the time he had finished that he had convinced the Court that he was a Frenchman. Yet one matter arose out of his examination that caused him a few nasty moments.
From beneath the table at which he was sitting the Prosecutor produced the little valise that Roger had brought ashore, and to which he had clung during his flight along the beach until he was compelled to drop it on meeting the two men who had attacked him. Opening the valise, the Prosecutor took from it a small squat bottle and handed it up to the magistrates for them to look at.
As Roger recognised it his heart gave a thump. The bottle bore a handwritten label, ‘Grove Place; Cherry Brandy.’ Old Jim Button made a couple of gallons or so of the cordial every year with the morello cherries that grew in the garden. Knowing Roger’s fondness for this home-made tipple he had slipped a bottle of it into the valise just before Roger’s departure.
‘You have told the Court,’ said the Prosecutor, ‘that while in Lymington you deliberately kept away from Grove Place. How comes it, then, that you had in your valise a bottle of this liqueur which has the name of the Admiral’s residence upon it?’
‘I bought it,’ Roger declared, after only a second’s hesitation. ‘I saw it with other bottles in the coffee room of the inn, and chose it as most suitable to keep me warm during my crossing.’
The fat magistrate in the bright-blue coat was examining the bottle and he said, ‘The handwritten label shows this to be a private brew. Inns buy their liquor from merchants, not from amateur cordial makers.’
‘It may have been stolen,’ Roger countered. ‘Perhaps one of the servants at the house sold it for half its value to the innkeeper.’
The magistrate shook his head. ‘Such things happen, but not in this case. You say you saw it in the coffee room of the inn. No landlord who had bought stolen goods would be such a fool as to display them publicly in his coffee room. I’m an innkeeper myself and can vouch for that.’
‘Then you had best drink it, Citizen,’ Roger quipped. ‘You will find it very good.’
His sally raised a titter, but next moment he could have bitten off his tongue. The Chairman of the Bench was on him in a flash. ‘This bottle is unopened, yet you admit to knowledge of its contents. Therefore, you must be well acquainted with the cordial and must have drunk it recently. I regard this as evidence that you did visit Grove Place and were given the bottle there.’
A slight shiver ran through Roger. The courtroom was warmed only by a charcoal brazier; so it was distinctly chilly, and by this time his having had nothing to eat since the previous night was beginning to tell upon him. With an effort, he shrugged his shoulders and said:
‘Citizen Chairman, you err in counting that against me. I recommended the cordial on the grounds that I recall enjoying it when as a youth I lived at Grove Place and I saw no reason to suppose that its quality had deteriorated.’
A frown momentarily wrinkled the bulging forehead of the Chairman, then he said, ‘We will leave that question for the moment and enquire further into an outstanding feature of the case. You have stated that your recent visit to England was as an agent for General Bonaparte, and that having completed your mission you fooled the Captain of a British sloop into bringing you back to France. Evidence has been given that you were landed safely and covered near half a kilometre along the shore away from the boat before you were challenged by two members of the second patrol. At that distance, had you declared yourself in what you assert to be your true colours, the members of the boat’s crew could not have shot you down or even heard you. Yet, instead of hailing your compatriots with joy, you shot one of them with a pistol and smashed the butt of it into the face of the other. If you are, as you claim, a Colonel in the Army of France, what possible explanation have you to offer for attacking two members of our Coastguard Service?’
This was the big fence and, pulling himself together, Roger took it to the best of his ability. Pointing to the Coastguard who had been among the first to arrive on the scene of the affray, he said, ‘That man has told the Court that at the time of the occurrence the beach was lit only by starlight so faint that it was impossible to see an approaching figure at more than a few yards’ distance. The men who attacked me were running full tilt towards me and I towards them. In such circumstances a yard can be covered in less than a second. They were upon me before I had even the time to shout. One of them had a sabre raised above his head with intent to cleave my head from scalp to chin. Instinctively, as the only chance of saving my life, I fired upon him. As he fell his companion charged at me. I barely escaped his thrust, and in swerving struck wildly at him with the hand that held my pistol. It caught him in the face and he went down.’
‘And then,’ the Chairman remarked acidly, ‘instead of remaining to give such aid as you could to these compatriots you had injured, you ran off into the sea, leaving them, perhaps, to bleed to death.’
‘There was no question of their bleeding to death,’ Roger cried indignantly. ‘The one was shot only in the shoulder and the other had but a bloody nose. Besides, their comrades came up with them no more than two minutes later. It was the thudding of the patrol’s footsteps on the sand as they came charging towards me that caused me to act as I did. Had I remained beside the men I had wounded, their comrades would not have waited to listen to any explanation but would have struck me down where I stood and made an end of me. My only hope of preserving my life lay in immediate flight and the hope that their resentment against me would have cooled a little by the time I gave myself up.’
The Prosecutor made no attempt to sum up, neither did the magistrates leave the Court to debate the evidence in private. No further evidence being offered, they began openly to discuss the case among themselves. The Chairman asked his two colleagues for their opinions and the little man with the ruddy cheeks, who had not so far spoken, said:
‘He is a Frenchman. There can be no doubt about that. And he has an answer for everything. One must admit that his account of himself is entirely plausible.’
‘Except about the Cherry Brandy,’ put in the innkeeper. ‘I am convinced that he was lying about that.’
‘If so,’ commented the Chairman, ‘he was then lying to us on other matters. If he obtained the bottle from Grove Place that means he did contact his relatives at the house. His doing so would greatly increase the probability that he is Sir Brook’s son rather than a French cousin who could not readily have accounted for his presence in England and who, on disclosing himself, would almost certainly have been detained.’
At that, Tardieu jumped to his feet and cried, ‘He is lying, Citizen Chairman; and I can prove it. When I woke him this morning and charged him with being Admiral Sir Brook’s son, his first words were, “Admiral Brook? I’ve never heard of him”. Yet now he declares himself to be a French relative of the Admiral and tells us that he spent several years of his youth in the Admiral’s house. He cannot have it both ways.’
Shaken as Roger was by this bolt from the blue, he rallied all his resources to meet it. Leaning out from the dock, he pointed at Tardieu and shouted indignantly, ‘It is the Lieutenant who is lying! I said no such thing! What I said was that I had not seen Admiral Brook since the war started. He has twisted my words because he is disgruntled. Having convinced himself this morning that I am a spy, he feels that I made a fool of him last night and that his men must be laughing at him for having accepted my statement that I am Colonel Breuc and an aide-de-camp to General Bonaparte.’
‘Lies! More lies!’ shouted Tardieu. ‘I swear to what I have said.’
‘Then you should be charged with perjury,’ Roger shouted back.
‘Silence!’ cr
ied the Chairman. ‘Silence!’ and banged hard on the table with his gavel. When quiet was restored he went on:
‘The Court has taken notice of the Lieutenant’s statement, also of the prisoner’s denial, although I can hardly credit that the reason he suggests constitutes sufficient grounds to have caused the Lieutenant to commit perjury. If we accept his statement it shows how anxious the prisoner was to conceal the truth about his activities while in Lymington and throws the gravest doubt on a great part of what he has said about himself.’
‘I told you he was lying about that Cherry Brandy,’ the innkeeper declared in a self-satisfied voice. ‘Displaying stolen liquor in a coffee room, indeed! Is it likely?’
Roger needed no telling that since Tardieu’s intervention things were beginning to look black for him; but the little man with the ruddy face created a diversion by remarking, ‘Whatever the truth may be about what he was up to in Lymington, I’ll not believe that he’s an Englishman. As my Citizen colleagues know, up till the Revolution I’d lived all my life in Paris, and it would be hard to find a man with a more definite Parisian accent.’
The Chairman nodded. ‘On consideration, I think you are right, Citizen colleague, and the seaman’s evidence, which is all we have to go on about that, was inconclusive. He must be a Frenchman or, at least, have French blood in his veins. From his statement, too, it can hardly be doubted that he has lived for a great part of his life in France. But even if, as he says, he was born here, that is no guarantee that he is a loyal Frenchman. Every country has its quota of traitors, and in recent years France has suffered far more in that respect than others, owing to the thousands of émigrés who now live abroad and intrigue against her.’
The innkeeper gave a snort. ‘Ah, now you’ve hit on it, Citizen. Look at those fine hands of his. He’s an aristo, I’ll be bound, and has never done an honest day’s work in his life. An émigré, that’s what he is, and come here to sell us to our enemies.’
After pursing his thin lips for a moment, the Chairman nodded again. ‘Yes, that would explain everything: his impeccable French, the English landing him here and his dread of capture. Well, the law is clear on the subject of émigrés. If caught re-entering France such traitors are liable to the death penalty. If my Citizen colleagues agree, I am in favour of passing it.’
‘I am not an émigré!’ Roger broke in hotly. ‘I am one of General Bonaparte’s aides-de-camp and were we in Paris I’d have no difficulty in proving that. The Director Barras, Citizens Tallien, Fréron and many other important men would all vouch for me. I met General Bonaparte as far back as the siege of Toulon. I was with him in Paris on 13th Vendémiaire. I———’
‘Enough!’ snapped the Chairman, rapping on the desk with his gavel. ‘We have given you a fair hearing and have already listened overlong to your lies.’
But Roger was determined to defend himself to the last ditch. Ignoring the interruption, he cried, ‘You dare not have me executed! You dare not! My friends, the men I served with in Italy—Junot, Murat, Duroc, Lannes, Berthier and half a dozen other Generals—will exact vengeance on you if you do. Aye, and my great master Bonaparte himself will call you to reckoning. I demand———’
‘Silence! Silence! Silence!’ the Chairman shouted, redoubling his banging on the table, and Roger, now white-faced and exhausted, realised the futility of continuing, so ceased his angry threats.
There followed a moment’s hush, then the Chairman turned to the innkeeper and asked, ‘Do you agree?’
His colleague nodded. ‘Yes, he’s a spy, right enough. I made up my mind on that as soon as the fool tried to gull us about where he got the Cherry Brandy. Have him taken outside and finished with.’
A sad little smile twitched at Roger’s lips. Although there was not an atom of humour in his terrible situation, it had suddenly struck him how incongruous it was that after all the dangers from which he had escaped during his life he was about to be sent to his death largely because dear old Jim Button had popped a bottle of Cherry Brandy into his valise.
Turning to his other colleague, the Chairman asked, ‘And you, Citizen?’
The little man tilted back his head so that the nostrils of the snub nose between the apple cheeks looked like two round holes in his chubby face. Then, in a quiet voice, he appeared to address the ceiling.
‘Yes, Citizen Chairman, I agree. Whether or not the man be an émigré, he landed clandestinely on French soil from a British war vessel. He resisted arrest and seriously wounded two of our people. The account he has given of himself lacks the ring of truth, and on several matters there can be no reasonable doubt that he has lied to us. All the evidence points to his having come to France as a secret agent, and in times such as these we cannot afford to take chances. That being so it is our duty to send him to his death.’
For a moment he was silent, then he went on, ‘But there is an aspect of this case which I would like my Citizen colleagues to consider. Let us suppose, just suppose, for one moment, that he has told us the truth in one important particular: namely, that he is an aide-de-camp of our national hero, the brilliant young General who has restored the glory of France by his conquest of Italy. Should we decree this man’s execution—what then, Citizen colleagues? General Bonaparte is back in France. In a matter of a few months he has become, after the Directors, the most powerful man in the country. He has only to express a wish and others spring to gratify it. To incur his displeasure might bring about our ruin.’
Roger’s eyes had remained riveted on the cherubic, upturned face. His throat seemed to contract and he held his breath in an agony of suspense as he waited to learn if this new development would prove the thread by which hung his life.
For a full minute, with a frown of uncertainty on his thin, bony face, the Chairman stared at his small, plump colleague, then he said, ‘You are right, Citizen, in that it might go hard with us did we make an enemy of General Bonaparte; but I count the risk of our doing so exceedingly small. We are all convinced that the prisoner is unquestionably a liar, so it is improbable that he has ever even set eyes on the General.’
‘Maybe, maybe,’ replied the other. ‘But why should we take any risk at all?’
‘Ventre du Pape!’ exclaimed the innkeeper. ‘Surely you do not suggest that we should let the rogue go free to spy on us and sell our secrets to the accursed English; or that we should even send him to a prison from which he might in time escape and still do the Republic some serious injury?’
‘Besides,’ the Chairman argued, ‘you say yourself that it is our duty to pass sentence of death upon him, and that being so———’
‘I did not say that,’ retorted the little man, suddenly sitting up. ‘I said that it was our duty to send him to his death. It does not follow that we should make ourselves responsible for his execution; and I, for one, will have no hand in it.’
The innkeeper banged his great fist on the table and cried angrily, ‘What in hell’s name do you mean by that?’
Simultaneously, the Chairman shook his head and said in a testy voice, ‘You talk in riddles, Citizen colleague. Put a plain meaning on what you have in mind.’
‘It is quite simple,’ came the smooth reply. ‘In calling for water and washing his hands before sending the Nazarene to be executed, Pontius Pilate set us an admirable example. The prisoner declares himself to be a Colonel in the Army of France. Moreover, spies are normally court-martialled, as this one would have been had he been caught by a patrol of soldiers instead of by Coastguards. Therefore, in a double sense, this is a military matter. Let us send him to the senior officer in the district, with a message to the effect that after giving him a fair trial we came to the unanimous conclusion that he is a spy and probably an émigré, and so deserving of death; but that on consideration we decided that he should never have been brought before this Court, so we are handing him over for them to deal with as they see fit.’
The innkeeper gave a great bellow of laughter. The Chairman smiled, patted the litt
le man on the shoulder and said, ‘Most ingenious, my dear Citizen colleague. We will most certainly adopt your admirable suggestion.’
He then said to Tardieu, ‘Citizen Lieutenant, the Court is returning the prisoner to you. I charge you to deliver him safely into the hands of General Desmarets at his headquarters outside the town.’ Turning to the Prosecutor, he added, ‘You, Citizen Corbiel, will accompany the Lieutenant, inform the General of the Court’s reasons for sending the prisoner to him and give him a full account of all that has taken place here.’
Having so delivered himself, he gave the table one sharp rap with his gavel and declared the Court adjourned.
As Roger stepped from the dock a sigh of relief escaped him. He was not, after all, fated to be led but right away to be hanged, or to face a firing party. Yet he could not disguise from himself that his reprieve was only a temporary postponement of the issue. It was, too, an unnerving thought that he was to be brought before General Desmarets, of whom he had never heard, as a spy who had already been tried and convicted. Even so, he felt that his chances of living out the day were considerably better now that he was to be handed over to the Military. They would surely give a more considerate hearing to a man who claimed to be General Bonaparte’s aide-de-camp and, vast as the French Army was, there must be officers or soldiers in the camp to which he was being taken who could if only they could be found, vouch for it that he was Colonel Breuc.
The strain of the trial upon him had been appalling, as he had not dared to relax for an instant in case he missed an opportunity to make some point that would have counted in his favour. Now he was so terribly exhausted that he stumbled several times when being escorted out to the small covered cart in which he had been brought to the Court.
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