Epitaph for a Spy

by Eric Ambler

  The small beach was now in complete shadow and a faint breeze off the sea was beginning to stir the tops of the trees; but it was still very warm. I could see the heads of two men and two women over the backs of the deck-chairs in which their owners were sitting; and as I neared the foot of the steps I could hear that they were attempting to carry on a conversation in French.

  I walked across the sand, sat a few meters from them on the end of one of the trestles on which the dinghy was being painted, and gazed out across the bay.

  From the quick look I had got in as I sat down I knew that in the two chairs nearest me were a young man of about twenty-three and a girl of about twenty. They had been swimming, and it was evidently their brown legs that I had seen from the terrace that morning. I judged from their French that these were the two Americans, Warren and Mary Skelton.

  The other two were very different. Both were middle-aged and very fat. I remembered having noticed them before. The man had a beaming moonlike face and a torso that from a distance looked almost spherical. This illusion was due in some measure to the trousers he wore. They were of some dark material and had very short, narrow legs. The tops of them, already very high, were drawn up over his round belly almost to his armpits by very powerful suspenders. He wore a tennis shirt open at the neck and no jacket. He might have walked out of a cartoon in Simplicissimus. His wife, for these were the Swiss, was slightly taller than him and very untidy. She laughed a great deal and even when she was not actually laughing she looked as if she were about to do so. Her husband beamed in concert with her. They both appeared as simple and unselfconscious as a pair of small children.

  It seemed that Skelton was trying to explain the American political system to Herr Vogel.

  “Il y a,” he was saying laboriously, “deux parties seulement, les Republicaines et les Democrates. Ces sont du droit-tous les deux. Mais les Republicaines sont plus au droit que les Democrates. Ca c’est la difference.”

  “Ah oui, je comprend,” said Herr Vogel. He hurriedly translated the sense into German. Frau Vogel grinned broadly.

  “One hears,” pursued her husband in his clipped French, “that the gangsters (he pronounced it “garngstairs”) have a decisive influence during the elections. Like a party of the center, perhaps?” He had the air of one putting aside frivolous small talk in favor of graver matters.

  The girl giggled helplessly. Her brother drew a deep breath and began to explain with great care, and to Herr Vogel’s evident amazement, that ninety-nine point nine per cent of the people of the United States had never seen a gangster. But his French soon gave out.

  “Il y a, sans doute,” he was admitting, “une quantite de… quelque

  …” He could get no farther. “Mary,” he said plaintively, “what the hell’s the word for graft?”

  At that moment fortune favored me. It may be that teaching becomes a habit, that the impulse to instruct will, like hunger or fear, overcome social inhibitions. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the girl shrug her shoulders helplessly; a fraction of a second later the words were out of my mouth.

  “Chantage is the word you want.”

  They all looked at me.

  “Oh, thanks,” said the girl.

  An eager light came into her brother’s eye.

  “Do you speak French as well as English?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then,” he said, tartly, “do you mind telling this moron here on our left that gangster is spelt with a small ‘g’ in America, and they’re not represented in Congress. At least, not openly. You might add, too, while you’re about it, that all our food doesn’t come out of cans, and that we don’t all live in the Empire State Building.”

  “Certainly.”

  The girl smiled.

  “My brother’s not serious.”

  “Aren’t I, by heaven! He’s an international menace. Someone ought to tell him.”

  The Vogels had been listening to this exchange with bewildered smiles on their faces. I translated, as tactfully as possible, into German. They rocked with laughter. Between paroxysms, Herr Vogel explained that it was impossible not to tease Americans. A party of garngstair! The Empire State Building! There were fresh peals of laughter. The Swiss were evidently not quite so naive as they looked.

  “What’s the matter with him now?” demanded Skelton.

  I explained. He grinned.

  “You wouldn’t think they had any guile in them, would you?” he said, and leaned forward to get a better view of the Vogels. “What are they, Germans?”

  “Swiss, I think.”

  “Pop,” remarked the girl, “looks exactly like Tenniel’s illustration of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Get those pants!”

  The object of these criticisms was regarding us anxiously. He addressed himself to me.

  “Die jungen Leute haben unseren kleinen Spass nicht ubel genommen?”

  “He says,” I explained to the Skeltons, “that he hopes he hasn’t offended you.”

  Young Skelton looked startled.

  “Heavens, no. Look-” He turned to the Vogels. “Nous sommes tres amuses. Sie sind sehr liebenswurdig,” he said heartily. Then: “Hell, tell him, will you?”

  I did so. There was a great deal of nodding and smiling. Then the Vogels began to talk between themselves.

  “How many languages do you speak?” said Skelton.

  “Five.”

  He laughed disgustedly.

  “Then would you explain very carefully,” put in the girl, “just how you learn a foreign language? I don’t want five. But if you could think in terms of ones for a moment, my brother and I would be interested.”

  I muttered something about living in countries and cultivating a “language ear,” and asked them if they had been at the Reserve long.

  “Oh, we’ve been here a week or so now,” he replied. “Our parents are coming over from home next week on the Conte di Savoia. We’re meeting them at Marseilles. You got here Tuesday, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m glad we can talk to someone in English. Koche is not bad with his English, but he’s got no staying power. We’ve only had that British major and his wife. He’s high-hat and she doesn’t speak at all.”

  “Which could be lucky, too,” said his sister.

  She was, I was realizing, though far from pretty, extremely attractive. Her mouth was too wide, her nose was not quite symmetrical, and her face was flat, with over-prominent cheekbones. But there was humor and intelligence in the way the lips moved, and the nose and cheekbones were good. The skin of her body was firm and clear and brown, while the thick mass of tawny fair hair crushed forward by the back of the deck-chair gleamed in a most interesting way. She was almost beautiful.

  “The trouble with the French,” her brother was saying, “is that they get mad if you can’t speak their language properly. I don’t get mad if a Frenchman can’t speak English.”

  “No, but that’s because most ordinary Frenchmen like the sound of their language. They don’t like listening to a bad French accent any more than you like listening to a beginner practicing on a violin.”

  “It’s no use appealing to his musical ear,” commented the girl. “He’s tone deaf.” She got up and smoothed out her bathing suit. “Well,” she said, “I guess we’d better be getting some more clothes on.”

  Herr Vogel heaved himself out of his chair, consulted an enormous watch, and announced in French that it was seven fifteen. Then he hitched up his suspenders another notch and began to collect his and his wife’s belongings. We all went in procession to the steps. I found myself behind the American.

  “By the way, sir,” he said as we started up, “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Josef Vadassy.”

  “Mine’s Warren Skelton. This is my sister Mary.”

  But I barely heard him. Slung across Herr Vogel’s plump back was a camera, and I was trying to recollect where I had seen another one like it. Then I remembered. It was a box-type Voigt
lander.

  On very warm nights, dinner at the Reserve was served on the terrace. A striped awning was put up for the purpose and illumination was provided by candles on the tables. It looked very gay when they were all alight.

  I had made up my mind to be the first on the terrace that evening. For one thing, I was hungry. For another, I wanted to inspect my fellow guests one at a time. Three of them, however, were already in their places when I arrived.

  One of them, a man sitting alone, was placed behind me so that I could not see him except by turning right round in my chair. I took in as much as possible of his appearance as I walked to my table.

  The candle on his table and the fact that he was bending forward over his plate prevented my seeing much of him except a head of short, graying fair hair brushed sideways without a part. He was wearing a white shirt and a pair of coarse linen trousers of obviously French manufacture.

  I sat down and turned my attention to the other two.

  They sat very stiffly, facing one another across their table, he a narrow-headed man with grizzled brown hair and a clipped mustache, she an impassive middle-aged woman with large bones, a sallow complexion, and a head of neatly dressed white hair. Both had changed for dinner. She wore a white blouse and a black skirt. He had put on gray flannel trousers, a brown striped shirt with a regimental tie, and a broad check riding-coat. As I watched him he put down his soup spoon, picked up a bottle of cheap claret from the table, and held it to the light.

  “I do believe, my dear,” I heard him say, “that the waiters drink our wine. I marked this bottle most carefully at luncheon.”

  He had a penetrating upper-middle-class English voice. The woman shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly. Obviously she did not approve.

  “My dear,” he replied, “it’s the principle of the thing that I look at. They ought to be pulled up about it. I shall drop a hint to Koche.”

  I saw her shrug her shoulders again and dab her mouth with her napkin. This was evidently Major and Mrs. Clandon-Hartley.

  The other guests had by this time begun to arrive.

  The Vogels sat at a table beyond the two English and beside the balustrade. Another couple made for the table against the wall.

  These were unmistakably French. The man, very dark and with goitrous eyes and an unshaven chin, looked about thirty-five. The woman, an emaciated blonde in satin beach pajamas and imitation pearl earrings the size of grapes, might have been older. They were very interested in one another. As he held the chair for her to sit down he caressed her arm. She responded with a furtive squeeze of his fingers, then looked round quickly to see if the other guests had noticed. I saw that the Vogels were convulsed with silent laughter at the incident. Herr Vogel winked at me across the tables.

  The blonde woman, I decided, was probably Odette Martin. Her companion would be either Duclos or Roux.

  Mary Skelton and her brother came next. They nodded amicably and went to a table behind me on my right. There was only one more to come. He proved to be an elderly man with a white beard and wearing pince-nez attached to a broad, black ribbon.

  When the waiter took my soup plate I stopped him.

  “Who is the gentleman with the white beard?”

  “That is Monsieur Duclos.”

  “And the gentleman with the blonde?”

  The waiter smiled discreetly.

  “Monsieur Roux and Mademoiselle Martin.” He placed a faint emphasis on the “mademoiselle.”

  “I see. Which, then, is Herr Schimler?”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Herr Schimler, Monsieur? There is no one of that name at the Reserve.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Perfectly, Monsieur.”

  I glanced over my shoulder.

  “Who is the gentleman at the end table?”

  “That is Monsieur Paul Heinberger, a Swiss writer and a friend of Monsieur Koche. Will you take fish, Monsieur?”

  I nodded and he hurried away.

  For a second or two I sat still. Then, calmly but with a hand that trembled, I felt in my pocket for Beghin’s list, enveloped it in my napkin, looked down and read it through carefully.

  But already I knew it off by heart. The name of Heinberger was not on it.

  5

  I am afraid that I lost my head a little. As I ate my fish my imagination began to run riot. I gloated over the scene with Beghin that would follow my revelation.

  I would be cool and patronizing.

  “Now, Monsieur Beguin,” I would say. “When you gave me this list I naturally assumed that it contained the names of all the visitors to the Reserve apart from the staff. The first thing I find is this Paul Heinberger unaccounted for. What do you know of him? Why is he not registered? Those are questions that should be answered without delay. And, my friend, I advise you to look over his belongings. I shall be extremely surprised if you do not find among them a Zeiss Ikon Contax camera and a spool of film with some photographs of a carnival at Nice on it.”

  The waiter took my plate away.

  “Another thing, Beghin. Investigate Koche. The waiter says that Heinberger is a friend of Koche. That means that this manager is implicated. I am not surprised. I had already noticed that he took a suspicious interest in my camera. He is well worth examination. You thought you knew all about him, eh? Well, I should investigate a little more carefully if I were you. Dangerous to jump to conclusions, my friend.”

  The waiter brought me a large portion of the coq au vin a la Reserve.

  “Always investigate a man with a name like Heinberger, my dear Beghin.”

  No, too clumsy. Perhaps a mocking smile would be best. I experimented with a mocking smile and was in the middle of the fourth attempt when the waiter caught my eye. He hurried over anxiously.

  “There is something wrong with the coq au vin, Monsieur?”

  “No, no. It is excellent.”

  “Pardon, Monsieur.”

  “Not at all.”

  Blushing, I got on with my food.

  But the interruption had brought me to earth. Had I, after all, made such an important discovery? This Paul Heinberger might have arrived that very afternoon. If that was the case, the hotel could not yet have furnished the police with particulars of his passport. But where, then, was Emil Schimler? The waiter had been very positive that nobody of that name was staying at the hotel. Perhaps he had made a mistake. Perhaps the police had made a mistake. In any case, I could do nothing but report to Beghin in the morning. I must wait. And meanwhile time was going. I could not telephone until nine o’clock at the earliest. Over twelve hours wasted. Twelve out of about sixty. I had been crazy to think that I could get away by Sunday. If only I could write to Monsieur Mathis and explain, or lie, say that I was ill. But it was hopeless. What could I do? This man who had my camera-he wouldn’t be a fool. Spies were clever, cunning men. What could I hope to find out? Sixty hours! It might just as well be sixty seconds.

  The waiter took my plate away. As he did so he glanced disapprovingly at my hands. I looked down and found that my fingers, fumbling with a dessert spoon, had bent it double. I straightened it hurriedly, stood up, and left the terrace. I was no longer hungry.

  I walked through the house into the gardens. In one of the lower terraces overlooking the beach there was a small alcove. It was usually deserted. I went to it.

  The sun had gone and it was dark. Above the hills across the bay stars were already shining. The breeze had stiffened a little and carried a faint smell of seaweed with it. I rested my hot hands on the cold brickwork of the parapet and let the breeze blow on my face. Somewhere in the garden behind me a frog was croaking. The sea lapping gently at the sand made scarcely a sound.

  Out at sea a light winked and disappeared. Ships exchanging signals, perhaps. One, maybe, a passenger liner, rustling swiftly through the oily sea on its way east, the other a cargo boat, travelling light with a half-submerged screw, thrashing its way towards Marseilles. On the liner they might be
dancing now or leaning on the rails of the promenade deck watching the moon on the wake and listening to the water bubbling and hissing against the plates. Below their feet, deep down, would be half-naked lascars sweating amidst the roar of oil-fired boilers and the thudding of propellers. The headlights of a car swept the road round the bay, gleamed on the water for an instant, and were lost among the trees as the car headed for Toulon. If only I…

  A shoe grated on the gravel slope behind, and someone began to descend the steps leading to the terrace. The footsteps reached the bottom. I prayed that their owner would turn to the right, away from me. There was silence, a hesitation. Then I heard a rustle as a piece of creeper overhanging the path to the alcove was pushed aside and I saw a man’s head and shoulders faintly outlined against the blue-black of the sky. It was the Major.

  I saw him peer at me uncertainly. Then he leaned on the parapet and looked out across the bay.

  My first impulse was to leave. I did not feel in the least like talking to Major Herbert Clandon-Hartley of Buxton. Then I remembered young Skelton’s comment on the Major. The man was “high-hat.” It was unlikely that he would speak first. But I was wrong.

  We must have stood there leaning on the parapet for ten minutes before he spoke. I had, indeed, almost forgotten his existence when suddenly he cleared his throat and remarked that it was a fine evening.

  I agreed.

  There was another long silence.

  “Cool for August,” he said at last.

  “I suppose so.” I wondered whether he had been thinking the point over and really did consider it cool or whether the comment was purely formal. If he really thought it cool I ought for politeness’ sake to draw attention to the breeze.

  “Staying long?”

  “A day or so.”

  “May see something of you, then.”

  “That would be pleasant.”

  You would scarcely call this “high-hat.”

  “Shouldn’t have thought you were a Britisher. But I heard you talking to that young American just before dinner. If you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t look British.”