All this, I appreciate, does not fall within the terms of reference, as laid down in your letter. Yet I venture to think that, since it has never to my knowledge been revealed before, it may be of historical interest in such a book as yours. And, needless to say, I would be only too pleased to make it available to you—
Elizabeth stared at Paul. “You’ve read this?”
“Not read it. David told me about it … and he’s talked to her—Miss—?”
“Miss Irene Cookridge.” Audley nodded between them. “And I lave seen her book—half-leather, with a brass lock—but pure gold, both of them … Miss Cookridge and her book!”
“Pure gold, I’m sure—if I was finishing off the Vengeful book for Elizabeth.” Paul’s face creased with irritation. “But where does Danny Kahn come in? And where does Josef Ivanovitch Novikov figure? Come on, David—whatever pure gold Danny Kahn and Loftus may have found there, it’s fool’s gold when you mix Novikov into it—it’s a con—it’s a bloody classic con, in fact—“
“A con?” Del studied Mitchell sideways. “Why a con, Dr Mitchell?”
“Because it’s exactly the sort of thing that David would fall for—it’s just sufficiently too bloody outlandish for anyone else … but it isn’t too outlandish for him … And, David, we know that’s the next likely ploy—to shoot us off at a tangent… I’m not saying we’re not close, with Loftus … But frigate actions off Ushant in 1812—and PoW escapes after that—it’s simply not on. It’s just too predictable, if they suspect you’re on the job.”
“You’re giving them too much credit, my dear fellow.” Audley waved a hand dismissively. “They couldn’t possibly have set up Miss Cookridge months ago, and written out her ancestor’s memoirs in longhand, and aged the ink, and all that… just in case we came up with Vengeful out of Washington—it’s quite beyond their capabilities, apart from the timing, even if they do have my number.”
Elizabeth could almost feel Paul struggle against this negative argument, and find nowhere to go.
“But, right or wrong, you’re under orders now.” Audley came down to earth abruptly. “So you’ll do what you’re told tomorrow, like everyone else.”
VIII
THERE WERE BELLS ringing somewhere out in the warm darkness of Laon.
“In the Champagne district of northern France, between Craonne in the east and Soissons in the west, lies the Chemin des Dames—‘the Ladies’ Highway’. This name originally applied to a road built along the crest of a ridge by Louis XV for the diversion of his sisters, but has since come to refer to the ridge itself, some 75 miles long and for the most part nearly 450 feet high, and with numerous hog’s-back spurs and deep ravines running south to the valley of the Aisne …”
Elizabeth’s eyelids fluttered, but her brain again refused to stop working, feverishly and confusedly trying to assimilate her experienccs, and to codify and file them for future recollection.
“No, madame—Madame has quite a high colour, so she thinks a blusher will add to her difficulty … But no! It is only that the flushed checks are always in the wrong place … so we need to relocate the colour—so!”
“It was here, on this fatal ridge, and by a matter of no more than a couple of hours only, that the German retreat from the Marne ended on September 14th, 1914: although neither side knew it, in the thick weather and bitter close-quarter fighting between isolated units of the British 1st Corps and the German 7th Reserve Corps on those formidable muddy slopes, the trench warfare of the next four years was born—“
It was no good—it was just too much … Louis XV and his sisters and their maids-in-waiting … and Paul Mitchell’s Northamptons and Coldstreamers, and their comrades of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps and the Royal Sussex … they all mingled together with Lieutenant Chipperfield’s exhausted escape party in the mist and the rain on the Chemin des Dames under a hail of machine-gun fire and a deluge of 8-inch howitzer shells from von Billow’s Germans—
And …
“The eyes are not difficult—Madame has good eyes—the important area is not over, but under … and there one does not cover the whole area—that is vital—but simply touches out the dark bits, which make the baggy look … like so—I will do this eye, and then Madame will do the other, eh?”
“A private aeroplane?”
“Not a private one, Elizabeth. Private planes are for millionaires and oil sheikhs. Just a business plane for a business trip—saves hassle, saves time …”
There were bells ringing somewhere, out in the warm darkness—
“Where’s Humphrey Aske, Paul? Didn’t David say he was coming with us?”
“That little bastard? That’s one of David’s bad ideas—a chaperone! Do you want a chaperone, Elizabeth?”
Wishful thinking! But hers, not his, obviously—sadly!
“But he’ll meet us over there, anyway—more’s the pity!”
Over there had been the first clue—
“All the British could do was to dig, as they had never dug before. Fortunately, the soil was good—at least before the rain began to drain off the crests—and the sides of trenches and ‘funk-holes’ held up without revetment—“
“Madame’s hair must be cut, and it must not be put up—no …up may seem sensible, but it is a great consumer of time, and Madame’s hair is naturally fuller, and hair is getting fuller now … So Monsieur Pierre will shorten perhaps a trifle, and will add the highlights—the colour is good, but the highlights will accentuate—yes?”
“—which was just as well, since the enemy’s artillery observers dominated the valley, while the British guns were still south of the river, firing blind. Here too, was the shape of things to come: this was to be an artillery war, and the man who could see could kill— “
“Christ! Elizabeth … what have they done to you?”
Dust and ashes: she had thought they’d made her presentable, and the cost of this summer suit would have started turning Father in his grave if she’d paid for it with his money. “Don’t you like it? Faith chose it, Paul—“
“Oh—the clothes are okay—trust Faith to go for the county look … But you’ve turned into your younger sister, and I’ve become a baby-snatcher—“
The man who could see, could kill—
“Isn’t that the Channel, Paul—?”
“On Madame’s account?” This was to Madame Faith Audley, not to the nameless madame who had arrived with her, pressed neatly, but obviously not credit-worthy.
“I must settle up with you, Faith—“
“Settle up? Not bloody likely! David will pay—or Jack Butler will pay, don’t you worry! You can’t know what pleasure this gives me. Elizabeth—soaking them, for what they’ve done to you … Take the money and run, Elizabeth—“
Expensive luggage, already packed with her new clothes, from the skin upwards—
Polite cough. “Madame’s cosmetics are all in the vanity case. And I have included both the Rimmel and the Clinique—the Clinique is not cheap, for the eye make-up, but it lasts very well—“
“All that?” Paul goggled at the cases, having already goggled at Elizabeth. “It looks like, we’re not going away—we’re running away! Is that what you’ve got in mind, Elizabeth?”
“I don’t even know where we’re going, Paul.”
“Isn’t that the Channel, Paul—?”
He craned his neck round her. “Looks very much like that, yes.”
“But I haven’t got my passport.” Panic. “I haven’t even got a passport, Paul!”
He felt inside his breast-pocket. “One passport. Though whether they’ll recognise you from the picture we rustled up is another matter—“
The Frenchman in the funny little office on the even funnier little airfield regarded Madame—Miss Elizabeth Jane Loftus—Occupation— Secretary—Place of birth—Portsmouth—Residence—England—with the honest doubt any functionary should have had when faced with an enlarged press photograph of E. Loftus, as she had appeared in the Amazons ‘A�
�� Hockey Team (captain), and E. Loftus’s younger sister, as processed by Madame Hortense and Monsieur Pierre, of Guildford, and dressed by Style, also of Guildford, and Madame Audley, of The Old House, Steeple Horley.
“Miss Loftus is my secretary,” said Paul, deadpan and confident, observing the Frenchman’s incredulity and offering his own passport in explanation, alongside hers.
The Frenchman looked at Paul, and then at his passport, and then at Paul again.
“Dr—Mitchell—“
Paul Lefevre Mitchell, Elizabeth read upside down—before the Frenchman turned the page. But then she decided that, however much she wanted to know the official description of Paul’s occupation, it might seem inappropriate for his secretary to be interested in such detail.
“A business trip, Dr Mitchell?”
The false insouciance of the question first surprised Elizabeth, since she didn’t think they bothered with such formalities any more. Then she felt insulted by it, in the guise of Dr Mitchell’s secretary, and started to bristle.
“Yes,” said Paul. “That is to say …”
The Frenchman caught Elizabeth’s frown and quailed slightly.
“Historical research,” said Paul.
“Ah—yes!” The Frenchman studied Paul’s passport again, almost gratefully, as though to confirm something he had known all along but had now skilfully established by interrogation. “But of course!”
It occurred to Elizabeth that she might also feel flattered—or that Madame Hortense and Faith Audley between them deserved the credit for whatever insulting thoughts had passed through the man’s mind—and then she felt a wave of contempt for herself at such silly imaginings.
“Un moment!” The man looked around for something, and didn’t find it, and vanished quickly through a door behind him with both passports still in his hand.
“Either they’ve had some trouble here—“ murmured Paul out of the corner of his mouth “—or we’re the first English to land on this field since 1940, and they’ve forgotten what to do.”
The sound of scurrying came through the open door.
“And either they’re going to arrest us on suspicion of being escaping criminals, or they’ve lost their bloody stamp.” There was a hint of savagery in the murmur. “But either way they’ll remember us now, blast it!”
“Does that matter?”
“I had a bit of trouble in France … once upon a time.” Paul drew a deep reminiscent breath. “So they’ll have my name and number written up somewhere for sure … Not here, but somewhere …”
“What sort of trouble?” She knew he wasn’t going to tell her, but having some first-hand experience of the sort of troubles he had she didn’t really want to know anyway. And that unfledged thought itself was enough to make her feel what she realised she ought to have felt all along: not surprised, and neither angry with the Frenchman nor herself, but just plain scared.
Two thumps sounded from the inner office, saving Paul the trouble of not replying, and to her intense relief the Frenchman reappeared with a smile on his face and the passports in his hand—
“What kept you?” Aske smiled at her in his usual half-shy, half-friendly way, but eyed her appraisingly at the same time as he held open the door of a big blue Renault. “Mmm! I like your new scent, Miss Loftus—very chic and expensive!”
“That’s probably what kept us,” said Paul irritably. “Let’s get out of here. We should have come by the hovercraft, like I wanted to do.”
“Another three hours on the journey—if you’re in such a hurry,” said Aske mildly. “Where to now?”
“But no awkward questions.” Paul sat back. “To the hotel.”
“They were inquisitive? Well … I suppose you’re a bit out of the ordinary. This isn’t exactly a tourist spot—it’s just a stop-over to and from the coast, though the old city’s very fine …” Aske looked over his shoulder at Elizabeth “… I got us into a place in the old city, I thought you’d like that … medieval walls more or less intact, and a nice little 17th-18th century citadel—not a Napoleonic PoW depot, of course—too small for that … the nearest one of them is Sedan, then maybe Longwy. Then Givet to the north, on the frontier, and the three to the north-west—Arras, Valenciennes and Cambrai. And the big one to the east, naturally—Verdun. I wonder you didn’t prefer Verdun for your base, Mitchell, even if the escape party didn’t break out of there. It was the main British prisoners’ depot, after all.”
Paul merely grunted, but Elizabeth sat up.
“Oh yes—I’m an expert too, now—an instant expert!” Aske appeared to have eyes in the back of his head. “I’m your man on British PoWs in France, and French PoWs in England, circa 1812— and on the year 1812 too … a very interesting year seemingly, as years go. ‘The 1941 of the Napoleonic War’, no less.”
“I didn’t know you were a historian, Mr Aske,” said Elizabeth.
“I’m not. Politics and Economics were my student theatres of activity—and cookery at night school … I must not deceive you, Miss Loftus—I did say ‘instant’ expert.” Aske snuffled to himself. “In the division of labour yesterday, after you were removed from my charge I drew one of Dr Audley’s old dons, Professor—now Emeritus Professor—Basil Wilson Wilder … once the terror of generations of idle Cambridge undergraduates, but now retired from the fray on Portsdown Hill, above Portsmouth.”
“Professor Wilder!”
“You’ve heard of him? You know him?”
“Yes—I mean … that is, Father had a frightful row with him a year or two ago.”
“Did he, now? I find that a little surprising. He seemed to me to be a really darling old gentleman, and he’s certainly a positive goldmine of information on the period … What did they row about?”
“Oh … it was about a letter he wrote.” The memory of Father’s explosive rages during the Vengeful renaming correspondence still made her wince. “What did he tell you about the prisoners? Did he know about the Vengeful survivors?”
“Not specifically. But he did agree with your father’s conclusion about them—that they weren’t included in the Decrés propaganda letter to Napoleon in the Moniteur Universel with the allegedly full list of successful British escapers down to September, but they were in the Lautenbourg Fortress in early August—and they didn’t turn up anywhere else thereafter, and weren’t listed anywhere else as having been recaptured or died of natural causes … He reckoned the French killed them right enough—he said that, apart from the conflicting stories the French told, sending them to Lautenbourg was suspicious in itself. Because no one had ever been sent there before, and no one ever was again. ‘Something fishy, but I don’t know what’ was his conclusion—and here’s our hotel—“ he swung the car under a narrow archway, through a passage, and into a tiny courtyard “—then we can have a proper session, once we’ve installed you—it’s all quite fascinating, Miss Loftus—I haven’t been involved in anything so absolutely fascinating in ages!” He turned to Elizabeth with an expression of disarmingly innocent enthusiasm. “There’s a sweet little café in the square—“
“We’re not going to sit in any cafe.” There was anything but an expression of innocent enthusiasm on Paul Mitchell’s face. “For any ‘proper session’.”
“No?” Aske took his disappointment philosophically. “Then what are we going to do?”
“I’ve got phone calls to make. You deal with the bags. And I want to be on the road in twenty minutes.” Paul sounded a bit like Father on one of his off days.
“And then where?” Aske’s obedience didn’t include total abasement.
“Wait and see,” said Paul rudely.
Twenty minutes later he seemed happier; or maybe he was beginning to regret being such a bear, decided Elizabeth.
“I’m sorry to push you like this, Elizabeth.” He tried to smile, and then looked past her and gave up the attempt. “Where’s that obnoxious fellow, for God’s sake?”
“Mr Aske is trying to get me a better room. He
thinks the one I’ve got will be too noisy.” Enough was enough. “Why must you be so beastly to him? Has he ever done you any harm?”
“Not so far as I know—and he’s not going to get the chance, either.” He shrugged. “I hardly know him, actually.”
“You just dislike him on principle?”
“On several principles. I don’t fancy queers, for a start.”
“Queers?’
“God, Elizabeth! You’re not that innocent, surely?”
She flushed—she could feel the blood in her cheeks, pumping at treble pressure because she was that innocent, but also because that explained her own unformulated doubts, and finally because such naked prejudice embarrassed her.
“It isn’t a crime any more,” she said stiffly.
“No.” More’s the pity was implicit there. “I can see you’ve never been propositioned! But then you wouldn’t be, would you …” He sniffed derisively. “You’re safe.”
That was more hurtful than he intended. “No. I have never been propositioned.”
“I didn’t mean that, and you know it.” The hardness in his face broke up. “Damn it—if you want to be propositioned, just keep your door on the latch tonight—“
“No, thank you!” snapped Elizabeth.
He ran his hand through his hair, suddenly not at all the Paul Mitchell she knew and didn’t understand. “Shit! I always get this wrong, don’t I! Frances, you are avenged!”
“Frances?”
“Doesn’t matter.” His face came together again. “I also dislike him because I don’t know him … and in this game, if you have someone there to cover your back, that’s not a comforting feeling. And I also dislike him because I associate him with someone I don’t trust— someone I do know. And birds of a feather—“ He stopped abruptly.
“Hullo there—sorry I’m late,” said Humphrey Aske. “I’ve got you an absolutely super room, Miss Loftus—quiet and comfortable—and a wonderful view across the old city.”
“Thank you, Mr Aske,” said Elizabeth, split disconcertingly down the middle between them. “I hope it wasn’t too difficult?”
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