by Mike Ripley
By some miracle of navigation, I steered us out of the city without mishap. If we were seen, it was only by a baker hurrying to light his ovens and, by the time we reached Lourdes, the morning’s bread was already being queued for by lines of women clutching their ration books and no doubt offering silent prayers to Saint Bernadette that the line would move faster and that the baker had made enough to go around.
‘Will there be snow in the mountains?’ Astrid asked from the back seat.
‘On the high peaks I think there is always snow, but I am no mountaineer,’ I answered. ‘I do have a friend who is, and he always said that climbing in the Pyrenees was no more difficult than a strenuous walk in the hills of Scotland, and the weather was usually better here.’
To be honest I had no idea what my old chum Jonathan Eager-Wright thought about climbing the Pyrenees, but it was necessary to instil some confidence into the Lunels, both of whom – one by age and a sedentary occupation and the other by pregnancy – were ill-suited to the trek that lay before them.
As dawn broke, and the granite peaks of mountains older than the Alps loomed even closer, the burden I was placing on the Lunels began to weigh heavily on me. I had impressed upon them to wear several layers of clothing and their most sensible, toughest shoes, but I realized that both had been physically weakened by their months in captivity. In comparison, despite a public school diet in my youth and wartime rationing, I was a positive Olympian. Still, I reasoned, they had the best possible incentive to face the rigors ahead: survival.
They must have found the prospect daunting, for they were ominously quiet during the journey, and it was not until we were beyond Lourdes and on the twisting and ever-rising road through Argelès-Gazost and a dozen straggly hamlets towards Cauterets, that Nathan finally broke his thoughtful silence.
‘These are pretty farms.’
‘It is all beautiful country here,’ I said.
‘It seems so clean. The air has a quality I had forgotten, or perhaps never appreciated before. Will I ever see France again?’
‘I do not see why not,’ I said with, I hoped, conviction. ‘The war cannot last forever and there can be only one outcome – the Germans will be defeated, and France will be free.’
‘You are sure of that?’
‘As sure as I have ever been about anything in my life.’
‘Sure enough for three lives?’
‘Four,’ I said. ‘Don’t forget the baby.’
I drove on through the pretty village of Cauterets which, if my calculations were correct, would be the last pocket of habitation in France we would see. From there on, the road became narrower, hardly a road at all, and that would soon become a track and we would have to abandon the car. If we were lucky, we might see a shepherd stalking the hillsides, perhaps even a wild chamois, which were known locally as isards. If we were very lucky, we would encounter no other humans, not even fellow pilgrims.
Those pilgrims who had come this way over the centuries would surely have appreciated the beauty of the tall pines, meadows, bubbling streams and glistening waterfalls as we approached the Pont d’Espagne – and then there was the bridge itself, an impressive stone arch spanning a rushing sluice of white water. It was the perfect place to stop for breakfast, gather our strength and gird our loins for the climb ahead.
I pulled the car over to the side of the road just before the bridge and we walked to the middle of the span, where I balanced my bag on the stone parapet and began to unpack our picnic.
‘Our Menu Pèlerin,’ I announced. ‘Perhaps not an authentic pilgrims’ menu but the best we can do in the circumstances. Madame Henneuse has provided everything except cutlery, but I have a penknife we can share. I suggest we save the brandy until we get higher – and colder.’
‘How much higher do we go?’ asked Astrid.
‘In height about another two thousand metres. In distance, perhaps six or seven kilometres.’
I checked my wristwatch to find it was not yet ten o’clock, yet it had already seemed like a long day.
‘I suggest we make a start as soon as we cross the bridge. I am hoping the trail will be marked. In fact, there are so many trails from here, my only concern is picking the right one. I propose we keep going until noon, so let us eat our breakfast, put our best foot forward and whistle a happy tune as we go. I must say, this rillette is delicious … Oh my goodness, how stupid of me! I never thought, fool that I am, about our food. It’s not kosher is it?’
‘Do not worry,’ said Nathan scooping up some of the potted meat with a biscuit, ‘we are not strict. We find we draw less attention to ourselves that way, and Madame Henneuse knows our tastes.’
‘She seems to be a positive angel.’
‘She is one of the few French citizens I would trust never to betray us,’ said Lunel, then corrected himself. ‘No, the only one.’
Conscious of the fact that by all the ‘tradecraft’ I had been taught by my lords and masters in intelligence, in Madame Henneuse I had left a classic ‘loose end’, I only hoped that my tutors were wrong, and Nathan Lunel was right.
We crossed the bridge. As soon as I could, I pulled off the road – now an unmade, rock-strewn track – and parked close to an exposed piece of granite as big as a double-decker bus. I did not bother to lock or disable the Citroën as no one could follow us in it, and hopefully some passing pilgrim would find a use for it. It would be a crime against such beautiful scenery if it was allowed to rust to death and remain an eyesore on the landscape.
The first part of our trek was easy enough, essentially through meadows along the floor of a small valley, with only the occasional exposed granite boulder to hint at what was to come. The biggest obstacles we faced were the streams we had to cross, and Nathan’s insistence that his pregnant wife must not attempt to jump, even though she protested that she was perfectly capable of doing so, and to be lifted and passed over from one set of male arms to the other. I suspected that if I had been wearing a cloak, Nathan would have expected me to lay it down if the going got muddy.
Our progress slowed dramatically as soon as we reached the first scree slope, and the muscles in my legs told me in no uncertain terms that we were now walking up an incline of forty-five degrees; my heels registered every slip and twist of walking over a stony surface.
I took the lead by default, keeping one eye constantly open for the small stone cairns which marked the trail, many of them adorned with scallop shells, the traditional symbol of the true pilgrim. The other eye was always over my right shoulder on Astrid, who was being gently pushed up the slope by her husband, although – of the three of us – his was the reddest face and his breath rasped loudest, something which would not ease the higher we climbed.
At noon we stopped to rest, eat and break open the brandy at the foot of a scree slope, the steepest incline we had yet faced.
While the Lunels ate, I scrambled up the slope to scout the easiest route, a sort of zigzag tack across the stony surface, and at the top took my bearings. Directly ahead, across a small meadow, the landscape became even more rugged, with the openings of five valleys converging, each one offering a narrow funnel up into the mountains proper.
I returned to the Lunels, scrambling sideways down the scree, my shoes filling with small stones and dust.
‘If I have my bearings correct,’ I said with more confidence than I felt, ‘there are five valleys ahead, and the one we want is the middle one. We follow the trail through it until we see a lake and a refuge – a shepherd’s hut, most likely – but I am told it can offer shelter if not comfort should the weather turn. In that respect, we have been very lucky so far.’
‘You seem very familiar with the terrain,’ said Lunel.
‘I was well briefed. This route has been used by shot-down airmen for over a year.’
‘Do the Germans know of the route?’
‘I hope not, but others may.’
‘You are thinking of that other Englishman, Asher. He would help British prisoners-of-war escap
e to Spain, if the price was right.’
‘He seems to have had a crooked finger in many a pie,’ I said, realizing that the phrase probably meant less in French than in English. ‘Let us not worry about him, let us concentrate on the task ahead. When we find the refuge, we can rest before our final climb, but we must find it while we have daylight. Try and follow in my footsteps but be careful, the ground is loose and slippery. Best you hold my hand, Astrid.’
Despite her condition, and the fact that she was wearing battered black leather dance shoes from which the metal taps had been removed, hardly Eiger-appropriate footwear, Astrid proved to be made of strong stuff, and her progress up that slope would have impressed even Corporal Colgan at his Commando school in Scotland. I felt sure Astrid would have earned a grunt of approval from the way she tackled that scree slope. But I would have received several demerits, if not one of his infamous bawlings-out, because while I had been so concerned for Astrid, I had temporarily forgotten Nathan, bringing up the rear.
We were painfully close to the top when he slipped, his right leg buckling under him and his arms flailing as he tried but failed to keep his balance and he tumbled back down the slope, screaming. All I could do was grip Astrid’s hand even more tightly and look on helplessly as Nathan slid, rolled and bounced all the way to the bottom in an avalanche of small, sharp stones.
‘Stay here. For God’s sake, stay here. I’ll get him.’
I pulled Astrid over the top of the slope and forced her to sit down on level ground, thrust my bag into her arms and set off at reckless speed down the slope.
I could see Nathan was in a bad way well before I reached him. His face was covered in dirt and blood from a dozen or more cuts and scratches, and he had lost the flat workman’s cap he had been wearing. He was lying in a foetal position, his arms reaching down towards his left foot, which was bent at a sickeningly unnatural angle.
‘Is it broken?’ I asked, leaning over him and hopefully shielding him from Astrid’s viewpoint above us.
‘I do not think so, merely a sprain,’ he gasped.
‘A bad sprain. Can you stand?’
I pulled him upright, realizing for the first time how little he weighed and how his clothes hung on quite a slender frame, his months in a camp having taken their toll.
‘Put your arm around me and we will take it slowly. We can stop whenever you need to. You’d better let me carry your bag.’
‘No!’ He clutched at the hemp satchel which had somehow stayed hooked over his shoulder. ‘Until my wife is safe in Spain, the ledger stays with me.’
His eyes flashed, his jaw jutted, and his moustache bristled as he stared me down. I did not want to play the bully, but he needed to be brought to heel.
‘Monsieur Lunel, you are lame and out in the wilds with nowhere to hide. To go back the way we came will only be to meet people who wish you harm, added to the fact that Vichy France probably no longer exists and is now run by the German army. I have identity papers and I have friends who will help me get out of France; you have neither. I have a pistol, you do not. If I wanted to take your ledger, what could you do about it?’
The fight went out of him with a sigh which could have been a balloon deflating.
‘Nothing,’ he said at last, his body slumping into mine. ‘Absolutely nothing. We are in your hands entirely.’
He opened his bag and rummaged inside, retrieving a black leather-bound notebook, no bigger than a cheap paperback book, its cover tied closed by a bootlace strip of red material.
‘Here, take it,’ he said. ‘It contains all the numbers and names of the accounts I opened on behalf of members of the cabal in banks in Casablanca, Rabat, Oran, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. Stop those accounts and you will foil their scheme. If you wish for the real names behind those account transfers …’
He tapped the side of his head with a finger. ‘They remain in here.’
‘Your ledger will help us stop the conspiracy from succeeding,’ I said, ‘and your memory would make sure the perpetrators face justice. Both are valuable assets and, being greedy, I would like to secure both. So put the ledger back in your bag, Nathan, and your arm around me, and let’s get up this damned slope. It’s awfully bad manners to leave a lady sitting twiddling her thumbs.’
For the third time I crabbed my way up that scree incline. The going was slow, with Lunel often a dead weight against my shoulder. He could not put any pressure on his left foot, and the higher we got the more terrified he became of slipping again. I was virtually carrying him over the last twenty yards of the climb, but he made an effort when he saw Astrid at the top, her arms out as if to catch him.
In the upper meadow, I laid him down and let Astrid minister to him as best she could, though I advised her not to try and remove Nathan’s left shoe as we might never get it back on again. While she was fussing, I flexed my aching muscles and wandered off until I found a small stream cascading over an exposed lump of granite. I took a long drink of ice-cold water and then soaked my handkerchief so that I could clean Lunel’s face.
‘He cannot walk,’ Astrid said as I wiped away the grime and dried blood.
‘He has to,’ I said. ‘There are some trees up ahead and with luck we’ll find a walking stick for him. For the moment, tie his ankle tightly with something. His belt if need be.’
I checked my wristwatch and then looked up at the sky. Clouds were rolling in over the peaks, the temperature was definitely dropping and the light was going. I began to worry about how ill-equipped our expedition was. We had no blankets or sleeping bags and little food. The terrain we were about to cross could provide us with water – we could hear a constant bubbling of streams and waterfalls – but little in the way of food. The only thing we had on our side, and perhaps I was clutching at straws here, was that the skies were empty of German spotter planes.
We crossed the meadow slowly but relatively easily, with Lunel and I stumbling along as if participating in a drunken three-legged race. We then followed the middle valley of the five which opened before us, and the going became narrower and stonier, with jagged rocks rising to each side of the narrow path.
My lungs told me that we were gaining in altitude, and they complained even more when I was forced to carry Lunel piggy-back when he began to fade and finally faint with pain and exhaustion.
The trail eventually brought us to a small plateau, a geological comma in the mountain range. There was a lake there, a lake of still, lifeless grey water, and small stone hut with a chimney but no windows and a door made of rough planking.
The sun was dipping behind the mountains as I pushed open that flimsy door, with Lunel still clinging to my back, his arms around my neck. I sank to my knees and Lunel yelped as he rolled off my back.
‘Be it ever so humble,’ I wheezed, ‘this is no place like home.’
TWENTY-ONE
Message for Emil
The Dorchester Hotel, London. 20 May 1970
‘Nobody’s seen nuffink, then? That’s what you’re saying?’
‘Spare us the double negatives and let Charlie speak,’ said Mr Campion.
‘I’m afraid Lugg’s got it in one,’ said Luke. ‘Not the way I would have reported it in a magistrates’ court, but basically that’s the gist. I have talked to most of your guests but only briefly, hardly proper interviews.’
‘Not packing yer notebook tonight? I suppose it would spoil the cut of yer penguin suit.’
‘Albert, do tell Lugg to shut up,’ said Amanda, glaring at the fat man rather than her husband.
‘I have, but it didn’t do much good.’
‘Then tell him to fetch us a drink or get some music going. We can’t have people standing around with long faces like washerwomen on a wet drying day. This is supposed to be a party, not a funeral. It’s not a funeral, is it, Charlie?’
Luke shook his head and motioned the senior Campions to come closer to him. Lugg, excluded and dismissed, sniffed loudly and shuffled off in the direction of the nearest
waiter.
‘When we moved from the dining room to here, the seating plan went out of the window and everybody was milling around. Herr von Ringer headed straight out of the hotel for a smoke; I saw him go myself. Maybe he wanted some fresh air.’
Mr Campion smiled weakly. ‘With those terrible cheroots he puffed, he could have done with a demilitarized zone. I think he was being polite; going outside to protect us from the fumes.’
‘Whatever his motive,’ Luke continued with the professional air all expected of him, ‘he left the building of his own volition and, as far as anyone knows, was minding his own business, having a smoke. Who followed him out is the interesting question, for as Magersfontein Holmes over there has pointed out, the knife used to stab him came from inside the hotel, most likely purloined by one of the party guests.’
‘Can we totally rule out the kitchen staff? Lugg said the knife had gone missing from the kitchen.’ Mr Campion removed his spectacles and began to polish the lenses with his handkerchief.
‘My gut feeling is we can,’ said Luke. ‘They’re all wearing chefs’ whites and surely would have been noticed walking through the mass of your guests to get to the front door. But of course, I can’t be sure until I get some men here and we take detailed statements.’
‘Is it going to be a long night, Charles?’ asked Amanda. ‘I’m thinking of our guests. They were expecting some dancing and frivolity, not a murder enquiry.’
‘Don’t be too sure about that. I’ve overheard a couple of your guests suggesting that this is Albert’s idea of an elaborate party game.’
Mr Campion bridled at the accusation. ‘How dare they! Would I ruin the cutting of my own birthday cake for the sake of a cheap stunt? How ungrateful. Didn’t any of them see anything useful?’
Luke took a deep breath and recalled the mental list he had made. ‘Well, Mrs Longfox certainly did, but only after the fact. She says she popped out for some fresh air, and more or less tripped over the victim. The hotel would normally have a doorman or two on duty, but it was all hands to the pump for the staff, moving furniture and setting up your disco, so no one actually saw her going out, let alone Ringer. Her father the earl, by the way, is kicking up rough with the hotel management, saying how disgraceful it was to have a body dropped at the feet of his daughter like that.’