Elizabeth weakened. ‘Go on, Major.’ She forced herself to smile. ‘Yes?’
‘Very well, Miss Loftus.’ He didn’t bat an eyelid, but she could feel his satisfied prejudice like an aura, now that he had asserted his superiority. ‘What is it that you want to know?’
That was a superficially reasonable question, thought Elizabeth. But, as David Audley always maintained, questions usually give you answers about the questioner. So in this instance, since he knew she hadn’t read his report, he was also fishing—and probably for anything the Deputy-Director had told her, for a start.
Well, that other time she’d been easy meat. But this time she must simply remember that his brief had been Major Parker’s death.
‘Everything, Major.’ Another smile. ‘Why was your investigation unsatisfactory?’ He’d know a false smile when he saw one. ‘A tragic accident, the newspapers said?’
‘Yes.’ The eyelids still didn’t bat as he realized that she had learned her lesson. ‘The French were waiting for me, Miss Loftus.’
‘Waiting for you?’ Innocent and genuine surprise. ‘On the Pointe du Hoc?’
‘Nearby.’ There was perhaps the faintest suggestion of Lowland Scottish, perhaps from the hard land of the Border, in his voice. ‘The local paper suggested that he had come to Normandy for the D-Day gathering, on June 6th. But that was not so. He did not arrive until the afternoon of June 7th. The day of his tragic accident.’ He repeated her words without commitment to them.
‘Yes, Major?’ She must not jump to conclusions. But tragic accidents in this line of country were generally neither tragic nor accidental; and it was only on the very cliff-edge of possibility that this elderly American had come half-way across the world to do alternatively what he could have done much more easily at home, on his own account.
‘The newspaper reported him as staying at Bayeux. I traced him to a hotel there. I gave the clerk twenty francs, and he was on the phone before my back was properly turned. I went directly to the Pointe du Hoc. They took me as I was on my way back to Bayeux.’
‘Took you?’
‘With the utmost courtesy, Miss Loftus. But without argument.’
She mustn’t waste time trying to imagine that scene. ‘What did they want?’
‘They wanted to know what I was doing.’
Another silly question then. ‘And what were you doing?’ A hard man like Major Turnbull would have had a cover-story. ‘You were stringing for PA? Or Agence-News Angleterre?’
‘No, Miss Loftus. There was a DST man in attendance, so they already knew exactly who I was. A simple lie would only have invited trouble.’
That was interesting, though logical—that the Major had a European reputation before Colonel Butler had recruited him, and long before Mr Latimer had sent him back to France. ‘So what was your complicated lie?’
He gave her Odin’s stone face again, looking down on Grimeby from Baldersby Dale. ‘In any period before or after Her Majesty the Queen has been invited to a foreign celebration, if there is a suspicious death we investigate it as a matter of routine, Miss Loftus.’
Phew! ‘And what did they say to that?’
‘There was nothing they could say. They could not deny that Her Majesty was there on June 6th, in Normandy. And they knew they couldn’t question such a story without making an issue of it. Especially not after I’d reminded them of the Vive le IRA slogans they had failed to erase.’
Not bad at all, thought Elizabeth. ‘When the safety of the Royal Family was involved, all foreigners expected John Bull to be at his most truculent. ‘And they believed that?’
‘No, Miss Loftus. If they had believed that I would have said so.’ He paused, and as the pause lengthened she felt herself sucked into it.
‘So what did—‘
‘If you will let me finish, Miss Loftus.’ He cut her off smoothly. ‘They pretended to believe me. And then they were uncommonly helpful and cooperative. They allowed me to interview three witnesses—two Frenchmen and an American youth. The Frenchman had been engaged in clearing up the area, after the previous day’s ceremonies. The American youth was the grandson of an officer in one of their destroyers, which gave close support to the American troops who stormed the positon in 1944.’ He paused again. ‘I take it that you are aware of what happened on the Pointe du Hoc, Miss Loftus?’
‘Yes, Major.’ It might be smarter to feign female ignorance, but there was a limit to what female flesh-and-blood could endure. “That would be D, E and F Companies of the 5th Rangers. And the destroyer was presumably the Satterlee.’
‘Yes.’ Not a nod, much less a smile—not even a bloody blink! Even Father had more grace on the rare occasions when she produced the right answer! ‘The boy had been delayed by an accident involving the truck in which he’d been hitch-hiking. But he was an excellent witness, observant and intelligent. I have no reservations about him.’
Elizabeth frowned, and plunged over her own cliff before she could stop herself. ‘He saw Parker fall?’
‘No, Miss Loftus. I did not say that. I neither said it, nor implied it. I said the boy was an excellent witness. If he had seen the man fall then my investigation would not have been unsatisfactory. None of these witnesses saw the man fall. Neither did two adult Americans who were also on the headland at the time. I was shown transcripts of their evidence. All five of them arrived on the scene after he had allegedly fallen—the boy, one of the Americans and one of the Frenchmen almost immediately, within sight of each other, the other two shortly after.’ He paused. ‘Altogether there were seven people in the vicinity.’
Seven?
‘Indeed?’ She was not going to be caught so easily again: the as-yet-unaccounted two must wait until the Major chose to summon them. ‘Why were you not able to interview the Americans—the adult ones?’
He stared at her in silence for a moment. ‘I was told that they had returned to America. Their evidence was certainly of no significance in transcript. They merely confirmed what the boy and the Frenchman said, but in less detail.’
‘Who were they? Why were they there?’
‘I was told that they were tourists.’
It was like playing a game—a game of snakes-without-ladders, from which he evidently derived some secret ego-inflating pleasure. But she was at least beginning to get the hang of his rules. ‘And is their transcript to be relied on?’
‘No, Miss Loftus. I did not say that. But so far as it went it was factually accurate, I believe.’
Whatever he stated as a fact was a fact, and ‘I believe’ prefixed a genuine opinion. But ‘I was told’ indicated an untruth. Those were his rules. But since she was boss it was about time she started making the rules. ‘Why were the French so helpful?’
‘The fact that I was there at all meant that I’d been tracking him. They didn’t know how much I knew already. Perhaps they thought I might give them something.’
Some hope! thought Elizabeth. ‘And the missing eye-witnesses?’
‘Eye-witnesses?’ He produced no reaction, of course.
‘Seven people, you said, Major.’ Now for her rules. ‘You may have all the time in the world, but I’ve got Dr Audley cooling his heels down the passage. So I don’t have time to play games.’
‘Hmm … ’ His lips compressed. ‘I did not say all their evidence was useless. It was not. The boy’s evidence was in reality of greater significance than the French police suggested—or pretended to suggest. He was able to testify that Parker was unsteady on his feet—how he lost his balance and fell while crossing the rough ground near the edge of the cliff.’
That suggested a genuine accident, thought Elizabeth. But she was done with questions now. ‘Seven people, Major. Tell me about the other two.’
‘The two other persons present were a man and a woman. Both young … both French. They had been observed earlier by the American boy, and also by one of the French refuse-collectors. The boy said that they were “necking”, and the Frenchman described wh
at they were doing more colourfully. But from where they were lying in the grass they would certainly have had a clear view of the point at which Parker went over the edge.’
Eye-witnesses. But then why was he playing so hard to get?
‘All the witnesses agreed that there was at least one shout, or cry. The boy thought that there were two. When they came within sight of the place … which is in a gully, or possibly a stretch of heavily bombed or bombarded cliff-edge … they also agreed that the young Frenchman was kneeling on the grass, with his female companion close by. The boy says that they were both very emotional—“all het-up, and crying”—but his grasp of the French language is limited. The refuse-collector’s recollection is that the man said “he fell—he jumped—I do not know”. And then perhaps “I ran -I was too late—he is gone”. But he is uncertain about either the exact words, or their exact sequence.’
Eye-witnesses, Elizabeth thought again. If they had been making love just above him, maybe their eye-witnessing had not been exact. But it was now reduced to one thing or the other, whatever the sequence.
‘The first of the other two Americans arrived then, followed by the other one shortly afterwards. They both then proceeded to the bottom of the cliff by the wooden staircase, together with one of the Frenchmen—you are , conversant with the geography of the Pointe du Hoc, Miss Loftus?’
Not in 1984, Major Turnbull—only in 1944; and there was certainly no easy way down then, never mind up! ‘Of course.’
He gave her one of his blank looks. ‘The evidence is unsatisfactory after that. The American boy says that the young man spoke to his girl-friend. He doesn’t know what he said—only that the girl burst into tears, and ; became hysterical. The refuse-man thinks he said some thing like “What shall we do?” But then the young man turned to him and said that he must take his fiancee from the scene of the tragedy—that he would take her back to the car, so that she could recover there.’
That was par for the course, thought Elizabeth: men expected women to become hysterical on such occasions. And, in her educational experience, men were often inadequate on such occasions, and unwilling to deliver the necessary slap, which she had always found easy. And, in this case, the Frenchman and the American boy would no doubt have been relieved to have an hysterical fiancee led away out of their sight by a protective fiance.
But Major Turnbulls lack of expression as he waited for her to react to this reasonable sequence of events, combined with what he had already said and left unsaid, suggested that there was more and better—or more and worse—to come. And, for choice, worse.
‘I see.’ So the two adult Americans (let’s say the two CIA men, for a guess, Major) had gone rushing off, in the faint hope that their subject had survived the fall; and that had been a mistake. ‘And that was the last anyone saw or heard of the fiance and the fiancee, Major?’
‘No, Miss Loftus.’ He managed to look pleased without moving a muscle.
Now she was stumped. Either she had missed something, or she was reduced to a tragic but boring accident again. And that made no sense.
‘Yes, Major?’ Instead of attempting nonsense, she simulated intelligent expectation of whatever he had in store for her.
‘The young man phoned the Gendarmerie at Bayeux next day. He told them that he had seen it all. But the lady with whom he had been at the time was not his fiancee. So he was not about to come forward to testify what he had seen, in person.’
Not his fiancee, thought Elizabeth. Therefore someone else’s fiancee—or someone else’s wife, more like: that went without saying in France, or anywhere else, but in France particularly, for such matters were bien entendu there, even in the Gendarmerie at Bayeux.
But they were evidently not bien entendu by Major Turnbull. ‘What else did he say?’
‘After he had indicated the delicacy of his situation he became disappointingly inexact, I was told. He saw an elderly gentleman, whom he took to be a foreigner by his dress, and who appeared to have strayed from the path. But he neither saw anyone fall nor jump. The old man was there—he heard a cry, which made him look up—and the old man was no longer there. Then he reacted as anyone might have done, rushing to the spot, on the edge of the cliff. And then other persons ran to join him. But it was useless—there was nothing he could do, or could have done, to avert the tragedy. He deeply regretted his inability to come forward in person, but the reputation of the young lady was at stake. And nothing would bring the elderly gentleman back to life.’
‘And you believe—‘ No, that was the start of a foolish and unnecessary question ‘—I mean, did they pretend to believe that, Major?’
‘For my benefit they did. It is on the face of it a plausible enough story. And I could hardly question it without raising difficulties for myself.’
That wasn’t the complete story, decided Elizabeth. ‘Did they explain why they picked you up?’
‘They did not. I had given them a sufficient reason for being there, asking questions. But their reason for keeping an eye on the place was if anything rather better than mine for being there.’
She was getting closer. “They didn’t believe the man’s story?’
‘Please let me finish, Miss Loftus. I detected a certain embarrassment. Because they were a little late in picking me up. Consequently I was able to examine the ground at leisure.’ He paused deliberately, and continued only when he was sure of her. ‘In my considered opinion, the two adult Americans were watchers, not bodyguards. And they did not anticipate any danger, since they allowed him out of their actual vision in a potentially hazardous area.’ This time the pause was longer. ‘But I do not know anything about the dead man. I presume you know more about him, Miss Loftus?’
Elizabeth held her tongue. It would have been satisfying to have teased him, but it would have served no useful purpose. All she had to do was to season her impatience and let him speak without interruption.
If he was disappointed, he didn’t show it. ‘I do not know whether you have had occasion to visit the place, Miss Loftus—?’
He was actually fishing! But then, perhaps it was her special knowledge of the Ranger units of 1944 which had tickled his curiosity. ‘Please do go on, Major.’
‘The site is cordoned off, and marked. And it is certainly the same site which the American boy described to me. And I had an opportunity to examine it, as I have said.’
Curiously, he was about to echo something Paul had once said to her about his battlefields: he was talking about the actual place now, which he had seen; and Paul had said: ‘People can lie, Elizabeth, or they can be wrong. But the ground never lies, and it’s never wrong?
‘People fall over cliffs, Miss Loftus, for three reasons. They go over by accident, because they venture too close and they slip. Or they choose to jump, and they do jump. Or someone pushes them. And, for any reasonable assumption to be made, each possibility requires different criteria.’
Apart from expertise on Anglo-Danish place-names and Norse gods, Major Turnbull evidently had a coroner’s experience of death, thought Elizabeth.
‘He was an old man, and he was none too steady on his feet. We know that because he slipped on the grass earlier. And if he had wanted to jump, then there are several stretches of cliff which make jumping easy, where the drop is quick and inviting.’
So jumping was eliminated.
The whole of that area was heavily bombed and bombarded, but there is a perfectly adequate path across the site. In spite of his physical infirmity he left that path, and negotiated a most difficult terrain in order to reach a gully. It is not only a much less promising place from which to jump—it is not simply lower, but the actual cliff there is something less than sheer for a further distance—there is something of an overhang, which makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain whether the drop is either clean or sufficient.’
Elizabeth nodded. ‘So he didn’t jump.’
‘It is a reasonable assumption that he did not. But, by the s
ame token, it seems unlikely that he fell from such a place, Miss Loftus. It is exactly the sort of place from which an adventurous child might have fallen, while peering over the edge of the overhang. But the man whom the American boy described would have found that far too difficult. Such a descent would require a quite unreasonable degree of imprudence.’
‘But he could have slipped. He had already done that once.’
‘Then he would still not have fallen over the actual cliff-edge, in my estimation. To fall there he would have required outward velocity—a downwards slither would have been insufficient.’
Elizabeth thought for a moment. It was really no wonder that he had described his investigation as ‘unsatisfactory’: he had been ordered to verify a tragic accident, only to find conflicting evidence, and then French Security waiting for him. All of which would not have endeared the assignment to anyone, least of all someone like Major Turnbull.
She stared at him, and wondered what she meant by ‘someone like Major Turnbull’, when she really knew absolutely nothing about him except that he had passed Colonel Butler’s scrutiny six months ago.
‘Yes, Miss Loftus.’ He stared back at her. ‘I am well aware that I am offering you a card-house of unsupported hypotheses. The man may have fallen. The French may have traced the young man and his woman. It is even remotely possible that the American boy had been rehearsed, and that he is a natural-born liar. You might even be entitled to assume that the man Parker did not fall—or jump—or was pushed … from the place I observed. All that is possible. And I warned you of my dissatisfaction—had you read my report you would have saved yourself time which you may well have wasted.’
Yes. But the Deputy-Director had rated this meeting as more valuable than reading words on the screen, and what did that count for?
‘Yes, Major,’ she heard herself say meekly. Simply, if the card-house was good enough for the Deputy-Director, it had better be good enough for her—at least until she had talked to David Audley. ‘But please continue, nevertheless.’
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