Lacroix had wanted to see Madeleine because he felt that sufficient time had now elapsed since the police had been hunting for her for the majority of them to have forgotten her description; and he had work for her to do. Now that the number of his sabotage squads was increasing, so too were their casualties through brushes with night-watchmen, sentries and police; so he had found it necessary to establish a genuine nursing-home where they could have their injuries attended to and remain in bed until they recovered.
She at once expressed her willingness to undertake such work, but Kuporovitch intervened to say that, although the police might have forgotten their description, if either of them were seen coming in and out of Luc Ferrière’s house regularly in the daytime the neighbours would begin to wonder who they were. As they had no ration-cards for use at local shops, suspicion might be aroused through some officious gossip, which would lead to an investigation and an arrest.
The Colonel agreed, but thought that might be got over, and introduced Madeleine to a handsome white-haired woman, the Marquise de Villebois, who was running her house as a home for him.
When the situation was explained the Marquise said that she already had her own daughter and another girl, both of whom had trained as V.A.D.s in the early part of the war. They were quite able to run the house and look after the patients in the daytime; but she badly wanted a reliable night nurse, as she and the two girls were on their feet all day. The house was in the Boulevard Saint Germain, and they all agreed that if Madeleine set out after dark each night, and returned before the neighbours were up each morning, there was no great likelihood of her being recognised during her journeys backwards and forwards in the Metro; so everything having been fixed up she set about her new duties the following night.
The thought of Christmas, and to the French the even more important festival of the New Year, was now in everybody’s mind; but little of the spirit of Christmas animated the gloomy captive city. The thousands of once well-stocked shops, in which the Parisians had bought their food luxuries and elegant useless trifles so casually, were now almost empty. Even wine, the very life-blood of the French people, was at a premium, and hard to come by. There were queues in every street each morning, while shivering housewives waited anxiously to see if they could obtain their meagre rations. There was no heating in any of the great blocks, and coal, coke and firewood were as precious as diamonds.
Now that Britain had broken the power of the Luftwaffe and was actually taking the offensive in Libya, no one could see any possible ending to the war. Many people in Paris were now bankrupt and starving. Thousands of others had sons, husbands or lovers who had been in the Forces at the time of the collapse and were now in German concentration camps. Thousands more had wives, daughters, and sweethearts who were missing—just disappeared—they knew not where—in the terrible upheaval which had shaken the country to its foundations the previous summer. For days past there had been snow and bitter winds; the pavements were slippery with ice and the streets full of dirty slush. On every hand there was misery, destitution and despair.
Yet there was at least one person in Paris who thoroughly enjoyed the life he was leading. Stefan Kuporovitch was a man without a home, and for the time being Ferrière’s house suited him admirably. It was roomy enough and as comfortable as they could reasonably wish, except for the cold, and even that caused him far less inconvenience than most people, because he was used to the Arctic winters of his native Russia.
He had long since made up his mind that their unwilling host set much too high a price upon his stamp collection to betray them; so, barring some unforeseen accident which they could not possibly guard against, they were perfectly safe as long as they chose to stay there. As he hated inactivity and was adventurous by nature, he got a big kick out of his nightly prowlings after supplies, or skilfully planned acts of sabotage. They had plenty to eat, and, as he had found means to supplement the contents of the cellar, plenty to drink. Above all, he was living in the same house as the girl he adored. For him the approach of Christmas meant only another excuse for one of his celebrations.
On Christmas Eve he took Madeleine to the house of the Marquise de Villebois, then paid another visit to the Zoological Gardens. The animals were not so numerous now, as it had proved difficult to get the right kinds of food to feed many of them, and the authorities had doubtless also decided that venison at this time of acute shortage was better in a pot than running about on four legs. However, on his previous visit he had marked down a handsome Chinese goose with exotic plumage. Having broken into the cage he wrung the bird’s neck and, skilfully evading the night-watchman, at which art he was now a past-master, brought it home to provide them with an excellent Christmas dinner.
Pierre joined them for the meal, and, although he avoided the question of Madeleine’s mother as far as he could, it emerged that she had recently been ill and that her sufferings from the cold were more acute than ever.
Madeleine wished to go to her that evening, but both Kuporovitch and Pierre flatly refused to let her, as Pierre was now fully convinced that Madame Bonard was in league with the police. He had seen her talking to an agent de ville on more than one occasion, and considered it a foregone conclusion that she had been told to keep a watch for Madeleine in the hope that sooner or later she would go to her mother.
Under great pressure Madeleine gave way and tried to salve her conscience by sending presents and loving messages by Pierre that night; but during the following days the mental picture of her mother—ill, lonely, unable to leave her bed and shivering with cold—haunted and tormented her. She had hoped that Kuporovitch would let her risk a visit at Christmas, and now Christmas was gone; but there was still the New Year, and she felt that she could not possibly allow that of all days in the year to pass without giving her mother the consolation of her presence. In consequence, she decided not to tell the others anything about it, so that they should have no opportunity of preventing her, and instead of going back to the nursing-home on New Year’s Eve creep back at night to her old home.
So intent was she on this project that the news that Admiral Darlan had had a most important two-day conference over Christmas in Paris with Otto Abetz, and that the Germans had succeeded in burning down a large area of the city of London by the use of thousands of incendiary bombs on December the 29th, passed her by unheeded. On the evening of the 31st, carrying a special parcel of good things, which she had quite unscrupulously taken from Monsieur Ferrière’s hoarded stores, she set out at eight o’clock, which was her usual time of leaving for the nursing-home.
It was nearly two months now since she had been in the Rue Saint Honoré, but nothing seemed altered, as far as she could see in the frosty starlight. A bitter wind cut her face as she walked down the street, and the gutters were piled high with snow, but there were even fewer people than usual about. At this hour they were nearly all employed in eating the New Year’s Eve dinner that they had managed to scrape up somehow; and it was largely on this that Madeleine counted to engage the attention of the concierge and his wife.
She knew that on entering the main door of the building a little hanging bell would ring; but as she was aware of its exact position she was able to carry out her plan of opening the door very gently, just a crack, then raising the point of her umbrella until it became wedged between the bell and the door. The trick worked, and she managed to get inside with only a faint jingle.
There was a light in the concierge’s room, and the sounds of laughter. Very cautiously she stole past it and up the stairs, not daring to take the lift to the third floor. With her own key she let herself into the apartment and was surprised to find it in complete darkness.
Switching on the light, she went forward with her heart almost in her mouth, dreading, almost foreseeing, what she might find. In the bedroom her mother was lying, but not in a natural sleep. Her hands had been carefully folded across her breast, and a small crucifix had been placed upon them. She must have died earlier
that day, or perhaps the preceding night before Madame Bonard came up to attend to her in the morning.
The room was positively icy. Madeleine’s teeth began to chatter as she stood there, but her heart was burning with a wild anger. She knew that it was this desperate cold which the German Occupation had brought to Paris that had killed her mother. Between grief and hatred she was almost overcome as she knelt at the bedside, sobbing bitterly.
It was Pierre’s voice that roused her. ‘Madeleine! What are you doing here? You shouldn’t have come. I was just on my way over to break the news to you.’
‘When—when did she die?’ sobbed Madeleine.
‘Last night; but I didn’t know about it until this afternoon. On my way out just now I saw the light, so I came in to see who was here. You shouldn’t have come, Madeleine! If that old woman downstairs knows you’re here she’ll tell the police, and you’ll be in most desperate danger.’
Even as he spoke they both heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
18
Unhappy New Year
‘Stay where you are!’ whispered Pierre, and slipping out of the bedroom he closed the door gently behind him.
He had hardly done so when Madame Bonard and a gendarme appeared in the small hallway.
‘So it’s you!’ she said in a surly tone, evidently badly disgruntled at having been disturbed from her New Year’s Eve dinner and made to climb up to the top flights of stairs. ‘What’re you up to, and how did you get in here?’
As she spoke the gendarme ran to the window and began to draw the curtains. ‘You’ll be lucky if you get off with a heavy fine for this,’ he muttered. ‘You must be crazy to sit about in rooms without doing the black-out. The lights from these top windows can be seen from the sky for miles, and for such an offence you’re liable to a prison sentence.’
Pierre realised then what had brought them up there. As Madame Lavallière was dead Madame Bonard had not bothered to do the black-out as usual that evening. On entering the flat Madeleine had failed to notice that, and the shock of finding her mother dead had prevented her from becoming aware of it later. Down in the street the gendarme had seen the lights go on and immediately roused out Madame Bonard to go up with him while he took particulars of the culprit.
‘How did you get in?’ Madame Bonard repeated truculently.
‘As a friend of the family I was given a key to the apartment months ago,’ Pierre lied.
‘And what were you doing here?’ she went on.
Pierre was saved from having to reply by the gendarme saying angrily: ‘Don’t stand there, man! Do the other two windows—in that room behind you! There were three windows in a line, all blazing with light when I ran along the street.’ As he spoke he moved swiftly towards the bedroom door.
‘No, no, I’ll do it,’ Pierre cried hastily, stepping in front of him.
‘All right, go on then!’ replied the policeman, but as Pierre did not budge he suddenly made to thrust him aside.
‘You can’t go in there!’ declared Pierre, grabbing the policeman’s arm.
‘Why not?’ the man demanded.
‘There’s a body of a woman in it who died last night. We should respect the dead.’
‘Fiddlesticks!’ exclaimed Madame Bonard. ‘It’s no disrespect to the poor woman to do her black-out.’ Her voice suddenly changed to a note of suspicion. ‘What’ve you been up to? I believe there’s something you don’t want us to see in there.’
‘Stand aside!’ said the gendarme firmly. ‘You’re obstructing me in the course of my duty. I believe you’re one of these Communists who’re endeavouring to sabotage the régime. If you don’t get out of the way I shall charge you with showing these lights and keeping them on with intent to assist the enemy.’
Pierre was up against it. He knew that Madeleine must have heard their raised voices through the door. She might have taken the minute he had gained for her to hide herself; but now that Madame Bonard’s suspicions were aroused it was more than likely that once she got into the room she would open the cupboards and poke about to see if he had interfered with anything, and that would result in Madeleine’s discovery. Pierre had never hit a man in anger in his life, but he loved Madeleine desperately. He could not bear the thought that she would be carted off and handed over to the Gestapo. Ribaud had furnished him with a pistol, but he was terrified of firearms and felt certain that he would bungle matters if he tried to use it.
As he stared into the angry eyes of the policeman he had an awful sinking feeling from knowing that he positively had to do something, or in another moment it would be too late. The gendarme was standing within two feet of him. With a sudden inspiration Pierre made a nervous grab at the man’s truncheon, jerked it out and hit him a glancing blow with it on the side of the head.
For a moment the gendarme was so astonished that he did nothing, but stood there with his left hand up to his head where he had been hit; then with a roar of rage he pulled out his pistol.
Desperate now, Pierre hit him with the truncheon again, this time much harder and on top of the head. The policeman’s kepi took some of the force of the blow, but he staggered back, while Madame Bonard, throwing up her hands, ran out of the room and down the stairs, crying:
‘Help! Help! Police! Murder!’
Before the gendarme could raise his gun Pierre hit him a third time, his nervous excitement lending strength to the blow. The man dropped his pistol and fell to his knees, where he remained, swaying slightly, while he mumbled threats and curses.
Staring down at him, Pierre was conscious of the frightening thought that he had burnt his boats; but he saw that his only course now was to go through with the job. Seizing the half-dazed policeman, he threw him face downwards on the floor, and pulling his arms behind his back tied his wrists with a handkerchief. He then grabbed a scarf from the hat-stand and, avoiding the man’s futile kicks, succeeded in tying his ankles together. Jumping up, he ran to the bedroom door, switched off the light and called to Madeleine:
‘It was Madame Bonard and a gendarme! Your forgetting to do the black-out brought them up. I’ve laid him out, but she’s rushed downstairs to get help.’
At the sound of his voice Madeleine stepped out of a big clothes cupboard where she had hidden herself, and said quickly: ‘You knocked the policeman out! How brave of you, Pierre! Where is he?’
‘Here, on the floor,’ called Pierre into the semi-darkness; ‘but his friends will come pounding up the stairs at any moment, and God knows how we’re going to get out of here.’
Madeleine’s mind had switched back to that terrible evening six months before when the Nazis had raided the apartment and shot Georges. She had then had a short-lived hope that if he could back his way into the little kitchen while she threw herself in front of him he might be able to escape down the cables of the goods lift. In a hurried spate of words she now produced the idea to Pierre.
He paled a little. ‘Those cables aren’t meant to bear a big weight and they’re pretty old. We’ll break our necks if they give way.’
‘We’ll have to chance that,’ declared Madeleine resolutely.
‘All right, then. But let’s go down by the one from my kitchen. If they find this flat empty when they get back that may give us a few extra moments; and if we lock the door they’ll have to break it down.’
With a swift nod Madeleine ran into the kitchen, flung open the window and threw her hat into the sink so that the police would find a false trail and imagine that they had gone out that way. Pierre meanwhile had unlocked the door of his own apartment across the landing, and as soon as they were inside it they bolted the door behind them.
‘You won’t be able to come back here now,’ she gasped, ‘so you’d better take a few things.’
‘D’you think there’s time?’ he asked uneasily.
‘Yes, yes! But for God’s sake, be quick!’
Running to his bedroom, Pierre pulled a suitcase out from under the bed and rapidly stuffed some of
his most treasured possessions and more useful clothes into it, while Madeleine got his kitchen window open, and climbing out on the sill began to test the stoutest cable to see if it would bear her weight.
Suddenly she heard Pierre’s voice behind her. ‘Perhaps I’d better go first in case it breaks.’
With a shake of her head she rejected his gallant offer and swung herself out on to the cable. It was not very thick, so it proved difficult for her to keep a proper grip on it with her hands and knees. She had intended to go down, hand over hand, but before she was halfway the wire was slipping through her grasp. In sudden panic she clutched it tightly so that it cut through her gloves and burnt her hands, as though it were made of red-hot steel. With a moan of pain she slid the last twenty feet, arriving with a horrible bump on the wooden cage at the bottom.
Dazed and faint, her hands smarting terribly, she managed to pick herself out of the snow and called up that she was all right. Then she saw Pierre’s dark form against the starlight sky as he prepared to follow her.
Very fortunately she stood away from under him, as before he had lowered himself a dozen feet he, too, found himself slipping, and with one of his hands he was clutching his heavy bag. Next second, in order to save himself, he was compelled to drop it.
It landed with a terrific thud at Madeleine’s feet, spilling its contents right and left in the trampled snow. Controlling the pain that she was feeling with an effort, she hastily began to collect the things and cram them back into the bag. A minute later he was beside her. In frantic haste they picked up the last few items. Pierre grabbed the bag, and they set off at a run down the dark alleyway, the snow deadening the sound of their footfalls.
By the time they reached the street at the alley’s end and broke into a walk Madeleine was sobbing openly. She could feel the warm blood soaking into her gloves from the places where her palms had been torn, and the nerves were on fire from their searing contact with the steel cable. The torture was such that she was hardly even aware that she was badly bruised about the body from her fall. Pierre had come off somewhat better, as he had grabbed up his thickest pair of gloves before leaving his room, and as they were leather motor gauntlets they had served to protect his hands, except in one place where the leather had been scorched through.
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