The Empty House

by Michael Gilbert

  “It’s very good of you,” said Peter, “but I can’t possibly—”

  “Your shoes,” said Mr. French-Bisset firmly, “have come up quite nicely. And I suggest you take this light raincoat. I’m not sure who it came from. It might have been Kent-Blake’s. I rather think it was. Shaving gear in the bathroom. I suggest you get dressed and we’ll see what you look like.”

  Peter lowered the trousers to the full extent of his braces and decided that the shirt, which was several collar sizes too large, would have to be worn open at the neck. The blazer fitted perfectly. He descended to find his housemaster pouring out glasses of sherry.

  “Do you think I could have a word with Sally?” he said. “I’d like to thank her.”

  “She’d be delighted,” said Mr. French-Bisset. “Come with me.” He led him along familiar passages. They found the old lady ironing sheets. She looked at Peter out of the guileless blue eyes which had been curiously comforting to him when he had first arrived in that terrifying place. “There was blood on your vest,” she said. “Up to your tricks again.”

  “If it was blood, it was probably mine, Sally.”

  “I didn’t suppose you’d been murdering somebody. Not that I’d have been greatly surprised. You were always a boy who went his own way.”

  She slapped another sheet onto the ironing board to signify that the audience was over.

  Mr. French-Bisset said, “You’ll be wanting to telephone your mother, I expect. She’ll have been badly worried.”

  “If I’d thought I could do it safely,” said Peter, “I’d have rung her the moment I saw that paragraph in the paper.”

  “Safely?”

  “I’m afraid our telephone will certainly be tapped.”

  “Good heavens,” said Mr. French-Bisset. He looked as though he would have liked to make some comment, but restrained himself with an effort. Peter’s stock as a Secret Service agent was rising.

  “I’ve been looking up trains to London. That is to say, if you’re planning to go to London. Perhaps you haven’t quite worked out your future moves yet.”

  Washington? Bonn? Moscow?

  “I shall have to go to London,” said Peter slowly. “But after that it depends on how things work out. I wonder whether I could regard this as my headquarters for the next few days. I mean, from the point of view of receiving and forwarding messages.”

  “Certainly. I shall be here myself until the middle of next week. Our idle governors have a habit of meeting in London from time to time and I may be called up to advise about appointments. We’re faced with a bit of a crisis over last-minute resignations – but I needn’t bother you with school politics. You must have much more serious things to worry about.”

  “Two or three days will be quite enough,” said Peter. “If I or anyone else sends you a message, could you pass it on to this man at Cryde Bay? His name is Anderson. He’s perfectly reliable, and I’m planning to keep in touch with him. I’ll give you his telephone number. It might be better if you remember it and don’t write it down.”

  “Certainly,” said Mr. French-Bisset. “Certainly. Never write anything down. Much safer. Now, about getting up to London.”

  “I’d prefer to arrive after dark, and as inconspicuously as possible.”

  “No difficulty. I’ll run you out to Riverton Junction in my car and you can catch the six-thirty Cornishman. It gets to Paddington at nine. Should be getting dark by then. You’ll pass muster as a young man who’s been spending a short holiday in the West Country. But it did occur to me that you’d look more convincing if you had some luggage with you.”

  He went out into the hall and returned with a battered suitcase. From the initials on it Peter recognised it as having belonged to an oafish boy called Baker who had left School House the term that Peter had arrived.

  “We’ll put in a few books and newspapers to give it a convincing weight. You’ll have time for a light supper before you go. Unless it’s too soon after your breakfast.”

  “I’ve got a lot of leeway to make up,” said Peter.

  At half past six on the dot the Cornishman pulled up at Riverton Junction, and Peter, wearing Garstone’s trousers, Whitmarsh’s blazer, and carrying Kent-Blake’s raincoat and the oafish Baker’s suitcase, now weighted with obsolete copies of Hall and Knight’s Algebra and Kennedy’s Latin Primer, joined a carriage full of returning holiday makers. He had planned a story of a walking tour on Dartmoor, but he had no need to use it. As soon as conversation became general, he found he had only to listen to other people’s accounts of their holidays.

  “Thank the Lord,” said the woman in the corner, “that we decided to send the children abroad. Think what they’d have been like, sitting for a fortnight in a boardinghouse at St. Ives watching the rain coming down. Herbert spent most of his time drinking with the local fishermen.”

  Her husband said that it wasn’t all drinking. They had managed to catch a few fish. A small man in the far corner said that all he’d caught was a cold. At nine o’clock on the dot the train rolled into the misty cavern of Paddington Station and Peter climbed out.

  Having time yet to kill, he dumped his suitcase in the cloakroom and made his way to the station buffet, where he secured a meal of a sort and extended it with repeated cups of coffee until the time had crept around to half past ten. By now, so oddly had his hours become reversed, he was feeling wide awake and energetic. He decided to walk back to Hampstead.

  He had not made the comment about his telephone being tapped solely in order to impress Mr. French-Bisset. It was a real possibility. He was beginning to feel an unwilling respect for Colonel Hay’s devious mind. The Colonel might not have been convinced by that waterlogged boat. All the same, there was a limit. He could hardly tell the local police to put a twenty-four-hour cordon around Peter’s mother’s house. The most he could do, surely, was to ask that the man on the beat keep an eye on it.

  There were several ways into the house. The quietest was the back gate, reached from a lane behind the house and leading through the garden to the kitchen door.

  The moon was hidden and it was quite dark when Peter reached Eckersley Gardens. The lane produced no unpleasant surprises. He opened the garden gate quietly. His rubber-soled shoes made no noise on the paved path. The kitchen door, as he had expected, was locked. He had his own key, which he fitted quietly into the Yale lock. No bolts. The door opened with hardly a squeak. He stepped inside and shut it behind him. Then a voice from the darkness at the far end of the room said, “One more step and I shall shoot.”

  “Please don’t shoot, Maman. It’s only me.”

  He heard something which might have been a sob, quickly choked. Then his mother said, “Is it really you?”

  “Flesh and blood,” said Peter.

  “They didn’t succeed in killing you, then. I’m glad.”

  “I’m glad, too. Can we turn the light on?”

  “Not in here. Come through to the front room.”

  The curtains in the front room were tightly drawn. His mother said, “Be careful not to walk between the curtains and the light. They will see your shadow.”

  “Then the house is watched?”

  “Of course. But only in front. I do not think they will have seen you come in. If we are careful, they need not suspect that you are here.”

  “It’ll only be for one night. I shall have to be away very early tomorrow. It will be a comfort to sleep in my own bed after some of the places I’ve slept in recently. Is that gun loaded?”

  It was a small-bore sporting rifle.

  “Certainly it is loaded. It is a twenty-bore shotgun which I bought from your Uncle Henry. I think he overcharged me. Also I have your father’s Army pistol. And certain other weapons.”

  “Are you preparing for an attack on the house?”

  A fortnight before, he would have asked the question wholly in fun. Now he was only half certain that it was a joke.

  “I am prepared for anything. I have had an alarm syst
em installed. It sounds a buzzer in here and in my bedroom if any of the house doors is opened. That was how I heard you come.”

  “If I had been an intruder, would you have shot me?”

  “Most certainly. In the legs, for a start.”

  “For a start,” said Peter. “Yes, I see.” He got out his wallet and extracted the scrap of paper.

  “Does this name mean anything to you?”

  His mother put on her glasses and studied the paper.

  “Certainly I know Valentin Lasspiniere. He is in fact, a relation, though a distant one. His mother was the niece of my Great-uncle Charles on his mother’s side. Thirty years ago his was the best-known name in Boulogne. You had but to speak it and the little boys in the streets would have known whom you meant.”

  “I thought it meant something when I read it. He was in the Resistance, wasn’t he?”

  “He was the leader of the Resistance in all the Pas-de-Calais. It was not only that he led it. He did it with such wit, such effrontery. You must have heard me tell the story of the young English Lieutenant. His name I forget. But he had been betrayed to the Germans. They knew he was in the old city, and they were combing through it. He went to Valentin, who is an expert at the make-up. He turned the Lieutenant into a girl, a ravishing girl. Another difficulty then arose. The head of the Gestapo was much attracted. The Lieutenant had great difficulty in resisting his attentions. Everyone on our side knew the truth and laughed about it. Laughter was precious in those days. Valentin Lasspiniere— yes, he was a fine man. I did not know that he was still alive.”

  “I think he must be,” said Peter. “I discovered this in circumstances which certainly suggest that he is alive. If he is a relative of ours, do you think you could write me a letter introducing me to him?”

  “I could do that. I will post it tomorrow.”

  “Don’t post it, give it to me.”

  “You are going to France?”

  “To Boulogne.”

  “Might one ask why?”

  “To find Dr. Wolfe,” said Peter.

  22

  Peter set his alarm clock to wake him at five o’clock. He had selected his wardrobe and laid out the clothes before he went to bed. A pair of faded corduroy trousers, an open-necked shirt of bold green and white checks, a fawn-coloured pullover, a respectable jacket, and a pair of brogue shoes. He completed the outfit with a cloth cap of the type worn by navvies at work and Tory prime ministers when out shooting, and a camera which was carried by a strap around his neck and bounced about on the middle of his stomach.

  He took his passport with him, although it was probable that he would not need it, some money borrowed from his mother, and a letter which she had written for him. It was a quarter to six when he slipped out of the house by the side door. He examined the main road carefully. There was no apparent sign of life. He did not see the policeman standing in the entrance to a house farther up the road. The policeman saw him, but took no action beyond making a note in his book.

  By half past six Peter was breakfasting at an all-night cafe in Shaftesbury Avenue, and an hour later he was at Charing Cross Station, occupying a corner seat in an empty carriage in the morning train to Deal and Ramsgate.

  It was going to be a fine day. The day trip from Deal to Boulogne, which he had seen advertised, should be running. “Six hours in La Belle France. Back the same evening. No passports, no formalities.” It had seemed to Peter to be exactly what he wanted.

  The train sauntered through the orchards, hop gardens, and fields of Kent, green from the rain that had fallen on them and bright under the sun. It was not a fast train. It was ten o’clock before it pulled into Deal station. When Peter reached the Esplanade, a small crowd had already collected outside the hut from which tickets were being sold. Families with excited children. A hearty male quartet, three of whom, Peter noted, were also carrying cameras. Two middle-aged ladies who were assuring each other that the sea looked calm. A thin and serious-looking man with a guidebook. Peter joined the tail end of the queue.

  At half past ten a young man with long blond hair and a book under one arm hurried up, gathered the party together, and directed them into a bus, which took them to Dover. Peter guessed he was a student. He had a squeaky voice which made the children laugh. The advertisement had been correct – there were no formalities of any sort.

  On the boat Peter found a chair and placed it on the after deck next to the chair occupied by the serious man. He said, “I see you have the Michelin guidebook. I expect you travel a good deal in France.”

  “I think I might claim,” said the man, “to be moderately well acquainted with the country. I make a point of visiting it each summer, and have been doing so for the last thirty years. No, I lie – thirty-one years. If you have never been before yourself, I think you will be greatly surprised.”

  He continued to surprise Peter, with scarcely a pause, for the ninety minutes which the boat took to reach Boulogne. As they approached the quay, the blond young man popped out from some private hiding place and said, “Do please remember that we start back at six o’clock. That means six o’clock by our time. If you haven’t brought your passports, this is most important. Last week a young lady missed the return journey. I believe she’s still in a French prison.”

  The audience assumed this to be a joke and laughed, but Peter noticed the middle-aged ladies checking their watches.

  “Although this is only a day trip, you’re allowed to bring back duty-free goods. Anything you do buy you’ll have to declare. Enjoy yourselves.”

  The guide returned to his lair. Peter noticed that the book he was carrying was Cheshire on Real Property.

  “Perhaps I could show you some of the sights,” said the thin man. “I am tolerably well acquainted with the history of the town.” They walked off onto the quay and past a pair of impassive gendarmes, chatting as though they were old friends. “The ecclesiastical architecture is not without interest.”

  “It’s very good of you,” said Peter. “I may have time for some sightseeing later. I really come over on business. I’m afraid I shall have to attend to it first.”

  He walked up the Rue des Pipots and made his way into the old town of Boulogne, the Ville Haute, which he knew and loved. It lies tightly enclosed, keeping itself to itself, caring nothing for the world which bustles and scurries outside. The narrowness of its gates and the steepness of its streets daunt the passing motorist. They hurry past on their way to Calais in the north or Abbeville in the south, knowing nothing of the tall buildings, shadowed streets, and quiet squares inside those medieval walls.

  The Rue Belcourt was a turning off the Rue de Lille, on the far side of the Basilisque de Notre Dame. Number fourteen was at the far end. It was a withdrawn house fenced with high iron railings in front and separated from the street by a paved court; a house of solid quality and dignity. Peter crossed the courtyard and climbed the six steps which led up to front door. He did so with a feeling of almost breathless anticipation. Such a long, such a complicated path. So many twists, so many hazards and blind corners, to lead at last to this quiet house in the city of his birth.

  He jerked the wrought-iron bellpull and waited. He could hear the jingling of the bell deep inside the house. Silence returned. He was on the point of pulling it again when he heard slow footsteps. A small door cut into the massive front door opened and a woman looked out. She was dressed in black and had a face like a good-natured monkey.

  She said, “Monsieur?”

  “I am looking,” said Peter, “for Monsieur Valentin Lasspiniere.”

  “This is his house.”

  “I have a letter for him.”

  “Yes?”

  “He is at home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then perhaps I might be permitted—”

  “You wish to hand the letter to him yourself?”

  “I should prefer to do so.”

  “Then enter.”

  Feeling as nervous as any prince invited
into an enchanted castle, Peter stepped up to the door. He had to duck his head to get through.

  “You are very tall,” said the lady. “You speak excellent French, but I surmise that you are English.” She led the way down a shadowy hallway and pushed open a heavy door. “If you would have the kindness to wait here, I will inform Monsieur of your arrival.”

  Valentin Lasspiniere was of middle height, his most noticeable feature a shock of snowy-white hair. He had the round and mobile face of a Gascon, a man who suspected life to be a joke and had spent a lifetime proving it so.

  He read the letter carefully and said, “Tante Marie. I hope she is well. It is many years since I have seen her, but I remember her, of course. I even remember you. She brought you once to see me. You were then so high.” M. Lasspiniere bent forward and placed his hand six inches from the floor.

  “Taller now.”

  “A little. This letter mentions my old friend Alexander Wolfe. I was sad to read of his death. The reports in our newspapers gave few details, but I gathered the impression—perhaps I was wrong?—that there was some mystery about it.”

  “You were not wrong,” said Peter. “And you were aware, I think, that he went in some danger of his life.”

  “That I knew.”

  “And you helped him, as you have helped many men before, to evade his enemies.”

  “I gave him what help I could.”

  “If you could tell me about that,” said Peter, “it might help us, in turn, to obtain the satisfaction of discomfiting his enemies.”

  M. Lasspiniere looked at Peter thoughtfully. He said, “From your interest in the matter, do I deduce that you are of the police?”