Death Has Deep Roots

by Michael Gilbert

  “Had she her child with her at this time?”

  “Yes.”

  “You saw him?”

  “I did. A tiny, thin child, of about six months. Very serious – but complaining little. I should say a child of natural fortitude.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Monsieur, if you had been in France that winter you would not ask. The Germans did more damage in their departure than they had done in four years of occupation. There was no electricity for lighting or heating, little fuel, a great scarcity of food.”

  “I understand. Can you describe the child?”

  “Most children of six months look alike, I think. He had what we call ‘tête d’anglais.’”

  “You mean he had an English look.”

  “Anglo-Saxon, yes. Light hair and very light blue eyes. At that age most French children would have dark eyes and dark hair.”

  “I see. You mentioned just now that you did what you could to help the prisoner. What particular help did she ask for?”

  “She wanted somewhere to live, some money. We were able to supply her with the necessities of life. All knew what she had suffered, and many were generous.”

  “Did she ask you for anything else?”

  “Yes. She asked me to see if I could put her in touch with Major Thoseby.”

  “Were you surprised at this request?”

  “No, I don’t think I was.”

  “Why did you imagine she had made it?”

  “I imagined, at that time, that she had thought that he would be in a position to help her.”

  Monsieur Lode gave this answer clearly and quietly and for a moment everyone in the court considered it, turning the words over to see what they could make of them. Macrea had his head cocked like a man who has sipped a fine brandy and is about to pronounce judgment on it. The prisoner was leaning forward with strained attention for counsel’s next question.

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Summers, “that is all.”

  “Monsieur Lode,” said Macrea, “I want to ask you a question which I put as one of my first questions to another witness. You knew Major Thoseby well. In your opinion was he the type of man to indulge in an illicit union with a young unmarried woman?”

  “I do not think I can answer that question.”

  “Why not?”

  “I do not think that any man could answer that question about another man.”

  “The last witness agreed that it was a matter about which one’s friends could form an opinion.”

  “In England, perhaps so. In France I can assure you a man would never discuss such things with another man. With his mother, perhaps. Not with anyone else.”

  “With his mother?”

  “Certainly. A Frenchman conceals nothing from his mother.”

  “I will put the question in another way. Was there anything in Major Thoseby’s conduct to suggest to you that he was a man who would act in such a way?”

  “That I can answer. No.”

  “Or that he, in fact, acted in such a way toward the prisoner?”

  “No.”

  “Did he see the prisoner much?”

  “Yes, from time to time – in the course of his duty.”

  “Would his duty ever be likely to lead him to spend the night with her?”

  “On one occasion, at least. Yes.”

  “I see.” Macrea had for the moment the look of a pedestrian who steps into a deep and unsuspected hole. “When was this?”

  “It would have been in May of 1943. It was when the Gestapo were very active in the Langeais area and almost everyone concerned with Resistance work had to take to the woods. Major Thoseby was on his Way through and had to spend the night in a barn—it was on the outskirts of the Forêt de Rochecotte. The prisoner also was sleeping in the barn.”

  “And was anyone else present?”

  “Oh, yes – about fifteen other persons were sleeping in the barn as well.”

  “Yes – I see – not what one might call an intimate occasion.”

  “No.”

  “Monsieur Lode, after the war, in 1946, did you work for a time at Arolsen in North Hesse?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were one of the French team on the UNRRA Tracing Staff.”

  “That is correct.”

  “You dealt, I believe, particularly with lists of persons who had been in concentration camps and in Gestapo prisons?”

  “Among other matters, yes.”

  “Do you remember personally dealing with an inquiry for a Lieutenant Julian Wells?”

  “Yes. I do. I recollected him, of course, since I had been so nearly connected with his original capture by the Germans.”

  “Would it surprise you to know that this inquiry was put on foot by the prisoner herself?”

  “Yes, I certainly did not know that.”

  “Does it surprise you?”

  “Yes. I think it does.”

  “Why?”

  “I have explained why, in my opinion, Mademoiselle Lamartine tried to get in touch with Major Thoseby. He had been the senior British officer in the district and it was natural she should turn to him for help. The same reasons hardly applied in the case of Lieutenant Wells.”

  “I am obliged,” said Macrea. “You would agree then that if the prisoner afterward sought news of Lieutenant Wells her reasons were probably personal ones?”

  “My lord—” began Mr. Summers.

  “I will put it to you in another way. It is within your knowledge that Lieutenant Wells spent three weeks at the Père Chaise farmhouse?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was hidden there from the time of his arrival until the Gestapo raid. He would probably not have been able to go outside the farm?”

  “That is so.”

  “And the prisoner was living at the farm all that time?”

  “Yes.”

  “In fact, they were living together for three weeks?”

  “I must protest—” said Mr. Summers.

  “I anticipate my learned friend’s protest,” said Macrea smoothly, “by hastening to add that I was using the words in their primary sense only.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  As Nap stepped off the boat, under the single unshaded electric light, on to the battered quay at Dieppe one thought was uppermost in his mind. That whatever steps he might have to take would be better taken out of the company of Josephine Delboise. Nor did he come to this conclusion from any motives of distaste for Madame Delboise as a person. Nevertheless, he felt it would be in all things safer, better and wiser did they part company.

  Being a direct young man he therefore sought her out in the Customs shed, took possession of her two cases, led the way out on to the platform and found two seats in a first – class carriage in the Paris train which was waiting alongside the quay.

  He placed his hat on the seat opposite, asked Madame Delboise to preserve the seat for him should any rival claimant appear – an unnecessary precaution really since the train was three – quarters empty – and went back to the Customs shed. A few minutes later he reappeared with a large and expensive – looking suitcase, which he placed on the rack. It was labeled for Paris and he imagined that the real owner would be able to identify it without difficulty at the other end. He then announced that there was just time to buy some newspapers before the train started, and went forth once more into the corridor. Madame Delboise appeared to be dozing, but gave him a sleepy smile of approval as he went.

  Two minutes later Nap was stepping quietly off the darkened side of the train. He retrieved his own humble grip from behind a pile of lobster baskets and set out at a round pace along the quay.

  There appeared to be no barrier to mark the end of the Gare Maritime and in a few minutes he was rounding the landward end of the jetty. The railway sheds were deserted and the arched colonnade where by day the fish sellers and the greengrocers hold their market was black and silent.

  As his footsteps rang out on the cobbles the ston
e arches threw back the echo. It was almost as if someone was walking behind him, in the shadows. He stopped abruptly. The echo stopped also. But did it stop quite quickly enough?

  Imagination, thought Nap. Anyway, there was no time to lose for his train for Rouen left the Gare de Ville, at the other side of the town, in less than ten minutes.

  He hurried on.

  Dawn was coming up cold and grey as Nap’s train crossed the watershed of the Alpes Normandes and plodded down toward the valley of the Seine. It was not a fast train.

  By the time it got to Rouen it was past six. Nap stood in the place outside the station and looked round him with unashamed nostalgia.

  Despite the early hour most of the cafés were open and an old white – coated waiter was moving round outside one of them uptilting chairs and polishing the glass table-tops. A many-caped gendarme paced by on the sidewalk, lost in official thought. There were bicycles everywhere. Men bicycling to work; housewives bicycling to be early at market; women bicycling in from the country; elderly people bicycling with serious attention; children bicycling for fun.

  Nap felt furiously hungry. He also felt grubby. The solution seemed to be a quiet hotel where he could wash and have breakfast, and possibly make up on some of the sleep he had lost the night before.

  He looked round for a guide. The only stationary figure in the whole place was a young man who had dismounted from his bicycle and was now standing in the roadway looking up through steel-rimmed glasses at the train indicator board. He was wearing khaki slacks and sandals and his torso appeared to be covered by a curious tight-fitting brown garment. As Nap came nearer he saw his mistake. It was not a garment at all. He was naked to the waist.

  “Hardy type,” thought Nap. He was about to phrase his request when the young man rose suddenly on to his toes, placed his hands on his hips and started to rotate his body rapidly and flexibly, finishing with a backward bend which brought the top of his close-shaven head almost on to the pavement behind him. Then he rose slowly into an upright position, at the same time drawing in his breath until his stomach was perfectly concave. Finally he let his breath out with a rush and smiled. His eyes glinted behind his glasses.

  “I was wondering,” said Nap, “if you could possibly—”

  “On the contrary,” said the young man, “you were wondering what I was doing.”

  “I cannot deny it,” said Nap.

  “It is the new gymnastique médicale,” said the young man. “It combats anemia and obesity. It is composed of two elements, the gymnastique respiratoire, which combats asthma and assists natural breathing and the gymnastique orthopédique which combats bad attitudes. In addition I practice a private system of deviations of the vertebral column, from which I have great hopes. How can I assist you?”

  “I was wondering,” said Nap, “if you knew of a quiet hotel which would be likely to have a room vacant.”

  “Certainly,” said the young man. “Follow me.”

  Wheeling his bicycle with one hand he led the way at a pace which had Nap gasping. They forked left at the main crossroads, turned left again, and crossed the old market square whose ugly stone tower commemorates one of the ugliest deeds in Anglo – French history.

  When the young man stopped Nap waited for the inevitable lecture on Joan of Arc, but it appeared that the young man’s mind was on more recent history.

  “Gestapo headquarters,” he said briefly.

  Nap could see nothing in the direction in which the young man was pointing except three large holes in the ground. Looking closer he saw, from the remnants of brickwork, that he was looking down into what had once been the basement of a fair-sized house.

  “Not very habitable now,” said the young man, showing his side teeth for a moment in a grin.

  “Who—”

  “The British Air Force, in March, 1944. An attack at rooftop level.”

  Nothing more was said, and in a minute they were outside the Hotel Apollinaire. Before Nap could thank him the young man had vaulted on to his bicycle and disappeared.

  It was late afternoon when Nap came lazily up again to the uplands of consciousness. He lay staring at the ceiling. He had been dreaming that he was back in Occupied France. It was a dream he had once had quite often, but very rarely of late. He wondered what had brought it back: the talk with Madame Delboise on the boat, the young man he had met in the street, or the acorn coffee which he had had for his breakfast, many hours before, and the taste of which still lingered on his palate.

  He looked down at his watch. The time was five past four. He had slept for eight hours, and he was beginning to feel abominably hungry. Lunch would now be over, and he was unlikely to be able to get dinner before seven. He lay for a few minutes thinking about that dinner. He would have plenty of time for it. The night train for Le Mans which he was planning to catch did not leave before ten. Nap had just decided that tournedos Henri Quatre would follow nicely on rilettes de maison when his attention was attracted by a slight scraping sound.

  Sitting up abruptly he realised that he was not alone. From the arm chair, level with the head of his bed, a pair of muddy grey eyes looked at him. Their owner, as Nap saw when he had got over his first surprise, was an undistinguished little man with a crop of long well – greased black hair framing a young unhealthily white face. Nap thought he had rarely seen a man he disliked more at sight. One of his least pleasing characteristics was a sort of downy unshavenness, the result apparently not of Bohemian leanings but of the desire to avoid beheading a formidable crop of pimples in the jawbone area.

  “What the devil,” said Nap, “are you doing in my room?” In his surprise he spoke in English, and seeing that this appeared to have gone over his visitor’s head he repeated it in colloquial French with embellishments.

  “I thought it would be a convenient place for a talk,” said the man.

  “If you don’t get out at once—” Nap looked round for the bell— “I shall shout for the manager and have you put out.”

  “You can shout for a long time in this hotel,” said the stranger. “People will only imagine that you are happy. There is always plenty of noise in this hotel.”

  Here Nap was forced to agree. He had eaten his breakfast to the accompaniment of one of the loudest wireless sets he had ever encountered. Even now he could hear it booming faintly in the distance.

  “All right,” said Nap, “then supposing I throw you out myself?”

  “You could, of course, try that.” The stranger made no appreciable move but his hand seemed to be resting under his coat.

  There was a moment’s silence. An air of unreality pervaded the whole scene. Nap fought with the idea that it was a continuation of his dream.

  “What I have to say will not take long,” said the man.

  Nap said nothing.

  “You should return to England.”

  “Why the hell should I?” said Nap. “I haven’t spent my fifty pounds yet.”

  “It is stupid to suggest that you are here as a tourist. We know why you are here. We know what you have come here to do.”

  “I only wish I did,” said Nap. He was still trying to work out whether it would be worth starting a fight. The last thing he wanted was to make trouble or draw attention to himself. Also he disliked the prospect of fighting a fully dressed man when he himself was in pajamas and had bare feet. One would present too many vulnerable points.

  “That is all,” said the man. “I do not threaten. I just state the truth. What you are embarked on is not your business. It does not concern you. You should go back to England, now.”

  “I—”said Nap.

  The man got to his feet, with no apparent haste. One moment he was standing there, looking down at Nap. The next moment he was gone. The door closed softly. Footsteps pattered away down the passage.

  Nap put aside any thought of following him, and started slowly to get dressed.

  Downstairs, in the lobby of the hotel, the white – faced man paused for a moment bef
ore he stepped out into the street. He looked quickly to left and to right, almost an automatic gesture.

  He did not look behind him. If he had done so he might have seen a young man glance up from one of the tables in the coffee room and stare thoughtfully after him. A young man in steel-rimmed glasses.

  Upstairs in his room Nap finished his dressing and started to write a letter. He sat on the bed, balancing the pad on his knee. It was quite a long letter, and it was in French.

  When he had finished he read it over, placed it in an envelope and addressed it to Monsieur Bren, at the Sûreté, Paris.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Your name is Honorifique Sainte?”

  “Yes.”

  Monsieur Sainte, as he stood in the witness box, was a thick-set white-faced man. It would have been difficult to have guessed his age more closely than that he was over forty and under sixty. The fairest description of him could have been that he looked a complete hotelier – a calling which only the French, perhaps, recognise as one of the learned professions. He spoke in good English; as, indeed, he also spoke excellent Italian and fair Spanish.

  “You were formerly the proprietor of an hotel at Saumur on the Loire?”

  “That is so.”

  “Perhaps you would tell the court shortly how you came to England.”

  “Certainly. My hotel – it was on the river front at Saumur, near the main road bridge, unfortunately – was completely destroyed by allied bombing in June of 1944. It did not seem at that time likely that I should be able to start again – or not in that part of France which I knew. Licenses to rebuild were almost impossible to obtain. Since I had to move, I decided to make a complete change. After some negotiation I got the necessary permission to come to England in 1946.”

  “I hope you have not regretted it,” said Mr. Justice Arbuthnot courteously.

  “On the contrary,”

  “I am glad to hear it.”