“Personal accounts?”
“No,” he said, pouring me a large brandy, “not especially so. I think it was the transportation of the French Jews that put me in credit. You probably heard about it yourself?”
“No,” I said, “only the mass extermination they are doing in Europe as a whole.”
“French ghetto-clearing was rather special,” he said. “A few months ago orders came to root out all the registered Jews and separate the children, even the children of two and three years of age. They and the parents were transported to Germany in separate convoys, packed like beans in a box. Most of them were probably dead when they arrived and it is certain that all are dead at this moment. There were four thousand children in that convoy!”
I swallowed my brandy but it did not seem to do me much good.
“I’ve read a good deal of history,” I said, at length, “but one doesn’t find this kind of thing anywhere, not wholesale extermination of children, if one discounts Herod. What I find so hard to understand is the attitude of the rank and file. Why the hell don’t the fathers among the extermination squads prefer death to that kind of job? What stops them losing all control and turning their guns on their officers? British troops would, so would French and Turks and even Japs, I imagine!”
“It has gone on too long,” he said. “There have been isolated instances of it and there will be again but mass mutiny, that kind of mutiny among the S.S.? It is asking a little too much, my friend! It is a matter of conditioning. If you had been present at their pre-war youth rallies you would understand a little better, I think!” He stopped musing and became businesslike again. “Would it help if you were conditioned yourself? We have …” he glanced at his wrist watch, “ … an hour or so. I could describe to you what happened in a village near my birthplace last December!”
“No, Captain de Royden,” I said, “I can manage, it’s just a question of getting used to the idea. We had better employ the time on the gun and by having a look round upstairs.”
He nodded and gave me a quick and useful lesson on the weapon, disengaging the magazine which held five shots and showing me how to steady my aim by employing the sling as a shoulder strap. Then we went into the hall and lowered the staircase. There were plank catwalks between the rafters and he sent me down again to listen while he belly-crawled about upstairs. I heard no sound but doubted whether I could have moved as noiselessly as he did. Then he called me up again and drew my attention to the hideout behind the cistern and said that I would have ample warning to retreat there when I heard the stair cord pulled but that it was unlikely Rance would have occasion to come up before I had a chance to kill him.
“He will be thinking of other things,” he said. “She still exerts a considerable influence over him. We have already established that, otherwise we should have found some easier method of disposing of him. We chose this way because it promises to be tidy.”
I pondered this remark as we went downstairs and Raoul summoned Diana and told us a little of his future plans. Once Rance was dead and I had stepped into his shoes, we were to set out for the small factory where we might hope to find blueprints in the safe. In the meantime I was to show myself in the area in case Rance was being shadowed by a personal bodyguard employed by the Germans. It was a possibility we could not overlook for a hue and cry over Rance would be sure to complicate the capture of documents and might well alert Yves.
I don’t know whether it was Raoul’s act in taking me into his confidence or my recognition of Diana’s fear of Rance that gave me the confidence I needed, but soon I began to feel less reluctant to murder him.
Towards sunset Raoul assumed his brisk, military personality again and wished us a formal farewell. When he had gone Diana said I had better go over the villa thoroughly and make doubly sure there was no trace of my presence. I did this and then it was dusk and time for me to take up my position. I had to force myself to ask her what kind of programme Rance would have in mind when he arrived. Would he be likely to collect her and take her down to the town for a meal or a drink or would he want to go straight to bed?
“It depends where he has been and what he has been doing,” she said uncomfortably. “I’m not the only woman he sleeps with. He has a mistress in Nice and another in Paris.”
“Raoul told me that they were confident that you still had considerable influence over him,” I said.
“They’re probably out of date,” she replied, dully.
Her apathy worried me on two counts. Unless she perked up when he arrived he might easily deduce something from her manner but quite apart from this I was beginning to be seriously concerned for her.
“Look here, Di,” I said, recklessly. “Why don’t we have done with all this bloody nonsense? Why don’t I crown him the minute he comes in and have done with it?”
“We have to do it the way Raoul planned,” she said. “He has a good reason for everything and I swore to him that I wouldn’t question his orders if he agreed to getting you here!” She straightened her shoulders and made a big effort. “This is damned silly,” she said, “and I’m not helping much, am I? Just think of those Jewish children. I heard Raoul tell you about it, I was listening outside the door!”
Somehow the admission comforted me, perhaps because it reminded me of the old Diana, a shameless eavesdropper if she thought eavesdropping paid. I pulled the cord of the stair and rested the carbine against the rail. Then I kissed her gently and reminded her of one of the things we had discussed before Raoul arrived.
“This is a sort of beginning again, Di,” I said, “so don’t let’s forget where we hope it might lead us. I’m not scared any more and you mustn’t be, not with me within call. I won’t botch it and all you have to do is to keep him happy and relaxed. If you can’t do that you’ve lost your touch. Remember how long it took your mother to rumble what was going on between us all those years. I don’t think they’d know now if we hadn’t panicked and eloped to Nun’s Island!”
She smiled and held me closely for a moment. Then I took the carbine, climbed the stairs and closed the trap. She pulled the cord and I was isolated in the roof. There was no way of lowering the stairs from above.
The little window was set high up in the wall facing the sea but it was almost dark when I settled in and the only real light came from the peepholes, three thin pencils above the kitchen, living-room and main bedroom. I slung the carbine and moved about in the gloom, checking the field of fire from each hole. Then I knelt over each, sighting the carbine. Dependent upon where Rance stood, I thought I could get a line on him anywhere but the bedroom loophole was the most promising, for elsewhere there were portions of the room I couldn’t cover, no matter on which side of the apertures I stood. As I said, the peepholes had been glazed and the loft was almost soundproof, far more so than its counterpart in a British-built bungalow of this type. Up here it was like looking down into a fish-tank and one felt far removed from anyone below. When Diana, drifting restlessly between terrace and main room, bent over the radiogram and switched it on I had to strain my ears to catch a murmur of the music and even when she turned it up and glanced towards the ceiling, as though asking me whether or not I could hear, I could not recognise the record. She turned it low again and helped herself to a brandy, a very generous one it looked from where I crouched, and she was sipping it when I saw car lights reflected on the little window and a yellow beam swept across the rafters. It might have been any passing car but somehow both of us knew at once that it was Rance’s. She jumped up so quickly that she almost spilled her drink and I padded over to the window and saw a car reversing into the short drive. Someone got out, said something to the driver and then stood aside as the car started up again and drove off down the hill. The passenger walked up towards the front door.
I was tempted to shoot him then and get it over. The range was short and he was silhouetted against the final glimmer of daylight but I remembered just in time that I was scheduled to impersonate this man and had
therefore better get a much closer look at him. He stood under the window a moment as if fumbling for a key and then Diana opened the door and I crept back to the peephole over the living-room. The music was still playing, I could just hear it, but for several minutes the room remained empty. Then he came in alone carrying a fat briefcase. He had left his coat, hat and bag in the hall.
I suppose we prefer to think of ourselves as unique individuals and perhaps a prejudice in this respect helped to reassure me as regards the likeness between us, or rather the lack of it. He was certainly my build and colouring, and the short Van Dyke beard and moustaches we wore did something for the match but we were only doubles in the sense that a pair of Guardsmen look very similar when they are pacing the same sentry beat in identical uniforms. He did not move like me, or hold himself like a man who had lived most of his life in the country. He had a town look and a slight stoop, as though he had spent long hours over a desk and I noticed that he found the light in the big room too strong for Him and squinted before turning off the centre-light and then one of the table lights. I was worried about this for I needed light and now the room was half-full of shadows.
He stood for a moment directly under my spy-hole and I saw that his hair was thinning on top and that his hands were not at all like mine but long and rather elegant, the hands of a man who has never worked at a bench. He had the air of a student, resolved and purposeful, a man whose moments of indecision would be confined to trivial things, when to eat or drink, what paper to buy, what train to catch. I can’t say why I got this impression but it was there all right. He looked a difficult, obstinate individual, big and strongly-made yet petulant and wilful and looking down on him I believe that I began to understand Diana’s physical fear of the man. No one could have mistaken him for anything but a Latin and I wondered again at Diana’s curious substitution of him for me. Taken all round it was not very flattering on her part. Again I could have killed him with a single shot and no margin for error but I did not, I just knelt there looking down on him and wondering. Presently he called something over his shoulder and Diana came in. I realised at once that there was something odd about her, a change in her manner and expression, in the way she moved and looked, and also that these changes were not part of an act to lull any suspicions he might have. It was a physical change and for a moment I was puzzled. I had never seen her looking quite like that, perky yet somehow stilted, jaunty in a rather fatuous way as though she had taken too much to drink and was defiant on this account. Then she went close to him and my bewilderment increased, for she looked up at him in a way a woman looks at a man when she has made up her mind to rouse him. Yet there was a good deal more than desire in her approach and it seemed to me that either she was overacting, or that she had told me less than the truth about their relationship. There was almost adoration in her approach, as though she was in the presence of the one man in the world who mattered to her, whose touch and affection were vital to her immediate happiness. He did not show any noticeable reaction to this but stood off, looking at her with what seemed to me amused contempt.
They pottered about down there, Diana making all the running and they exchanged a few remarks. I caught a word here and there but not enough to follow the drift of their conversation and I cursed Raoul for failing to convert the loft into a listening-post. I felt quite futile looking down and being able to see their lips move without hearing what they said. Now it was like looking out from a fish bowl. At length he sat down and she brought him a drink which he sipped and put down on a coffee table beside him. Then, having swallowed all her liquor, she suddenly slammed down the glass and reached over his shoulders, clasping her hands across his chest and laying her cheek alongside his in a sensuous but amateurish fashion. It was like watching someone who was half-drunk trying to parody a scene from a film, and it made me feel like a Peeping Tom squinting through a suburban window. I was struck by the expression of abandon in her face. Her lips were moist and slack and her eyes dilated in a curiously unpleassant way.
Then another curious thing happened. Suddenly, as though irritated by her, he shrugged her away, stood up and stretched himself, yawning and tapping his mouth. She looked at him uncertainly for a moment and when he turned and said something she hung her head, looking almost abject. I could not be certain but it looked as though there were tears in her eyes.
I was so absorbed in what was going on that I quite forgot what I was doing up here and pushed my carbine on to the narrow catwalk between the rafters. I saw him pick up and finish his drink and take his briefcase over to the table where he peeled off his jacket and opened the case, spreading his papers on the desk and seeming to forget her altogether. She said something more but he made no reply and after looking at him intently for a moment, she turned on her heel and drifted out, closing the door.
I was now able to devote my full attention to Rance and did so with a certain relief. Casually he consulted a notebook and jotted down one or two figures in a small ledger. Then, after pondering a moment, he began to sort through a bulky file holding what appeared to be drawings and sketches and I wondered if we were going to have the luck to find what we sought in his possession without the risk of raiding the factories. He sifted through the drawings without much interest until he found what he was looking for, a folder measuring about eight inches by six. This, I decided, must be something important so I craned my neck until I could look beyond his hunched shoulders. He flicked open the folder and drew out the contents, a bunch of cards that he spread fanwise in front of him. They were not plans or lists of figures, just pornographic postcards half as large again as ordinary postcards and printed in lurid colours. I could see them so clearly that I could recognise them as a series featuring two sleek, fuzzy-haired young men and a plump olive-skinned girl, all South Sea Islanders or natives of that hemisphere. They had been photographed in some extraordinary positions, sometimes as a pair and sometimes as an acrobatic threesome.
Suddenly I wanted to laugh and the chuckle stuck in my throat causing me a few seconds of acute discomfort. The momentary discomfort restored my sense of reality and I decided that I might now get on with what I had been instructed to do, that is, to shoot him tidily and efficiently whilst Diana was safely out of the room. I slid the carbine towards me and lifted it, adjusting the shoulder strap and aiming at the hairline on the forehead. Surprisingly so, I now felt no repugnance at what I was going to do and my aim was as steady as if I was sighting a target card. I realised what it was that had steadied me, the pictures and his way of studying them. In a matter of seconds his stature had been reduced to that of a bored little man grubbing about in search of erotic stimulation. Until then he had been grave and dignified, and his attitude to Diana’s pawings aloof and remote, but now killing him was like swatting a fly on the window-pane. I was within a split second of squeezing the trigger when the door opened and Diana returned.
She was wearing a garment that I had not seen before, a pseudo-Oriental kimono in a shade of deep purple, with so much gold thread about it that its folds were semi-rigid. It looked an uncomfortable and vulgar gown and seeing her draped in it annoyed me. She had loosened her hair and taken off her shoes and stockings. I was quite certain that underneath this ridiculous robe she was naked.
Perhaps it was this kimono that emphasised her second change in personality, a far greater one than that which had taken place when Rance had entered the room an hour or so earlier. This time everything that I knew as Diana was absent. She was not only a parody of the woman I had known in my youth but a complete stranger to the Diana I had held in my arms during the last few days. The impression that she was drunk or drugged was much stronger now. Her movements were listless and the colour had gone from her cheeks, her complexion reminding me of how she had looked on the day of Alison’s funeral. I knew with absolute certainty that she had forgotten I was waiting within a few yards of her to kill this man and that she had surrendered unconditionally to whatever spell he exercised over her. She was
completely submissive but there was also a kind of pitiful eagerness in her approach to him. The transition was not merely astounding, it was terrifying.
Then, as he looked up and saw her, things began to happen in a way that suggested at once a kind of ritual, something that was fully understood between them, something that had happened before. He paced about the room, addressing her in what was clearly a hectoring tone and all the time she listened very attentively, like a chastened pupil receiving teacher’s lecture. I thought again that she must be acting but then I realised no actress alive could give a performance of that standard.
At last he stopped barking and went back to the table, sitting and taking up the pictures one by one and handing them on to her in a patronising manner that suggested he was doing her a great favour. She looked at each of them and clearly they excited her, for she began to anticipate them like a greedy child being fed with sweets. He humoured her for a while and then barked another order and she went over to the radiogram and selected a record. Having put it on she poured two drinks, a large and a small, and carried them across to the desk. He was busy for a moment shuffling his precious postcards and when they were bunched he picked up his drink and she reached for hers. She did this so tentatively that I was not very much surprised by what happened next. He slapped the back of her hand with such force that I heard it strike the edge of the desk. She leapt back a pace and her bruised hand shot to her mouth but she did not take her eyes off him and her expression was still reverent to the point of worship. He poured the contents of her glass into his and began to sip, giving her another order as a kind of afterthought.
I was trembling now and my hands were so sweaty and unsteady that I doubt if I could have used the gun. As it was I was far too fascinated by what was going on below and when I looked again she was standing over by the radiogram, very still and straight; I could hear the faint purr of the record and follow its beat by the steady tap of Rance’s foot. Then he seemed to mellow and said something that made her smile. In a single movement she threw off the gown and began to walk across the room, not towards him but past him as his foot stopped tapping and he leaned forward, studying her intently and keeping up the rhythm by gently clapping his hands. She crossed in front of him again and reached the radiogram and then turned again and repeated the walk in exactly the same way, to and fro, along the entire length of the room and all the time he did nothing but watch her and clap his hands. It was not simply a case of a timid tart gratifying the demands of an eccentric customer, it was much more like a marionette moving back and forth on the end of a string and was the most degrading performance I have ever witnessed.
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