Diana

by R. F Delderfield

  It opened quietly and I was in a stone passage laid with uncarpeted flags. Recollecting Raoul’s briefing, I moved along it until I came to a broader door, faced with baize. I gave this a gentle push and it opened, letting in a flood of light from the hall where ornate lamps burned on each side of the stairs. I stood for a moment listening, one hand on my pistol butt. Behind me, in the kitchen regions, someone was singing and clattering pans and plates but the noises came from a safe distance. I was on the point of slipping into the hall when I heard steps on the stairs and opened the door a crack to see an elderly manservant descending with a tray and glasses. He looked tired and dragged his feet a little. I was getting ready to brace myself behind the angle of the door in case he came my way, when he turned and walked away in the opposite direction, disappearing on the left of the vestibule beyond the staircase.

  The moment he had gone I moved into the hall and made for the stairs. I had put my foot on the first of them when I heard her voice.

  “Jan!”

  She was standing on the first landing, looking down. She was wearing a beautifully-cut evening gown the colour of old gold and the lamplight from the landing above her fell directly on to her head and set her hair sparkling and glowed on her bare shoulders. She looked very lovely, lovelier than I ever remembered as she stood with one hand on the newel post and the other hanging loosely by her side. Then I noticed that this hand held an automatic pistol. The ugly little weapon seemed so incongruous that it was almost laughable, as if she was a beautiful hostess playing charades with a houseful of jovial youngsters.

  I went softly up the stairs and reached her side. She was utterly composed, so much so that her expression and pose might have indicated abstraction. As I breathed her perfume, I found it very difficult indeed to focus my mind on the reason why we were standing here, each holding a pistol and on the brink of a desperate enterprise. All I could think of in those seconds was her loveliness, the tumbling vitality of her hair and the deep blueness of her eyes. I wanted to let my hands slide over her bare shoulders and down over the roundness of her breasts to her waist, I wanted to bury my lips in her hair and draw warmth from her cheeks and mouth. I realised that I was trembling, but it was not from fear. She said, quietly:

  “Did you see Hervé go down?”

  “Yes, a moment ago.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Behind the stairs, to the left of the front door.”

  She nodded. “The dining room, he fusses about in there every night at this time, but don’t mind him, keep close to me.”

  “Is Yves in the study?”

  “Yes, and we haven’t much time, he intends to go visiting and he’s already told the chauffeur. Come, don’t waste a second.”

  She glided on ahead, up the second short flight and into a broad corridor that branched from the first-floor landing. As I followed, I noticed one or two pictures on the staircase. They were Corots and Fragonards. small but very valuable, each skilfully lit from below. There was a deep yellow carpet on the floor and where the corridor branched, a huge Louis Quinze commode, heavy with ormolu. It crossed my mind then that every time Diana introduced me into a house its atmosphere was one of outrageous wealth.

  Halfway along the corridor she stopped and laid her hand on my shoulder. Beyond was a closed door, and we were now in a cul-de-sac, with unrelieved walls on each side.

  “Follow me straight in,” she said, “and don’t bother to lock the door behind you. First we must cancel that chauffeur and get him out of the way!”

  For the first time she spoke with urgency. I took my automatic from my pocket and followed at her heels as she threw open the door and marched in, closing the door with a side kick. We were alone with Yves de Royden, each pointing a gun at his head as he sat in a pool of lamplight at a huge, flat-topped desk placed at right angles to the fireplace. Before he could look up a buzzer sounded at his elbow.

  “Answer it!” she rapped out. “Tell Martin you won’t be needing him after all!”

  I have never seen a man more astounded. He sat slumped down in his comfortable chair, with one plump hand stretched towards the house telephone and the other resting on a sheaf of papers spread across the desk. In that few seconds I got a good look at him and my first impression, dominating all others, was how pitilessly the years had used him. I fixed his age at thirty-four, three years older than Diana and only two years older than me, but he looked at least forty-five, with the lamplight shining on his bald patch and glinting on his prim pince-nez spectacles. Somehow I had never expected him to look like this. When I had met him all those years ago he had been slim and narrow-faced and now he was plump and round-headed, the kind of man who might have passed for a rapidly ageing executive in a bank or an insurance company, with a son at university and a daughter keen on tennis and sports cars. He didn’t look French at all but rather middle-class British, a family man who takes a first-class every morning from Esher or Sevenoaks and spends the day in a centrally-heated office, surrounded by juniors hoping to please him and ask for a rise. He had pursey little lips and an exceptionally pale skin that looked as if it might be moist and soft to touch. He did not look as if he ever needed to shave.

  Diana had issued her command in a quiet voice but when he continued to sit staring up at her, she repeated it, her voice rising half an octave.

  “Answer it, Yves! Tell Martin you won’t need him!”

  He swallowed twice and then moved his left hand nearer the switch. Simultaneously the buzzer sounded again and she forestalled him, jerking her head towards me as an instruction to keep him covered and snatching up the little receiver.

  “Martin? Madame here! You won’t be needed, I shall be driving M’sieur’s car myself! Yes! Go to bed!”

  She replaced the receiver and the strain left her face.

  “That’s done!” she said, lightly. “It worried me when I heard him ask Martin to stand by!” She addressed Yves directly: “You won’t be going over to see Labortine tonight,” she said, “instead you’ll be taking a trip with us!”

  He spoke at last, in a whisper.

  “Who is this? What is he doing here?” Then, clearing his throat, “Why are you waving that gun at me? Are you out of your senses?” He sounded like a petulant junior master who has surprised boys skylarking in the dormitory.

  There was no great urgency now that the chauffeur had been headed off so I thought it might help things along if I introduced myself and made it quite clear that we meant business.

  “I’m a British agent,” I said, “and I want certain papers from your safe. Afterwards we shall be making some calls on your factories. We have other men outside and they will follow us everywhere we go, so don’t try anything silly!”

  He paid very little attention to me which I thought odd in view of the fact that I was supposed to be doubling for his friend Rance. Instead, he directed his astonished gaze at Diana, now rummaging in the safe behind him.

  “You must be out of your mind!” he said, slowly. “I suppose you realise I shan’t be able to protect you if this piece of foolishness becomes known!”

  It struck me then how fatally wealth can warp a man’s judgement. Here he was, two guns pointing at him and his safe being ransacked by his own wife, yet he still found it impossible to believe that we were in earnest or had serious intentions of thwarting him, or were in fact doing anything more than to interrupt his work. The safe was open and his keys swung from the lock, in all, about a dozen clamped on a stout ring. At my request, Diana tossed over the ring and I noted that it contained six small keys of intricate but almost identical pattern. I thought it very likely that the safes at all five factories were to a standard design and pocketed the ring, moving round beside him and taking care to keep the barrel of my gun within a foot of his round head.

  “The book is here,” said Diana, over her shoulder and she pulled out a wedge of papers and threw them on the desk. Prominent among them was a red-covered book about the size of a small ledger. I
t was indexed and was obviously the one we sought. I flicked over the pages and found each covered with small, precise handwriting.

  “Is that his handwriting, Di?”

  She glanced at a page and nodded. I slipped the book in my hip pocket.

  He followed each movement with the same expression of irritated concern. Now he reminded me less of a schoolmaster than of a testy husband. engulfed in a spring-clean and having to sit by and see all his papers disturbed.

  “That book can be of no possible use to you!” he blurted out. “Put it back at once! At once! Do you hear me?”

  Diana laughed and slammed the safe door.

  “That’s the lot, Jan!” she said. “Show him the list and I’ll see if I can talk some sense into him!”

  I thought he had shown slight reaction to my use of the word “Di,” but now I was sure that he had picked up her “Jan.” He swung round towards me and let both his hands rest on the little gilt lions decorating the armrests of his swivel chair.

  “British!” he said, “British, you say! What the devil can the British want with my business records?”

  “What do you suppose?” said Diana, sitting on the corner of the desk and throwing one long leg over the other. She looked very much at ease sitting there in her lovely yellow gown and looking down on him with a smile.

  “Do you imagine they don’t know about you in London? Do you think that you and those bastards you work for are the only people concerned with Vergeltungswaffe Eins?”

  The mention of the weapon shook him. For the first time, I think, he took us seriously and his prim little mouth contracted as though he had tasted something sour. He began to get up, but Diana motioned him down and he obeyed her, very promptly, I thought.

  “First of all, let me get you up to date,” said Diana. “Pierre Rance is dead and buried! Jan and I killed him. We needed his papers!”

  He received this news stolidly. The only sign that it might have shocked him, if indeed he believed it, was a faint flush that came to his cheeks. Diana went on: “We are going downstairs and out through the front door, Yves. We shall drive first to Vincennes then to Orly then to Juvisy and so on. Don’t make trouble on the way or at the gates. I shall be driving and Jan will be sitting right beside you! He’s deadly. He put three bullets in Rance’s head in the dark!”

  “There is nothing the slightest use to you in any of these safes.” he said, addressing me rather than Diana.

  “We’ll decide that,” I told him, “in the meantime this is a list of the documents we’re looking for.”

  He took the envelope and glanced at the contents. Again I thought of a pedantic schoolmaster, now engaged in correcting botched examination papers.

  “You can take your choice,” I added. “Give us the relevant stuff or we’ll take everything and burn what we don’t need. We might even spare ourselves the trouble and lay on a first-class blitz.”

  He had got himself well in hand now. It was like looking down on a skull with the power to see through the flesh and bone and watch the processes of thought squirming underneath. Finally he said: “Why should I do this? Why should I help you in any way? If you really have killed Rance then you mean to kill me, so why shouldn’t I make a run for it the moment I arrive at my establishment? I might get shot but I should have the satisfaction of knowing the pair of you would be caught. The difference would be that you would undergo several unpleasant experiences before the end. I daresay the Gestapo would enjoy coaxing information from you!”

  It was a cool speech for a man in his situation and I admired his logic and his guts. Diana looked to me for a lead, clearly she was surprised at the way he pulled himself together. I said: “Listen, de Royden, I’ve got to turn you over to the Resistance as soon as we’ve made a tour but don’t deceive yourself that they are going to dispose of you! They have something quite different in mind. They are going to ship you over to Britain and give you a chance to turn King’s Evidence! You can save your neck that way, either now or after the war, when the De Gaullists begin weeding out you people and standing you up against walls! You’re not stupid and you know very well Germany can’t win the war now. They had their chance in 1940 and threw it away!”

  He was silent for a moment. Then, when he spoke, he shocked us both.

  “I assume you are my wife’s lover,” he said, not accusingly or even testily but as a simple statement of fact, almost the way Stanley might have said “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?”

  “If you had as good a memory for human beings as you have for facts and figures, you might even remember him,” said Diana, still perched on the edge of the desk. “You once gave him a lift in your first sports car, but it was a long time ago!”

  He closed his eyes and I could see he was trying but failing to recall me. Then he looked straight at me and said: “My wife already has access to certain funds in London and elsewhere. I could treble them if you wished and pay out through Madrid, or a Swiss bank. Suppose you take what you need and leave me to get on with my work? It would be quite safe to do so, I could hardly inform on you without involving her in a one-way journey to Dachau or Sachenhausen. You may find it difficult to believe but I should be unwilling to accomplish that, providing that is, she undertook to get out of my life altogether! You would have everything you need for the rest of your lives! You might find me more rewarding than the Armed Services.”

  It had never occurred to me that he would attempt to bribe us, but I believe his offer was a genuine one and that he would infinitely have preferred to be rid of her in this way rather than expose her and see her thrown into Fresnes gaol and turned over to the Gestapo. Perhaps it was pride and nothing else that prompted this proposition or perhaps he felt that his stock with Vichy and the Germans would be worthless once it became known that his wife had introduced a British agent into his home and factories and attempted to hand him over to the De Gaullists. Diana looked hard at him for a moment, wrinkling her brows. Then, without comment, she slipped off the desk, picked up his briefcase and began cramming the papers into it.

  “We’d better make a start, Jan,” she said and I motioned to him to get up and walk before us to the door.

  “You are both making a fatal mistake,” he said, as I switched off the desk light and prodded him in the small of the back.

  Diana went ahead and stopped to peer over the stair-head.

  “Bring him down slowly,” she said, “I’m going to check on Hervé! He had better know we’re going out!”

  She ran lightly down the stairs, holding her dress with her right hand and concealing the gun in the folds of the material. I followed with Yves immediately in front and as we reached the hall I heard her talking to the butler in the dining-room. A few seconds later she reappeared with a coat thrown over her shoulders. She paused for a moment, putting her automatic into a small evening bag and stuffing the bag into the pocket of her coat. Then she opened the door and we passed out into the mild night and walked towards the car. Just as we reached it thunder rumbled overhead. The storm seemed to have come much nearer whilst I was in the house. The time was now five minutes past eleven.

  I opened the door of the car and pushed de Royden inside, taking care to seat him on my left. Diana had a car key of her own and started the engine at once. A moment later we were sliding away and turning into the avenue. In less than a hundred metres she had built the speed to around fifty and all this time Yves de Royden said nothing at all.

  I looked behind to see if we were being followed but there was no sign of Raoul’s car or of any other vehicle. The streets were almost deserted and the gloom of the semi-blackout hid the houses on each side of the tree-lined thoroughfares. In about twenty minutes we slowed down alongside a high brick wall and stopped at a pair of wooden gates, over which a single light was burning. In its feeble gleam I saw the name “de Royden Fils” painted on a notice board nailed to the gates. The place seemed deserted.

  Diana tooted the horn and almost at once a panel in the gate slid
back. Diana got out and spoke to someone inside who flashed a powerful torch in our faces. de Royden stirred as the beam fell on us and I gave him a prod in the ribs. Then the torch was turned away, the gate creaked open and Diana got back into the car, driving it into the yard and stopping again. An elderly Reservist shuffled over and I lowered the window to present Rance’s identity card. The janitor glanced at it, then at me, and finally at de Royden.

  “M’sieu!” he said, stepping back, and waved us through.

  Diana drove further into the yard, reversed and pointed the car toward the gates. As I got out, I noticed that the watchman was closing them again.

  “Take over for a moment,” I told Diana and went over to him.

  “This is a spot security check,” I told him. “Don’t alert the night shift. We are inspecting on behalf of the Todt Organisation.”

  The man looked startled and uncertain. I turned away and over my shoulder added: “Leave one gate open, we shall only be here a short time!”

  I went back to the car and Diana said: “Over there, up the short flight of steps!”

  She went ahead and Yves followed her, hunched and silent. We passed up the steps and on the platform at the top I gave Yves his key ring.

  “Open up,” I said, “and don’t waste time about it!”

  He selected a key and opened the door. We passed in and Diana closed it behind us, switching on a light. We were in a large building set out with rows of desks like a school. On each desk was a hooded typewriter. At the far end was a wooden barrier and an inner office marked “Private”. We walked down the aisle and tried the office door, finding it open. We went in and turned on the light. I looked all round it but there was no safe.

  “It’s behind the filing cabinet,” she said and I wondered how she had acquired this kind of information without arousing suspicion.

  “I should like a drink,” said de Royden, suddenly. “There is cognac in the second drawer.”