Madeleine's War

by Peter Watson

  “I’m calling from Paris,” I said loudly. “I hope you can help me.”

  “Paris? Paris in France? Oh my. It’s a call from Paris,” the voice said, obviously speaking for the benefit of everyone within earshot in his office. “You know this is a taxi office. Have you got the right number?”

  “Yes, yes, I know who you are,” I said. “And I want you to do me a favour, please.”

  “Oh, yes? What’s that then?”

  “I need urgently to talk to Mrs. Dirac, she’s a good customer of yours—”

  “Yes, she is. You want to talk to her?”

  “Yes, please, can you go and get her? I’ll hang on.”

  “Oh,” said the voice. “Oh. I don’t think…no. Don’t go away, here’s our Jeannie.”

  There was a short pause. Was Victoria Dirac still in Blakeney? I needed to know—it would tell me a lot. If she had moved out, that would point to Madeleine being…what I feared most. If not, had she heard from her daughter…?

  A voice broke in on my thoughts. “Jeannie Slater here. Are you wanting Victoria Dirac?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly who I do want. Can you go and get her for me, please? It’s urgent.”

  “I can’t get her, I’m afraid, because she’s not here. I’m looking after Wellington, her dog.”

  “She’s away? Where’s she gone?”

  This was not good news.

  “I’m not sure. I mean I don’t know.”

  “Oh? Why has she gone? Do you know that?”

  “No, I don’t. She was very private about it all. She left very suddenly, four days ago. Took the train to London, left me three pounds to look after Wellington.”

  Had Mrs. Dirac told Jeannie Slater the truth? Had she disappeared, and sacrificed her dog?

  I barked into the phone. “What else did she say?”

  “Nothing, not to me anyway. Who are you?”

  “I’m a friend of her daughter. She didn’t mention her daughter?”

  “No, no. She didn’t mention her daughter, nothing like that—”

  “Did she say how long she would be away?”

  “Not exactly—”

  “What does that mean? What did she say exactly? Please, it might be important, very important.”

  “It was as she was leaving, in one of our taxis, leaving for King’s Lynn, I mean, to take the train to London. She said she didn’t know when she would be back.”

  I paused. The swishing on the line was bad. “Is there anything else you can think of? Anything you can tell me about her departure?”

  “Only…only…”

  “Yes?”

  “She took a bag of photographs with her. I know because I saw them slip out on to the back seat of the taxi as she was leaving.”

  —

  THE TABAC IN PLACE ROYÈRE was still smoking. The smell of burned wood clogged the nostrils and even penetrated to the back of the throat. Blackened timbers lay everywhere, scorch marks disfigured the exterior brickwork, tiny fragments of glass caught the daylight. The shop was still giving off heat.

  Justine and I stood together surveying the damage.

  I looked up at what was left of François Perrault’s building. “What a horrible way to die,” I said softly, mentally crossing my fingers as I did so.

  Justine nodded, but didn’t say anything for a moment.

  “It’s not much of a shop, is it? I mean in terms of size.”

  “A tabac needn’t take up much space, though. Cigarettes and matches are hardly bulky.” She held up a Gitane, to make her point.

  I shook my head. “Being here rubs it in: it was an incredible thing to do—set fire to the shop to kill the person living next door, above. Are you still convinced that’s what happened?”

  She nodded furiously.

  A policeman walked by. He looked at us intently and Justine turned away.

  “What do you think?” she said, gesturing with her hand to the fire site. “Any thoughts?”

  I nodded decisively. “This is an incendiary-type fire, very much so. I recognize the configuration, the pattern of heat generation.” I made a show of looking up and down the smoking remains. “And I can tell you that we in SC2 parachuted thousands of incendiaries to the Resistance. This is a Resistance job—make of that what you will. If the tobacconist was sleeping with—”

  “But she wasn’t!”

  I shrugged. “Have you met the woman who runs the tabac? Do you really believe her when she says she never—?”

  “No, I haven’t met the woman, but I’ve met her man—Didier, the waiter. Come on, the café’s over here.” She moved off towards it.

  Here was the crunch. Had the waiter done as I had enticed him to do, and gone to police headquarters? If he hadn’t…

  Justine crossed the square and walked straight into the café, past the tables on the pavement and on inside.

  My stomach was in a brawl with my other organs.

  “Is Didier here?” she said to the woman behind the counter.

  “No, he’s been called to the police station,” said the woman.

  I relaxed.

  “Oh? Why?” said Justine. She turned to me and said, “This is Matthew Hammond, a British colleague.”

  The woman held out her hand and I shook it. “Good afternoon,” I said in French. “We were hoping to see Didier.”

  “The police want him to look at some photographs, of people who might have been in this café on the night of the fire.”

  I suddenly realised with a start that the woman behind the bar was looking at me intently and the skin under my chin began sweating. She was, of course, the person I had spoken to when I had called the bar, pretending to be a policeman. Had I been too talkative and had she recognized my voice? She had remarked on it earlier.

  “But how did the police know he had seen some suspicious-looking people? So far as I know, he had only mentioned it to me, and I certainly never told the police. I was going to but I haven’t yet. We wanted to have some potential suspects first.” Justine frowned at me.

  The woman shrugged. “I don’t know who Didier talks to. I’m his employer, not his confessor. He talked to lots of customers. The police telephoned here earlier today—I answered the call myself. Didier spoke to them and they fixed an appointment for two o’clock.”

  “What time was this call from the police?”

  The woman shrugged again. “Eleven, eleven fifteen.”

  Justine looked at me quizzically. Did she suspect me? Was that behind her question over timing? She couldn’t suspect me.

  Could she?

  “How long will he be gone?” Justine said to the woman.

  She shrugged again. “He didn’t say. But you’re welcome to wait.”

  Justine looked at me.

  “Sorry, Justine. I’ve done what you asked, but when I went back to the office today, I found out that Madeleine’s mother has left her address in England. Something had happened suddenly, and that means—”

  “I know what it means,” she said softly but bitterly.

  She didn’t know everything it might mean, but I wasn’t getting into that. Madeleine’s mother might have been telling the truth to Jeannie Slater, or she might not have been.

  What I did say was, “I’m going to Limoges tonight, on the overnight train. I’m sorry but…” I tailed off.

  “When does the train leave?”

  “Eight. But I need to go back to the office first. Loose ends to tie up.”

  “Shall I come to the station, to see you off?”

  “I…Well, if you wish. Are you sure?”

  “I’ll be there at a quarter to, on the platform. For my last kiss.”

  —

  I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED THE SMELL and bustle of railway stations. The steam, the soot, the drama of arrival and departure, the hugs and tears—there is nowhere quite like a big station to make you feel quickened by ordinary events.

  But this time I was apprehensive as well as excited. I had of course lied to Justine
about having things to do in the office. I knew she would wait for Didier Roque, that he would arrive back at the café flustered and irritated, having found that there was no rendezvous with the police, and that he had been set up. At that point, when he and Justine were discussing what had happened, would the bar’s owner recall that my voice was quite similar to the one she had heard on the telephone that morning? Both had remarked on my accent. Would Justine put it all together? She could have no understanding of why I would wish to kill François Perrault, but she might be suspicious enough to bring Didier with her to the Gare Montparnasse, to settle it once and for all.

  I had thought this through while we were standing talking to the café owner, and that is why I had also lied about the departure time of the Limoges train. It left not at 8:00 but at 7:10 and I was banking on Justine’s not doubting my word about that and not checking the timetable herself. If she did check the timetable and found out that I had misled her…

  I was seated in a compartment now, at 7:05. I had no suitcase with me—I’d left my belongings in Justine’s flat, so there was some ambiguity as to whether I would return—but I hoped I could buy the basics I would need in Limoges. The compartment was filling up—there was no officer’s section for this journey, as we were too far from the front, and it was likely to be an uncomfortable night. But, so long as I got out of Gare Montparnasse without a confrontation with Justine, I could live with that.

  7:06. I had had some time to digest the news from Blakeney, that Mrs. Dirac had gone to London and didn’t know when she would be back. Or so she had told Jeannie Slater at the King’s Men. And that she had taken a bag of photographs with her. Madeleine’s mother’s drawing room flashed into my mind, with its mantelshelf and the photographs on it, in particular the photograph of Philippe. And crowded in there, among the other thoughts, was the moment Madeleine’s mother had told me that Madeleine had “unfinished business” with Philippe, when she had said that “you are never in love in quite the same way that you are in love the first time, when you are innocent in a way that you are never innocent again.”

  I remembered her words only too well.

  She had told me that Madeleine would want, if she were able, to “wind up” that part of her life—to visit his grave, if there was one.

  What if Madeleine had gone to Louzac looking for his grave—and instead found the man himself, alive?

  Or was I running on ahead, too fast? If Madeleine was a German agent, she could have been duping him as she had perhaps duped me. If she was a German agent, and her mother was too, the whole Philippe story could have been invented by them, but based on a real person, for verisimilitude. Her mother could have removed the photographs because, in some way, they identified who she and her daughter really were. The two of them could have invented his death, never imagining that I would stumble across him being alive.

  Alternatively, Madeleine might have swallowed her suicide pill, soon after her last message had been interrupted. Something else that I simply didn’t know about could have happened to her. The ambiguities hadn’t gone away.

  If Mrs. Dirac had spun Jeannie Slater a line, however, and that was certainly a possibility, if both she and Madeleine were German agents, then she could have left Blakeney for anywhere, anywhere at all.

  Which would mean I had no hope of finding either of them.

  But since Pforzheim had still to fall to our forces, finding out the exact truth about Philippe was my only way forward for now, blind alley or dead end that it might be.

  I’d bought an evening newspaper at the station kiosk. I looked at it now. On the front page, at the foot, one particular item immediately caught my attention: a report that a German newspaper had published an account of Leni Riefenstahl’s latest exploit. In a break from covering the front with her camera, she was making a film in Berlin of Hitler’s favourite opera, Tiefland. In typical Hitler-Nuremberg-Riefenstahl style, the film had hundreds of extras.

  7:09. I willed my watch to go faster. The compartment was full now. Sleep tonight, for me, would be out of the question. I had with me some sandwiches and a beer. Better to go easy on the beer—if I stood up I’d lose my seat. I studied the timetable and the route: Étampes, Pithiviers, Montargis, Gien, Briare…I gave up. It wasn’t an express, and with so many stops, the journey was going to be interminable.

  7:10. Wasn’t the damn train supposed to leave now? What would I find when I got to Louzac? If Mrs. Dirac had been right, that Madeleine’s first love was like no other, that in truth she had never got over Philippe, would Madeleine be there, and how would she feel about my turning up unannounced? Whatever had happened later, she hadn’t made straight for Louzac. Had she behaved impeccably to deceive us still further, while she passed on information from France to Berlin?

  7:12. I reminded myself one more time that I had only Madeleine’s word, and her mother’s, that there had ever been any connection with Philippe Sompre. Or that he existed.

  7:14. I kept my eyes averted from the window, so that should Justine be on the platform, having worked out when the train actually was scheduled to leave, and was actively looking for me, I would be all the harder to spot.

  My geography of that part of France was hazy but I thought Louzac was about 200 kilometers—120 miles or so—from Le Gâvre, where Madeleine had been dropped. She could have cycled there, had she wanted to, in a few days.

  7:16 and the bloody train still hadn’t left. The biggest question, the most awkward question, was this: If Madeleine was still alive, why had she made no attempt to contact me? Did she not want to see me? If not, why not? Did the fact that she was reunited with Philippe mean that our life together counted for nothing? She had made no attempt to contact me, so far as I knew, or get information to me…Did that point to her being an enemy agent…?

  7:18. The carriage jolted into motion. My nervousness began to subside. But not completely. The train was packed; passengers were standing in the corridors. Justine, if she wanted, could have boarded the train further along, and I would never know. I wouldn’t know, with certainty, until we got to Limoges tomorrow morning.

  LIMOGES

  · 29 ·

  JUSTINE WASN’T AT LIMOGES. I took the first local train north and was in Louzac—changing twice, with hefty waits in between trains—by six o’clock on the evening of the following day. I used the waiting time to buy a small suitcase, a razor, a spare shirt, and other bits and pieces. When I reached Louzac, I found a hotel near the railway station, had dinner in a steamy brasserie almost next door, took care not to get involved in any conversations with curious waiters, and, having hardly slept on the overnight train from Paris, was in bed by ten o’clock. With any luck, tomorrow would be a crucial day.

  LOUZAC

  · 30 ·

  MY FIRST STOP NEXT MORNING was the university. The archaeology department would surely contain several people who knew about the cave discoveries.

  I found the university easily enough, by asking people in the hotel, and tracked down the archaeology department, which occupied part of a barracks-type temporary building that must surely once have belonged to the army. A woman secretary, in what appeared to be the main office, had no idea what I was talking about, but then a small man came in, carrying what looked to me like a stone axe.

  “Excuse me,” I said in my best French. “Do you know a Philippe Sompre?” I had to bend the rules here and take some calculated risks. “I believe he is the man who has discovered the ancient painting of an ox in your local caves—I read about it in a newspaper in Paris. I believe he may be able to help me find my wife,” I lied, or exaggerated. “She was an undercover agent near here about the time of the invasion—D-Day—and she has gone missing.”

  The man looked at me, hard. Had he been in the Resistance—or, worse, had he been a collaborator? All France was still deeply divided.

  “I can tell you where the cave is. I don’t know who or where Philippe Sompre is.”

  “Well, that’s a start,” I sa
id. “Tell me, please.”

  “You go out of town, to the south, on the Cognac road. After about four kilometres, you come to an avenue of trees, poplar trees, on both sides of the road. At the far end of the poplars there is a bridge over a river, the Vienne. You walk upriver for about three kilometres until you come to a narrow gorge. There is a small path along the cliff on the left, the north side. After a few hundred metres you will come to a narrow slit in the cliff, with a small stream falling as a waterfall into the river. You climb up that stream—you will get very wet, I am afraid—and you will come to the cave.”

  I thanked him and retraced my steps to the railway station, where I had noticed a couple of taxis waiting for business.

  The first man didn’t want to take me to where I wanted to go, and wait for me there, but the second man didn’t mind. In fact, as we were driving out of Louzac, he asked me why I was so interested in the cave.

  “I’m not, really. I’m trying to locate someone called Philippe Sompre. I believe he’s the man who found the cave and the ancient painting on its walls. If they are still excavating there, someone will know where he is. I need to contact him because I gather he’s a Resistance hero, and he may be able to help me find my wife, who parachuted into France ahead of the invasion, and went missing.”

  “You mean you don’t want to go to the cave at all, not really?”

  “No, as I say, what I really want is to find Philippe Sompre.”

  “But I know where he is.”

  “You do?”

  So he was alive! I had been right to have my suspicions all along. But why had he been reported dead? Had Madeleine misled me about that?

  “How do you know he’s alive? And where is he?”

  “I was in the Resistance, we were in the Resistance together, in the caves. Do you want me to take you to him?”

  “Yes, of course I do. Where is he? Is it far?”

  “About forty-five minutes from here.” The driver stopped his car, did a three-point turn, and went back the way we had come. “He’s in a convent, St. Hilaire-en-Fôret.”