So Galles was at pains not to advertise himself more than necessary now. But perhaps that was understandable, after what had happened to Miss Stephanides last night.
He looked at his watch again, trying to judge minutes against distances. As usual on such occasions, time was behaving erratically: it had gone slowly at first, and then it had speeded up while Lexy had taken his mind off it. But it was still too early for his final contact with Genghis Khan, and that was what mattered. Unless and until he could be sure that the man had superimposed his own plan on Audley’s, he had to take things easily.
So … trousers first, and then socks and shoes … because a man without trousers couldn’t face the world, and a man without shoes couldn’t run away from it.
Then shirt and tie: shirt to make him respectable, tie to add formality, because a man in a Royal Signals tie was ready for anything and anywhere, even Le Château du Cingle d’Enfer.
He slung his coat over his shoulder, feeling the comforting weight of passport and wallet (a man with those could run faster and further), tucked his bastide-book and notes under his arm, and advanced in Full Service Marching Order towards the Citroen.
The engine was already running.
He bent down to the window. “What’s all the hurry?”
Galles scowled at him. “Get in the car, m’sieur.”
The little Citroen eased forward slowly, protesting at the potholes on the track, laboured up the incline on to the road, and then slammed him back in the seat as it accelerated away.
“What’s all the hurry?” repeated Roche.
“No hurry, m’sieur.” Galles had his foot down on the floor. “M’sieur Audley wishes me to say that he has telephoned M’sieur d’Auberon, and that M’sieur d’Auberon awaits your visit with the keenest interest, at 6.30 if that is convenient.”
“Are we being followed?” inquired Roche, even though the question was superfluous, since Galles was already staring fixedly into the wing mirror.
“M’sieur Roche—“ Galles continued to study the mirror “—I have been followed ever since I picked you up at the station yesterday. And I should guess that you have also been followed. Have you not noticed?”
“By whom?” Roche ignored the question of his own inadequacy.
“I do not know. To my shame, I failed to remark upon the coincidences until this morning. It… has been a long time, since the old days, m’sieur. I am not as suspicious as I once was.”
Shit! thought Roche. It could hardly be the Comrades, or Genghis Khan would have told him so. Therefore it had to be … whoever had attended to Miss Stephanides … and that was frightening, even though Genghis Khan had promised to attend to them himself.
“A motor-cyclist, I think,” said Galles. “Though I cannot see him at this moment.”
Shit again! thought Roche. There were altogether too many faint motorcycle noises in his memory, from the last twenty-four hours back.
“Lose him, then,” he commanded. This sort of thing, beyond a little checking before he made a carefully prepared contact, was out of his routine experience. He had never been a bloody cloak-and-dagger man.
“M’sieur … one does not lose a motor-cyclist—he has too many advantages. One kills motor-cyclists—nothing else will serve.”
“Kills?”
“But yes! I killed one once—by accident, of course, you understand … on the blind corner before La Roque, it was … I braked to avoid a child who had run into the road—my cousin’s little niece, it was—and there was a cement-lorry broken down on the other side of the road at that exact moment—the child ran out from behind it … so there was nowhere the motor-cyclist could go—he was travelling too fast, of course—and nothing anyone could do. It was a tragic accident, with no one to blame except the victim himself, poor fellow.”
Yes?”
Galles shrugged. “Well… it will take me at least twenty-four hours to find another niece, and another cement-lorry, if that is what you want, M’sieur Roche.”
Roche reviewed the situation. A single follower was there to follow and observe. And Genghis Khan himself had required him to lay on an observer for what he had in mind, whatever it was—a reliable observer. So one more trained observer couldn’t do too much harm.
“We’ll go on—and let him follow.” Long-forgotten OCTU training supported him: orders must always be given confidently, to encourage the other ranks’ ill-founded belief that the officers know what is going on. “But I need a telephone at 6.15—I must report in before I see d’Auberon.”
Galles gave him a searching look, as though to suggest that, however rusty and far-removed from tragic accidents he might be, he was too old a hand to cherish ill-founded beliefs.
“Go on, man!” He tried to meet the look arrogantly. “But just don’t drive like a maniac any more. This is important, and I don’t want to be part of any tragic accidents.”
The look continued to search him. “Like that which befell Mademoiselle Meriel last night?”
The poor sod was as much in the dark about Steffy as everyone else, thought Roche. The years of peace since ‘the old days’ had not prepared him for a new generation of violence.
He shook his head. “I don’t know about that. You think it wasn’t an accident?”
“The Police say that it was. But I do not think so.”
Neither do I.”
“Very well.” Galles gave him another five seconds’-worth of doubt, and then reached under the dashboard. “M’sieur Audley sent this too, to introduce you to M’sieur d’Auberon.”
Chases et Gens de la Dordogne et ses Pays, by Etienne d’Auberon. It was a rather slim, typically French rough-cut volume, rather dog-eared but unmarked by ownership—at a guess, Audley’s own copy, because Audley would never bother to put his name in any book of his, it would be beneath his dignity.
He looked up Le Château du Cingle d’Enfer immediately in the index— “… high above the bend of the river, with the fertile river-plain on either side to supply it, which successive generations of d’Auberons terrorised to enable them to keep up the state of great barons…”
“A motor-cyclist,” said Galles. “Or perhaps a motor-cyclist and an auto-cycliste—I think we have maybe united two separate tails into one now, m’sieur.”
Roche looked up, and couldn’t identify his surroundings.
“Where are we?” he demanded.
“Just coming into Laussel-Beynac. You wished for a telephone, and I have a cousin here—“
“A public telephone,” said Roche quickly, moving to minimise unacceptable risks. “That’s the regulation.”
Overhanging trees gave place to overhanging houses clinging to a steep hillside in the middle of nowhere.
“Over there,” said Galles, pointing.
The telephone was beyond another 1914-18 Poilu, unsuitably overcoated and weighed down with equipment on the top of a marble plinth, standing guard aggressively on behalf of the men of Laussel-Beynac who had not come back from the Marne and the Aisne and the Somme to the Dordogne. He was, so far as Roche could recall, the same soldier who had presided over Neuville’s dead enfants.
He tripped the switch in his memory to activate the number Genghis Khan had given him, from among the peach-boxes.
“David. For Johnnie.” It seemed very strange indeed to think of Genghis Khan so innocently.
“Johnnie. For David—“
It wasn’t Genghis Khan’s voice, or any other voice that he could place. But it was Johnnie for David nevertheless.
He listened, and replaced the receiver without bothering to acknowledge, just letting ersatz-Johnnie cut him off.
Never again, Johnnie for David. That was the last time ever!
And now one other call—but at least Johnnie for David gave him strength for that—
“Hullo? Roche here.”
He held on, studying the stained copper-green-and-grey soldier, forever Mart pour la Patrie. No one was going to remember Captain Roche that way, by God
!
“Roche?”
It was Thompson, and that made it easier. If God wasn’t an Englishman or a Frenchman at least, He wasn’t anti-Roche!
“Listen—you tell Stocker—“
“Hold on, old boy! You should have checked in this morning, you know! He’s off-net at the moment, but he’ll be back any time now. So call back in half an hour, and you’ll get him, eh?” Thompson sounded a tiny bit rattled.
“I was busy this morning—and I can’t wait now. Tell him I’m going in, to get what he wants—tell him that. Right?”
The bastide-fancier gobbled impotently for another rattled moment, and then took a grip of himself. “Do you want any back-up … for whatever it is?”
“Can you get back-up to Laussel-Beynac in five minutes?” Roche looked at his watch, almost happily.
“Where?”
“It doesn’t matter. Our man down here is with me. Just tell the Major that. And I may not be able to call him again until tomorrow—you tell him that as well—“ By tomorrow I’ll be long gone to ground, with a leaf or two taken out of d’Auberon’s book too “—right?”
“If you say so, old boy. But you sound a bit over-confident to me—“
“Shit!” Roche wasn’t sure whether he’d put down the phone before or after he’d pronounced his last farewell to Thompson, but it no longer mattered.
He retrieved Chases et Gens de la Dordogne etses Pays from the passenger’s seat, and nodded encouragingly to Galles.
“It’s okay. I’m cleared to go ahead. How far is it?”
“Three kilometres only.” Galles glanced uneasily at his wing mirror. “Did they have any ideas about our followers?”
“Are they still there?” It would be as well to reassure the little Frenchman, even with lies, so that he could concentrate on seeing what he was required to see.
“I cannot see them. But they are there.”
Not that what Galles saw, or didn’t see, really mattered any longer either … But it would be better to go through with Genghis Khan’s plan to the letter, just in case.
“I don’t think we need worry too much about them.” The memory of their meeting in Madame Peyrony’s coach-house came to his rescue. “It’s most likely the Americans keeping an eye on us, it seems. They won’t try anything rough.”
“No?” Galles sounded something less than disarmed by the forecast, possibly because of some wartime recollection of OSS roughness. “I hope you’re right, m’sieur. But just in case … if what you are doing is so important…”
Roche watched him swivel to rummage in a large metal tool-box wedged behind him amongst a collection of jacks and crowbars and towing-ropes, finally to produce a sacking bundle secured with greasy twine.
“Good God, man!” He watched in horror as Galles produced an enormous military revolver and a tiny automatic pistol from the sacking. “We don’t need those—we’re not going to storm the château!”
“Here—“ Galles offered him the little automatic, ignoring his reaction “—I will keep the man-stopper, you can put this in your pocket. It’s only a Ruby—my cousin René brought it back from Spain in ‘38—it will do no one any harm, but it may make them think twice.”
“Good God—no!” exclaimed Roche, hypnotised by the weapons. “We’re not into that sort of thing!” He knew he had to make allowances for the vast arsenal of weaponry which defeat and occupation, not to mention well-supplied resistance, had distributed throughout France, but the casual appearance of small arms from a middle-aged mechanic’s tool-box, from among the wrenches and screwdrivers, shook him nevertheless.
“Eh bien! So you suit yourself, m’sieur.” Galles shrugged. “But I choose rather to be safe than sorry.”
He closed the sacking loosely over the weapons and placed the bundle at his feet. “So now … just what exactly is it that you wish me to do, eh’”
“Drive to the château—“ Roche swallowed nervously, then took hold of himself “—and drop me off in the parking area in front of the main gate … do you know it?”
“Yes, m’sieur. The new parking area which M’sieur d’Auberon has had prepared for the tourists—there is building work in progress still or the gate-house—“
“That’s right.” Galles’ information tallied with Genghis Khan’s. “You wait for me there. That’s all you have to do, mon vieux.”
“It is … a pick-up?”
That was a perfect question, better even than he could have imagined “Yes. And we are picking up dynamite, I can tell you.”
Galles touched the sacking with his toe. “Then we will make your pick-up, m’sieur—never fear!”
Roche used up the last three kilometres inside Chases et Gens.
Most obligingly (though no doubt by design, now that he intended to convert Le Château du Cingle d’Enfer into a tourist-trap, milking foreigners where his hobereaux ancestors had once composed the peasants out of their money), Etienne d’Auberon had included a plan of the château.
“… the outer courtyard, reached by way of a ruined gate-house of formidable proportions, leads the visitor to a second and more attractive gateway, built in the Renaissance style, bearing the family motto ‘Soln in perfectum me attrahit’ intertwined among delicate devices…”
So he had two gateways to pass—
“… the interior of the château, soon to be opened to the public for the first time, comprises a succession of noble rooms, furnished with the everyday objects of life in the XVI, XVII and XVIII centuries, including priceless tapestries, furniture and family portraits…”
Either the château had somehow escaped the excesses of the French Revolution, or the present owner was lying through his teeth! But here, once again, was illustrated that unrivalled ability of the French to triunph over adversity … and he could only hope that his own diluted French blood would do the same for him.
“We are close, m’sieur.”
Roche craned his neck to take in the view. They had left the last houses of Laussel-Beynac behind among the trees, and had twisted and turned in a series of hairpin bends to rise above a great cingle of the river, to bring into view the towers of the château ahead.
The last turn opened up the new parking area, bulldozed out from the hillside on the peasants’ side of a great dry moat which had been cut across the limestone headland on which the castle itself had been built to command the river valley.
The medieval defences of the castle lay directly ahead, wreathed in scaffolding, with a lorry in the foreground from which men were even now unloading bags of cement, and with the delicate conical towers of the Renaissance château he had glimpsed earlier rising in the background.
He was oddly reminded of The Old House, which was so absolutely different and so English, but which was the same for all that: possession of these things—Le Château du Cingle d’Enfer and The Old House at Steeple Horley—could twist some men out of true self-interest, just as any abstract ideas could delude others, like himself and Genghis Khan, who had no such things of their own, into other follies.
The distant sound of a motor-cycle, somewhere behind him in the trees on the twists and turns, recalled him to reality.
He picked up Choses et Gens and his own bastide nonsense, and walked round the Citroen to the driver’s window.
“Just you keep your eye on that gateway. When I come out of there I don’t want to hang about admiring the view—you understand?”
He didn’t wait for Galles to acknowledge the instruction, but launched himself straightway towards the first gate.
“The visitor will observe the gun-ports, pierced low in the gateway by Jean d’Auberon, who died with ‘obert de Montal at-the battle of Pavia in 1525 …”
He observed the gun-ports.
And he also observed the cement-bag carriers, who took no more note of him than the peach-box carriers outside Neuville.
Under the shadow of the archway ahead—“rebuilt by Etienne III d’Auberon, who led the best shots in France in the hunt for th
e last wolf of the Dordogne, in 1774”—there was a pile of cement bags, laid away safe from any August rain, as Genghis Khan’s man had said they would be.
He paused halfway down, out of sight of everyone, as though to adjust the tightness of one shoelace, and picked up the brief-case planted between the bags.
It was dusty with a fine powder of cement, and the key was in the lock. He turned the key and put it into his trouser pocket, dusted down the case with his hand, as he straightened up, and stepped out briskly into the light of the inner courtyard beyond.
It was only a matter of ten seconds, but he had it now—King, Cawdor, Glamis, all—he could turn round and run now!
He continued on towards the ‘Solum perfectum me attrahit’ doorway, tucking the d’Auberon book and the bastide material more comfortably under his arm. A thing done right was a thing done well, Mrs Clarke had said.
There was a heavy bronze dolphin knocker on the great door. He looked back across the courtyard and saw that the cement carriers were back on their job.
A small grill clicked open in the door, startling him.
“Captain David Roche—for M’sieur d’Auberon.” He projected the password into the grill, slightly off-put by the pink scalp which was all he could see through it. “M’sieur Audley has telephoned, I think?”
Heavy bolts echoed on the inside. Getting into the château, with all its ancient treasures and its more lethal post-Suez objets d’art, was not just for casual callers.
There were three steps forward, and then two steps down, over white Carennac marble into the hall, while the great door crashed shut behind him.
“… and its greatest architectural beauty is the splendid Renaissance staircase, which comprises a superb transition between the spiral and the stair in flights, as at Montal…”
“If M’sieur le Capitaine will come this way?” The little bald man who had peered up at him through the grill, grey-coated and black-trousered, indicated a door to his left.
Roche regretted desperately that he had come so far, but he was trapped now beyond all thought of retreat.
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