Chasing Ghosts

by Madalyn Morgan

  Thomas opened the passenger door and pushed Claire into the car. The wind buffeted the car and hail hammered noisily on the roof and windscreen, making it impossible to hear what each other was saying or to see anything other than balls of ice building up in the corners of the windows.

  Claire stared open-mouthed as a white shroud of hail covered the windscreen, blocking out what was left of the daylight. The car’s interior became eerily dark and Claire began to panic. She turned to open the door, but Thomas grabbed her and pulled her to him.

  ‘The noise!’ Claire shouted, through chattering teeth. In a fit of anxiety, she forced her hands free of Thomas’s hold, pressed them against her ears and buried her face between the lapels of his coat.

  When the storm ended, sleet and rain melted the hail leaving the windscreen relatively clear. Straining to see through the rivulets of icy rain running down the windows, Claire watched the sky brighten.

  Taking his arm from around her, Thomas lifted Claire’s chin and looked into her eyes. For a moment she thought he was going to kiss her. Instead, he whispered, ‘Breathe…’ Claire looked at him and nodded. She suddenly realised she’d been holding her breath. After inhaling and exhaling several times, slowly, she felt calmer.

  Thomas started the car. ‘What are you doing?’ Claire asked. Ignoring her, Thomas put his foot on the accelerator and the engine roared into life. ‘We can’t go,’ Claire said, ‘not while it’s still daylight. We haven’t found the escape route. Thomas, please,’ she begged, ‘we can’t go yet.’

  ‘We can go and we will!’ He put the car in reverse gear, spun the steering wheel and turned to look out of the back window. ‘You are soaked to the skin,’ he said angrily, ‘we both are!’ Claire wiped the cuff of her coat across her face, transferring mud to her cheek. ‘You’ll catch your death of pneumonia,’ he shouted, ‘and then you won’t be any good to your husband, or to anyone else!’

  Claire slumped down in her seat, dejected. She looked out of the passenger window and watched the leafless trees around the desolate prison fade into the distance.

  Hôtel Garonne, on the outskirts of Saint-Gaudens on the Garonne river, was once a private chateau, which had turned into a hotel between the wars. Thomas carried in the suitcases and asked for two single rooms.

  From the outside the hotel had the red-brick charm of buildings in Toulouse. On the inside the décor was tired and the woman behind the reception desk looked as if she had something unpleasant stuck to her top lip. She clicked her fingers at a lad dressed in an ill-fitting bellboy’s uniform standing like a statue at the bottom of the sweep of stairs. He jumped and ran over to the desk. The woman behind it glared at him. ‘How long will you be staying, Monsieur?’ she asked, looking at Thomas from beneath hooded eyelids.

  Thomas raised his eyebrows in question at Claire. Still annoyed with him for insisting they left the prison without looking for the escape route that Alain had told her about, Claire shrugged her shoulders. ‘One, possibly two nights, Madame. We are not sure how long we will be staying in Saint-Gaudens.’

  ‘In that case, I will need a deposit to hold your rooms after tonight. It will be fifteen francs Monsieur,’ she said, leaning over the reception desk and looking with distaste at the floor where Claire dripped water on the cheap carpet. ‘Each!’

  ‘It is raining, Madame!’ Claire said, her voice clipped with sarcasm.

  ‘Then it is a good job there is a fire in your room so you can dry your coat,’ the receptionist countered. Turning her attention back to Thomas, the woman reeled off a list of hotel rules: ‘Dinner is at seven. Do not be late. The kitchen stops serving at eight. The dining room closes at nine. The bar, which is for residents only, closes at eleven.’ The sour-faced receptionist handed Thomas the keys to both rooms and turned to the bellboy. ‘Rooms seven and eight.’

  Claire and Thomas followed the boy up the thinly carpeted stairs to the first floor. Outside room seven the boy put down Claire’s case. ‘Do you want to look at the other room?’ Thomas asked, ‘it might be--’

  ‘This one will be fine.’ Claire shivered. ‘As long as there is a fire?’ She directed the question to the bellboy who nodded. Taking the key from Thomas, Claire unlocked the door.

  ‘If you feel like a drink, I shall be in the bar from…’ he looked at his watch, ‘six-thirty.’

  ‘I might join you; I’ll see how I feel. If I don’t, I’ll see you in the dining room at seven.’ The bellboy followed her into the room and set her suitcase down by the wardrobe. ‘If you need anything, Madame, anything at all,’ he said, with a glint in his eye, ‘ring down to reception. Madame la propriétaire will be happy to help you.’ He pointed to a telephone on the dressing table. ‘Pick up the receiver, there is no number to dial, and you will get through to reception and Madame’s cheerful voice.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Claire said. Taking a couple of coins from her purse she gave them to the lad. ‘I’ll make sure I need something while I’m staying here,’ she said and laughed. The bellboy laughed with her, touched his cap and left, closing the door.

  The room was small. Besides a single bed, there was a narrow wardrobe, small window, and a desk-cum-dressing table on one side of the room. On the other side was the fire and a wash basin, with a towel hanging from it. Claire was tempted to hide the towel and ring down to reception and ask the miserable woman to bring a towel up, but the woman would probably keep her waiting, and she needed it to dry herself now.

  Claire took off her wet clothes and hung them on the picture rail at the side of the fire to dry. After towelling her arms and legs, she put on her dressing gown and knelt in front of the fire to dry her hair. Feeling warm at last, Claire sat back on her heels and gazed into the flames. She watched as they licked the underside of each lump of coal turning one after the other red as each caught alight. She leaned back, rested her head on the foot of the bed, and closed her eyes.

  A knock on the door woke her from a light sleep. Her stomach lurched as she got to her feet. She held her breath and without making a sound, crept to the door. Damn! It wasn’t locked. She pulled her dressing gown tightly around her waist, knotted the belt and put her ear against the wood. There was a second knock followed by, ‘Room service, Madame.’

  Claire recognised the bellboy’s voice and exhaled with relief. Quickly returning to the side of the fire she shouted, ‘Come in.’

  ‘Monsieur Durand thought you would like coffee, Madame,’ the bellboy said, treating Claire to a cheeky grin. A Jack of all trades as far as the hotel was concerned, Claire thought, and smiled back at him. ‘Monsieur Durand took my advice and telephoned reception for it.’ He grinned again. ‘Madame la propriétaire had dropped off in her chair in the office and when the telephone rang almost jumped out of her skin.’ The lad giggled. ‘She was not happy,’ he said, crossing the room and putting the tray on the dressing table.

  Claire laughed. ‘Is Monsieur Durand having coffee?’

  ‘Yes, Madame, I’m about to take it in.’

  ‘Thank him for me, will you? And tell him I’ll see him downstairs in the bar at six-thirty.’

  When the boy left, Claire turned the key in the lock. She didn’t think military intelligence would have had time to catch up with her. All the same, it was careless of her to leave the door unlocked, especially as she had fallen asleep. She took her diary and a pen from her handbag and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the fire with her coffee. She recalled the events of the day, jotting down the places they had stopped to put fuel in the car, writing down the cost next to the name of each petrol station. The last entry was the hotel. Two rooms for one night, possibly two nights if they didn’t find the doctor who had looked after Mitch tomorrow.

  Replacing the diary in her handbag, Claire got up and closed the curtains. She took off her dressing gown. Turning to throw it on the bed she caught sight of herself in the mirror. She looked thin. She had lost weight while she was in Canada, which she hadn’t minded because she had been a few pounds ove
rweight when she went out there. She hadn’t eaten as much as she would normally have done at Christmas either. She’d had hardly any treats, she had been too worried about Mitch to bother with candied fruit or chocolate.

  Thinking about it, Claire had hardly eaten since she got back to Oxford. She stared at herself in the mirror and grimaced. Loose flesh at the top of her arms and legs made her look skinny. Antoinette had noticed she’d lost weight, she had said as much. Claire laughed, ‘That’s why she fed me up while I was in Paris,’ she said aloud.

  She put the plug in the basin and filled it with hot water. As she washed, she decided she needed to eat to keep up her strength. She would start eating properly tonight - if she could get the image of the prison out of her mind.

  Claire felt the coat and the hem of the skirt she’d worn in the afternoon’s downpour. Neither were dry. Give them a few hours more, she thought. The clothes were relatively clean, they were just wet. Tomorrow she would ask the delightful Madame la propriétaire if she could borrow an iron.

  Claire crossed the room and opened her suitcase. The outside of the case was damp, but the clothes inside were dry, they just felt cold. Tonight she would put on something smart to go down to dinner. Apart from a blue silk dress, which she had brought in case she went anywhere where she needed to dress up, she had packed mostly thick, serviceable clothes; skirts and jumpers to keep her warm, which she laid on the bed.

  She took out a navy blue tailored skirt and a pale blue twin-set and hung them on the outside of the wardrobe. The only other outfit suitable for dinner in a hotel that wasn’t creased from being in the suitcase all day was a tailored suit in a tweedy mix of green, blue and mauve. She wore the jacket in the daytime, and a fine mauve cardigan in the evening. She hung up the dress, skirts and the jacket, folded her underwear, cardigan and jumpers and placed them on the shelves in the wardrobe, leaving the door open so the heat from the fire, that had already taken the chill off the small room would drift across to the wardrobe and air them.

  She quickly dressed and combed her hair. Pushing a few stray curls into place she trapped them beneath a Kirby grip. Slipping her feet into her shoes, Claire picked up her handbag and looked over her shoulder, taking a last look in the mirror. Her face was pale with dark rings under her eyes. She looked as if she hadn’t slept for a month. She blew out her cheeks and took her makeup out of her bag. After applying powder, rouge and lipstick she looked better - and she felt better.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The bar was busy when she arrived at six-thirty. Thomas was hunched over a newspaper in the corner of the room. As she approached him he jumped up, folded the paper and dropped it onto the table. ‘What would you like to drink?’

  She was about to ask him what he was drinking but saw a glass of beer on the table. She didn’t feel like beer. It was too cold. ‘Wine,’ she said, ‘red, please.’

  Thomas strolled over to the bar. After a short conversation with the bartender, which Claire wasn’t able to hear, he came back with a glass of wine. ‘The barman said this is a good local wine. He told me that it is medium bodied and a little fruity - and then he winked at me.’ Thomas put Claire’s wine on the table and sat down. ‘Make of that what you will,’ he said, laughing.

  Claire took a sip of the wine. ‘Mm, it is fruity,’ she said, and laughed too.

  When Claire and Thomas were sure they would not be overheard by any of the hotel’s guests, they made plans for the following day.

  ‘So,’ Claire said with a shiver, ‘we go back to that horrific prison.’

  ‘No, we don’t.’

  ‘But we must! How else will we find out how Mitch escaped and which village he was taken to?’

  Thomas put his hand on Claire’s hand. She flinched and he withdrew it immediately. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to--’

  ‘No. It’s me who should be sorry. I’m a bit on edge. Go on?’

  ‘We do not have to go back to the prison,’ Thomas said. Taking a map of the area from his pocket, he spread it out on the table as any tourist visiting the town might do. ‘The escape route must be on the south or southeast boundary of the prison grounds. Somewhere around here there is a wood,’ he said, pointing to an area on the map that was green. ‘They couldn’t have escaped to the north or west. If I remember correctly the two main lookout towers were on the northern perimeter and la Garonne runs along the western fence.’ Thomas pointed to the blue meandering line of the river.

  ‘I can see that,’ Claire said. ‘They would have been target practice; picked off one by one if they had tried to cross the river.’ Thomas moved his finger north. ‘Why risk trying to get past two watchtowers without being seen, and then have to climb a mountain when you could hide in undergrowth in a forest of fir trees a little further south, which is on an incline?’

  ‘But they were seen,’ Claire said. ‘Mitch was shot. So, they might have gone north to the mountain,’ she reasoned.

  Thomas shook his head. ‘No. I spent a year training with a Maquis group in the mountains. Not in this region, in the Alps at Chamonix. You have to be fit to climb a rock face like the one near the prison. They couldn’t have done it, they would have been too weak. Besides, if they were hoping to cross the Pyrenees to Spain…’ Thomas pointed to the Spanish border on the other side of the mountains, ‘they would have to end up around here.’ He drew his finger back across the map to France. ‘That would be the shortest and the quickest route.’

  ‘But not the safest,’ Claire said. Her heart was beating fast. ‘And this area,’ she said, indicating with her finger to a clearing on the far side of the wood, ‘would be a perfect place for a sniper to wait and shoot the escapees.’

  ‘Yes, it would.’ Thomas folded the map and slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘The good news is, there are a couple of villages within walking distance, so we could start at the edge of the wood, at the clearing, and from there go to the first village.’

  Before Claire could respond a crowd of youths crashed through the door. The last one let the door slam behind him. Claire jumped and spun round. With the horrors of the prison still in her thoughts her nerves were on edge.

  ‘Time for dinner,’ Thomas said, getting to his feet. He stood behind Claire and when she stood up, pulled her chair away to give her space to step away from the table. He gestured to her to walk in front of him. Instead, she offered him her arm. When he drew level with her, Claire linked her arm through his and together the two friends strolled into the dining room.

  There was a choice of three main dishes, beef, chicken and fish with seasonal vegetables - and apple cake for dessert. Thomas chose beef and Claire chicken; they both said yes to apple cake. The food was tasty and there was plenty of it. Neither of them had eaten for several hours and they both cleared their plates. After dessert, they sat for a while and drank coffee. Refusing a refill, they left the dining room and went back to the bar.

  A roaring log fire in a large red-brick fireplace attracted Claire and she headed for the nearest table to it, while Thomas ordered their drinks.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Claire said, when Thomas returned with two glasses of brandy, putting one in front of Claire and taking a drink from the other. ‘You were right. The weather was too bad today, and it was too late to start looking for the escape route.’

  ‘I understand why you wanted to go on,’ Thomas said, smiling. He lifted his glass. ‘Here’s to a good night’s sleep and finding the route out of the prison tomorrow!’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she said, and took a drink.

  Fingers of ice seized Claire’s heart as the memory of the prison came into her mind. Like the pull of a magnet, the feeling that she must return there was luring her. She craned her neck and looked out of the window to get a glimpse of the prison, which lay beyond the trees to the right. Thomas turned the car in the opposite direction. He steered it off the road, down a narrow lane that ended on the south side of the wood and turned off the engine. ‘We have to go on foot from here.’ H
e pointed to a clump of small spruces. ‘We’ll enter by those saplings and walk straight ahead until we find the path. Then we’ll follow it down to the clearing.’

  ‘Listen?’ Claire said, getting out of the car. ‘Can you hear that?’

  ‘No,’ Thomas whispered, ‘what is it?’

  ‘Nothing. There is no sound at all. Yesterday at the prison, the noise the storm made was so loud we couldn’t hear ourselves speak. But now?’ Claire fell silent and strained her ears. ‘Not even birdsong. This place is as quiet as the grave. There is not even the sound of the breeze in the trees.’

  In the eerie stillness, Claire followed Thomas into the wood. The saplings on the edge allowed daylight to filter through for a few yards, but further in, the fully-grown firs were so tall that, with the winter sun low in the sky, only the tops of the tallest trees would see daylight.

  Claire stumbled. Thomas stopped and turned round. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. My eyes haven’t fully adjusted to the darkness but go on, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Take this.’ Thomas took a torch from his rucksack, switched it on and gave it to Claire. They had only taken a further half a dozen steps when Thomas stopped and took the torch back. ‘I think this is it,’ he said, shining the beam of light across a patch of barren earth in a small clearing. ‘Come,’ he said, taking Claire’s hand. ‘Stand here. Can you feel the ground is hard?’

  ‘Yes.’ Claire scraped the sole of her shoe from side to side, disturbing a thin layer of moss. Excited, she took a couple of steps and stopped. ‘The ground here is slightly raised and is soft under my feet.’ Taking smaller steps, she followed Thomas along a sloping path and within a short distance she saw rays of light flickering through the trees. They were near the edge of the wood.

  With fewer trees there was more light. They could see where they were going but with every step the gradient of the path became steeper. Putting out her hands and holding onto the trunk of each tree as she came to it, Claire was able to defy gravity and stay upright. Thomas was not so careful and when the path suddenly dipped his strides turned into short staggering steps. The momentum of the downward slant pulled him forward, he lost his balance, and went hurtling down the mossy path on his backside.