The Woman From Saint Germain

by J. R. Lonie

  ‘Bravo, madame,’ said the bookseller and Eleanor stepped triumphantly into the back of the van. She even beat them to a seat. She could hear the bookseller give the youngsters one last warning about shooting their mouths off before she got into the front passenger seat. Only the driver gunning the engine motivated the quarrelsome young men to follow, and they pushed each other in, the last swinging the door shut as the van moved off.

  They drove away from the farmhouse along a track in another direction, again at uncomfortable speed and out onto a narrow road. No one said a thing. Eleanor wasn’t sure if she’d won them over or not. She didn’t care.

  OGEU LES BAINS

  Midday, Sunday, 14th December 1941

  After a short drive, they turned in through the gates of a farm with high walls that ran along the main street into a village and parked outside a barn whose roof looked like a Dutch bonnet. The farmer, a large bear of a man, emerged from inside.

  ‘Welcome,’ he said gruffly and gave each of them a scallop shell threaded onto a string. ‘You are now pilgrims along the Way of St James,’ he informed them. ‘God bless you and keep you.’ Though the farmer was no priest, each of the young men crossed himself as he put the shell around his neck. Eleanor, the last to alight and be anointed, thought it wise she did the same. She reached inside her pullover and retrieved the cross Madame Teixeira had given her.

  ‘Can we smoke?’ one of the young men asked politely.

  ‘Sure,’ replied the farmer, ‘wouldn’t mind one m’self. But remember, pilgrims don’t smoke along the Way.’ The young men didn’t care about the Way. They cared about the Chesterfield that Eleanor had already lit for herself.

  ‘Always milder, Better tasting, Cooler smoking,’ said the ads. ABC.

  Throwing caution about conserving her supply of cigarettes to the wind, Eleanor offered her pack around, instantly turning the young men into friends, if not for life at least for the next stretch of her escape.

  She gazed south as she smoked. Beyond the farmer’s fields were the first folds of the Pyrénées, and just beyond them, steep slopes angled this way and that way at forty-five degrees, making daunting snow-dusted walls. Each angle was a turn in the Aspe Valley as it wound its way up to the passes that she could see under the snowy peaks. They’d be using these passes to reach Spain.

  Could she really make it? Damn it all, look what she’d gone through to get this far. That Henk was not here suddenly filled her with terrible anguish.

  Prayer, which had never come easily and had eluded her almost entirely since the terrible night, came to her now – not as a discreet Episcopalian retreat into some gentle mystical state of being with the sun and the sky as witnesses, but in a strong and fervent evangelical plea to save Henk and carry him to safety. Whether she’d cried out loud, she did not know. It was as if she’d been whacked on the back of her head. When she opened her eyes, she found she was on her back on the grass, with the young men by her side, cradling her head, her arms, calling to her. They were gallants, these boys. Was it a fit she’d had? The bookseller pushed them aside.

  ‘Give her air,’ she cried and lifted a small flask to her lips. ‘Brandy, madame,’ she said and Eleanor sipped and soon felt the warm liquid coursing through her. Revived, she apologised.

  ‘Is there something I could eat?’ she asked practically. She’d fainted. At least, they thought she’d fainted, which was fine by her. Fainting was better than the Damascene event it was – oh, she knew that. And, of all places, on the camino to Santiago de Compostela from Lourdes. She didn’t want to be left behind as a lunatic or an epileptic, nor carried aloft in triumph for having had visions of Jesus or the Virgin. The farmer, not given to enthusiasms, quickly returned with bread and cheese, and she was able to eat.

  ‘Keep up your strength, madame,’ the bookseller encouraged as the sound of the Lourdes ‘Ave Maria’ chorus floated towards them. Soon, the promised pilgrims began turning in off the roadway on what was a slight detour from the Way. A mix of nuns, the elderly and schoolboys in oversize berets and suits, presumably a school uniform, and girls in shapeless smocks, they were led by a priest past the barn and out to the path across the farmer’s field. By the time the stragglers passed by, each with the scallop shell around his or her neck, they numbered over a hundred.

  The sight of Eleanor’s young, male companions, a rare event with so many of France’s young men still in German POW camps, dissolved any mood of piety and contemplation. This among the elderly no less than among the schoolboys in their teens, who intuited exactly who and what these tough young men probably were, figures to be admired, to be looked up to. The schoolgirls gushed and giggled so much the nuns scolded them, but that couldn’t stop their shy glances at the young men, who reciprocated.

  Eleanor joined at the end with her fellow travellers, each of whom, at least raised Catholic, took up the Lourdes ‘Ave Maria’ with varying degrees of conviction and accuracy. Oloron was a few hours’ walk away along the ancient camino, which the group rejoined a little way past the farm, where it turned towards the river.

  CHEMIN DES PIEMONTS, THE WAY OF ST JAMES, TOWARDS OLORON-SAINTE-MARIE

  Around 1pm, Sunday, 14th December 1941

  In Paris, Eleanor was always protecting herself and her church-going from the barbs and sneers of the raptors, who despised Christianity and all religion while being fervent followers of St Marx – people like Hettie Rosen, the true believer, or fellow-travellers like the odious Hemingway. Poor Christian that she’d turned out to be on this journey, or so she thought, what just happened had shaken her spirit out of its despair. Around her, the pilgrims were singing the ‘Ave’, whose rhythm and repetition were infectious. When the chorus came, she joined in, timidly at first, but soon as fervently as if she’d been born to it.

  As she walked along, the ancient Way, now just a muddy cow track, her thoughts wandered back to the tree in the yard of their holiday home at Bar Harbor, a feeling so tangible and real that faith seemed entirely unnecessary – indeed, irrelevant. Jesus hadn’t deserted her, she realised. She’d deserted Him, and as if to make the point, it was He who had given her the whack over the head, which still ached. Henk was safe and she would see him again, she was sure of it.

  Soon the pilgrims were stretched out along the narrow path that followed the winding river. They had fallen silent, either in contemplation or, like Eleanor, withdrawn into their own thoughts and world. For company, they had the mumuring waters of the Gave d’Ossau and, now and then, small herds of cows and sheep, which eyed them with friendly curiosity. There were much straighter and quicker routes, but those were made for speed and efficiency, not for contemplation. This was the ancient way, the way of the pilgrims, no car or truck to disturb them – and no roadblocks.

  They stopped by the river some time later, to rest, to collect water for their canteens and to eat a late lunch. The pilgrims shared with Eleanor and the young men the bread and hard cheese that was sustaining them on their journey. Fortified, Eleanor began to take in her surrounds. On the far side of the field on a rise was a farmhouse with smoke drifting from one of its chimneys. Vines grew in rows down the slope, the canes cut back for winter. A turquoise kingfisher sat on the stone fence looking for prey. She could hear the chirping of tiny finches somewhere nearby. Each sound, each sight, was as if in a halo. She imagined she could hear the crack of the ice on the mountains.

  Suddenly, attention was on a figure emerging from the farmhouse. He came towards them at quite a pace, looking as if he might throw them all out. Instead, he spoke briefly and urgently to the priest, who nodded gravely. Eleanor tensed.

  ‘The police have a roadblock outside the town where we meet the road,’ the priest announced. ‘We hope they do not stop us, but if they do, leave the talking to me.’

  In normal times, this might have been cause for some excitement and gossip. Why, who, what? Now roadblocks were commonplace, an irritation to be borne like aches and pains in one’s joints. But this one was more s
erious than that. Without a word, one of the schoolboys handed his beret to the nearest young man, indicating for him to wear it, which the fellow did. Once the lead was given, others offered their berets to the remaining young men, who now joined them in their schoolboy disguise, enhanced by their freshly shaven faces. Those who had donated their berets moved to the back of the group among the older people, to take an arm, like a grandson helping a grandparent.

  ‘Not me,’ said one of the ancients, pointing to a companion. ‘He’s much older than me. He can barely walk.’ They all laughed and joked about who among the women was the eldest, but more important, who was single or a widow and needed a man.

  ‘I’ll have that one,’ said a shawled old woman with wispy whiskers on her chin. She grabbed the boy as if she were the witch and he Hänsel.

  ‘Watch out,’ her friend cautioned. ‘Marry her, you marry death.’

  ‘She hasn’t got a sou either,’ quipped another, and everyone laughed, although the boy’s laughter was nervous.

  As the group set off, the mood tightened. The danger was not to the pilgrims, but they were certainly aware of the danger to their guests and possibly to the priest. Not far out of the town, they came to a narrow stone bridge, high over the river, whose waters now rushed through the gorge below. Eleanor noticed even the young men crossing themselves as each stepped onto its ancient stones.

  ‘Pont du Diable,’ explained Eleanor’s neighbour. The devil’s bridge. When in Rome, Eleanor thought, and crossed herself.

  JUNCTION CHEMIN DES PIEMONTS AND MAIN ROAD INTO OLORON-ST MARIE

  Around 3pm, Sunday, 14th December 1941

  Soon, through the trees, they could see the chimneys and steeples of the hilly town nestling in the valley where the two mountain rivers joined, one of which, the Aspe, led up to the frontier with Spain at the Col de Somport. Ahead, where the Way emerged from the woods to join a main road into the town, was the promised police roadblock. They were checking traffic into and out of the town. Given how few cars and trucks were supposed to be about in these times of rationing, the priest murmured his delight at the chaos.

  ‘Ah, good,’ he said. ‘The Lord loves chaos.’

  Without any bidding, the pilgrims took up the Lourdes ‘Ave Maria’.

  The old chemin hadn’t been usurped completely by the modern road and continued alongside it, thus they could bypass the barriers set up across the bitumen. Unless stopped, the priest intended them to keep going.

  Bauer stood by his car in his coat, observing two French police checking a driver and his truck. He could have stayed in Pau with Inspector St Jean but preferred being out in the field, leaving Kopitcke to maintain contact and to keep an eye on the problem of Lieutenant Wolf and the Gestapo. The police had put a block here only after he kicked up a fuss. All roads, he had insisted, not just the main one up the Aspe. Did they think the killers wouldn’t try to avoid the main roads? To make his point, Bauer had himself driven to this very spot. See the number of vehicles heading out that had been stopped? he said. He’d been told hardly anyone used this route, apart from local farmers.

  With him, he had his secret weapon, the Spanish boy from the hotel who knew exactly what the woman looked like. Persuading the boy to help had not been hard. Money plus the attention it would give him were enough. If he helped identify the killers, Bauer had promised him 500 francs, more than the penny-pinching Dumas had paid him in three months. This had opened up the possibility that the kid himself had done her in, but Bauer doubted it. Now he sat out of view in the front seat of the car, with instructions to give a prearranged signal if he saw the woman.

  A policeman thrust the photograph of Pohl into the truck driver’s face. Nah, never seen him. The police waved the fellow on and beckoned the next. By the muted and submissive reaction of many of the drivers, he knew they were not keen, any of them, to be so sprung. Some were caught red-handed with contraband. The police got excited about that. Not Bauer. He had bigger fish to fry.

  The car radio crackled. Nothing had come through for the last hour, but there was something in the voice at the other end that had Bauer pay attention.

  The bloody fingerprints on the handle of the knife exactly matched those on the valise found in the boxcar.

  Bauer grabbed the microphone. ‘No other prints?’ he asked.

  There were, but the bloody prints had almost wiped them out. Not usable.

  The woman was the murderer? He had not expected that. His immediate concern was that the French would now go after her and ignore Pohl. His second: could she have killed the two soldiers as well? He couldn’t dismiss the idea out of hand. Facts were facts. It certainly supported the notion that they were fleeing together.

  He heard the pilgrims before he saw them. Catholic though he was – albeit a Catholic who attended Mass only at Easter and Christmas Eve – he had to ask one of the French police what was going on. The Frenchman explained. Since the Spanish Civil War, he added, you didn’t see many pilgrims going on the Way of St James into Spain. ‘More in the opposite direction to Lourdes.’

  ‘Where are you from?’ the policeman called out as the pilgrims approached.

  ‘From Lourdes,’ replied the priest, ‘going to Oloron for Gaudete Sunday.’

  ‘Let’s look at them,’ said Bauer to his French offsider. ‘Single file, one by one.’

  ‘But they’re pilgrims and they’re from Lourdes,’ the policeman protested. Hearing what was going on, the priest couldn’t resist.

  ‘This is the Way of Saint James,’ he addressed Bauer. He knew his protest would be futile, but causing the man’s conscience some grief would be worth it. Bauer did have a conscience but not one to be troubled by such a challenge.

  ‘Forgive me, père, it is necessary,’ Bauer said in a firm tone. We are looking for a murderer.’

  ‘Among these?’ said the priest, astonished.

  Even Bauer could remember something in the Bible about Satan masquerading as an angel of light, but quoting the Bible to a priest was ‘Eulen nach Athen tragen’, taking owls to Athens. Yet he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life wondering if this was how he’d missed his quarries. The trouble with the French, they weren’t thorough.

  Eleanor was among the older people, well back in the group. With a large cross around her neck, her dark shapeless coat, her worn and now muddy boots, her mothy woollen cap, she figured she would pass the police muster. Then she felt something pressed to her hand and it was a large black scarf. The old lady behind her indicated she cover her head. Her lustrous auburn hair falling free from under her cap was far too bourgeois among these simple small-town grey heads, as red a rag to a bull as could be. With help from her companion, she quickly tucked her hair under the scarf, which she tied under her chin.

  The singing died away as each passed before Bauer’s eagle eyes, which moved from the Spanish boy in the car and back to the pilgrims.

  Eleanor’s fellow escapees looked young enough under their berets and among their peers. The bareheaded boys looked innocent as they helped their adopted grandparents, each of whom played up to their decrepit part, stuttering along, clinging to the young arm supporting them. Eleanor hoped she looked enough like a widow as she approached the eye of Bauer’s needle, neither camel nor rich. As she came closer she caught a glimpse of Bauer, who, in his ancient tweed coat and his battered hat like some grandpa smoking a cigarette, stood out among the French uniforms.

  There he was, she knew it, the face of the enemy, not in the grey uniform or the sinister leather coat and fedora she expected; she couldn’t even claim he looked cruel. But in presenting so benignly, he looked the more chilling. She would remember this face, she thought, here was that whole damnable nation of sheep.

  She had no need for prayer now, just a cool head. That notwithstanding, she imagined every police eye upon her, could feel them like tiny suns burning into her, little spots of prickly heat. Sweat seemed to be forming on her brow.

  Unknown to her, the boy had seen her com
ing.

  ‘You hear that, son?’ Bauer said to him in case the boy had missed the radio conversation. ‘The American woman is the murderer.’

  Murder was a sin, Bauer had impressed upon him earlier. The young man she was in league with – another sin, by the way – was a German. Worse, he was a Jew and probably a communist. The boy did think of the money that M’sieur le Commissar was offering. But he knew who in the Hôtel Cosmopolitan was a Jew and who lived for money and who was kind and who was not kind, who had smiled at him and who had cursed him. So, she was old Dumas’s killer, this woman with the beautiful auburn hair, now hidden under her scarf? If so, it couldn’t have been murder. He knew that to point her out to the police would be wrong, so he sat mute and opaque to Bauer’s desperate eyes.

  Eleanor realised she was through the cordon only by the hand of her elderly companion drawing her close, and they rejoined the ranks of the pilgrims who were moving slowly into the town. They exchanged a furtive, reassuring smile.

  *

  With the last of the pilgrims gone, Bauer shrugged his shoulders. It had been worth a try. Police blocks were set up on other roads. The passes were secure. The queue of people lined up for questioning was still long. The day was far from done. The radio crackled again. It was Kopitcke, and Kopitcke was excited.

  ‘Herr Kommissar, Herr Kommissar!’ he cried.

  Not given to elation without the facts to support it, Bauer waited. Of course, he hoped the reason for Kopitcke’s excitement was that one or both of the killers had been found.

  ‘Your son,’ Kopitcke yelled, not quite trusting the radio set to communicate his voice at a level Bauer could hear. ‘There’s a cable from your wife for you.’