The Secret Houses

by John Gardner

  When the ladies retired after dinner, leaving the three men alone, Richard apologised for his daughter.

  ‘What was she going to say when you stopped her?’ Caspar asked, recalling the look Dick had given his daughter when she began, ‘But he’s – ’

  Dick gave a small sigh. ‘“But he’s going to be charged with incompetence.” That was probably what she had in mind. You must know, Cas, there’s a witch-hunt in the making.’

  ‘They’re really after my blood?’ Caspar was surprised.

  ‘Scapegoats’re being found for everything, Caspar.’ James did not meet his cousin’s eyes.

  ‘They can have my wretched job any old time,’ Caspar laughed. ‘Press-ganged back and now – ’

  ‘Shat upon,’ Dick supplied with a laugh. ‘I’d have a word with C, but – ’

  ‘He won’t have anything to do with it.’ Caspar sipped his port. ‘I should’ve known when he told me the Enquiry was only for the record – “Setting matters straight.” C wants no involvement.’

  ‘No. No, he wants no involvement.’ Dick spoke as though he knew something else. ‘Who’s on the Board of Enquiry, then?’

  Caspar gave the names of a former senior SOE man and two departmental heads from MI6. ‘The usual legal inquisitors, as well, I should imagine. There’ll also be three of Torquemada’s Terrors borrowed from “Five.”’ He grimaced.

  There was a long pause before Dick spoke again. ‘Cas, Caro did know what she was getting into, didn’t she?’ It was not said to twist the knife in the wound. His tone was professional, not fatherly.

  ‘Jo-Jo and Caro, both.’ Caspar looked at him with sad eyes. ‘I spelt it out to them. They knew when I talked with them in Paris. The only thing I reproach myself for is that, finally – in 1940 – I did not give them the time to back out even if they had wanted to. But that wasn’t altogether my fault. Guderian and the Luftwaffe moved much faster than anyone expected. The French collapse came quickly as well.’

  ‘And this fellow Felix. You spoke to him a lot. Any hints that he was a Red – a Communist?’

  ‘He was a Frenchman, first and foremost. Didn’t like the thought of the Nazis running all over his country. I spent a lot of time with him, but we didn’t go into the finer points of his politics. Why?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Cas!’ Dick thumped the table. ‘You know what problems everyone had with the Allied forces. Different shades of politics were the booby traps we all dealt with after the Fall of France. The inquisition’s going to ask a lot about Felix’s politics.’

  When refugees and fighting men, fleeing from the Nazis, had managed to reach England, and the country seemed to stand alone after Dunkirk, there had been many political difficulties. Not just with the Free French, but with Poles, Czechs, Belgians, Dutch, and others also.

  At that time Germany and Soviet Russia had stood shoulder to shoulder because of the nonaggression pact between their two countries, signed barely days before the war began in 1939. The Nazis and Communists were strange bedfellows and before Hitler reneged on the pact, by invading Russia in the early summer of 1941, any refugee with Communist leanings was suspect – particularly as Germany and the Soviets had, together, carved up Poland at the outbreak of war.

  When Hitler invaded Russia he also pushed her into the arms of Britain – another strange alliance. At the time, Richard Farthing had remarked, ‘We’re getting into bed with Hitler’s unsuitable mistress. We should sleep with one eye open and make sure she’s not going to cut our throats.’ Now he said, ‘Saving money – austerity – and the revolutionaries among us are this government’s obsession.’

  ‘You mean if Felix comes right out with it, they’ll brand me as a Red as well?’ Caspar asked, as though the idea was ludicrous.

  ‘We all know that our Russian comrades are no longer allies.’ Richard Farthing laid his palm on the table. ‘You know what went on and what’s going on now. On both sides of the Atlantic they see Communist plots everywhere. God knows, I’ve talked to generals who say we should use the atomic weapons on them tomorrow and have done with it. You Brits have always been a secretive and suspicious race.’ He laughed, knowing his own habit of thinking himself British and not American – or vice versa – when it suited his purpose. ‘Anyone who had close dealings with the Reds is suspect.’

  Caspar bridled. ‘Tarot was the first operational network. It was part of the Mouvement. Jules Fenice only called it a réseau after Hitler turned on Russia – and that was when all the pro-Communist Frenchmen joined in arms against the Nazis. Until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, one hell of a lot of French Communists stayed out of the fight – simply because there was a Russo-German treaty. If Fenice was bright crimson politically, I hardly think he would have had a go against the Occupation forces while Hitler was still Stalin’s buddy.’

  ‘Don’t be too certain.’ Dick looked at him gravely. ‘Beware questions that’re loaded, Cas. They’ll weigh down the questions with Communist traps. Be sure of it. I tell you, Cas, the Soviets are not this year’s favourite people.’

  Caspar nodded, but Dick continued, overlapping what the younger man started to say. ‘The thing you have to remember is that the real interrogation is over. They’ve had your man – Felix, and the “pianist,” and the guy from operation Romarin, and the Otter under a microscope – and they’ve extracted the dawn chorus from them. What they have said – true or untrue – is already on secret record. From those sources they know what they think is the truth about Tarot. Nothing you say in defence is going to surprise them. Their minds are already made up – unless C has the secrets locked away where nobody can touch them, which I doubt. They do have something up their sleeves, Cas. I know. I’ve tried to get hold of the transcripts.’

  ‘Me too,’ James murmured.

  ‘Nobody’s selling. So they’ll let you say your piece, then they’ll bring out the treasures from the dig. They’ve been on an interesting expedition wherever they do their work these days. Archeology of the mind, Cas. And they’ll bring up the artefacts and the jewels from the tombs and parade them especially for you. Mark me, my dear Caspar; and mark me well.’

  *

  The Board of Enquiry assembled on the second floor of a house off St James’s, far enough away from the SIS headquarters in Broadway Buildings to make it comfortable.

  The chairman, a much-liked Cambridge don who had made his name in the Service, reminded everybody that it was not a trial. ‘We’re not here to accuse anyone, nor apportion blame, nor even to recommend disciplinary action,’ he said in his thin, reedy voice. ‘We’re here simply to sift the facts and try to reach some conclusions for the record.’

  The lawyers all looked as thought they did not believe a word of it.

  There followed a reading of the guidelines on which the Board would act. Caspar Railton, as the SIS officer who had been on loan to SOE and had much to do with Tarot, could be questioned about the part he had played and the decisions taken. There was a list of witnesses, and Caspar could be present at the giving of their evidence. Each one could be questioned, and crossquestioned, by the Board, and by Caspar. It was his right, but it made him feel uneasy.

  The chairman smiled at him. ‘I think we should begin with your own view, Mr Railton.’ His body matched his voice, thin, as though bundles of twigs had been fashioned into human form.

  ‘Where would you like me to begin?’ Caspar heard the undertow of hostility in his own voice.

  One of the lawyers shuffled his papers, glancing at them. ‘Why not do as the eminent Lewis Carroll suggested, Mr Railton. Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’ His manner and tone contained all the signals of pomposity which Caspar loathed.

  ‘You will, I presume, already know that I was invited to rejoin the Service in 1938,’ he began. Noting the lawyer was about to interrupt him, Caspar raised his voice to override any attempt to stop him now. ‘I was appointed to Section D and later received a brief from the CSS himself to carry out a recrui
ting drive for likely informers, agents, provocateurs, and saboteurs throughout Northern Europe. We were most interested in possible target countries…’ So he started, not mentioning names until he got to those directly connected with Tarot, and taking care to be as precise as possible.

  Caspar talked solidly throughout the six sittings of the Board – for three days. And, as he spoke, he found himself being transported to the time, nearly seven years before, when he followed the trail which led him to the man they called Felix – Jules Fenice. He saw places, recalled weather and smells, remembered the stains on tables of estaminets, or marks on old furniture, the rise and fall of particular voices, looks, gestures and off-stage noises. ‘I have a distinct picture of all the “alarums and excursions” – as Shakespeare would say,’ he told them.

  To give the Board credit, the members listened attentively to his narrative.

  It started in a bar –

  Chapter Five

  The bar was near the abbey ruins in Loudun. Later Caspar was to reflect on the irony of being in this ancient little town, with its narrow streets and flamboyant square-towered church, when he first heard of Jules Fenice.

  It was almost autumn, 1939, but the leaves had yet to turn into gold and brown. The smell of war was in the air, as it had been last year. But this time everyone seemed to know it would happen. Two workmen talked seriously, leaning against the zinc bar, gesturing with a violence that in other countries might have precursed an alarming personal feud.

  Caspar sat alone, and waited. It was past six o’clock and twilight was nearly upon them. His contact – Claude Fremet – a name filched from the files as one who had operated behind the German lines during the last war, was late.

  Caspar sucked at his cigarette, knowing the man might wish to dodge the meeting. He glanced at his watch and thought briefly of the scandals, sights, and horrors that this place had seen. There had been a short episode of terror here in the early 17th century when a fever of so-called demonic possession had broken out among Ursuline nuns, led by a hunchbacked prioress. They had denounced the local priest, Urbain Grandier, as the devil, and he had been put to the question, tried, tortured, and burned in this place.

  He swilled back his brandy and was about to leave when the door opened and his contact appeared – a small old man, bearing his body on a crutch, the tiny ribbon of the Criox de Guerre just visible between the buttonhole and lapel on his shabby dark jacket. He did not wear a false limb. Instead, one trouser leg was pinned up around the calfless knee.

  The barman nodded at Claude Fremet. A wary nod, as though he knew the man’s reputation. The two workmen did not even look up. One was saying that this time it would be different, this time they had the Maginot Line.

  ‘There will be war,’ Caspar said. His French was excellent, though he spoke it with a Parisian accent.

  ‘When was there not war?’

  It was the agreed exchange of words. Caspar had spoken to his man only on the telephone, though he knew Fremet was short of his right leg from the knee down, and that he had lost it, not in battle, but falling from a window when trying to burgle a house not far away in Châtellerault. Both men nodded. Caspar asked what he would drink, and went to the bar, carrying two glasses of fine back to the table.

  Fremet had been in trouble with the police many times yet still managed to make a living. How, nobody was quite certain, but those who knew about these things maintained that his absences from Loudun denoted time spent planning robberies for some big gang in Paris. Fremet had always been a better planner than burglar.

  ‘You want something arranged?’ he asked Caspar, who saw immediately that the Frenchman spoke in that manner beloved of convicts the world over – a sort of ventriloquial speech, with the lips hardly moving, the sound directed low toward the ear of the listener.

  ‘I would like your advice, Monsieur Fremet.’

  ‘So? Advice is not cheap.’

  Caspar nodded, slipping the envelope from his breast pocket and dropping it onto his knees. It was the act of a close-up magician who worked the tables of nightclubs, sitting with customers and amazing them with sleights and card tricks. Only Fremet was allowed a tiny glimpse of the envelope. Nobody else had time to see it.

  ‘War is coming,’ Caspar repeated. ‘Any day now. This time we wish to be ready.’

  ‘I’m too old to fight, and my leg cannot help me. I shall sit this one out, as they say in the dance halls.’

  Fremet slid his hand under the table onto Caspar’s false knee, to nip the envelope away and pocket it. ‘Okay.’ He smiled, the eyes searching behind Caspar, constantly moving. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘I need to know of men who could be trusted if the Boche ever got here.’ It was a variation of a phrase he had already used in Belgium and other parts of France.

  ‘In this area?’ Fremet opened his eyes wide, making a joke of it.

  ‘Somewhere near at hand.’

  The Frenchman shook his head. ‘I cannot give you any introductions here. But I might have one man for you, elsewhere. A good man, and an even better Frenchman. Though the cops would not say it.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘West. Nearer Paris. A village outside Orléans. Not so far in your machine.’ Fremet had the acute observation of a criminal, for Caspar had parked the old Citroen three streets away. Caspar nodded, indicating admiration.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘He is named Jules Fenice. Lives alone since his wife left him – or died. Nobody really knows which. He went away for a time.’

  ‘Away? Away in prison?’

  There was a ghost of a smile on Fremet’s thin lips. ‘Away to the Foreign Legion. He did five years with them. They are the worst. The hardest. But not as hard as the guillotine, if you follow me.’ Then, almost as an afterthought: ‘But he’s trustworthy, I promise you. Loves his country. Hates the Nazis. Doesn’t care much for our own politicians.’

  ‘How does he live?’

  ‘Small house. A portion of land. Breeds pigs. Not in a big way. He’s not prosperous, but he’s the kind of man you want. I give you my word on it. I know. You wish to meet him?’

  ‘Maybe. ‘

  ‘He has the telephone. I shall tell him you’re coming.’

  Fremet gave him careful directions, and as Caspar left it began to rain. He drove to Poitiers, booked into the Armes d’Obernai and overslept the next morning. The weather was bad right across France, so he did not get to St Benoît-sur-Loire until late at night.

  Here, in the present, as he told the story of his first meeting with Jules Fenice, Caspar knew what it must feel like to be an actor holding an audience in the palm of his hand. Each member of the Board had his full attention. There was no shuffling, fiddling with papers, or exaggerated sighs of weariness. He relived it all for them – and for himself.

  ‘It was a filthy night,’ Caspar continued. ‘The rain was all I could see in my headlights. The drive seemed to go on forever. The roads were very bad, and I lost the way once, nearly finishing up in a ditch. But Jules Fenice was waiting for me. He had put an oil lamp in his front window. Fremet had said it would be the signal that Fenice was willing to talk with me.’

  Chapter Six

  In the blustering downpour the house at St Benoît-sur-Loire seemed only a dark mass, merging with the night. The rectangle of light, which was the first ground-floor window, appeared and disappeared as the wind sent squalls over it. Caspar approached the house by driving down a rutted muddy track on the outskirts of the village. His wheels spun on the sodden earth, finally bringing the car to a halt. In the headlights he saw two poplars, whipping in the wind, standing sentinel over a small latched gate.

  On the following morning, when the storm had gone, the house was revealed as a long, narrow, ugly building of gray blocks, with a slate roof the color of a thunderhead. It looked more like a large farm outbuilding than a dwelling. But on that first night he heaved himself from the car, grabbing at his attaché case, turning up his collar, and squelchin
g through mud, as he moved toward the house. The door opened as he reached it, as though the man inside had watched his progress.

  At first sight Jules Fenice did not appear to be the kind of man Caspar required – thickset, in his mid-forties, with a square face and sparse light hair which lay flat to his scalp as though someone had painted it on. To start with, Caspar could not put his finger on what was wrong. Fenice moved with tight precision and the grey eyes never showed any sign of speculation: revealing instead an instant wariness, as though everything and everyone with whom he came into contact was potentially dangerous. He opened the door wider, motioning Caspar to come in.

  ‘Claude said you were coming.’ Fenice closed the door, leaning against it, waiting as Caspar’s eyes flicked quickly around the room, which seemed to take up the bulk of the ground floor – bare flagstones and an old, open range with sides of ham and cured bacon hanging from hooks set into the stone hearth, functional furniture and the smell of animals which pervaded the atmosphere.

  ‘Thank you.’ Caspar returned the man’s guarded look.

  Fenice helped him off with his coat, hanging it over a chair in front of the range. Already a bottle of Cognac and two glasses stood on the table, and Caspar’s host poured a liberal dose into one of the glasses, ‘Drink it. It will kill the damp. You wish to talk or eat?’

  ‘You’re generous. Can we do both?’

  ‘But certainly. You stay here the night. Claude said it was a matter of being ready for war.’

  ‘A precaution.’ Caspar smiled. ‘In case the worst comes. In case Hitler’s army gets the better of us. Unlikely, but we’re trying to be ready.’ It was the line he had used in other parts of France, Belgium, and, even once, in Poland. Fenice’s reply might give him a clue to the man’s possible use.

  ‘It is likely, not unlikely.’ The Frenchman was dropping lard into a big frying pan set on the range. He took down a side of bacon and deftly cut a dozen slices from it, dropping them carelessly into the pan where they hissed and sizzled as he shook the handle with one hand and took plates from a rack with the other, setting them on the back of the range.