The Little Parachute
Page 34
Standing—calming herself as best she could—she went into the hut to hack away at what remained of her hair and to let it fall where they had kept her.
Jean-Pierre and he would have to appear as if they had died fighting. The body of the SS was almost too heavy for her, but when it lay on the floor, she took his knife and drove it into the small of Jean-Pierre’s back. Then she sprinkled her hair over both of them and left the shears in Jean-Pierre’s hand.
There was blood everywhere along the trail over which she had dragged the Stabsscharführer’s body. Perhaps he had been wounded first. Perhaps the two of them had fought out here before dying on top of her.
It would have to do but somehow she would have to explain how it was she had managed to cut herself free.
Picking up the Schmeissers, she soon found the sous-préfet’s body and took from it the keys to his car. Hans would have to help her. She would try to kill Kraus for him, would try to make it look as if the Résistance had done it, but then especially, help would be needed.
She was now a walking advertisement of all those she had betrayed and those she could still finger. If Ledieu, the mayor, didn’t kill her, then one of the others would. For her, Abbeville was far too dangerous and the sooner she was away from it, the better.
But first she had to go to the Kommandantur. First she had to see if Hans had sent word from Paris. Hans couldn’t let her down, not now, not after all that had happened.
It was Frau Hössler who told her where to find Kraus and that the Standartenführer Dirksen was on his way to Berlin.
‘Please wash and find a change of clothes, yes? Here, I will help you.’
‘No. No, it’s all right. I’ll go as I am but telephone ahead, would you, so that I’m shown right in to him and don’t have to wait.’
‘The boy is missing. The boy has escaped.’
‘Martin … ? Ah! I’ll watch out for him. He and I are old friends.’
The peacocks were making noises, the swans too, and as the soldiers dragged someone’s body across the lawns by the heels, the ducks flew up and away.
The fog was everywhere. Martin wondered who had been killed in the woods. The dogs were following the body with their heads down as though ashamed of what they had done.
When the soldiers reached the circular drive, they left the body lying on the stones. ‘It’s monsieur le maire,’ he said softly, and letting go of the drapes behind which he stood, remained silent in thought.
Had they killed or arrested all of them? he wondered. Had the Mademoiselle Isabelle betrayed the whole réseau?
He swallowed hard. He knew he mustn’t cry—crying did no good at times like this. Angélique had to be rescued if she was still alive. And Châlus? he asked but answered, ‘Châlus didn’t say I was his son. He denied it.’
The door to the gun room opened onto the corridor near the summer salon, and from here he had a chance to look towards the main entrance. Kraus and the Gestapo Munk and some others were going out to see the body. Their backs were turned. There was no one on the main staircase.
Hurrying—carrying the double-barrelled shotgun and the Mauser pistol—Martin reached the foot of the stairs and was starting up them when someone decided to come down. It was the Oberst Lautenschläger and he was angrily shouting. ‘Verdammt, Dummkopf! House arrest? Shoot me if you wish but I must know who was killed!’
He, too, went outside and so did the SS who was supposed to be guarding him.
The bedroom door was open, and when he saw the shotgun pointed at him, the doctor who sat beside the bed hesitantly got to his feet and raised his hands. ‘It’s all right, Martin,’ he said, throwing a questioning glance at the corridor. ‘Keep calm. She’ll live if she gets the help she needs.’
Moving across the room, the doctor sat down at a table next to the windows and indicated he would behave. ‘It’s not my quarrel. I know nothing of it, you understand, but the Sturmbannführer Kraus is very much in command and this you must consider.’
‘I have. I’m going to kill him and her too.’
‘Who, please?’
‘You’re just trying to get me to tell you things,’ said Martin shrilly, but calmed himself. ‘The Mademoiselle Isabelle. The infiltrator.’
‘Ah, yes, the de Fleury woman.’
He sat so still, this doctor, as still as Angélique lay on the bed. Martin threw a glance at the door and decided to close it. ‘There, that’s better,’ he said.
The doctor wasn’t young and the jacket of the Wehrmacht uniform he wore was open. The sleeves of his shirt would still be rolled up. His glasses needed polishing and he asked if he might do this and take a cigarette case from his pocket. ‘You’re making me nervous,’ he said and smiled. The accent was much like the colonel’s, the French not so bad.
I’ll give him a nod, said Martin to himself. Then I’ll sit beside the bed in that chair he was using, and I’ll point the shotgun at the door so as to take the colonel hostage.
‘I won’t kill either of you,’ he said to the doctor. ‘Not if I can avoid it.’ And gingerly setting the pistol on the bed beside Angélique’s bandaged right hand, sat down to face the door and wait.
‘My name is Haeften, Martin—Alfred, if you like, and I have a son your age back home in Hamburg. We write from time to time but the mails aren’t always so good. Because of the bomb damage, he’s living in the countryside with his grandmother now.’
The doctor waited and waited and finally Martin knew he had to ask, ‘What happened to his mother?’
‘The incendiaries,’ he said. Just that and nothing more, for he had lighted a cigarette and had taken to looking out the windows.
Half hidden in the fog, Bagatelle Château seemed empty. There were no sentries on the door, no camouflaged lorries parked in the drive. And when she stopped the car beside Ledieu’s body, Marie-Hélène wondered where everyone had gone.
Hesitantly she swept her eyes over the French windows of the ground floor and then those of the first storey, the bull’s-eye ones. A curtain was pushed aside. A figure stood at one of those upper windows, and when she got out to cross the drive, she saw that it was Martin Bellecour but that his back was to her.
A fist-size hole had been torn in the top of Ledieu’s head and she asked, What’s this? and understood he hadn’t been killed by anyone but himself.
Again she swept her eyes over the château and then turned to questioningly search the grounds. The peacocks looked at her, the white swans did too. She had passed no lorries on the road in. Had they taken another route? Had they gone after her, gone to the ruins of that hut?
They must have.
Uncertain of what the château held, she reached into the car to take up one of the Schmeissers. This she kept at the ready.
There was no one downstairs—Châlus had been dragged down here and lay naked in the cellars. He had been beaten to death but she felt no relief, glanced uncertainly at the ceiling timbers above and then hesitantly went back up to the front entrance.
Still there was no sign of anyone. ‘Ah merde,’ she sighed. ‘What has happened?’
There were little dark brown hairs on the back of the Sturmbannführer’s neck where it had been closely shaved, and these hairs, the muzzle of the shotgun pushed aside as it was pressed more firmly against them. Kraus sat in the chair beside the bed but facing the door. The Gestapo Munk stood between him and the door but to one side so as to give a clean shot.
The Oberst Lautenschläger, the doctor and the Hauptmann Scheel, who had carried the orders to the others, sat at the table by the windows.
‘We’re not interfering,’ the colonel had said to Kraus. ‘Might I remind you we have been placed under house arrest by yourself?’
The soldiers had gone to find Isabelle Moncontre; the Sturmbannführer Kraus had been furious with the colonel and the others and had accused them of being tr
aitors and of not having tried to stop the little parachutist from taking him and the Gestapo Munk hostage too.
Now they all knew the infiltrator had arrived alone and that she was armed.
Angélique stirred but didn’t awaken. Her breathing wasn’t good. Her chest rattled. There was a bloodied froth on her lips. The bubbles grew as she exhaled but subsided with each new breath.
Martin braced his back against the wall because this was what the colonel had told him to do. I’m not to make the mistake of discharging both barrels at once, he reminded himself. This, too, the Oberst Lautenschläger had said, and yes, that one wanted the Sturmbannführer and the Gestapo Munk dead and out of the way so that he could again take command.
They each listened intently to the château. Not a one of them stirred. The visitor came on up the stairs, perhaps a step at a time—who could possibly tell? Carpets muffled the sound of her.
Angélique breathed in.
‘Be reasonable, Colonel,’ the Gestapo Munk had nervously begged. ‘Let’s not have an accident.’
‘Accidents are common enough with shotguns,’ the colonel had replied. ‘We are all of us hostages and at risk.’
At last the doors were nudged open. Isabelle Moncontre—Marie-Hélène de Fleury—took them all in at a glance. She gasped and managed to say softly, ‘Martin, what’s this?’
Her hair had been hacked off with scissors. Blood made the white shirt-blouse cling to a shoulder, to a breast, an arm … There was blood smeared on her brow and cheeks and on the backs of her hands, on her skirt also.
‘You …’ began Martin only to find his eyes, they refused to obey and filled rapidly with tears. ‘You lied to me! You betrayed us!’
The Gestapo Munk didn’t turn to face her. The Oberst and the others sat so stiffly, she realized what was wanted of her and, finding voice enough, said, ‘Martin, stand away from him. Go to your mother. Get on the other side of the bed. Please …’
A ten-year-old boy, the son of Raymond Châlus, she thought, but not of the woman whom Martin had called mother.
‘Please,’ she begged. ‘It’s over for me, Martin. Let me kill him for you. Me instead of you, chéri. Then maybe when this war is done you won’t think so badly of me.’
‘Mademoiselle …’ said Lautenschläger in alarm.
Kraus glared at her. Finally he hissed, ‘Kill them, idiot!’
Martin felt his fingers tightening on the triggers. He heard her saying, ‘No, Martin,’ and even as the Sturmbannführer leapt at her and the Gestapo Munk turned swiftly towards her, he heard the Messerschmitts firing, heard the cannon shells exploding as they struck people and smashed things, saw the blood and brains being scattered everywhere. A froth of them.
Thrown back against the wall, dazed and unable to stand, he felt himself sliding to the floor. Angélique murmured and urgently reached out to him. She was trying to say his name …
The sound of the shotgun blast rushed in on him so loudly, it filled his head but then he heard a last burst chasing it.
‘Lieber Gott!’ swore Lautenschläger, leaping up from his chair to hesitate as did the others.
Blood and brains peppered the walls, the doors, the ceiling. Decapitated, Kraus lay near Munk who had tried to draw a pistol and had been hit both by the woman’s Schmeisser and the shotgun.
Thrown back into the corridor and sitting, slumped against the wall, Marie-Hélène de Fleury tried to speak but couldn’t.
There was no forehead, and when they reached her, she toppled over.
Snow fell softly and though it would make the streets of Paris even more miserable, in the Jardin du Luxembourg it made the children happy.
Angélique watched them chasing each other and throwing snowballs. With the littlest ones, there was that sense of wonder, of magic. They licked the snow and felt how cold it was on their tongues—their minds were so far from this lousy war and Occupation and yet they were caught up in it.
For months she had lain in hospital in Abbeville. No word—nothing. Martin gone from her like that, the Oberst Lautenschläger making sure she got well. But could anyone recover from such a thing? she asked herself. Just to be in Paris was enough. She had found a room nearby and each day, she tried to walk a little farther.
‘But I do miss Martin,’ she said to herself. ‘He and I, we were at each other’s throats half the time but companions otherwise.’
She sat a while on one of the benches near the pond where he had sailed a little boat and had lost monsieur le maire’s pencil. She tried to remember, to recall how he would intuitively respond to her needs by reaching out to brush fingers against her cheek or take her by the hand.
She searched the faces of the children. Some watched the puppet shows; others slid on the ice of the pond. Mothers worried, as they always did. Fathers remained reserved or upset, depending on each child’s actions.
Pulling off a glove, she hesitantly touched the scars on her forehead, nose and chin. She didn’t know if she would ever be able to face people or be able to work again—ah! it was too early to think of such things. Her right eye was still not good.
Something distracted her. Some pigeons she thought and, turning to look at them, saw a boy striding through them towards her. The coat was dark blue and its collar was up. He wore a matching toque, and his hands were jammed into the pockets of the coat. A real urchin, a tough guy. ‘Martin … ?’ she managed. ‘MARTIN!’
The little parachutist had been released from prison and had been sent to her.
About the Author
J. Robert Janes (b. 1935) is a mystery author best known for writing historical thrillers. Born in Toronto, he holds degrees in mining and geology, and worked as an engineer, university professor, and textbook author before he started writing fiction. He began his career as a novelist by writing young adult books, starting with The Odd-Lot Boys and the Tree-Fort War (1976). He wrote his last young adult novel, Murder in the Market, in 1985, by which time he had begun writing for adults, starting with the four-novel Richard Hagen series.
In 1992, Janes published Mayhem, the first in the long-running St-Cyr and Kohler series, for which he is best known. These police procedurals set in Nazi-occupied France have been praised for the author’s attention to historical detail, as well as their swift-moving plots. The sixteenth in the series, Clandestine, was published in 2015.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by J. Robert Janes
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
978-1-5040-3610-8
Published in 2016 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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