The Alibi Club

by Francine Mathews

  He mounted the stone steps and tried the front door handle.

  It opened to his touch.

  He pushed the heavy oak wide, and stepped into a deeper darkness. His heels rang suddenly on marble. He stopped short, mouth dry. He would be taken for a thief. He should find the salon and sleep there on a settee or even the floor, perhaps, without waking the household.

  A candle flame materialized in the darkness above him.

  He glanced up.

  “Ricki,” she breathed. “They said you would come.”

  She began to descend the stairs, a strange and unknown creature clothed in white, a votive with her candle, eyes burning clear above the flame.

  He stood still in the middle of her floor, and let her come.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  They were ferrying people from the port of Bordeaux, which sat on the narrow Garonne river, to the ships moored out in the Gironde estuary, on flat, bargelike craft normally reserved for casks of wine. Bordeaux fishermen and laborers were pitching in wherever they could, to get the refugees out of France. It was a cloudy Monday morning, the seventeenth of June, and the Germans had arrived.

  The attack planes dove in low over the moored ships and the ferries jammed with passengers and without hesitation dropped bombs on them. Sometimes the bombs went wide, but the river was so packed with vessels that most bombs struck something: a boat would explode into a shower of debris and body parts. It was a complete crap shoot, Joe Hearst thought, whether any of them would make it out alive.

  “I’m not going,” Mims Tarnow said flatly. “You’re nuts even to suggest it, Hearst. We’ve got children here!”

  She glared at him fiercely, her arm around her son, as though Hearst intended the boy for cannon fodder. He did not answer Mims, his eyes fixed on the crowd of small craft choking the port. It was impossible to see the S.S. Milwaukee—it was too far out in the estuary. He hoped the captain had waited for them.

  He’d brought Sally King to Bordeaux that morning in the Buick. Mims and the rest of the Americans followed, bickering over Hearst’s orders to leave their cars and baggage in the care of Consul Noakes, for transatlantic shipment later. Hearst had told Petie to siphon the fuel from the convoy’s tanks once the cars were parked at the consulate. He’d need all the petrol he could steal, to get back to Bullitt in Paris.

  “I’d bet anything you could name that Noakes will sell our Chrysler to the Germans,” Mims Tarnow said acidly to her husband, Steve. “Maybe we should just sit tight.”

  “Mims,” Hearst interjected, “unless you want to eat lunch with the entire German army, you’ll stop complaining and get on the launch, okay?”

  “What’s so awful about the German army, anyway?” Mims retorted. “It’s not like we’re at war with them. We’re innocent bystanders.”

  “Tell that to the bombers,” Sally muttered.

  One of the flat little barges nosed into the stone quai in front of the café where they were huddled. At the prow, standing like a figurehead, was no local fisherman but an actual sailor in a crisp white uniform, S.S. Milwaukee embroidered on his breast.

  “Thank God,” Mims declared. “Somebody who knows what they’re doing, at last.” She clutched her son’s shoulder and three suitcases she had culled from her wealth of baggage and hurried forward. The rest of the Americans began to follow her.

  Hearst put his arm around Sally—gently, because of her cast and sling—and said, “Time to go.”

  “No,” she replied.

  “It’s the right thing to do.”

  “How do you know?” She turned a furious face on him. “You said that the last time I got on a boat, and you were wrong. I’m tired of being sensible. I’m tired of doing what I’m told. I’m not that kind of woman anymore.”

  The whistle of a bomb, hurtling through the air. A hundred yards upriver, a quai burst into a shower of stone and wood. The barge heaved from the shock wave and everybody screamed.

  “Go!” Hearst shouted, thrusting Sally toward the precarious grasp of the sailor. Steve Tarnow and two others jumped the widening gap of water between quai and barge, the weight of their bodies rocking the edge dangerously. The sailor stumbled backward, Sally in his arms, both of them lurching into the mass of people pressing toward the bow. Tarnow recovered his balance, and reached for the mooring rope.

  Hearst tossed it to him. He waved farewell.

  It was then he saw Sally, white-faced, her eyes fixed on his. He’d never told her he was staying behind.

  She threw his name desperately across the water, straining toward him. The Milwaukee crewman grasped her good arm but she surged forward, shaking herself free, toward the stern of the barge.

  Hearst saw what she meant to do.

  “Sally, don’t!” he cried. “Don’t!”

  For the first time since they’d met, she ignored him, and jumped.

  Joliot had awakened as the last of the American cars pulled out of Loudenne.

  Pale sunlight on a white ceiling, a furl of bedclothes over his loins. The place where Nell had been was empty. When he touched the sheets they were already cold.

  He pulled on his clothes and got himself out of the room. He could not be found there, by a servant or another guest—Allier or Mad Jack. Whether his impulse was to protect himself or Nell—himself or Irène—he could not say.

  He moved silently down the marble staircase and followed the sound of voices to the kitchen.

  It was an old-fashioned block of a room with scrubbed oak tables and bare white walls: the province of a staff far larger than Loudenne now boasted. He wondered how often Nell came here, and why she had seen fit to entertain an earl in the château’s scullery. Mad Jack had made himself at home, however, propped at the table in his shirtsleeves with a map of Bordeaux spread out before him. Oscar and Genevieve were loaded at his side.

  “The Broompark is presently moored at the quai in Bordeaux,” the earl was saying. “I intend to bring a smaller craft up the Gironde to your docks here at Loudenne, and shift the jolly jugs of water out around nightfall. I shouldn’t like those bombers to catch us ferrying suspect goods.”

  “What bombers?” Joliot asked from the doorway.

  Three heads swiveled toward him. Nell smiled her secret smile; he could not acknowledge it under all those eyes.

  “You’re here!” Allier cried, and rose from his chair. He alone had shaved that morning; he looked neat as a pin. “I confess I hadn’t hoped for it, Joliot. Where are von Halban and the others?”

  “On their way. I came directly from the Dordogne. I left my wife in the sanitorium you found.”

  “Poor lady,” Mad Jack mused. “Hell of a cough. TB, I suppose?”

  Joliot nodded. “You’ve made your plans?”

  “We have. I’m to fetch the boat while you and Allier stand guard over the goods and await reinforcements. The Broompark leaves with the dawn tide and the captain waits for nobody. We’ll hope your chappies make it.”

  “Where is the water?” Joliot asked.

  In all the heated hours of the night he had never once remembered the reason for his errand, never asked whether Nell had kept his precious stuff safe. He’d awakened now from his dream, and it was the night that was no longer real.

  “That’s why we held the Council of War in the kitchen,” Nell said quietly. “Come. Let me show you.”

  She lit an oil lamp and led them through a doorway at the rear of the pantry.

  “All the cellars at Loudenne are connected underground. These are the stairs to the château’s main cellar—where we keep the bottles we don’t intend to sell, the ones laid down by Bertrand’s father and grandfather.”

  “Any port?” Mad Jack inquired with sudden interest.

  “Next to none. But there’s some very good Lafite,” Nell replied dryly. “If we’re successful this evening I’ll crack open a bottle. Gentlemen?”

  They followed her single light down the stone steps into the arching depths of the château, the chill settl
ing immediately in Joliot’s bones. They walked on, past shadowed cave after shadowed cave filled with dusty bottles. Once there was the scrabbling of small feet, and Joliot imagined a mouse with its nest among the fifty-year-old classed growths. The silence and the stale air reminded him of a crypt, and he understood suddenly why Nell loved Loudenne, why it had a sacred power over her. This was her cathedral, her broken bread and spilled wine. There had been ritual, too, in their lovemaking last night, Joliot thought—as though without speaking they both understood it would be the last time.

  The passage before them widened suddenly, the lantern light welling. “This is the passage from the cuverie,” Nell said. “It joins the tunnel from the house. If we move on you’ll see the water gate just ahead.”

  Massive casks, smelling of toast—Joliot recognized the new wood she’d paid a fortune to bring from Paris. And then, past the rank upon rank of barrels, the sound of the river. A ramp descending to a hatch with an iron grille.

  “There are tides in the estuary,” Nell said. “This gate can only be opened at low ebb. That, too, is why you should wait for darkness.”

  “And my jugs?” Joliot asked.

  She turned and looked at him, her face immobile. “Packed in straw. I had Henri open two casks and store them there. He resealed the tops so nobody would know. We can roll them right down to Jack’s boat, when he brings it.”

  Joliot nodded.

  There remained nothing to do but wait.

  He spent much of the day in writing to his children, in the hope that somebody might be able to deliver a letter.

  Mad Jack disappeared in the green Simca, bound for Bordeaux, but Allier moved restlessly around the château, colliding with Nell’s other guests—the Jews from Holland—and conversing at length on the subject of Schubert. Joliot noticed how Elie Loewens’s eyes followed Nell even as he listened politely to Allier, fingers grasping the throat of his violin; and Joliot thought, Ah. Another of the fallen.

  He took a walk among the vines and discovered a playhouse erected from two flat stones and the broken staves of a barrel. Sheltering inside it were a small boy and girl belonging to the Dutch, already speaking passable French after a few short weeks at Loudenne. Joliot made the girl a daisy chain and carried the boy on his back. He could hear the rumble of bombs and guns in the distance—coming from the south, near Bordeaux—and wondered at the children’s calm.

  Toward evening, the light still strong in the sky, he strolled down toward the river to check on the tide. He was shocked to discover a mass of boats in the Gironde, a vast fleet of river traffic, and veering out of the mass was one small craft: Mad Jack at the wheel.

  Joliot ran to the end of Loudenne’s pier.

  “Catch hold, there’s a good fellow,” the earl called.

  He looked more than ever like a pirate, his tattoos flashing in the last sunlight, his pistols shoved into the waist of his trousers. He was grinning hugely, in love with this adventure, better than any service at the Front could be. Joliot caught the rope. He had spent enough holidays in Brittany to know how to tie a sailor’s knot. The water level was so low now, that the dock was at the Englishman’s shoulder.

  “Von Halban arrived? Moureu and the Russian?”

  Joliot shook his head. “They may not make it. Too many Germans between here and the Auvergne.”

  “Like shooting fish in a barrel,” the earl agreed cheerfully. “Let’s open Nell’s wine and then load the water, hey? The tide should be low enough.”

  They walked together toward the darkening bulk of the château, Joliot matching his pace to the earl’s limp.

  “I’ve known Nell for donkey’s years, you know,” Mad Jack confided. “Grew up together. Had our wilder days. Attended her wedding to Bertrand, though we grew apart after that. What I mean to say is, Joliot: She told me about you.”

  “Told you what?” he asked.

  “That you were the flame to her moth—the most dangerous air she could breathe—that sort of thing. Has a kind of passion for you. Thought you ought to know.”

  “Thank you,” Joliot said with difficulty. “I, too, have known Nell a long time.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d use your influence with her? Get her to leave on the Broompark when it goes? I don’t feel right abandoning her to Jerry. All manner of terrible things might happen.”

  “If I had any influence to use,” Joliot replied, “I would persuade her to stay here forever.”

  “I see,” the earl said. And they walked on to the house in silence.

  It was as they were finishing dinner—a hasty affair of rabbits Henri had snared in the park and the cook had stewed in wine—that the whole table was thrown into silence by the sound of approaching vehicles.

  “Von Halban.” Joliot thrust back his chair and followed Nell into the hall.

  She was standing at the door when the first of the German staff cars rolled to a halt, and Spatz stepped out into the sweet night air.

  He raised his arm and smiled.

  “Heil Hitler,” he said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  “Quickly,” Nell breathed. “Get back into the house. Find the Dutch. Get them to the tunnels as quick as you can. Do as I say, Ricki!”

  Joliot turned and raced back to the dining room. “Germans,” he muttered. “Five cars at least. We’ve got to move quickly.”

  Mad Jack was already brandishing Oscar or Genevieve, but Allier grasped his wrist and urged, “The water gate. Vite.”

  Joliot wheeled. He made for the back staircase near the kitchen, aware of the sound of bright chatter in the château’s entry, of Nell at her most aristocratic, speaking French for all the world as though she were not an English citizen and an enemy national of the twelve men who came striding into her house.

  “Hello, Spatz, darling,” he heard her say, and thought to himself, Her cousin. Has Nell betrayed us?

  Elie Loewens was standing mute in the upper hall, his fingertips reaching for the walls as though he could channel sound through the heavy plaster.

  “Get your family,” Joliot whispered. “Down the back staircase. Before it’s too late.”

  “The children,” Elie said. “The children. They’re not in the house.”

  Joliot swore under his breath. “I’ll take care of it—I know where they might be. Go. Quickly. To the cellar.”

  She led them into the dining room and apologized for the fact that dinner was already over—rang the bell for the housemaid, who would not respond, terrified of invasion and rape. Nell begged them all to sit down, so tired as they must be after such a journey, she would get some food and wine herself—and felt Spatz following her as she made for the kitchen.

  It was empty. But she knew that at all costs she must keep him out of that part of the house now, because it was the only route of escape. She turned and placed her hands on his good wool tunic. Bracing herself against his chest and stopping him cold in the butler’s pantry.

  “What in bloody hell are you doing here?” she demanded.

  He smiled down at her, with the usual careless warmth in his birdlike gaze, and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Sweet Nell,” he said. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. The amount of death I’ve had to witness since I last saw you—”

  “But why? Surely you should be in Paris?”

  “I’m saving my apostate soul,” he answered lightly. “I’m kissing up to the Gestapo. Some of the most violent men in Germany are sitting at your dinner table right now, Nell, and they want your vineyard. Your wine cellar. Your house. I gave it all to them as a sort of grand gesture of reconciliation. They are, after all, the Master Race.”

  She stepped backward, bile surging into her throat. “What?”

  “Did you know two million French soldiers are missing or taken prisoner?—That nearly a hundred thousand are dead? Two hundred thousand wounded? And all in six weeks. The German war machine is something even I can’t oppose.”

  “Spatz—”

  “Loudenne was all I h
ad to offer them, Nanoo. Because you failed me. You were supposed to find something to sell.” He gripped her shoulders. “But nobody wants to help little Spatz anymore. The nigger girl—my circus performer—stole a fortune in uranium once I got her out of France, and I believed in her, Nell—I waved good-bye on the dock at Marseille while she took off with the trunk I thought was mine. Then I got Joliot’s deuterium, but it turned out that was a fucking mistake—I took dirty tap water from Clermont-Ferrand all the way to the German High Command outside Paris and they laughed at me, Nell, once they’d tested the first three canisters. They almost laughed me all the way back to Berlin and I’d rather die than go there, you understand? I’d sell my mother and my child if I had one and I’d even sell you, Nell, before I’d face Hitler in the Fatherland. Comprends?”

  “Oui,” she replied, her body cold as ice. “I understand. But I can’t give you Loudenne. It isn’t mine.”

  “Those men in the other room’ll take it anyway. They hammered out the Occupation zone with old Pétain this morning—he replaced Premier Reynaud, he’s the Führer’s lapdog now—and it’s hilarious, you’d laugh if you saw the map; it includes the best wine regions in France. Yours among them. So pack a bag before my friends at the dinner table decide they want your lingerie, my darling. Or you, perhaps. You’d make a passable fuck for one of them until Bertrand comes home.”

  “Don’t do this, Spatz. Don’t trade your soul—”

  He reached for her, kissed her brutally on the mouth, caressed the drop of blood on her lower lip.

  “I have no soul, dearest. Now pack, before I sell them your pathetic little Jews.”

  He’d eased breathlessly down the back staircase, groping his way with his palms against the wall, listening as Nell’s world fell in ruins around her.