by Kurt Magenta
The woman’s face closed. ‘Who sent you?’
‘Nobody. I mean…the library.’
‘Yes, well. We all have to be “for” the war now, don’t we? Pulling together and all that. Britain stands alone against the tyrant. It’s just that some of us felt it could have been avoided, that’s all. And not just little people. Important people. The Establishment.’
‘It was the same in France. That’s how I ended up here.’
She ignored him. ‘You know, in 1938 there was a famous dinner at Cliveden, Lord and Lady Astor’s house in the country. One of the guests was Baroness Mary Ravensdale. Do you know who she is?’
He shook his head.
‘Oswald Mosley’s sister-in-law. The Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, was there too. And the editor of The Times. All of these people believed for perfectly valid reasons that Germany should be allowed to expand.’
‘Do you have any literature on the subject?’
She shook her head. ‘Not any more. That kind of thing can get you arrested. I shouldn’t even be talking to you about it.’
‘Surely it’s not that bad.’
‘Listen.’ She leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘From time to time a little man in a brown mackintosh comes in here. “Just browsing,” he says. Wanders around and gazes at the shelves for a bit. Once he even bought a volume of Dickens, but I doubt he’s read a word of it. So what do you think he wants?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps he’s in love with you.’
The woman actually blushed. ‘How very French you are! No, young man, he’s a snooper from Special Branch. Keeping an eye on me. One wrong move and my husband and I will be interned.’
He was at a loss for words. ‘I’m sorry…’
‘Young man, whatever our politics, we are still civilised people. But the situation on the street is far from black and white. When the bombing starts in earnest, you’ll see where loyalties lie. You’re doing a very brave thing, supporting General de Gaulle. But you may live to regret it.’
Chapter 12
The Argyll
Late on the night of August 23 1940, a tall man in uniform stepped out of the Gargoyle Club in Soho. The sounds of jazz, talk and laughter briefly rose and then died as the door closed behind him. He strode up the darkened street, wading from the blue-tinted shallows into the secretive depths of the blackout.
A few seconds later, an equally tall but more slender figure slipped out of the door and took the same route, his footsteps as determined as his expression.
A few people lingered outside the club chatting and smoking, but they barely noticed the departing customers. A more attentive observer with a lively imagination might have wondered whether the second man was following the first.
The slimmer man was Lucien Cortel, fully engaged in his new role as a hunter of spies.
A week earlier Jasper Maddox had told him: ‘I want you to come to the house on Saturday. I’m having a few people round for drinks – and I know Anna would like to see you.’
‘Really?’
‘Steady, my boy. I think she just wants to be chums.’
They were in the American Bar of the Savoy Hotel, which had turned out to be one of Maddox’s favourite haunts. (‘Can’t bear the Ritz these days: full of crooks and pansies.’) He liked to meet Lucien outside Charing Cross station and stroll up The Strand while his spy briefed him, their conversation masked by the growling traffic.
‘Passy is getting restless,’ Lucien had told him during that day’s walk. ‘De Gaulle is still wary of engagement with the British. Passy says it won’t last; sooner or later there will have to be a pooling of resources.’
‘Can’t say Churchill’s making life easy for our lot either. He prefers his Special Operations Executive, a bunch of franc tireurs who’ll keep hopping over to France to blow things up. Just the kind of romantic twaddle the old man loves. Meanwhile the enemy is at our door.’
Lucien told him briefly about Vauthier.
Maddox shook his head. ‘Got your teeth in there, haven’t you? Just make sure it’s a cold judgement. This business feeds on paranoia.’ He paused as a bus thundered past. ‘Still, if he is working for the other side, he’s right at the top of the ladder. Daily access to de Gaulle. But I still think it’d make sense to penetrate your lot. Keep an eye on you. Plant false intelligence.’
Lucien smiled. ‘If you saw us at the office you’d be hard pressed to put your finger on any suspects. Talk about amateurs. We’re stumbling around in the dark. Duquesnoy is conservative and deeply Catholic, but I can’t see him as a spy. He’s not subtle enough for that.’
When they arrived at the hotel, the conversation switched to everyday fare: gossip and politics. Maddox had never made any attempt to disguise their relationship. ‘Your father was a friend of the family. No reason why I shouldn’t be keeping an avuncular eye on you.’
Now, seated at the bar, Maddox was sipping a Gibson; essentially a dry martini, but the pickled onion that usurped the standard olive looked too much like a bobbing eyeball. In front of Lucien was the cocktail the Englishman had suggested on their first visit: a French 75. ‘Gin, champagne and lemon juice. Like being socked by a French field gun.’ Excited at the thought of seeing Anna again, Lucien was thankful for its numbing effect.
‘Cocktails at my place are always informal,’ Maddox continued. ‘And I’m afraid there’s a no uniforms rule.’
‘But this is pretty much all I’ve got to wear!’
‘Quite. Which is why I’m sending you to my tailor at Sheppard’s. He’s going to alter one of my dinner jackets and run up a couple of suits. Worry not: we’ll make an English gentleman of you yet.’
Following somebody in the blackout presented an obvious advantage: there was little chance of being spotted. In addition, his quarry was carrying a small pencil torch with a dimmed beam, directed downwards in accordance with the Ministry of Information posters. The result was that Lucien was effectively pursuing a glow-worm. All he had to do was keep at a reasonable distance, so the sound of his footsteps didn’t betray him, and – being torchless – avoid tripping up a kerb or walking into a lamppost.
Occasionally the glow-worm joined others, but Lucien had the rhythm of it now, its regular bobbing like a signature.
Although the cartography of London was becoming clearer in his mind, they soon reached the limits of his knowledge. They had certainly crossed Oxford Street, but now they were in a maze-like area that was entirely unfamiliar to him.
The glow-worm, however, knew exactly where it was going. No hesitation, no deviation. There was a time behind this decisiveness, and a place. Who are you meeting?
Saturday night took its time coming. But finally, on Chesham Place, he stood before a narrow yet rather grand building faced in smart white stucco, a wrought iron balcony running along the first floor and pediments like circumflexes above the windows. Feeling both smart and self-conscious in his freshly adjusted dinner jacket, Lucien rang the bell. A butler – or perhaps a footman, he was never sure of these things – answered with a swiftness that suggested he’d been lurking just behind the door. He welcomed Lucien with a look that blended surprise and disdain, the same mixture trickling into his, ‘Good evening, sir.’
He showed Lucien into what was clearly the library: a masculine room with Persian carpets and leather club chairs, hunting prints on the walls where they weren’t lined with books. There was already a waft of smoke and a murmur of conversation, a braying laugh. Lucien couldn’t see Anna.
‘There you are, my boy. Glad you could make it.’ Jasper Maddox, immaculate in a white dinner jacket, shook his hand. ‘You look splendid. What can I get you? Gin? Whisky? We’ve got all the requisite poisons. Come over to the fireplace – there’s someone you may remember.’
Lucien took in the round spectacles, the frieze of fair hair around a bald patch sprinkled with freckles.
Yes indeed: Mr Duncan of the Home Office.
‘Good Lord!’ said Duncan, breaking off a conversation with a portly gentleman. ‘Young Cortel, isn’t it? Whatever became of you? Manage to sign up for any soldiering?’
‘I’m with the Free French Forces. De Gaulle’s lot.’
‘The devil you are! Rather a tricky sort, they say. Not at all keen on us. What’s his game, d’you think?’
‘I really couldn’t say, sir. In the long term he’ll have to accept the support of the British, but for the time being he doesn’t want to be seen as their puppet. He’s afraid of damaging his image among the French.’
Duncan frowned. ‘Hardly our puppet – we’re feeding and watering the man! Don’t suppose you’ve met him, have you?’
‘Unfortunately not. I’m right at the bottom of the ladder, more or less in administration.’
‘Hmm.’ Duncan looked unconvinced, perhaps because of Lucien’s relationship with Maddox. Glancing around, it occurred to Lucien that the room was probably crawling with members of the intelligence community.
The portly man beside them put in: ‘I know Churchill admires him, but I’m not sure how long that will last. He – ’
‘Now boys, enough politics.’ Anna appeared at last, holding the inevitable cocktail glass. He would have known her from her perfume. ‘This is supposed to be an informal gathering, remember?’
She was wearing a turquoise silk evening dress with a long string of pearls and looked radiant, well aware that she was the only woman in the room. Lucien’s skin tingled as she took his arm.
‘But surely you feel bad about France, Anna,’ the portly man said. ‘Or at least about Paris. Swastikas over the Champs-Elysées and all that.’
‘Yes I do, Freddie. But soon I’ll be sipping a glass of champagne on the terrace of Fouquet’s and the avenue will be a sea of bleu, blanc, rouge. Mark my words.’
‘Hear hear!’
The conversation drifted to their favourite Paris restaurants. Lucien told a story about a waiter at Le Flore who never said a word, merely raised a eyebrow when he took an order and nodded curtly when it was given. Lucien had always assumed the man was mute, but later he discovered the waiter was fully capable of speech – he just wouldn’t lower himself to talk to customers. That got a chuckle.
The anecdotes flowed after that, as did the gin. Finally, not wishing to be the last to leave, Lucien pleaded tiredness. ‘Let me show you out,’ said Jasper Maddox. And on their way to the door: ‘See if you can get anything solid on Vauthier, will you? He begins to interest me after all.’
It was only when he got home that Lucien found the fold of paper in the hip pocket of his jacket. The ink was light blue, the writing full of soft loops.
Dinner at The Argyll. My treat. Tuesday at 7. A.
It was his third night of shadowing Arnaud Vauthier. On the previous two occasions, the Lieutenant had returned to the boarding house in Kensington where he was billeted. Lucien was tempted to give up, but he continued in a spirit of curiosity mingled with recklessness. As usual, he needed to feel as if he was moving forward, contributing in some way.
They were in an area he would later come to know as Fitzrovia, whose pubs were almost as bohemian as those of Soho. On a corner, a red brick establishment with the words The Fitzroy Tavern on the sign above the door. Vauthier went inside.
Now Lucien hesitated. If he followed, surely Vauthier would spot him? But he could always pass it off as a coincidence. ‘Mon Lieutenant, what a surprise to see you here! I was looking for a friend. Do you know this place well?’
He took a deep breath and pushed through the door.
Over dinner at The Argyll, Anna asked him: ‘What’s the thing you miss most about France?’
He thought for a second and replied, ‘The cheese.’
She laughed. ‘No! Is that true?’
‘Of course. Ask any Frenchman.’
‘I’m sure any Frenchwoman would say la mode. That’s certainly what I miss. And sitting in cafés on pearly grey afternoons. The pubs here are so stuffy and masculine.’
Anna’s silk dress was emerald green tonight, and the pearls had been replaced by a long silver diamond pendant. Her hair was up, displaying small diamond studs in her ears. She was lavishly beautiful.
He guessed she had dressed for the surroundings. The Argyll was both cosy and magnificent, with banquettes in plush red velvet, pristine white tablecloths and lustrous oak-panelled walls. Each banquette was separated from its neighbour by a screen of stained glass mosaic. Soft lights glowed from lily-shaped art nouveau sconces. The fact that the windows were blacked out only added to the sense of intimacy. The restaurant and its bar – from which piano music lilted into the dining room – had been a West End institution since the turn of the century.
Lucien should have been nervous, but in fact he was at ease in Anna’s company. One of the things he was learning about himself was that he felt comfortable around women. Perhaps it was because his father had been so absent during his childhood: he had grown up with his mother and sister.
He told Anna as much. She expressed interest in his father and said that Maddox had spoken of him too.
‘Can I ask a delicate question?’ Lucien said.
‘Ah. I was expecting this.’ She lit a cigarette and blew a plume of smoke at the ceiling. Only then did she look him in the eye. ‘If you must.’
‘Could you tell me something about your mother? Neither you or your father have mentioned her. Was there a divorce, or…’
‘She died.’ A quick tap of ash into the ashtray. ‘Tuberculosis. Four years ago.’ The fingers of her other hand went to the pendant.
‘I’m s—’
‘None of the usual platitudes, please,’ she waved his comment aside. Then more softly, ‘Not if we’re going to be friends.’
He felt a sudden warmth flood his veins, took a sip of Bordeaux.
Before he could say anything she continued: ‘Daddy tried everything – the best treatment in Switzerland, expensive sanatoriums. It cost him a fortune. He had to sell our place in the country. We only just managed to hang on to the London house by letting most of the staff go. Anyway, none of it did any good.’ She shrugged.
‘So now it’s just you and your father? No brothers or sisters?’
‘She lost a little boy at birth. I was too young to remember, and she only spoke of it once. A “blue baby”, she said, which meant he had some sort of heart problem. After that they were stuck with me.’
She stubbed out her cigarette and let him take her hand across the table. After a brief moment, she gently withdrew it. ‘Not that I live with daddy any more,’ she said. ‘Rented a flat in Chelsea. A bit cruel to leave him knocking around that big house, but it felt like a mausoleum. Besides, he can see me as often as he likes. He’s got me typing memos at headquarters.’
Lucien knew better than to ask where these might be. He wondered briefly about her use of the word ‘daddy’. She always said it with an ironic inflection, as if she was mocking herself. Or perhaps betraying a slight bitterness.
A waiter came to whisk away their plates. Lucien reassured him that the poached salmon had been wonderful, and the waiter smiled and inclined his head. Another took his place to ask if they wanted dessert. They opted for coffee.
‘No cheese?’ asked Anna, with a smile.
‘Not even mouse-sized. Mille mercis, Anna. It was kind of you to invite me here.’
‘I told you – friends. Besides, you always make me think of Paris, which is lovely.’
Outside, in the blacked-out street, he offered to escort her home.
‘Trying a bit too hard, darling.’ She laid a hand on his cheek. ‘But Flaxman 9358, if ever you need to confide.’ The Chelsea telephone exchange, he realised. She reached into her bag and retrieved a pair of short white kid gloves, which she pulled on. Chic, of course,
but also useful for hailing taxis in the quasi-darkness.
One soon drew up, as if its white-painted bumper had been drawn to her pale upheld palm.
He opened the rear door for her. She kissed him on the lips, very briefly, before disappearing into the car.
He needn’t have worried: The Fitzroy Tavern was full of bodies and dense with smoke. Nobody even glanced his way as he stepped through the door. There was nothing like the fear of invasion for encouraging heavy drinking and bad behaviour of all kinds.
He couldn’t see Vauthier through the press of uniforms and suits. He edged his way towards the bar, looking left and right.
The crowd parted for a brief second and the shock froze him. He frowned, moving ahead again.
And there they were, hunched over a corner table: Arnaud Vauthier and Georges Chenard.
Chapter 13
Limehouse Jazz
He left the pub with his thoughts spitting and snarling. What could those two possibly be doing together? Did it mean that Lucien’s instincts had been correct – that Vauthier had some kind of agenda of his own? And that Chenard was in on it?
He realised he would have to talk to Maddox. But their next meeting was almost a week away, and Lucien needed time to think. As he did so, he reassessed his friend’s behaviour over the past few weeks. Chenard’s regular departures, usually explained by a card game. The fact that he always had money. Lucien did all right by combining his laughable soldier’s pay, the remaining money from his aunt and ‘advances on expenses’ from Maddox. Yet compared to Chenard he was a pauper. The man may have been a successful gambler – but what if he was being paid by another organisation too?
