by Allan Massie
‘She’s not beautiful,’ St-Hilaire said. ‘Not even pretty. A plain child and a shy one, perhaps young for her age, which is, I should say, only nineteen. My cousin used to call her “my little novice”, though, so far as I know, she has never shown any sign of having a vocation for the religious life. Nevertheless she is a girl who has had, endured I should say, unhappy experiences. Her grandmother reared her with great tenderness, though you may say that in these times it’s wrong to bring up a child in seclusion and to try to shield her from all the realities of the world. I don’t know. Love often takes the wrong path at any fork in the road. You’ll have seen examples, I’ve no doubt.’
Clothilde. Michel. If only she had never met the boy.
He cleared his throat, sipped wine, and lit a second cigarette.
‘And so?’
‘So she formed an unsuitable attachment and has now disappeared.’
The Count knew very little of the man. He was middle-aged, in his late thirties or early forties, and called himself an art-dealer. Which indeed he might well be, but whether a reputable one or not was another matter. Nobody knew how the girl – Marie-Adelaide – had met him. At an exhibition perhaps. He might even have picked her up in the street, for she was sufficiently naïve for that to have been possible, responding, shyly at first perhaps, to a friendly word. No matter. It was shocking. The girl was besotted. Her grandmother had come on letters written to her which she had concealed in a drawer. The count couldn’t say what was in them – but his cousin had been horrified. She had spoken to the girl about the unsuitability of any relationship with the man, without, apparently, mentioning the letters. And now the girl had left home, overnight, a week ago, taking almost nothing with her, and there had been no communication since. She had simply vanished. It was strange, alarming, inexplicable to the grandmother. She needed help. Might Lannes be kind enough to offer it, make enquiries, see what there was to learn about the man and search for the girl? St-Hilaire would be in his debt.
There would be no debt – it might so easily have been Clothilde. He would call on the Count’s cousin.
‘What of the girl’s mother?’ Lannes said. ‘You spoke of her father – no good, you said – but said nothing about the mother. Is she alive? Did she play no part in her daughter’s upbringing?’
‘None at all. I confess I know little about her, and certainly never met her. She was a dancer, I believe, in the chorus-line at nightspots patronised by tourists. Something like that. The marriage didn’t last. So far as I know she has never shown an interest in her daughter, and hasn’t been heard of for years.’
St-Hilaire rose stiffly and poured them each a second glass of wine.
‘And your charming son and his friend, the little Jewish boy whose name I forget?’
‘Léon. No, we have heard nothing. Perhaps when the Americans arrive … ’
‘Which won’t be long now, I think.’
‘Not long,’ Lannes said, ‘but the months till then … ’
There was no need to spell it out.
‘I agree,’ the Count said. ‘They’ll be the most bitter of all. Germany has lost the war, there’s no question about that, but they’ll fight to the end. The madman in Berlin won’t imitate the Marshal in 1940 and ask for an Armistice, which I suppose wouldn’t in any case be granted, now that the Allies have, stupidly in my opinion, demanded unconditional surrender.’
‘Perhaps,’ Lannes said, recalling his conversations with Lieutenant Schuerle, the East Prussian who had been the previous officer responsible for liaison with the PJ, ‘someone will remove him.’
‘Unlikely, surely. Only senior officers, generals, could do that, and they have their tradition of blind obedience. Kadavergehorsam – corpse-obedience – they call it, as I remember. But I pray that your Alain is safe, he impressed me, and his friend – Léon, did you say? – wherever they are. As for the third of them, my godson, little Jérôme, I listen occasionally to Radio London, as I suppose you do yourself, and I have heard him speak. Unexpectedly well. The Gaullists found the right role for him – he’s no fighter, poor boy. I trust they did so also for your son and his friend.’
III
The girl mopped his brow with a cloth soaked in vinegar, and held a mug to his lips.
‘It’s wine sweetened with honey, what Maman says you need.’
Alain sipped. His throat hurt when he swallowed and there were sharp pains in his head. He didn’t know where he was and had never seen the girl before. Her hands were cool, also rough. He should speak, ask questions, but when she took the mug away, his eyes closed and he fell back into sleep.
She sat and watched him. Once his whole body seemed to twitch. Then he called out ‘no, please, no, don’t please’ and sweat started on his brow. She stroked his cheek. She could hear her mother banging pots in the kitchen and a goose honking in the yard. Dusty sunlight streaking through the window lay on the boy’s face.
***
Children’s voices, cries and laughter, rose from the Place Contrescarpe. Léon put the book aside and, though knowing he was going to be late, couldn’t bring himself to get up and dress. It was essentially silly, and yet it fascinated him, the idea behind it, of a portrait that changes for the worse while the original remains pure, innocent and beautiful. Chardy had pressed it on him. ‘You are my Dorian,’ he said. ‘You fascinate me. I still after all this time can’t imagine what you are like and what you do when I am not with you. You are so secretive, my dear.’ No doubt it was only because Léon had denied him so much of what he demanded that he spoke in this manner. Not always, of course; at other times he called him a little bitch, a cock-tease, a parasite, unworthy of his attention and of the affection he offered. Then Léon would sigh and say ‘all right, I’ll get out of your life if that’s how you feel about me’ which, if it didn’t reduce Chardy to tears, had him in obvious distress.
It was a ridiculous relationship, and yet Léon couldn’t break it off, not only because it provided cover of a sort by giving him a recognised role, but also because without it, now, since the network had been broken, there was only fear. He still didn’t understand why the Gestapo hadn’t come for him. Was it possible that the girl who acted as his liaison, conveying the messages to be transmitted to London and passing on those he received, had withstood torture or had died without speaking? And yet she had been watched. Someone must have observed the meetings at which they pretended to be lovers. He couldn’t hear steps mounting the stairs to this apartment without finding himself trembling. And London had gone dead on him, that was strangest of all. Perhaps they believed he had been arrested in the round-up and was now in a camp or more likely dead. His own attempts to re-establish communication had all failed. So he was now in limbo.
He looked up to see his corporal smiling.
‘She’ll be fortunate if she ever sees you again, and, if by happy chance she does, you won’t be the boy who went away.’
The corporal, Baron Jean de Flambard, who before the war had worked, spasmodically, as a publicity agent for film companies, doing most of his business in the bars around the Champs-Élysées, had made himself Michel’s mentor, having been, he said, just like him in his own springtime, mad for girls and adventure in dark places. Michel responded: the baron had the glamour of audacious failure.
Now he ruffled Michel’s hair, and said, ‘I’ve a book for you to read. It will tell you why we are fools to be where we are. If only Little Adolf had read it. The Comte de Ségur’s memoir of 1812. It’ll prepare you, my dear, for the worst we’ll experience. Last winter was bad. Next one? Well, we’ll be lucky to survive it, or unlucky as the case may be.’
***
The light went out and Jérôme left the studio in a hurry. The broadcast had gone well, he was sure of that, and his superiors were pleased with him. One had even told him the General approved of his work. Praise was welcome, even if you didn’t quite believe what they said to you. Meanwhile there was a party in Charlotte Street to go to, in the
scruffy office of the little magazine that had published his poem, a French text with an English refrain – ‘And the ebbing tide bore all my hopes away’ – he’d had to ask Max for the English verb that translated baisser.
There were still days he was ashamed to be here safe in London. That was really the theme of the poem. He had made a success, a little success, of not doing what he had hoped to do, and when the Liberation came and he returned to France with whatever glamour attached itself to his service with the Free French, he would feel a fraud.
He stopped off at the Duke of Argyll to collect the sailor-boy, Freddie, who had never been to a literary party before, was keen to go and would probably be bored. But it didn’t matter so long as he came back with him afterwards.
IV
Lannes couldn’t believe that fresh air was ever admitted to the salon of the apartment in the rue d’Aviau, only a few doors from the hôtel particulier of the Comte de Grimaud, that house which, as old Marthe had told him, had seen so much evil. But there was no such sense of corruption here, only sadness, a feeling of waste, of life ebbing away. Even the stuffed birds in the glass case seemed to be moulting. The room was spotlessly clean, and yet you couldn’t escape the impression that a layer of dust covered everything and that there should be cobwebs in the corners of the window-panes. He could imagine the shy young girl brought up there longing to escape in order to experience she wouldn’t know what.
Madame d’Herblay was embarrassed by his presence. It was probable she had never spoken to a policeman before, certainly not in this apartment which was completely feminine. He wouldn’t have been surprised to be told that the modest and gentle landscapes, of which there were at least a dozen on the walls, were her own work, painted in her now distant youth.
‘I don’t know that there is anything you can do,’ she said. She spoke so quietly that Lannes had to strain to hear the words. ‘But I had no one to turn to but my cousin, the Comte de St-Hilaire. I have always relied on him for advice, you understand. And I was quite at a loss. She is such a good girl you see.’
‘I’ve a daughter myself,’ Lannes said, to give her confidence. ‘Do you know where Marie-Adelaide met this man – I’m afraid I don’t know his name?’
‘He calls himself Mabire, Aurélien Mabire.’ She touched her cheek which was paper-soft and wrinkled. ‘But whether that is truly his name, I don’t know. I know so little about him, and certainly not how my poor girl became acquainted with him. The truth is, superintendent, I am at a loss.’
‘Now that I have a name I can at least find out if he is known to us, if he has a record.’
He wondered if St-Hilaire had told her he had been suspended. Probably not, and in any case it didn’t matter since he was acting unofficially. He could rely on young René to see if they had a dossier on anyone called Mabire. It certainly wasn’t improbable that there was one. The sort of man capable of enticing a young girl from her family home is quite likely to have attracted the attention of the law.
‘Monsieur le Comte said he believed he was an art-dealer, or gave out that he was,’ he said. ‘If so it shouldn’t be difficult to find out about him. And I gather there are some letters.’
Mention of them caused her to lower her eyes and blush.
‘They are terrible,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how my poor girl could bring herself to read them.’
Or leave them behind, he thought. That was the strange thing.
‘What of her father?’ he said. ‘Does he know about this?’
‘I haven’t spoken to my son for seven years. He has done nothing for his daughter. He has scarcely seen her since she was a little girl.’
For the first time a note of decision sounded in her voice.
***
As soon as he was out in the street Lannes lit a cigarette; he hadn’t dared to ask if he might smoke in that apartment in which he supposed it was likely that no man except perhaps St-Hilaire had set foot for years. And the Count wouldn’t have lit one of his cigars there either, he was sure of that – any more than the sun, now shining brightly out of a cloudless sky, was ever admitted to that shuttered salon. Perhaps it was not so strange after all that the girl had left the letters behind. A gesture of defiance: you’ve bottled me up, but look, I’ve found a life for myself. He could understand that, no matter how shy and reserved she might be. And the letters which he had been so reluctantly given and which he had stuffed into his pocket might not be so terrible, no matter how shocking they seemed to the grandmother. That didn’t mean it wouldn’t indeed turn out to be a dirty business. Nevertheless it cheered him up. It was something to do.
He turned into a bar, ordered an Armagnac and asked for a jeton for the telephone.
‘René?’
‘Yes, chief. What can I do for you?’
‘If you have nothing pressing, you might meet me for lunch.’
‘Nothing that can’t be put aside.’
‘Chez Fernand then. One o’clock.’
He picked up his glass and settled himself at a corner table to read the letters. There were only four, each written on a single sheet of cheap notepaper such as a café provides for its clients. They were ordinary enough, the kind of thing a boy might write to a girl he was in love with, what Michel, he thought with a spasm of distaste, might have written to Clothilde. Yes, but this writer, Mabire, who signed himself ‘your devoted Aurélien’ was reportedly a man in middle-age. It was only this that made them unsuitable. But he learned nothing from them.
V
Though Fernand had been his friend since they were young boys, Lannes hadn’t been to his brasserie since his suspension. It was a place associated for years with lunches with Moncerre, René Martin and other inspectors during which they mulled over whatever case they were currently engaged in, and so it had been a sort of adjunct to the office. Now he was greeted by Jacques, the oldest of Fernand’s several illegitimate children, who said his father would be sorry to have missed him; he was in bed suffering from a heavy cold which had turned into influenza.
‘But he’ll be up and about again soon,’ Jacques said, ‘probably before he should, you know what he’s like. Actually we’re short-staffed, so it’s fortunate we’re not busy today.’
Indeed fewer than half the tables were occupied. That was unusual. Then Lannes realised that there were no Germans there, for the first time since 1940.
‘Yes,’ Jacques said, ‘and when they do come now, they tend to go heavy on the brandy rather than the champagne. The word is they’re preparing to pull out, but I don’t know as I believe it. How many will you be?’
‘A table for two’s enough. In that corner perhaps, well away from that fellow.’
He indicated the advocate Labiche whom he detested.
‘You’re in luck,’ Jacques said. ‘We’ve got your favourite blanquette de veau. And a bottle of good dry Graves? Fine.’
It wasn’t like young René to be late. Lannes looked at his watch and realised he was early himself. That was what happened when you were idle.
Jacques uncorked the wine and poured a glass.
‘Can we have a word in private before you go?’
‘Of course.’
Lannes lit a Gauloise, and sipped his wine which was fresh as the spring morning. Labiche glanced in his direction, then turned away. He looked as sure of himself as ever; yet, as a member of the Commission set up in 1940 to deal with what they called ‘the Jewish Question’, he should surely be feeling a cold wind on the back of his neck. Of course like many he might have persuaded himself that any Anglo-American landing was likely to be repelled. He was now joined by a priest.
Young René arrived, full of apologies for keeping him waiting, not, he said, that he had been engaged on anything urgent.
‘I don’t know why it is, but we’ve very little to do. It’s as if we’re in a state of suspended animation. The Alsatian’s taken to spending no more than a couple of hours in the office, and this morning he hasn’t even put in an appearance.
What can I help you with, chief ?’
Lannes explained, added, ‘You realise of course that as things are I’m not entitled to ask you to do this. Nevertheless I’d be grateful if you can find out anything about this chap Mabire, if we’ve had dealings with him. And I’d also like to know if we have anything on one Jean-Pierre d’Herblay, though I don’t even know if he is in Bordeaux, or when he was last here. I’ve really nothing to go on, you understand.’
‘Of course, I’m delighted,’ René said. ‘No matter how things are at present, you’re still the chief.’
He blushed, which he had always done when embarrassed, as he was now, Lannes thought, to have expressed his feelings so openly.
‘If there’s anything on either of them I’ll find it. And how, if I may ask, are Madame Lannes and Mademoiselle Clothilde?’
He blushed again. Lannes had long been aware that the boy fancied Clothilde but had never nerved himself to speak of his feelings. If only he had done so, a couple of years ago indeed, before she had met Michel. He would have been much more suitable, even though Marguerite might not have thought so. Michel was well-bred, of good family, and had charming manners. René’s widowed mother had gone out cleaning and indeed continued to do so, despite his efforts; he had told Lannes he had urged her to give up the work since he now earned enough to support her. She had refused, saying he should be saving for the day he married and in any case she enjoyed her work and her old ladies relied on her, besides keeping her amused. They can’t really do anything for themselves, she used to say, not ever having had to do so.
‘I’ll check through the hotel fiches too,’ René said. ‘Just in case they are still in Bordeaux and staying in a hotel or pension.’
***
After René had left, all eagerness to be doing something for him again, Lannes sat over an Armagnac and the cup of coffee Jacques had brought even though both knew the ersatz stuff tasting of chicory was scarcely drinkable, and smoked as the brasserie emptied. Then, to his surprise, the priest who had been lunching with Labiche returned a few minutes after leaving with the advocate and approached his table.
