End Games in Bordeaux

by Allan Massie

  Well, there were things to be cleared up, and it came to him that he might not have much time. He didn’t know much about the Milice and how they operated. He had preferred not to. But they certainly had little regard for due process of law.

  He stepped outside. It was a surprise to find that the sun was shining and that the buildings glistened after overnight rain. Housewives were returning from doing their marketing; they had to be out early before the shops and stalls were cleaned out. There were pretty girls in summer dresses, and a priest hurrying, head down, perhaps because he was in danger of being late for a Mass he was due to celebrate. Two policemen approached. One was smoking a cigarette which he transferred to his left hand when he recognised Lannes in order to be able to salute him. How much longer would he be greeted like that? It took him only a few minutes to reach the rue du Port St-Pierre through streets that he had known since he was a child. Yet everything seemed different and he looked round a couple of times to see if he was being followed. It was a ridiculous idea, but he couldn’t shake it off. He already felt like an outlaw in his own city, like so many whom he had himself hunted down. The props of his identity were being kicked away.

  Fernand was at home. If he was surprised to see Lannes, that was natural enough – Lannes couldn’t remember when they had last talked anywhere but in his friend’s brasserie. And if he seemed also embarrassed, this certainly wasn’t on account of the presence of a young woman, even though she was wearing only a bra and panties. She was a big girl with badly-dyed blonde hair, and when she smiled in greeting you could see that there was a wide gap between her front teeth. Fernand patted her on the bottom and told her to go and make them coffee, or, rather, ‘what passes for coffee’.

  ‘What brings you here, Jean? Not of course that I’m not pleased to see you, but it’s a surprise.’

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt. A new girl?’

  ‘New enough for me not to be tired of her. You look troubled.’

  ‘Do I? Troublesome times. What about you?’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘Are you? Jacques told me you had had flu or a bad cold you couldn’t shake off.’

  ‘He’s like a mother hen, young Jacques. Fusses over me. I’m fine.’

  ‘Actually,’ Lannes said, ‘he’s worried about you. Not only about your health. He said you weren’t yourself.’

  ‘Which of us is these days? I’m all right. You don’t look so good yourself, troubled as I say.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lannes said, ‘I’m in difficulties. I’ve been suspended from duty and acting as if I wasn’t. So … ’

  ‘So you’re in the soup. How’s Marguerite? How’s she taking it?’

  ‘She’s worried. Naturally.’

  ‘I never criticise my friends’ wives, not to their face anyway.’

  ‘So don’t.’

  ‘Well, I know she doesn’t like me, thinks I’m a bad influence. As if I’ve ever managed to influence you.’

  The girl came through with a coffee pot and two cups on a tray.

  ‘I hope you don’t take sugar,’ she said, ‘we’re out of it.’

  Lannes registered the pronoun and wondered if the girl had actually managed to move in on a basis that was at least semi-permanent. Fernand patted her on the bottom again, and said, ‘Go back to bed, sweetheart. I’ll join you when we’re through.’

  As the door closed behind her, he opened a bottle of marc and put a slug in both cups.

  ‘She’s all right, you know. A real peach. Great in bed, likes it both ways, up the arse pleases her most. Am I embarrassing you, Jean?’

  Lannes smiled. Fernand was quite right, he knew him too well. Lannes’ attitude to women had always amused him. For Fernand they were there to be used. It was, he insisted, what they really wanted. He accused Lannes of putting them on a pedestal where, he always said, they weren’t comfortable. Perhaps it was true, but he couldn’t be other than he was. He had always been sorry for women, living in a world made by men and ordered by men. No woman would have led France and Europe into this terrible war, or his own, earlier one, either. But for the moment he knew that Fernand was speaking in this way to distract him from asking more searchingly whether young Jacques had reason for the anxiety he had expressed.

  ‘So Jacques has nothing to worry about? Is that right? Everything’s fine and dandy with you?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Fernand said.

  And yet Lannes didn’t believe him. It wasn’t only on account of his new girl that he was here at home at this hour of the morning and keeping away from the brasserie.

  ‘Labiche was in your place when I had lunch there the other day. He’s one of your regulars, isn’t he? He’s a bastard. You know that of course and I’ve often wondered why you don’t throw him out, tell him he’s barred.’

  ‘That would be clever, wouldn’t it?’ Fernand said, ‘considering the position he’s held these last years. He’s not short of influence. I’d probably find I was being closed down on account of transgressing this regulation or that one. Besides, I sell food and drink. I don’t make moral judgements. I can’t afford to. I used to think you couldn’t either. So, yes, I put up with Labiche, it’s been in my interest to do so.’

  Lannes looked his old friend in the eye. Fernand met his gaze steadily.

  ‘You don’t need to worry about me, Jean. I’ve got everything under control.’

  ‘I hope you have. More than I can say for myself. More, I sometimes think, than any of us can say for ourselves.’

  ‘And now,’ Fernand said, ‘that slut will be getting impatient. So, if you don’t mind … oh, and here’s a box of cigars for your boss if you’re still on speaking terms with him. That’s all right, pay me later.’

  ***

  Gustave greeted him with a warm handshake. He had been grateful to Lannes ever since his son had got into trouble over a botched burglary. Lannes had arrested him, given him a good talking to, and, Gustave said, straightened him out. Now the boy was married and had recently become a father.

  ‘A beautiful wee girl,’ Gustave said. ‘Are you a grandfather yet yourself? No? I recommend it, I really do. The wife and I dote on the little one.’

  He gave Lannes an Armagnac and refused payment.

  ‘We’ll never forget what you’ve done for us.’

  Young René arrived with apologies for being late.

  ‘You’re not late. I’m early. I always seem to be early now. What are you drinking, René?’

  ‘A beer, thank you. I’ve been dashing all over town, and it’s given me a thirst.’

  ‘Fine. May we use your back room, Gustave?’

  ‘Of course, and you won’t have eaten. I can’t offer much, but the wife’ll make you a sandwich.’

  Settled at the table in the back room, they spoke only trivialities at first, René as always asked politely about Lannes’ family, especially Clothilde, and Lannes responded by asking if René’s mother was well.

  ‘Work all right?’

  ‘We all miss you. Even the Alsatian said he hoped your suspension might soon be lifted. Oh and he asked about his cigars again.’

  Lannes handed over the box.

  ‘Give him these, but I’m afraid there’s no chance of me returning to work soon. Quite the contrary. So you’ll have to make do with the bull-terrier. Are you getting on all right with him?’

  ‘It could be worse. Nevertheless, the sooner you’re back the happier I’ll be.’

  ‘That may be some time yet.’

  Gustave came in with two glasses of beer and a plate of baguettes filled with cheese and salad.

  ‘It’s not much I’m afraid but the best we have. I hope your appetite’s good.’

  ‘Thank you. It’ll be fine.’

  Lannes hesitated. He knew what he wanted to say but was reluctant to speak the words. He trusted René absolutely, more anyway than he trusted Moncerre. He had no doubt that René would do whatever was asked, but was he entitled to involve him? Was it even fair? Moreover he would
have to explain what he would have preferred not to speak of.

  ‘You remember Yvette, that girl in the Pension Bernadotte?’

  He wasn’t surprised to see René blush. He had always blushed easily, to his considerable embarrassment, and Lannes recalled that Yvette had described him as ‘quite a dish’. Perhaps she had invited him into her bed and he had been alarmed. Or might he have accepted?

  Lannes pushed the plate across the table to René. He had no appetite himself. Instead he lit a cigarette. Meanwhile he waited till René had finished eating.

  ‘My wife’s had an anonymous letter.’

  ‘How horrible! You mean about that girl?’

  ‘About her, yes.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I’m not entitled to ask you to do anything. Since I’m suspended, I certainly can’t give you orders.’

  ‘That’s irrelevant. You’re the chief, whatever. Besides in these times, well, it seems to me that normal rules don’t apply.’

  ‘That’s not all,’ Lannes said. ‘There’s something else you should know before you commit yourself. I saw the bull-terrier this morning. He had a visit yesterday from an officer in the Milice, looking for me.’

  He related the incident at Chez Jules.

  ‘You see that when they discover I’m suspended, they’ll come looking for me again and I’ve no doubt I’ll be arrested. Given what one hears of the Milice, that wouldn’t be pleasant, and it might not stop merely at arrest. I don’t need to spell it out. So I’m going to have to disappear off the map, if I can. I’ve an idea about that. But there are other matters to be attended to. First, the anonymous letter. I wouldn’t be surprised if Yvette has had one too. I want you to go to see her, keep an eye on her. All right?’

  ‘Of course, chief.’

  ‘Then there’s another thing. I suspect that the letter came from Labiche. Aurélien Mabire, whom you found for me, was working for him. I’ve interfered in his little game. This is just the sort of nasty response he would make. Now, when we were investigating his brother’s murder – that murder in which he said he took no interest – you made the acquaintance of one of his clerks. I forget his name.’

  ‘Jacques Bernard.’

  ‘Look him up again, would you? Cultivate him, pump him, find out everything he knows about his boss’s activities. What sort of chap was he?’

  ‘Very young, a bit wet, scared to death of Labiche.’

  ‘Good. See if you can make him more scared of us. Speak of the Liberation which isn’t far off and of the likely consequences for collaborators like his boss.’

  ‘I’ll suggest he’s in that boat himself. How do I keep in touch with you, chief?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I’ll call you. There’s a couple of other matters I have to see to first, and I don’t know how much time I have.’

  ‘Does the bull-terrier know about all this?’

  ‘Only what I’ve told you about his visit from the Milice. I don’t think he needs to know more. On the other hand he’s your boss now. So if you feel you … ’

  ‘Certainly not. After all, this is unofficial, isn’t it? So I don’t see that it concerns him.’

  ‘I’m very grateful to you.’

  René blushed again, as he always did when Lannes praised him.

  ‘You’ve nothing to be grateful for. Not after all you’ve done for me.’

  When René left, Lannes asked Gustave if he might use his telephone. St-Hilaire’s butler answered. Lannes asked if the Count was at home and said that, if convenient, he would call on him later in the afternoon. It was convenient; the Count would be delighted to see him.

  XV

  ‘What can you tell me about Madame d’Herblay’s son?’

  St-Hilaire sighed and seemed to examine the ash on his cigar. Apparently deciding it wasn’t about to fall off of its own accord, he put the cigar between his lips and drew deeply on it.

  ‘You see,’ Lannes said, ‘none of it makes sense to me. Assuming I’ve been told the truth, why employ an unreliable fellow like Aurélien Mabire? And where does the advocate Labiche come into it? It seems – again if Mabire isn’t lying – that the girl, Marie-Adelaide, is devoted to her father, or at least to her idea of him. So why not approach her directly?’

  St-Hilaire tapped his cigar on the ashtray, got to his feet and crossed the room to look out of the window.

  ‘Such a beautiful afternoon,’ he said. ‘I’m grateful to you, superintendent. My cousin will be grateful to you also.’

  ‘With little reason,’ Lannes said. ‘I haven’t found the girl. Indeed you might say she’s more lost than ever since I’ve established she isn’t now with Mabire. Moreover what I’ve learned of the girl’s history – her earlier experience – I won’t say relationship – with Labiche is, I suppose, something that Madame d’Herblay would rather I didn’t know.’

  ‘Undoubtedly.’

  With his back still to Lannes, the Count said, ‘I owe you an apology. I was – how should I put it? – reticent, or as you might say economical with the truth when we spoke last. I gave you to understand that Marie-Adelaide was an innocent. Evidently, as you have discovered, this wasn’t exactly the case.’

  ‘The father too? So that’s why no action was taken?’

  St-Hilaire returned to his chair.

  ‘Had I been consulted at the time, I would have advised my cousin to call in the police. Perhaps she would have shrunk from doing so. She was horrified by the thought of a public scandal. So, instead, she bought her son off, increasing his allowance on condition that he signed a paper relinquishing all rights over his daughter and promising to have no future contact with her. I learned of this only a few years later when he was in prison.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me he had a police record.’

  ‘It seemed unnecessary. It was a short sentence, eighteen months, as I recall, and the crime was political. Jean-Pierre d’Herblay was a Cagoulard charged as an accessory to the bombing of the offices of the employers’ federation. Doubtless you remember the case?’

  Lannes did of course. The Cagoule had been – no doubt still was, in some form anyway – a secret society of the extreme quasi-Fascist Right which had murdered two Italian Socialists, refugees from Fascist Italy, to oblige Mussolini, and more importantly had embarked on a campaign of bombing and other acts of terrorism. Its targets had been men and organisations on the Right in the hope that the Communists would be held responsible for the outrages. The Cagoule’s broader aim had been to discredit the institutions of the parliamentary Republic. Because so many on what was known as the constitutional Right, politicians, business magnates, senior officers in the army and princes of the Church, had connections with members of the Cagoule, itself financed, it was believed, by certain great industrialists terrified of Communism, who were at least in sympathy with its aims, if not its methods, investigation of the organisation had been little more than perfunctory. In 1940, as Lannes knew, many Cagoulards had welcomed Vichy and found positions of importance there. Others were said to be among the leaders of the Parisian Fascists who despised Vichy as lukewarm and would have had France join Germany in the war against Bolshevism.

  ‘I’ve heard it suggested,’ he said, ‘that there are even Cagoulards among the Gaullists in London. Do you think that possible?’

  St-Hilaire smiled.

  ‘Why not? The men of the Cagoule believed themselves to be patriots, and, as we know, patriotism wears many faces. Besides General de Gaulle himself is a man of the Right. I knew his father slightly, an admirable man, a school-teacher or lecturer, a devout Catholic and a monarchist, one of those, I think, who continued to believe Dreyfus guilty of spying for Germany long after it was obvious and established, you would have thought, beyond any reasonable doubt that the unfortunate Alsatian Jew was innocent, believed it even after he had been brought back to France, exonerated and reinstalled in the army.’

  ‘After so many years on Devil’s Island,’ Lannes said.

&nb
sp; ‘Quite so.’

  Lannes lit a cigarette. How deep and prolonged were the divisions in France! He had always known that. Nevertheless it was a surprise to discover how easily so many managed to bridge them, maintaining friendships across the divide, friendships that transcended political differences. He wondered if Labiche was also a Cagoulard like the young d’Herblay. If so, mightn’t he have friends among the Gaullists who would be in a position to offer him protection after the Liberation and might indeed be eager, or at least willing, to do so?

  ‘I haven’t found the girl,’ he said again, ‘and I’m bound to tell you that I may not be able to be of any further assistance.’

  St-Hilaire made no reply, drew on his cigar, and waited.

  ‘You knew I’ve been suspended from duty. Since this wasn’t, as you said, a police matter and Madame d’Herblay was determined it shouldn’t be that, I saw no reason not to act on her behalf, carrying out an unofficial investigation.’

  ‘We were both grateful to you. But things are different now? Am I entitled to ask what has changed?’

  ‘Simply that I’m no longer only suspended. I’m in danger of being arrested.’

  ‘My dear fellow … ’ St-Hilaire raised an eyebrow.

  ‘It’s not,’ Lannes said, ‘that I’ve done anything discreditable, or nothing, that is, that I consider discreditable. But I’ve fallen foul of the Milice, am accused, or will be accused, of obstructing an officer of that patriotic body in the pursuit of his duty. Since I actually did so, I have no defence, and since I have no wish to find myself in one of the Milice’s prisons – or perhaps a German one, in the hands of the Gestapo – I’m going to have to try to disappear from the scene, go underground as it were. So I can’t continue to search for Marie-Adelaide. I’m sorry and must ask you to convey my apologies to your cousin. I’ll add only that I don’t think any harm – any new harm – will come to the girl. I shouldn’t be surprised if her father, wherever he may be, is badly in need of money, and that your cousin will receive some sort of ransom request. That’s just my suspicion which may be quite mistaken.’