The Paris Collaborator

by A. W. Hammond

  Duchene sighed. ‘Yes. I would have liked that too.’

  As he said this, as if it had been planned, the lights died. With only candles, the room seemed to grow smaller. The glow of the flames lit Marienne’s face and pushed away the shadow of her frown, the rings around her tired eyes.

  ‘Can we sit?’ he said, indicating the chairs around the dining table. He led the way and sat down.

  Marienne’s face didn’t soften, the furrow on her brow remained, but she did sit opposite him. He navigated a hand past the glasses and candelabra to lift up the cognac. She refused his offer of another drink. He poured a generous measure into his own glass.

  ‘You’re right. I shouldn’t have tried to keep things from you. About her, about the reasons for her leaving. But I was trying to protect you. The time I had with her was short, and I spent most of it worried that I didn’t deserve her. To live a life through her eyes … it was glorious. I spent so much time afraid I wouldn’t live up to her expectations, I think I started to convince her of that truth. Maybe I didn’t offer her a good enough reason to stay. Or maybe it was always going to be this way – she was younger than me, she had only ever lived in Paris. She was bound to discover ideas and places outside of her experience that would draw her to them. I wanted stability. She wanted to be excited.’

  ‘And me? What about me, her child?’

  ‘Marienne, she loved you very much. You were still small, and she thought she’d be back. She really, truly did. Things changed, her life changed. For a time, I thought she must be dead or captured. She fought at Ebro – it was a bloodbath.’

  ‘But she wrote to you.’

  ‘To us. She was fleeing with a Polish general and had crossed the French border. I don’t know why she never made it back to Paris.’

  ‘Can you see that you are now doing the same thing, with me?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You want stability for us. I want something more – possibility. A compelling life.’

  ‘It’s not stability I want for us. Although wouldn’t that be glorious right now – the war over, life returned? No, I want something more straightforward and seemingly impossible.’

  ‘Peace?’

  ‘No. Survival. I want us to survive, Marienne. I can see no further than that goal. And with every day it seems further and further away.’

  ***

  Duchene paused in front of his apartment. Earlier today, men had been waiting for him on the other side of the door. Earlier today, he had been threatened by both Partisans and Germans.

  He surprised himself by smiling. Less than an hour ago, Marienne had accused him of seeking a dull life. And yet he couldn’t even succeed at that. Threats, deadlines, lives on the line – perhaps that might impress her.

  A soft glow underlined Camille’s door, through which he would find candles, conversation, a patient ear and a sympathetic voice to soothe his troubled mind.

  A note was pinned to his door: I’m here if you want to talk.

  He could use an ally, someone to help him try to fathom Marienne, her motivations, her mind. Camille always understood her better than him. She had been Marienne’s confidante at the table, and long before that. She was smart enough to guide him, without revealing a confidence, through the complicated emotional terrain of his daughter’s mind. But such deeper understandings would be pointless if he or Marienne ended up dead. He had only a limited time to make sure that wouldn’t happen and as much as Camille was the only one who could soothe his troubled mind, he couldn’t spare a minute.

  He took the note from his door as he opened it. Inside, his apartment was dark. He reached for the trench torch he kept by the door and squeezed the lever that ran down the length of its handle. Slowly its motor whirred into action, and its small bulb started to glow.

  He staggered a little, the cognac catching up with him, and knocked over a pile of books on his way from the living room to the kitchen. Here he found the nub of a candle and lit it with a match from above the stove. With the breadboard beside him, he spread out the papers Faber had given him. The German was to the point in granting him an exception from the curfew. The signature at the bottom was unrecognisable, but the stamp beside it was clear: Dietrich von Choltitz, their chief warden and the administrator of their fates. While Duchene had no sympathy for the man, he didn’t envy his position – deployed to a city that despises your presence, its Resistance plotting your assassination, while enemies approach from east and west.

  He re-read the dates, hoping he’d misheard Faber and that he’d find he had more time to complete the task. No, it hadn’t changed. He had less than forty-eight hours to find this missing soldier, Kloke. Less than forty-eight hours to find the missing priest. Each task was almost insurmountable on its own, and impossible when performed simultaneously with the other. He would have to find more hours in the day. To do that, he’d need to look to the night.

  He tucked the papers back into his jacket pocket and blew out the candle. Using the trench torch to guide him, he made his way to the front door and out into the night.

  Wednesday, 16 August 1944

  NINE

  Madame Noirot stood in the doorway to the rectory dressed in a faded floral house jacket. In the light of her torch, he could see that she had maintained the robe with stitches and fabric patches. Her grey hair was concealed under a crochet boudoir cap. He removed his hat and nodded at her. ‘Sorry to disturb, Madame.’

  ‘Are you mad? There is a curfew.’

  ‘I have papers. I wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t important.’

  ‘What is so important that you need to disturb a woman at one in the morning?’

  ‘Father Ramelle. Can we talk inside? There’s no telling when the power will come back on and your neighbours catch sight of us. Papers might be good for the Germans, but I’d rather the Resistance didn’t know of our meeting.’

  The concern dropped from her face, the hint of a smile appear­ing at the edge of her mouth. ‘Come in, then,’ she said, holding the door open for him until he was across its threshold. She pulled it closed with caution, making very little noise. ‘Come to the office. Let us talk there.’ He followed her. Once the curtains were closed, she reopened the drawer in Ramelle’s desk where he kept his keys, removed one and approached the liquor cabinet. ‘Whisky?’

  ‘Perhaps I’d better not. I’ve only just walked off the wine from dinner.’

  ‘Lucky you. Wine and dinner.’

  ‘My daughter announced her engagement.’

  ‘Then there is still hope in these troubled times.’

  ‘You might not agree if you met her fiancé. Sorry to be so indiscreet, Madame, but I’d like to ask you some questions.’

  Madame Noirot held up a finger until she finished pouring herself a dram. ‘Proceed.’

  ‘Madame, I sensed there were things you weren’t saying when we visited this afternoon.’

  She sipped the drink. She didn’t flinch. ‘Monsieur, I don’t know you. But you work with those men.’

  ‘For those men. And not by choice. But I suspect you’ve figured that out already.’

  ‘Words are dangerous things these days. Said to the wrong person, I too might disappear.’

  ‘Then let me offer you something. We were talking about my daughter before – she’s betrothed to a German. Luftwaffe, an airman. Armand, Philippe, they’re threatening to kill her as a collaborator if I don’t find your missing priest for them.’

  ‘And she isn’t a collaborator?’

  ‘She’s young. Looking for a way out of Paris. I don’t know. You have children of your own?’

  ‘No, but I’m close to my niece.’

  ‘Then you know. My point is, I’m not going to betray you to the Resistance. I’m compromised. And now you know why.’ Well, half of it, anyway.

  She took another sip of the
whisky. ‘It wasn’t your presence that bothered me. It was theirs.’

  ‘But you must have known Father Ramelle was working with the Resistance?’

  ‘I knew. I’m not troubled by that. I hate the Germans. And although I’m concerned that Father Ramelle has disappeared, I can’t say it’s a surprise. Those were the risks he took. It’s those men, specifically – they bother me.’

  ‘Armand and Philippe?’

  ‘And the other.’

  ‘Lucien?’

  ‘They brought guns into a place of worship. I have no idea why Father agreed. He was not a violent man. Perhaps he thought it was a necessary evil. War does things to people, and he lost many parishioners to it. “Lives spent for the vanity of dictators and fools,” he used to say.’

  ‘You don’t think he’s alive, do you?’

  ‘I do not. And I suspect those men don’t think he is either. It’s the guns they want. They care nothing for his safety.’

  Duchene shifted, and the housekeeper raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Why have you come tonight?’ she asked.

  ‘When I was here earlier – when Armand and Lucien were showing us where they had parked when they unloaded the weapons –’

  ‘Yes. I recall that.’

  ‘I asked if there was any other way in and out of the church.’

  ‘Your exact words were, “And the only other way into the church is through the front doors?”’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Other.’

  ‘Yes. There is another way.’

  ‘Could you take me there?’

  ‘For that, you’ll need to come downstairs again.’

  Soon they were standing before wood and iron, four hundred years old. Duchene waited as she inserted the key. Within moments the door was open, and the damp cold of the room drifted across them.

  ‘There’s another entrance, down here,’ he said.

  Madame Noirot said nothing as she crossed to the tombs on the far side of the room. With the base of her torch, she tapped along the capstones until one came back with a dull thud. She waved Duchene over and shone her light onto two narrow crevices cut into either side of the capstone.

  He approached and indicated with both hands. ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes, please. Pull it.’ She trained the torch between the edges of the capstone.

  Even though he had anticipated what would happen next, Duchene was still surprised when he heard a grinding noise and felt three capstones move forward simultaneously. These tombs were only a façade, and a hidden door opened on a hinge.

  ‘Where does it go?’ he asked.

  ‘Deeper, into the Catacombs. Down to the old mines. Who knows?’

  ‘Do you think someone could find their way into this room, through those Catacombs?’

  ‘Maybe. If they knew what they were doing.’

  ‘I need to follow it.’

  ‘That’s not a good idea – the tunnels go for hundreds of miles.’

  ‘I’ll just follow it a short way.’

  ‘Take this,’ Madame Noirot said, offering him her electric torch. ‘Better than that relic.’ She nodded at his trench torch.

  ‘Madame, I won’t have you wait here for me in the dark. Please return upstairs. I won’t be long.’ She shook her head, and he insisted again, ‘Madame, it is cold down here. If it helps, perhaps pour us each one of Father Ramelle’s whiskies, and I’ll return soon to join you in drinking it. I won’t go far.’

  This seemed to sit better with her, and Duchene watched as she left.

  The floor was covered in dust and dirt. A long-dead rat lay part way down the tunnel. There were no clear footprints. After a few paces, he stopped and shone the torch back over his steps. He had disturbed some of the dust, but he didn’t see anything so obvious as a tread mark.

  It might have been the silence, or that his vision was limited only to what he could see by torchlight, but his senses came alive. He could feel the air moving across his face, and smell the dust and the musk of vermin in their nests. He was suddenly aware of how alone he was. Just him and the dead.

  Soon he had to turn his body sideways to fit through the narrow corridor. The further he went, the more he had to bring his mind back to the moment and away from paranoid speculation about a collapse from above or a sudden pitfall. Shining the torch behind him to see the open door of the crypt gave him some comfort. But the fears remained close by.

  He pulled up his collar against the chill and continued. The tunnel intersected with a wider corridor, more recognisable as part of the Catacombs for which the city was known. But it was less maintained than those tunnels, which were frequented by tourists and visitors. Here, the orderly shelves of skulls and bones had collapsed onto one another or tumbled out into the corridor itself. Perhaps some of his fears were better founded than others, as there was movement in the earth here, a good reason for the catacomb to remain sealed.

  Duchene unwrapped his scarf and tied it to a femur near the edge of the tunnel that led back to the church crypt. He took the corridor to his left, stepping over broken bones, afraid to offend the dead, while he looked for signs of recent disturbance. Around him were sounds of quiet movement – small paws scratching over cloth and stone, a persistent drip and echo from somewhere above him. He passed many thousands of bones of the ancient dead, brushing cobwebs and brittle roots aside. The faint smell of something rotten rose up at him as his coat stirred still air from the ground. Perhaps another rat that had fallen prey to something larger.

  Ahead was a wall of rubble – another collapse. Stone and bone blocked the corridor. It would have been impossible for someone to squeeze through, much less six large weapon crates.

  He checked his watch. He’d followed this corridor for ten minutes. It had felt like more. Turning, he retraced his steps and soon found his scarf like a waypoint in the darkness.

  After a quick check back down the tunnel to see that the crypt door was still open, he continued along the other pathway. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for: a blood spatter, a torn piece of cassock, or an indication that the crypt had been breached via its hidden door, the crates dragged – some sure sign that this was the answer to the question of the stolen cache.

  It became clear that there was no easy answer.

  Within a few minutes, he found himself tracking through a heavy layer of silt. Looking at the ground behind him, he could easily see the tread of his brogues. He walked a few more steps, trying to travel light and leave no disturbance. Impossible: each step scraped the dirt to the stone.

  He crouched low and shone the torch on the ground ahead of him. The light revealed the tracks of a small cat; nothing else had come this way.

  ***

  ‘No one has been down that corridor in a very long time,’ Duchene said to Madame Noirot as he arrived back in Father Ramelle’s study.

  She was sitting at the desk, two glasses of whisky already poured. She had brought up the old oil lantern and had set its wick low. The smell of it filled the air. It reminded Duchene of dinners in the trenches, with sandbag cloth soaked in candle wax to create a fire barely hot enough to warm a dried vegetable stew.

  He sat across from her, and she passed him a whisky. She pulled a packet of cigarettes out of her pocket and offered him one. Lucky Strikes. ‘Your friend gave me his packet. There are still quite a few left.’

  Duchene nodded and let her light it for him. He sat back in the chair and peered through the gloom at an icon on the wall. Framed in gold leaf, it was a portrait of Jesus, his robes red, his beard symmetrical. It was strange to see a Russian Orthodox symbol in a Catholic Church.

  ‘What will you do next?’ Madame Noirot asked, letting the smoke roll from her mouth before drawing it back into her nostrils.

  ‘I have to think. Are you certain there’s no other key to the crypt?’

 
‘Just the one that’s kept in here,’ she said, patting the drawer.

  ‘And only Father Ramelle and yourself have keys to open it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Duchene sipped the whisky. It was strong, tasted like smoke and iodine, filled him with warmth. He winced as it went down. Madame Noirot smiled.

  ‘Has the key to the crypt always been locked away?’

  ‘Ever since Father Ramelle hid the guns down there.’

  He placed the cigarette to his lips, drew the smoke deep into his lungs, held it there before exhaling, let the buzz of the tobacco tingle to his fingers.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

  ‘Probably look at that key next. Have a look at the drawer.’

  ‘Not that. About your daughter?’

  ‘What can I do? She’s made her decision. She’s no longer my responsibility.’

  ‘This is what you are telling yourself. But it’s not really how you feel.’

  He sighed. ‘You’re probably right. But I need to take care of the other work first.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s too late, then. You don’t want to regret speaking sooner.’

  ‘You know this from experience?’

  She nodded. ‘I do.’

  Taking another sip, Duchene let the heat from it stir his mind. ‘Did you hear anything the night he went missing? That was Friday, yes?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No sound at all? Something mundane, normal, that might make sense now that you think back on it?’

  ‘No. It’s a big building. I sleep at the back, and the walls are thick. You were beating a storm on my door this evening, and I could hardly hear you.’

  He drew back on the cigarette.

  ‘You should acknowledge your own sins,’ Madame Noirot said. ‘Seek her counsel. Show her that you too make mistakes. Not even Christ was perfect.’

  ‘I seem to recall being told he was.’

  ‘He was without sin. But he made mistakes. He chose Judas as his friend.’

  ‘Well, that’s true … So, tell me, Madame, what is it you would like to confess?’