Flawed Banner

by John Harris

  ‘Fair-haired. That’s all she noticed. You know what people are like. They could pass the President of France in the street and not notice.’

  The policeman was eager to discuss the case with Woodyatt, as if he thought he were a British detective. But Woodyatt was eager to be away. It was already late and it was clearly going to be difficult to drive anywhere. Traffic still all seemed to be heading north and the French Transport Officer told him the army was trying to cut off the German advance in the Ardennes.

  ‘All it needed,’ he said bitterly, ‘was a few bombs. They were packed nose to tail. But all our aeroplanes are up in Belgium trying to stop them there. They’ve taken the Maastricht bridges and we’re trying to smash them. They’ve got us hopping about like a dog wanting to get out for a leak.’

  A colossal traffic jam was building up because the troops trying to move north were running into units of the French Ninth Army who were being forced back and were retreating southwards. There was a great deal of shouting and bad-tempered confusion. To Woodyatt it seemed pointless trying to go anywhere in the dark and he decided to wait until daylight.

  Nicole was waiting for him at her flat.

  ‘Nicole,’ he said. ‘I’m leaving. I have to go back to Amiens.’ He explained what he’d learned at the house near the Ban St Martin. ‘It wasn’t robbery,’ he said. ‘I think Madame Grune refused to give him the address. She wasn’t very keen to give it to me. When he turned up soon afterwards, she began to be suspicious. He must have been torturing her to get the information and killed her to stop her talking. The Sardier girl could be in danger.’

  She looked bewildered. ‘What shall I do without you?’ she asked. ‘The war’s started.’

  ‘The war started last September, Nicole,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately neither your country nor mine realised it.’

  Knowing he was leaving the following morning and that, with things as they were, it might be difficult to return, they decided to eat in town. They found the restaurant where the soldiers had sung and flirted with Nicole, but now they were all gone. The place was quiet and the mood depressed. They ate in silence.

  When they returned to the flat, Woodyatt followed Nicole inside where she moved about silently, attending to the blackout. Eventually, a small light went on and she stood near him, facing him, her face blank and expressionless. Putting his arms round her, he kissed her gently.

  ‘You have been here some time,’ she said. ‘You have never mentioned your wife.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘It is all over?’

  ‘It didn’t last long.’

  ‘Are you very bitter?’

  ‘I’m getting over it.’

  ‘It changes things,’ she said.

  ‘What does?’

  ‘The fact that it didn’t last long. Are you comfortable in your room?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think the bed is very small.’

  ‘It is a bit.’

  ‘I think you would have slept better in my bed. It is bigger and softer.’ She gave a nervous little giggle. ‘And I am very warm and cosy. I think also I would sleep better close to you. But I am a good wife and I miss my Claude. It would have been easy but it has all been so proper. So English. So fair play.’

  Sometime during the night Woodyatt woke to find the guns going again and Nicole sitting in her little salon. She was crying. As he sat alongside her and put his arms round her, she leaned limply against him.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why are you crying?’

  ‘I don’t know. You. Me. Claude. It was so lovely. But it’s all going to end soon. We know the Germans are coming.’

  ‘Perhaps it’ll be us who will go into Germany.’

  She shook her head. ‘French soldiers don’t have the spirit to advance. All they’ll do is wait for the Germans. I’m afraid.’ She clung to him. ‘Are you in love with me, Jimmee?’

  He wasn’t sure how to answer. She was a delightful companion, full of fun, intelligent and pretty, and he had always been a little in love with her. She saved him the embarrassment of having to work out a reply.

  ‘I am not in love with you. I was once. But then I met Claude. And I got married. Things never work out the way you expect, do they? Because there was a time when I thought you and I might marry.’

  ‘There was a time when I hoped we would. My mother certainly did.’

  ‘But I still love you – because I have known you since I was a little girl and one does love people who are familiar. But I am not “in love” with you.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘Though after your stay here, I could easily be again.’ She sighed. ‘One must love for today. There may not be any tomorrow. A woman needs to be loved,’ she went on. ‘And I am so afraid it might never happen now. Especially since the guns started. They are guns, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes. They’re guns.’

  ‘Perhaps I shall join my parents.’ She smiled. ‘I have written to Claude. He will know what to do and how to get in touch with me. Surely the Germans will never reach Hyères.’ She blinked away the tears. ‘It’s so bewildering, so sudden, and it would be sad to die in a war without love.’

  He kissed her and she clung fiercely to him, her mouth seeking his. As the guns died, she became quiet in his arms and eventually fell asleep, still clutching him tightly. Long after he heard her breathing steady, he stared into the darkness, wide-eyed.

  It was a nightmare journey to Amiens. The traffic made the going slow and he was held up again and again at cross roads to allow a column of military vehicles to pass. Several times his papers were demanded and there seemed to be a great deal of panic. A British military policeman explained. ‘They reckon Jerry’s dropping parachutists everywhere,’ he said.

  ‘Dressed in British and French uniforms. Disguised as women.’

  He grinned. ‘If you see a nun wearing hob-nailed boots, sir, you’ll know to be careful.’

  The rumours multiplied and several times Woodyatt saw people stuffing cars with suitcases and packages as if they didn’t intend to take chances. Probably they’d been refugees in the last war and thought it wiser to be on the safe side.

  Despite everything, however, the countryside looked remarkably peaceful and there was little sign of air activity. Then he heard the sound of engines and looked up. Aeroplanes had appeared from nowhere and a German machine he recognised as a Dornier 215 was being harassed by two British Hurricanes. The Dornier was low down and zigzagging wildly and the traffic came to a stop to watch. Suddenly the Dornier’s speed dropped abruptly, so that the Hurricanes overshot, and it made a slow half-circuit round a field until it hit a ridge, bounced, came down again and slithered along the ground – panels and pieces of engine cowling flying into the air before it came to rest with a rocking motion.

  A few French soldiers moved cautiously towards it. As they approached, the roof of the Dornier’s cockpit opened and the pilot appeared, waving his arms, and clambered down to the ground. The Frenchmen ignored him and fished down into the fuselage to drag out the rear gunner who was either badly wounded or dead. People stood up in their vehicles and clapped, and one of the French soldiers bowed and pointed to the circling Hurricanes as if acknowledging that the applause was really theirs. Everybody looked up and clapped again.

  It was oppressively hot as the traffic started once more. As the French soldiers hoisted the unwounded German to his feet, nearby an old man was tilling his land with a horse-drawn harrow. A boy followed in the newly cut farrow. Both of them were totally indifferent to what had happened. Then explosions were heard and the drone of more aircraft. Woodyatt had seen a group of Heinkels turning over the eastern horizon but they had all vanished except one, and as it approached he decided it might be a good idea to leave the car and be ready to take shelter in the ditch alongside the road. Other people followed him.

  The Heinkel had vanished behind a low hill then without warning it reappeared, roaring over the rise at tremendous speed. There was a whisper, a whistle, then an unearthl
y shriek that split the heavens. Everybody flung themselves flat and clawed at the earth. There was a series of ear-splitting crashes and Woodyatt saw the Morris and a big lorry just ahead of it bounce on their tyres as the bombs went off. Then the scream of engines was gone and the French soldiers were loosing off their rifles in a broken crackle of firing in the hope of hitting something.

  Nobody appeared to have been hurt but all at once they saw the boy who had been helping the old farmer running towards them. He was pointing towards a heap on the skyline and they made out the horses lying together, with the old man who had been guiding them just behind.

  Woodyatt went with the soldiers and one or two civilians to see what could be done. The old man was dead but the horses were still alive – just. One of the French soldiers shot them.

  It went on like that throughout the journey. Long periods of quiet when the traffic moved on, forcing its way through unexpected jams at crossroads; military vehicles moving north and east across the route; panic-stricken civilians; rumours; an occasional aircraft. The violence was twice as shocking after the tranquillity of the past weeks. The Phoney War had ended with a vengeance and in its place had come a hurricane sweeping across France’s eastern flank.

  The spire of Amiens cathedral came up against the sky and soon afterwards a weary Woodyatt was driving into the square past the hotel where Dominique Sardier had walked out on him. The city was silent under the black-out and no traffic was moving. He glanced at his watch. It was approaching midnight and he wondered how, even with a warning of danger, you got inside an unmarried lady’s house at that hour.

  When he reached Dreuil, the sky was clear and full of stars and he could see the river reflecting its light in little glints like diamonds. He stopped near Dominique’s house. It was in darkness. Parking the car off the road under the trees, he switched off the lights and approached on foot, keeping to the grass verge to deaden the sound of his footsteps. He had no wish to alarm her.

  There was no sign of life and he hoped to God she hadn’t already headed for Paris to warn Montrouge that he was on his track. She hadn’t believed his story, that was clear, and her desire to protect the old man was equally clear. It was even quite possible that she had decided he should move from wherever he was hiding at the moment. Woodyatt had no doubt he was hiding, no doubt at all by now that Montrouge had once been von Rothügel who had once been Redmond.

  Since the house stood on its own, it was possible to move round the back along the fence. There was still no sign of life, and he thought it was deserted. Then he saw a chink of light in one of the ground floor windows and realised that she had not left after all, even that she was still awake and downstairs. He moved nearer, starting as he knocked over a stake from among a pile leaning against a corrugated iron shed that was being used as a garage. Fortunately, the stake fell on to a patch of grass without a sound.

  As he approached the house he heard a faint mewing noise he couldn’t understand. The shutters were closed but one of them was a bad fit and he suddenly wondered if she had Montrouge in there with her. It would have fitted in with what he had learned of her character. Creeping close, he realised he could see into the room he remembered as her living room. As he put his face to the glass, the first thing he found himself looking at was a man – a young man.

  My God, he thought at once, she’s a dark horse! She had a secret lover…she’d replaced Monsieur Maladroit with someone else! He could see her beyond him, partially obscured by the man’s shape, and she appeared to be naked. He was looking at her bare shoulders and arms.

  The man was wearing a short coat despite the heat. He was talking and as he stepped to one side, Woodyatt suddenly realised what was happening. Dominique Sardier was sitting in a chair her hands tied behind its back, her ankles lashed to the legs with what looked like a clothes-line. There was a gag in her mouth, held in place by a silk scarf secured tightly enough round her head to make her cheeks bulge. The mewing noises he had heard were her cries of pain and terror through the gag. Chestnut hair fell in strands over terrified eyes. The man had wrenched open her dress – that same green dress that matched her eyes, the same dress she had worn to have dinner with Woodyatt – and dragged it down so that she was naked to the waist.

  Dominique’s visitor was smoking and Woodyatt now saw that on her breast there was a bright pink spot and that tears were streaming down her cheeks. She was shaking her head with a desperate firmness and Woodyatt realised that the man must be an associate of the blond character who had tortured the old woman in Metz. He was doing the same here and for the same reason.

  Wondering how to deal with the situation, Woodyatt tried the door gently, but it was locked or bolted. He had his revolver strapped to his waist but inside there was a gun on the table and there was obviously not the slightest chance of bursting into the house without being shot. And the surrounding houses were too distant to take any notice of any strange sounds – especially now that the odd echoes of war could be heard.

  The man in the house took a deep drag at his cigarette, blew out the smoke then, leaning forward, he pressed the glowing end against the girl’s breast. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she shook her head in agony, unable to scream because of the gag.

  Woodyatt heard Dominique’s assailant speak. ‘L’adresse,’ he said. ‘L’adresse. L’adresse. If you are prepared to give it to me, nod and I will let you go.’

  Desperate to do something, Woodyatt remembered the stakes he had disturbed. Grabbing one of them, he dragged it across the corrugated iron of the shed. When he looked through the window again he saw the man inside was standing with his head cocked at the terrified girl on the chair. Eventually he glanced at the door, picked up the gun and moved out of Woodyatt’s vision. Standing with his back to the wall close to the door, Woodyatt waited with the stake in his hands, his breath stilled in his throat. After a few moments, the door clicked and he heard the sound of a bolt being drawn. Woodyatt flattened himself against the wall. First of all the gun appeared through the opened door, the barrel just visible in the light from the stars. Then slowly, after what seemed an interminable wait, the man’s arm. Woodyatt swung the stake with all his strength.

  Six

  Coming unseen out of the darkness, the heavy stake smashed down across the stranger’s forearm and the gun went flying. Bringing the stake up again, Woodyatt sent the gunman himself staggering back inside the house, where he sprawled against the wall, face covered with blood, nose and mouth pulped by the heavy piece of wood. Woodyatt grabbed him by the collar, kicked the door shut and dragged him face-down into the living room. All the while Dominique stared at him with horrified eyes as if this were some new terror she had to endure.

  Her tormentor was unconscious and looked as if he wouldn’t cause trouble for a while. Woodyatt quickly untied the knots that held her to the chair and unfastened the scarf holding the gag in her mouth. When she tried to rise to her feet, almost collapsing against him, he put his arm round her, letting her lean, half-fainting, against him. Eventually she managed to struggle upright, then sat down on the chair again, her head hanging, her arms covering her scarred breasts.

  Using the ropes that had lashed Dominique to the chair, Woodyatt tied the intruder’s hands behind his back. In doing so he probably broke the man’s arm, but he was quite indifferent and even surprised at his own ruthlessness.

  ‘He was going to burn me again,’ Dominique whispered through the tangle of hair that fell over her face. Her hands moved feebly, trying to hold the ruins of the dress in place.

  ‘He wanted Montrouge’s address?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She lay back in the chair, staring up at him. He took off his trench coat and laid it over her and she gave him a weak look of thanks.

  ‘Take your time,’ he said. ‘He can’t harm you now. Was he alone?’

  ‘I think so.’ Her head was wobbling a little. ‘But he mentioned another man.’

  Woodyatt went to the door and, locking it, ch
ecked the front door and the windows.

  ‘Have you any brandy?’

  Her head moved to indicate a small cupboard. On top he noticed the vase containing the red roses he had bought her. Inside was a half-full bottle of Courvoisier. He found a glass. It was thick and far from being a brandy balloon but he sloshed the spirit into it and handed it to her. She swallowed too much, coughed, and hiccoughed as the raw spirit burned her stomach.

  ‘All of it.’

  She did as she was told and he refilled the glass – generously.

  ‘How did he get in?’

  ‘He came to the door as it grew dark. He looked perfectly all right.’

  Woodyatt glanced at the man on the floor. His face was a mask of blood. ‘He doesn’t now.’

  She looked up at him, her eyes appealing for understanding. ‘I thought you had sent him.’

  ‘I think you’d better put something on those burns,’ Woodyatt advised.

  She rose to her feet and went unsteadily to the kitchen where she opened a cupboard and took out a tube of ointment.

  ‘I bought it when I burned my hand on the stove. I’ll find something else to wear.’

  He watched her go up the stairs, then bent over the man on the floor. He was stirring now. The best thing to do with him would be to hand him over to the police and get out of Dreuil before his partner turned up.

  After a while Dominique reappeared. She had dressed in a skirt and a loose blouse and had done her hair and put on a little make-up. He made her sit down and poured himself a brandy. ‘Another?’ he asked.

  She didn’t take much persuading and he decided that it might make her more willing to answer the questions she had earlier refused.

  ‘Do you accept now that what I told you is true?’ he asked.

  Her head inclined slowly. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You understand how important it is that I find Montrouge?’ Woodyatt indicated the man on the floor. ‘Is he German?’