Flawed Banner

by John Harris

  She indicated the loaf he carried. ‘I bet that was expensive under the circumstances,’ she said.

  ‘On the contrary. It was very cheap. I stole it.’

  Grabbing her hand, he swung her round. The old woman, still white with plaster dust, passed them and she turned and grinned conspiratorially at them. They grinned back at her then started to run, hand in hand like children.

  With the food they had managed to buy, they decided to eat a solid breakfast by the roadside and, finding a convenient place, stopped beneath the trees.

  The old man looked with amusement at the three miserable steaks Woodyatt had managed to obtain. ‘How do you propose to cook them, young man?’ he asked.

  For once, Woodyatt was ahead of him and had thought of that. With the tools from the car, he removed the grille from the front of the bonnet and, propping it up on stones, proceeded to build a fire under it with twigs which they collected. Despite the toughness, in the fresh air the meat tasted wonderful.

  ‘Bravo, young man!’ Montrouge enthused. ‘What initiative. What knowledge of woodcraft. You would have learned this, I suppose, in Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts.’ He pronounced it as Bwa Scoo in the French fashion. ‘No doubt you were in his little army, training for soldiering as a boy. The man was an ass.’

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘Never met him in my life,’ Montrouge said jauntily.

  As they set off again, the traffic consisted mostly of small cars hung with pots, pans, even birdcages. If a car broke down the owners set up a temporary home in a field. Since they were all in second gear most of the time, petrol consumption was high. When the fuel ran out the cars were pushed into a ditch, their mattresses dangling from them like dead men hanging on barbed wire, and the occupants set off on foot. Occasionally they saw children and old people sitting in patient groups, waiting for families who had left them in search of food. In every village there were queues at the shops and at all the pumps and wells. But there was never any fuss, as if the people were already accepting the reality of France’s defeat.

  Many of the refugees had tried to save too much, even cumbersome bedsteads and grandfather clocks. There were dozens of overloaded vehicles which had capsized with smashed axles. Some had been pushed well aside to clear the road but nobody was willing to wait. As soon as the car stopped, the people from the vehicles behind climbed out, pushed it out of the way, climbed back to their seats and drove on. An old woman wearing sabots was dragging along a treadle sewing machine on wheels, with an ancient dog on top. Every car that passed had a head sticking out, yelling at her to get out of the way. She plodded on, deaf to the world.

  One village was full of more gaping reservists in uniform. It was clear that the disciplined machinery of the army had broken down. The road was littered with discarded packs, greatcoats, mess tins, rifles, bandoliers. Abandoned military vehicles were stuck in the hedgerows, their tyres punctured, their radiators blackened. One was on fire and the branches around it were ablaze, too, and crackling like machine-gun fire.

  ‘Une sale guerre,’ the men were saying. ‘Une saloperie de guerre!’

  Lost and bewildered, the soldiers watched their superiors abandoning them. As a car containing a handsome army officer and a smart woman approached, one pale young lad scooped up a handful of mud and flung it. It struck the officer on the cheek. He pretended it hadn’t happened and drove on like a man in a trance. It seemed to set the soldiers going.

  ‘Look at that!’ the young soldier yelled. ‘Off with his tart! They’re all the same!’

  There was the sound of breaking glass as a lunatic rampage was launched. Shop windows were broken and bottles were looted from the bars. The constant appearance of the wretched men involved was depressing. The children of a joyless era, victims of unemployment and the cynicism of ambitious politicians, they were creating havoc all over France.

  At Rambouillet there was another traffic jam. Taxis were honking and a bus ahead was stuck, the driver shouting abuse at an army lorry with a high canvas canopy. A British military-police section was on duty, trying to sort out the vehicles and looking for British-owned cars. As Woodyatt drew to a stop, a Bren carrier driven by a bony red-faced man with a ginger moustache drew up alongside. He was displaying a Grenadier Guards badge on his cap, which he wore in the usual Guards’ style over his nose.

  ‘You!’ One of the military policemen pointed at him. ‘Get outa the fucking way!’

  The Guardsman regarded him with a cold eye. ‘I’ll get outa the way when I feel like it,’ he retorted. ‘And I’ll thank you not to swear at the fucking Brigade of Guards.’

  The policeman grinned and there was a bark of laughter from Montrouge. Woodyatt looked quickly at him. It wasn’t the sort of retort a civilian, or a Frenchman, or a German would appreciate, though a British serviceman of any rank or any age, certainly would.

  Entering the town, they decided here was a chance to take a coffee to finish off their meal. The shops had all opened by this time but people were still standing at their doors and windows in their night clothes, bewildered by the endless procession of vehicles. There was an air of despairing irritation everywhere. This encompassed the waiters in the bars as well as the customers, and they had to wait for their coffee.

  The roads were hot by the time they got away again and still jammed with traffic. The stink around them was of human sweat, petrol fumes and dust. People were sitting at the side of the road looking as if they would never get to their feet again. Montrouge said he needed to stretch his legs.

  ‘I’m an old man,’ he said briskly. ‘Old men can’t sit in the same position for long periods!’

  As they stopped to let him get out, a lorry-load of girls who looked like factory workers went past, some of them singing, some weeping. Resuming their journey once again, they passed an aerodrome which had been flattened by bombers. The wooden hangars were still smouldering in a pall of blue smoke, and a Morane stood on its nose among the line of bomb craters. All they could see was a tangled mass of metal and there didn’t seem to be an unbroken pane of glass for miles. Officers of the armée de l’air, often with their wives, were driving away: their aeroplanes following on enormous floats with petrol bowsers and lorry-loads of men. Woodyatt wondered why they weren’t in the air.

  After a while it started to rain and they put the hood up. In the next town awnings erected for market day were being used as shelters by exhausted refugees and a noisy war of words was going on between them and the stall-holders who were trying to get their goods on display.

  Most of the shops were closed and long queues had formed outside any that were open. The interiors were packed with shouting, gesticulating people and by the time customers fought their way to the counter of their choice, there was often nothing left but tins of sardines. The shelves had been stripped bare. Down the street another crowd was hammering on the door of a baker’s. The glass broke and a great whoop of triumph went up as the mob surged inside. The baker had not been working but the locals emerged with stale rolls and baguettes, cakes and tarts, and left the shop a wreck.

  As Woodyatt restarted the car, babies seemed to be crying everywhere, but in the bars he could hear music and people laughing because they had been drinking on empty stomachs.

  As they left, the route became easier, though here and there it was blocked by piles of stone as if they’d been dumped as barriers against tanks. As they approached Chartres, they passed a car parked at the side of the road. A tall, thin man leaning against it was watching the passing vehicles, examining each one closely, bending and peering inside as they passed.

  ‘Is that the bastard who was working for Zamerski?’ Woodyatt yelled.

  It was too late. Dominique hadn’t seen him. But she had noticed another man behind the wheel of the stationary car. He had been wiping the perspiration from his face and as his hat was in his hand, she had been able to notice that he was fair-haired – and pink-faced.

  The bastards were right behind them, W
oodyatt decided. He had little doubt that they had been spotted. He reacted in the only way possible: he crouched over the wheel and thrust his foot down on the accelerator.

  They didn’t stop for some time and ate a late lunch at a small hotel at a village just south of Chartres. The place stank of spilled beer, wine, dry rot and stale urine from a lavatory down the hall with a door that didn’t close properly. Montrouge pushed his plate away.

  ‘What dreadful chefs they have these days,’ he said fretfully. ‘Fit only to cook for Tartars.’

  He appeared to be falling asleep at the table and Woodyatt was in a dilemma. Sleeping upright in a car was no way for a man of eighty to rest. He had to get him back to England but it wasn’t in the plan to kill him in the process. They had to get a room for the night and, because of the crowds, early afternoon seemed a good time to start trying.

  The hotel was full of people. At one table there were two men in city suits and stiff collars, even spats, sitting with a blonde woman loaded down with jewellery as if she were wearing all she possessed. There was something about them that indicated they were Paris gangsters with their moll, flushed out by the approach of the Germans and seeking their pickings in safer surroundings.

  By the use of a large denomination note, Woodyatt managed to secure a room. It contained one bed and an armchair and they pushed the old man up the stairs. He still clutched his suitcase. Only once had Woodyatt seen it open and then, apart from a few clothes, he had noticed it seemed largely full of papers.

  They had barely got Montrouge settled when the proprietor of the hotel appeared. ‘I must ask you to move,’ he said.

  ‘We’ve only just arrived,’ Dominique snapped.

  ‘I must insist, nevertheless. The room was booked. My wife didn’t realise. There is a room in the annexe you can have. This is for a sick man, so the doctor can come and go easily. He is a very important man. He’s also a very old man.’

  ‘So is our man,’ Woodyatt said.

  ‘This one is eighty.’

  ‘So is ours.’

  ‘If I may say so, Monsieur, my old man is a very old eighty. Yours is not.’

  Montrouge had been listening with interest. Without help, he swung his legs off the bed. ‘I will move,’ he said. ‘What does it matter whether I sleep here or down the garden? At my age it makes little difference.’

  With promises from the proprietor to reduce the price, even to throw in a free meal, they trudged down the stairs again and down the length of a neglected garden. At the end was a building which looked as though it had once been a barn. Inside, it had been newly converted into a set of rooms and bathrooms.

  Once again they got the old man established on the bed. He offered no thanks. The other room contained a narrow bed and Dominique looked enquiringly at Woodyatt.

  ‘I’ll sleep in the car,’ he growled.

  It was a lovely evening. There was a jade-green sky with a brush-stroke of pink across it, and for a while after dinner, they sat at a table outside and took Cognac with their coffee. Montrouge, Woodyatt noticed, drank the brandy with soda water. Inside the bar, the two men he had identified as Parisian gangsters were playing cards with the blonde woman and making a lot of noise.

  Eventually, Montrouge said he was tired and they escorted him to his room in the annexe. There was a separate entrance to the garden at the back of the hotel and a patch of gravel where cars were parked.

  Two or three white-painted iron tables and chairs were placed outside where people could eat their breakfast in summer, and Woodyatt sat drinking with Dominique until it grew dark. Every now and then they heard a rumble in the distance. At first they thought it was guns but decided in the end it was approaching thunder. It added an air of menace.

  For a while they remained silent, then Woodyatt drew a deep breath. ‘Have you made up your mind yet?’ he asked.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Our friend, Montrouge.’

  ‘I think you are right. I don’t know why but I think so. I have no proof, of course.’

  ‘Neither,’ Woodyatt said gloomily, ‘have I. However, we’re going via Angouleme to see someone who knows him better than I do. Someone who knew him in 1904 when it all happened. He was assistant military attaché at the Paris Embassy at the time.’

  Dominique was silent for a while. ‘Will he be able to identify him?’

  ‘He says he will.’

  ‘After all these years?’

  ‘He says he’d be able to identify him even after a lifetime.’

  ‘He sounds as though he doesn’t like him.’

  ‘I don’t think he does. The affair did him a lot of harm.’

  Dominique was already dressed when Woodyatt knocked on her door the following morning.

  Next door, Montrouge was at the wash basin. ‘I’m not ready,’ he said. ‘I like to be clean.’

  ‘So did Gorgeous George.’

  The old man’s head came up quickly. ‘Who did?’

  ‘Gorgeous George. That’s what they called Redmond. It was a joke when he was in South Africa.’

  The old man laughed and went on with his ablutions. ‘Still on about that, young man? You never give up, do you? You seem to have collected a great deal of frivolous information.’ He studied the two of them cynically. ‘Did you have a good night?’

  ‘I slept in the car,’ Woodyatt snapped.

  The old man looked at Dominique. ‘How very unenterprising,’ he said. ‘By the way, I left my razor in that room we quitted last night. I need it. You’d better get it for me.’

  He was speaking to Woodyatt as if he were a batman. For a moment Woodyatt ignored the request then he decided he didn’t want any delay and went in search of the razor.

  When he reached the hotel the staff were busy with breakfast, for the most part hovering round the blonde woman and her companions. There was no sign of the proprietor or his wife and Woodyatt decided to take a chance. Mounting the stairs to the room they had briefly occupied, he knocked on the door.

  There was no sound from inside and no answer to his knock and he decided the occupants were probably at breakfast. Cautiously he opened the door, ready to close it again if the occupant was asleep. What he saw sent him staggering back.

  On the bed was the figure of an old man, smaller than Montrouge, shrivelled and thin. He was in pyjamas and his mouth was open, his eyes were staring, his face ghastly. He seemed to be red from the waist up, his features smeared, his white hair standing on end with dried blood. The whole bed seemed to be soaked with it and it had splashed on to the walls, the floor, even on to the ceiling. The clawing hands were crimson and there was a smeared hand print near the door. On the pale lino on the floor was the print of a shoe in crimson.

  Five

  The traffic was still hurrying by on the road past the hotel as the police cars bumped on to the grass verge. The policemen immediately suspected Woodyatt.

  ‘You were the one who found him?’ they asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What were you doing there?’

  He explained about the razor.

  ‘He was killed with a razor. It’s still there. Why didn’t you call the proprietor?’

  ‘He was nowhere to be seen.’

  ‘Did you do it?’

  Woodyatt was recovering a little by this time. ‘If you looked, you’d see the blood’s dry.’

  ‘You could have done it last night. Are you a British officer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why aren’t you with your army, running away in the North?’

  ‘I’m here because my duty brings me here.’

  ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘I’m travelling with two others.’

  ‘Bring them here.’

  Still shaken, Woodyatt explained to Dominique what had happened.

  She looked shocked. ‘Did they think it was Monsieur Montrouge they were killing?’ she asked.

  Woodyatt had no doubt of it.

  When they reached the main building,
the police were still busy and the owner was frantic with panic at the savagery of the murder. His wife was wailing and alongside her a girl with a maid’s apron was weeping. The proprietor looked at Woodyatt reproachfully. ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he whimpered. ‘There was no need for this.’

  The police were surprised to find that Woodyatt’s companions were civilians. ‘Who are they?’ they demanded.

  Woodyatt explained that it was his job to get Montrouge to England and that Dominique was a nurse accompanying them.

  ‘Why do they want him in England?’

  ‘Because he’s important.’

  ‘There are too many important English to be got to safety while France is allowed to suffer. How do we know you’re not a German agent?’

  As they turned away, Woodyatt heard Montrouge’s voice just behind him. ‘I think, young man,’ he observed quietly, ‘that you are in a great deal of trouble.’

  Woodyatt had little doubt that he was right but he was far less concerned by the policemen’s attitude than by the knowledge that they had had a very narrow escape. Their pursuers were more than willing to murder and only by chance had Montrouge been saved. The one thing in his mind was that Zamerski, unaware of the mistaken identity, might feel his task had been accomplished and that from now on he would leave them alone. They needed to put a lot of distance behind them.

  In the end, despite their early antagonism, the police soon realised that the smudged red footprint on the floor of the bedroom bore no relation to Woodyatt’s shoe and they dropped their suspicions – even becoming friendly enough through their stiff officialdom to allow themselves to be questioned.

  ‘They were after his money,’ they said. ‘It seems he owned a store in Paris and was on his way to Biarritz. He had a lot with him.’

  Woodyatt and his companions were warned they would be questioned again but were allowed to have breakfast. He noticed that the blonde woman and the two men in the city suits and spats had disappeared.

  Afterwards, like everybody else in the hotel, they were interrogated once more. This meant being herded into the bar with the proprietor, his family and staff, but the policemen didn’t seem as concerned as they should have been and kept stopping to listen to the radio. France was falling to pieces about their ears and every few minutes some new disaster was announced. A thousand tragedies were being enacted round them. Frenchmen were still being killed in the North. The Germans were sweeping across the country. Among the hundreds moving along the roads, every minute brought some crisis or personal loss. It was impossible to stop the flood of refugees and any attempt to do so would have caused a riot. Without doubt the policemen’s minds were on their own families.