At a million-plus, they’d be damned expensive fish.
Exerting muscle-power, she forced the sash window up and leant out, taking in the panorama of roofs and chimneys, one church spire in the foreground and – at much greater distance northeastward – that of the cathedral, on Rive Droite. The river wasn’t visible. More interesting to her, anyway, was the drop from this window and what other windows might be directly under it: thinking of the aerial wire of the Mark III dangling across them when she paid it out.
There were shutters, though, latched back. If she pushed the wire out between the slats, fiddled the rest of it through and pushed it out to the end… If the lower windows were directly below this – they would be, surely – it would hang down a foot and a half to the side, not across them. That was the answer. It was fine wire, and black, non-reflective, you’d have to be looking for it to see it.
Not that she was intending to make any transmissions from this room, but she’d be listening out – for details of Romeo’s pickup, for instance – and on occasion would need to blip off an acknowledgement.
11
Tuesday: she was at Chez Jacqui a minute before nine: pushing in to find Jacqueline Clermont busy on the telephone – glancing her way and recognizing her, smiling, wiggling the fingers of one hand. Her assistant, Estelle, in the same pale blue smock with the darker entwined letters CJ on the left shoulder, also looking round, from cleaning one of the basins: ‘Good morning, madame.’
Jacqui was now holding the phone at arm’s length, raising her eyes to heaven while a shrill voice gabbled, like Donald Duck’s except that it was female; when it paused for breath Jacqui said quickly, ‘Tomorrow afternoon at three, then. Forgive me, I’ve a horde of customers. Until tomorrow.’
She hung up. ‘One of those. Imagine when it’s in here, going on two or three hours. As I think I mentioned…’
‘Earning your living the hard way.’
‘And I hope’ – a glance at the sample-case – ‘you’ve begun to earn yours?’
Rosie put the case down, beside one of the chairs in which customers could wait. Bright cushions, magazines. It weighed a lot less than it had done: she’d loosened a floorboard under the bed in her room at Ursule’s and hidden both the Mark III and the money in there. The board hadn’t been loose to start with and didn’t look loose now.
Touch wood. A vision of Romeo waiting across the street to see her leave. It was less a matter of maligning him than of questioning her own judgement.
Straightening, she shook her head. ‘Truth is, I’m pinning a few hopes on you.’
‘But I did warn you—’
‘I know, but—’
‘The real truth is – forgive me for speaking frankly – well, there must be a small market for your perfumes, but it’d be a miracle if you could live on it. People don’t have money to splash out, these days. Anyway, not many. Germans perhaps – French perfumes to send home as presents to their women – that’s a possibility.’
‘Do you have German customers?’
‘A few. Not men, of course. But the men window-shop, don’t they – and they’d tell each other…’ Checking the time: ‘Oh, God… Look, if you don’t mind, we’d better make a start. I tell you what – if you’d like to, you could come this evening, we could talk then?’
‘I’d love that!’
‘So… My last customer,’ – she opened her appointment book – ‘last one should be out of here by – six. Suppose you come at seven? Then we won’t be interrupted – upstairs. I can sniff all your lovely fragrances?’
‘But that’d be perfect!’
‘I’d like it too. Fine, that’s settled. Now – here you are. Cut, wash and set?’
‘Please.’ She sat down: a blue cotton surplice swung, settled around her. Looking up at the clock: ‘How long, d’you think? Two hours?’
‘About that. A snag sometimes is the power supply. The dryers can be erratic in their performance.’
‘I asked because I have an appointment I must keep, soon after eleven.’
‘We’ll step on it, then. But first’ – ruffling Rosie’s brown hair – ‘what to do with this?’
‘It’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it?’
‘To be frank again, my dear, it looks as if it’s been bitten off in lumps…’
‘Well – a young Parisian did it, as it happens – and at the time—’
‘Even worse before that, was it? Would you leave it to me, to do what I can?’
‘Yes. Please. As long as I can be out of here at eleven.’
‘Good-looking, is he?’
‘What?’
‘Your mid-morning date. Good-looking – rich?’
‘It’s not that kind of date at all.’
Estelle was on the telephone. Jacqui murmured, ‘Don’t you have a man friend yet?’
‘Not in Rouen. Heavens, I only got here last Wednesday!’
‘With your looks you should have been beating them off with a stick by Thursday!’
Smiling into the mirror: ‘Don’t have a stick.’
‘You’d need one, if you took yourself in hand, a little. This hair, to start with – OK, we’ll fix that – but also make-up – and perhaps a splash of your own scent – and try not to look so worried—’
‘Didn’t know I did.’
‘This job you’ve taken on, I suppose.’
‘Anyway – I’d still be an ugly duckling beside you.’
The smile was involuntary – as if she’d touched an electric button. She thought, Bull’s-eye… following it up with ‘I’ll tell you honestly – first sight I had of you, I thought Hollywood would absolutely snap her up!’
‘What a happy thought…’
‘Must have occurred to you, surely. Wouldn’t it appeal to you – if it were possible?’
‘If…’ Scissors were in play now, ‘As a young girl, I suppose one might have had such thoughts. Day-dreams. But then – well, the money would be nice, I’d like that part of it…’
‘You’re not married – don’t wear a ring, anyway – but I’d guess you do have a man friend?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Her eyes met Rosie’s in the glass. ‘I do indeed. Talking about me now – I start on your problems, and—’ The street door had opened, another customer arriving… She glanced round: ‘Good day, madame.’ Calling towards the curtain, then: ‘Estelle!’ Back to the customer: ‘I’m sorry – that girl’s constantly disappearing…’ Then to Rosie, quietly, ‘Tell you about him this evening, if you’re interested… Estelle, Madame Guertz has come for her wash and set. I’ll attend to the setting myself, of course…’
* * *
The people in S.I.S., Rosie thought, would be patting her on the back. At this stage, anyway. It was sheer luck, of course, no skill in it at all, they’d simply taken a liking to each other. She couldn’t have acted it anything like as well: even if the ulterior motive hadn’t existed, she’d have been looking forward to seeing Jacqui again. Because of the ulterior motive, though? Without realizing it, liking her because she’d made it so easy?
Perhaps she – Jacqui – didn’t have many friends of her own here. Result of her German connection? (Connections, plural: as Colonel Walther’s mistress she’d have to consort with his brother officers, presumably: he wouldn’t hide her. It was a reasonable guess that in Amiens her friends would be either German or French collaborators.)
Anyway, Rosie told herself, the thing would be now to play it carefully, not push it too hard to try to progress too fast. Let her make the running. If she was lonely – during the week, at any rate – felt the need of female company… It was natural enough that Jeanne-Marie Lefèvre would welcome the contact – as a newcomer to a town in which she knew no-one at all, and needing any help she could get with the scent-flogging business… And if she wanted to talk about her colonel – well, fine, let her. It would be perfectly natural to show interest, too. In the relationship itself and its history, and what sort of man he was, and from that what kind of sol
diering he did. To Jeanne-Marie politics wouldn’t count for much: the Germans were here, that was simply a fact of life, her primary interest would be survival. She might well be envious of Jacqui, and wonder whether she might not climb on to a similar bandwagon: not through inclination, not like Jacqui – whose interest in men in general was slightly obvious – viz, information more or less admitted by La Chatte to S.I.S. – but because prospects in the scent business were practically nil and even the ingenuous Jeanne-Marie would be beginning to suspect as much, might well be losing sleep over it.
So let that show. Stir Jacqui’s sympathy. Maybe she had already – it could be part of it.
* * *
Eleven-ten now. She was too early to go straight to the rendezvous at the Café Belle Femme, had strolled up into the Place du Vieux Marché: unhurried, a lot more relaxed now that the sample-case had only samples in it. She felt comparatively safe. Papers in order, nothing incriminating on her, a sound cover-story, if anything slightly enhanced now by prospects of a business relationship with Jacqueline Clermont.
She didn’t expect César to be at the rendezvous. And to be honest with herself, she had to admit that at this stage she didn’t need him. The drops were organized, Baker Street would be making arrangements for pulling Romeo out, and she wanted to concentrate on the Jacqui business, which had nothing to do with César anyway.
Except that if he didn’t turn up pretty soon you could be fairly certain he’d come to grief.
She was passing the old church that was dedicated to Joan of Arc. Its windows were boarded up, the stained glass removed against the risk of bomb-damage. Imagining herself kneeling in there in the gloom: Please, God… There wasn’t time, though: it was eleven-fifteen, and if César was in Rouen he’d be dropping into a chair outside the Belle Femme at about this moment, looking for her to join him in ten minutes’ time. So – from the top of this Place, eastward along Rue Guillaume-le-Conquérant: she’d turn down Rue Jeanne d’Arc when she came to it. Then three blocks and turn right again.
Ignoring the bloody swastikas. Red for blood, black for darkness. Look the other way: with that familiar shiver in the brain…
And feeling like that, but able to contemplate an almost genuinely friendly association with a Frenchwoman who shared the bed of one of them?
Because he was the target: for no other reason. And seeing her through the eyes of Jeanne-Marie Lefèvre, not those of Rosie Ewing.
There’d been no bombing here for a month or five weeks, Ursule had told her at breakfast – ersatz coffee, bread which might have come from the Bonhommes, plum jam. There’d been several other inmates at the communal table, but no obvious tarts. Ursule had joined her for a few minutes, chatting about this and that: about the bombing, and the damage that had been done. The port was always the target: but of course bombs did go astray…
Letting the Allied airmen off the hook of responsibility for it? Rosie hadn’t risen to the bait. To accept the risk of being killed in one of their raids, you’d have to be devoted to the Allied cause.
Eleven-eighteen. Turning right into Rue aux Ours. Slowing her pace, with only about a hundred yards to go. This was really only a matter of ‘going through the motions’; she could tell Baker Street that for a second time he hadn’t shown up, and get on with her own commitments – which would include some more trips out into the countryside: to the north and northeast. Amiens, for instance, Jacqui’s colonel’s base. She’d thought about this when she’d woken in the night, would have to think about it some more and also talk to Romeo, pick his brains without giving anything away.
Grey-green and buff-coloured uniforms crowding past her. Doing all right this far, Ben… Over the road, into Place de la Pucelle: pucelle meaning virgin. The Hôtel Bourgtheroulde’s ancient stone hideously defaced by that outsize swastika banner. She was at the corner more or less opposite it, with the café just along here on her left, its pavement tables already in her field of view. Three – four – were occupied: one by the fat man who’d been here last time. His bulk and the hunched-together shapes of two elderly women at a nearby table – like two vultures, quick-eyed, furtive, looking up at the waitress who was hovering over them – temporarily screened her view of the customers further back: and she had to look away, there being some danger of Fatso imagining that she was interested in him.
Then with the view cleared, another glance that way…
Fair hair, and a floppy blond moustache. She hadn’t expected a moustache: recent addition, she supposed. Much less than forty, you’d have guessed nearer thirty. Wide-shouldered: leaning back in the chair with one arm dangling, the other hand fiddling with the coffee-cup in front of him. Surprise as it were stopping her in her tracks – figuratively speaking – mentally, psychologically – while physically she’d changed direction to pass between Fatso’s table and those women’s, on what might have been her most direct route to the café’s open, glass-topped doors.
Twin cups on the table, one unused, both spoons in the saucer in front of him. Sipping at his coffee – or making a show of doing so – narrow blue eyes on hers over the cup’s rim.
She pulled a chair back for herself. ‘César. At last…’
* * *
They’d left the Belle Femme, after a few mundane remarks aimed at Fatso’s obviously straining ears, and were now strolling – limping, in César’s case – westward along Quai du Havre. Getting towards the Quai Boulet, in fact. There was a cool breeze off the river, a smell of tar, shipping on the move… César was carrying her sample-case for her. He was quite a small man: when he dipped, each time his left foot touched the ground, he came down more or less eye-to-eye with her. She knew – had been told, in London – that the limp was the result of an injury to his left knee during parachute training in 1940, but he’d told her – when they’d left the café and had been heading river-wards down Rue St Eloi – ‘According to my papers, a horse fell on me. Caused me to be invalided out of the Army, in ’38.’
‘French army.’
‘Of course.’ He was actually quite pleasant-looking, in his own way. Strangely slitted eyes, though. And a bit tense: it showed around the mouth. She guessed he might have grown the moustache to make himself look older. She queried, ‘French horse, too?’
He glanced at her – surprised – for a moment before he laughed. Then it was as if he was amused at her, rather than at the weak joke: she sensed the beginning of an easier relationship, a slight relaxation. Telling him, ‘I was getting worried. Thinking something had happened to you… Colonel Buckmaster asked me to give you his regards, by the way. ’
‘Oh. That’s – nice.’
‘Did you run into problems, on your way?’
‘You could say so. You could say – a marathon… Look, shall we sit here?’
One of the stone benches: there was one every fifty yards or so, and this one was unoccupied, an old man having just got up from it and shuffled to the riverside.
‘A marathon. I’ll tell you about it. But – Angel – we’ve a lot to be getting on with, haven’t we? To start with, what’s your cover here?’
‘That is.’ Nodding towards the sample-case, which he’d put down on the paving between them. ‘I’m representing a well-known Paris parfumeur. Maison Cazalet. I’m calling on hairdressers and such people – anyone who might be interested – and those are samples.’
‘Is there a Maison Cazalet?’
‘Certainly there is. Pierre Cazalet, who heads it, happens also to be a personal crony of Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering. How d’you like that?’
An intent stare, while he absorbed it. He could have been an Englishman, she thought. If it hadn’t been for the moustache, anyway. An Englishman would have clipped or shaped it; this droopy thing was definitely French.
‘You’re telling me he’s a friend of the Reichsmarshall – therefore presumably accepted as a collaborateur – and he’s provided you with this cover?’
‘He’s also supposed to be a cousin of mine. Helping a
n impecunious young relation – I’m a widow, you see, I have a small daughter whom I’ve left with my former mother-in-law while I try to scrape a living.’
‘This man’s really your cousin?’
‘Of course not. But it’s good, isn’t it? I’m working quite hard at trying to sell the perfumes – not full-time, but enough to make it real… It’s almost flawless. As long as Louis himself stays in the clear, of course. And with friends of that calibre—’
‘You referred to him as Pierre – that’s his code-name, “Louis”?’
‘Yes.’ Studying him – the sun’s reflections from the river’s moving surface flickering in his brilliantly blue eyes. His French was slightly stilted, she’d noticed, had a degree of correctness that suggested a language learnt, not grown up with… She asked him, ‘And your cover?’
‘I was about to ask whether you’ve made contact yet with this Romeo, so-called.’
‘I have, yes. All right, I’ll—’
‘No – I’ll give you my story first. Have our backgrounds straight, and go on from there… This is a bit of a tear-jerker, I’m afraid. At its roots quite similar to my own true origins – Father’s business in Dieppe – and Rotterdam, we spent a lot of time in Holland, I actually spoke Dutch before French although I am French… I was never in the family business, straight from school to Saint-Cyr. Name of Rossier, by the way, Michel Rossier – and your name?’
‘Jeanne-Marie Lefèvre.’
‘Lefèvre, Jeanne-Marie. And you’re a widow. OK… Well – I married a girl from Rouen and we spent a lot of time here – all my leaves from the Army, weekends and so forth. But she’s dead – some time ago, in a road accident – and now I’m for it – I’ve only six months to live.’ He tapped his chest, the region of the heart. ‘Six months is an estimate – could be less, could be a year, but that’s the prognosis.’
‘Commiserations.’
‘Thank you. I’m – er – older than I look, you realize.’
Into the Fire Page 19
