British Bulldog

by Sara Sheridan

  Mirabelle turned. ‘Look, there’s a woman trapped in an attic further along. The attic of number 8. At least I think that’s where she is. I’m not a thief out of anything other than necessity, monsieur, and anyway I’ve brought back your things. I can’t see any other way to help this girl. She’s in trouble. Please, if you’ll be patient, I’ll see to it you’re rewarded.’

  ‘You should let me do this,’ McGregor put in. ‘It’s dangerous.’

  Mirabelle shook her head. ‘I’m more agile,’ she said. ‘And I know where I’m going. I need to see if she’s there.’

  The man took a swig from a glass of port, which he’d left on the floor next to his chair, and gave a dismissive flap of his hand. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  McGregor reached into his inside pocket and brought out a knife. ‘Here,’ he said, flicking it open. ‘You might need this.’ Mirabelle looked dubious. McGregor didn’t normally carry a weapon.

  ‘Why on earth did you bring that?’

  ‘I’m abroad,’ he said in explanation.

  Mirabelle grinned. ‘Thanks.’ She slipped the serrated blade into her pocket so that the wool stretched even further. ‘I hope it doesn’t come in handy.’

  Outside the air was chill. The iron grille of the balcony felt icy beneath her feet. She held her breath as McGregor’s strong hands lifted her upwards and she scrambled onto the lead roof. Gingerly she crawled along the top until the skylight of number 8 was beneath her. When she peered in she saw the room was empty even of the chair and the rags she had been bound with. She squinted through the glass. The door to the hallway lay open as if the room had been hastily abandoned. Perhaps the Russians had moved. Safe houses could be switched in a moment.

  Curious, she pulled at the skylight. It was more difficult from the outside than it had been from within, but slowly she managed to heave it open. Then she lowered herself onto the bare wooden boards. Beyond the room where she’d been held, the hallway was deserted. Mirabelle crept on tiptoes to the top of the stairs and listened. There was no noise from below. Perhaps the Russians had gone. An eerie silence pervaded the apartment. Mirabelle started to turn back, but just as she did so there was a low moan from behind a closed door on the other side of the stair. Her heart flipped in her chest. It hadn’t sunk in that there was another room up here.

  Aware she must work silently, Mirabelle tentatively turned the key that had been left in the door and swung it open. The room smelled rancid. There was no ventilation – the men had clearly decided to use this side of the hallway after her escape because there was no skylight. Inside, Evangeline Durand was tied to the same chair Mirabelle been tied to earlier in the day with what looked like the same linen rag. Mirabelle checked over her shoulder before walking silently into the room. The girl was dripping with sweat and a thin line of vomit trailed down her beautiful dress. She was breathing heavily. Mirabelle took her hand. The skin felt clammy but Evangeline was conscious. She looked up at Mirabelle and smiled.

  ‘I’ve come to get you. Can you stand up?’

  The girl took a protracted breath that was painful to watch. She shook her head.

  ‘He put it over my mouth,’ she wheezed, enunciating each syllable slowly and with an effort. ‘I have asthma. They say it’s in the mind, but whatever he put over my mouth started it.’

  Mirabelle wondered whether she might be able to carry the girl to safety, but it would take two pairs of hands to hoist her through the skylight. Perhaps the quickest way would be to fetch McGregor. Together they’d manage it. She was about to turn when she heard a heavy footfall on the wooden steps leading up to the attic. She froze, then whirled to close the door, realising she couldn’t lock it from the inside. Someone was coming. Would they tumble to the fact that Evangeline must have had company – someone who’d unlocked the door? With her heart thumping, she rolled out of sight under the only other piece of furniture in the room – a large upholstered chaise longue placed along the wall. The women’s eyes met. Mirabelle put her fingers to her lips and Evangeline nodded. The door swung open and Albert strode in.

  ‘You are an idiot, Pieter,’ he said to someone outside. ‘You didn’t even lock it.’

  ‘I did,’ a second voice insisted.

  Albert ignored him. He hovered over the girl. Clearly this time he’d decided to try different interrogation tactics. Perhaps her youth made him bold. Or maybe her once beautiful dress offended his political sensibilities. Without warning Albert pulled back his arm and struck her a full blow on the face.

  ‘Where is it, Mademoiselle Evangeline? Where is the scarf? Who were you going to deliver it to?’

  Mirabelle could only see the girl in profile now but the kid was plucky. The faintest smile flickered across her face as she heaved for breath, and her eyes were hard.

  ‘That’s my secret,’ she managed. ‘Fetch a doctor or you’ll never know.’

  Albert leaned over her. ‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ he sneered. And to underline his point he shoved his hand into her face and held her mouth and nose spitefully so she couldn’t breathe.

  ‘I bet a daddy’s girl like you is used to issuing orders. Well, Mademoiselle Durand, you’re not in high society now. Did you think you were playing a game?’

  Evangeline’s face turned puce and her legs twitched. In her current state the poor girl was so completely vulnerable it was painful to watch. Mirabelle felt in her pocket for McGregor’s knife as her anger rose. If she could take Albert by surprise, perhaps his greater height and weight wouldn’t count too much against her. She’d need to slit his throat, she calculated. That way he wouldn’t be able to shout for help. Her mind rushed with a cocktail of terror and outrage and she visualised herself rolling from under the chaise longue and getting to her feet before he could react. The element of surprise would work in her favour. Albert let go of Evangeline’s face as a second man came into the room. Mirabelle held herself back. She couldn’t take both of them. The girl’s wheezing resumed. She gasped desperately but clearly she wasn’t getting enough air. Not nearly.

  ‘If she dies we won’t get anything out of her,’ Pieter pointed out. From what Mirabelle could see this second man was younger. ‘I could fetch the pharmacist we used when Max got shot. He’d be able to help.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Albert hissed.

  ‘You gave her the stuff,’ Pieter said. ‘It’s not my fault she can’t breathe properly. How much did you use?’

  Albert shoved the boy’s shoulder. ‘She’s just panicking,’ he snapped, and turned back to Evangeline. ‘If you tell me where you put the scarf, I’ll let him go for the pharmacist. He wants to go, mademoiselle. He’s quite gallant, don’t you think? Your knight in shining armour.’

  Pieter stiffened. ‘Do what you want,’ he said. ‘I’m only trying to help.’

  Behind Albert Mirabelle could see that Evangeline was in some kind of altered state of mind. The lack of oxygen had clearly affected her. The girl didn’t seem fully conscious. She began humming between wheezing.

  ‘The scarf,’ Albert insisted.

  ‘I did my hair. I went to the opera,’ she sang. It must be taking a huge effort to get the words out, Mirabelle thought.

  ‘Where did you hide the scarf?’

  ‘My mother prefers a chignon. But I like a full bun.’

  Albert slapped the girl hard. ‘I swear,’ he said, ‘you’d better tell me.’

  Evangeline laughed. She turned towards the chaise longue, wheezing all the while, and stared Mirabelle right in the eye.

  ‘Elnette,’ she said, ‘is the best hairspray.’

  Albert lost his temper. He punched Evangeline in the stomach. Pieter pulled him off. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘You’ll kill her.’

  ‘These women …’ Albert was so angry that he couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.

  Evangeline was retching now. A slick dribble of vomit slid down her chin and onto the chiffon bodice. She heaved in as much air as she could, but it was only a trickle and it cost her dear. She st
opped humming. She couldn’t speak. Her arm jerked as she pulled against the linen rag that tied her to the chair. Mirabelle looked away. There was nothing she could do. She willed the girl to calm down – panic wouldn’t help, though there was plenty to panic about.

  ‘I’m getting the pharmacist,’ Pieter said.

  Mirabelle waited as his footsteps receded down the stairs. Albert paced to and fro in front of the girl. ‘Where is the scarf?’ he repeated.

  Evangeline was clearly fading. Albert crossed his arms and stared at her. Then he put his hand around her throat. ‘Where?’ he demanded.

  Mirabelle couldn’t watch any more. She rolled out from the chaise longue and got to her feet, flicking open the knife in the same smooth movement. Albert turned too slowly. She remembered somebody saying that stabbing a man took strength and determination. Perhaps it was Bradley. Perhaps it was Jack. Whoever it was, they were wrong. Stabbing someone, she realised, took unadulterated fury. In her case, anyway.

  She launched herself at him. Albert was so surprised that his immediate reaction was to laugh and lazily put up one arm in defence. It wasn’t enough. McGregor’s blade lashed into his throat and the laugh turned into a gurgle. She had missed his jugular, she thought as he punched her solidly in the face. That meant there would be less blood. She reeled, vision blurred, as Albert tried to pull the blade out. He couldn’t. It was lodged too deeply in his flesh and he was thick-fingered with shock. A strange cacophony of two people’s gasps for breath assailed Mirabelle as her anger subsided. Still reeling, she made for Evangeline’s side. The girl’s eyes betrayed her terror.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Mirabelle tried to soothe her. ‘He’s not going to hurt you any more.’

  Albert fell to his knees and then onto the floor. A trickle of blood began to pool in front of him and the sound of his gasping stopped.

  ‘He’s dead,’ Mirabelle said. ‘You’re perfectly safe. Just take your time. Calm down.’

  But Evangeline’s chest was raised as if she had taken a breath in and couldn’t let it go. She reached up to her hair and slipped her fingers inside her bun, pulling out the corner of the rayon scarf that she had folded into a tiny square.

  ‘You were trying to tell me?’ Mirabelle whispered. ‘You hid it there.’

  The girl nodded. She squeezed Mirabelle’s hand so tightly that it hurt. She couldn’t speak any more. It was too late for that.

  ‘I’ll take it back to the rue de Siam, don’t worry. We just need to get you out of here …’

  But that wasn’t going to be necessary. In only a few seconds Evangeline Durand’s grip failed. She slumped into the seat, no longer struggling for breath, her eyes wide with horror at her own demise.

  ‘No!’ Mirabelle cried out. ‘Don’t.’

  But the girl was gone. Mirabelle checked her pulse. Then she kicked the leg of the chair, her palm over her mouth. It had all happened so quickly. She wondered whether, if she’d been quicker, Evangeline might have recovered. But she couldn’t have taken Pieter as well as Albert. Not even armed. Then she remembered that Pieter was going to return. She wondered how long he might be.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered to Evangeline’s body, as she tentatively pulled the rest of the scarf from the girl’s hair. Then she turned her attention to Albert. She removed his wallet: his identity papers might prove useful. You always tried to provide proof of who you’d killed. Someone had told her that once. Gingerly she removed McGregor’s knife from the wound. The slick scrape of metal against bone made her wince. Lastly, she fished her lock picks out of Albert’s pocket and then, with a glance over her shoulder, Mirabelle fled across the hall and back through the skylight. Her heart was racing as she climbed the sloping part of the roof, but she tried to measure her pace. One slip was all it would take, quite literally. Once she was on the flat section she scrambled haphazardly towards number 2. Looking round, she picked out a large tree in a garden below. Then she threw the knife so it embedded itself towards the top of the trunk. No one would find it there. It was far better than dropping it down a drain or leaving it in a gutter. Looking around, somehow afraid that someone might have seen, she slid carefully down the lead roofing and braced herself.

  ‘McGregor,’ she hissed towards the window.

  There was no response.

  ‘McGregor.’ Louder.

  The superintendent’s face appeared, peering upwards. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’m here.’

  Mirabelle felt herself relax slightly. She’d never been so glad to see someone in her life. She gripped the edge of the gutter and let herself swing into his arms.

  Chapter 27

  Only the dead have seen the end of war.

  Up at the corner, the driver had gone. His loyalty to the Durand family must have overwhelmed him. He was probably at their residence now, telling an outlandish tale about the backstreet bar and the untidy couple who thought Mademoiselle Evangeline had been taken to number 8 rue de Courcelles.

  ‘It would have been a long time for him to wait,’ said McGregor. ‘The French police will want these fellows, you know. And you’re a witness, Mirabelle. By rights we should go straight to the station and offer our evidence.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ Mirabelle replied under her breath. McGregor hadn’t asked for his knife back and she hadn’t told him what she’d done with it. All she’d said was that Evangeline was dead. ‘There’s no more we can do for the poor girl now. There’s too much at stake to stay here. We have to press on.’

  It had started to drizzle. McGregor stared at Mirabelle in the lamplight. She was always so perfect in Brighton, but tonight she had been through an immense ordeal and seeing her in disarray was somehow stirring. He wondered if this was how she must look in the morning – her hair dishevelled and her make-up worn away. The man in the studio had lent her a pair of velvet slippers that she deemed more comfortable than the riding boots and she had done away with the torn stockings. When she slid off the roof and into his arms he had wanted to kiss her. Or at least he had felt that way until he noticed that she was fighting back tears.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’ll be lucky to find a taxi round here at this time. We’ll have to walk at least as far as the Arc de Triomphe.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  Mirabelle was finding it difficult to look McGregor in the eye. She wasn’t sure how he would react when he discovered she was a murderer. Mirabelle had killed someone before, but only in self-defence. Afterwards a tribunal had cleared her. She tried not to think about the difference between that occasion and what had happened tonight. She’d been trying to save Evangeline Durand, but she’d failed. She couldn’t tell McGregor about it – not yet, anyway.

  ‘We need to find the woman who handed Evangeline the scarf in the first place. My guess is she’s von der Grün’s wife. At the very least von der Grün must know her. The scarf started out in his house.’

  McGregor didn’t like to ask. He told himself Mirabelle’s judgement had always been sound in the past as he fell into step alongside her. Almost at the Arc de Triomphe they found, not a cab, but a rag and bone man driving a little wagon. Mirabelle flagged him down and agreed a fee in excess of what he would expect to make for a whole night’s work, McGregor assumed, given the look on the man’s face. At least they would get to their destination more quickly, he thought, as he sat on the edge of the cart and gawped down the Champs-Élysées like some kind of gypsy. This wasn’t how he’d envisioned spending a few days in Paris with Mirabelle – soggy and on the run. The rain eased as the horse pulled up at the rue de Siam and they stepped down to the pavement. The driver gave a little salute and cracked the reins.

  It was close to midnight. They could hear the hooves retreating down the street as the rag and bone man went back to his rounds. Mirabelle took a moment to compose herself on the doorstep of number 25 before ringing the bell. The fanlight was bright but no one came to answer the door. Perhaps the von der Grüns had gone somewhere after the opera. Paris was a cit
y that partied all night, even on a Sunday. After a weekend in the country maybe they had decided to kick up their heels. She tried the bell once more.

  McGregor checked his watch. ‘It’s getting late.’

  Mirabelle was on the point of deciding to take a room in the Hôtel Siam, although she feared that in her current attire the staff might treat her with less respect than they had shown the other night. It flitted across her mind that McGregor and she could check in as Mr and Mrs Horton. She shocked herself with the blasphemy of even considering it, and made up for the thought with the silent vow that if they did so McGregor would be sleeping on the floor. From there they would be able to keep an eye on the rear of number 25 in shifts, and if the lights came on they could move quickly. She was about to make the suggestion when the door swung open. Inside, the younger man who had attended the opera stood in his evening dress. The staff must have been dismissed for the night.

  ‘Oui?’ he enquired curtly.

  Mirabelle wasn’t sure where to start. The words came in a babble. She found herself gesticulating as she spoke – all in French. McGregor stared, only able to guess what she might be saying.

  ‘I’m a friend of Evangeline Durand,’ she started. ‘It’s been the most dreadful evening. I’m sorry but I need to speak to the woman in the purple dress, if she’s here.’

  ‘La comtesse?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Mirabelle shrugged. ‘I have bad news, I’m afraid. The worst. I know it’s late but I must speak to her at once.’

  The man paused for a second, but ultimately stood back from the threshold to let them in. He ushered his eccentric-looking visitors into the study, where a fire was burning in the grate and a half-drunk bottle of champagne stood on a side table. The woman in the purple dress stood up with her glass in her hand. Mirabelle fumbled in her pocket and pulled out the scarf. The woman looked uneasy, her eyes lighting on the man who had opened the door as if to see if he understood the implication of the scarf’s turning up in their house again.