British Bulldog

by Sara Sheridan

  ‘Evangeline Durand is dead,’ Mirabelle said, in her brisk Parisian accent. ‘I’m so sorry. She was followed. She was taken. I tried to rescue her but she was ill. She couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t save her.’

  The man who had answered the door stepped forward. Unexpectedly, he had a cut-glass accent that wouldn’t have been out of place in St James’s. He probably thought speaking English made the conversation more private. Neither McGregor nor Mirabelle corrected him.

  ‘Good God, Elizabeth, what is this woman talking about? What the hell have you been up to?’

  Elizabeth took the scarf from Mirabelle’s hand. ‘We need to run this over to the American Embassy,’ she said. ‘Now.’

  ‘Answer me! What have you got yourself involved in? You’ve been working, haven’t you?’ He sounded furious. ‘After everything we said. What about the children? We can’t do this kind of thing any more. The war is over, damn it. Dead and buried.’

  ‘We can discuss it later.’ The woman’s voice remained even. She rang the service bell to the right of the fireplace ‘I’ll raise Javier and have him bring round the car. Please, Philip, calm down.’

  Mirabelle turned towards the man in evening dress. ‘Philip?’ she repeated, staring at him as the name fell into place. ‘Are you Philip? Philip Caine?’

  He turned on her. ‘And who the hell are you?’

  Mirabelle cocked her head to one side. He was the right age. He was clearly English. ‘What are you doing here?’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve been looking for you. I thought you were dead.’

  ‘Well, you’ve found me.’ He gave a shallow bow. ‘Philip, Comte de Vert.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Von der Grün was your cousin. But does that mean … excuse me, but did von der Grün die?’

  Caine flipped open a cigarette box on a side table. He offered it round, lighting a Gitane and sucking hard as if he was taking out his anger on it.

  ‘Yes. Wilhelm died. Kurt died. Everyone bloody died and I inherited in the end. I’m the survivor. I didn’t catch your name.’

  ‘Mirabelle Bevan.’ She held out her hand. Stiffly, Caine shook it. ‘I hope you don’t mind my asking but when did von der Grün die? What happened?’

  Caine hesitated before deciding that it was all right to continue. ‘It was February 1944, if you must know. What is it that you want, Miss Bevan?’

  It suddenly occurred to her that this meant Christine Moreau had lost her lover only a few months before the liberation of the city and had then had to endure being punished for the affair. Mirabelle tried to remember what had been happening in February 1944. She could not think of any obvious action in which Wilhelm von der Grün might have perished. The Resistance had struck out as it became obvious the Germans would have to quit the city. Perhaps von der Grün had fallen foul of that, though it was earlier in the year than she’d place the majority of the civil disobedience.

  ‘He’s buried in Passy cemetery, I imagine,’ she said.

  Caine nodded. ‘A small gravestone, given the circumstances. No “Soldier and Great Man.” No marble angels.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘I don’t see it’s any of your business.’

  ‘Tonight I watched Evangeline Durand die. She was very brave. I killed a man while I was trying to save her. I came to Paris to find you, Flight Lieutenant. Matthew Bradley asked me to. And I’ve ended up a murderer. So when I ask you how Wilhelm von der Grün died, I consider it very much my business.’

  ‘You’ve been taken for a ride, Miss Bevan. Matthew knows exactly where I am if he wants to find me.’

  Mirabelle sank onto the edge of the sofa. ‘He knows? You’re sure?’

  ‘It’s not common knowledge. I couldn’t go back. I don’t want to. But Matthew knows. He knows everything. What does he want, anyway?’

  ‘He wrote asking me to find out what happened to you.’

  ‘Well, I don’t understand that.’

  ‘It was in his will. He died about a week ago, you see. I’m sorry.’ Had it only been a week?

  Caine stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I hope Caroline is all right. She and the girl.’

  ‘They’re fine,’ Mirabelle replied.

  The door opened and a butler entered the room. ‘Duchamp,’ the countess said. ‘Could you have the car brought round? I know it’s rather late. And raise Javier to drive it for us.’

  The man bowed and retreated. Mirabelle found herself unable to take her eyes off Philip Caine, wondering if he’d succeeded in turning his cousin for the Allies and how much sensitive material he had managed to pass to Jack in the two years he’d spent undercover in Paris. Had it all been worth it?

  The countess scooped up a fur wrap that was slung over a chair. ‘May I have that?’ She put out her hand, and Mirabelle handed over the scarf in a daze. Philip Caine glared at his wife.

  ‘Elizabeth, I wish you wouldn’t.’

  ‘It’s too late now. I have to. Poor Evangeline Durand gave her life. Do you expect me just to burn it? To ignore it? They need this, Philip. It will be the last. I promise.’

  ‘You shouldn’t go alone.’ Mirabelle got to her feet. ‘It isn’t safe.’

  ‘Let me,’ McGregor insisted. ‘You look done in, Mirabelle. Do you mind, monsieur? It’s been a hell of a night.’

  Philip Caine nodded curtly. ‘I’ll keep her here till you get back,’ he said. ‘Miss Bevan, may I offer you some champagne?’

  Mirabelle couldn’t help thinking that what she’d really like was a cup of tea but she nodded, accepting the glass that Caine put into her hand. When she sipped it was certainly reviving.

  ‘Well, that’s settled.’ The countess swished past in a cloud of Dior.

  McGregor followed her, and Mirabelle’s gaze fell to her feet and the damp velvet slippers as the door clicked closed. On the hem of her dress was a dark splatter that had sunk into the brown wool. Only now did she realise it must be blood.

  ‘You can rest here,’ Caine said, scrambling in his desk and pulling out a box of cigars. ‘I wouldn’t smoke one of these in front of a lady. I’ll go up to the drawing room.’

  Mirabelle stood up. He wasn’t getting away that easily. In the hallway she heard the front door closing behind McGregor and the countess. The car would be along directly.

  ‘I love the smell of cigar smoke,’ she said. ‘I don’t like cigarettes, but I enjoy a Cuban now and then. Please let me join you.’

  Chapter 28

  Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just.

  Eddie was right about Churchill and the stogies. Smoking cigars was difficult. Mirabelle had seen many men over the years cutting the cap and lighting up, but she’d never done it herself. Upstairs, Caine handed her the box and she took one. Then he handed her the cutter and watched, smiling, as she made a valiant attempt to use it, before offering a lit match. Mirabelle leaned in and puffed. She didn’t want to say she’d been in the room before – when she broke in the other night and had seen Christine Moreau from the window.

  ‘It’s a lovely house,’ she managed just before the smoke made her cough. It was strong and it caught in her gullet. Caine’s smile widened into a grin as he prepared his own cigar.

  ‘You’re an unusual woman,’ he said, taking a seat on a leather chair by the fire and reaching for his champagne. ‘Tell me, what did you do during the war?’

  Mirabelle sank onto the sofa.

  ‘I worked in Whitehall. For Jack Duggan. I was only a secretary. I never went into the field, like you.’ She saw Caine register Jack’s name.

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ he said. ‘How is Jack?’

  ‘He died. Some years ago. In Brighton, where he lived.’

  Caine’s gaze was drawn to the fire. ‘They’re gone, then. Both Jack Duggan and Matthew Bradley?’

  She nodded.

  ‘They seemed indestructible. Almost inhuman. I can’t believe I’m the one who’s left.’

  ‘You fell out with them, didn’t y
ou? When they came to Longchamp?’

  Caine took a deep draw. ‘You better keep puffing on that or it’ll go out.’

  Mirabelle drew the cigar to her lips and tried again. ‘I read the medical records,’ she said. ‘You were the one who left them bruised.’

  Caine nodded. ‘My mother had died and then I was furious about what had happened to Christine. She was …’

  ‘Von der Grün’s mistress. I know. I can’t imagine being bereaved like that and then punished anyway once the man you loved was gone.’

  ‘She’s still in the same little studio. She won’t accept any help. They tried to send her away but she wouldn’t have it. I offered to set her up somewhere else but she turned me down. She looked after me, you know. All those years ago. But she’s a proud woman. Tell me, Miss Bevan, you said earlier that you were a murderer. That you killed someone.’ His gaze fell to the splatter on Mirabelle’s dress. She felt suddenly glad that she hadn’t gone for Albert’s jugular.

  ‘Yes. It was a Russian agent. He was hurting Evangeline Durand. I came at him from behind.’

  ‘You shouldn’t think of it as murder. They’re not real people,’ Caine said. ‘Anyone in covert operations. They’re not subject to the same rules or the same rights. Do you understand?’

  ‘You were a covert operative.’

  ‘Yes. I was.’

  Mirabelle rolled the cigar between her lips. ‘So who did you kill?’ she asked.

  Caine sat forward. ‘Very good. That’s excellent. I’m surprised Jack didn’t deploy you in the field. It’s not often old Duggan missed a trick.’ Mirabelle must have flinched, and Caine laughed. ‘Oh, I see,’ he said. ‘So that was you, was it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I knew he was sweet on someone. He never used the story on me, of course. I’d lost the woman I loved, and I didn’t love again until … well, you can see. Elizabeth and I were supposed to quit all of that. Clearly she hasn’t kept her side of that deal. I maintain it doesn’t do to love someone if you’re in the service. But Jack used to say he’d found someone who was worth winning the war for. He’d use the story when he wanted to inspire someone. Some poor idiot who still believed in goodness.’

  Mirabelle’s stomach sank. ‘You don’t think he really loved me?’

  ‘I don’t think anyone knew what Jack Duggan really felt.’

  Mirabelle remembered the day Jack had declared his love. He’d insisted that he hadn’t expected it. It had been a bolt from the blue. She’d been his black swan, he said. For years he’d only seen white birds on the water and then suddenly he’d found something he didn’t believe existed and everything had changed.

  ‘It felt as though he loved me.’

  Caine puffed. ‘Maybe he did.’

  This was beginning to feel like a game of chess. Mirabelle turned the table. ‘I must say, I admire what you did – leaving Caroline Bland behind. You must have been very committed to the service. Did you succeed in your mission? Did you get what you wanted out of your cousin?’

  Caine nodded. ‘I was as inhuman as the best of them. One of Duggan’s finest. Paris fell a good three months earlier than it would have if it hadn’t been for me.’

  ‘But you never went home?’

  Caine spread his arms. ‘This is my home.’

  ‘Not Pity Me in County Durham? To see your mother’s grave?’

  ‘Inhuman, aren’t I? They trained me well.’

  Mirabelle stood up and walked to the window. ‘I don’t believe you’re inhuman, Flight Lieutenant. I think you were too upset. I think you’re a man who loved his family so much you couldn’t bear it. But you did your duty.’

  ‘I hope you aren’t expecting me to break down and tell you everything, Miss Bevan, because I won’t. I worked hard. I’ve seen what I’ve seen. I think I deserve a normal life now.’

  ‘Your wife doesn’t want to give up, though, does she?’

  Caine’s jaw stiffened. ‘I can’t imagine what she’s thinking. We have children to consider.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s precisely what’s on her mind.’

  Caine’s eyes narrowed. ‘Oh, the bigger picture. Contributing to a better world? Yes. I see what you mean. I’m not sure there is a bigger world. I’ll admit it. There. The bigger picture wasn’t worth it. If I’d realised that, my mother would have been alive to meet her grandchildren. She didn’t deserve what happened to her. Dying alone that way, not knowing that I was safe, or even alive. Thinking she had no one any more. She took sleeping pills, did you know? They said it was an accident but my mother was an accurate kind of person and if she took extra sleeping pills it was because she intended to. She didn’t want to go on. My brother was shot down and she thought I was dead. A man feels a duty, you see, to his country and to his family. During the war I had to choose which of those was more important. Life is in the small things, Miss Bevan, and I chose badly. I as good as pulled the trigger on the old lady. If I had honoured what was really important she’d be alive today. And so would my cousin.’

  ‘You think you killed your cousin?’

  ‘I know I bloody well did. And on your precious Jack Duggan’s orders. Wilhelm was on to us. It was me or him. Actually it was me and Christine or him. Though I’m not sure Wilhelm would have turned in Christine. He loved her, you see. Perhaps he’d have let her get away. Anyway, I shot him. He died in the street. Coming out of a little bar he liked, only just up the road. He was alone – no escort. I’m under no illusions. He would have shot me too. Cousin against cousin. That’s what war does to people. That’s family for you. Sometimes agents in the field have to make split-second decisions. Sometimes you find out a lot about yourself in a millisecond. The Germans thought it was the Resistance who killed him, of course – and in a way it was. So they rounded up a hundred men and shot them. I must have killed thousands if you count all that, because I was a very accomplished Nazi-murderer in my day. Covert and inhuman at once – the SOE’s dream. The truth is that of all the men I killed, it’s only Wilhelm’s death I regret. I’ll bear that till the day I die, Miss Bevan – the sight of him lying there in the street, bleeding to death. And look at me now, sitting here, smoking a cigar in our comfortable family home. Are you surprised I couldn’t bear to go back to England and pretend to be a war hero? Our children are asleep upstairs and every night when I check on them I think I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve any of it. If Duggan and Bradley came today to try to take me home, I’d wallop them again. Is that what you came here to find out?’

  Caine stubbed out his cigar and checked his watch. He stared past her out of the window.

  ‘Christine says it’s always the women,’ Mirabelle said.

  ‘Yes. She’s right. A lot of the time it is.’

  ‘But you found love again? You made it come right.’

  ‘Yes. Elizabeth and I.’

  ‘I’m curious. Would you marry Caroline if you had 1942 to live again?’

  Caine’s eyes hardened. ‘And have Jack Duggan court martial me, the bastard? ‘He shook his head. ‘I’d get a message to my mother. I’d make sure Wilhelm didn’t tumble. But who the hell has a real choice? A man could go mad. We did what we had to do.’ He finished the conversation as if a shutter had rolled down. ‘Look, we’d better go back to the study. They’ll be home soon.’

  Chapter 29

  Keep going come what may.

  The American Embassy wasn’t far. The countess slid into the back seat of the car and McGregor followed. She gave the chauffeur instructions in swift French and then turned back to McGregor as if he was her guest at a cocktail party.

  ‘Have you visited Paris before?’

  ‘No. It’s my first time.’

  ‘Well, you must see the sights. The Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.’

  ‘I expect it would be best to get Miss Bevan home. She’s had a shock.’

  ‘Is it the first time she’s faced this kind of situation?’

  ‘No.’ McGregor surprised himself w
ith the thought that if anything this kind of experience seemed to follow Mirabelle around, and yet, every time, he treated it as if she was the rookie and he knew best. ‘I think perhaps she did something of this nature during the war.’

  ‘Ah.’ The countess nodded. ‘I see. That’s how my husband and I met, though we didn’t discover our feelings until after the peace. He used to say that fighting the Nazis focused the mind, but I think it was living in fear. Have you ever lived in fear, Superintendent?’

  McGregor shifted uncomfortably. During the war he’d worked in Leith, at the dockyard. He’d tried to enlist in the army but he hadn’t passed the medical. Stories of wartime derring do always left him feeling inadequate. ‘I suppose I haven’t,’ he admitted.

  ‘Philip is angry,’ the countess continued, oblivious, her attention focused no doubt on the argument that would face her when she got home. ‘After the war we swore never again. Who would have thought that not ten years later the Germans would be our friends and the Russians would be the enemy? They are a formidable enemy, too. Stalin has split Europe just as surely as Hitler did. The Americans call them the Reds.’ The countess pulled the scarf from her purse. ‘Reds, you see. It’s a little joke.’

  ‘And apart from its colour, what is it about the scarf? Why is it so important?’

  The countess pulled the material smoothly between her fingers. ‘I suppose I can tell you. It’s over now, or almost. It’s the pattern. Pretty, isn’t it? The material is delivered to the seamstress, you see, and in one section of the roll the pattern is very slightly different. No one would notice in the normal run of things. People would simply think that the print was misaligned, but it means something if you can read it. The rest of the roll is just cheap frippery for downmarket shops. The seamstress cuts the material into squares, hems them and makes her money on the rest of the scarves, but this one is priceless. They paint the message by hand. It’s this one that contains the code.’