by Mike Ripley
Campion replaced his spectacles and turned to his wife. ‘Have a word with your brother, would you? Calm him down.’
‘You know what Hal’s like,’ said Amanda, ‘but I’ll pour oil on troubled egos. Go on, Charles, what else?’
‘Not much, I’m afraid. Guffy Randall and Eager-Wright were having an argument about the current state of English rugby, having been trounced in the Five Nations, and how could we possibly let both the Welsh and the French win? Your sister Mary was helping Lady Carados find a rogue earring and Johnny Carados, Dr Livingstone and your nephew Christopher were talking politics and were therefore oblivious to anything else. You might have thought the two youngsters, Edward Longfox and the student Oncer Smith, would have kept their eagle eyes open, but they had them zero-ed in on the American girl, Precious. So nobody noticed anyone making a surreptitious exit, following the German gent with a carving knife, nor anyone coming back with blood on their hands.’
‘What about Elsie?’ said Mr Campion. ‘He normally notices things.’
Luke hesitated and tried to look shamefaced, an expression unfamiliar to his invariably solid countenance. ‘I may have distracted Mr Corkran. I was pumping him about Ringer. They were on the same side after the war when they worked in intelligence and were in Berlin when the Wall went up. Albert’s war stories got me interested in him – sounded a fascinating chap. Suffice it to say, we didn’t see anyone stalking Ringer; not that we were expecting anything like this to happen.’
‘I notice,’ said Mr Campion, ‘that you haven’t mentioned my other foreign guests, apart from the magnetic Miss Aird.’
‘I haven’t talked to them yet. Thought I’d better have a word with you first, see what the form is.’
‘I wouldn’t be too worried about the diplomatic niceties, Charles. You are a policeman and there seems to have been a crime. You are the representative of law and order and you are on the spot, therefore you must investigate. As to my guests, they are all here as private citizens, though I believe Madame Thibus’s presence was negotiated by the French embassy.’
Luke’s eyes narrowed, and he studied his friend in a way he knew from experience was effective in disconcerting the guilty.
‘Are you saying that you did not invite Corinne Thibus personally?’
‘It was suggested that I invite her.’ Campion was deliberately vague. ‘I have not seen her since 1942.’
‘When she proved herself fairly adept at violence,’ said Luke, ‘if your reminiscences over dinner are to be believed.’
‘Charles!’ Amanda reprimanded him. ‘There was a war on then.’
‘Against the Germans, I believe.’
Mr Campion shook his head. ‘Don’t jump to conclusions, Charles. By that logic, the majority of men in this room probably had an argument with a German thirty years ago. They even tried to drop a bomb on old Lugg during the Blitz but their aim wasn’t up to much.’
‘Speak of the Devil,’ sighed Luke, noticing the juggernaut approach of the bombproof Mr Lugg.
‘Sorry to h’intrude on a conference I wasn’t invited to,’ he declaimed with the solemnity, but none of the dignity, of one of Landseer’s Trafalgar Square lions, ‘but I bring a message for ’is ’onour the birthday boy.’
Mr Campion allowed Lugg five seconds of imperious smugness.
‘Then let us have it; or do we rely on telepathy?’
Lugg, the unlikely carrier pigeon, puffed out his chest and delivered his message.
‘The German gentleman was taken across the river to St Thomas’s and, on the orders of Mr Luke here, a young constable of the noble Metropolitan Police was assigned to his bedside on hand-holding and bedpan duty …’
‘Don’t be coarse,’ warned Amanda, and was studiously ignored.
‘Anyways, this particular PC is called Dillon, Gerald Dillon, whose dad, Mike ‘Sweetheart’ Dillon is an old mucker of mine and custody sergeant at Love Lane nick.’
‘Get on with it,’ growled Luke.
‘So, as I have a sort of family connection, when young Gerald telephoned the front desk here at the Dorchester, he thought it would be a better bet to communicate important information to someone he could trust.’
‘And any day now we will find out what Constable Dillon wanted to tell us,’ said Mr Campion. ‘I pray that Robert’s life is not hanging on your extended prolongation – and that’s not a double entendre.’
‘First off, no Germans have died while I’ve been relaying this message, nor are they likely to. Initial medical opinion is that Herr Ringer suffered only a flesh wound. By some fluke or sheer amateurishness, the blade missed all vital arteries and didn’t penetrate all that deep. The doctors are more worried about the bang on the ’ead your mate got when the doorstep came up to meet him. They’re keeping him in for tests – concussion and such like – but he come around long enough to dictate a message to PC Dillion, though it sounds to me he was raving a bit.’
‘Dictated?’
‘Made him write it down; that’s dictation, innit? Made sure of the wording he did, ’cos it was in German. Told young Gerald it was “a message for Emil” but then said that was you, so oo’se this Emil?’
‘It’s a character from Emil and the Detectives, which Robert and I used as a sort of code during the war. Emil was the boy detective in the book. Even though it had pictures, I don’t suppose you’ve heard of it.’
‘Now you’re being rude, Albert,’ said his wife.
‘Nonsense, I once got Lugg a book for Christmas and he said thank you, but he’d already read one.’
‘Ho, very droll. Do you want to hear the message or not?’
Lugg’s fat fingers squirmed into the breast pocket of his jacket and produced a square of paper. Like a stage magician playing for time, he slowly unfolded the square into a sheet of Dorchester notepaper.
‘I wrote this down just as it was said to PC Dillon and he said it to me. It’s in German, so it’s no wonder it makes no sense: Für meinen Vater. That’s it, that’s the message for Emil.’
Lugg turned the paper over and displayed the three words to the trio who had clearly been expecting something more dramatic.
Lady Amanda and Luke remained nonplussed. Only Mr Campion seemed to consider the message had significance.
‘Right then, old fruit,’ he said, taking the note from Lugg’s paw. ‘Have a word with that young tearaway running the disco – I’m not sure whether he’s a Mod or a Rocker, so be careful not to upset him. Tell him he can start up the music so people can get dancing, or at the very least gyrating.’
Amanda looked in genuine puzzlement at her husband.
‘Albert, you’re surely not thinking of providing entertainment after what’s happened?’
‘No, darling,’ said Mr Campion, ‘I’m providing a distraction.’
TWENTY-TWO
The Way of St James
Pyrénées Occidentales. November 1942
Pilgrims are a generous bunch, at least in my limited experience.
The stone refuge in which we took shelter was a basic structure with few, if any, home comforts, but at least it was dry. It must have been visited by hundreds if not thousands of pilgrims taking the road to redemption via Santiago de Compostela over the years, and many of them had left a little something behind, perhaps for a return journey or for the use of the next caravan of holy walkers. There were numerous crucifixes, some pale and withered, made from cleverly twisted palm leaves or bull rushes, others from two thin strips of wood and a single nail, and several stout walking sticks or staffs brought up from the treeline and then abandoned or forgotten before the next phase of the journey. There was even a besom-type broom made from pine-tree branches, tied together with a strand of rusty wire, to help pilgrims keep their hovel clean for the next set of visitors. That would come in very useful as the last lot of pilgrims appeared to have been a flock of sheep, judging by the fronds of dirty white wool, and other sheddings, left behind before their sheltering shepherd, or his dog, rounde
d them up and moved them on.
Most pilgrims had arrived far better equipped than we had and had brought candles with them. Whether for practical or religious purposes I did not know, but many a candle had been lit in that refuge, and devout pilgrims had left behind a generous collection of stubs scattered about the hut. There was also a thin, burst and stained mattress made from a sack which some pilgrim had dutifully carried, determined to have a comfortable night’s sleep on the mountains, only to have it soaked by rain or being dropped in a stream. The hessian material had split and the straw intestines had spilled out, probably helped by the nibbling of sheep.
There was enough light left in the afternoon for me to take stock of our thin resources and face the fact that we would be staying in the refuge overnight. From our bag of provisions, I took the glass jar which had held the duck confit eaten at our ‘picnic’ and told Astrid to go to the lake, rinse it out and bring it back full of water while I screwed up the newspaper which Madame Henneuse had used as padding and stuffed it in the hut’s stone fireplace.
My reasoning was that once darkness fell, we could risk a fire, as the smoke from the chimney would not be seen. It could, of course, be smelled on the otherwise clean mountain air, but I reasoned that might help keep animal predators away, if there were any. Human predators, of course, were another matter, and might be attracted but, purely for keeping up morale, I felt the risk worth taking.
Using the besom, I swept into the fireplace anything which looked remotely flammable: pine needles, strands of wool, dried sheep droppings, twigs, the remains of the burst mattress and several pine cones, and then broke up three of the abandoned walking staffs. It was a pathetic reserve of fuel and the fire did not last long; but as we sat on the hard floor, it gave us the illusion of heat and some comfort as we shared out our dwindling provisions.
‘I don’t suppose anyone noticed if there was a red sky,’ I said, chewing on a crust. ‘It’s a saying, at least it is in England, that a red sky at night is a shepherd’s delight – a forecast of good weather for tomorrow.’
‘Is that how you predict the weather in England?’
I could not see Lunel’s face clearly now the fire had died, and the only light in the hut came from one of the candle stubs – a generous inch-long one I had found, yet I felt there was a new calmness in his voice.
‘In England, it’s as good a way as any,’ I said.
‘What do they call you in England?’
‘Albert.’ I saw no reason not to admit to it, now the end of our journey was in sight – or hopefully would be, come the dawn.
‘I would like to visit England, Albert.’
‘I don’t see why you should not,’ I said. ‘The man you will meet in Madrid is called Benton. He will be most interested in the contents of your ledger and the Allies will be most grateful. If you want to go to England until it is safe to return to France, I am sure it can be arranged.’
‘We may not wish to return to France,’ said Astrid from the shadows.
‘The Germans will not be here for ever.’
Astrid let out a snort of derision. ‘Our problems of late have all come from fellow French citizens. The policemen who arrested us were French. The guards in the prisons and camps were French. My captors in Marseilles were French. I am no longer a Frenchwoman, I am just a Jewess. It may be best if my baby is not born here.’
I said nothing, judging it not the moment to point out to her that a very brave French girl had been instrumental in her escape from the Panier.
‘Come and sit next to me, my dear,’ said Lunel, ‘and let us try and get comfortable as best we can. Tomorrow you will be in Spain. Is that not so, Albert?’
‘If my calculations are correct, we should meet Vidal, our Spanish guide, at the top of the ridge directly ahead of us. It is not an easy climb, but we are on the Way of St James and the track has been successfully followed by thousands of pilgrims in the past. If they could do it, so can we, for are we not pilgrims in a just cause?’
Neither of them said anything, but I could hear rather than see the two of them huddling closer for warmth and comfort, and then my candle stub guttered and went out and the only sound in the hut was that of their breathing, deep and regular, as exhaustion overtook them.
I pulled my coat tight around me and sat propped up against the wall opposite where I judged the door to be. With my right hand around the butt of the pistol in my jacket pocket, I wondered how long it would take sleep to claim me.
I had just enough time to realize that Nathan had said, ‘Tomorrow you will be in Spain’ and not, ‘we will be in Spain’, before it did.
When I awoke, I was stiff, cramped and disorientated. Only a thin sliver of light around the frame of the door told me that dawn’s alarm clock was as reliable as ever. It was still dark and gloomy in the windowless hut, so I slowly negotiated my way to the door, careful not to step on one of the sleeping Lunels.
There was a thin frost on the ground which made the exposed lumps of granite sparkle like diamonds, but the lake was free of ice, albeit icy cold when I knelt to wash my hands and the stubble growth on my face. That had the effect of a double-espresso coffee in terms of blowing away sleep’s cobwebs; I was determined to get my body, and my circulation, moving.
A brisk walk to the end of the stony, saucer-shaped plateau brought me to the foot of a proper mountain. A cairn of piled stones and vague indentations in the ground indicated that the pilgrims’ trail continued steeply upwards from here on. It was no north face of the Eiger, but it was a mountain, not a hill, and my heart sank at the prospect of trying to get the Lunels up it. I knew Reuben Vidal would be up there somewhere waiting for us, but he would not wait for ever, and he had no way of knowing that I had a pregnant woman and a man with only one working foot in tow.
Still, things could be worse, I told myself, though I was not sure how.
Back in the refuge, Astrid was struggling to help her husband stand, an exercise which seemed risky for both of them, so I intervened as gently as I could, putting an arm around Nathan’s waist and taking his weight.
‘How’s the foot this morning?’ I said in my best bedside manner.
‘Much better,’ winced Nathan.
‘Liar!’ said his wife. ‘The ankle is broken and turning blue. He cannot walk.’
‘Let’s get him outside into the light,’ I said. ‘I’ll see if I can make …’ I fumbled for the word in French, ‘… splints and find a walking stick.’
We sat him down gently on a large square rock, his short legs dangling over the edge so I could clearly see that Astrid’s diagnosis was painfully accurate.
‘Perhaps soaking in cold water might help,’ I suggested. ‘We could sit you over by the lake …’
‘No, that will not cure me.’ He used my arm in an attempt to lever himself up but, as soon as his swollen foot touched the ground, his face twisted in an animal grimace, the breath hissed between his teeth and he sank back on to the rock. ‘Nothing will.’
I thought for a moment he had fainted and, because I had no real idea what to do at that moment, I brusquely ordered Astrid to fetch the brandy from the hut. As soon as she was out of earshot, Lunel’s eyes flicked open and locked on mine.
‘You must leave me.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, I can help you.’
‘You cannot carry me up there,’ his eyes flicked towards the surrounding peaks, ‘not if you are carrying Astrid also.’
‘Nonsense, she’s proved herself as strong as me if not stronger. Between us we can do it. It will not be easy, but in a few hours we can have you in Spain and safety and I can get help.’
He shook his head. ‘If you think that, then take Astrid. Make sure she is safe, then come back for me.’
I thought of the climb ahead and did some rapid mental arithmetic. ‘Even if nothing went wrong and the weather held, I doubt I could get back here before nightfall.’
‘I am not afraid of the dark,’ he said calmly.
‘Are you not afraid I might not come back?’
His gaze came back on to my face, though his eyes were watering with pain.
‘You will return for my ledger once Astrid is safe. That was our agreement. You can have my ledger once my wife is safely out of France. I do not matter. Did you not give me your word?’
‘Yes, I did Nathan, I did; but won’t you at least try?’
‘No, I will only be a hindrance. Take Astrid and make sure she is safe, then come back for me.’
‘I promise I will,’ I said.
‘Your word again?’
‘Certainly, if you trust it.’
‘I do. You have got us this far, Albert; I trust you to get my wife and child over the border. Nothing else is important; nothing.’
For a moment I could not speak, I merely studied the man lying splayed out in front of me. He had been threatened and bullied into criminality, persecuted and imprisoned. Deprived of his possessions and citizenship and his wife held hostage, he was little more than a husk of the comfortable, middle-aged businessman he should have been, had the war not intervened. Now he lay injured, unable to walk unaided, miles from anywhere in inhospitable surroundings, and he was entrusting a stranger with the one thing he held most dear.
He spoke again before I could think of anything to say. ‘I think you would come back for me even if I did not have the ledger, M’sieur Albert.’
‘You think too much of me, Nathan, because you are truly a good man.’
‘I think you could be one, too.’
I helped him hobble back inside the refuge and made him as comfortable as possible, propped against the wall by the fireplace. With the door open, he would have light during the day, but I found a pair of surviving candle stubs and placed them within reach and made sure he had matches for them. I emptied my bag of what little food we had left and made a pillow of it for the back of his head.
