by Allan Massie
‘My respect for you, superintendent, my respect. Only that.’
‘Only that?’
Sigi got to his feet. He held out the papers to Lannes and, when Lannes made no move to take them, laughed and stuffed them carelessly into his pocket.
‘Think about my offer,’ he said. ‘It would, I assure you, give me great pleasure to twist advocate Labiche’s tail, very painfully. I give you a fortnight. I can hold him off that long. He’s a rat, you know, and a rat’s bite is sharp and poisonous. He really hates you, though I don’t know why. Stupid of me to say that. We never need a reason to hate, do we?’
He made to turn away and waved to summon Michel.
Lannes said: ‘One other thing. Let the boy go. Break whatever hold you have on him.’
‘Why should I do that, my friend?’
‘Because yours will not always be the winning side, and enthusiasts like that boy will suffer when the wind shifts.’
‘You speak rashly again. I really do admire you, superintendent. But you are wrong. The war is to all intents and purposes over. Germany is invincible. Why don’t you join us? I assure you, there will be no place for rats like advocate Labiche in the New Europe.’
XXIV
Lannes had never been in Vichy before the war. It wasn’t his sort of place. Truth to tell, if he had ever thought of the town, it would have been with a certain distaste, even scorn. It was a make-believe place, a spa that doctors recommended to rich patients, many of whose ailments were doubtless imaginary. His own mother, after thirty years of hard work, had died of some form of kidney-disease; she couldn’t have afforded to come to Vichy though he supposed the idea had never crossed her mind. And would it have done her any good if she had?
And now this make-believe town with its array of hotels in all styles representing the architectural fancies, often incongruous, of the last hundred years, with its Turkish baths crowned with vaguely oriental domes, its kiosks, its casinos, its pretentious villas designed according to the whims of rich women, its long promenades, its parks each with a bandstand and gravelled walks, was, bizarrely, the capital of the French State, selected, as he would learn, on impulse, after the government on the move from Bordeaux had spent one night at Clermont-Ferrand. There were cities in the Unoccupied Zone which might have seemed more obvious choices: Lyon, Toulouse, Marseille. All had been rejected, the first two because they were strongholds of the Left, Marseille because . . . well, because, with its pervasive criminal underworld, its brothels and reputation for catering for all forms of vice, it hardly seemed a fitting place from which to launch the National Revolution. He smiled at the thought.
The Marshal himself, he had learned, was established in the Hôtel du Parc, which was therefore the seat of government. For a sceptic like Lannes there was encouragement here. Hotels were for transients, they spoke of impermanence, their guests here today and gone tomorrow. Weren’t any of them, he wondered, alert to the symbolism?
In other circumstances it might almost have been charming. Outside the hotel, he had already been told, schoolchildren would gather in their hundreds every Sunday, to sing the anthem, ‘Maréchal, nous voilà!’ Now, even as he stood there picturing the scene, the old man himself appeared from the hotel, walking-stick in hand, wearing a light overcoat, a Homburg on his head, to take what must be his regular afternoon constitutional. He had only one companion – his doctor perhaps? – and he strode out briskly, very erect, his skin glowing pink with health, and the famous moustache white as new snow. He might have been an elderly banker come to Vichy to take the waters in the days of peace. Lannes, mindful of Verdun, took off his hat as the Marshal passed him, and received a brief acknowledgement, two gloved fingers being lifted to touch the brim of the Homburg.
There was a air of repose to the town, even on a winter afternoon when a soft mist clothed the low hills that encircled it. The air was mild. Lannes settled himself at a pavement café. Most of the tables on the terrace were occupied by women in fur coats and men who had the appearance of being government functionaries. The waiter was in no hurry to take his order – perhaps no one hurried in Vichy. It didn’t matter; Lannes was content to wait. He had a curious sense of being on holiday, perhaps because of the absence of the German soldiers inescapable in Bordeaux. It was as if he had been allowed time out from real life. And this doubtless was what many visitors had felt there in the days before the war.
It had not been easy to get permission to make the journey. Schnyder had been reluctant to approve. ‘I can see you intend to stir things up,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it.’
Eventually Lannes had gone his own way, telephoning Edmond de Grimaud to make an appointment and at the same time extracting an invitation from him. Obligingly Edmond had confirmed this by telegram, thus cutting the ground from under Schnyder’s feet. ‘But why should he be willing to see you? I don’t understand it,’ he said. Lannes was surprised himself. He had half-expected he would have to force himself on Edmond. But all he said to Schnyder was, ‘That’s how it is.’
He ordered a cognac and a small bottle of Vichy water, not because he wanted it, but because it seemed the right thing to do. The woman at the table to his right was staring fixedly at the cream cake the waiter had brought with her pot of tea, and for a moment Lannes was tempted. There had been no cream available in Bordeaux for months now – it all went to the Boches of course – and he thought how eagerly Clothilde would have fallen on such a cake. But to order one would be taking the holiday spirit too far. He lit a cigarette and smoked placidly.
In a little the Marshal and his companion came past again on their way back to the hotel, the old man striding out like someone twenty, even thirty, years his junior. There was a ripple of applause, and someone behind Lannes said, ‘He’s wonderful, isn’t he, for his age, and you know they say he still has an eye for a pretty woman.’ Glancing round the terrace, Lannes thought, there’s no shortage of that commodity here either.
He had two hours to kill before his appointment with Edmond. No problem: killing time was what everyone did, or had done, in Vichy. It was a town built for that, with its five hundred or more hotels and an equivalent number of bars, cafés and restaurants. It was a place where you filled the days, idling, between the set hours at which your doctor had ordered you to take the waters.
Finishing his brandy and leaving the bottle of water untouched, he decided that he too should take an afternoon stroll, for this was, he saw, a scarcely escapable, indeed necessary, part of the Vichy day. So, at a leisurely pace – for you don’t hurry in Vichy – he set off, leaning on his stick, along the Avenue Thermale – a name you are unlikely to encounter in any real city – and then down the Avenue Victoria and the rue G. Clemenceau to arrive back in the Parc des Sources by the Opera House, the building where the National Assembly had taken the vote that killed off the Third Republic and accorded the authority and power to re-order the State to the aged Marshal. A band was playing in the soft greyish-yellow light of the afternoon, and the music was Offenbach’s, airy, joyous music that seemed to mock the idea of war and misery.
Edmond had appointed the Hotel des Ambassadeurs as their meeting-place. It was one of the two grandest in the town and Lannes would in any circumstances have felt awkward and uncomfortable there. Now, entering the foyer, it seemed as if he had stepped on to the set of a movie. Page-boys in pillbox hats scurried here and there. All the small marble-topped tables seemed to be occupied. Waiters with trays held aloft glided between them. There were palm trees in pots and other plants that he couldn’t identify. A string quartet was playing sweet music to which few, probably, were listening. Nobody approached him and there was no sign of Edmond. That wasn’t surprising; he had expected to be made to wait. He strolled through the crowd coming on a long ill-lit passage at the end of which four elderly people sat round a card-table. He watched them for a little as one stout baldhead dealt out a new game with painful slowness, holding each card in the air before placing it on the green baize. It was
like a film scene shot in slow motion.
He turned into a bar and ordered a pastis because that was what he had been drinking at the Hotel Splendide where Edmond tried to force champagne on him, and he had resisted. The barman served him silently; he was scarcely more than a boy, probably an apprentice, assigned this quiet time in the late afternoon before the cocktail hour. Had he dodged the army or was he lucky enough to have been demobilised?
‘My dear superintendent!’
Edmond’s hand was pressed firmly on his shoulder, as if they were old friends come together for a long-anticipated reunion.
‘And how do you find our Vichy?’
‘Strange.’
‘Sometimes, you know, I think it is like one of these imaginary islands you find in poetry or novels, or a sort of Atlantis perhaps that has escaped engulfment by the waves, but then in other moods, it seems to me simply remarkable. Rather wonderful in any case. Certainly it has a compelling charm. Then of course one reminds oneself there is work to be done, important work. In my case driving forward a total reform of teaching in our lycées, a reform designed to produce a more vigorous and healthy youth. But you have not travelled here to listen to me speaking about the importance of my work. Pierre, bring us a bottle of my usual champagne. Come, superintendent.’
Taking Lannes by the elbow, again in the style of an old comrade, he guided him to a table in the far corner of the room where the lighting was subdued and they would be out of earshot of anyone standing at the bar.
‘Maurice will be sorry to have missed you,’ he said, ‘but you must know that I have secured him a position with one of the new Youth organizations and he is even now leading a party of young lads on an excursion into the mountains. He’s thriving on it, you’ll be pleased to hear. Even his asthma has relented. And do you have word of your own son – Dominique, is it? – The one who is a prisoner-of-war?’
‘The occasional card. He’s been put to work on a farm. Which could, I suppose, be worse.’
‘We must see what we can do to secure his repatration. Such things are possible, if you have the right contacts and know the line to take. Ah, thank you, Pierre, just pour both glasses. That’ll do. Your health, superintendent, your good health.’
This time Lannes did not resist. He sipped the wine – Pol Roger – which was good, far better than he could ever afford himself.
‘I truly am concerned for your health – and your well-being in general,’ Edmond said. ‘That’s why it distresses me to learn that you are still pursuing inquiries which are pointless in themselves and likely to damage your reputation with those that count nowadays. You won’t be surprised to learn that my nephew Sigi has kept me up to date with your activities, which is of course why I acceded to your request for a meeting. They won’t do, you know. They really won’t do.’
Lannes said: ‘I was shot after our last meeting. You pretended it was intended for you, but naturally you know it wasn’t.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘I’m tired of these games,’ Lannes said. ‘Sigi was driving the car which he had borrowed from his foster-brother, who has since been murdered himself, and the shot was fired by his Spanish friend Sombra who, fortunately for me, made a bosh of it. You know this as well as I do.’
‘It pleases you to think so.’
‘I have enough evidence to justify asking the examining magistrate for a warrant for their arrest.’
‘But you haven’t done so. Precisely. Instead you come here. To question me, which would be vain, or to seek my help?’
‘And you agreed to see me,’ Lannes said. ‘Indeed you made my journey possible.’
‘Just so.’
The man’s calm was infuriating. As at their last meeting Lannes knew himself to be at a disadvantage. He was a policeman, but outside the loop. The structure which should support him was rotten, worm-eaten. Murder was no longer an offence against society, against nature and the order of things, but had become a political act, a means to a justified end. It came to him that his journey to this make-believe Vichy and this meeting itself were attempts to deny that things were as they were. Yet he had to press on. He owed it to himself, to his idea of his office, to Gaston and Cortazar. To Pilar also, and therefore to Henri. At the very least he could confront Edmond with the reality of his knowledge.
‘She was your mistress, wsn’t she?’ he said.
This time Edmond, perhaps also wearying of the game, didn’t pretend not to understand.
‘Mistress? Scarcely that. We went to bed a couple of times. She was charming, a delightful lover. She was also, as I realized from the start, my enemy, seeking to make use of me and to compromise me. And I couldn’t have that.’
‘So you had her betrayed and killed.’
‘So you say. Killed by her own people, not by me.’
‘But you arranged it.’
‘Whoever was responsible, it was an act of war.’
‘There’s a document,’ Lannes said, ‘a paper. I don’t know what it is, but I know it would do you damage, even now. Which is why it’s important. Important to you. I’ve no doubt about that. Sigi and the Spaniard searched Gaston’s apartment, looking for it and the Catalan’s also. Both men were tortured in an attempt to get them to reveal where it was. Neither did so. It’s still out there. Somewhere. And it worries you. It’s because of that paper you agreed to this meeting.’
Edmond smiled and taking the bottle from the ice-bucket refilled their glasses.
‘It would be very easy,’ he said, ‘to have you arrested. One telephone call is all it would take. I wonder why I don’t make that call.’
‘I believe Sigi killed your father too. Doesn’t that distress you.’
‘He was a very old man, feeble in body, who fell downstairs. I told you before: you really mustn’t believe old Marthe. She adored Sigi once, and then, well, she stopped adoring him. Should I make that call? Give me a reason why I shouldn’t.’
Lannes was tired of it all. He picked up his glass, drained it, and lit a cigarette.
‘And what would the charge be?’
‘That scarcely matters, does it? Unreliability, disaffection, lack of commitment to the National Revolution, suspicion of treason . . . anything would do. Moreover I understand that you are already in danger of being denounced in Bordeaux also.’
‘You refer to the advocate Labiche? It’s not yet an offence to have Jewish friends.’
‘Not an offence, certainly not a criminal offence – not yet, as you say. But it’s what? Unwise at the very least for a policeman? It calls his judgement into question. His loyalty also and his willingness to uphold the law.’
‘Even if the friend in question is your father’s widow?’
‘Even so. Come, superintendent, let us stop this play-acting. You are, to put it vulgarly, in deep shit. But, luckily for you, I’m not your enemy. I propose a bargain. Abandon your tiresome investigation which – yes, I admit this much – might, if you bring it to a conclusion, do me some harm – abandon it, call your dogs off, and I’ll bring Labiche to heel. He can do you great damage. You know that. It scarcely matters whether my stepmother is indeed your mistress, or her pretty nephew your catamite – neither of which allegations, I assure you, I credit – the mere accusation relayed to certain quarters would be enough to ruin you. That’s undeniable. But I have, as I say, a certain regard for you. I admire your persistence. You’re a man of integrity, the sort of man we need on our side if we are to restore order and virtue to our wretched France. I have no wish to see you destroyed. Quite the contrary. But you will be, unless I bring Labiche down. Which I can do, believe me. I shall be happy to supply you with a weapon to use against him. He shares my poor brother’s weakness, but whereas Jean-Christophe is feeble and in my view to be pitied, Labiche is malignant, sadistic, repulsive. I can furnish you with proof. Furthermore, I can – and will – arrange to have your son repatriated. All you have to do is say “yes” to my proposal and give me his particulars. What do you say
, superintendent? Shall we shake hands on it?’
‘And the document?’
‘Oh the famous document. Naturally if such exists and comes into your possession, you will hand it over to me. I trust you to act honourably.’
‘Honourably?’
‘Yes, indeed. I too am a man of honour. Is it a bargain?’
XXV
‘She really likes you, I can see that.’ Léon’s words came insistently back to Alain. But how did she like him? Simply as Léon’s new friend? Well, he was that of course, and pleased to be it, without reservations or embarrassment, but he couldn’t help remarking that though she obviously cared for Léon, she treated him as little more than a child, and an irresponsible one indeed. He turned over in bed, thinking of how she had crossed her legs and of the glimpse of skin she had revealed above her suspender. She needn’t be more than thirty, he told himself again; she was too attractive to be more than that. It was time to lose his virginity, as half a dozen of his classmates already boasted of having done, but to lose it to a real woman, not a little shop-girl or prostitute. He pictured himself being permitted to place his hand on her breast, and then to watch her undress, or, better still, to do that for her, article by article, with kisses in between.
‘I’m in love,’ he said to himself. ‘I really am, in love with a woman.’
The Alain of even a few days before would have been ashamed of the naivety of the words, for he had been at pains to cultivate a bored and superior manner whenever any of his mates talked of love. Romantic language was out-of-date, out-of-place anywhere but the cinema, and, even there, well, the standard love-scene was matter for laughter.
Would Miriam laugh at him if he said the words he was eager to speak? Would she say, ‘How sweet, but really you’re only a boy, I don’t go in for cradle-snatching?’
‘Besides, I’m a brute to think of her as I do, to imagine myself undressing her. She’s in danger as a Jewess. I ought to be thinking of how I can protect her. What’s more, she’s been recently widowed, even though Léon says she is well rid of her husband who was old enough to be her grandfather – how disgusting. Well, I don’t know. I’ve got to put it to the test. There’s no alternative. I can’t think of anything else.’
