Chasing Ghosts

by Madalyn Morgan

  ‘Yes, of course we are! But why do you want a post office?’

  ‘I’m not going to telephone Commander Landry in case they’re listening in to his calls.’

  ‘Why would he have his own telephone tapped?’

  ‘It may not have been RCAF military intelligence tapping Alain’s grandmother’s line. I thought it was at first, but now I’m not so sure. After Canadian military intelligence searched Esther’s house, she was specific about which rooms they had searched and what they had taken away, but she didn’t say anything about them going near the telephone. Someone searched my house too, at Christmas, while I was at Foxden. I assumed it was Commander Landry’s people, but again, I’m not sure. To be on the safe side, I’m going to send him a telegram.’ She ripped the page from the notebook and got to her feet.

  ‘What if it’s intercepted?’

  Claire laughed. ‘They won’t understand it. The only thing Commander Landry and I have in common is the love of cryptic crosswords, I’ve made it difficult for anyone else to decipher.’ She laughed again, despite the seriousness of the situation. ‘I’m not clever enough to make it difficult for the commander. He’ll know exactly what I’m saying.’

  They arrived at the post office as the postmaster was turning the open sign to closed. Claire gave him one of her most endearing smiles, which he turned his back on. She knocked on the glass in the upper half of the door. He ignored her. She knocked again, louder, and he turned.

  ‘Claire!’ Thomas took her by the elbow. She lifted her arm and snatched it away from his grip.

  ‘Would you open the door, please? I’m begging you.’

  ‘Claire? Stop now.’

  ‘No, Thomas! I must send this telegram today.’ She knocked again. ‘It is vitally important that I get a message to England, sir.’ The postmaster, eyes glazed as if he was bored and his mouth set in a downward arc, threw up his hands. ‘Sir, I have written the message.’ She held the piece of paper against the window. The postmaster didn’t move. ‘Thank you,’ she shouted, and pushed the note through the letterbox, followed by five francs. ‘It needs to go to England tonight,’ she shouted. ‘It is very urgent.’

  Turning his back on Claire again, the postmaster opened a door behind the counter marked private and flicked off the light. ‘Bastard!’ Claire shouted, kicking the door.

  ‘No, no, no!’ As she lifted her foot, Thomas grabbed her from behind and swung her round. ‘He’ll call the police as soon as he gets to his living quarters, I shouldn’t wonder. Come on! We need to get out of here.’ Thomas dragged Claire away from the post office door crying and complaining. ‘We’ll walk back to the hotel. Give you time to calm down.’

  They walked along streets crowded with shoppers and office workers hurrying to get home, stopping only when they came to the restaurant next to the hotel. Seated with coffee and brandy, Thomas took the map of France from the inside pocket of his overcoat. He traced the road from Saint-Gaudens to Fontainebleau with his finger, pointing to various places where they could stop for refreshment. ‘It will take the best part of a day to get there if the weather doesn’t improve.’

  Claire wasn’t listening, she was racking her brain for ways to contact Commander Landry. There wasn’t one, unless she went back to the station. She looked at her wristwatch, it was six-thirty. He would have left his office by now and was probably at home. She didn’t have his home telephone number. Even if she did, the number would probably be tapped. She took a long deep breath; there was no way of contacting him; not tonight anyway. Suddenly aware that Thomas had stopped speaking, she looked at him. ‘Sorry, what were you saying?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Drink your coffee.’

  Just before seven they left the small restaurant and went to the hotel for dinner. Again, being early meant they were served within minutes of sitting down and had finished eating before most of the hotel’s other guests had ordered. Still annoyed with herself for not telephoning the commander from the railway station when she had the chance, Claire declined an after-dinner brandy, saying she was going to her room.

  ‘I was hoping you’d have a drink with me in the bar.’ She shrugged. ‘Come on,’ Thomas said, getting up from the table. ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’ He waited at the door until Claire joined him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I don’t usually kick down doors and call tired civil servants bastards.’ Thomas laughed and Claire laughed with him. ‘Am I forgiven?’

  Hardly able to speak for laughing Thomas said, ‘I thought you were going to break the door down when the post-guy put out the light.’

  ‘I felt like it.’ Claire ran in front of Thomas, stopped, and turned to face him. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For dragging me away before the police got there.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed Thomas near his lips. She giggled, ‘Now I’ve embarrassed you again.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Thomas said, pushing open the door to the hotel bar. ‘What do you want to drink?’

  ‘Wine!’ Claire said, ‘a gallon of it.’

  Thomas went to the bar laughing and came back with a regular bottle of red wine and two glasses. ‘They’re all out of gallon bottles.’

  ‘Well,’ Claire sighed, ‘this will have to do, won’t it?’

  Thomas poured wine into both their glasses, lifted his and when Claire did the same, he clinked his glass with hers.

  ‘Do you forgive me for behaving like a hooligan and kicking the post office door?’

  ‘Of course.’ He took a drink. ‘The guy was so smug, I felt like kicking the door myself.’

  Claire was sure Thomas didn’t feel anything of the sort but thanked him anyway. She took a drink of her wine. ‘Mmmm… This is good. I shall know the difference between good and bad wine when I get back to England.’ Anxiety took over, and she began to ramble. ‘You see, where I come from it is beer or whiskey, we never drink wine, except at my sister and brother-in-law’s hotel, they--’

  ‘Claire?’ Thomas said.

  ‘Sorry, I’m talking nonsense.’

  ‘You are not talking nonsense.’ Thomas leant his elbows on the table and looked at her, his face unsmiling, his mouth a straight line. ‘There is something I need to tell you.’

  The nerves on the top of Claire’s stomach began to tighten. Thomas took another drink, put the glass on the table and holding the stem, turned it round between his fingers. ‘Thomas, you look serious. You’re worrying me. What is it?’

  ‘I’m going back to Paris.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  Claire felt as if a rug had been pulled from under her. ‘Why? What has happened? Is it because of me?’

  ‘No.’

  What then? The call you made to Paris?’

  ‘Yes. There is a flu epidemic in the city and my assistant who has been lecturing for me has it pretty bad.’

  ‘I’m sorry…’

  ‘The principal said if I don’t return to work on Monday, he would find someone to replace me.’

  ‘Can he do that?’ Claire asked, knowing full well the principal could, especially as Thomas had taken time off without giving him notice.

  Thomas gave her a feeble smile and nodded. ‘Yes, he can do it. He has given me until Monday, so I shall drive you to Fontainebleau tomorrow, find you a safe place to stay, then drive on to Paris.’ Claire cast her eyes down. ‘You do understand, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course. You can’t lose your job because of--’ She was going to say me, but that wouldn’t have been true. Yes, she needed to find Mitch, but what she had to give Guillaume Cheval from Lucien Puel was much more important. How was she going to do that without Thomas?

  He poured the remainder of the wine into their glasses and lifted his to take a drink. ‘Wait!’ Claire said, ‘I want to make a toast.’ With her head tilted on one side as if she was getting the measure of her friend, she said, ‘To the man who saved me from falling down a mountain, falling foul of the police
and--’ she was about to say because you are leaving you have saved me from falling in love with you. Instead, she said, ‘saved me from myself.’

  The wine left her feeling mellow. She walked with Thomas through the hotel foyer and up the narrow staircase to their rooms. Outside her door, Thomas stopped and gave her a friendly hug. ‘You’ll be fine taking the documents to Guillaume Cheval,’ he said, ‘you know that, don’t you?’

  Claire nodded. ‘I know. I’m just getting soft in my old age.’ She laughed. ‘I felt tonight like I felt the first time I came to Paris to deliver money to you. It was something I had never done before, I was scared to death every time a gendarme or SS officer checked my travel permit and identity papers.’

  ‘And afterwards?’ Thomas said, a knowing smile on his face.

  ‘Afterwards, I could have done it the next day and the next.’

  He laughed. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’ Claire watched the strong good-looking Resistance man amble along to his room and whispered, ‘Good night, Thomas Durand, sleep well.’

  Claire had planned an early night, but it was past eleven. She took off her clothes and put on her nightdress. She hung what she was going to wear the following day on the outside of the wardrobe and packed everything else, apart from her washbag which she needed in the morning.

  She looked around the room. She’d left nothing out, so she put the fireguard in front of the dying embers in the grate and climbed into bed.

  Unable to sleep, Claire tossed and turned for most of the night, falling into a fitful sleep around five o’clock and waking up again at six. Thomas knocked just before seven. ‘I’m ready,’ she called, and crossing the room opened the door.

  ‘I’ll put your suitcase with mine while we have breakfast,’ he said, hauling Claire’s case the short way along the corridor to his room. By the time he had put her case inside and locked the door, Claire was waiting for him on the landing, Doctor Puel’s briefcase in her hand.

  Claire and Thomas, first down for breakfast, were served quickly. When they had finished eating, Thomas asked the yawning bellboy to fetch his and Claire’s cases from his room. With a cheeky smile and raised eyebrows, the boy ambled off. By the time they had paid the miserable proprietor the balance on three nights’ accommodation plus the bar bill, the bellboy was back. He trailed behind them to the car where Claire thanked him and Thomas gave him a tip.

  ‘Next stop, Fontainebleau,’ Claire said, Doctor Puel’s briefcase safely on her knee.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The weather, while no warmer by any means, was not as bad as the wireless presenter had forecast on the morning news and they arrived at Fontainebleau earlier than expected. They turned off the main road at a junction that said City Centre left, Vignes de la Seine, right.

  ‘We have twenty minutes before it will be dark. Do you want to take a look at Chateau Je Reviendrai?’

  Claire closed her eyes and bit her lip. Her stomach churned at the thought of it, but without Thomas to take her there, she needed to know where she would be going and what she was to expect when she delivered Doctor Puel’s documents to Guillaume Cheval. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  Driving through a small industrial area on the outskirts of Vignes de la Seine, Claire saw several bombed-out factories. There was evidence along many of the streets that offices and houses in the southern suburbs had been damaged. Some so badly by incendiary bombs or shells that they had been demolished. A reminder to residents and visitors alike that less than a decade ago the German Airforce had dropped bombs on the town’s residential as well as industrial area.

  Claire caught her breath when she saw the Chateau Je Reviendrai, an imposing Eighteenth Century charterhouse set back from the road in as much parkland as Foxden Hall before the war. Surrounded by manicured gardens, shrubs and flower beds, there was no evidence that Simone’s family home had been touched by German or Allied bombs, let alone destroyed by them as some of the houses in Vignes de la Seine had been.

  If she hadn’t met Dr Puel - and known better - Claire might have believed what Heinrich Beckman said about Simone and her family being German spies, sympathisers of Hitler’s Reich. Claire shook her head to rid herself of the doubts Beckman’s accusations had left her with.

  A large black car passed them in the lane and swung onto the wide drive. Claire watched as a tall man in his mid-sixties, with greying hair, got out of the car and mounted the steps to the chateau’s door. The man took a key from his coat pocket, unlocked the door and went inside.

  They waited for half an hour, but there was no further sign of life. No one came to the chateau, no one left. ‘It’s getting late,’ Claire said, ‘I think I should find a hotel. Do you know any hotels in the town?’

  ‘What kind of hotel do you want to stay in? Big and impersonal or small and friendly.’

  ‘Big and impersonal. I want to be anonymous.’

  ‘You’ll be that in the Hotel Central,’ Thomas said. ‘It’s huge. It’s mostly used by business people whose head offices are in Fontainebleau. It was the first really big hotel to be built after the war. It calls itself an International Hotel,’ he said, laughing.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘A friend of mine from the Resistance days is the manager of a small hotel here. I was going to suggest you stayed there, but I picked this up when we stopped for lunch.’ He took a brochure listing hotels in the area from the pocket in the door and dropped it in Claire’s lap.

  It was too dark to read, so she put it in her handbag. They drove into the town and turned into Boulevard Principal. ‘It is a big hotel for such a small town,’ Claire said, looking up at four storeys of concrete and glass. I’ll be anonymous enough in there, she thought, jumping out of the car. Thomas took her case from the car’s boot and followed her into the hotel.

  The foyer, a complete contrast to the hotel’s stark exterior, looked welcoming and comfortable. Large ornate mirrors framed in gold hung on the walls above ruby red seating that ran from the reception area to-- Claire stopped, and Thomas stopped immediately behind her. While taking in the hotel’s ambience Claire spotted a man on the far side of the foyer reading a newspaper. Except he wasn’t reading it. He was holding it in front of his face, but his eyes were fixed on the reception desk. On the opposite side of the room, a similarly dressed man was not smoking the cigarette he was holding.

  ‘What is it?’ Thomas asked.

  Claire turned so her back was to the men, put her hand on his shoulder and stood on tiptoe looking dreamily into his face. ‘The guy with the newspaper at ten o’clock,’ she said, smiling, ‘is more interested in who is booking a room at the reception desk than he is in reading the newspaper he is holding.’

  ‘Uh-huh!’ Thomas said, ‘I see him.’

  ‘And,’ Claire swayed coquettishly, ‘At three o’clock, there’s a guy sitting with his back to the window holding a cigarette.’

  ‘There are several men holding cigarettes.’

  ‘Sharp features, small eyes, hooked nose. Holding a cigarette, but not smoking it. There’s an ashtray on the table in front of him that is full of fag-ends, but he isn’t a smoker.’

  Thomas looked over her shoulder, ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘He puts the cigarette in his mouth, takes a drag, then puffs out the smoke without inhaling.’

  ‘I see him. He’s looking around the room,’ Thomas said.

  ‘That’s right,’ Claire turned so she was side-on to the man facing the door to observe him again. Beginning with the people on the left of him the beaky-nosed man began a slow sweep of the crowded foyer. From left to right he studied the face of every woman who had entered the hotel. Then, just as his eyes were about to reach her, someone shouted, ‘Harlot!’ The man’s head whipped round and his attention was off the women in the foyer and focused in the direction of the shouting.

  Claire and Thomas - and everyone else in the foyer - stopped what they were doing to see what was going on. A tall woman in her mid-forties, wearing
a full-length black sable coat and a Cossack-style fur hat, sashayed into the reception area. At her side was a young man in a chauffeur’s uniform, carrying bags and boxes displaying the names of some of the most prestigious Parisian designers.

  Behind them, a short stocky man in his late fifties with a bald pate shouted, again, ‘Harlot!’

  The woman turned and gave the man a contemptuous look. ‘Call me that once more,’ she goaded, ‘and I shall leave you. And this time it will be for good!’

  The man ran ahead of her, turned, and opening his arms wide, blocked her way. ‘Fine. Go! But you are not going out at this time of night with my chauffeur?’

  ‘What? I am not going out with your chauffeur in the way you mean,’ she said, smiling at the young man, ‘He is taking me to visit my mother.’

  ‘That old witch? She only wants to see you to get her hands on my money!’ the man shouted. As the woman walked towards him the small man started to back off. ‘Fine!’ He put up his hands, but the woman didn’t stop walking. ‘Go and see your mother,’ he said, ‘but I forbid you to give her any of my money. And I forbid you to go in my car.’

  ‘She-lives-miles-away...’ The woman said, pronouncing each word deliberately. ‘How do you propose I get there if I don’t take the car? Walk?’

  ‘Yes! The exercise will do your grand derrière good,’ he shouted. Spurred on by the men in the foyer laughing, he continued, ‘Take the metro! Go on the tram! Fly on your broomstick! But you are not taking--’

  ‘Er, hum!’ Claire nudged Thomas who like everyone else was transfixed on the pantomime argument between the tall woman and her short husband. ‘We should leave while the two goons are being entertained.’

  She turned, walked across the foyer to the revolving doors and stepped quickly into an empty section. Thomas followed but stopped at the door to let a young woman enter. She said thank you and he smiled. Still smiling he descended the hotel’s steps and walked in the opposite direction to where he had parked his car. Claire stopped and opened her handbag. She took out her powder compact and powdered her nose. When Thomas passed her, she dropped the compact back into her handbag and walked a few paces behind him to the end of Boulevard Principal. At the corner, she stopped again and looked back at the hotel. There was no one standing around in the street or leaving the hotel. It was safe to assume they hadn’t been seen.