Madeleine's War (24 page)

“Oh yes. She could run faster than most boys her age, she was quite a clever fighter, and she was even admitted to a boys' gang.” She smiled. “That was unheard of where we lived.”

I buttoned up my coat. I could tell from the noise whistling down the chimney that the wind was as strong as ever. “And she gets on famously with dogs, too.” I told Mrs. D. about the love affair between Madeleine and Zola.

“That's my daughter,” she said as I finished. “She had a dog of her own after we moved here from France, but it drowned when it got swept out to sea in a storm.”

“And who's that?” I said as nonchalantly as I could, nodding at the photo on the mantelpiece.

“Philippe, of course.”

When I said nothing, she went on, “I didn't really know him, their relationship was so short, but he
was
my son-in-law and a French Resistance hero. And he nearly gave me a grandchild.”

I looked at her sharply. “Nearly?”

She nodded. “Didn't Madeleine tell you? When she came home from France with me, after our few days in Louzac, and after their secret marriage, she was pregnant—”

“What!”

“Yes. And when her dog was swept overboard, she jumped in, to try to save it. But she couldn't…and on top of everything, in the exertion she lost the baby.”

I didn't know what to say.

Then I did. “She told me about Rolfe, her German shepherd who howled at the moon. That was in Louzac, right?”

She nodded. “He had to be put down. But we got another when we came here.”

Again, I didn't know what to say. This was all news to me.

“I'm not sure I should have told you,” Mrs. Dirac said. “She never talked about it herself. When Philippe was smuggled to England in 1940 they spent a day or so together in Dover—”

“Yes, she told me that.”

Mrs. Dirac took her house keys from off the mantelpiece. “She explained to Philippe what had happened and they tried hard, while he was in Dover, to make a baby all over again. But that time it didn't work. She knew Philippe might get killed and she wanted…she wanted something of his to live on, should that happen. When we heard that he had been killed…it was devastating.”

I was standing by the piano. I picked up the top sheet of music and opened it. As I did so, a photograph fell out and landed on the floor. I stooped and picked it up. I showed it to Mrs. Dirac.

“That's Madeleine and me in Berlin,” she said, taking the photo from me.

“When was that?”

“Nineteen thirty-six, I think.” She pointed to the sheet music. “That is her favourite Schubert song. Madeleine has a good singing voice and at school she won a prize, a holiday to a place that enabled you to expand your interest in your winning subject. She chose Berlin, to hear some Schubert sung professionally. I went with her, paying for myself, of course.”

I replaced the sheet music on the piano.

“Madeleine speaks German?”

“No! Not really. She had to learn the German words of the Schubert songs, so she could sing them with the appropriate feeling, but that was all. She can't speak proper German.”

Mrs. Dirac walked past me, opened the front door, and turned back. “We were talking about Philippe's death. I told her that the grief would pass and that she would meet someone else and that when she did she mustn't be always comparing him to Philippe. I hope she doesn't do that with you.”

“I…I've never been aware of it. We seemed to have—we
do
have—
a straightforward, clean relationship.” I smiled. “And as I say, she seems to love my dog as much as I do. The three of us were—are—content.”

“Then find her, Colonel Hammond. Find her, and give me the grandchild I never had.”

I EASILY GOT THE TRAIN
. The 7:13 from King's Lynn was very crowded and got into King's Cross rather late. I flopped into bed with a drink and that day's newspapers, as was now my routine. Zola was in bed alongside me. I still valued his warmth and the other signs of life that he brought with him—the sound of his panting, his doggy smell, the mild thud of his tail when he wagged it. He now accepted his place on the bed as his natural right. This would be my last night with him, for a while at least.

Of course, the whole Blakeney encounter had been turning over in my mind. Most of all, of course, I didn't know what to make of the fact that Madeleine had never mentioned her pregnancy. Or her interest in Schubert lieder. Was that odd? Or was I being too—what was the word?—inquisitive? paranoid? She had never mentioned her trip to Berlin either—was
that
odd?

I don't know what I would have made of these thoughts and ruminations had a small item in that day's newspaper not caught my eye. It was a short report on page 6 of
The Times
to the effect that the day before a man had been arrested on suspicion of being a German spy, in Cromer.

I read that article twice, three times. A man had been arrested in Cromer, on suspicion of being a German spy, because, when asked the way to Sheringham, the very next village, by an off-duty RAF pilot, on leave from a nearby base, he had appeared nonplussed. Since the exclusion zone had been in force for months or even years by then, and only locals and accredited military personnel were allowed in Cromer, for a local not to know where Sheringham was…It was unthinkable. The police were called, and it was found that his identification papers were fake.

And, of course, that was the day before Mrs. Dirac had been in Cromer.

According to what she had told me, she had been fitting someone's curtains, but…that could just have been flimflam. Armed with the new information that Mrs. Dirac and Madeleine had been in Berlin in 1936, and that Madeleine had kept quiet about her taste for Schubert, on top of which Mrs. Dirac hadn't seemed especially anxious about the fate of her daughter, was this a…a new possibility? Was a new understanding of
Madeleine coming into view? Had Mrs. Dirac been in Cromer to…to do what exactly? To see what she could find out about the arrested man? To report back to…to whom? If she
had
been in Cromer to make a rendezvous, would she have told me that's where she had been?

I didn't want to follow that line of thought, but I knew I had no choice. The thoughts wouldn't go away all by themselves.

I checked in the other papers. Yes, they all had the same story, about the arrest of a German spy in Cromer, though with no more details.

But there could be no doubt about the fact of the arrest and its reason.

To see more clearly I put out the light. I reached over to the bedside table and gripped what was left of my whisky. It was going to be a long night.

I searched my memory. For a few moments my mind was vague, blank, but then I suddenly started to piece together what might, at some point, become a picture.

I recalled that, at Ardlossan, when we had discussed using poetry as the basis of our fall-back codes, Madeleine had mentioned using Goethe. Was that odd, or too obvious if she was a…not what she seemed?

Then there was the fact that she kept lapsing into English, rather than keeping to French as recruits were meant to do. Did that mean anything? Was it a sign that language was her weak point?

Was I making sense?

Zola scratched himself, vigorously. I scolded him and he stopped.

Had Madeleine shown an unusual interest in the German
Schwimmweste
we had happened across on the beach at Ardlossan? I had thought nothing of it at the time; her curiosity seemed only normal, but was it? Had it worried her unduly, that her fate might be much the same? Had it made her realise how exposed she was?

I heard an all-night bus pull away from the stop on the corner of Lisson Grove.

Madeleine had asked me many times about the date and place of the invasion. Was that natural curiosity, or something more? I hadn't, until now, felt that she had been unduly inquisitive, but then, if she was more than she seemed, she would be trained in dissimulation. I could read little into her behaviour on that score.

Or from her inquiries into SC2, what it was, whether there was an SC1. She had asked more questions than any of the other recruits, but that might only mean the rest were not unduly curious. She
had
shown more
interest than any of the others but…I could conclude nothing concrete from her behaviour.

There
was
the fact that she was Protestant, not Catholic. I wasn't too clued up on my French history, but there was, I knew, a Protestant tradition in France—the Huguenots—so it was entirely possible she was exactly what she said she was.

I swallowed some whisky.

On the other hand, if there was more to her than I knew, if she had stronger German links than she had let on, she might find it safer to keep to the faith she was raised in than to pretend to be Catholic.

I listened to the night. It was becoming a habit.

She didn't drive, or so she said. Could I read anything into that? Her mother had asked how she moved around France. Did that imply Madeleine
could
drive?

Early on she had said that, sooner or later, she got on everybody's wrong side. In the land of paranoia into which I was sinking, even that could be made to seem suspicious.

She had impersonated Hitler, or rather Charlie Chaplin's Hitler, when we had been inspecting German officers' uniforms, and she had spoken German—but a very rudimentary nonsense German that we all understood. She had given Katrine and Ivan a French translation of a German classic. It had been a French translation, yes, but she had known that—what was his name?—Friedrich Schiller—was a respected playwright. Was there anything in that?

Was there anything in her obsession with the Riefenstahl woman? Would a real German spy admit to such an obsession? Or was it bluff and double bluff?

Was there anything in the fact that her mother had cancelled lunch in London? Did they not want me to see them together, just in case I…what?

Were they a team? That's what the Cromer business suggested, if it suggested anything. A mother-and-daughter team—if they
were
mother and daughter, of course. The lack of physical resemblance between them didn't confirm anything, but it didn't support their story either. The photos on the mantelpiece could have been a deliberate decoy.

Where was I going with all this?

Then there was, of course, Madeleine's last message. Was it genuine? Had she really been cut off in mid-transmission, and been forced to
escape? Or was that more dissimulation, a clever gambit to cover her tracks as she went back to her masters in Paris or Berlin?

I drank more whisky.

How had her mother behaved when I told her that her daughter was missing? She had been distraught, sort of, but had she been
very
upset?

I couldn't be sure, but I didn't think so.

So what did she know?

And Madeleine hadn't told her “mother” about me…Was that because I meant so little to her, was just one part of her plan, her trap, her deception? Is that why she had given me Erich's cigarette case—because it meant nothing to her?

I didn't know what to think.

Then there was Philippe. Had he ever existed, or was he just a concoction of Madeleine and her mother, to root them artificially in a specific part of France, and to add to their credibility?

The whisky was finished. The darkness was deep. It had begun to rain—the swish of car tyres on the surface of St. John's Wood Road told me as much, as did the spattering sound on the windows. I found that vaguely comforting, as I always did when it rained at night. I don't know why.

What I
did
know—and I am not proud of saying this—was that I had to avoid making up my mind, at least for the time being.

If I decided that Madeleine was…well, more than she seemed, I had to tell Hilary and he would have to tell his superiors. That might stop me going to France, might stop me having the chance to look for her. My mission might easily be aborted.

It wasn't too difficult to rationalise, of course. I had no concrete evidence that Madeleine was not exactly what she said she was. Just an old photograph, with a seemingly innocent explanation; and a coincidence about her mother's being in Cromer on the day after a German spy had been arrested there.

On top of which I had now been given an important assignment, far more important than Madeleine's relationship—or non-relationship—with me, and what else she might or might not be. No doubt Hathaway and the prime minister could replace me, but my withdrawal—whatever the reason—wouldn't be a popular move. There wouldn't be much time to find a substitute to stop Legros briefing Perrault. And the prime minister had given me one of his cigars.

I put the empty whisky glass on the bedside table, and laid my other
hand on Zola's back. He woke up, turned his head, and started licking my hand.

No, I told myself, I had to keep my thoughts private for the moment, until I had more to go on.

Given more time, had I not been scheduled to travel to France the very next day, I could have checked out Madeleine's story—her past history—a bit more thoroughly than our people had been able to do before she arrived at The Farm. As it was, I had no choice but to take what I knew, and didn't know, or half knew, to France with me, and see what happened.

I turned on to my side and tried to sleep. Doubt is an awful snake of an emotion. Once it has you in its grip, it won't let go. It spoils everything.

I'd never had this kind of feeling with Celestine.

SEPTEMBER