Madeleine's War (38 page)

She nodded and blew smoke in my face again.

“And a good one, too. I haven't had the chance to tell you yet, but after we finished work last night, as I told you, I went back to his flat. I went because he said he had a document he wanted to give me.”

I nodded and sipped some wine.

She reached down into her bag on the floor and took some sheets of paper from it and put them on the table.

“And they are?”

“Remember that woman we interviewed in La Santé prison?”

“Claudine Petit?”

“That's right.”

Justine shuffled the papers neatly. “Well, the
épuration
committee visited her in jail after we did. François was one of them—I think I told you that was one of his responsibilities.”

I nodded. “And these pages are…?”

“A complete list of people who passed through the Gestapo offices in Paris from January 1 this year until it closed down at the end of July. And details of what happened to them. It was one of the last things the bureaucrats in Avenue Foch produced.”

She sucked on her cigarette. “Claudine Petit had it all along. She stole it amid the chaos of the Gestapo's last days. She didn't tell us because you are a foreigner and I was too junior. She knew the
épuration
committee would visit her and that, if she produced it for them, it would help her cause…show how well-motivated she was. It worked—she has been released and gone back to her family.”

“And?”

Justine turned the pages and pushed them across the table, leaving her hand on them. “When François told me he had the list, I took it so we could be certain, if we ever do get to Pforzheim, that we have full and
accurate details of who was sent where. Claudine Petit's memory, Monique Brèger's, even Ulrich Kolbe's recollection, could be flawed. This list is official, the Gestapo's own.”

She lifted her hand. “Read the lists for yourself.”

I reached forward and spread the sheets of paper across the table, moving the
pichet
out of the way.

I scanned the list.

I scanned it a second time.

I read it more slowly a third time.

“I don't see…Madeleine's name. It's not…there.”

She spoke through the cigarette still in her mouth.

“That's right.”

“But Claudine Petit said that she remembered Madeleine's code name, Oak. So did the others, Monique, Kolbe—”

“No.”

“They did!”

“No! I wasn't there when you saw Monique Brèger, but what Claudine Petit actually said—in French, remember—was that someone with the code name Chêne came through Gestapo headquarters. And so did Ulrich Kolbe.”

“So? It amounts to the same thing.”

“No it doesn't. Look down the list for the name Barbara Hapgood. César circuit, Auxerre.”

I did as she said. “Yes, I see it.”

“And what is the code word next to it?”

“Chain. So what?”

“Chain in French is
chain
.” She looked hard at me. “It is pronounced exactly the same as
chêne
. You speak French well but with a bit of an accent. I think that both Claudine Petit and Ulrich Kolbe may have misunderstood you. Maybe Monique Brèger did too.”

Chêne…chain…chain…chêne
.

Justine was right. Different meanings but they sounded the same. My heart was racing. My heart was ahead of my mind.

A thought struck me. “I wonder…Did you notice, in Saarburg, when we interviewed Kolbe, when we asked him a question about Chêne, he hesitated. I remember, he chewed his cheek as if he was going to say something, then thought better of it. Was he perhaps going to point out the possibility for misunderstanding, then dropped the idea?”

I was, of course, aware of another possibility, that Kolbe had been
about to tell us that Madeleine—Oak, Chêne—was a German agent. But I wasn't about to tell Justine that. I wasn't sure what the situation was. The Gestapo lists told us Madeleine hadn't been captured, or executed. They didn't tell us whether she was alive, or where, or with whom.

Another thought struck me.

“And Monique Brèger commented on my accent, too. She asked me to repeat words, even code words.”

Justine shrugged. “Maybe what you say is true. But the point is, your Madeleine never came through Paris. She was never sent to Pforzheim, or Ravensbruck, come to that.”

She sat back.

“If she hasn't turned up, after…after more than four months, I am afraid to say that she must surely be dead. And the chances are—I'm sorry to say this, too—you may never find her grave.”

She tapped ash into the ashtray.

“That's what I thought you should know. That's what these records confirm. I don't think there's any point in your going to Pforzheim, not if your main aim is to find your Madeleine.”

Given what Justine knew, or thought that she knew, she was right. It had been four months, four long, eventful months—historic months—since we'd had word from Madeleine. Long enough—more than long enough—for her to have got in touch if she was alive and free, more than long enough if she had escaped via a ratline.

I gulped some wine.

Justine reached across the table and put her hand on mine. “I'm sorry if this is bad news. I know you were hoping to find her grave, to say goodbye. Now—”

I held up my free hand to stop her talking. “You may be right, but there's something you don't know, something I've never told you.”

Taking a deep breath, I poured more wine into our glasses. I was—
of course
—not going to tell Justine about the bleak possibility of Madeleine being a German double agent. Instead, I began to explain about Philippe, his activities in the Resistance, his life in the caves, his marriage to Madeleine, his death, the newspaper cutting in
Limoges Matin
.

“So you see what's going through my head,” I said when I had finished. “Maybe Philippe
isn't
dead, maybe that incomplete
Limoges Matin
article was about
him
. If he's alive and Madeleine—who was in that part of the world when the invasion took place—went looking for his grave, and
found him instead, it could explain her silence. She…she has gone back to her first love.”

Justine stared at me. “Don't put yourself through this. Don't think it—and don't go looking. Either way, if she's dead, or gone back to this Philippe person, you have lost her and are going to crucify yourself. You're not married to her—she's married to him. You've already made a break—you've been four months without her. Don't stir up your feelings again. Stay here. Stay here with me.”

I didn't say anything for a while. I lit another cigarette and smoked it. I drank my wine.

I shook my head. “No. I can't. This changes things, Justine. I'm sorry. But you're French, you're a woman, you know what I'm going through. I really do need to settle this. And that means I need to go to the Bibliothèque Nationale immediately. Tomorrow.”

She gripped my hand more firmly, and said softly. “Don't, please don't. I don't want to lose you, too. I am losing all the men I know and like, and all at once.”

“I'm sorry.” I shook my head again. “I'm sorry.”

A long silence elapsed. I noticed a clock ticking somewhere.

Slowly, she disengaged her hands from mine. A tear coursed its silver trace down her cheek.

She sniffed again. “I think you are making a mistake. Some things are better left…alone. But I know a lot is happening in your head and it is not certain, is it, that this article is about the man you think? So yes, I will take you to the Bibliothèque tomorrow—after all, I can't stop you going by yourself. But, in return, I want you to come with me to see François's flat and the waiter. You owe me that.”

My throat was dry.

“Of course.”

THAT NIGHT
,
JUSTINE TOOK HER TIME
coming to bed. She ran a bath, so hot that steam leaked out from under the bathroom door. All was quiet from within the room, so she was obviously just lying there, soaking up the heat and whatever bath oil she had mixed in with the water.

I was sitting on the edge of the bed, in my undershorts, cleaning my shoes, just to make doubly sure they were free of any lighter fuel I might
have spilled on them, when I had a disturbing thought that I should have had before. I got up quickly and knocked on the bathroom door.

“Yes?”

“You're very quiet. I was just checking.”

“Checking what?”

“You know…what with François being killed…that you haven't done anything silly.”

A pause. “The door's not locked. Come in.”

She was lying there, the bath very full, foam covering her shoulders and breasts, just her head showing.

“I did think about…
alors
…doing something silly, as you say.
Fou
. But then I thought…to get all the way through this war, safely, and to…No. I'm miserable, but you have never misled me, so I don't complain. We had what we had. I had my first English lover, and maybe my last. You had…What did you have, Matt? What did I do for you—anything? Anything you haven't had or done before?”

I sat on the edge of the bath. “Let's not keep score, Justine. I just need to know what happened to Madeleine. It's partly duty and partly…Well, you know what else. There's still a possibility she was killed, a strong possibility. And she had a suicide pill if she wanted to avoid capture and the torture that would follow. Then…if that's the case…”

“You'll come back?”

“Would you want me to?”

She didn't answer. Instead, she sank under the water and, for a moment, disappeared. Then she stood up, naked except for the foam, her body glistening in the light, the hair between her legs dripping wet, succulent.

“Go back to bed,” she said softly. “I'll dry off and be there soon.”

I went back to my shoes. My mind wasn't on them, of course. My mind was on the waiter in the café in the Place Royère. How was I going to get out of meeting him?

I lay back on the bed with that day's paper. Death notices continued to fill the pages of
Le Monde
. The war was still on. From the accounts of the fighting in the east I could see that Pforzheim still hadn't fallen. There was now a small section in the paper headed
“Épuration.”
There I found details of the death of François Perrault, described as an accident in an arson attack that had gone too far.

Justine came through in her dressing gown, drying her hair with a towel. She sat on the edge of the bed.

When she had finished she made no attempt to comb it but left it wild—red strands falling like rope all over her shoulders and down on to her breasts, leaking droplets of water. Then she took off her gown and got into bed.

I put aside my paper and got under the covers alongside her.

I turned towards her.

“I can tell you one thing,” she said, sniffing.

“Yes?”

“I telephoned the Bibliothèque Nationale today, to check in which part of the library they keep the newspapers. When I was put through, the woman in the newspaper division was very helpful and asked which paper I wanted, and for which dates, so she could have it ready. But when I told her, she said that the papers for the dates you are interested in are at the binders, out at Massy, and can't be consulted until the binding is finished. I asked if
Limoges Matin
has a Paris office, but she said she didn't think so. It just uses agency copy.”

Her eyes searched mine. “Does that make any difference? Are you still going?”

I paused. But not for long. “Yes.”

She lay her head on the pillow, her eyes glistened, a tear nestled on the side of the bridge of her nose.

“Kiss me,” she said softly.

“I thought—?”

“Kiss me!”

Her mouth was wet. Her cheeks wet from the tears. Her hair wet from the bath.

As I kissed her, she pulled me to her and wrapped her legs around mine, the hair between her legs still wet.

I broke off kissing her and looked at her.

Her eyes were closed, then they opened.

“Get
into
me! I don't care where you were last night.”

She pressed her wet pelvis against my upper thigh and her mouth closed over mine.

My body responded fully to her advances. But as I made love to her, I couldn't get out of my mind the fact that if she knew where I had really been the night before, she would care very much.

BREAKFAST THE NEXT MORNING
was—well, difficult. Justine didn't touch her coffee and only picked at her croissant. At length, she said, “When will you leave? Tonight? Tomorrow?”

“Tonight, if there's a train.”

If Madeleine was a German agent, I needed to know that quickly, too. London would need to track her mother, and any other people she'd had dealings with.

“I'm sorry. Last night was so…Sorry.”

She was close to tears.

“Come to the square? You promised?”

I couldn't get out of it. In her current mood, what she felt for me could easily turn to loathing, and any suspicions she had of me would set like steel.

“Yes, I promised,” I said. “But there are a couple of things I have to set in motion at the office. Can we meet
at
the square?” I looked at my watch. “It's now nine fifteen. Shall we meet there at, say, two?”

She nodded. “
D'accord
. Will you find it okay?”

“Place Royère? I'll come by taxi—how's that?”

She nodded, threw down her cigarette, and trod on it. “It will be a sad place for our last date. But perhaps fitting.”

“Don't say that! I don't know how this story will end.”

Justine only knew the half of it. How could she know more? But I didn't know the whole story myself. Not yet.

AT THE OFFICE I HAD THREE THINGS
to do. The first was to get a call put through to Blakeney in Norfolk. So far as I recalled, Madeleine's
mother did not have a telephone, but I knew someone who did—the taxi firm just around the corner, the firm whose drivers had ferried me to and from King's Lynn railway station. I didn't have their number either, but I remembered their name—the King's Men—and I asked Colette to find their number through directory enquiries.

That would take a while, I knew, so in the meantime I asked one of the other secretaries to book me a ticket on that night's overnight train to Limoges, if there was one. Then I took down a copy of the Paris telephone directory and began a search that only I could do—for the café in the Place Royère.

I couldn't remember the exact name of the café, but it was the only one in the square, so I took a chance that it was called the Café Royère.

It was.

I took a deep breath, wrapped my handkerchief around the mouthpiece, and dialed the number.

After a couple of rings, a voice answered.

Speaking in my singsong Lorraine-style French, as best I could, I asked if that was the Café Royère?”

“Oui, monsieur.”

“You have a waiter there, one Didier Roque.”

“Oui, monsieur.”

“May I speak to him, please? This is the police.”

“The Paris police? You don't sound Parisian?”

“I am not, madame, but that is not your concern. I wish to speak to Roque.”

“He's done nothing wrong, I hope?”

“No, no. Nothing for you to worry about. But bring him to the phone, please, now.”

“Of course.
Ne quittez pas
. Hold on.”

A delay. Traffic noises, both outside the office and through the telephone receiver. Having spent time in Lorraine, it was the only French accent I was familiar with.

Then, “Hello, this is Didier Roque. Who is that?”

“This is Police Headquarters, sixteenth arrondissement. Inspector Ravenal here. I am investigating the fire in the Place Royère the other night. I understand that you have told more than one person that you noticed some strangers in your café before the fire.”

“Ye-e-e-s.”

“You sound doubtful. Yes or no?”

“Well, there was one person, yes, who was hanging round here on the day before the fire. He wasn't Parisian. He said he—”

“That's enough. I want you to come into headquarters. We have some photographs we would like you to see. It could be important. Can you come in…Let's see, can you be here at two o'clock?”

“Where is ‘here,' as you put it?”

I gave him an address well away from the Place Royère.

“That's a long way. Why are you so far away?”

“Because, if we are right, our suspect lives in this arrondissement, where he is known for other crimes. Now, can you come? It's urgent, we may be talking about murder here—you realise that?”

“Yes, of course I do. That's why I mentioned my suspicions. Who told you, by the way?”

“That doesn't matter for the moment. We can talk about that when you get here. Answer my question—can you get here by two o'clock?”

“Hold on, let me ask the woman who owns the café.”

The line went dead again.

As I looked up, Colette was waving a piece of paper at me. She laid it on my desk. It was a phone number for the King's Men in Blakeney. I nodded my thanks.

“Monsieur?”

“Yes?”

“How long will the meeting take?”

“Oh, I don't know. Half an hour, forty-five minutes.”

“Will you pay my fare?”

I exploded but tried not to show it.

“We'll pay your fare by public transport, and give you a ride back to the café in a police car, how's that?”

“Okay, I'll come. Two o'clock?”

“Two o'clock it is. Ask for me, Inspector Ravenal, Pierre Ravenal.”

I rang off.

I picked up the phone again immediately and put through a call, via the international operator, to England. Since I had an army rank, it took only ten minutes.

The line wasn't good but it was good enough. Swishes and storms all over again.

“The King's Men, Blakeney,” said a voice.

“I'm calling from Paris,” I said loudly. “I hope you can help me.”

“Paris? Paris in France? Oh my. It's a call from Paris,” the voice said, obviously speaking for the benefit of everyone within earshot in his office. “You know this is a taxi office. Have you got the right number?”

“Yes, yes, I know who you are,” I said. “And I want you to do me a favour, please.”

“Oh, yes? What's that then?”

“I need urgently to talk to Mrs. Dirac, she's a good customer of yours—”

“Yes, she is. You want to talk to her?”

“Yes, please, can you go and get her? I'll hang on.”

“Oh,” said the voice. “Oh. I don't think…no. Don't go away, here's our Jeannie.”

There was a short pause. Was Victoria Dirac still in Blakeney? I needed to know—it would tell me a lot. If she had moved out, that would point to Madeleine being…what I feared most. If not, had she heard from her daughter…?

A voice broke in on my thoughts. “Jeannie Slater here. Are you wanting Victoria Dirac?”

“Yes, that's exactly who I
do
want. Can you go and get her for me, please? It's urgent.”

“I can't get her, I'm afraid, because she's not here. I'm looking after Wellington, her dog.”

“She's away? Where's she gone?”

This was not good news.

“I'm not sure. I mean I don't know.”

“Oh?
Why
has she gone? Do you know that?”

“No, I don't. She was very private about it all. She left very suddenly, four days ago. Took the train to London, left me three pounds to look after Wellington.”

Had Mrs. Dirac told Jeannie Slater the truth? Had she disappeared, and sacrificed her dog?

I barked into the phone. “What else did she say?”

“Nothing, not to me anyway. Who
are
you?”

“I'm a friend of her daughter. She didn't mention her daughter?”

“No, no. She didn't mention her daughter, nothing like that—”

“Did she say how
long
she would be away?”

“Not exactly—”

“What does that mean? What did she say exactly? Please, it might be important, very important.”

“It was as she was leaving, in one of our taxis, leaving for King's Lynn, I mean, to take the train to London. She said she didn't know when she would be back.”

I paused. The swishing on the line was bad. “Is there anything else you can think of? Anything you can tell me about her departure?”

“Only…only…”

“Yes?”

“She took a bag of photographs with her. I know because I saw them slip out on to the back seat of the taxi as she was leaving.”

THE TABAC IN PLACE ROYÈRE
was still smoking. The smell of burned wood clogged the nostrils and even penetrated to the back of the throat. Blackened timbers lay everywhere, scorch marks disfigured the exterior brickwork, tiny fragments of glass caught the daylight. The shop was still giving off heat.

Justine and I stood together surveying the damage.

I looked up at what was left of François Perrault's building. “What a horrible way to die,” I said softly, mentally crossing my fingers as I did so.

Justine nodded, but didn't say anything for a moment.

“It's not much of a shop, is it? I mean in terms of size.”

“A tabac needn't take up much space, though. Cigarettes and matches are hardly bulky.” She held up a Gitane, to make her point.

I shook my head. “Being here rubs it in: it was an incredible thing to do—set fire to the shop to kill the person living next door, above. Are you still convinced that's what happened?”

She nodded furiously.

A policeman walked by. He looked at us intently and Justine turned away.

“What do you think?” she said, gesturing with her hand to the fire site. “Any thoughts?”

I nodded decisively. “This is an incendiary-type fire, very much so. I recognize the configuration, the pattern of heat generation.” I made a show of looking up and down the smoking remains. “And I can tell you that we in SC2 parachuted
thousands
of incendiaries to the Resistance. This is a Resistance job—make of that what you will. If the tobacconist
was
sleeping with—”

“But she wasn't!”

I shrugged. “Have you met the woman who runs the tabac? Do you really believe her when she says she never—?”

“No, I haven't met the woman, but I've met her man—Didier, the waiter. Come on, the café's over here.” She moved off towards it.

Here was the crunch. Had the waiter done as I had enticed him to do, and gone to police headquarters? If he hadn't…

Justine crossed the square and walked straight into the café, past the tables on the pavement and on inside.

My stomach was in a brawl with my other organs.

“Is Didier here?” she said to the woman behind the counter.

“No, he's been called to the police station,” said the woman.

I relaxed.

“Oh? Why?” said Justine. She turned to me and said, “This is Matthew Hammond, a British colleague.”

The woman held out her hand and I shook it. “Good afternoon,” I said in French. “We were hoping to see Didier.”

“The police want him to look at some photographs, of people who might have been in this café on the night of the fire.”

I suddenly realised with a start that the woman behind the bar was looking at me intently and the skin under my chin began sweating. She was, of course, the person I had spoken to when I had called the bar, pretending to be a policeman. Had I been too talkative and had she recognized my voice? She had remarked on it earlier.

“But how did the police know he had seen some suspicious-looking people? So far as I know, he had only mentioned it to me, and I certainly never told the police. I was going to but I haven't yet. We wanted to have some potential suspects first.” Justine frowned at me.

The woman shrugged. “I don't know who Didier talks to. I'm his employer, not his confessor. He talked to lots of customers. The police telephoned here earlier today—I answered the call myself. Didier spoke to them and they fixed an appointment for two o'clock.”

“What time was this call from the police?”

The woman shrugged again. “Eleven, eleven fifteen.”

Justine looked at me quizzically. Did she suspect me? Was that behind her question over timing? She
couldn't
suspect me.

Could she?

“How long will he be gone?” Justine said to the woman.

She shrugged again. “He didn't say. But you're welcome to wait.”

Justine looked at me.

“Sorry, Justine. I've done what you asked, but when I went back to the office today, I found out that Madeleine's mother has left her address in England. Something had happened suddenly, and that means—”

“I know what it means,” she said softly but bitterly.

She didn't know everything it might mean, but I wasn't getting into that. Madeleine's mother might have been telling the truth to Jeannie Slater, or she might not have been.

What I did say was, “I'm going to Limoges tonight, on the overnight train. I'm sorry but…” I tailed off.

“When does the train leave?”

“Eight. But I need to go back to the office first. Loose ends to tie up.”

“Shall I come to the station, to see you off?”

“I…Well, if you wish. Are you sure?”

“I'll be there at a quarter to, on the platform. For my last kiss.”

I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED THE SMELL
and bustle of railway stations. The steam, the soot, the drama of arrival and departure, the hugs and tears—there is nowhere quite like a big station to make you feel quickened by ordinary events.

But this time I was apprehensive as well as excited. I had of course lied to Justine about having things to do in the office. I knew she would wait for Didier Roque, that he would arrive back at the café flustered and irritated, having found that there was
no
rendezvous with the police, and that he had been set up. At that point, when he and Justine were discussing what had happened, would the bar's owner recall that my voice was quite similar to the one she had heard on the telephone that morning? Both had remarked on my accent. Would Justine put it all together? She could have no understanding of why I would wish to kill François Perrault, but she might be suspicious enough to bring Didier with her to the Gare Montparnasse, to settle it once and for all.