Madeleine's War (39 page)

I had thought this through while we were standing talking to the café owner, and that is why I had also lied about the departure time of the Limoges train. It left not at 8:00 but at 7:10 and I was banking on Justine's not doubting my word about that and not checking the timetable herself. If she
did
check the timetable and found out that I had misled her…

I was seated in a compartment now, at 7:05. I had no suitcase with
me—I'd left my belongings in Justine's flat, so there was some ambiguity as to whether I would return—but I hoped I could buy the basics I would need in Limoges. The compartment was filling up—there was no officer's section for this journey, as we were too far from the front, and it was likely to be an uncomfortable night. But, so long as I got out of Gare Montparnasse without a confrontation with Justine, I could live with that.

7:06. I had had some time to digest the news from Blakeney, that Mrs. Dirac had gone to London and didn't know when she would be back. Or so she had told Jeannie Slater at the King's Men. And that she had taken a bag of photographs with her. Madeleine's mother's drawing room flashed into my mind, with its mantelshelf and the photographs on it, in particular the photograph of Philippe. And crowded in there, among the other thoughts, was the moment Madeleine's mother had told me that Madeleine had “unfinished business” with Philippe, when she had said that “you are never in love in quite the same way that you are in love the first time, when you are innocent in a way that you are never innocent again.”

I remembered her words only too well.

She had told me that Madeleine would want, if she were able, to “wind up” that part of her life—to visit his grave, if there was one.

What if Madeleine had gone to Louzac looking for his grave—and instead found the man himself, alive?

Or was I running on ahead, too fast? If Madeleine was a German agent, she could have been duping him as she had perhaps duped me. If she was a German agent, and her mother was too, the whole Philippe story could have been invented by them, but based on a real person, for verisimilitude. Her mother could have removed the photographs because, in some way, they identified who she and her daughter really were. The two of them could have invented his death, never imagining that I would stumble across him being alive.

Alternatively, Madeleine might have swallowed her suicide pill, soon after her last message had been interrupted. Something else that I simply didn't know about could have happened to her. The ambiguities hadn't gone away.

If Mrs. Dirac had spun Jeannie Slater a line, however, and that was certainly a possibility, if both she and Madeleine were German agents, then she could have left Blakeney for anywhere, anywhere at all.

Which would mean I had no hope of finding either of them.

But since Pforzheim had still to fall to our forces, finding out the exact
truth about Philippe was my only way forward for now, blind alley or dead end that it might be.

I'd bought an evening newspaper at the station kiosk. I looked at it now. On the front page, at the foot, one particular item immediately caught my attention: a report that a German newspaper had published an account of Leni Riefenstahl's latest exploit. In a break from covering the front with her camera, she was making a film in Berlin of Hitler's favourite opera,
Tiefland
. In typical Hitler-Nuremberg-Riefenstahl style, the film had hundreds of extras.

7:09. I willed my watch to go faster. The compartment was full now. Sleep tonight, for me, would be out of the question. I had with me some sandwiches and a beer. Better to go easy on the beer—if I stood up I'd lose my seat. I studied the timetable and the route: Étampes, Pithiviers, Montargis, Gien, Briare…I gave up. It wasn't an express, and with so many stops, the journey was going to be interminable.

7:10. Wasn't the damn train supposed to leave now? What would I find when I got to Louzac? If Mrs. Dirac had been right, that Madeleine's first love was like no other, that in truth she had never got over Philippe, would Madeleine be there, and how would she feel about my turning up unannounced? Whatever had happened later, she hadn't made straight for Louzac. Had she behaved impeccably to deceive us still further, while she passed on information from France to Berlin?

7:12. I reminded myself one more time that I had only Madeleine's word, and her mother's, that there had ever been any connection with Philippe Sompre. Or that he existed.

7:14. I kept my eyes averted from the window, so that should Justine be on the platform, having worked out when the train actually was scheduled to leave, and was actively looking for me, I would be all the harder to spot.

My geography of that part of France was hazy but I thought Louzac was about 200 kilometers—120 miles or so—from Le Gâvre, where Madeleine had been dropped. She could have cycled there, had she wanted to, in a few days.

7:16 and the bloody train still hadn't left. The biggest question, the most awkward question, was this: If Madeleine was still alive, why had she made no attempt to contact me? Did she not want to see me? If not, why not? Did the fact that she was reunited with Philippe mean that our life together counted for nothing? She had made no attempt to contact me, so far as I knew, or get information to me…Did
that
point to her being an enemy agent…?

7:18. The carriage jolted into motion. My nervousness began to subside. But not completely. The train was packed; passengers were standing in the corridors. Justine, if she wanted, could have boarded the train further along, and I would never know. I wouldn't know, with certainty, until we got to Limoges tomorrow morning.

JUSTINE WASN
'
T AT LIMOGES
. I took the first local train north and was in Louzac—changing twice, with hefty waits in between trains—by six o'clock on the evening of the following day. I used the waiting time to buy a small suitcase, a razor, a spare shirt, and other bits and pieces. When I reached Louzac, I found a hotel near the railway station, had dinner in a steamy brasserie almost next door, took care not to get involved in any conversations with curious waiters, and, having hardly slept on the overnight train from Paris, was in bed by ten o'clock. With any luck, tomorrow would be a crucial day.

MY FIRST STOP NEXT MORNING
was the university. The archaeology department would surely contain several people who knew about the cave discoveries.

I found the university easily enough, by asking people in the hotel, and tracked down the archaeology department, which occupied part of a barracks-type temporary building that must surely once have belonged to the army. A woman secretary, in what appeared to be the main office, had no idea what I was talking about, but then a small man came in, carrying what looked to me like a stone axe.

“Excuse me,” I said in my best French. “Do you know a Philippe Sompre?” I had to bend the rules here and take some calculated risks. “I believe he is the man who has discovered the ancient painting of an ox in your local caves—I read about it in a newspaper in Paris. I believe he may be able to help me find my wife,” I lied, or exaggerated. “She was an undercover agent near here about the time of the invasion—D-Day—and she has gone missing.”

The man looked at me, hard. Had he been in the Resistance—or, worse, had he been a collaborator? All France was still deeply divided.

“I can tell you where the cave is. I don't know who or where Philippe Sompre is.”

“Well, that's a start,” I said. “Tell me, please.”

“You go out of town, to the south, on the Cognac road. After about four kilometres, you come to an avenue of trees, poplar trees, on both sides of the road. At the far end of the poplars there is a bridge over a river, the Vienne. You walk upriver for about three kilometres until you come to a
narrow gorge. There is a small path along the cliff on the left, the north side. After a few hundred metres you will come to a narrow slit in the cliff, with a small stream falling as a waterfall into the river. You climb up that stream—you will get very wet, I am afraid—and you will come to the cave.”

I thanked him and retraced my steps to the railway station, where I had noticed a couple of taxis waiting for business.

The first man didn't want to take me to where I wanted to go, and wait for me there, but the second man didn't mind. In fact, as we were driving out of Louzac, he asked me why I was so interested in the cave.

“I'm not, really. I'm trying to locate someone called Philippe Sompre. I believe he's the man who found the cave and the ancient painting on its walls. If they are still excavating there, someone will know where he is. I need to contact him because I gather he's a Resistance hero, and he may be able to help me find my wife, who parachuted into France ahead of the invasion, and went missing.”

“You mean you don't want to go to the cave at all, not really?”

“No, as I say, what I really want is to find Philippe Sompre.”

“But I know where he is.”

“You
do
?”

So he was alive! I had been right to have my suspicions all along. But why had he been reported dead? Had Madeleine misled me about that?

“How do you know he's alive? And where is he?”

“I was in the Resistance, we were in the Resistance together, in the caves. Do you want me to take you to him?”

“Yes, of course I do. Where is he? Is it far?”

“About forty-five minutes from here.” The driver stopped his car, did a three-point turn, and went back the way we had come. “He's in a convent, St. Hilaire-en-Fôret.”

“What's he doing there?” The name rang a bell.

“The convent is also a hospital. Many people in the Resistance were injured—the convent is where they recovered. It was also the place where the Resistance kept records of collaborators. It is from there, now, that old scores are being settled, what we in France call—”

“
Épuration
—yes, I know.”

He looked at me and nodded. “Now that the war is nearly over, France is a strange country,
n'est-ce pas
?”

“What do you mean?”

“Philippe is a communist—we are all communists in Louzac, we are anti-Gaullists. Yet we have our home in a convent, in the church. There will be elections soon and we will fight the Gaullists for the future of the country. Philippe has a wide following here. He will be elected.”

We were leaving Louzac now, the country hilly and green, the cows chewing their way through lush fields, with no sign anywhere of the war: old buildings, lines of poplars, horse-drawn carts, men and women on bicycles, people carrying bread and fishing rods.

We headed north for about twenty-five minutes. The traffic was light, mainly rural—a few tractors with enormous rear wheels, cascading mud everywhere—and we had to wait at most bridges, which were too narrow for two-way traffic. We took our turn.

“Tell me about Philippe? He was injured—yes?”

He nodded. “He was shot in the leg and chest as he ran from a bridge he had blown up.”

“But he has recovered now?”

“Well, he walks with a limp, but I don't think he's in pain any more. I haven't seen him for a few weeks.”

“Is he married?”

“No. There was a rumour that he had an English girlfriend once, but it didn't work out. But I'm not the one to ask—I was injured myself and left the Resistance two years ago. I just acted as a messenger—a taxi driver can do that well, because he goes everywhere as part of his job.”

We turned off the main road on to a lane. The countryside here was thick with trees and the lane was so narrow that twice we had to back up when we met a truck and a tractor coming the other way.

Then I saw some roofs among the trees, slate roofs, and stone walls.

“This is St. Hilaire,” said the driver.

He drove off the lane into a gravel forecourt, and as he did so we nearly collided with a large black dog, which ran off at the last moment. The driver stopped the taxi in front of a stone-built porch with two huge wooden doors, into one of which was set a much smaller, human-scale door with a shiny brass knob. This was the door that was used most often.

“Shall I wait?” the driver said.

“I don't know. Let me pay you for so far. How much?”

He told me and I gave him the money.

“I don't know how long I'll be,” I said. “I could be half an hour; I could be here for the rest of the day.”

He made a gesture with his head. “Go in and see what there is to see. Then, when you know what the story is, come out and tell me. It's a slow day so I can wait here for a bit. Just don't forget me.”

“Okay, good,” I replied. “Let's do that. And don't worry, I won't forget.”

I got out of the taxi and approached the convent door.

As I did so, it opened and a nun appeared. She was dressed in a pale grey habit, with white edging all the way down to the ground, and a white cloth enveloping her head. She looked surprised to see me, but managed a smile.

“May I help you?” she said.

“Thank you. I am looking for Philippe Sompre.”

“When did you make the appointment?”

“I don't have one, but I have come all the way from England,” I replied. “I only found out an hour ago where he is living.”

She looked at me, inspecting my clothes, the state of my beard, the neatness of my hair. How plausible was I?

“Come with me, please,” she said at length, turning and going back through the door-within-the-door.

I followed.

Inside was a cavernous hall, built of stone, with granite flags on the floor and two tall, narrow windows of stained glass, throwing a perpetual evening light over everything.

“Wait here, please,” she said. “I won't be long.”

I looked about me. The convent, I could now see, was mediaeval, with a large stone superstructure and elaborate heads tenoned into the walls at varying heights—heads of saints, heads of grotesques, shields and rosettes, angels blowing trumpets, lions' heads. A Christ on the cross but not one slumped in suffering, rather triumphant, radiant, his body arched in an act of bravado.

Ten minutes passed, twenty, twenty-five. She had said she wouldn't be long but she was.

A bird, a shiny coal-black crow of some kind, was suddenly flapping in the hallway. It had got in somewhere and was now desperate to get out. I opened the door-within-the-door, hoping that the light that streamed in would attract its attention and help it to freedom.

It didn't work. The bird continued to flap about in the higher reaches of the hall, far too high for me to be of any use.

More than half an hour had passed. The nun had disappeared through a solid-looking, brown wooden door and I thought it time I went after her.

But as I approached the door, it opened and a figure came through.

It wasn't the nun.

Its was Victoria Dirac.

“Colonel Hammond,” she said softly. “So it
is
you. I thought as much.”

My throat constricted. I swallowed. “If you are here, Madeleine is here.” My heart seemed to swell and lighten all at the same time.

“Come,” she said. “Sit down over here. I need to talk to you.”

“No. I want to see Madeleine.”

“Please. Let's sit. You'll see Madeleine, but we need to talk first.”

So Madeleine
was
here; and alive. My heart had not been so spring-loaded in months.

“Why do we need to talk? I don't understand.”

“Let's sit. Please. I promise you that when I tell you what I'm going to tell you, you'll understand.”

Reluctantly, I sat down. I'd lived with doubt for weeks. It was time to end it. I didn't know what to think and I was in no mood to slow down.

She sat alongside me. She was wearing a cream blouse, I remember, and a tartan skirt, but not a kilt. There was rouge on her cheeks but she wore no lipstick. Odd, the details one remembers.

She spoke softly, hesitantly.

“When you came to see me in Blakeney, neither of us knew what had happened to Madeleine. You were in the dark almost as much as I was. What happened is that Madeleine did her job, as you know, until D-Day, the invasion. But then—”

“She came looking for Philippe's grave, but found him instead. Isn't that what happened? I know now that he's alive.”

She shook her head. “No, it isn't, not at all, and you mustn't think it.”

She fingered the pearls of her necklace. Her voice was weak.

“Shortly after D-Day, Madeleine made a mistake—she'll tell you herself what happened. But, as a result of her mistake, she was captured at a place called Nallies, just outside La Rochelle. She was taken to a holding hospital-cum-prison there and interrogated.”

Victoria Dirac caught her breath.

“In fact, she was tortured—she won't say what exactly was done to her. But she held out well and, while she did so, the invasion proceeded. As you almost certainly must know, three places in France—three coastal cities with U-boat fleets—fought hard and became isolated pockets of resistance. Those areas were Brest, St. Nazaire, and—”

“La Rochelle. Yes, I know. You mean—?”

She nodded. “As I have had it explained to me, the Gestapo's original plan would have been to ship Madeleine—once she had been captured—to Paris, interrogate her further there, and then transfer her even further eastwards, into Germany itself, where she would have been…executed.”

“I don't understand,” I said. “La Rochelle has still not fallen. If she was interned there, how did she get out?”

Mrs. Dirac had been holding a pack of cigarettes in her hand, and a lighter. She took out two cigarettes—just as Madeleine once had—and offered one to me, lighting both with her lighter.

“All in good time.” She inhaled the smoke of her cigarette. “The Resistance in Paris intercepted Gestapo radio traffic, or they stole details at Gestapo headquarters in Paris—I'm not sure which. Among those details was the fact that a named British agent was being held in the Dompierre Secure Hospital in La Rochelle. These details were circulated to local Resistance groups in the area, in case they could help.

“Philippe saw those lists—”

I struck my fist on my knee and cried out, “I was right all along! But how can that be? Is that why—?”

“Hold on, Matt! Hold on! I'm telling you everything I know. I'll get to Philippe in a minute. But Madeleine first.”

My insides were in turmoil, fighting one another. Where was all this going?

Victoria Dirac breathed out loudly, blowing cigarette smoke up into the air. “Now, as I know you know, Philippe is an expert on the caves in this region—”

“Yes,” I said. “I read a report of his great discovery. I presume it was his. That's partly why I'm here, now.”

She nodded.

“Well, it turns out that one of the caves hereabouts leads
into
La Rochelle. There is one cave, one cave at least, which starts here in free France and ends up inside that part of La Rochelle still occupied by the Germans. It's too small—and zigzags too much—to mount an assault through, but it has been used for intelligence purposes, or so I'm told.

“So Philippe mounted a rescue attempt—

“The rescue went well. The Resistance had people in the hospital, Madeleine was freed, and they reached the entrance of the cave inside La Rochelle…”

“But what…? I can tell from your voice that—”

“Hold
on
!”

She drew on her cigarette.

“They got into the cave, some way inside. In fact, they were nearly out the other side, in free France, when the Germans, who had found out what had happened, and gave chase…Well, they found the entrance to the cave and exploded a bomb inside it.”

I said nothing.

“The explosion sent a terrific blast of air, dust, and stones throughout the cave, collapsing part of it. Madeleine, as it happens, was half protected by a wall of rock but Philippe wasn't. Having a limp, he was slower than the rest, and he was deafened, blown off his feet, and hit his head on the stony ground. Rocks and stones fell on him and he was badly hurt. The others carried him to safety, and brought both of them here.”