The New Black Mask ( No 3 )

Michael Gilbert A Pity About the Girl

One of the most respected British crime writers, Michael Gilbert has written more than twenty-five books, as well as plays and an estimated four hundred short stories. Mr. Gilbert, who has been pleasing his readers for forty years, has commented, “What is a writer to do if he is not allowed to entertain?” A founding member of the Crime Writers’ Association, Michael Gilbert is a London solicitor and lives in Kent.

It was seven o’clock of a lovely summer evening when Andrew Siward first saw her. He was sitting on the terrace of the Hotel Dauphin at Cannes, looking across the square of burnt grass and bent orange trees at the deep blue of the Mediterranean. It was the best hour of the day. His second aperitif was on the table in front of him. He was looking forward to a leisurely dinner, not more than two glasses of mare with his coffee, and an early bed.

The work he had come to the South of France to do was finished. It was a moment for sitting back and enjoying the scenery; and beautiful girls were a prominent part of the scenery on the promenade at Cannes.

Not that this particular girl was got up to attract attention. She was wearing a plain white linen dress cut square across the top of her breasts, and showing the sunbrowned skin of arms, shoulders, and throat and, as far as Andrew could judge, nothing else at all. He put her age at nineteen or twenty.

The man who was with her was a figure as typical of that time and place as she was. In his middle fifties, but still alert and fit. Frenchmen of his age seem to grow through middle age more gracefully than the English or American male. Hair so light it was difficult to see whether it was grey or not, cut en brosse, a bush shirt with half-length sleeves which showed brown and muscular arms; on one wrist a gold watch, on a metal strap, and a small gold medallion on a chain around his neck.

Andrew was used to summing people up by their clothes and their belongings. These were clearly residents, not tourists. In spite of the informality of their dress, or perhaps because of it, he sensed a background of wealth and position.

He wondered if the man was her father.

He wondered if they were going to come onto the terrace. After a moment of indecision they climbed the three steps which separated it from the roadway and settled down two tables from him.

They were so close now that it was difficult to examine them, but their reflection in the glass front of the hotel dining room gave him an opportunity to do so without seeming rude.

The girl seemed to him as attractive as anyone he could remember. Maybe a film star? He thought not. She had none of the hardness and sophistication which encased even the youngest actresses like a protective shell. It was a shell which might be invisible at ten yards, but was unmistakable at close quarters.

It was possible that she was the man’s petite amie, but he thought not. There was nothing in their attitude towards each other to suggest such a relationship.

Andrew thought, I wish she was sitting here at the table with me, talking to me, looking at me in that way, or, perhaps, looking at me a little more intimately than that. We could have dinner together, and after dinner we would go up to my room. As he put his hand out to pick up his drink he was shocked to find that desire for a girl he had hardly set eyes on had made it shake. He put the glass down slowly and said, “Take a grip on yourself, Andrew. You’re an old man. Well, middle-aged, anyway. Thirty-five years older than that girl. A whole generation.”

It was a sobering thought, if not a comforting one.

Up to that time his experience of women had been standardised. A few adventures during and after the war, followed by marriage to an attractive and desirable wife. Twenty years of happiness. Then he had noticed that she grew easily tired, and curiously weak. She made nothing of it. She belonged to a stoic generation. A generation that had been brought up to believe that complaining was something only the lower classes did. It was the doctors who had spoken the word “leukemia” to him. He had hardly had time to grasp what it meant before she was gone.

When the numbness had worn off he had taken consolation where he could find it. Not from the professionals who hung around the pavements of Maddox Street and Soho Square but from amateurs, discontented wives, some of them not much younger than he was. A sordid, unsatisfactory series of bargains. Pumped-up lust for the price of a dinner and a theatre. Furtive coupling which left him with nothing but a bad taste in his mouth.

It had taken one look at this young French girl to show him what he had been searching for so hungrily and failing so sadly to find.

At this point common sense took charge. It said to him in the flat, unemotional voice that common sense always uses, “It’s not a young girl that you’re craving for. It’s your own lost youth. And that’s something that no amount of wishing is ever going to bring back. If you can’t grasp this simple fact, you’re stupider even that I took you for.”

At this point he realised something else.

He had been looking at the reflection of the girl in the glass. The man had been looking at him. It was not a look of hostility. Rather one of dawning recognition. Now that he came to consider it there was something in the man that touched a chord of remembrance. The square forehead, the long, straight nose that turned very slightly at the tip giving the face a whimsical look, the set of the chin. And surely he could see — or was his imagination playing tricks? — a zigzag line down the left side of his face, from cheekbone to chin, white against the sunbrowned skin.

None of this had occupied more than a few seconds. The man had made up his mind. He said something to the girl, pushed back his chair, and came across. He was smiling. He said, “I run the risk of having made a stupid mistake, but is it not the young lieutenant?”

“It is,” said Andrew, “and you are the young farmer.”

“Neither of us so young now,” said the man. He spoke in French as though he realised that Andrew would answer him in the same tongue.

“It was a long time ago,” said Andrew.

Nearly forty years. Half a lifetime.

By influence of his father, and by virtue of his excellent French, Andrew had infiltrated the army at an illegally young age. He had celebrated his eighteenth birthday on the ship which took him and the rest of the Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment to Algiers for the Torch landings. Their job had been to find the German army. They had found them in the little farm in the hills above Bou Arada.

It was not a strong or well-organised part of that army. Three panzer-grenadiers on a foraging expedition for eggs and wine. The farmer and his seventeen-year-old son had been foolish enough to refuse them and to add some uncomplimentary comments on the German character. The old man had been knocked unconscious. The youngster had been tied to a chair and one of the men was busy with a knife teaching him good manners. He was carving the symbol of his regiment, a lightning flash, on the left-hand side of his face.

They were so preoccupied with what they were doing that they had not heard the armoured car stop in the lane at the far end of the farm. Andrew, standing outside the open window, had drawn the army revolver which he had never used before, and shot one of the Germans in the foot. That was the end of the battle. The three soldiers had surrendered to superior force, and had been taken away. Andrew and his section had been billeted at the farm for a week, and had become friends with the craggy M. Rocaire and his young son Louis. Then the battle had moved on. He had often meant to go back, but had had no chance to do so until after the war, when he was on holiday in Algiers and had driven out to the farm. The Rocaire family was no longer there. Like many French settlers, they had seen the writing on the wall and returned to their own country.

“This is most evidently the hand of fate,” said Louis Rocaire. “That out of a thousand tables in Cannes we should have chosen this one. One must never contest the decrees of Providence. You are here yet for some days?”

“My business is finished, and it had been in my mind to spend a little time exploring the countryside.”

“Then you have a car here? Not an armoured car this time.”

“No. A faithful old Humber.”

“A most distinguished vehicle. You will drive out in it, if not tonight then tomorrow morning and will consider yourself our guest for the rest of your visit. I am forgetting myself. I have not introduced my daughter. Marie-Claude. This is the young lieutenant.”

“The man who shot the German in the foot,” said Marie-Claude. “You are a figure of mystical importance in the history of the Rocaire family. I am delighted to meet you in the flesh.”

“No more delighted than I am,” said Andrew.

“Then all that remains is to give you directions. Our house is in the hills, in the valley of the Loup. You have a map with you. Excellent. An officer of the Reconnaissance Corps, my love, never travels without a map. I will mark the place. So. It is a little isolated but not difficult to find.”

“I can’t impose on you for more than a day.”

“It will not be an imposition, I assure you. It will be a pleasure. We see very little company, Marie-Claude and I. We will drink the wine we make ourselves, and will fight old battles. My little girl will be bored, but for her father’s sake she will pretend not to be.”

Marie-Claude said, quite seriously, “You must stay longer than one day, or we will think you do not like us.”

“That would never do,” agreed Andrew. He hoped he did not sound as breathless as he felt.

When, on the following morning, he drove his fifteen-year-old Humber up into the hills, following the course of the Wolf River, he wondered what sort of place he would find. He had pictured something between an old Provençal stone house and a converted farm. As he turned the final comer in the long, winding approach road he dismissed both ideas. This was a very considerable residence. Newly built, on a platform cut into one side of the hill, there was a solidity about it that spoke of money and taste. A solemn dark-haired boy opened the door for him, and took charge of his luggage. A second one led the way to his room. Andrew guessed that they were brothers and might be Corsicans, and this was confirmed by the slurred consonants when the second boy spoke: Mamzelle and her father, he said, were by the pool. He would inform them of monsieur’s arrival.

It was the start of a five-day fantasy. Andrew had forgotten that such a life could still be lived. The house staff could not have been less than five, and there was a chauffeur, and a gardener as well. The food and the wine would not have disgraced a three-star hotel. His clothes were washed and ironed daily, and his original intention of staying for a day and a night was neatly thwarted when both his suits were removed and sent down to Cannes for cleaning and pressing.

By day there was riding with Marie-Claude and tennis against her father, who turned out to be a formidable player. All three of them swam in the pool, a cunning piece of engineering, fed by a stream coming in at one end and overflowing into a waterfall at the other. In the evenings, after dinner, they sat on the terrace, the bullfrogs competing with the cicadas, and talked about every thing and everybody except themselves.

Only once did Louis touch on their own circumstances. He said, “You may have noticed that one or other of my boys makes a circuit of our property every evening. They are both armed. It is a necessary precaution. In this part of France we are still fighting a war that most people have forgotten.”

Andrew said, “I noticed OAS signs on some of the houses. I did wonder.”

“The OAS against the SAC — the Service d’Action Civique. De Gaulle’s spies and butchers. There are many of us Pieds Noirs in this area. We have not forgotten. And the SAC has not forgotten. Recently, not many miles from here, a police officer and all of his family were butchered one night.”

This was said when they were sitting by themselves. The arrival of Marie-Claude had switched the conversation to more suitable topics.

It was on the fourth night, when Andrew had at last convinced his host that he must leave, that the suggestion was made.

Louis said, “You will be proceeding by car to one of the Channel ports?”

“To Dieppe.”

“Which will take you how long?”

“I am not one of your racing drivers. I shall spend at least one night en route. Possibly a second one outside Dieppe, where I have friends.”

“Then may I entrust my little girl to you?” Before Andrew could take in all the implications of this, he added, “She goes to visit an old friend in England. They were at school in Switzerland together. Normally she would go by brain, but in present circumstances I should be much happier—”

The length of this explanation had enabled Andrew to get his breath back. He said, “I should be delighted to be of service to you. It would be a very small return for the hospitality you have shown me.”

It had been a day of blue skies and hot sun. Andrew had driven steadily, but not fast. The roads had been bad to start with, but after Valence they had improved and as evening was closing in they were in the wooded, hilly country of the Puy-de-Dôme. Marie-Claude, who had been turning the pages of the Michelin guide, had found what sounded like a promising hotel above Châtelguyon in the Vallée de Sans Souci. It was classified as quiet, and possessing a jardin fleuri.

“That sounds fine,” said Andrew, “as long as they’re not all booked up.”

There were half a dozen cars in the courtyard outside the hotel. Andrew said, “Wait whilst I enquire.” He came back to say that they were in luck. There were just two rooms left.

“Lucky indeed,” said Marie-Claude gravely. She had got out of the car and had a holdall in one hand. As she stooped to pick up her suitcase Andrew said, “Let me,” took a suitcase in either hand, and followed her into the hotel.

The bedrooms were on the first floor, at the back. Looking out of his window, Andrew could see the flowered garden, and, beyond it, a wild stretch of wooded country now fading into the dusk of a late summer evening. There were lights away in the distance towards the southeast. Riom, he guessed. A helicopter buzzed overhead like an angry bumblebee. Andrew went downstairs thoughtfully. Marie-Claude was in the dining room when he got there. She was dressed as she had been when he saw her first, in her simple white dress. Andrew was conscious that every person in the room had observed, analysed, and recorded her, and that every man in the room was envying him.

Marie-Claude was unusually silent at dinner, and when she had finished her coffee, said, “I am tired. I will go up now.”

Andrew sat over a second cup of coffee, then over a glass of brandy. He knew that if he went up, he would not be able to go to bed and go to sleep. He would be too conscious of the fact that only an intervening door was separating him from a girl he desired more than anything he had ever desired in his whole life.

No doubt the door would be locked.

Doubly locked, in fact, by the trust that Louis Rocaire had placed in him.

“I entrust my little girl to you.”

He was vaguely aware that other people were arriving at the hotel, and thought that they would be unlucky since he and Marie-Claude had secured the last two rooms.

Possibly they had merely called in for dinner, though it was now nearly eleven. He heard voices in the hall, but no one came into the dining room. Ten minutes later he was sitting on the end of his bed. He had taken off his coat, but had made no further move to undress. The window was wide open and he could see the moon riding high over the dark woods, and could hear the owls talking to each other.

Then he heard another sound, closer at hand.

It came from Marie-Claude’s room, and was unmistakable. She was crying.

He walked across and tried the door gently. It opened under his hand. The girl had not undressed either. She was sitting on the edge of the bed. He strode across, put an arm round her shoulders, and said, “What is it, Marie-Claude, what’s wrong?”

Marie-Claude said, with a gap between each word, “I — am — so — frightened.”

At two o’clock that afternoon a car had drawn up at the entrance of the Rocaire house. Two men had gotten out. The driver and another man stayed in the car. It was clear that they were expected. One of the Corsican boys had led them to the business room where Louis was waiting for them, standing.

They shook hands briefly, and without any warmth. The spokesman of the two new arrivals was a thin man, with white hair and a brown face seamed with wrinkles, like the sand when the tide has ebbed. His companion was dark-haired, younger and thicker. He stood a pace behind the other as though to emphasise that he was a subordinate, though no one looking at his heavy, composed face would have doubted that he was a formidable man in his own right.

They all sat down. The white-haired man said, “We discovered, only this morning, and quite by chance, that you were entertaining an Englishman named Siward.”

“Andrew Siward. That is correct.”

“And he has been staying with you for the last five days.”

“That is also correct.”

“Would it be impertinent to enquire the reason for your hospitality?”

Louis considered the question. Then he said, “Yes. It would be impertinent. But since you evidently feel it to be important I will answer it. He turned out to be a very old friend of army days. Also, it occurred to me that his arrival might be providential.”

“In what way?”

Louis again considered before answering. Then he said, “I had certain plans, in which it seemed to me that he might be able to assist me. It has not, in the past, been my custom to discuss details of my plans with you. I have considered our functions as separate. You are the suppliers. I organise the onward transport and the distribution. Is there some particular reason why we should depart from this arrangement? It has worked very well in the past.”

“The reason,” said the white-haired man, “is that Major Siward — he does not now use his military title, I believe — is an official of the British Narcotics Control Section. A senior inspector in that organisation. He works directly under Colonel Foxwell, who is head of the French liaison branch, with headquarters in Paris. Naturally Siward was followed from the moment he arrived. It seemed to be a routine visit. He called at a number of offices of the Police Judiciare and the Douane along the coast. Six days ago, when he paid his bill and drove off, we assumed that he was on his way back to Paris or London. Apparently we were wrong. I think you will agree that in the circumstances we should be told exactly what use you were planning to make of Major Siward’s services.”

There was a long silence, broken by the white-haired man, who said, “If a mistake has been made, we have not much time to rectify it.”

“But how?” said Andrew. “And why?”

“You carried my suitcase into the hotel this evening. Because I had a holdall and a smaller bag.”

Andrew thought about it, and said, “Naturally.”

“Then, naturally, when we arrive at Newhaven, you would carry it through the Customs.”

“Of course.”

“Open it and take a look inside. It’s not locked.”

The suitcase was on the second bed. Andrew opened it and stood for a long moment staring down. Then he said, gently, “Well, you do surprise me.”

The suitcase was full of what certainly looked like his own clothes. He picked out the jacket of a tweed suit. It carried the label of his tailor.

“It will fit you too,” said Marie-Claude. “That was why they took away your suit on the first day you were with us.”

“Quick work, all the same.”

“They are very quick. And very clever.”

“And the stuff is in a hidden compartment underneath?”

“At the sides.” She put a hand inside the case, feeling for the retaining catch, and drew out, one after the other, four flat cellophane envelopes.

Andrew held them for a moment in his hand, as though estimating their weight, and said, “Two million francs. A valuable cargo. What did you intend to do with it?”

“It was all arranged, through my school friend and her father. He has connections with the law officers. I was to hand this over, and to give them the names of our contacts in England. The ones who were waiting for this consignment. In return they promised to look after me. Money and papers. A new name and a new life in America. And, at last, freedom from all this.”

“And now?”

“And now it is too late. They must have discovered my plans. They are here already. They would have had no difficulty in tracing your car. They have friends everywhere. You saw the helicopter which watched us as we approached. You heard them arrive at the hotel.”

“I don’t think they found out about you,” said Andrew slowly. “I think it is much simpler. I think, at the last moment, they must have found out about me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Explanations later. What we need now is two minutes on a clear telephone. Not here. The hotel exchange will already be controlled. Somewhere, anywhere outside. Put on a coat.” As he spoke he was pushing the packets down inside his shirt.

“We shall never get away from here.”

“And a pair of shoes. Sandals would be best. We shall have to move quietly.”

“How?”

“Fortunately there is an outhouse roof underneath my window. We shall have to drop onto it, hoping we break no tiles, and slide down it, making as little noise as possible. Then out through the garden, and into the countryside. It would be too risky to try to take the car. It has probably been immobilised. Are you ready?”

Five minutes later they were making their way through the garden among the rose beds. There was a low fence at the bottom to negotiate, and they were in a field. The second crop of hay had been cut, and was lying in swatches.

“It is beautiful,” said Marie-Claude. Her voice had no longer the heavy undertones of defeat. It was singing with the excitement of the night. “I could go on forever.”

“A mile should be enough,” said Andrew practically. “We will lie up until first light. Then find a farm with a telephone. We can have enough of our own men here in an hour to deal with all your father’s hired bullies.”

They circled the wood ahead of them. At the far side Andrew went down on his knees, scraped a hole between the roots of a massive oak tree, and buried the four envelopes, covering them with leaves. Then they crossed two more fields, waded across a shallow stream, and climbed the slope ahead of them. This time it was stubble, but easy going. At the top was a barn. The door was immovable, evidently barred on the inside, but they found an opening at the back, and wriggled through into the sweet-smelling darkness. Then they climbed on top of the hay, which was piled, not baled, and Andrew took off his jacket and rolled it up for a pillow. They lay down together. He thought, All men wish for their youth back again, and not one man in a thousand is granted his wash. You are lucky. You are the thousandth man. He made love to the girl in the simple way that the situation demanded, and then they both slept, pressed up against each other in the warm hay.

He slept longer than he intended. When he woke, he cl imbed off the stack, unbolted the door of the barn and looked out. He came back quickly to Marie-Claude, who was blinking the sleep out of her eyes.

He said, “We are in trouble. Bad trouble. I underestimated them. We should have gone further and faster. There are six men at least in sight. Four of them are beating up the hill towards us. The other two are at the top. There may be more of them.”

Marie-Claude stared at him and said nothing.

“Listen to me, and please listen carefully. We have only one chance. It is not a very good one, but it is better than no chance at all. When the men get close to the barn, you will scream, and run towards them. I do not think you are in any danger. It is me they are after, not you. You will be hysterical. Your story, when you are able to tell it, is that I abducted you by force. They will look after you, but you will not be a prisoner. So you should have an opportunity, sooner or later, of getting to a telephone. Sooner, I hope.” He gave a crooked smile.

Marie-Claude said, “I understand.”

“Remember this number. It is a Paris number.” He spoke it slowly, and she repeated it after him.

“All you have to do is to ask for Colonel Foxwell. He won’t come to the telephone himself. But the fact that you know his name and this particular number will vouch you to them. Tell them where you are telephoning from. The number will be sufficient. Say, very serious. That’s all.”

Marie-Claude nodded. He could see her lips move as she repeated the name and the number to herself.

“One more thing.” He felt in his jacket pocket and took out a small black pistol. It was a nine-millimetre Mauser automatic. “You had better have this. It is no use to me, since they will search me and find it. In certain circumstances it might be useful to you.”

He looked through the opening in the door. Two of the men were quite close to the barn. Two others were behind them, well spread out and covering them. They moved like trained soldiers.

Andrew kissed Marie-Claude gently, and said, “Run. And scream.”

The men were not gentle with him. They knocked him to the ground and one of them stood on his ankles whilst the other searched him. His arms were twisted behind his back and handcuffed. He was frog-marched across the field, and bundled into the car which was in the lane at the top of the field. Being unable to protect himself in any way, his head made contact with the door handle of the car, and the blood started to run down his face. Through all of this he saw nothing of Marie-Claude, and hoped she was safe.

About half a mile down the lane the car turned off into the courtyard of a prosperous-looking farm. The place had been taken over. There were half a dozen cars parked outside the door, and no sign of the farmer or his family. Andrew was dragged out by his hair, pushed into the front room of the farm, and thrown into an old armchair. The blood had run into his eyes and he wiped it away by rubbing his face on the arm of the chair.

The man who seemed to be in charge was the younger of the two who had visited Louis Rocaire on the previous afternoon. He said, “You are in trouble, Mr. Siward. In bad trouble. There is only one way in which you can help yourself. That is by handing back the property which you stole from us last night.”

Andrew said nothing. He was shaking his head to try and clear it.

“You could be heroic. I hope not. We should start by removing your left eye.”

“I have not the least intention of being heroic. You can certainly have back the packages of which I took temporary charge last night. There is only one difficulty. When one buries something in a wood at night, one can find it again. But it is not possible to explain to someone else where to find it.”

The dark-haired man considered the point. Then he nodded his head towards the two men who had brought Andrew in. Andrew had already begun to think of them as Laurel and Hardy. One was thin and serious, the other was a stout, jolly Marseillais who might have been a sailor.

“Go with him. If he seems to be wasting time, you can do what you like — to encourage him to move more quickly.”

By finding the wrong tree twice Andrew managed to waste a certain amount of time. The second mistake cost him two inches of knife blade in the flesh of his left arm. In less than an hour’s time the three of them were back in the farmhouse. Blood from the wound in his arm had soaked Andrew’s sleeve and was dripping steadily onto the floor. He felt sick and dizzy and guessed, from the look on the dark-haired man s face, that he had not long to live.

“Just those four packets,” said Laurel.

“Some encouragement was necessary,” said Hardy.

Andrew had no eyes for them. Marie-Claude was there. He could read nothing from the expression on her face, but he thought she nodded fractionally.

Maybe it was his eyes playing tricks.

“I think,” said the black-haired man, “that we might finish—”

He broke off what he was saying as there was a squeal of tyres, and a car, driven fast, swung into the courtyard and braked. There was interest but no alarm shown by the three men in the room. Some signal must have passed. This was reinforcements, not enemies.

When the door opened and Louis Rocaire came in Andrew felt unsurprised. Louis walked over, and put an arm round his daughter.

“She is safe,” said the black-haired man. “Everything is now in order. As I was saying, I think we might finish up our business and restore this house to its owners. It is a pity about the blood. Maybe we should buy him a new carpet.”

Marie-Claude had disengaged herself from her father. She was fumbling in her handbag. Andrew knew what was going to happen, and cringed.

He said, “Please don’t do it. One against three. It is hopeless.” This was in a whisper, to himself. If some sort of diversion could be arranged—

The diversion arranged itself. The inner door of the room burst open and a man who must have been posted as a lookout on the far side of the house came in.

He said, speaking so hoarsely in his excitement that the sense of his words could hardly be made out, “Army helicopters — and police in cars.”

Marie-Claude’s hand came out, holding the small gun. She took careful aim at the black-haired man. Andrew thought that she meant to hold him up until the police arrived. Instead she pulled the trigger.

The shot hit the black-haired man in the middle of the face. Before he had dropped, the sailor had shot Marie-Claude.

After these two shots there was a full five seconds of stunned immobility. Then Louis put his hand inside his coat and drew the heavy police special.388 automatic from its shoulder holster, and started to shoot. It was a gun intended to immobilise and to kill.

His first shot slammed the sailor against the wall. The second missed the thin man who had twisted and drawn his own gun. Before he could use it, Louis’s third shot tore off his right arm. It was the lookout, standing in the open doorway, who shot Louis before taking to his heels.

Andrew was flat on his face behind the sofa.

“A clean sweep,” said Colonel Foxwell. It was three days later. He and Andrew were alone in the headquarters office of the Anglo-French Narcotics Liaison Section in Paris. “Excellent.”

“Excellent” was his highest commendation for any operation.

He added, “A pity about the girl.”