End Games in Bordeaux Read online

  END GAMES IN BORDEAUX

  ALLAN MASSIE

  First published in 2015 by Quartet Books Limited

  A member of the Namara Group

  27 Goodge Street, London W1T 2LD

  Copyright © Allan Massie 2015

  The right of Allan Massie to be identified

  as the author of this work has been asserted

  by him in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in

  any form or by any means without prior

  written permission from the publisher

  A catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 0 7043 7407 2

  Typeset by Josh Bryson

  Contents

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  Part Two

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  Envoi

  Also by Allan Massie

  Death in Bordeaux

  Dark Summer in Bordeaux

  Cold Winter in Bordeaux

  Life & Letters: The Spectator Columns

  For Claudia and Matt with love

  I

  It was strange to be idle. Sometimes Lannes thought that he was like his peasant grandfather from Les Landes, who, even when settled in his chair by the fire after supper, would keep his hands occupied, mending a piece of harness, whittling the head of a walking-stick, stitching the nets with which he trapped migrating birds, or cleaning his gun. Even the business of keeping his pipe going seemed a sort of work, occupation anyway. He had been a silent, suspicious man, reluctant to display the affection he nevertheless felt for him as a boy.

  Now, since his suspension, Lannes found himself wondering to what extent his own life had been his work, how it had defined him, given him the sense of his being. True, he had often told himself that family was more important than work, more important than anything else in his life. Nevertheless without work he was diminished. And home which had been a place where more was left unsaid than spoken since the boys, Dominique and Alain, went their separate and frightening ways was now more silent than ever, with Marguerite spending much of the day in bed on account not only of poor health and low spirits, but also, he thought, because his presence disturbed her. Clothilde too was perpetually anxious, hoping for word from Michel, wherever he was, serving in what Lannes thought of as the legion of the damned. And if the boy should survive the war, and return home, what awaited him? Ignominy, arrest, imprisonment, a trial for treason, even perhaps the firing squad. He couldn’t speak of these fears to his daughter, and so they no longer had the early morning conversations he had valued. There was nothing to talk about because the subject that oppressed them both was forbidden, by tacit and shameful agreement.

  It was a beautiful spring morning with only a few wispy clouds high in the sky, and the sense that it would be the first hot day of the year. He had taken Marguerite a cup of tea and some bread and a scrape of butter from their meagre ration, and she had murmured thanks and turned away from him. He washed last night’s dishes, swept the kitchen floor, sat at the table, lit a cigarette, and saw emptiness stretch before him. He picked up his blackthorn stick.

  ***

  The bookshop in the rue des Remparts had been closed for months now. As Henri said, ‘I simply no longer have the heart.’ That was how many in Bordeaux felt about everything. The war had turned, there was no question about that. Rumours of an Anglo-American invasion were rife, but the Occupation was more severe than ever, food shortages too. Nobody spoke of the Resistance, though many knew that there had been numerous arrests and imprisonments in the early months of the year. Some of those picked up by the German and Vichy Security Services had succumbed to torture, and – doubtless – given information which led to more arrests, deportations or executions. But whatever people knew or suspected there was nothing to say because there was nothing which it was safe to say. And of course there were many committed to Vichy who viewed the prospect of invasion and ‘Liberation’ with misgivings, even fear.

  It was a couple of minutes before Henri answered Lannes’ ring. He was unshaven, he had lost more weight and his trousers sagged, but at least his breath, when they embraced, no longer stank of wine. Music sounded as they climbed the stairs to the apartment above the shop: the ‘Pilgrim’s Chorus’ from Tannhäuser on the gramophone.

  ‘I wonder if Wagner still comforts Hitler,’ Henri said.

  ‘How’s Miriam?’

  ‘Weaker and in more pain. She’s sure it’s cancer, like her sister, but what can one do?’

  ‘That doctor you said you thought you could trust?’

  ‘In the end I didn’t dare. Finding a doctor willing – and brave enough – to treat a Jewish woman? And even if I had, what in the circumstances could he have done?’

  ‘Something to relieve the pain at least. Morphine?’

  ‘Which is certainly in short supply. Besides, Miriam wouldn’t hear of it. For my sake, she said. If it was known that I had given her refuge … it’s an appalling situation. I’m utterly at a loss, Jean. And you have troubles yourself.’

  ‘Nothing comparable.’

  Nothing comparable indeed, because if he survived the coming months he might expect to be reinstated when the Germans had gone, Vichy had finally collapsed, and France was liberated. Bracal, the examining magistrate with whom he had worked on the Peniel case, had made that clear when he apologised for having been unable to prevent his suspension.

  ‘It may even be well for you to be out of things meanwhile,’ he had said. ‘And since you’re suspended rather than dismissed, your salary will still be paid of course.’

  As indeed it was. The State might be crumbling but the bureaucratic machinery continued to work, and the salaries of officials, policemen and teachers were paid, even on time.

  ‘There’s no word of the boys, I suppose,’ Henri said.

  ‘None. But then there can’t be.’

  ‘And how do you fill your days?’

  ‘With difficulty.’

  There was silence but for the whirring of the record on the turntable.

  That’s how it is, Lannes thought. The music stops, but the record continues its revolutions.

  ‘I’ll ask around,’ he said. ‘See if I can find a doctor we can trust. There must be one, surely. Say nothing to Miriam meanwhile. If I find one we’ll bring him here without warning her. Meanwhile, would she like a visit from me?’

  ***

  It would have been distressing to see her. He knew that, and had been relieved when Henri came back down the stairs to say that she was asleep and that he hadn’t cared to wake her since untroubled sleep was rare and precious. Relieved, but also ashamed to feel
like that, and now, as he sat in the sunshine on the terrace of the Café Régent in the Place Gambetta, with the swifts and swallows wheeling and diving above him as they went about their urgent and mysterious business, he wondered if Miriam had not wanted to be seen by him as she was or had perhaps simply felt too ill and weak for company and so had asked Henri to make some excuse. It was quite possible. Wasn’t it how he might have behaved himself in similar circumstances?

  It was midday. The hours stretched out, empty, ahead of him, and he couldn’t even bring himself to pick up his glass of beer. It wasn’t that there was nothing he wanted to do. There was of course, he couldn’t pretend otherwise, but it was three years now that he had been denying himself Yvette, and this wasn’t going to change, no matter how often and how vividly he pictured her stretched out all but naked in her mean room in the Pension Bernadotte. The image disturbed his sleepless nights. It disturbed him now. He knew she would welcome him. She had made that clear often enough, even saying – jokingly but nevertheless, he thought, sincerely – that for him there would be no charge. ‘And not only because a lot of girls are ready to give it free to a flic, but because I really like you and have a lot to be grateful to you for.’ Which might be true. He liked to think it was true. Nevertheless he would be using her to staunch his loneliness, for consolation, even if he did indeed, to be honest, feel affection for her too, as well as the desire he was ashamed of. I’m not much of a man, he thought, but I have to cling to what there is. Even picturing Yvette’s legs was some sort of a betrayal of Marguerite, and would surely disgust Clothilde if she knew of it. There were moments when he envied a man like Edmond de Grimaud who took women as he found them and discarded them carelessly. Then he remembered that Edmond’s son, Maurice, had once implied that his father had come to hate the English wife who had left him and resented what he saw of her in Maurice himself – Maurice whom Miriam had called ‘a sweet boy’ and who was Dominique’s closest friend. Would they be able to extricate themselves from the mess that was Vichy when the collapse came, and did Dominique still intend to study for the priesthood? He might have spoken of this to his mother, and he didn’t doubt that Marguerite nursed such a hope. But what would be the position of the Church, whose bishops had almost unanimously approved Vichy, in the New France to be reborn after the war?

  He was rescued – for the moment – from these troubling thoughts by the sight of young René Martin crossing the square toward the café. They shook hands. René said he had hoped he would find him there, and Lannes realised that since his suspension he had formed the habits of a pensioner who gives meaning to empty days by falling into a comforting routine: the prescribed walk, the hours spent at first this café and then that one, the time trickled away sitting on a bench watching a game of boules. And it would have been so easy to include in that rhythm an afternoon hour in the Pension Bernadotte.

  ‘The Alsatian was asking after you,’ René said.

  Lannes knew that the Alsatian, which was how they all referred to Commissaire Schnyder, the head of the police judiciaire, hadn’t lifted so much as a finger to defend him when word came from Vichy that he was to be suspended while under investigation for it had never been quite clear what. There had been complaints from the Boches by way of the most recent German liaison officer, a sour-faced young man from the Sudetenland. At their first meeting he had tapped his forefinger on Lannes’ dossier, and said, ‘There are things here that I don’t like, superintendent.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Lannes had said then, and now said again to young René.

  He didn’t actually blame the Alsatian who was really quite amiable. A man is what he is and he had long ago realised that Schnyder was determined to survive, however things turned out.

  ‘He said you used to do him a private service and hopes you still feel able to do so. I don’t know what he meant but I said I would pass the message on.’

  ‘Cigars,’ Lannes said. ‘Havana cigars. I’ve a black market connection. Tell him not to worry.’

  And why not? If he survived, the day might come when they would work together again, for he was sure that whatever sort of regime succeeded Vichy, there would be no indelible black marks on Schnyder’s record.

  ‘How are things?’ he said. ‘With you, René, and with our old bull-terrier?’ – which was of course what they called his second-in command, Inspector Moncerre.

  ‘They’re not good. We don’t know where we are or what we should be doing, and as for the bull-terrier, he’s drinking too much and his troubles with his wife are worse than ever. Just the other day he said, “I should strangle the bitch.” ’

  ‘He won’t,’ Lannes said. ‘It’s an old refrain and he’d be lost without her.’

  Which might, or might not, have been true.

  ‘It wasn’t however on account of the Alsatian,’ René said, ‘that I came in search of you today. I don’t jump to do what he wants, you understand, because’ – he paused and blushed, looking even younger than he was – ‘because it annoyed me that he didn’t stand up for you, even if I know him well enough not to have expected that he would. It’s because I took a telephone message for you this morning. From someone called the Comte de St-Hilaire. I don’t know who he is, but he said you would. He didn’t know of your suspension – I thought I was required to tell him – but he said this was irrelevant , since it wasn’t, strictly speaking, a police matter he wanted to discuss with you. He would be grateful if you would call on him. I said I would pass the word on to you. That was all, I think. Did I do right?’

  II

  Lannes moved more slowly, leaning hard on his stick, as he turned into the Allées de Tourny. Stendhal had once called it the most beautiful street in France, and it might indeed be so, even now, but it unnerved him. If he hadn’t been a policeman he would most probably never have entered any of these houses, certainly not by the front door. By his age, with fifty in sight, he should have rid himself of this sense of social inferiority. As a Radical and free thinker he despised it. But there it was: ultimately you are what you feel, not what you think; sentiments can be changed less easily than opinions. He had reason to respect the Comte de St-Hilaire, even to believe that the respect was reciprocated. They had done each other services, the Count by facilitating the boys’ escape from Occupied France to join de Gaulle, Lannes by what he knew to be an unprofessional act, a dereliction of duty, for which he felt no regret. Nevertheless he hesitated before approaching his house and ringing the bell.

  The butler showed him into the salon and said he would inform the Count of his arrival. As on his previous visits Lannes admired the comforting simplicity of a little Courbet still-life of bread, fruit and a jug of wine. There was also a Fragonard of nymphs bathing which he remembered the actress Adrienne Jauzion praising. It wasn’t to his taste, but it struck him now that the nymph drawing herself up from the pool in the bottom left of the canvas had a look of Yvette, the same smile at once innocent and knowing – deceptively innocent, disturbingly knowing.

  St-Hilaire entered. They shook hands as they hadn’t done on previous occasions when Lannes had come on official business. He wore an English tweed suit which hung loose on him, for he had lost weight in the two years since Lannes last saw him. His face was more deeply lined and he moved as if he no longer had full trust in his legs. The butler returned with wine, claret from the Count’s vineyard.

  ‘I am sorry to hear of your troubles,’ the Count said. ‘But, as I said to your young inspector, it’s not precisely a police matter that I wish to speak of. Or not yet, anyhow. At least I don’t think so. In any case I am obliged to you for responding so quickly.’

  ‘I have time on my hands,’ Lannes said, ‘on account of what you tactfully call my troubles.’

  He was tempted to add that he didn’t often get the chance to drink such good wine. But the Count would take the quality of the wine for granted – he had probably never drunk vin ordinaire in his life.

  ‘I’m in some perplexity,’ St-Hilaire said.


  He paused and took a cigar from the box on the occasional table beside his chair.

  ‘I think you prefer cigarettes? Yes? Then please smoke. My doctor has advised me to give up cigars. But, at my age, breaking the habit of a lifetime? It’s ridiculous.’

  Nevertheless his hands shook as he clipped the end off the cigar and held a match to it.

  Yes, Lannes thought, he’s not the man he was. He tapped out a Gauloise from a crumpled packet and lit it. There was a great stillness in the high-ceilinged room, as if life hung suspended, and for a few minutes neither spoke as smoke drifted upwards.

  ‘I am not in the habit of asking favours,’ St-Hilaire said.

  Doubtless this was true. Such things would have been more often sought from him.

  ‘I have a cousin I’m fond of, an elderly lady. In fact she’s a few years younger than me, but it is as if she has made herself older, perhaps because her life has been an unhappy one. Her husband was killed in the first weeks of our war – I say “our”, superintendent, because, as I remember, you were at Verdun. Her only son was no good, a wastrel who ran through much of the family fortune. He went to the bad and nobody knows what has become of him. My cousin was distressed of course, but brought up his only child, a daughter whom she adores. She never speaks of her son now. Perhaps she feels guilty because she spoiled him. I don’t know. No matter. It’s the daughter – that is, my cousin’s granddaughter, who is now giving cause for concern. That’s putting it mildly, an understatement, I’m afraid.’

  The Count paused, laid down his cigar, removed the monocle, letting it dangle on a black silk ribbon, and dabbed his temples with a handkerchief scented with eau de cologne.

  Lannes waited; patiently, as he had so often waited in the course of an interrogation or while a victim or witness to a crime struggled to make sense of a horror they had never previously imagined. Any good policeman knows that silence is hard to endure and will often bring better results than questioning.