We settled on a bench by the path overlooking the river, and Delzons lit his pipe, gazing down at the distant snow-patched roofs.
"You conceive my amazement, not only to discover that my little gamine had become a lovely young woman, but that she should seek an occupation so unsuitable, mais inconcevable, for one so chaste et modeste. `Why, dear child?' I asked. `I cannot be a soldier like my father and brothers. I shall fight for France in my own way.' That was her reply. As gently as might be, I suggested that there were other ways to serve, that the world of the département secret was a hard and dangerous one, and … highly unpleasant in ways which she, a convent-reared girl of eighteen, could not conceive. Do you know what she said, colonel? `Uncle Delzons, I have studied the world from the tableaux vivants of the Folies Gaités, and moved among its clientele, who are also hard, dangerous, and unpleasant.' Before I could even express my scan-dal, for I had known nothing of this, she added—oh, so quiet and demure with that laughter in her innocent eyes—`Also I am fluent in languages, and fence and shoot even better these days.' "
Delzons took the pipe from his mouth, looked at it, and stuck it back. "What could I say? I was shocked, yes—but I saw, too, that beneath the fresh, lovely surface there was a metal that I had never suspected. It is rare, such metal, and essential to the département secret. And if I had refused her, I knew there were other sections of the département which would not." He laughed ruefully. "The truth was, she was a gift to any chef d’intelligence. And so she proved, in small things at first, as translator, courier, embassy bricoleur—what you call jack-of-all-trades—and later as secret agent in the field … and you know what that means. Yes … she was the best."
I said he must have been sorry to lose her, and he grimaced. "She told you? Yes, sorry … but I rejoiced also. For six years I had lost sleep, whenever she went into danger. Oh, seldom enough—our work, as you are aware, brings a moment’s peril in a year of routine—but when that peril comes … No, I am glad she has gone. When I think of the risks she ran—of her facing a man like Starnberg to the death, my heart ceases to beat. If we had lost her … my friend, I should have died. It is true, my heart would have ceased forever then."
The usual exaggerated Froggy vapouring, but Delzons wasn’t the usual Frog, and I guessed he believed it. I took the opportunity to canvass his opinion.
"Well, you needn’t ha' fretted. He was a capital hand with a sabre, but not in her parish." I paused deliberately. "Can’t think I’ve ever seen a neater … execution."
His head came round sharply. "Ah! You confirm M. ’Utton’s opinion—which I happen to share. The evidence of Starnberg’s wounds was conclusive. As you say … an execution." His eyes were steady on mine. "But in my report, self-defence. As it must always be when an agent kills … in the line of duty."
That reminded me of something Hutton had said. "He told me Starnberg wasn’t the first she’d sent down. Were the others self-defence, too?"
He frowned and muttered a nasty word. "I have a great respect for our colleague ’Utton, but he talks too much." He sucked at his dead pipe, and continued rapid-fire. "Yes. She has killed before. Twice. In Egypt, in Turkey. One was a minor diplomat who had found out she was a French agent. The other an informer whose silence was essential. She was not under my control on either occasion. My responsibility is for Europe. She was on detachment to another section. I did not seek details." Abruptly he got to his feet, his mouth set like a trap. "Nor have she and I ever mentioned the incidents. Shall we walk on, colonel?"
And this was the girl who had giggled with me over Punch. I fell into step beside him as we walked down to the bridges, his stick fairly cracking at each stride, but there was a grim grin under his heavy moustache.
"Oh, M. ’Utton!" cries he. "So talkative, so shrewd! No doubt he offered you his theory that she slew Starnberg in cold blood because of a tendre for you? Bon sang de merde!" He gave a barking laugh. "Enraged because he had wounded, perhaps slain, her lover! Perhaps you believe that yourself, because you were lovers in Berlin—oh, I know all about her `holiday task' for Blowitz! What, you do not believe ’Utton’s theory? I congratulate you!" He calmed after a few steps. "Your affaire in Berlin was an amour passant, then. Not of the heart."
Gad, they’re a tactful, tasteful lot, the French. "Not on my side," I told him.
"Nor on hers, whatever the so-shrewd ’Utton may think. Shall I tell you why she killed Starnberg as she did?"
Ile had stopped on the bridge, turned to face me. "I told you her father and brothers fell in the war of ’70 against the Germans, and what she said of fighting in her own way. I did not tell you how they died. Papa and Jacques were killed in the battle at Gravelotte. Claude died of his wounds, neglected … in a German hospital. Valéry was in the intelligence. He was captured at St Privat on a mission d’espionnage. He was shot by a firing squad of Fransecky’s Pomeranians, the day after the signing of the armistice, February the first, 1871!" Suddenly the eyes in the bulldog face were bright with angry tears. "They knew the armistice had been signed, but they shot him just the same. Just the same! German chivalry."
It had started to snow, and he was hunched up against the chill wind, staring down at the river.
"So they were gone, all four, it seemed in a moment … as the poet says of a snowflake on the water. Did I mention that the diplomat in Turkey and the informer in Egypt were both Germans? No? Well, Caprice does not like Germans. As the Count von Starnberg discovered. But I am keeping you standing in the cold, colonel! Give me your arm, my friend! Shall we seek a café and a cup of chocolate—with a large cognac to flavour it, eh?"
• • •
Some clever ass has said that "if" is the biggest word in the language, but I say it’s the most useless. There have been so many coincidences in my life, good and bad, that I’ve learned the folly of exclaiming "If only … !" They happen, and that’s that, and if the one that brought my Austrian odyssey to a close was uncommon disastrous—and infuriating, because I’d foreseen its possibility—well, I can be philosophic now because, as I’ve observed before, I’m still here at ninety, more or less, and you can’t ask fairer than that.
But that don’t mean I’ll ever forgive the drunk porter who mislaid my trunk at Charing Cross, because if he hadn’t … there, you see, "if " almost got the better of me, and no wonder when I think what came of that boozy idiot’s carelessness. Shocking state the railways are in.
However, we’ll come to Charing Cross all in good time. I’d have been there weeks earlier if (there it is again, dammit) Kralta hadn’t been so amorously intoxicated, and the circumstances of our reunion in Vienna so different from what I’d expected. When I took the train from Ischl early in December I was looking forward to a couple of cosy and intimate weeks in which I rogered her blue in the face, sparked her to the opera or whatever evening amusements Vienna offered, wined and dined of the best, saw the sights, took her riding (for she looked too much like a horse to be anything but an equestrian), viewed the Blue Danube from the warm comfort of her bedroom, and back to the muttons again. A modest enough ambition, and would have had me home again by Christmas. Well, I was taken aback, if not disappointed, by what awaited me at the Grand Hotel, and followed in the ensuing weeks.