My ring was answered by a plump, middle-aged woman in black, sleeves rolled back on pink arms, unwelcoming, alarmed at confrontation with a stranger in British battle-dress. She said in reply to my enquiry, _'Je suis madame Lamartine'._ So this was the wife he had deserted for the talkative Madame Chalmar. I had taken her for the maid. 'Are you a British officer? I speak some English.'
'I met Dr Lamartine during the war. I have a friendly interest in his whereabouts, that's all.'
'Dr Lamartine is dead,' she told me curtly.
I exclaimed, 'What happened?'
'My husband was killed in the big air raid by the RAF on March 3, 1942. He was living across at Montmartre. He had sent me and the children away from Paris when the war started.'
'I'm very sorry, madame,' I consoled her.
_'C'est la guerre,'_ she said briefly. 'When did you last see him, monsieur?'
'In Bordeaux, during the summer of 1940.'
She looked at me suspiciously. 'What was your business with my late husband?'
'You've heard of penicillin, I expect?' She nodded. 'Dr Lamartine had a specimen of penicillin mould, which I was sent from England to recover before the Germans could get their hands on it.'
'Henri would not have given it to the Boches,' she said promptly. 'He was not a collaborator, whatever people say. But there's no use talking about it now.' She started to shut the door. 'You knew Madame Chalmar? She was killed by the same bomb,' Madame Lamartine added with satisfaction. 'To be exact, the firemen found her with my husband's body, very hysterical. She died suddenly shortly after. I do not think she was a very healthy woman.'
'You knew her well?'
'No. I would not have wished to meet her.'
I walked slowly back to the street. I never had any liking for Lamartine. But I thought him stupid rather than sinister. For him to be killed by a British bomb struck me as a rather unnecessary exaggeration of irony. My experience stimulated my curiosity to call on Professor Piйry, his house being not far away by the Bois.
He had the same maid, puzzled at being unable to place me. He was at home, and received me in the dining-room with the same lurid colour photograph of his son, the fleeing lieutenant. He looked much older and even thinner. His cook's art had become the most pointless in France.
'My dear Mr Elgar-' He shook hands powerfully but solemnly, holding mine in both his. 'What terrible experiences we have suffered, since you last left this house. With the young Miss Tiplady
'Miss Tiplady is very well, and now married.'
_'Eh, bien…_ we wondered if you ever got home safely to England. Those days of 1940 brought no credit to any of the Allies. Not to us French, because we ran away. Not to you British, because you snatched back all your planes. Not to the Americans, because they should have declared war on Hitler there and then. But you have heard of Jean-Baptiste? My son?' I shook my head. 'He was shot. By the Germans, as a hostage.'
I was so appalled that I could say nothing. I had noticed that the professor still wore a black crepe band across his lapel. His was a suffering of which I had often heard during the past few months, but never encountered face to face. He waved me to a chair. 'We are getting over it now. We see him as dead for the honour of France, like any other soldier killed in action.'
'But when did this happen?'
'In 1942. Of course, in 1940 my son had to report back to the Army, and was immediately locked up by the Germans. He had a hope they might release him, because of his English-to interpret the broadcasts of your BBC, something of that nature, but the Boches had enough interpreters of their own and weren't inclined to trust a Frenchman. I got him out early in 1941, on what they called _en congй de captivitй._ Jean-Baptiste had been working in my laboratory at the Franзoise-Xavier, and the Germans were releasing in a conditional way _le personnel sanitaire,_ as well as men to run the railways, the electricity and gas, and so on. My God, he was better off then than millions of others captured in the fields, or even sitting in their barracks, some of them kids just called to the colours, who'd never even had a rifle in their hands. Do you know what these were saying at the Armistice? That it obviously meant demobilization for everyone, they'd be back in their homes in a fortnight. Instead, they were marched off to Germany, without food, sleeping in fields, and kept for the rest of the war securely behind _les barbelйs.'_
He paused, leaving me to feel the pain of his silence for almost half a minute.
'Then in 1942…at the beginning of August. Things really started to become very bad in Paris that summer. The German General Schaumburg had been killed, a bomb was thrown at his car. The Nazis were getting nervous, which was a very dangerous state, as I'm sure you know. Of course, they ascribed the attack to "Jews and Communists", but it was the work of the Resistance. Jean-Baptiste was arrested by the SS. Why they should pick on him I don't know, I don't know…'
The Professor sat in his chair slowly shaking his head, still in tragic bewilderment. 'Perhaps it was because of my position in the medical faculty of Paris. There were plenty of my son's fellow-officers after the Armistice who were left completely unmolested. He was kept in the Fresnes prison, we never saw him nor heard from him. Then a German officer was shot dead in Molitor Mйtro station, near the racecourse in the Bois de Boulogne. The Polizeifьhrer, the SS General Oberg, announced that one hundred Frenchmen would be shot if the assassin was not handed over by the population to the French police in ten days. Well, the assassin was not. My son was shot with the others on the morning of August 1, by the little barracks at the Carrefour des Cascades in the Bois. He was allowed to write a letter first, which I have in that desk. As an additional punishment, General Oberg shut all Paris theatres and cinemas for a week,' he added with a contemptuous snort. 'Which shows how the Nazis equated the value of a hundred human lives.'
We sat without speaking for some moments. I could not console him, because consolation is a charity which can outrun the power of words.
'Yes, my son died in action,' Professor Piйry repeated wearily. 'Had that assassin been denounced, do you know what would have happened? All his male relatives-including his brothers-in-law and all his cousins over eighteen-would have been shot. Yes, shot, all of them. Their wives would all have been sent to concentration camps. Their children all taken to a prison-school. This Teutonic thoroughness was made completely clear to us by a proclamation from General Oberg when he took up his job. The General claimed his measures were necessary for the calm and security of the Parisiens. And they say the Nazis had no sense of humour,' he ended bitterly. 'That letter of my son's will be passed down in my family, it shall never be destroyed.'
I was relieved that a knock at the dining-room door broke the tension. The maid appeared, remembering me now and smiling. She left on the table a brass tray with two minute glasses and a bottle of reddish apйritif, which I noticed from its encrusted neck had been in use for some time.
'We are still obliged to be frugal,' Professor Piйry explained, pouring out two drinks. 'But things are naturally better than during the occupation, when we had alternate _fours avec_ and _fours sans_-of wine, you know.'