The man who could see, could kill—
"Isn't that the Channel, Paul—?"
"On Madame's account?" This was to Madame Faith Audley, not to the nameless madame who had arrived with her, pressed neatly, but obviously not credit-worthy.
"I must settle up with you, Faith—"
"Settle up? Not bloody likely! David will pay—or Jack Butler will pay, don't you worry! You can't know what pleasure this gives me. Elizabeth—soaking them, for what they've done to you . . . Take the money and run, Elizabeth—"
Expensive luggage, already packed with her new clothes, from the skin upwards—
Polite cough. "Madame's cosmetics are all in the vanity case.
And I have included both the Rimmel and the Clinique—the Clinique is not cheap, for the eye make-up, but it lasts very well—"
"All that?" Paul goggled at the cases, having already goggled dummy3
at Elizabeth. "It looks like, we're not going away—we're running away! Is that what you've got in mind, Elizabeth?"
"I don't even know where we're going, Paul."
"Isn't that the Channel, Paul—?"
He craned his neck round her. "Looks very much like that, yes."
"But I haven't got my passport." Panic. "I haven't even got a passport, Paul!"
He felt inside his breast-pocket. "One passport. Though whether they'll recognise you from the picture we rustled up is another matter—"
The Frenchman in the funny little office on the even funnier little airfield regarded Madame— Miss Elizabeth Jane Loftus
— Occupation— Secretary— Place of birth— Portsmouth—
Residence— England—with the honest doubt any functionary should have had when faced with an enlarged press photograph of E. Loftus, as she had appeared in the Amazons
'A' Hockey Team (captain), and E. Loftus's younger sister, as processed by Madame Hortense and Monsieur Pierre, of Guildford, and dressed by Style, also of Guildford, and Madame Audley, of The Old House, Steeple Horley.
"Miss Loftus is my secretary," said Paul, deadpan and confident, observing the Frenchman's incredulity and offering his own passport in explanation, alongside hers.
dummy3
The Frenchman looked at Paul, and then at his passport, and then at Paul again.
"Dr—Mitchell—"
Paul Lefevre Mitchell, Elizabeth read upside down—before the Frenchman turned the page. But then she decided that, however much she wanted to know the official description of Paul's occupation, it might seem inappropriate for his secretary to be interested in such detail.
"A business trip, Dr Mitchell?"
The false insouciance of the question first surprised Elizabeth, since she didn't think they bothered with such formalities any more. Then she felt insulted by it, in the guise of Dr Mitchell's secretary, and started to bristle.
"Yes," said Paul. "That is to say . . ."
The Frenchman caught Elizabeth's frown and quailed slightly.
"Historical research," said Paul.
"Ah—yes!" The Frenchman studied Paul's passport again, almost gratefully, as though to confirm something he had known all along but had now skilfully established by interrogation. "But of course!"
It occurred to Elizabeth that she might also feel flattered—or that Madame Hortense and Faith Audley between them deserved the credit for whatever insulting thoughts had passed through the man's mind—and then she felt a wave of dummy3
contempt for herself at such silly imaginings.
"Un moment!" The man looked around for something, and didn't find it, and vanished quickly through a door behind him with both passports still in his hand.
"Either they've had some trouble here—" murmured Paul out of the corner of his mouth "—or we're the first English to land on this field since 1940, and they've forgotten what to do."
The sound of scurrying came through the open door.
"And either they're going to arrest us on suspicion of being escaping criminals, or they've lost their bloody stamp." There was a hint of savagery in the murmur. "But either way they'll remember us now, blast it!"
"Does that matter?"
"I had a bit of trouble in France . . . once upon a time." Paul drew a deep reminiscent breath. "So they'll have my name and number written up somewhere for sure . . . Not here, but somewhere . . ."
"What sort of trouble?" She knew he wasn't going to tell her, but having some first-hand experience of the sort of troubles he had she didn't really want to know anyway. And that unfledged thought itself was enough to make her feel what she realised she ought to have felt all along: not surprised, and neither angry with the Frenchman nor herself, but just plain scared.
Two thumps sounded from the inner office, saving Paul the dummy3
trouble of not replying, and to her intense relief the Frenchman reappeared with a smile on his face and the passports in his hand—
"What kept you?" Aske smiled at her in his usual half-shy, half-friendly way, but eyed her appraisingly at the same time as he held open the door of a big blue Renault. "Mmm! I like your new scent, Miss Loftus—very chic and expensive!"
"That's probably what kept us," said Paul irritably. "Let's get out of here. We should have come by the hovercraft, like I wanted to do."
"Another three hours on the journey—if you're in such a hurry," said Aske mildly. "Where to now?"
"But no awkward questions." Paul sat back. "To the hotel."
"They were inquisitive? Well ... I suppose you're a bit out of the ordinary. This isn't exactly a tourist spot—it's just a stop-over to and from the coast, though the old city's very fine . . ."
Aske looked over his shoulder at Elizabeth "... I got us into a place in the old city, I thought you'd like that . . . medieval walls more or less intact, and a nice little 17th-18th century citadel—not a Napoleonic PoW depot, of course—too small for that . . . the nearest one of them is Sedan, then maybe Longwy. Then Givet to the north, on the frontier, and the three to the north-west—Arras, Valenciennes and Cambrai.
And the big one to the east, naturally—Verdun. I wonder you didn't prefer Verdun for your base, Mitchell, even if the dummy3
escape party didn't break out of there. It was the main British prisoners' depot, after all."
Paul merely grunted, but Elizabeth sat up.
"Oh yes—I'm an expert too, now—an instant expert!" Aske appeared to have eyes in the back of his head. "I'm your man on British PoWs in France, and French PoWs in England, circa 1812— and on the year 1812 too ... a very interesting year seemingly, as years go. 'The 1941 of the Napoleonic War', no less."
"I didn't know you were a historian, Mr Aske," said Elizabeth.
"I'm not. Politics and Economics were my student theatres of activity—and cookery at night school ... I must not deceive you, Miss Loftus—I did say 'instant' expert." Aske snuffled to himself. "In the division of labour yesterday, after you were removed from my charge I drew one of Dr Audley's old dons, Professor—now Emeritus Professor—Basil Wilson Wilder . . .
once the terror of generations of idle Cambridge undergraduates, but now retired from the fray on Portsdown Hill, above Portsmouth."
"Professor Wilder!"
"You've heard of him? You know him?"
"Yes—I mean . . . that is, Father had a frightful row with him a year or two ago."
"Did he, now? I find that a little surprising. He seemed to me to be a really darling old gentleman, and he's certainly a dummy3
positive goldmine of information on the period . . . What did they row about?"
"Oh ... it was about a letter he wrote." The memory of Father's explosive rages during the Vengeful renaming correspondence still made her wince. "What did he tell you about the prisoners? Did he know about the Vengeful survivors?"