told them exactly what had happened in the wine cave, well I
think they wanted the whole episode to receive as little
attention as possible. Armand never mentioned it, though
my father told me he had spoken to him, and he had
promised to keep everything to himself. Lucien never
mentioned it either. Whether he and Hortense had been
sleeping together I don’t know, it never seemed appropriate
to ask. But I think they had.
‘So there you have it, the murder of Hortense de
Bourchain. Why Erich thought it had some vital connection
with Halunke I simply don’t know. He checked on Hortense’s family and none of them were in France at the times that mattered. The only other people who know what
happened are Doctor Lebrun, my father, Lucien and
Armand, and as none of them could conceivably be Halunke
Looking up, Francois saw in the fading light that
Claudine’s eyes were shining with tears. ‘Why are you
crying?’ he asked softly.
‘I’m not. Not exactly. I just feel so sad. But you’re right,
none of them could be Halunke. The only one who has anything approaching a motive is Lucien - if he loved Hortense. And Lucien wouldn’t have killed his own father.’
‘So, we’re right back at the beginning. Erich must have
discovered something else, and we - I - have to find out
what that was.’
‘ We,’ she corrected. ‘Will you come here, please? I want to give you that kiss now.’
As he knelt in front of her, she put her arms round his
neck and said, ‘How does a man with such an ugly face and
such a chequered past manage to fill my heart with so much
love?’
‘I don’t know, but I’m glad I do,’ he smiled, lowering his
mouth to hers.
Five minutes later he was handing her up onto her horse.
‘That wasn’t enough,’ she said, looking down at him sulkily.
‘I didn’t think it would be,’ he answered with a wry smile.
‘Can we make love tonight?’
‘If you can make it sound like rape.’ He thought about
that, then his eyes met hers and they laughed.
‘How are you getting back?’ she asked, turning her horse.
‘There’s a tunnel. It leads from the river bank over there,
into the middle cellar.’
‘The middle.cellar!’ she gasped. ‘The boxes!’
‘Don’t tell me,’ he groaned. ‘You’ve opened them.’
‘It was your father’s idea,’ she said sheepishly. ‘But where
did all those valuables come from?’
‘Jews,’ he answered. ‘They belong to wealthy Parisian
Jews. I’m keeping them until they, or their descendants, can
come to collect them.’
Claudine smiled widely as tilting her head quizzically to
one side, she said, ‘Is that a halo I can see shining over your
devilish face?’
‘Get out of here,’ he laughed, and giving the horse a slap,
he sent her galloping off into the forest.
During the months that followed Francois’ return to the
chateau it was easy to forget that there was a war taking place
beyond the borders of Lorvoire - that was, if you ignored the drone of aircraft passing overhead, the daily wireless broadcasts and the presence of the Germans stationed in
Chinon. Even Claudine’s Resistance group went to ground
for a time, once she had warned the Jupiter reseau that the Germans knew about them. But as soon as Lucien returned from England with news that the RAF were to begin a series of fighter sweeps over northern France, the escape-line went back into operation and the search for safe-houses and
couriers began again. At first, though, the number of Allied
pilots needing to be escorted through France to Spain was
small, and Claudine was more than happy to concentrate on
other things.
As those balmy summer days passed, she could feel
herself inexorably changing. She was lightheaded with
love, with a sense of fulfilment, a feeling of well-being. She
walked taller than ever, her glorious hair bouncing on her
shoulders, and was so unmistakably radiant that Francois
was forced to see that continuing to try and delude the
family they were not in love was a waste of effort. But the
truth must go no further than that, he warned her. Apart
from anything else, her fellow Resistants would take a dim
view of her attachment to a collaborator.
He told her little about the days he spent at the Chateau
d’Artigny, though she knew that as yet he had been required
to do very little. Following the breakdown of the RussoGerman
non-aggression pact, Hitler had turned his army
east, and von Liebermann and his Komitee were heavily
involved in intelligence-gathering for the planned invasion
of Russia. Without von Liebermann’s specific instructions it
appeared that Francois’ commanding officers in Touraine
were at a loss to know what they should do with him. This
suited Francois perfectly, of course - though he was curious
to know why von Liebermann - or more accurately,
Himmler - had not yet ordered his execution. He had as yet
done nothing further to prove his fealty to the Reich, and if
he wasn’t to be actively engaged on the Abwehr’s behalf he
couldn’t see what purpose his staying alive served. Still, the
German plan for his fate would no doubt be made clear soon
enough, and meanwhile he and Claudine determined to
make the most of the reprieve.
It wasn’t long before Blomberg, whose discomfort since
Francois’ return had been painfully obvious, started to spend
more and more nights away from the chateau. This delighted
Solange, because it meant that the family - including Lucien could
spend the long, hot summer evenings together, singing
and dancing in the ballroom, or simply listening to Edith Piaf’s
lazy, seductive voice on the gramophone. Lucien couldn’t
come often, but when he did Francois allowed Louis to stay up
fate as a special treat. Solange, whose hair was back on end as
though the crazy ideas in her head were pushing up through
her skull, played loudly on the piano while Louis sang with
Monique and Claudine. And when Louis became tired and
snuggled sleepily into his father’s lap, the cries for Lucien to
sing next were almost as loud as the protests that were made
when Armand joined in. Liliane was often there too, and
neighbours from nearby chateaux took to bringing their
rations to Arlette so that they too could join the de Lorvoire
soirees. No one objected to Francois’ apparent allegiance to
the German cause since most of them, like Tante Celine, were Attentistes - waiting to see which way the war went before deciding which side to take. Besides, most of them played host
during the day to hunting and shooting parties in the Chinon
Forest which Francois and many other German officers
attended.
During those wonderfully light-hearted evenings
Claudine often found herself watching Armand as he
laughed and joked with Solange and Monique, twirled them
about the room or tossed them into Lucien’s arms. He was
at last his old self again, and she could see once more why
she had found it so easy to love him. She was glad that he
now seemed so relaxed - and it was obvious, too, that the
worry she had had that he and Francois would never
recapture their former friendship was unfounded. The two
of them were as easy in each other’s company as they were in ,
Lucien’s. There were times, though - particularly when she
danced with Armand, when she would catch Francois
staring at them, a black frown between his eyes and his
mouth a thin, tight line of concentration. Could her
invincible husband actually have fallen prey to jealousy?
‘What, when I know how utterly devoted you are to me?’
he would say when she challenged him. And then he would
pull her onto his lap and kiss her so soundly - in front of the
entire family - that she would almost blush.
‘Oh La la,’ Tante Celine would cry at these public displays
of affection. She still wasn’t quite over the shock of
discovering that Francois de Lorvoire had a heart, or that
her niece had, by some miracle, managed to capture it,
though like everyone else she was delighted for them, and
simply longed to tell Beavis - wherever he might be.
It was only on family evenings, when they had no guests,
that Claudine and Francois felt able to behave so freely with
each other, and only on those evenings would they dance
together, usually to an over-played, scratched record of Al
Bowlly singing ‘The Very Thought of You’ - the song
everyone remembered them dancing to at their wedding.
Later, if it was a night when Lucien was there and Louis had
stayed up, Francois would carry his sleeping son to the
nursery, then join Claudine in her room where they would
spend hour upon hour making lazy, luxurious, and increasingly
erotic love. Her room, like his, was bugged, but
now that Blomberg knew they were in love there was little
point in hiding it from the Germans, and if they had
anything of importance to say to one another they would
either walk in the forest or meet at Thomas’ fishing hut. In
truth, their recklessness caused Francois a great deal of
concern, but he said nothing; Claudine was so happy, and
he couldn’t bring himself to do anything to spoil it.
Summer turned to autumn, and as the German army
tightened its stranglehold on Russia, and the British
suffered incalculable losses in North Africa, in Lorvoire it
was time to harvest the grapes. As they did every year, the
locals came to help, and so did the German soldiers who still
visited Gustave’s cafe each Friday to drink an endless
supply of black-market spirits with Armand. As Claudine
had predicted at the outset of the occupation, befriending
these officers had proved extremely useful. Surprisingly
often they would let little nuggets of information slip to
Armand - troop movements, the location of roadblocks,
areas of concentration for radio detector vans. These details
were enormously useful to the group in their task of escorting pilots through the escape-line, or when they were trying to send messages to London.
On the night of the harvest there was a party. It was
nothing like the one in thirty-seven - but it amused
Claudine no end to be dancing with German officers when
no more than half a mile away, two British pilots and one
Canadian were spending the night at the forest cottage. The
following morning they were given black felt berets and blue
serge overalls tailored by Gertrude Reinberg, and a collection
of identity cards forged overnight by Theobald the
signwriter. Then, while their uniforms burned in the grate,
they ate a heartier breakfast than most of the locals had seen
since the outbreak of war, before being transported in broad
daylight to the demarcation line by old Thomas in his horse
and cart. The escape-line was now running so smoothly that
Claudine often had to remind the others - Solange and
Liliane in particular, who had appointed themselves her chief couriers - of the danger they all faced if they were caught.
It wasn’t until the following week that they heard that
while they had been celebrating the harvest, fifty Frenchmen
had been shot as a reprisal for the assassination of a
German officer in Nantes. Two days later, fifty more were
shot in Bordeaux where another German officer had lost his
life at the hands of the Resistance.
From that day on, all fraternizing with the Germans came
to an abrupt end. Even the Attentistes ceased their hospitality.
Resistance groups who had gone to ground over the
summer months began to re-form, and techniques of
sabotage and assault favoured by the Communists started to
catch on. It was a difficult time for Francois. He became a
major target for local hostility, and more than once he
arrived home with the windshield of his jeep smashed and
his face and hands covered in cuts. Claudine became
increasingly afraid for his life, but nothing she said would
persuade him to go into hiding with Lucien. There had
been no sign of Halunke for almost a year, but until he was
caught Francois was not prepared to do anything to
antagonize von Liebermann. And von Liebermann, he told
Claudine, was due any time now to arrive at the Abwehr
headquarters in Paris.
As it turned out, von Liebermann didn’t arrive until early
in the New Year, by which time Hitler’s invasion of Russia
was suffering severe setbacks, and the Japanese had
bombed Pearl Harbour, bringing America into the war.
This change of fortune for the Allies prompted many Attentistes finally to declare their allegiance, and the numbers of men - and women - who went into hiding in the
forest after successful sabotage attacks on German bases
started steadily to increase. Leopard, which was Lucien’s
code name as well as the name of their escape-line, now
prepared to transport American as well as British and
Canadian pilots out of the country and back to the war; and
though it was a bitterly cold winter, with heavy frosts, snow
and gales, neither Claudine nor any of her fellow Resistant! were deterred.