Authors: Michael Ridpath
The maid arrived with some coffee. She could sense the tension around the table. Everyone was silent as she poured two cups for Conrad and Veronica.
‘Apparently, Constance was a little drunk at the time. She and Anneliese had been sticking up anti-Jewish posters in Mayfair.’
Oakford glanced at his young companion, who sat silent and grim-faced, two pink circles of colour emerging on her pale cheeks. Anger rather than shame, Conrad thought.
‘Anneliese was exaggerating,’ said Oakford. ‘It’s true that Henry and I are trying to bring about a sensible settlement with Germany and I am on my way to discuss how the duke can help. But the rest is the result of Anneliese’s overwrought imagination. Or yours.’
Everyone around the table was looking at Conrad.
‘Don’t go, Father,’ Conrad said quietly. ‘I know you hate war. I know you have always wanted peace with honour, and I know that’s what you think you are seeking now. But that’s not what this is. This is peace with
dis
honour. Alston effectively wants Britain to surrender to Germany. He wants Britain to become a vassal state, a neo-Nazi protectorate. I know that’s not what you want. But that’s what you are helping him to do.’
‘How do you know what Henry wants?’ said Lord Oakford. ‘Don’t you see that the sooner we negotiate peace with Hitler, the less we will have to give up? We are losing this war. Let’s call it off before we have lost it.’
‘Is there nothing you wouldn’t do for peace, Father? Is no price too high?’
‘One life is priceless,’ said Oakford. ‘Fifteen million people died in the last war. That’s fifteen million times priceless. So no, Conrad, no price is too high.’
Conrad understood his father. The war hero with the Victoria Cross and the missing arm had devoted his life to preventing another war. He believed in peace at any cost. In Henry Alston he saw the means that justified that end. He was blind, wilfully blind, to Alston’s motives for bringing peace. He didn’t care as long as an armistice was declared.
‘You know Constance did kill Millie, Father?’ said Conrad, trying another tack.
‘I’m not listening to you any more,’ said Oakford. ‘In fact, Constance and I are leaving now.’ He got to his feet. ‘Thank you for your hospitality, Madame de Salignac,’ he said in French. ‘I am afraid we must leave. I apologize for the suddenness of our departure.’
‘I won’t let you go,’ said Conrad, also standing.
‘One moment,’ said the old lady, in French. ‘I have something inside for you.’
She climbed to her feet, took her stick and hobbled inside. Her four guests waited.
Conrad knew he could never persuade his father to abandon his mission. He hated seeing Constance, Millie’s murderer, at his father’s side. He would have to stop him somehow.
The old lady reappeared. ‘Here, you might need this,’ she said in English. She had put her stick to one side and was limping out into the courtyard. In her hands was a shotgun. She handed it to Conrad. ‘I was ten in 1870 when the Prussians arrived in Paris. I saw how they behaved then. Two of my three sons died in the war of 1914. I hate the Boche, Lord Oakford. The French people will never surrender to them again, and neither should the British.’
Her blue eyes were blazing with anger. ‘You should listen to your son, Lord Oakford.’
Conrad took the shotgun, and slowly pointed it at his father.
‘What are you going to do with that, Conrad?’ said Oakford. ‘Shoot me?’
‘I will if I have to,’ said Conrad. Would he? He didn’t know.
‘I think you might,’ said Lord Oakford. ‘But I don’t care. I told you once about that afternoon at Passchendaele when I took that machine-gun post, didn’t I? How, after I turned the German machine gun on those young German boys and mowed them down, I walked unarmed towards their line. How I expected them to shoot me – I wanted them to shoot me. I was sick with myself for killing so many. I vowed then that I would never kill another man, that peace was more important than my life.’
Conrad remembered that story well.
‘Come on, Constance,’ said Oakford. He began to move towards the Packard.
‘You can’t let him go, Conrad,’ said Veronica. ‘You must pull the trigger!’
Conrad knew she was right. If Conrad was prepared to sacrifice his own life for what he believed was right, and he knew he was, then he should be willing to sacrifice his father.
Whatever he decided, he knew he would have to live with it for the rest of his life.
He couldn’t do it. Logic might tell him to pull the trigger, but he couldn’t do it.
His father had his back to him and had almost reached the car. Conrad took several rapid paces towards him. Lord Oakford’s shoulders stiffened as he sensed Conrad’s approach, but he didn’t turn round. Conrad raised the shotgun and brought the stock down hard on his father’s skull.
There was sickening crack, and Lord Oakford crumpled to the ground.
‘Take this,’ said Conrad, handing the shotgun to Veronica.
He bent down over his father. He had had no idea how hard to hit him. Lord Oakford was fit, wiry and not yet sixty. Conrad’s intention had been to knock him out, without doing him permanent damage, but he feared he had hit him too hard. It was impossible to judge the weight of a blow like that.
Oakford was lying face down on flagstones, blood seeping from a cut on the back of his head. His eyes were shut and he was motionless. Conrad couldn’t tell whether he was breathing. He put his fingers on his father’s neck hoping to find a pulse.
He heard movement behind him, and turned to see Constance lunge at Veronica, who was staring at Conrad and Oakford, holding the shotgun loosely in front of her. Veronica was a bigger woman than Constance, but was taken by surprise. Constance grabbed the barrel of the shotgun with both hands and yanked. Veronica let go.
Constance skipped backwards a few paces and turned the gun on Veronica. ‘Keep still, or I’ll blow your head off!’
The Loire Valley, 24 May
Veronica kept still.
‘Get back!’ Constance ordered.
Veronica hesitated and then retreated. It was clear that Constance had never fired a shotgun before. She was holding the gun awkwardly in front of her. But it was pointed directly at Veronica, Constance’s finger was on the trigger and Conrad could see that the safety was off. All she had to do was squeeze and Veronica would be dead.
‘Further back,’ said Constance. Veronica took two steps back. She was now standing next to Conrad and a few paces away from Constance.
‘Is he all right?’ Constance asked Conrad.
‘I don’t know,’ said Conrad.
‘Well, check!’
Conrad bent over his father again and searched for the artery in his neck. At first he felt nothing. He forced himself to take it slow. He moved his fingers and felt something. A pulse! ‘He’s alive,’ he said. ‘But he’s out cold.’
‘All right,’ said Constance. She was clearly thinking through what she would do next. Conrad tried to guess her next move. Shoot him; that was the obvious answer. It was a double-barrelled shotgun, presumably with a cartridge in each barrel. So she could afford to loose off one at him and keep the other to cover Veronica and Madame de Salignac.
In which case, maybe Conrad should rush her first, in the hope that somehow she missed him. The odds didn’t look good, but the odds of doing nothing looked worse.
Then his father groaned. His eyes flicked open.
‘Leave him!’ said Constance.
Get her talking, thought Conrad. Distract her. Play for time.
‘You did kill Millie, didn’t you, Constance?’ Conrad was hoping for an admission that his father might hear.
‘Yes,’ said Constance. ‘I had to. I liked your sister, she had good intentions, but in the end she was going to blow the whistle on the whole plan. Your friend Theo told her that the Duke of Windsor had been passing secrets to the Germans. That he was a traitor. At that stage I didn’t know the details of what Henry was planning, but I knew I had to shut her up. There was only one way of doing that.’
‘And Freddie Copthorne? Was he the same?’
‘Yes. He lost his nerve. Henry had to do something. At least your father knows his duty.’
‘What do you mean?’
Oakford groaned again, and moved on the ground.
‘You heard him,’ said Constance. ‘He was willing to die for the cause of peace with Germany. Lloyd George is a very old man. It won’t be long before he steps aside for Henry, and then Britain will have a truly great Prime Minister. Don’t you see that with Germany as our ally and not our enemy, there will be nothing to stop Britain becoming great again? The French are pathetic; all the Americans are concerned about is money. Only we know how to rule. And the Germans.’
Oakford pulled himself to a sitting position and rubbed his skull. Then he looked at his one hand. There was blood on it. The hair on the back of his head was matted red.
‘Help your father into the back of the car,’ said Constance.
Conrad lifted his father to his feet, but Oakford’s knees buckled. So Conrad lifted him bodily and carried him to the Packard. He opened the rear door and eased his father into the back seat.
‘Did you hear that?’ Conrad whispered. ‘She did murder Millie in Holland. And once I have got you into this car, she will shoot me. Don’t you care?’
‘Don’t talk to him!’ Constance said.
Oakford groaned again. He was sitting on the car seat with his legs dangling down to the ground. He was trying to say something.
‘Yes, Father?’ If Conrad was going to die he may as well die hearing what his father wanted to say.
‘I do care,’ he whispered. ‘If she killed Millie, I... I cannot forgive her. There’s a pistol in my coat pocket. Use it.’
Conrad glanced at his father’s suit jacket. There was indeed a heavy weight on one side; Conrad wondered how he had missed it.
‘I said, don’t talk to him!’ Constance shouted.
‘All right,’ said Conrad. And he put his hand around his father, slipping it into the side pocket of his jacket, out of sight of Constance. His fingers closed around a small gun.
It was a revolver. No safety to worry about then. He extricated the gun from the pocket and cocked the hammer, all out sight of Constance. He kept his back to Constance and straightened up. His father, still groggy, looked at him with unfocused eyes and nodded.
Conrad spun around, crouched and fired. He hit Constance in the shoulder just as she pressed the trigger. There was a double bang, the shotgun’s drowning out the crack of the revolver. He heard his father yell from the car behind him, and Constance screamed, dropping the shotgun and grabbing her shoulder.
‘Leave it!’ Conrad shouted.
Constance whimpered in pain. Already blood was spreading over her white dress.
Behind him, Lord Oakford groaned.
‘Are you hit, Father?’
‘Just my leg.’
Veronica darted forward and grabbed the shotgun. She took a few paces back from Constance.
Constance’s eyes blazed. ‘You’re too late!’ she said. ‘You won’t be able to stop Henry.’
‘
Donnez-le-moi
,’ said Madame de Salignac to Veronica, hobbling towards her.
Veronica looked at the shotgun in her hands and passed it to the old woman.
Madame de Salignac took the gun, pointed it at Constance’s chest and pulled the trigger. They were only five yards apart. Constance’s whimpers stopped as she fell backwards, her chest a bloody mess. She was dead before she hit the ground.
‘Someone should have done that a long time ago,’ said Madame de Salignac.
Conrad stared at the body of the woman who had killed his sister. He didn’t feel any thrill of revenge, or even any pity, just wonder that a nice English girl could have such a poisoned soul.
Another scream. This time it was Veronica. She was looking at Lord Oakford, who was slumped on to the back seat of the Packard, blood pumping out of his leg.
‘Father!’
Conrad leaned into the car, and lifted his father out, laying him on to the ground. It wasn’t ‘just his leg’. His left thigh was peppered with shot, and his trousers were already soaked in red. Blood was streaming out on to the ground beneath him.
Conrad remembered when his comrade Lofty Bennett had been shot in the leg at Brunete. The medics had tied a tourniquet above the wound to try to stanch the flow of blood. It had worked, sort of. Lofty survived the loss of blood, but died of gangrene a week later.
Conrad needed a strip of cloth, fast. He flung off his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt, tearing it off as his fingers fumbled on the buttons.
‘Pass me that knife!’ he shouted to Veronica, pointing to the breakfast table. She grabbed it and gave it to him. He cut his father’s trouser leg above the wound and pulled it down, revealing a pulsing mass of blood-soaked flesh. He wrapped his shirt around the leg above the wound and pulled tight. Within seconds the flow seemed to slow, but not stop completely. He tried to adjust the shirt, but then the blood started streaming again.
Oakford had already lost a lot.
His father’s eyes were open as he watched his son. He seemed to be conscious, but not in pain.
Veronica offered Conrad a towel from the kitchen.
‘Well done,’ said Conrad. ‘Push that down on the wound.’
‘Conrad?’ his father whispered.
‘Yes?’
‘You know we never agreed on much, did we?’
Conrad couldn’t help grinning as he kept the pressure on the tourniquet. ‘No, Father, we didn’t.’
‘Your mother always says you are just like me.’ He was struggling to get the words out. ‘I’ve always done what I believed to be right. You have always done the same. My time is over now. So you do what you think you have to do.’
Conrad looked at his father sharply. What was his father saying? He wasn’t admitting that Conrad was right and he was wrong, that wasn’t Lord Oakford’s way. But he was giving him permission to stop Alston. His blessing.
‘All right, Father. But let’s talk about it later.’ Conrad didn’t want his father’s blessing at that precise moment. He just wanted him to live.
But Lord Oakford’s eyelids were closing. He made an effort to speak. ‘Conrad,’ he whispered.
Conrad bent down.