Authors: Sara Sheridan
Chapter 23
Let food be your medicine
.
M
irabelle had to admit the location was romantic. The courtyard was flanked by a wide sandy gravel path round a long lawn which was lit by old-fashioned wrought-iron lamps that cast a diffuse honey-coloured light over it. A fountain rose at the centre and a couple of statues punctuated the grass on either side. Lines of chestnut trees, devoid of their leaves at this time of year, must provide welcome shade in the summer. A long colonnade enclosed the courtyard and running along it there were little cafés and grocery shops that served the apartments above, though most were dark-windowed in the evening. On the side that opened towards the Louvre the shops sold souvenirs and antiquities. This was where Mirabelle entered, slipping past the displays of fossils, unframed miniatures of Napoleon and postcards of the
Mona Lisa
. The courtyard would be an easy place to spot anyone following McGregor. The structure made it difficult to hide – there was nowhere to get lost in the ordered layout. If you walked in, you could be seen as soon as you moved past the line of trees.
While much of Paris seemed deserted this Sunday evening, the courtyard was relatively busy. Lights shone from the upper floors. As Mirabelle arrived, she could make out residents moving in the bright rooms – serving dinner, preparing clothes for the following day, listening to the radio or simply reading. An elegant woman in a long chocolate-brown coat and a fur hat overtook Mirabelle and tripped into one of the passageways that
led to the apartments. Mirabelle eyed the woman’s high heels enviously. Perhaps the riding boots would put paid to the superintendent’s romantic ideas once and for all, she thought sadly. It was strange, now she came to think on it: the truth was that she didn’t want McGregor and yet she didn’t want to give him up either. Paris provided shelter from such decisions. Brighton seemed so far across the Channel it was almost a dream.
The Bistro Florentine was lit mostly by candles and heated by means of an open fireplace beside which logs were neatly stacked. Flames flickered in the grate as a dapper waiter showed Mirabelle to a table for two by the window, which was partly steamed up. She slid her hand across the damp glass to clear it, ordered a glass of red wine and settled down with one eye on the yard. It always struck her as odd that one minute one might face the risk of kidnap or plummeting from a five-storey building yet not long after the world felt entirely normal and all that was left was a sliver of adrenaline in the bloodstream. No one would guess the kind of evening she’d had or what she had been up to. It seemed strange to slip so easily back into normality. The wine tasted smooth, almost buttery, and she gulped it down. McGregor was not far behind her. He entered through the arch she had come in by and she watched as he strode along the colonnade looking for the right place. He seemed taller than she remembered. He was a fine-looking man, if a little scruffy, and in Paris scruffiness seemed somehow more acceptable to her than it had been in Brighton. Out of context, Mirabelle considered Alan McGregor with fresh eyes. When he noticed her gazing through the candlelit window he smiled and waved. Inside he didn’t greet Mirabelle with a kiss, like a Frenchman, but instead put his hand on her shoulder.
‘Are you all right? Why did you think I might be followed?’
‘Were you?’
‘No.’
Mirabelle pondered that to anyone looking it would be apparent they weren’t French. But then, why would anyone be looking? ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I’m sure. I’ve a good ten years on the force, remember.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘I’ll have one of those.’ McGregor directed the waiter’s attention to Mirabelle’s wineglass.
The man hovered.
‘Encore deux verres du vin rouge,’
Mirabelle translated.
McGregor took off his hat and coat and sat down. He was wearing a blue woollen scarf that matched his eyes. Mirabelle tried not to notice but the superintendent’s face held the light somehow.
‘Vesta said you had the lingo down pat. Your mother was French, is that right?’
‘Yes. She was brought up here. In Paris, I mean.’
‘It’s a beautiful city.’ McGregor had taken a taxi as instructed and had spent the trip staring out of the window at the glories of the French capital. ‘Vesta said you were looking for somebody. Have you found him?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Well, this might help.’
McGregor withdrew a manila envelope from his inside pocket. Mirabelle’s name was written on the front in Vesta’s scrawl. As she tore it open she felt a sudden nostalgia for the office on Brills Lane – the endless tea and the comforting rhythm of keeping the ledgers. Inside the envelope was a set of handwritten notes. McGregor picked up his glass and drank.
‘That’s good,’ he pronounced. ‘Very nice.’
Mirabelle laid the papers on the table. In the low light it was difficult to make out the words formed by Vesta’s untidy hand. The page was headed
Mrs Ida Caine’s Last Will and Testament
and below it was a list of worldly goods: a house a mile outside the dramatically named village of Pity Me in County Durham
and a car, an old Morris 8 series. There was some jewellery: a string of pearls valued at £26 and a diamond ring worth about the same. The relics of a woman’s life. Mrs Caine had died in January 1944. In only a few months she could have had her son home again, Mirabelle thought sadly. She had passed away thinking that she’d lost everyone. No wonder Caine had been furious when he heard.
After carefully copying the items contained in Mrs Caine’s estate, Vesta had continued. Mirabelle lifted the paper and squinted. She cocked her head to one side as she read.
‘But they can’t have actually done that.’ The words came out in a low whisper.
‘What is it?’ McGregor looked up from the menu, which he was examining with a bemused expression.
Mirabelle’s eyes returned to the page as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was reading. Her mind buzzed, making the connections. In the absence of close family, her sons being missing in action, Mrs Caine’s property had been bequeathed to her cousin. That was normal enough, but this wasn’t just any cousin. During wartime the estate must have languished unexecuted, because no British solicitor would dream of contacting a German with the news that they’d inherited a good deal of property in England. What had Mrs Caine been thinking? The situation itself was interesting – a legal conundrum – if not entirely a surprise. Almost since the beginning Mirabelle had known of Caine’s German relations.
Some Hun family connection,
the RAF officer had said at the Army and Navy Club – on his mother’s side, it would seem. No, what made Mirabelle’s mind pulse was that the cousin Mrs Caine had named was Wilhelm von der Grün. She read the name again to check that was really what it said. On the lines below, Vesta had carefully copied out von der Grün’s titles, the ones Mirabelle had read at the National Library in
Wer Ist’s
. The girl had written ‘sounds posh’ in brackets at the end.
Mirabelle sat back in her chair. The titles meant there was no mistaking the identity. It wasn’t simply a matter of two people sharing the same name.
‘So Caine knew him,’ she whispered. ‘They were second cousins. That’s why Caine had to stay in France. That’s why he didn’t go home again.’
When Bradley and Caine arrived twenty miles outside Paris in the summer of 1942 they must have discovered that one of them had a direct connection to the heart of the Nazi war machine. A break like that could be invaluable to the Allies.
Mirabelle ran through the scenario. When the men realised von der Grün was newly stationed in the French capital – perhaps they had read the very newspaper article that Mirabelle had found in the library – they would have reported the information to London. Perhaps Christine Moreau had helped them. The Resistance was certainly their best chance of getting a message through. With that in hand, they must have settled down to wait for instructions. Mirabelle imagined Jack receiving the news at his large mahogany desk in the Whitehall office. It was a lucky break – a dream opportunity for anyone in covert operations – but of course it was also risky. Any action would have to be approved, so Jack would have gone to someone senior. In a back room somewhere, three or four British officers would have met around a table. Brandy and cigars, no doubt. What might they be able to make from such an opportunity? Could they trust that Caine’s loyalty to his country was stronger than his family ties? As with any opportunity there were risks to weigh up.
On balance, she reckoned, Philip Caine would have been told to stay. Well, clearly he had been. And Bradley was more use at home, so Bulldog was sent back via Bilbao to a storm of press interest and a blackout on the news that he had escaped as part of a duo. Before the men parted, Caine made Bradley promise to look after his mother and Caroline. The
opportunity was so important to the war effort that it was worth abandoning his pregnant fiancée. Under orders, Caine would have had little choice in the matter. It must have been heartrending for him, she thought, and an act of selfless bravery. The men must have made a deal to ensure Caroline Bland wouldn’t be humiliated by bearing Caine’s illegitimate child. At home, Bulldog kept his word and married his friend’s lover.
How tortuous, she thought, waiting for the news – lodging on the rue du Jour, in the care of Christine Moreau. Waiting for the woman he loved to marry his friend. But then, what he might be able to achieve for the Allies was so important … Mirabelle ran through the likely options – what had Jack decided Caine should do? There was no question the flight lieutenant would have been told to make contact with his cousin, but did Jack intend Caine to turn the Standartenführer for the Allies? Wilhelm, after all, had not been a member of the Nazi party in 1935. She wondered how late he had left it to join. Might he be considered vulnerable? Might Caine’s mission have been to turn his cousin into a double agent? Or was the flight lieutenant simply instructed to position himself to gain inside information? There were other British officers who lasted out the war in Paris – one had famously won a fortune at the races and set himself up in an apartment in Saint-Cloud. Perhaps the plan was for Caine to throw himself on his cousin’s mercy and lodge in the family house keeping his ears open. Or had Jack encouraged Caine to let his cousin think he had turned him against Britain by feeding false information to the Nazis while really being a triple agent and true to the Allies? Whatever his orders, she didn’t envy Caine having to make the initial contact. Had he called at the rue de Siam or followed Wilhelm into a café one afternoon and slipped into a seat beside him? Wherever that first meeting took place it must have been terrifying – Caine couldn’t have been sure how von der Grün would react. Despite their relationship, the
Standartenführer might simply have turned him over to the authorities and from there it would have been straight back to the Stalag at best. At worst Caine would have faced a firing squad, because as often as not a man out of uniform was a spy. In fact, from the moment Jack started to handle him, Caine wasn’t just a serviceman any more – he
was
a spy. Mirabelle’s fingers tingled at the thought.
‘Are you all right?’ McGregor asked, looking up from the menu. Mirabelle gulped in some air. She had been so busy thinking through the possibilities that she had forgotten where she was and with whom. The past engulfed her too easily. McGregor indicated the menu. ‘I can’t tell one dish from another. When I was a kid we learned a bit of French at school, but not enough, it seems.’ He smiled. ‘I fancy chicken, if there is any.’
Mirabelle blinked. Her stomach turned. ‘I don’t feel like eating.’
‘Well, I’m ravenous.’ McGregor motioned to the waiter and pointed to the card.
‘Poulet
?’ he enquired.
‘Et pour madame
?’ the waiter replied coldly.
Mirabelle shook her head.
‘Encore du vin
?’
‘
Oui
.’ McGregor seemed to be able to make that out easily enough. As the waiter retreated he leaned over the table. ‘I don’t need ten years of experience on the force to see something’s up, Mirabelle. Could you use a hand?’
Mirabelle looked doubtful. ‘It’s going to be important to blend in.’
McGregor laughed. ‘Aah.’ He peered down the side of the table, taking in her boots. ‘I noticed you might be having some difficulty with that. Or have you been riding?’
She blushed. ‘I’ll need some shoes,’ she admitted, ‘but apart from that …’
‘I probably look foreign, do I?’ McGregor asked.
‘A little.’
‘I thought I’d done all right. Well, you could Frenchify me, if you like. It’s always interesting about people, isn’t it? I mean, they don’t notice what fits, they notice what doesn’t – the one tiny thing that’s out of place. We get it all the time on the force. See, if I was describing you, I’d say five foot five, slender build, auburn shoulder-length hair, hazel eyes. Or the waiter – I’d say five ten, strawberry blond. No more than thirty-five. But a witness, they’d say the woman was, pardon me, ordinary enough but she was wearing riding boots with a dress. Course they would. They wouldn’t have a clue how tall you were. They wouldn’t think of that.’
‘Point taken.’
‘Let me give you a hand, eh? And perhaps tomorrow you could show me around. You must know the place. The Eiffel Tower? The cathedral of Notre Dame? Once you’re finished your work?’
‘I’m not sure how long this will take. And it might be dangerous, Superintendent.’
McGregor lifted his glass. ‘Enough of the “Superintendent”! It’s Alan, please. And I owe you my life already, don’t I?’ he said referring to the year before when Mirabelle had freed him from a cellar on Queen’s Road where he’d been tied up for the best part of twenty-four hours. ‘You can tell me what’s going on. What did Vesta send you?’
Mirabelle paused. She wasn’t sure how to express it. Her mind was still churning the details. Was Philip Caine the reason Christine Moreau met Wilhelm von der Grün in the first place? Had she only encouraged the German as part of the scheme? Did she sleep with him for her country and then fall in love afterwards? Suddenly the whole situation seemed too complicated to unravel – whose side had everyone been on? It was impossible to tell. Perhaps that was why Jack had come here himself in 1944. Perhaps even he’d lost track of it all.