Authors: Sara Sheridan
‘You are an idiot, Pieter,’ he said to someone outside. ‘You didn’t even lock it.’
‘I did,’ a second voice insisted.
Albert ignored him. He hovered over the girl. Clearly this time he’d decided to try different interrogation tactics. Perhaps her youth made him bold. Or maybe her once beautiful dress offended his political sensibilities. Without warning Albert pulled back his arm and struck her a full blow on the face.
‘Where is it, Mademoiselle Evangeline? Where is the scarf? Who were you going to deliver it to?’
Mirabelle could only see the girl in profile now but the kid was plucky. The faintest smile flickered across her face as she heaved for breath, and her eyes were hard.
‘That’s my secret,’ she managed. ‘Fetch a doctor or you’ll never know.’
Albert leaned over her. ‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ he sneered. And to underline his point he shoved his hand into her face and held her mouth and nose spitefully so she couldn’t breathe.
‘I bet a daddy’s girl like you is used to issuing orders. Well, Mademoiselle Durand, you’re not in high society now. Did you think you were playing a game?’
Evangeline’s face turned puce and her legs twitched. In her current state the poor girl was so completely vulnerable it was painful to watch. Mirabelle felt in her pocket for McGregor’s knife as her anger rose. If she could take Albert by surprise, perhaps his greater height and weight wouldn’t count too much against her. She’d need to slit his throat, she calculated.
That way he wouldn’t be able to shout for help. Her mind rushed with a cocktail of terror and outrage and she visualised herself rolling from under the chaise longue and getting to her feet before he could react. The element of surprise would work in her favour. Albert let go of Evangeline’s face as a second man came into the room. Mirabelle held herself back. She couldn’t take both of them. The girl’s wheezing resumed. She gasped desperately but clearly she wasn’t getting enough air. Not nearly.
‘If she dies we won’t get anything out of her,’ Pieter pointed out. From what Mirabelle could see this second man was younger. ‘I could fetch the pharmacist we used when Max got shot. He’d be able to help.’
‘Shut up,’ Albert hissed.
‘You gave her the stuff,’ Pieter said. ‘It’s not my fault she can’t breathe properly. How much did you use?’
Albert shoved the boy’s shoulder. ‘She’s just panicking,’ he snapped, and turned back to Evangeline. ‘If you tell me where you put the scarf, I’ll let him go for the pharmacist. He wants to go, mademoiselle. He’s quite gallant, don’t you think? Your knight in shining armour.’
Pieter stiffened. ‘Do what you want,’ he said. ‘I’m only trying to help.’
Behind Albert Mirabelle could see that Evangeline was in some kind of altered state of mind. The lack of oxygen had clearly affected her. The girl didn’t seem fully conscious. She began humming between wheezing.
‘The scarf,’ Albert insisted.
‘I did my hair. I went to the opera,’ she sang. It must be taking a huge effort to get the words out, Mirabelle thought.
‘Where did you hide the scarf?’
‘My mother prefers a chignon. But I like a full bun.’
Albert slapped the girl hard. ‘I swear,’ he said, ‘you’d better tell me.’
Evangeline laughed. She turned towards the chaise longue, wheezing all the while, and stared Mirabelle right in the eye.
‘Elnette,’ she said, ‘is the best hairspray.’
Albert lost his temper. He punched Evangeline in the stomach. Pieter pulled him off. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘You’ll kill her.’
‘These women …’ Albert was so angry that he couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.
Evangeline was retching now. A slick dribble of vomit slid down her chin and onto the chiffon bodice. She heaved in as much air as she could, but it was only a trickle and it cost her dear. She stopped humming. She couldn’t speak. Her arm jerked as she pulled against the linen rag that tied her to the chair. Mirabelle looked away. There was nothing she could do. She willed the girl to calm down – panic wouldn’t help, though there was plenty to panic about.
‘I’m getting the pharmacist,’ Pieter said.
Mirabelle waited as his footsteps receded down the stairs. Albert paced to and fro in front of the girl. ‘Where is the scarf?’ he repeated.
Evangeline was clearly fading. Albert crossed his arms and stared at her. Then he put his hand around her throat. ‘Where?’ he demanded.
Mirabelle couldn’t watch any more. She rolled out from the chaise longue and got to her feet, flicking open the knife in the same smooth movement. Albert turned too slowly. She remembered somebody saying that stabbing a man took strength and determination. Perhaps it was Bradley. Perhaps it was Jack. Whoever it was, they were wrong. Stabbing someone, she realised, took unadulterated fury. In her case, anyway.
She launched herself at him. Albert was so surprised that his immediate reaction was to laugh and lazily put up one arm in defence. It wasn’t enough. McGregor’s blade lashed into his throat and the laugh turned into a gurgle. She had missed his jugular, she thought as he punched her solidly in the face. That
meant there would be less blood. She reeled, vision blurred, as Albert tried to pull the blade out. He couldn’t. It was lodged too deeply in his flesh and he was thick-fingered with shock. A strange cacophony of two people’s gasps for breath assailed Mirabelle as her anger subsided. Still reeling, she made for Evangeline’s side. The girl’s eyes betrayed her terror.
‘It’s all right,’ Mirabelle tried to soothe her. ‘He’s not going to hurt you any more.’
Albert fell to his knees and then onto the floor. A trickle of blood began to pool in front of him and the sound of his gasping stopped.
‘He’s dead,’ Mirabelle said. ‘You’re perfectly safe. Just take your time. Calm down.’
But Evangeline’s chest was raised as if she had taken a breath in and couldn’t let it go. She reached up to her hair and slipped her fingers inside her bun, pulling out the corner of the rayon scarf that she had folded into a tiny square.
‘You were trying to tell me?’ Mirabelle whispered. ‘You hid it there.’
The girl nodded. She squeezed Mirabelle’s hand so tightly that it hurt. She couldn’t speak any more. It was too late for that.
‘I’ll take it back to the rue de Siam, don’t worry. We just need to get you out of here …’
But that wasn’t going to be necessary. In only a few seconds Evangeline Durand’s grip failed. She slumped into the seat, no longer struggling for breath, her eyes wide with horror at her own demise.
‘No!’ Mirabelle cried out. ‘Don’t.’
But the girl was gone. Mirabelle checked her pulse. Then she kicked the leg of the chair, her palm over her mouth. It had all happened so quickly. She wondered whether, if she’d been quicker, Evangeline might have recovered. But she couldn’t have taken Pieter as well as Albert. Not even armed. Then she
remembered that Pieter was going to return. She wondered how long he might be.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered to Evangeline’s body, as she tentatively pulled the rest of the scarf from the girl’s hair. Then she turned her attention to Albert. She removed his wallet: his identity papers might prove useful. You always tried to provide proof of who you’d killed. Someone had told her that once. Gingerly she removed McGregor’s knife from the wound. The slick scrape of metal against bone made her wince. Lastly, she fished her lock picks out of Albert’s pocket and then, with a glance over her shoulder, Mirabelle fled across the hall and back through the skylight. Her heart was racing as she climbed the sloping part of the roof, but she tried to measure her pace. One slip was all it would take, quite literally. Once she was on the flat section she scrambled haphazardly towards number 2. Looking round, she picked out a large tree in a garden below. Then she threw the knife so it embedded itself towards the top of the trunk. No one would find it there. It was far better than dropping it down a drain or leaving it in a gutter. Looking around, somehow afraid that someone might have seen, she slid carefully down the lead roofing and braced herself.
‘McGregor,’ she hissed towards the window.
There was no response.
‘McGregor.’ Louder.
The superintendent’s face appeared, peering upwards. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’m here.’
Mirabelle felt herself relax slightly. She’d never been so glad to see someone in her life. She gripped the edge of the gutter and let herself swing into his arms.
Chapter 27
Only the dead have seen the end of war
.
U
p at the corner, the driver had gone. His loyalty to the Durand family must have overwhelmed him. He was probably at their residence now, telling an outlandish tale about the backstreet bar and the untidy couple who thought Mademoiselle Evangeline had been taken to number 8 rue de Courcelles.
‘It would have been a long time for him to wait,’ said McGregor. ‘The French police will want these fellows, you know. And you’re a witness, Mirabelle. By rights we should go straight to the station and offer our evidence.’
‘I can’t do that,’ Mirabelle replied under her breath. McGregor hadn’t asked for his knife back and she hadn’t told him what she’d done with it. All she’d said was that Evangeline was dead. ‘There’s no more we can do for the poor girl now. There’s too much at stake to stay here. We have to press on.’
It had started to drizzle. McGregor stared at Mirabelle in the lamplight. She was always so perfect in Brighton, but tonight she had been through an immense ordeal and seeing her in disarray was somehow stirring. He wondered if this was how she must look in the morning – her hair dishevelled and her make-up worn away. The man in the studio had lent her a pair of velvet slippers that she deemed more comfortable than the riding boots and she had done away with the torn stockings. When she slid off the roof and into his arms he had wanted to kiss her. Or at least he had felt that way until he noticed that she was fighting back tears.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’ll be lucky to find a taxi round here at this time. We’ll have to walk at least as far as the Arc de Triomphe.’
‘Where are we going?’
Mirabelle was finding it difficult to look McGregor in the eye. She wasn’t sure how he would react when he discovered she was a murderer. Mirabelle had killed someone before, but only in self-defence. Afterwards a tribunal had cleared her. She tried not to think about the difference between that occasion and what had happened tonight. She’d been trying to save Evangeline Durand, but she’d failed. She couldn’t tell McGregor about it – not yet, anyway.
‘We need to find the woman who handed Evangeline the scarf in the first place. My guess is she’s von der Grün’s wife. At the very least von der Grün must know her. The scarf started out in his house.’
McGregor didn’t like to ask. He told himself Mirabelle’s judgement had always been sound in the past as he fell into step alongside her. Almost at the Arc de Triomphe they found, not a cab, but a rag and bone man driving a little wagon. Mirabelle flagged him down and agreed a fee in excess of what he would expect to make for a whole night’s work, McGregor assumed, given the look on the man’s face. At least they would get to their destination more quickly, he thought, as he sat on the edge of the cart and gawped down the Champs-Élysées like some kind of gypsy. This wasn’t how he’d envisioned spending a few days in Paris with Mirabelle – soggy and on the run. The rain eased as the horse pulled up at the rue de Siam and they stepped down to the pavement. The driver gave a little salute and cracked the reins.
It was close to midnight. They could hear the hooves retreating down the street as the rag and bone man went back to his rounds. Mirabelle took a moment to compose herself on the doorstep of number 25 before ringing the bell. The fanlight
was bright but no one came to answer the door. Perhaps the von der Grüns had gone somewhere after the opera. Paris was a city that partied all night, even on a Sunday. After a weekend in the country maybe they had decided to kick up their heels. She tried the bell once more.
McGregor checked his watch. ‘It’s getting late.’
Mirabelle was on the point of deciding to take a room in the Hôtel Siam, although she feared that in her current attire the staff might treat her with less respect than they had shown the other night. It flitted across her mind that McGregor and she could check in as Mr and Mrs Horton. She shocked herself with the blasphemy of even considering it, and made up for the thought with the silent vow that if they did so McGregor would be sleeping on the floor. From there they would be able to keep an eye on the rear of number 25 in shifts, and if the lights came on they could move quickly. She was about to make the suggestion when the door swung open. Inside, the younger man who had attended the opera stood in his evening dress. The staff must have been dismissed for the night.
‘Oui
?’ he enquired curtly.
Mirabelle wasn’t sure where to start. The words came in a babble. She found herself gesticulating as she spoke – all in French. McGregor stared, only able to guess what she might be saying.
‘I’m a friend of Evangeline Durand,’ she started. ‘It’s been the most dreadful evening. I’m sorry but I need to speak to the woman in the purple dress, if she’s here.’
‘La comtesse
?’
‘I suppose so.’ Mirabelle shrugged. ‘I have bad news, I’m afraid. The worst. I know it’s late but I must speak to her at once.’
The man paused for a second, but ultimately stood back from the threshold to let them in. He ushered his eccentric-looking visitors into the study, where a fire was burning in the
grate and a half-drunk bottle of champagne stood on a side table. The woman in the purple dress stood up with her glass in her hand. Mirabelle fumbled in her pocket and pulled out the scarf. The woman looked uneasy, her eyes lighting on the man who had opened the door as if to see if he understood the implication of the scarf’s turning up in their house again.
‘Evangeline Durand is dead,’ Mirabelle said, in her brisk Parisian accent. ‘I’m so sorry. She was followed. She was taken. I tried to rescue her but she was ill. She couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t save her.’
The man who had answered the door stepped forward. Unexpectedly, he had a cut-glass accent that wouldn’t have been out of place in St James’s. He probably thought speaking English made the conversation more private. Neither McGregor nor Mirabelle corrected him.
‘Good God, Elizabeth, what is this woman talking about? What the hell have you been up to?’
Elizabeth took the scarf from Mirabelle’s hand. ‘We need to run this over to the American Embassy,’ she said. ‘Now.’
‘Answer me! What have you got yourself involved in? You’ve been working, haven’t you?’ He sounded furious. ‘After everything we said. What about the children? We can’t do this kind of thing any more. The war is over, damn it. Dead and buried.’
‘We can discuss it later.’ The woman’s voice remained even. She rang the service bell to the right of the fireplace ‘I’ll raise Javier and have him bring round the car. Please, Philip, calm down.’
Mirabelle turned towards the man in evening dress. ‘Philip?’ she repeated, staring at him as the name fell into place. ‘Are you Philip? Philip Caine?’
He turned on her. ‘And who the hell are you?’
Mirabelle cocked her head to one side. He was the right age. He was clearly English. ‘What are you doing here?’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve been looking for you. I thought you were dead.’
‘Well, you’ve found me.’ He gave a shallow bow. ‘Philip, Comte de Vert.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Von der Grün was your cousin. But does that mean … excuse me, but did von der Grün die?’
Caine flipped open a cigarette box on a side table. He offered it round, lighting a Gitane and sucking hard as if he was taking out his anger on it.
‘Yes. Wilhelm died. Kurt died. Everyone bloody died and I inherited in the end. I’m the survivor. I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Mirabelle Bevan.’ She held out her hand. Stiffly, Caine shook it. ‘I hope you don’t mind my asking but when did von der Grün die? What happened?’
Caine hesitated before deciding that it was all right to continue. ‘It was February 1944, if you must know. What is it that you want, Miss Bevan?’
It suddenly occurred to her that this meant Christine Moreau had lost her lover only a few months before the liberation of the city and had then had to endure being punished for the affair. Mirabelle tried to remember what had been happening in February 1944. She could not think of any obvious action in which Wilhelm von der Grün might have perished. The Resistance had struck out as it became obvious the Germans would have to quit the city. Perhaps von der Grün had fallen foul of that, though it was earlier in the year than she’d place the majority of the civil disobedience.
‘He’s buried in Passy cemetery, I imagine,’ she said.
Caine nodded. ‘A small gravestone, given the circumstances. No “Soldier and Great Man.” No marble angels.’
‘How did he die?’
‘I don’t see it’s any of your business.’
‘Tonight I watched Evangeline Durand die. She was very brave. I killed a man while I was trying to save her. I came to Paris to find you, Flight Lieutenant. Matthew Bradley asked me to. And I’ve ended up a murderer. So when I ask
you how Wilhelm von der Grün died, I consider it very much my business.’
‘You’ve been taken for a ride, Miss Bevan. Matthew knows exactly where I am if he wants to find me.’
Mirabelle sank onto the edge of the sofa. ‘He knows? You’re sure?’
‘It’s not common knowledge. I couldn’t go back. I don’t want to. But Matthew knows. He knows everything. What does he want, anyway?’
‘He wrote asking me to find out what happened to you.’
‘Well, I don’t understand that.’
‘It was in his will. He died about a week ago, you see. I’m sorry.’ Had it only been a week?
Caine stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I hope Caroline is all right. She and the girl.’
‘They’re fine,’ Mirabelle replied.
The door opened and a butler entered the room. ‘Duchamp,’ the countess said. ‘Could you have the car brought round? I know it’s rather late. And raise Javier to drive it for us.’
The man bowed and retreated. Mirabelle found herself unable to take her eyes off Philip Caine, wondering if he’d succeeded in turning his cousin for the Allies and how much sensitive material he had managed to pass to Jack in the two years he’d spent undercover in Paris. Had it all been worth it?
The countess scooped up a fur wrap that was slung over a chair. ‘May I have that?’ She put out her hand, and Mirabelle handed over the scarf in a daze. Philip Caine glared at his wife.
‘Elizabeth, I wish you wouldn’t.’
‘It’s too late now. I have to. Poor Evangeline Durand gave her life. Do you expect me just to burn it? To ignore it? They need this, Philip. It will be the last. I promise.’
‘You shouldn’t go alone.’ Mirabelle got to her feet. ‘It isn’t safe.’
‘Let me,’ McGregor insisted. ‘You look done in, Mirabelle. Do you mind, monsieur? It’s been a hell of a night.’
Philip Caine nodded curtly. ‘I’ll keep her here till you get back,’ he said. ‘Miss Bevan, may I offer you some champagne?’
Mirabelle couldn’t help thinking that what she’d really like was a cup of tea but she nodded, accepting the glass that Caine put into her hand. When she sipped it was certainly reviving.
‘Well, that’s settled.’ The countess swished past in a cloud of Dior.
McGregor followed her, and Mirabelle’s gaze fell to her feet and the damp velvet slippers as the door clicked closed. On the hem of her dress was a dark splatter that had sunk into the brown wool. Only now did she realise it must be blood.
‘You can rest here,’ Caine said, scrambling in his desk and pulling out a box of cigars. ‘I wouldn’t smoke one of these in front of a lady. I’ll go up to the drawing room.’
Mirabelle stood up. He wasn’t getting away that easily. In the hallway she heard the front door closing behind McGregor and the countess. The car would be along directly.
‘I love the smell of cigar smoke,’ she said. ‘I don’t like cigarettes, but I enjoy a Cuban now and then. Please let me join you.’