British Bulldog (9 page)

‘It’s an English chap I’m looking for,’ Mirabelle said. ‘He passed through the Red Cross’s hands around the time Paris was liberated in 1944, and I understand the papers relating to his injuries and his release might be here. I hope you can help me find him. The man I spoke to said you had records that sounded as if they’d be relevant.’

‘Name?’

‘Philip Caine. He was Royal Air Force – a flight lieutenant.’

The woman paused. ‘I meant
your
name.’

‘Oh. Mirabelle Bevan.’

‘And you’re a relation?’

Mirabelle hesitated She expected her heart to sink but it didn’t. Instead, this time she squared up to the enquiry.

‘Not exactly.’ Her tone was very matter of fact. ‘I worked for the chap who was trying to get Caine back to England. He seems to have failed in that. And I suppose you could say that I’m here at the behest of the man who was Caine’s escape partner when they gave the Germans the slip. Though that was a couple of years earlier – 1942.’

The unkempt blonde slumped onto a seat in a manner reminiscent of Vesta. ‘My, it sounds as if this fellow has quite some story.’

‘I’d like to find out more of it.’

‘I’m Maisie du Pré.’ The woman held out her hand. Mirabelle shook it, her surprise clearly evident for Maisie went on. ‘The name is how I got the job. They thought I was French and spoke some English. Instead I’m American and I speak only a little French.’

‘The records are in English, are they?’

Maisie shrugged. ‘That depends on the nationality of the doctor and the nurses. We have records in just about every language from Hindi, which we can’t read, to Russian – we’ve found a couple of people who can help us with that though the diplomatic service don’t like us doing it. An international service is supposed to be a boon. Let me tell you, international records most definitely aren’t.’

Mirabelle nodded sympathetically.

‘Date?’ Maisie enquired.

‘August 1944. De Gaulle entered the city on the twenty-fifth or thereabouts. On that day, or close to it, my man was in a Red Cross field hospital near Longchamp.’

Maisie indicated a table set up for six readers. She strode
over and pulled a little cord that switched on a lamp, which in turn illuminated the green leather insert.

‘Dinky, isn’t it? Wait here and I’ll see what I can dig up.’

Moving more quickly than might have been expected, Maisie du Pré disappeared through a door at the rear. Mirabelle removed her gloves and took a seat. She became aware of the clock in the corner ticking. There was something sterile about the office; Miss du Pré was the only lively thing about it. Even with her hat and coat strewn beside her desk, it was like sitting in a mortuary. The clock’s hand moved slowly and Mirabelle squirmed in her chair. A full twenty minutes later Maisie reappeared with a large pile of papers that she managed to lever onto the table.

‘There were a lot of injuries in Longchamp that week,’ she said. ‘The Germans mined the roads when they left.’

Mirabelle undid her buttons and slipped her coat over her shoulders. ‘Thank you. That’s very helpful. Well, I’d best get to work.’ She picked up the paper on the top of the pile as Miss du Pré went back to her desk.

Mirabelle wasn’t squeamish by nature but the records went into gruesome details of injuries and operations. The hospital had been set up to the west of the city in the open space afforded by the racetrack at Longchamp. It didn’t only offer first aid – there was also a surgical unit dealing with gunshot and shrapnel injuries. And it helped the local community. Mirabelle found civilian records – two boys who had contracted mumps and a woman who went there to give birth. While photographers snapped the crowds rejoicing in the streets around the Champs-Élysées as the French reclaimed their city, some poor souls were having limbs amputated or bullets removed. In those last weeks Paris had stood up to the Nazis. There had been widespread strikes and the Resistance had staged a series of incendiary attacks against German targets. In retaliation, as Maisie had pointed out, the Nazis
had mined the roads, hoping to strike the Allies as they arrived. Occasionally a mine hit home. The whole operation had resulted in extensive injuries – not on the scale of an actual battle, but bad enough.

Mirabelle read the medical details of the ensuing devastation for a good two hours before she encountered a familiar name. When she did, it was not Philip Caine, the man she had expected to find. Instead, she turned over a piece of paper and there he was. Jack Duggan. From beyond the grave. His name loomed towards her, his familiar signature on the form confirming that the J.M.R. Duggan in question was the man she had known it must be. The twenty-fifth of August – the day the Germans had surrendered the city. Yet Jack had told her he had never been here. They had joked, she remembered, about her showing him the city where her mother was born. Jack had said he wanted her to be his tour guide. ‘You’re the one who speaks French,’ he had said. Mirabelle had blushed and given a demonstration. ‘Well, you’ll be in charge when we get there,’ he had promised with a grin. ‘I’d love to see Paris.’ The lie made Mirabelle uneasy. What else had Jack not told her? She rifled through the papers for more information and settled down to read.

Now she knew when Jack had been at Longchamp she could search more accurately by date, and she soon discovered that before he arrived he had sent a communiqué to the hospital, enquiring after the whereabouts of one Mademoiselle Moreau. Curiosity twisted in Mirabelle’s chest. Who on earth was she? Soon after that she turned up an accommodation allocation in his name. Jack was quartered near the hospital, put up by the Red Cross in their doctors’ quarters. He had been allocated two bunks – numbers thirteen and fourteen. The accommodation block was communal and almost certainly male only – there would be another block for the nurses. So, she deduced, did Jack have Matthew Bradley with him? Had they arrived
together – Bradley in one bunk and Jack in the other? However they got there, the day the men came, Mademoiselle Moreau was under treatment. She had been beaten. The notes detailed several cracked ribs and a broken right arm. The poor woman was also treated for burns on her back and arms. There were three black-and-white photographs of these injuries that made Mirabelle wince. It looked as if someone had attempted to brand Mademoiselle Moreau’s back and had stubbed out cigarettes on her arms.

Treatment at Longchamp was swift and the woman signed herself out on the twenty-sixth of August. Mirabelle squinted to read the spidery, barely legible scrawl that, she reasoned, given the circumstances, must have been written using the woman’s left hand. Christine Moreau. Christine. Was this the woman Eddie had said she should try to find? Mirabelle checked Jack’s bunk allocation again. The day Christine Moreau was discharged Jack retained his two bunks. He stayed at Longchamp for another twenty-four hours.

Moving on, she carefully searched the treatment roster for that week in August 1944, and there he was. Philip Caine. His injuries, it seemed, were relatively slight. He had shrapnel wounds but the doctor bandaged him up and discharged him within six hours. He signed his discharge form in a well-formed hand and left with a bottle of painkillers. Here it was – confirmation that Caine was alive in August 1944. He had given his address as 17 rue du Jour – the street Eddie had steered her towards. That was interesting. Mirabelle turned over the form as she considered. She cocked her head. On the back, scrawled in French, someone had written, ‘The British officers were removed and treated for bruising. An orderly had to restrain the patient when he became distressed.’ And then one word:
Mal
. Bad? Sick? What did the person who wrote it mean by that? Was Caine in the wrong? Was there more to it than the distress of a man who’d had his fiancée whipped from under
his nose by a friend? Was he sick? Or was he crazy? Lots of men had been damaged by their wartime experiences and ended up removed from the world, depressed, mad or simply violent. Either way it looked as if there had been bad blood over Caroline Bland after all. Caine had struck out against Bradley and Jack so forcefully they’d required medical attention.

Mirabelle suddenly remembered the day Jack had asked her if she’d marry him if he freed himself from his wife. It was the end of August that year – 1944. They had been picnicking and drinking gin all weekend, down near Hampton Court. Jack wanted to get out of the city and they’d put up in a boarding house in East Molesey. They’d called themselves Mr and Mrs Horton, she recalled. It was a sunny Saturday and they hired a boat on the river. Jack rowed and Mirabelle flung herself at him when he’d brought up the subject.

‘Yes,’ she cried. ‘I’d marry you like a shot, you idiot! Don’t you know that?’

And as she hugged him he’d cried out in pain.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ she asked as the boat rocked dangerously.

‘I went riding while I was away, my love. I was thrown.’

It hadn’t felt like a lie, but then Jack was adept at managing information. And in his personal life he hadn’t seemed the least bit wayward. He must have been in France that week. She recalled that he had waved a hand as if trying to pluck somewhere out of thin air when she asked him where he had been. Perhaps he was reaching for somewhere he could admit to having visited. Up north. That’s what he’d said. Up north. Where Caine was from and where Bradley returned to make a home with his wife and child. Mirabelle frowned. It was difficult to accept that Jack had really been in Paris, but it made sense. And he had proposed to her as soon as he came back. Had the liberation of Paris made him sure for the first time that the Allies would win the war? Or had he seen what
fighting over a woman could do? Perhaps he’d learned a lesson and had decided to come clean to his wife. Not then, of course, but later, when the girls were old enough. Either way, that week he decided to mark out his intentions for the future.

Mirabelle had always thought her relationship with Jack was insulated from the war. That it was apart from everything else that had been going on. Now it seemed that somehow he had been prompted to propose by this sordid situation in a field hospital. That meant these people she didn’t know – Bradley, Caine and even Caroline Bland – had touched her life. They had changed things. Mirabelle pushed the papers away and looked around the office. Maisie was munching a biscuit as Claude came out of the back.

‘Dejeuner,’
he mumbled, pointing at the clock. Lunch.

Maisie waved him off. ‘I’m not hungry.’

Mirabelle got to her feet. ‘Thank you so much,’ she said, reaching for her coat. ‘I found just what I wanted.’

Chapter 13

The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know
.

T
he air was clear as Mirabelle stumbled back onto the street. She walked quickly and it wasn’t long before she was back in sight of the river. The cold black water of the Seine flowed wider than she remembered. But then there were so many things that weren’t quite as she recalled. The last few days had brought Jack to life – not as the saint of her memory but as a living, breathing man endowed with both good and bad qualities. She decided that if she found Philip Caine she would be interested in hearing his opinion of Jack’s character and she’d definitely like to know why he’d attacked Jack when it was Bradley who had betrayed his trust. It was difficult to piece together a clear picture of what had happened. It was as if the three men trailed myriad shifting shadows in their wake.

As she reached the Tuileries, Mirabelle felt tired and flagged down a taxi to take her to Saint-Eustache. A famous church not far from its still more famous cousin, Notre Dame, the building was considered a masterpiece, its high Gothic ceiling a perfect echo chamber for medieval music. As Mirabelle paid the driver and stepped onto the street, a placard propped against the base of a stone pillar announced a madrigal concert that evening. The taxi drove away and Mirabelle sidestepped the house of God and moved in the direction of the network of streets clustered around it. The rue du Jour had come up twice now and Mirabelle wondered what she might find there.

She wasn’t far from the huge market at Les Halles, and the air was scented with cooking from several bistros. Between these, grocery shops spilled their wares onto the street with displays of citrus fruits and jars of honey. Three men clustered around a tobacconist’s booth, smoking. Next to them the door of
a fromagerie
was wedged open and a whiff of strong blue cheese hung around the entrance. Mirabelle decided she would eat later. At the moment, she had too much on her mind.

The rue du Jour was only slightly wider than a lane. It ran downhill from the main road, with a small fire station halfway along on the left. Number seventeen was a haberdashery, with feathered hat trimmings and brass buttons strung on white threads in the window. Mirabelle paused to collect her thoughts before she stepped inside. Passing a rack of edging ribbons that stretched up to the ceiling, she had to squint to make out a young woman at the dark wooden counter to the rear. She was surrounded by skeins of wool and embroidery silks and appeared to be drinking a glass of red wine as she sewed together the pieces of a child’s pink cardigan. She looked up. Mirabelle smiled. The girl’s hair was held in place by means of two knitting needles and a crochet hook.

‘Vous cherchez quelque chose, madame
?’ Are you looking for something?

‘Une femme,’
Mirabelle said. ‘Christine Moreau.’

The girl removed a knitting needle from her hair and used it to scratch her scalp. ‘
Non
.’

‘Et un homme,’
Mirabelle pushed on. ‘Philippe Caine?’

The girl replaced the knitting needle with a Gallic shrug and a shake of her head.

‘C’est jolie,’
Mirabelle pointed to the cardigan.

The girl picked up the tiny garment and held it against her face.

‘La couleur est belle,’
she admitted. It’s a beautiful colour.

Mirabelle glanced around. The shop looked as if it had been fully fitted fifty years ago and nothing had changed since.

‘Vous avez travaillé ici depuis longtemps
?
’

The girl worked out that she’d worked in the shop for three years – it took a moment. Mirabelle nodded. It was no surprise then that the child wasn’t able to help.

‘What’s upstairs?’

‘I live there,’ the girl shrugged.

Mirabelle thanked her and turned to leave.

Walking away, she wondered what this area must have been like ten years or so before. The street wasn’t far from the Marais, which was as close as Paris had ever got to a ghetto for its Jewish community. It was also the hub of the Parisian Resistance, though the Germans didn’t know that – not for sure. They kept their enemies close. Nazi high command based themselves in the ornate splendour of the rue de Rivoli, which ran parallel to the river, or in the houses of French aristocrats around the Palais Royal. It was a different world. The rue du Jour looked quaint today – almost medieval – but a decade ago people must have been terrified on this narrow cobbled street with the occupying forces set on flushing them out one way or another. Mirabelle looked up. Above the shops here there were apartments. Like London, Paris was short of post-war housing and every corner was co-opted for living space.

It started to rain. Drops bounced off the paving stones, and Mirabelle decided to shelter in a café on the other side of the street. It would be a good place to check for information in any case. She hurried inside, settled at a table and ordered
café au lait
and a
croque monsieur
. She fussed over her hat and coat, arranging them to dry a little before looking up and taking in her surroundings. When she did, she saw that the waiter was handsome, but like the girl in the haberdashery, he was far too young and unlikely to have any helpful memories. When he brought her coffee she asked if he knew the name Christine Moreau or Philip Caine, but was not surprised when he shook his head. A man at the next table peered over the top of his
newspaper and looked away. As she took a bite of her sandwich she decided she needed to find someone older to ask.

Outside the window a puddle formed below the kerb. Mirabelle regretted not bringing an umbrella. She finished her coffee and toyed with her food, keeping an eye on the street as people dodged about their business trying to keep out of the rain. A van drew up at a doorway opposite. The driver rolled down the window, flung his cigarette onto the pavement and got out to ring an apartment bell. He sheltered in the doorway until it opened, then ran to retrieve a bale of what looked like printed silk in a fetching shade of red. The roll was only partially wrapped in brown paper; he’d have to hurry to keep the material dry. In the doorway a middle-aged woman accepted the delivery. She was wearing a floral housecoat and had her hair tied up in a cotton scarf. Mirabelle noticed leather cuffs around her wrists and wondered if they were for keeping pins – it seemed there was dressmaking going on in the apartment. In her heyday Mirabelle had had clothes made not far from here, on the rue du Temple. At the next table the man drained his coffee cup and lit a cigarette. He watched idly as the van drove off.

Mirabelle paid her bill. Then, deciding to brave the weather, she pulled her coat round her shoulders and crossed the street to ring the doorbell. There was a hammering sound of steps being taken at a lick before the door opened inwards onto a tiny hall dominated by a rickety staircase. The woman who had just accepted the bale of material stood in the doorway. Yes, Mirabelle thought, she’s in her forties. Perfect. Face to face there was something indefinable about the seamstress. Mirabelle’s eyes fell to the leather cuffs and she thought there might be more than one reason why the woman wore that kind of protection.

‘Christine Moreau?’

The seamstress crossed her arms. ‘What do you want?’ she said in English.

‘I’d like to have something made,’ Mirabelle lied. ‘I need a dress. You are Christine Moreau? A friend recommended you.’

The woman looked Mirabelle up and down. ‘A friend?’

‘Yes. In London.’

The seamstress considered this a moment and then seemed to accept it. ‘Come in,’ she said abruptly, and led the way upstairs and into her workroom.

Inside the studio, Mirabelle looked around. The place was shabby and smelled of dust but it was tidy and warm. A potbellied stove stood in one corner next to shelves that constituted a kitchen area, although it appeared entirely devoid of sustenance except for two bottles of Boodles Dry Gin, which stood side by side next to a bottle of cheap red wine. There was a window to the rear but it was caked in grime. A low single bed was covered in boxes of thread, dress patterns and a pile of tiny labels that said ‘Made in Paris’. Half a dozen bales of cloth were piled opposite. On the table the dressmaker’s tools were laid in a scatter around a silk scarf that she was apparently edging by hand in the grey light from the window.

‘It’s nice.’ Mirabelle motioned towards the scarf.

The woman closed the door behind her, her eyes moving over Mirabelle’s outfit as if she was a general surveying enemy troops. She hovered by the coat stand.

‘Do you have the material?’ she asked. ‘For your dress?’

‘No. I hoped you might have some I could buy. Red silk, perhaps?’

‘A special occasion?’

‘A friend is getting married.’

The woman raised her eyebrows as Mirabelle moved over to the corner of the room and touched the bale of material that had just been delivered. The dressmaker cocked her head to one side.

‘This colour? It is new – fashionable. Red is unusual for a wedding. Will it be in summer?’

‘In spring. The bride is wearing purple. I thought it would
be nice to wear a bright shade as well. Something like this would be perfect.’

‘Purple?’ The woman looked as if she could not possibly have heard correctly. ‘A bride?’

‘She is very unconventional.’

‘These days the world is upside down. Perhaps it is not unconventional – only modern. Had you considered wearing white to the wedding yourself, madame? Would that not really turn the world on its head?’

Mirabelle smiled. ‘I like the colour of this fabric. I thought a pleated skirt?’

The seamstress smacked her lips in disapproval. At first Mirabelle was unsure whether her censure was for the colour or for the notion of pleating. In the end it was for neither. The seamstress took the bale, laid it on the table and rolled it out a few inches.

‘This one isn’t silk. It is rayon. The colour is bright, but for you, for a dress? No,’ she said decisively. ‘It will not be good enough. It is to make scarves, you see. It is cheap.’

‘Well …’ Mirabelle said, ‘we shall have to find real silk, I suppose, and hope for the same colour. Are you Madame Moreau? I don’t know what to call you.’

‘You can call me by my name,’ the woman said flatly. ‘Christine.’

‘Ah, so it is you?’

Christine folded away the fabric. Her eyes were hard. ‘What do you want? You haven’t come here for a dress.’

Mirabelle turned her palms upwards, and stood slightly to the side. People responded to body language without even thinking. It was important to get it absolutely right. She did not want to appear threatening. Jack always said body language made it easy to pretend. You should never trust anyone else’s, but always make sure your own sent the appropriate message.

‘I want to ask some questions,’ Mirabelle admitted. ‘I wonder if there’s someone you might remember?’

Christine’s eyes darted. ‘Who?’

‘Jack Duggan.’

‘Did he send you here?’ The woman sounded almost panicked.

Mirabelle shook her head. ‘Jack’s dead. But you knew him during the war, didn’t you? He came to Paris. He met you here. At Longchamp. At the hospital.’

‘I met him long before that. Many times. It was all his fault.’ Christine sounded furious. ‘Jack Duggan was a bad man.’

Mirabelle noticed her fists were clenched. It took some effort to uncurl them. ‘What do you mean?’ The shock must have showed in her tone, but Christine ignored it.

‘I’m glad to hear he’s dead,’ she spat. ‘Glad of it. The arrangement was that he would not return. Well, now he can’t. A man like that …’

Mirabelle felt fury rising in her chest. ‘How can you say that?’

‘Ah. You are his wife?’ Christine guessed and then, seeing Mirabelle flinch, she changed the assertion. ‘No, you were his lover.’

In England no one would say such a thing in company. Mirabelle drew herself up.

‘Yes, I was,’ she admitted. Saying it felt good. ‘I loved Jack very much.’

‘And you think he loved you?’

‘I know he did.’

‘Jack Duggan was not capable of love. Such a grand cause. Did he promise you the world? Did he deliver it? No!’ The woman read Mirabelle’s eyes. ‘Well,’ she continued triumphantly, ‘that was Jack Duggan. You were betrayed in love, but then he betrayed us all, and we suffered for it.’

Mirabelle’s breath became shallow. ‘Jack died of a heart attack. Years ago,’ she managed to get out. ‘But I met him during the war. I worked for him. He would never have done anything …’ She steadied herself against the table as her voice tailed off. She had lost control of the conversation. She was far too involved now to get the woman to open up. She was betraying herself the more she spoke, but her blood was up
and she didn’t care. Jack had made difficult decisions during wartime. That was his job. He ran spies behind the lines and that meant he had to question everything. He had the kind of mind that could play several games of chess simultaneously and still see the bigger picture. But whatever he did, she told herself he’d have done it in a good cause.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she spluttered.

‘Why did you come here, then?’

‘A man called Matthew Bradley asked me to.’

This infuriated Christine even further. She picked up a pair of scissors and brandished them.

‘Traitor!’ she screamed. ‘How dare you? Get out! Get out of here.’

Mirabelle clutched her handbag to her chest as she backed away. ‘Bradley wanted to find out what happened to his friend. A pilot. A man who didn’t go home after the war. He stayed here, I think, and it’s as if he simply disappeared. I’m beginning to worry about him. So many brave men …’

Christine let out a shriek. She thrust the scissors towards Mirabelle, narrowly missing her face.

‘Go to hell! You’ve come to torture me, but I won’t have it.’

She jabbed the scissors towards Mirabelle again as if she was holding off a dangerous animal. Mirabelle made for the door with the dressmaker in pursuit. A bundle of rayon scarves cascaded off the table as Christine brushed past.

‘You selfish bloody English! You’ve had enough of our good French blood! If you want someone to bleed, this time I swear it’ll be you. Why didn’t they send a man, eh? They haven’t changed. Not one bit.’