Original Sin (56 page)

' uie. I , � on this garage floor h%e, not like this, haul-, - - won t let him � ,o ,,ct DOU . � pretend to be dead, if he %ummoned up her W like an arurnal

' 11. he

can twist round and tnt%l, half dead If I cab .. ought: I must get to my feet. the strap I owe his uard � ' power lhhnff only I can

She summoned waiting for just this, (he strength for this lagt rnqve was jerked taut agai,..qe Nas ready. As soon - � ott he had Queen

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the last gurglings sil. the body's dreadful �orlto..

listened for the absettCd. Then he let o of -- 0as were stilleo, :1 o tl'X Srr � pocket, stretched ux breath. He got uv and � ,-. P and, bending, .... tar-,mg th ' Now, with the gara.n.i replaced it in the ocket e bulb from.. his tmlock the car and ti'- lit, he could see to tak'-e the low ce'ding. hands work, -- 'th-., , - r geyg from her v0cket �wnr 1. ,=,,., ,o me strap ro4cl the -- engine. Her body las,' ahd without fumblin, L- -' Wheel. His gloved

door of the car. kn,, Pawled as if she ha,,e5. suy he tttrned on the - -%r -t/a herse en

would finish her onR that either the noose -- . If from the op 't, or ne tta es footsteps coming dc. And it was at that r, -- . lexhaust ham

%wn the passage toward% . at he heard t,, gara�e door.

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It was 6.27. In Frances Peverell's flat the phone rang. As soon as James spoke her name she knew that something was wrong. She said at once: 'James, what is it?' 'Rupert Farlow is dead. He died in hospital an hour ago.' 'Oh James, I'm so terribly sorry. Were you with him?' 'No. Ray was. He only wanted Ray. It's so strange, Frances. When he was living here the house was almost intolerable. Sometimes I dreaded coming home to the mess, the smells, and the disruption. But now he's dead I want it to look as it did then. I hate it. It's prissy, affected, boringly conventional, just a show house for someone who's dead at heart. I want to smash it.' She said: 'Would it help if I came over?' 'Would you, Frances?' She heard the note of relief in his voice with joy. You're sure it won't be any trouble?' 'Of course it won't be a trouble. I'll come at once. It's not half-past six yet, Claudia may still be here. If she is I'll get her to drop me at the Bank and take the Central Line. That'll be the quickest. If she has left, I'll call a cab.' She put down the receiver. She was sorry about Rupert but she had only met him once, years before, when he had come to Innocent House. And surely for him this long-expected death, awaited in such uncomplaining agony, must have come as a release. But James had called for her, needed her, wanted her to be with him. She was possessed with joy. Grabbing her jacket and scarf from the hall peg, she almost flung herself down the stairs and ran into Innocent Lane. But the door to Innocent House was locked and there was no light shining through the window of the reception room. Claudia had left. She ran into Innocent Walk thinking that she might still catch her getting out the car, but could see that the garage door was closed. She was too late. She decided to call for a cab from the wall telephone in the passage at number o. That would be quicker than going back to her own flat. It was as she came up to the garage doors that she heard

agony of pain and terror into brief unconsciousness. She thrashed feebly on its end like a hooked and dying fish, her feet scrabbling ineffectively for a hold on the rough concrete.

And then she heard his voice. 'Lie still, Claudia. Lie still and listen. Nothing will happen while you lie still.'

She ceased her struggles and at once the dreadful throttling eased. His voice was speaking quietly, persuasively. She heard what he said and her numbed brain at last understood. He was telling her that she had to die, and why.

She wanted to shout out that it was a terrible mistake, that it wasn't true, but her voice was throttled and she knew that only by lying totally motionless could she stay alive. He was explaining now that it would look like suicide. The strap would be tied to the fixed wheel of the car, the engine would be left running. She would be dead by then but it was necessary to him that the garage should be full of a fatal gas. He explained this to her patiently, almost kindly, as if it were important to him that she should understand. He told her that she had no alibi for either of the murders now. The police would think she had killed herself from fear of arrest or remorse.

And now he had finished. She thought: I won't die. I won't let him kill me. I won't die, not here, not like this, hauled about like an animal on this garage floor. She summoned up her will. She thought: I must pretend to be dead, fainted, half dead. If I can get him off his guard I can twist round and seize the strap. I can overpower him if only I can get to my feet.

She summoned up her strength for this last move. But he had been waiting for just this, he was ready. As soon as she moved, the noose was jerked taut again and this time it did not slacken.

He waited until at last the body's dreadful contortions were stilled, the last gurglings silenced. Then he let go of the strap and, bending, listened for the absent breath. He got up and, taking the bulb from his pocket, stretched up and replaced it in the socket in the low ceiling. Now, with the garage lit, he could see to take the keys from her pocket unlock the car and tie the end of the strap round the wheel. His gloved hands worked swiftly and without fumbling. Lastly he turned on the engine. Her body lay sprawled as if she had flung herself from the open door of the car, knowing that either the noose or the fatal exhaust fumes would finish her off. And it was at that moment that he heard the footsteps coming down the passage towards the garage door.

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60

It was 6.27. In Frances Peverell's flat the phone rang. As soon as James spoke her name she knew that something was wrong. She said at once: 'James, what is it?' 'Rupert Farlow is dead. He died in hospital an hour ago.' 'Oh James, I'm so terribly sorry. Were you with him?' 'No. Ray was. He only wanted Ray. It's so strange, Frances. When he was living here the house was almost intolerable. Sometimes I dreaded coming home to the mess, the smells, and the disruption. But now he's dead I want it to look as it did then. I hate it. It's prissy, affected, boringly conventional just a show house for someone who's dead at heart. I want to smash it.' She said: 'Would it help if I came over?' 'Would you, Frances?' She heard the note of relief in his voice with joy. 'You're sure it won't be any trouble?' 'Of course it won't be a trouble. I'll come at once. It's not half-past six yet, Claudia may still be here. If she is I'll get her to drop me at the Bank and take the Central Line. That'll be the quickest. If she has left, I'll call a cab.' She put down the receiver. She was sorry about Rupert but she had only met him once, years before, when he had come to Innocent House. And surely for him this long-expected death, awaited in such uncomplaining agony, must have come as a release. But James had called for her, needed her, wanted her to be with him. She was possessed with joy. Grabbing her jacket and scarf from the hall peg, she almost flung herself down the stairs and ran into Innocent Lane. But the door to Innocent House was locked and there was no light shining through the window of the reception room. Claudia had left. She ran into Innocent Walk thinking that she might still catch her getting out the car, but could see that the garage door was closed. She was too late. She decided to call for a cab from the wall telephone in the passage at number xo. That would be quicker than going back to her own flat. It was as she came up to the garage doors that she heard

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unmistakably the sound of a running engine. This surprised and disconcerted her. Claudia's Porsche, her beloved 9, was too old to have a catalytic converter. Surely she realized that it was unsafe to run her engine in a closed garage? It was unlike Claudia to be careless.

The door to number so was locked. That wasn't surprising; Claudia always came into the garage this way and locked the door behind her. But it was strange to find the light still on in the passage and the side door to the garage ajar. Calling Claudia's name, she dashed to it and threw it open.

The light was on, a harsh, cruel, shadowless light. She stood transfixed, every nerve and muscle paralysed by a second of instantaneous revelation and horror. He was kneeling by the body, but now he got to his feet and came quietly across to her blocking the door. She looked into his eyes. They were the same eyes, wise, a little

tired, eyes that had seen too much and for far too long.

She whispered: 'Oh no! Gabriel, not you. Oh no.'

She didn't scream. She was as incapable of screaming as she was of movement. When he spoke it was in the same gentle remembered voice.

'I'm sorry, Frances. You do see, don't you, that I can't possibly let you go?'

And then she swayed and felt herself falling into the merciful dark.

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In the little archives room Daniel looked at his watch. Six o'clock. He had been here for two hours. But the time hadn't been wasted. At least he had found something. The two hours of searching had been rewarded. It might not be relevant to the investigation, but it had some interest. When he showed the confession to the team, AD might feel that his hunch had been vindicated, even if less fruitfully than he had hoped, and call off the search. There was no reason why he shouldn't stop now. But success had revived his interest and he was nearly at the end of a row. He might as well take down and examine the last thirty or so files along the top shelf. He preferred a job to have a defined and tidy ending, and it was still early. If he left he would feel obliged to go back to Wapping. He didn't feel at the moment that he wanted to confront either Kate's understanding or her pity. He moved the stepladder further along the row. The file, bulky but not abnormally so, was lodged tightly between two others and as he pulled at them it slipped from the shelf. A few papers, detached, fell over his head like heavy leaves. He carefully dismounted and gathered them up. The rest of the papers were tagged together, presumably in date order. Two things struck him. The file cover was of heavy manila and obviously very old, while some of the papers looked fresh and clean enough to have been filed within the last five years. The file was unnamed, but among the early papers he was scrabbling together the word 'Jew' caught his eye time and time again. He took it with him to the table in the little archives room. The papers were not numbered and he could only assume that they were in the correct order, but one, undated, caught his eye. It was a proposal for a novel, inexpertly typed and unsigned. It was headed Submission to the Partners of the Peverell Press. He read:

The background and the universal and unifying theme of this novel, provisionally to be called Original Sin, is the cooperation

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of the Vichy regime in France with the deportation of Jews from France between 2940 and 2944. During these four years nearly 76,000 Jews were deported, the great majority to die in concentration camps in Poland and Germany. The book will tell the story of one family divided by war in which a young Jewish mother and her four-year-old twins are trapped in France by the invasion, are hidden by friends and are provided with false papers, but are subsequently betrayed to be deported and murdered in Auschwitz. The novel will explore the effect of this betrayal - one small family among thousands of the victims - on the woman's husband, on the betrayed and on the betrayers.

Working through the papers he could see no response to this proposal and no communication from the Peverell Press. The file contained what were obviously working and research papers. The novel had been well researched, extraordinarily well researched for a proposed work of fiction. The writer had either visited or written to a remarkable variety of international and national organizations over the years. The Archives Nationales in Paris and Toulouse, the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine in Paris, Harvard Univer-sity, the Public Record Office and the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London and the West German Federal Archives in Koblenz. There were extracts, too, taken from the journals of the Resistance movement, l'Humanit, Tdmoignage Chrtien and Le Franc-Tireur, and minutes from prefects in the unoccupied zone. He let them pass in front of his eyes, letters, reports, scraps of official documents, copies of minutes, eyewitness accounts. The record was both broad-based and in places peculiarly precise; the number of deportees, the times of the trains, the part played by the policy of Pierre Laval, even changes in the German power hierarchy in France during the spring and summer of 942. It was quickly apparent that the researcher had taken care to ensure that nowhere should his name appear. Letters from him had his signature and address cut off or blacked out, letters to him had the name and address of the sender but all other identifying marks had been obliterated. There was no evidence that any of this particular research had been used, that the book had even been started, let alone finished.

It increasingly became apparent that the researcher was particu-larly interested in one region and one year. The novel if that was

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what it was, was becoming more focused. It was as if a cluster of searchlights had played over a wide terrain highlighting an incident, an interesting configuration, a single figure, a moving train, but had now co-ordinated their beams to illumine a single year: 942. It was a year in which the Germans had demanded a great increase in deportations from the unoccupied zone. The Jews, after being rounded up, had been taken either to the Vel d'Hiv or to Drancy, a huge apartment complex in a suburb north-east of Paris. It was this camp which served as the staging post to Auschwitz. There were three eyewitness reports in the file: one was from a French nurse who had worked with a paediatrician in Drancy for fourteen months until she could no longer stand the accumulated misery, and two from survivors, apparently in reply to a specific inquiry from the researcher. One woman wrote:

I was rounded up on 6 August 942 by the Gardes Mobiles. I was reassured because they were French and were very correct at the time I was arrested. I did not know then what would happen to me but I remember that I did not feel that it would be too bad. I was told what possessions I could take with me and medically examined before I was in transit. I was sent to Drancy and it was there I met the young mother with the twins. Her name was Sophie. I cannot recall the names of the children. She had been first in Vel d'Hiv but was later transferred to Drancy. I remember her and the children well although we did not speak very often. She told me little about herself, except that she had been living under a false name near Aubire. All her concern was for her children. At the time we were in the same hut with fifty other inmates. We lived in great squalor There was a shortage of beds and straw for mattresses, the only food was cabbage soup and we were suffering from dysentery. Many people died in Drancy, I think over 400 in the first ten months. I can remember the wails of the children and the groans of the dying. For me Drancy was as bad as Auschwitz. I went merely from one room in hell to another