"Eliza," I called to her softly as I entered Barry's room and saw her sitting beside him.
She looked up and, seeing that it was I, smiled. "Hello, Robbie. Did you men get it all figured out with those interviews they asked for?"
"I suppose," I answered, entering the room. "I did not like the chap from MI5, though."
I looked down at Barry lying there. He looked so peaceful. And undisturbed.
"Who was it? The Germans?"
"So it appears. They think it's an Waffen-SS operation because it seems to have been quite bungled. And von Kys' widow is now in the SS—it was probably Gisele."
"Bungled?" she yelped. "Two men dead and Barry lying here wounded—?"
"The chap from MI5 believes it was me they were after. I do too. Major Urnazy was a German agent—a double agent really—but there was little reason to kill him whilst we were on the hunt. At least, that MI5 chap didn't indicate any."
"The other dead man?"
"They still don't know who he was."
"And Barry?"
"He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time apparently. The moment before he was hit, he'd been between me and the knoll where the assassins were—"
"Assassins, Robbie? How many of them were there?"
"Two from the footprints in the snow leading away from the knoll." I looked down at Barry again and noticed the beads of perspiration that covered his forehead. "Should he be perspiring so?" I asked.
"You might want to bathe his face with cool water." Elizabeth pointed to the pan sitting on the bedside cabinet nearest us and stood.
"Are you leaving then?" I asked as I wrung out the flannel before folding it and bending over to wipe Barry's face.
"I thought that you might like to be alone with him for a bit," she chuckled.
I looked up at her and saw the merriment dancing in her eyes. I took her seat, refolded the flannel and laid it across Barry's forehead. "I think that we need to chat a bit before you leave."
"Oh?"
"The Comte de Paris has asked me for your hand, Eliza. I think he'll spring the big question on you in the near future."
"He what?" She stared at me. I saw the smile tugging at her lips. Now she was an actress.
"Don't act so shocked, Eliza," I told her, turning my attention to Barry. "You've known all along that the poor man was smitten with you."
"Well, yes, I supposed I did—"
"Oh, and I suppose you aren't smitten with him as well," I continued, knowingly laying it on a bit thick. I permitted myself a slight tug at the edges of my mouth but did not allow the smile to grow. I rather liked this game she and Barry were always working on me, now that the shoe was on the other foot for a change. "At least a little."
"I didn't think that it'd go this far, Robbie," she said softly and I picked on the seriousness that had entered her voice. "I'll admit that he's made me feel good—being with him, I mean. And I'd reckoned that I was in love with him a little. He is very interesting—but marriage?"
I looked up at her then. "Let your heart decide, dear Eliza," I said just as seriously. "He is a good man and he loves you—and you love him as well. Those are very good reasons to get married."
"I'll have to think about it, Robbie," she answered looking away. "Marriage is rather final, you know."
I shrugged. "It is. But love doesn't come along every day, either."
"This war that you think is coming—would Philippe survive it?"
"Will any of us survive it, Eliza? He's in a position to have a better chance than most men will." I pursed my lips. "And I think that you're being more than a bit selfish, if that's one of your criteria for marrying him."
"I'd like to have the opportunity to grow old with him and enjoy our children—"
"Wouldn't any woman—any human being—want that of her partner?" She hung her head. "It shouldn't be something that you use to decide whether you marry Philippe, Cousin. If he makes you happy and you do the same for him, you should enjoy the time that you have—no matter how long or short it is. No one can beat chance or know the future."
"It is selfish," she mumbled shakily. "It's just that I want him with me forever—"
"Accept his proposal then. Enjoy whatever time God gives you."
She laughed and turned back to face me, her face flushed. Even in the darkening room, I could see that her eyes were puffy. "You sound just like the vicar, Robbie—or Aunt Alice."
I smiled. "Go on with you, lass. Go find Philippe and let the poor lad make his request." I studied her for a moment more and knew that I adored her as much as I did Barry. "Get that first proposal under your belt, Eliza."
She stood indecisively for another moment. "I should go see if I can find a decent cup of tea," she said finally. "Would you like some?"
"I think not. Enjoy, Eliza." I looked back at Barry then. "That's what you're supposed to do with life—enjoy it as it comes."
"Thanks, Robbie," she whispered and was gone.
I remained seated on Barry's bed, watching him and letting my mind wander. I took his hand in mine and held it, trying in some way beyond the normal senses to impress on him my love.
My mind wandered.
It had been Urnazy who'd insisted on the stag hunt. He'd used Philippe to plan it, of course—at least, the part that I'd known about. He and a still unidentified confederate had plotted the rest of the scheme—my elimination at the hands of Gisele von Kys. The man from MI5 had suggested that she was involved—even as he was saying nothing.
So, Janus' wife had thought to pay me back for my shooting her in the stables of Schloß Kys.
As she was involved, it was obvious why Barry had been shot—if, somehow, she had found out about us. Of course, she had. She'd had Urnazy as an informant—and both Barry and I had picked up on his interest in us last night.
It made sense in an insane sort of way for her to try to kill Barry. It would have been a way to hurt me before I was done in myself. As she had started to do to Janus in that damned stable. As she had done to Dagold, for that matter.
If I was right, I had to expect another attempt on me before Reynaud arrived at the weekend.
Barry could well be killed this time, too. And Elizabeth.
But why wasn't Gisele trying to get Willi back? And possibly finish what she'd started with young Dagold back at Schloß Kys?
I dropped Barry's hand and stood.
I began to pace. I couldn't wait until the Justice Minister of France finished his verbal duels and political games necessary to arrive at compromise with the other parties in the Government coalition.
I had promised Churchill that I would brief Reynaud and de Gaulle. The voice of armour in the French army had elected not to hear my briefing, relegating me to Philippe. That lessened the value of my giving information by at least half.
Why shouldn't I merely brief Philippe and let him get the information to his people?
I would be able to get Barry to a doctor who could at least speak English. He'd be in a top drawer hospital as he recovered. I would also have Elizabeth and myself out of France where Gisele was presumably acting like some American cowboy with unlimited guns and ammunition.
I wondered if Philippe had popped the question to Elizabeth yet. If he hadn't, it would probably be bad form merely to announce that I was going to brief him and, then, pack up my party and have young Pettigrew drive us back to Paris.
* * *
The narrow path up to the Hall from the cottages had been cleared since the last storm. But there were small patches of ice.
Crooksall's foot landed on one and, before he had realised that he was on ice, he'd put his weight on it. Both Clive and Müller watched him try to keep his footing before both legs shot out from under him.
Crooksall went down silently. Clive laughed.
"Schweigen, Schweinhund!" Müller hissed at the boy and moved carefully to pull Crooksall to his feet. "This rubbish has to remain silent, comrade," he told the Englishman as he helped him up. "Until we reach the manor—then, I'll silence him permanently."
"Clive, you've got to stay quiet, lad," Crooksall said quietly as he brushed snow off his coat and trousers. "We get caught and it's the dickens for all of us. You as well as us."
"You were funny," he answered. "Like one of them puppets at the fair, you were." The boy managed to get control of himself, stifling the last of his chuckles.
They trudged silently along the path after that—Clive in the lead with Crooksall between him and Müller.
After they'd walked what the Hauptscharführer was sure was a kilometre, he began to wonder if, perhaps, this English farm boy was as slow witted as he'd initially thought. Instead of being greedy as well as dense, he could well have alerted the nobleman to what the smith had paid him to do. He could now be leading them into a trap. And that ox he'd left back at the cottage to finish off the other dunce and his bumbling would be the cause of it.
He speeded up to catch the undertaker. "How much further?" he whispered to Crooksall.
Clive stopped when he heard the whispering and looked around at the two men behind.
"How much further?" Crooksall asked softly in English.
"See them woods jutting out there ahead of us?" Clive asked, pointing to the even darker area of the shadows in front of them. "Just after them, we'll come out amongst the outhouses and all. It's only a hop, skip, and jump from there to the kitchen—maybe a couple of furlongs as the crow flies."
Crooksall translated and Müller, squinting, tried to see into the shadows. "Why would he lead us to the kitchen? There's more danger of being found out there than any other part of the manor, isn't there? Don't servants do the aristocracy's work here in this country?"
Crooksall translated the essence of the Hauptscharführer's questions without including the man's suspicion.
Clive grinned cheekily at both men. "They leave the kitchen unlocked so eggs and stuff can be brought in and the fire started before the cook is up. Everything else is locked." His grin widened. "Maybe they expect us to come after them with pitchforks or somesuch—and they don't think we're smart enough to know that they're leaving the kitchen as a way in."
Müller nodded to himself as Crooksall translated. Clive turned and they began to move along the path again.
English nobles closed up their manors at night. Müller could understand their reasoning, but it would seem that English peasants were more revolutionary than German peasants were. At least, the aristocracy who ruled them thought that they were.
He smiled. Locked doors would not protect these relics of feudal times—not after the Führer had liberated all of the Volk and brought them under the same banner. Then, greater Germany would finally rid itself of the useless relic that the aristocracy was. No door would be able to withstand the force of history.
The quarter moon had broken through the clouds when they'd made their way through the woods. Crooksall saw the outbuildings and turned to Müller. He smiled as he pointed to them.
Like some child, the Hauptscharführer thought. Crooksall was as mindless as the farm boy. And nearly as useless. He wished that he could handle the undertaker the way he intended to do the boy. Unfortunately, the undertaker held his key to escape—and he had to carry the Obersturmbannführerin's son back to Germany.
They halted in the shadows of the outbuilding closest to the kitchen and Müller surveyed the manor carefully. The entire upper storey was dark, but he could see a faint light in the west wing on the first floor and another on the ground floor west of the kitchen.
"They had electric put in three years ago," Clive volunteered, "just before the old Lord died. That and the telephone."
"Where is everybody?" Müller grunted.
"Miss Murray and Cook, they're on the top floor," Clive told them after Crooksall had translated. "Miss Alice now—she keeps an apartment on the ground floor over there," he pointed to the west wing where Müller had seen the light. "Her and Miss Elizabeth both do." He leered.
Müller could see the glint of his eyes. "Who is this Elizabeth?"
"She's His Lordship's young cousin and quite an eyeful, I must say."
The Hauptscharführer reckoned that the boy had watched the young aristocrat through her windows. That made Clive both stupid and a leering pervert. "And the others?" he demanded, a sharper edge to his voice. Crooksall translated.
"All the sleeping quarters are on the first floor there."
"The child too?" Crooksall translated and the farm boy nodded. "And the escaped criminal as well?" Again, Clive nodded.
"Which rooms are theirs?"
Clive looked back to the woods beyond the outbuildings.
"Which rooms?" Müller growled.
Clive turned back to the other men before Crooksall could translate. He didn't look at them but intently looked at the dark shadow at their feet. "I've only been inside the Hall once. And that time only to his Lordship's study."
"So, he doesn't know then," Müller groaned. He instantly imagined them searching from room to room for the dead Graf's son and lover. He could only hope that there was only the old woman, the Graf's Schwul, and the child inside the house. He was beginning to revise downward the chances of his getting the brat out of England.
He reached into the left pocket of his greatcoat to find his dagger and looked at the farm boy gazing at the back of the manor. The dagger was the standard, ornamental issue that was part of the dress uniform of the Waffen-SS—with the German eagle holding the swastika enclosed in a circle of laurel leaves. Horst Müller had found that the steel was good however, and had the blade sharpened.
"Find out from him where the unlocked door is, comrade," he told Crooksall as he began to edge towards Clive. "That and anything unusual he might remember. But hurry! We must be back to this Coventry of yours and on the road to the coast as close to midnight as possible."
Clive and Crooksall spoke together for several minutes while the Hauptscharführer inched closer to the farm boy. There were but inches separating them when he stopped moving and reached into his greatcoat for the dagger.
"Ask him if there is any reason that these aristocrats might guess that there is a threat to them," he told Crooksall, slipping the dagger out of his pocket so that it was pressed against the greatcoat's sleeve unseen.
Watching the farm boy shake his head and answer the question, the Hauptscharführer worked the blade of his dagger around so that it jutted out from his hand, ready for a quick jab to the boy's back.
Clive turned to peer up towards the Hall. Müller's right hand clamped over his mouth, pulling the boy back towards him while his left hand thrust the dagger into his back. The Hauptscharführer stabbed him three more times before he felt the body go limp in his arms. He held him close to himself for another minute to make sure that he was dead.
Müller let the body go and watched it collapse. He reached over and cleaned his dagger on the boy's jacket. "Let's get inside," he told Crooksall. "Just stay within the shadows, like we taught you at camp in the Fatherland."
* * *
John Pettigrew drove into the village. It hadn't taken the majordomo but minutes to find car keys for him. He hadn't even had to explain why he wanted them. That had surprised him; he had expected to be grilled about why he wanted to go out alone. After all, there'd been two men killed and one wounded only hours earlier.
He snorted. The French were always so damned efficient, even when they were being insanely inefficient. He only hoped that it wouldn't be as easy to get inside the château as it was to leave it.
It was Elizabeth who occupied his thoughts as he drove towards Deauville. She was a lovely thing—far more interesting than the girls his mother had had around for him to look over. Lord Petersholme's cousin was one he'd enjoy a bout with in the kip, but it'd have to be on the quiet. And take some planning. It was never just a quick roll in the hay when the girl was one of his sort.
He drove past the casino before parking. Less than a block ahead of him stood the Normandie and the Germans he reckoned to be there. According to the majordomo at the château, there was only one other hotel in the village—one that didn't cater to gentlefolk. It was also in a shabbier part of Deauville.
Germans were ostentatious in Pettigrew's experience, at least the Nazis were—those were men who thought themselves the equals of their betters. It would be logical not to call attention to themselves, to take rooms at a hotel that was simple and did not call attention to itself. It's what he would have done if this had somehow been his mission. The less exposure, the better.
Only, the few Germans he'd had occasion to meet didn't seem to think like that. They wanted people to be aware of them, of their presence. To Pettigrew's mind, that meant that the Jerry who'd tried to kill Petersholme and very nearly succeeded in doing so with the American would not try to hide himself.
He continued to sit in the motorcar and studied the front of the hotel. He'd left the château enthused at doing something that would square him with Petersholme and have his dossier show him to be ingenious. He'd only thought far enough along that he found Jerry, but now he realised that wasn't even half of it. What happened if he did find one or more Germans encamped in Deauville?
He frowned as he accepted that, in itself, meant nothing. Germans were allowed to move about in France, just as they were in England. He had to make sure that the Germans he found were connected to the assassination attempt that morning. He had to have evidence.
"Bloody hell!" he groaned aloud to himself. "I'm as dense as dear old pater ever was," he mumbled to himself, continuing his train of thought. "I need a plan of action."
If he did find Germans at either hotel, he told himself, it wouldn't mean anything—not by itself, it wouldn't. He could envision himself bursting in and proudly reporting what he'd found to Brigadier Dunham agent at the château. The man would love that—le jeune homme Anglais proving what he probably already knew. Pettigrew felt his ears burn as he imagined the man laugh at him.
No, he needed more than just confirmation that there were Germans staying in Deauville. French internal security had to have that information already. He needed something that was more concrete than that. He needed something that would place any Germans he found inside the plot to kill Petersholme.
He grinned. He'd studied German at Marlborough, just as he had French and Latin. He reckoned that he could read anything he found in a room occupied by a German. He'd know all right if he had intelligence that the chap from MI5 would have to act on.
His grin broadened as he thought of the kiss that Elizabeth Myers would give him once she knew how thoroughly bright he'd been in finding her cousin's attempted murderers. He could even smell her perfume. Of course, she would permit him to show her London after this was over. And he'd turn on all the charm his dear old mum was always saying that he had in order to make sure she fell into his bed.
Pettigrew pulled himself back from the direction his thoughts were taking. It didn't matter if Elizabeth became interested in him or not. He was, after all, an officer in His Majesty's Navy. Putting a stop to a plan to kill any man on His Majesty's business was his duty. Finding evidence of such a plan and being able to identify the killer would certainly gain the attention of both Churchill and the First Lord of the Admiralty.
So, how did he get into a Jerry's room, he asked himself.
Firstly, he'd have to learn if there was a Jerry at the hotel. The best way to do that, he reckoned, was simply to ask at the desk. Desk clerks were forthcoming if they were palming money in all those films he'd seen in the cinema; Pettigrew had no reason to believe they were any different in reality.
He pulled his wallet from the American's trousers and felt cloth gather up against his genitals in a strange way. He paused and curiously ground his bottom against the car seat. "Blast!" he grumbled. "The whole bloody cut of these pants is wrong."
He allowed himself a moment to wonder how the Yanks could endure the way the seam cut into a man's wedding tackle. American underpants weren't cut sensibly at all. He'd be walking queerly inside a day if he had to wear these things all the time. Thank God for sane English tailoring.
Pettigrew remembered his wallet then and opened it, turning so that he had some light to see by. He had twenty-five Francs left. He wished he had more. But it would have to do. He figured he could offer no more than five Francs to the desk clerk to learn if the hotel had Germans. Not if he was then to have enough to buy information as to whether any German he found was in his rooms or not.
He had ten pounds in his wallet. He quickly calculated that was worth more than fifty Francs at the official exchange rate. It should be enough for what he wanted.
He pulled the Francs from his wallet and shoved them into his front pocket. Placing his wallet in his greatcoat, he stepped out of the car and started towards the Normandie.
He strolled in a leisurely way up to the front desk, just as he imagined Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes would do on a similar case.
He smiled kindly at the balding man behind the desk and asked in French: "Do you have any Germans registered? I'm looking for a friend who supposedly was coming to Deauville."
The clerk opened a ledger and nodded. "Oui, Monsieur. Two. A Gräfin von Kys and her aide."
"Gräfin?" John Pettigrew asked, picking through his memory for translations of German titles.
The clerk nodded dourly. "Countess for us in the civilised world, Monsieur," he said softly in a Breton dialect.
"Why would a countess be here at Christmastime?" Pettigrew wondered aloud.
"To play the games at the casino, she said."
Even through the dialect, the sub-lieutenant made out the man's disbelief. "And she has yet to visit the casino?" he asked.
"Is she the friend you seek, Monsieur?"
"Definitely not. The chap I'm looking for attended university with me—in England."
"Mais oui! This Boche is a cow—no! A hog! She eats like one and wallows in her rooms as if it were a sty."
Pettigrew pulled a five Franc note from his pocket and placed it near the clerk's hand. It seemed to disappear into thin air. "Is she in now?" he asked.
The clerk shrugged. "I have not seen her go out this evening and it is most difficult to miss her."
"Her aide? What about him?"
"He's called Stefan Schmidt. I saw him leave almost twenty minutes ago."
"Stefan Schmidt?" Pettigrew pulled another five Franc note from his pocket and, watching more carefully, was still unable to see the clerk pick it up. It still disappeared before his eyes. "I wonder if this is the same Stefan Schmidt I knew at university?" he mumbled. "What room is he in?" he asked more forcibly.
Copyright © 2006-2025 David MacMillan
First posted 2006
Updated 2 July 2025