CLAUDINE WAS LOOKING at her son. His child’s body was dwarfed by the powerful arm holding him from shoulder to groin, and his face was frighteningly pale, making his eyes seem wider and blacker than ever. The long lashes were beaded with tears and his chin wobbled with the effort of holding them back. His hair needed cutting, she thought, noticing the way his curls fell haphazardly over his forehead, and really she should wipe his nose. Then a fat tear dropped onto his cheek, and it was as though a terrible fist of fear had smashed through the irrelevance of her thoughts, forcing her once again to confront the horrifying reality of what was happening to them. She closed her eyes, unable to bear the gun pointing at his delicate little face a moment longer.
She was sitting on a cold, dusty floor, propped against two bales of hay, her face dazzled by the brilliant streams of sunlight coming through the arch at the front of the barn. She was within reaching distance of Louis, but she dared not hold her arms out to him again. The last time she’d done it he had been hit across the face.
Panic swelled, then subsided, then swelled again in her chest. She shifted her feet in the scattered strands of hay, and tightened the clench of her hands, willing herself to keep calm. She could feel Armand watching her, but she couldn’t bring herself to look back. The lying, the deceit, the treachery, the murders, the mutilations were all there, like phantoms dancing a macabre, malefic dance in the space between them. She could still hardly believe it. When she had first come into the barn with Louis and seen him, it was a moment of such incredulous horror that she almost fainted. The Germans had deceived them, and her instincts had been right all the time. It was Armand. Halunke was Armand.
Finally she forced her eyes to meet his. He was crammed up against a corner of the barn, facing the arch. His face was unshaven, his eyes bloodshot and ringed with shadow. He stared back, and after a while a curl of malicious amusement started to hover about his lips. Her skin prickled. It was a stranger looking out of a familiar face.
‘Why?’ she breathed at last. ‘Just tell me why?’
He laughed, an arid, mirthless sound, and his eyes glittered as he swept them over her body, then back to her face. ‘You think it’s because of you, don’t you?’ he sneered. ‘You think it’s because I still want you.’
‘No. No, I don’t, but …’
‘The arrogance!’ he spat, covering her words with his own. ‘The conceit! You thought you could use me, didn’t you, thought you could satiate the lust for your pig of a husband on me – the poor, peasant vigneron. The man who had lost his wife and son, who needed someone to love, someone to heal his wounds – I was easy prey for a woman like you, that’s what you thought, didn’t you? He didn’t love you, and you thought to make him jealous by turning to me. But it didn’t work, did it? He didn’t care, and you, you could never get him out of your mind.’
He laughed, nastily. ‘But it’s not you, Claudine, you aren’t the reason I’m making him suffer. You and your son here are merely the instruments with which I can inflict the greatest torture of all. What a pity for your sake that he fell in love with you in the end, but what a Godsend for me! He tried not to, though, didn’t he? He tried everything in his power not to succumb, but finally even he couldn’t resist you. Who would have thought it? That François the Invincible could actually fall prey to his own heart. But then, how could any of us resist you – those tempting eyes, that succulent mouth, and that exquisitely hungry body? Hah! what a prize that was, knowing that I, Halunke, the man François feared above all others, was all the time copulating with his wife – and with his permission! He even asked me to protect you, how I laughed at that. He never suspected me once. But you did, didn’t you? In the end. You worked it out. But François, he believed Helber when Helber told him that Lucien was Halunke. Did he ever tell you the price he paid for that information?’
Again, Armand snorted with laughter. ‘Such a pity that after you two are dead I am forced to kill François too. I wanted him to see his brother hang for a murder he didn’t commit. A murder I set him up for. But an even greater pity is that he won’t know what it is to live without you, to know what it is to suffer the way he’s made me suffer. That he won’t …’
Suddenly, Armand’s eyes shot to the arch. It was only the breeze rustling a piece of litter across the wasteland outside, but it had broken his concentration, and Claudine seized her chance to speak, to bring him back to the present.
‘Armand, please,’ she begged. ‘Louis – he’s just a child. Please let him go.’
‘Papa,’ Louis sobbed. ‘I want my Papa.’
Claudine gasped as Armand slapped him across the face – but as she sprang towards them Armand jammed the gun into Louis’ neck.
‘All the unarmed combat in the world won’t save you now,’ he snarled, kicking her back against the bales, ‘so don’t even try it.’
Claudine looked helplessly at her son as tears rolled down his cheeks and little sobs choked from his throat. She had never in all her life felt so desperate or so impotent. ‘papa will come, chéri,’ she said, trying to force some comfort through the anguish in her voice. ‘He will be here soon.’
‘Yes, he will be here,’ Armand jeered. ‘Von Liebermann will send him. This is a set-up, Madame la Comtesse – or didn’t you realize that?’
‘Armand, tell me what he’s done,’ Claudine pleaded. ‘Tell me, and perhaps we can …’ She stopped as his stranger’s eyes shot back to hers.
‘Nothing,’ he snarled. ‘He’s done nothing. It’s what I’ve done because of him.’ The light suddenly dimmed in his eyes and he looked down at Louis, fixing on the point where the gun met his jaw.
Claudine watched him, seeing his concentration slip again as he became engulfed in his thoughts. She started to edge towards him, sliding her feet under her, trying to position herself to dive straight for the gun. But then he turned back, and though his eyes were unfocused she didn’t dare to make another move. ‘What did you do?’ she asked, sinking hopelessly back against the hay.
When at last he spoke, his voice trembled. It was as though each word he uttered came from the core of a wound so deep, a pain so profound, that she couldn’t begin to comprehend it. ‘I killed my son,’ he said. ‘I murdered my own son.’
For a long time she simply looked at him, and he stared back, watching the shock register on her face, until finally his own stiffened with contempt. She whispered, ‘But I thought …’
‘I know what you thought,’ he snapped, ‘It was what everyone thought. He was a weak child, his health gave out, that’s what everyone thought. But he died because I put a pillow over his face and smothered him.’
Claudine squeezed her eyes tight shut. ‘Why?’ she gasped, forcing herself to think rationally. ‘You must have had a reason.’
‘Oh yes, I had a reason. I did it because he wasn’t my son at all. He was your husband’s son. The son of François de Lorvoire.’
Outside, birds were chattering in the trees, the river bubbled and gushed, and in the distance, the town hall clock was chiming the midday hour. Claudine’s head had started to throb. She looked around for something to hold onto, but the dizziness was coming over her in such paralysing waves that she was afraid to move.
Seeing her reaction, Armand gave a dry, caustic laugh. ‘That’s what I thought,’ he sneered, ‘because that’s what she told me. But he wasn’t. He was my son. I was his father, but I only found that out when it was too late.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she cried. ‘What are you talking about?’ Oh, François! If only he would come and deliver her from this nightmare! Then Armand started to speak again, and she bit her lips to stop herself screaming as his voice washed over her in gentle, familiar waves. It was a voice as sweet as honey, a voice she knew and had once loved.
‘I’ll go back to the day it all really began,’ he said, ‘to the day Hortense de Bourchain died.’
Claudine lifted her head and looked into his face. He was gazing absently at the floor, a strange smile on his lips and a frown creasing his forehead. ‘Hortense?’ she breathed, now more confused than ever.
He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘He killed her because she loved him, but you know that, don’t you? You know how she wanted to die rather than live without him – so he put her out of her misery.’ Suddenly his head snapped up and the savagery had returned to his eyes. ‘Tell me, Claudine, what is it about him? What is it that makes women half-demented with love for him? I want to know why you’ve loved him ever since you came to Lorvoire. We both know how he treated you, the contempt, the abuse you suffered in those early days. Yet you loved him. Oh, you tried not to, you even managed to convince yourself you detested him, but I knew. I always knew. Even when we were making love, I knew you were thinking of him, wishing I was him. So tell me, Claudine, how is it that François de Lorvoire can command love as though he were God Almighty Himself?’
‘He can’t,’ Claudine answered, echoing his anger.
‘He can create love, he can manipulate it and destroy it. I know, because I’ve seen him do it. He destroyed my wife’s love for me and made her love him. He possessed her. Like a demon, he consumed her from within and turned her into a monster. Until she met him she was content, fulfilled, happy. She loved life, she loved me. Then she met him, and everything changed. She started to despise me because I wasn’t strong like him, I wasn’t brilliant like him, not an aristocrat like him. She ridiculed me because I cared about her and loved her when all she wanted was him. She adored him, there was nothing she wouldn’t do for him. Can you explain that to me, Claudine? Can you explain how a woman can turn her life inside out, yearning for a man who hardly knows she exists?’
Claudine looked down at Louis’ pale, frightened face. ‘I didn’t know Jacqueline,’ she answered. ‘So no, I can’t explain it.’
‘She said I was jealous of him,’ Armand went on. ‘She taunted me day and night with it, comparing me with him. She drove me half out of my mind. But I loved her, I couldn’t stop loving her. And I began to hate him. I hated him more and more, until I wanted to kill him. Then she became pregnant and I thought then that maybe things would change, that at last she would stop torturing herself with wanting him. But if anything it became worse. She was obsessed with him. On any pretext she would go to the château, just to look at him. Then she would come back and tell me how she had felt when she’d seen him, what she had wanted to do to him. She fantasized about him all the time.
‘Then Hortense started to come to Lorvoire. At first Jacqueline was beside herself with jealousy. It was all I could do to restrain her from going to the Château and causing a scene. Then she locked herself in the bedroom and refused to come out. She stayed there for almost a week, until one morning she came downstairs, put her arms round me and cried as though her heart would break. She begged me to forgive her and swore she would never try to see François again. Of course I forgave her, and I thanked God that she was at last back to her normal self. She was calmer, easier to live with, and she never went to the château at all.
‘It was some time before I realized she had stopped eating. I thought, in my ignorance, that the pregnancy was making her weak. In the end she became so ill that I was afraid she would die, or lose the baby, or … I don’t know what I thought. I never knew in those days. All I knew was that my life had become a nightmare, and that François de Lorvoire was the cause.
‘Then one night Jacqueline and I had a terrible fight. It was about François, of course, though it was the first time his name had been mentioned for weeks. I could see she was no closer to getting over him than she’d ever been. We both said some terrible things that night, things I shall never forget. Finally she worked me up to such a pitch that I had to leave the house. I went to the wine caves to escape. That was how I came to see what happened between François and Hortense. Another woman driven half out of her mind for wanting François de Lorvoire. What is it about him?’ he groaned. ‘Why do you all love him so much?’
‘Did François ever know how Jacqueline felt about him?’ Claudine asked gently.
‘Even if he did, what would he have cared for a woman like her? What does he care for anyone?’
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘What happened after you saw Hortense and François?’
He bowed his head for a moment. Then taking a breath, he looked at her again. ‘When Louis finally let me go, having sworn me to secrecy about what had happened, I went home and told Jacqueline everything I had seen. I knew François hadn’t killed Hortense intentionally, but I told Jacqueline he had. I asked her how it felt to be in love with a murderer. I asked her if she felt the same way now, knowing that he could kill a woman just for wanting him? And do you know what she said?’
Claudine was very still, her face drawn with pity.
‘She said, how could she stop loving him when he was the father of her baby? And how did I feel now, to know that every day I looked upon my child I would know it wasn’t really mine? That I was so inadequate that …’ He broke off, pushing his fingers hard into the sockets of his eyes. ‘She even described the way he made love to her, the way he made her feel, she went on and on and on until I finally lost control and hit her. She laughed. So I hit her again. She fell down the stairs, and when I got to her she was still laughing. She was hysterical – and delirious with joy, because Hortense de Bourchain was out of his life.
‘She gave birth two weeks later, and with every contraction, every push and every breath she called his name. She screamed at the top of her voice that she was giving birth to his child – that I should never forget that it was his child.
‘When the baby was born, after Doctor Lebrun had severed the cord, she told me she wanted to call the baby after his father. I didn’t argue, I couldn’t. There was no fight left in me. My mother sent me out. I walked around for hours, trying to tell myself she had been lying, that the child was mine, but I couldn’t make myself believe it. I knew, because I’d always known, what power François had over women. He had no morals, no scruples, he wouldn’t have thought twice about fornicating with my wife.’
Again Armand rubbed a hand over his eyes, and for a moment Claudine thought he was crying. But then Louis, seeing his chance, tried to break free – and when Armand grabbed him back she saw that his eyes were as dry as the dust at his feet.
‘When I got back to the house, Father Pointeau was there,’ he went on, ‘Jacqueline was already dead. She had haemorrhaged just after I’d left. The last words she said to me were, “I want to call his son François.”
‘I lived with it for a year, but as the child’s features began to form, all I could see was François. I know now that it was Jacqueline he resembled, his dark complexion, his black hair, his deep brown eyes, they were all hers, but at the time all I could see was François. What was more, François visited us a lot that year and the child took to him – more than he did to me. I would watch François swinging him up on his shoulders, and the child would laugh in a way he never laughed for me.
‘Then one day, as I was returning from the vineyards, I saw François carry him from the house and put him on a pony. He couldn’t walk, he wasn’t strong enough, he’d been sickly since birth, but François thought he could learn to ride. The child was more excited than I’d ever seen him. He cried when François left, and he wouldn’t stop crying. I put him to bed and sat with him until finally he fell asleep, then I took the pillow, covered his face and held it there until I knew he was dead.’
His last word fell into silence. His hands were shaking and now there were tears on his cheeks. He was trapped, Claudine knew, in the nightmare of the past, unable to bring himself back to the present, unable to escape the stalking shadow of guilt. In the end, her voice so thick with emotion she could barely speak, she said his name.
He looked up in surprise, almost as if he had forgotten she was there. Then his face contorted. ‘A sorry tale, isn’t it?’ he said scathingly. ‘One that I thought was going to end there, because I thought I was finally rid of him, that he couldn’t torment me any more. That living each day in the knowledge that the person I loved most in the world loved François de Lorvoire – that nightmare was over. You see, I couldn’t take that any more. I’d lived with it for two years. Two years of unadulterated hell, when first my wife, then my son …’ He started to sob, and Claudine moved to comfort him. But he pushed her away, wiping the back of his hand over his eyes.
‘But he was your son?’ she prompted gently.
‘Oh yes, he was my son all right. Father Pointeau told me. But it was too late by then. I’d already killed him.’
‘But how did Father Pointeau know?’
‘She’d confessed. Before she died, Jacqueline had confessed her sins and told him how she’d lied to me. She also told him never to tell me – never to let me be certain that I was the father of my own son. How she must have hated me to do that to me! Father Pointeau, of course, tried to reason with her, tried to make her understand that she must make peace with the world before going to meet her Maker. But she refused. So, obeying the laws of confession, Father Pointeau kept her secret – until the morning after I had killed my son. He told me then, he said, because for a whole year he had witnessed my misery and he couldn’t bear to see me suffering any longer. The Good Lord would not want him to keep such a secret, he said, so he told me.
‘Of course he didn’t know then that the child was dead, I hadn’t told him. Can you imagine how I felt then, Claudine? Can you even begin to understand? It was too late, the child, my son, was already dead. My son who loved François, whose mother loved François. And I, who had once loved him too, swore that day that he would pay for what he had done to my family. I sat there, in the confessional, and told Father Pointeau everything. Then I told him what I intended to do. How I would make François de Lorvoire suffer as I was suffering, how I would kill those he loved until he, like me, had no one. But more than that, I vowed that if he ever had a son I would make him kill that son, as he had made me kill mine.’
Claudine looked at Louis. ‘I am so sorry, Armand,’ she whispered. Words seemed so inadequate. ‘I didn’t know. Neither of us did. If we had …’
‘If you had, then what? There was nothing you could do, it was already too late. The damage was done, my wife and son were dead, and François de Lorvoire was going to pay. Nothing, no one would have changed my mind. Don’t you think Father Pointeau tried? I let him think he’d succeeded, of course. I was a fool ever to have told him. And I was to find out just how big a fool within a matter of days. Von Liebermann had one of his snoops listening in to the confessions. He’d had someone there for a long time, it was just one of his many methods of getting information about François. Of course, von Liebermann didn’t know then that François was working for the Secret Service, but he suspected it. So I, just like François, became a pawn in von Liebermann’s game. And whenever François didn’t play to his rules, that was when I got my chance. But even so, von Liebermann never did manage to turn François, make him the double agent he wanted him to be. Because François is meaner, uglier and cleverer than any man alive.’
Armand’s voice was thick with scorn, his mouth twisted with venom. ‘The man isn’t human, he’s a devil, the devil. His only weakness is that he loves, and that is why I’ve used it as my weapon against him.’
‘But so many people, Armand! Not only those François loved, but Yves and Thomas, the pilots and agents who were captured in the escape-line, Estelle … Why did you kill Estelle?’
‘You saw her that day in the forest, cavorting with his brother. Another de Lorvoire. I’d lost my wife to one, I’d lost my son because of one – I wasn’t going to lose her to one as well. She paid, you’ll all pay, but this will be the bitterest price. As for the others … Regrettable, but there was nothing I could do. I was a tool of the Abwehr. They made me do it. Stinking, filthy Germans, I despise them. They’ve manipulated me all the way. But not any more. They won’t be able to control my life ever again, because after today they’ll have nothing on me. Because François will be dead. It will all be over, and at last I shall be free.’
‘No, Armand, you won’t be free. No matter what you do to François you’ll never be free, because nothing you do is going to bring your son back.’
He stared at her, blinking as though she had delivered him a brutal blow.
‘She’s right, Armand.’
A shadow fell across the barn, and they both spun round to see François standing at the centre of the arch.
‘Papa!’ Louis shrieked. And oblivious to the gun pressed against his head, he started to struggle over Armand’s leg to get to François. Then, to Claudine’s amazement, Armand lowered his leg and let Louis go.
She watched as he flew across the barn into his father’s arms. François scooped him up and Louis clung to him, sobs shuddering from his little body as he buried his face in François’ shoulder. But François wasn’t looking at Louis, his eyes were fixed on Armand.
Claudine turned back, then started as she saw Armand’s gun only inches from her face. ‘So,’ Armand hissed, looking at her but speaking to François, ‘you’ve come at last.’
François didn’t answer.
Armand shifted so that his back was against the wall beside Claudine. Then gesturing towards the floor in front of him, he made her lie down.
‘On your front!’ he growled. ‘Put your hands under your body and turn your face to me.’
She did as he told her, and then, keeping the gun out of her reach but still aimed at her head, Armand lifted his eyes to François. ‘I take it you’ve been there for some time,’ he sneered.
‘Long enough,’ François replied.
‘So tell me. How does it feel to know that Halunke, the only man you’ve ever feared, was all the time fucking your wife? Does it feel good, François? Or do you want to kill me for it? I even drank your son’s milk from her breasts. I suckled her, François. How does that make you feel? Does it get to you, right deep down inside?’ He twisted a hand into his gut. ‘Because that’s where it got me, François. It got me, and ate me like a cancer. But we’re equal now, aren’t we? You made my wife love you, and I made yours love me. But it doesn’t end there, does it? It doesn’t end there François, because you made me kill my son!’ Armand stopped and wiped the saliva from his lips with the back of his hand. ‘So you know what you have to do. You’ve ruined my life, de Lorvoire, and now I’m going to ruin yours. So kill him, kill him now, or I’ll kill her.’
For a long moment François merely stared at him. Then, without uttering a word, he put Louis on the ground, took him by the hand and walked away.
Claudine knew they had gone, she could hear their footsteps crunching on the gravel. Her heart started to pound in her chest. He had gone; he hadn’t spoken a word, he had just walked away.
Armand swore violently under his breath, and her eyes dilated as his hand tightened on the gun.
Then he started to laugh, a low rumbling sound that seemed to creep into every shadowy corner of the barn. ‘So he’s fooled us both! He’s fooled you, and me, he’s fooled us all. François de Lorvoire has won again! Yes, he even managed to convince me that he loved you. But he doesn’t love you, does he, Claudine? Because he’s left you here to die. He’s walking away. He’s made his choice, and he’s left you. But as far as he was concerned there never was a choice, because all that matters to him is his son. You don’t matter at all, you never did. So how does it feel, Claudine, to know that he’s tricked you as foully and as ingeniously as he’s tricked everyone else? How does it feel to be one of his victims? Hurts doesn’t it? It hurts here.’ He thumped his fist into his heart. ‘So why don’t I put you out of your misery?’
He hooked his thumb over the cock and drew it back. Claudine closed her eyes, and through the horror of what was happening to her she started to pray.
The shot blasted into the silence, ricocheting from the walls, vibrating from the beams and echoing out into the field where it finally faded into the chill, empty air.
Still holding Louis’ hand François kept on walking, not betraying, even by the twitch of a muscle, that he had heard the shot.
Minute after minute ticked by. The wind rustled the trees behind the barn, and the magnificent Château of Rigny-Ussé slumbered peacefully on the opposite bank of the Indre. Besides François and Louis, the only other sign of life was inside the Mercedes, parked on the cart track halfway between the field gate and the barn. From behind the open window in the rear seat von Liebermann and Max Helber watched as de Lorvoire finally stopped at his jeep, stooped to speak to his son, then handed him up to his sister. Then she drove away.
Another ten minutes slipped by. Clouds massed angrily overhead; the rain didn’t come, but the sky darkened about the sun covering its face with black, bulbous warts of cloud.
Inside the barn, Armand stood up. A sheen of sweat glimmered on his face, but his senses were brittly alert. He stepped over Claudine and stole quietly across the barn to the arch. As he peered outside, he prepared the gun to fire again. Then his eyes narrowed dangerously as he saw someone sitting on the bank of the river with a fishing rod.
‘Get over here,’ he hissed to Claudine.
Too terrorized to do anything other than obey, Claudine got up and went to stand beside him.
‘Who’s that?’ he growled.
Claudine turned to look where he was pointing and as she recognized the man sitting nonchalantly on the riverbank, a sob gurgled in her throat. She had no idea how he had got here, but it was her father, and she was so swamped by relief that it was all she could do to stop herself collapsing. She knew she should never have doubted François, but when she had heard his footsteps retreat, when he had gone with no arguments, no protests, no attempt even to reason with Armand, she had believed … But now she knew that somehow he was in charge of the situation. Somehow he had found out about the torturous climax Armand and von Liebermann had plotted between them, and had laid his own plans. And if Beavis was here, perhaps there were others.
‘Who is it?’ Armand seethed.
‘It’s my father,’ she answered, knowing that he would recognize him sooner or later.
Armand uttered a stream of obscenities, then pushing her in front of him and jamming the gun into her neck, he edged a short way out of the barn. Seeing von Liebermann’s car, he waited for a sign to tell him what was happening, but the General’s face was lost in shadow.
Then suddenly both Armand and Claudine spun round as they heard a footstep behind them. It was Lucien, standing at the corner of the barn.
‘At last,’ Lucien said, starting towards them. ‘We were beginning to think you would never come out. Now put the gun down, Armand, and let’s talk.’
Before Armand could answer, someone else was striding up behind him, and he twisted round again to see a masked figure coming from the other side of the barn. ‘Hand it over, there’s a good chap.’ The American accent was strong – Claudine suddenly realized that this must be Jack Bingham.
Armand took a step back, pulling Claudine with him, his eyes darting between Lucien and Bingham. Then he noticed that Beavis had gone. ‘Get away from me!’ he growled. ‘Get away or I’ll kill her.’
‘And what then?’ Lucien said mildly.
Armand stared at him.
‘And what then, Armand?’ he repeated. ‘Tell me, Armand!’
Armand flinched as Lucien boomed out his name, then he staggered as the cry started to echo through the valley like the deathly chant of ravens. Voices, hundreds of voices, resounding from the trees, from the barn, from the river, from the château. They were coming from everywhere. Below him, above him, in front of him, behind him, from every side. Shouting his name: ‘Armand! Armand! Armand!’
At the side of the barn François was climbing swiftly and quietly from the ladder into the hay loft.
‘It won’t work, de Lorvoire!’ he heard Armand scream into the cacophony.
‘Armand!’
‘Armand!’
‘Armand!’
The noise rose to a deafening crescendo. François stole through the hay, then lowered himself into the barn. He could see them now, grouped in a pool of sunlight on the waste ground.
‘Kill him, de Lorvoire!’ Armand roared to the sky. ‘Kill your son or I’ll kill her.’
‘Armand!’
‘Armand!’
‘Armand!’
‘Shut up!’ he bellowed. ‘Shut up or I’ll fire.’
More voices, flat, monotonous, menacing voices. No faces, only Lucien and Bingham and … Armand stepped back, looking for Claudine. Then he saw her. She was on the floor, covering her head with her arms. He raised the gun, aimed it straight at her, then screamed as a foot crashed into his wrist. Then he became aware of the pressure on his spine, and he clenched his teeth as the agony tore through his limbs. But he still had the gun, and he fired it, again and again …
He couldn’t move his arm; the bullets were blasting randomly into the air. Armand jerked his body forward – then screamed as François’ hands tightened their grip. But now the gun was pointing right at her … A splintering pain seared through his skull. His knees were sagging, but he tightened his finger on the trigger. He tried to throw the weight from his back. It shifted and he staggered, then the gun was on her again. He fired – and in that same instant François broke his neck.
Claudine stared at the bullet, buried in the ground only an inch from her face. She couldn’t move, her whole body was frozen in terror. She knew François was there, she could feel him holding her, lifting her, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the bullet.
‘It’s all right,’ he soothed. ‘It’s all right, chérie, it’s over.’
‘Louis,’ she mumbled. ‘Where’s Louis?’
‘With Monique. He’s safe.’
‘Oh François!’ she gasped, then fell sobbing into his arms.
Then she opened her eyes and stared down at Armand’s limp, broken body lying at her feet. His eyes were still open, staring back at her. She shuddered, and François stooped to close them.
‘Did you know?’ she said. ‘About Jacqueline?’
‘No.’
He looked at her, and her heart twisted as she saw the torment in his eyes. She could read his thoughts, almost as if he were speaking them aloud. Hortense, Jacqueline and Élise. Three women whose lives had been ruined because of him, because he had been unable to love them. He would never forgive himself, yet there was nothing he could have done to prevent it. Claudine choked back her tears, and pulled him tightly into her arms. He pushed his face into her hair and clung to her the way Louis had clung to him.
Finally he pulled away and gazed searchingly into her eyes. ‘Are you all right?’ he whispered.
She nodded.
He brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers, then turned to Armand’s body.
‘What are we going to tell Liliane?’ she asked.
‘Nothing, if we can avoid it. It’s better that she thinks he died by the firing squad.’
‘Do you think she knows? About all this.’
He shook his head. ‘I doubt it. Except about Jacqueline, she must have known about that. But she would never have imagined him capable of doing all he’s done. What mother would?’
‘A mother who persuaded me to have an affair with her son?’
François lifted his head. ‘I asked her to.’
Claudine shook her head in dismay, then, as she started shakily to pull herself to her feet a voice boomed into the stillness.
‘François!’
Both she and François swung round. Then François flew back as a stultifying blow crashed into his chest. Claudine started for the barn as first one shot, then another and another blasted through the air. Then suddenly she staggered to the ground beside François as both Résistants and Germans emerged from the woods, from the barn, from the river bank and from the road, until the whole world was alive with the sound of machine-guns, pistols, rifles, even grenades.
Bullets tore through the air above their bodies, plunging into the earth all around them. Black smoke curled round the barn as canisters were thrown from the woods to disguise the emergence of the Résistants. The air rang with shouts, barked orders and the sound of running feet. Men in berets and masks swooped into the field, while the German soldiers in their tin helmets and uniforms flattened themselves to the grass and blasted bullets into the mêlée.
Lucien and Beavis, crouching low with guns slung over their shoulders, waded through the river to the bridge. Jack Bingham, Pierre Bonet the melon farmer, and three others, crawled through the next field’s vines towards the road. Still more withdrew into the woods, firing and shouting and holding cover for those gone to circle the Germans.
François turned his head to look at Claudine, half expecting her to have crawled into the barn. But she was still there, lying only an arm’s length away. He twisted himself a little further so he could see her face. Her arms were spread out, her hair was tangled around her mouth and her eyes were wide, staring straight into his. His lungs turned to pockets of ice as the whole world tilted on its axis. Then she blinked, and he breathed again.
Almost from the moment he’d fallen, he had realized that the hammer-blow to his chest had come from Claudine as she’d knocked him to the ground, but he continued to lie where he was, unmoving. Von Liebermann and Helber must think he was dead.
‘Are you all right?’ he hissed.
‘I think so.’
‘Stay right where you are. For God’s sake let them think you’re dead.’
She blinked again, not daring to move another muscle, as the battle raged on around them. Then she watched, as François slid his hand carefully beneath him and pulled out his gun.
He waited until there was a drift in the smoke, then aimed directly at the Mercedes. Again he waited, until von Liebermann’s eyes finally came to rest on his, but before von Liebermann had a chance even to register surprise, the bullet ripped through his face.
And there was still one more score to settle. From the rear door on the other side of the car, Max Helber emerged, his face splattered with von Liebermann’s blood. As he staggered round the car, dazed and disoriented, into full view, François took aim again, pointing the gun this time between Helber’s legs.
As Helber screamed, chaos broke loose. The Mercedes roared off, and what seemed like an entire battalion of Germans closed in around the woods. No one thought to look in the direction of the barn, no one knew that the bullets which had killed the General and his henchman had come from François de Lorvoire.
Still neither he nor Claudine moved, but lay there feigning death until finally the battle was drawn into the depths of the wood and the gunfire started to recede into the distance.
After a while they heard footsteps running towards them.
‘François!’ Lucien called in a heavy whisper.
‘It’s all right, I’m alive,’ François answered, recognizing his brother’s voice.
‘I thought you must be. I saw what Claudine did. Are you all right?’ he added turning to her. ‘Come on, let’s get you both out of here.’
François was already on his feet. The smoke had all but disappeared by now, and for the moment there was no sign of the Boches.
‘It’s all right, chérie, you can get up now,’ he said, starting to help Lucien drag Armand’s body into the barn.
When she didn’t move, he looked up. ‘Claudine, you can get up,’ he said, a hammer of alarm suddenly starting to thud in his chest.
‘I can’t,’ she answered.
Dropping Armand, he threw himself down on his knees beside her. ‘What is it?’ he said.
‘Oh François, I’m sorry,’ she gasped. ‘I’m so sorry.’
And then he saw the pool of blood, spreading thickly across the ground beneath her.