CHAPTER 27
I moved forward into the light of the window, grasping her forearms as I leaned forward to buss her on both cheeks. She appeared much as I remembered her, though there was now more gray in her hair than brown, and the lines bracketing her mouth and eyes appeared deeper.
“Well, you certainly didn’t make it easy,” I replied in French.
She sighed. “Yes, well, I’d hoped to avoid such a thing. But Pauline always was one for theatrics, and my plan wasn’t flashy enough for her.”
“Wait. Pauline Laurent?” I felt like I’d been struck in the head and my mind was struggling to regain traction. “You’re the one who asked Madame Zozza to pretend to summon you?”
“No. That was entirely Pauline’s doing.” She sniffed in affront. “As if I would ever do something so ridiculous. That girl was simply supposed to pull you aside and tell you that you might be in danger, and that I needed your help.”
“Oh, only that?” Sidney drawled.
Rose and I both turned to look at him where he stood in the middle of the room, Alec hovering at his elbow.
“I dare say this is your husband,” she deduced.
He moved forward, accepting her proffered hand while I performed the introductions. They greeted one another cordially enough, though I could tell they were both taking each other’s measure. Then Rose’s mouth curled into a genuine smile, clearly realizing the same thing. “Good man,” she murmured, patting his hand where it still clasped her other one.
A flash of amusement crossed Sidney’s face before we all turned to Alec.
“And this is Captain Alec Xavier, one of my colleagues from the Secret Service,” I explained. “He worked covertly in Belgium during the war.”
She narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing him even more closely. Alec, for his part, was wise enough not to display his usual insouciance, sensing correctly that it would not endear him to her.
“As one of the Bosche, no?”
How she’d deduced he’d infiltrated the German Army, I don’t know. Perhaps after observing his comportment, she’d discarded all the other usual possibilities as unlikely. Whatever the case, I could tell that for Alec her estimation had just gone up.
“Can he be trusted?” she asked me without removing her eyes from his.
I knew that for her, nothing short of a confident answer would do, so I gave it to her despite my remaining reservations. “Yes.”
Then she surprised me by addressing Sidney. “And what of you, Mr. Kent? Do you think he can be trusted?”
I turned to my husband, curious what he would say, and certain that whatever it was, Rose would heed it. Sidney did not respond at first, instead turning to study Alec with an air of almost disinterest. But when his gaze shifted to meet mine, I could see that he was far from detached. The knowledge of my and Alec’s past relationship flashed in his eyes.
But in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, I felt myself relax. Sidney had served as an officer on the Western Front. He had assessed the fitness of thousands of men, sized them up in the heat of battle when death was but a fingertip away. I realized I trusted him to make this call. That unlike during the war, it didn’t all come down to my judgment alone. I could rely on him.
Whether Sidney understood I’d come to this epiphany or not, the lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth softened. He nodded to Rose. “Yes, I trust him.”
Alec’s face registered briefly with shock, something I wasn’t sure I’d ever witnessed. It was immensely satisfying. Particularly knowing that my husband had caused it.
“Then let us sit down and I will explain what this is all about,” Rose declared, gesturing to the table and simple ladder-back chairs, which were the only furniture in the floral wallpapered room other than a narrow bed and battered chest.
“What of Madame de l’Epine?” I asked as we sat. “Will she be joining us?”
Rose shook her head. “I’m afraid not. The good woman died just a week before Tourcoing was liberated.”
“Oh, how sad,” I replied, having known the older woman was battling a grave illness. And yet, still she had done all she could for the Allies and her fellow countrymen.
“But I trusted you would decipher my riddle and know to find me here. And so you have.” She exhaled, clapping her hands. “But on to my tale. Some months after the war was over, I received a visitor.” She glanced at me. “You will recall Adele Moilien, I believe. I delivered her baby the night you stole the map case from that German aviator.”
I nodded.
“Well, the first time she came to see me, she was furious. Though, truly she was more distraught. She’d lost so much, including her baby to the influenza. Much of the village all but shunned her for daring to take the Bosche as lovers, not understanding she hardly had a choice in the matter. Certainly not the first time.” She shook her head angrily. “She informed me that her brother, Étienne, had been arrested the day after her baby was born and sent to prison in Germany. And then she accused me of framing him, of leaving behind incriminating evidence in their home and informing on him to the Bosche. I knew better, of course. I would never have been so stupid as to leave anything more than ashes for the Secret Police to find.”
I’d thought as much, but I’d left the task in her hands as I hastily buried the map case, so I hadn’t been able to recall with certainty whether that was true. But if Emilie said it was so, I believed her.
She spread her hands wide. “I offered the girl what comfort I could, and when she told me she didn’t know what had become of her brother, I told her I would help her find out. After that, she came to see me many times, and a sort of friendship developed between us. I think she had no one else.” She grimaced, but then held up her finger. “But I could tell there was something she was not telling me. When I told her I’d discovered her brother had survived the end of the war and returned to Belgium, her reaction was not at all what one would expect. So I surmised this must be what she’d been hiding. That she must have already known.”
Her eyes hardened. “But then, someone set fire to my house. Fortunately, it was sloppily done and I was not asleep. I smelled the smoke and with the help of a few neighbors, was able to douse the flames before they could do more than minor damage. But I knew then that she had not told me all.
“I was debating what I should do when Adele came to see me the next day. She was frantic and weeping inconsolably. She told me she’d known her brother was alive, that he’d been quizzing her for information about me. That she was certain it was he who tried to burn my house down. It was evident the girl was terrified of him. He claimed he’d worked for British Intelligence during the war, but that they had double-crossed him. That it was they who informed on him and planted evidence so that he would be arrested by the Bosche.” She pressed a hand to her chest in outrage. “And I had been the one to do it.” Her dark gaze flicked to me. “Or Verity.”
I couldn’t withhold a flinch. “Because of the map case?”
“Adele had found it some months earlier and not known what to make of it, but apparently Étienne saw it as confirmation. She said he would not stop until I was dead. And that she feared he was planning something much worse, though she could not tell me what.”
She stood, crossing to the door to speak with someone outside in a soft voice before returning. “I decided then that the best course was for me to go into hiding until I understood better what Monsieur Moilien planned. Though I do not like to admit it, I will tell you the man gave me quite a turn. Here, I thought my instincts were as keen as ever, and yet not for a second during the war had I suspected him of being any sort of agent. I was aware of his history. Earlier in the war, he’d been rounded up and taken to another part of Belgium where he was forced to work in the fields, leaving his sister unprotected.”
“Which was, I imagine, how she’d ended up entertaining German officers in the first place?” Alec’s mouth twisted cynically. “Who better to prey on but the defenseless?”
A furrow formed between Rose’s eyes. “Because of this, I always suspected he’d harbored a particular hatred toward the Bosche, even though he sullenly knuckled under, but I’d never believed he actively resisted. And now this man is telling his sister he was an agent? Who was I to say for certain? I had only been connected to British Intelligence through La Dame Blanche. And I’d never met any agents outside of it save you.” She gestured to me. “So I elected to keep the matter to myself at first.”
I nodded, understanding her logic for doing so in the beginning, and hoping she would clarify why she’d continued to do so.
“It was relatively easy to confirm he’d never been a member of La Dame Blanche, but there were always lone agents and small bands of citizens working separate from us. And I didn’t know in what capacity he had performed his role.”
“What of Adele?” I asked. “Perhaps she could have gotten more details from him.”
“Mais oui, Gabby, I am coming to that,” she reproved me gently, using my code name. She pressed her hands flat on the table, staring down at them as her brow grew heavy. “All this time I continued to correspond with the girl, in code, mind you, through an anonymous letter box asking for any information she could share. But mostly encouraging, nay, begging her to consider leaving Belgium. Her brother’s behavior toward her had grown increasingly worrisome and I feared the worst. I even told her I had a friend in London who could help her find a place.”
“Pauline,” I guessed.
She glanced up at me and the look in her eyes made the back of my neck prickle with dread. “I thought I’d finally convinced her to leave when I learned that she’d died. Burned to death in her cottage.”
I turned aside, swallowing hard to contain my shock and outrage. That explained why we hadn’t been able to find the Moilien’s cabin. “So Madame Zozza wasn’t his first success at murder.”
“It was his sister,” she stated succinctly.
There was a rap at the door then, a blessed reprieve as the woman who had guided us inside entered, carrying a tray filled with coffee and little pastries. Rose began to pour for each of us, releasing the aroma of the roasted beans.
“What? No roasted oat chaff or pea shells, simply for old time’s sake?” I jested in an attempt to lighten the weight of her most recent disclosure. Such items had been the poor substitutes the people in the occupied territories had to put up with during the war.
Rose scoffed. “You can take a stroll down memory lane if you like, but I’ll keep my java.” She dipped her head toward the plate. “And don’t be telling me you wish the jam in those tarts is sugared potato pulp either.”
“And here I’d thought we had it bad eating bully from tin cans,” Sidney remarked, referencing the tinned corned beef that was often part of the men’s rations while in the trenches. “I don’t think I’ll be complaining ever again.”
We all looked to Alec as he lowered his coffee after taking a drink. “What? Don’t look at me. I was one of those bastard Bosche officers back at headquarters for much of the war. We certainly weren’t going to deprive ourselves of a good meal even if our men in the trenches and the good German people back home had none.” He stared down at his cup morosely. “Honestly, it could put you off food forever.”
On that somber note, Rose resumed her tale. “After hearing about Adele’s death, I ordered the friend who was checking our anonymous letter box for me to stop going. I was afraid her brother might have extracted the information of its location from her. But then a few weeks later, I received a message through a different anonymous letter box I’d set up in another village.” She tapped the table with her finger. “Except this address I’d only given to La Dame Blanche. And, yet, who should utilize it but Étienne Moilien.”
My eyes widened in surprise. “How did he get the address?”
“I don’t know. But that’s one of the reasons why I feared involving La Dame Blanche and British Intelligence. Because either he was an agent, or he had a contact who was.”
“What did his letter say?” Sidney asked as he began to remove his cigarette case.
But she halted him with a lifted hand. “No smoking, please. Not in here. It inflames my asthma.”
“Of course.” He dropped the case back into his pocket.
“He blamed me for the fact that Adele had to die. And told me she wouldn’t be the last. That if the British were so eager to sacrifice others to their cause, he would help them along.” Her gaze shifted to meet mine. “And that I and my assistant were next.”
Sidney’s brow furrowed. “How did he know who Verity was?”
“He didn’t. Not at first. And I prayed she was safely in London, her identity protected.” She folded her hands together. “But then you made your return from the dead in such spectacular fashion.”
Sidney’s eyes closed and his head sank back as he grasped what I already had. “The blasted newspapers.”
Rose nodded. “Yes. Your photographs were posted in many of the papers in Belgium and France. And I knew it was too much to hope Moilien hadn’t seen it, or that he wouldn’t recognize you. So I asked for Pauline’s help. I was hesitant to contact you directly,” she told me. “Lest I was being followed, or surveilled in some way, and lead him straight to you or vice versa. And I was equally afraid he was aware of Pauline given the fact that I’d urged Adele to flee to London and contact her. She was not supposed to come straight to you, but conceive of a way to happen upon you in a shop or coffeehouse. Somewhere that appeared natural.”
She reached up a hand to rub her temples. “But as I said, that wasn’t exciting or daring enough for Pauline. She insisted on luring you to that preposterous medium she worked for. I told her you would never come, that the woman I knew would never be taken in by such charlatanry, but she insisted she would find a way to get you there. Even then, she agreed to merely pull you aside and relay my message.” She shook her head. “But that is not what she did. And this is where all control slipped from my fingers.”
“She told Madame Zozza about me,” I surmised, having already been told by Pauline that she often fed her employer information about her clients that would prove useful. “She thought channeling you would prove more . . . impactful.” That was as diplomatically as I could phrase it.
“And it likely got the foolish woman killed.” She pressed a hand to her chest where underneath her dress, I knew hung a gold crucifix. “Whatever exactly happened, Pauline contacted me in a panic. She said everything had gone wrong. That the medium had deviated from the plan.”
I sat taller at those words, for Pauline had also uttered them to me, but I hadn’t known what they meant.
“That she’d delivered the type of oblique message she often gave clients to milk them for more money, but you had been furious and hadn’t fallen for any bit of it. And then she told me her employer was dead. That she’d seen a strange man leaving the house just after it was set on fire.”
“Moilien,” Alec declared.
She nodded once in confirmation. “From everything I knew about Moilien’s previous crimes, I was certain it must be him. Adele must have told him what I said about Pauline and he followed her trail from Macon, for Pauline said she was almost certain he was the same man who had paid a visit to her employer a few weeks prior. Why he decided to kill this medium, I do not know. Maybe he convinced her to alter the plans, maybe she tried to blackmail him. Whatever the case, he killed her. And I told Pauline she was dashed lucky to be alive.”
“By the skin of her teeth,” Sidney confirmed, for we had seen how quickly that house had gone up in flames.
“I told her if she valued her life at all, she would go into hiding. That I would contact her again when it was safe.”
“But I don’t understand,” I interjected, gesturing between me and Sidney. “We talked to her on the street while they were struggling to extinguish the fire. She could have told us then what was going on. She could have relayed your message. Why didn’t she?”
Rose had fiddled with the handle of her coffee cup while I asked my questions, and now as if realizing it, she pushed it resolutely away. “I asked her the same thing, and I do not have a satisfactory answer for you. In all honesty, I think the girl was in shock and riddled with guilt. She knew her tomfoolery had contributed to her employer’s death, and I think she was too scared to trust you with the blatant truth, especially since you had reacted so hostilely at the séance. And yet, at the same time, she didn’t want you to be unaware there was a dangerous man involved. She said she told you that much, but she wanted to speak with me first before saying more. But by then, I knew it was too late. That Pauline needed to disappear before Moilien caught up with her.”
I brushed my lank hair back from my forehead, trying to make sense of it all, for it seemed hopelessly muddled. “And so the codes you left me? They were all what? Your contingency strategy?”
“I appreciate how convoluted all this seems,” Rose replied, obviously sharing in my frustration. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way. But I didn’t know who to trust, and this was too important to risk it. I was fearful for your life, Gabby.” She reached her hand out to rest it over mine where it laid on the table, her eyes dipped before rising to meet mine again. “And I knew, of all people, I could trust you.”
Rose was one of the least demonstrative people I knew, so for her to speak this way, and to touch me while doing so, meant she was being extremely earnest.
“I had to make those clues difficult, or else anyone could have followed them. And when I laid out the breadcrumbs, I thought the only chance you would be using them was if Pauline failed or something had happened to me.” She released my hand, sinking back in her chair as she sighed heavily. “And now I fear it may have all been too late.”
I sat taller, glancing at Sidney and Alec. “You’re speaking of the aeroplane in Havay?”
She nodded. “I stumbled upon it just after the war. Though it all started months earlier. From the papers in that German aviator’s map case, actually.”
“Zauberer—Buzancy,” I replied, repeating the name and location scrawled on those papers.
Her gaze sharpened. “You do know then?”
“Captain Landau helped me fill in some of the blanks,” I confirmed. “Though he didn’t know about the aeroplane in Havay.”
“Well, after I discovered what Moilien was capable of, I remembered that aviator had been rumored to be one of Adele’s particular friends. She admitted the young ace had been prone to brag, and though she had little interest in aeroplanes and such, her brother did. Given that, I figured he must be aware of Havay.”
“So you went back to Havay,” Sidney concluded, his hands pressed flat to the table. “And the bombs were gone.”
I expected Rose to be surprised by this swift bit of deduction, but perhaps the implications were too grim for such considerations. Instead, she replied with a simple, but foreboding, “Yes.”
None of us spoke for a moment, perhaps all trying to come to grips with the reality that our worst suppositions were true.
Alec was the first to find his voice. “How can you be certain it was he who took them? Perhaps the army retrieved them as they are doing all the others.”
“That’s what I’d hoped had happened,” Rose admitted. “But I asked those who lived closest to Havay. No one had come to clear the site. The only visitors in vehicles that ever drove that way were the occasional morbid tourists. And their motorcars weren’t military lorries.”
Sidney blew a breath out through his lips, pushing back a distance from the table, his voice growing more strident and bewildered with each word. “So, Étienne Moilien intends to use these bombs somehow to get back at the British government because he believes they framed him, and turned him over to the Germans, and then refused to pay him restitution. Why not the Germans? They’re the ones who imprisoned and tortured him after invading his home and harming his sister.”
No one seemed to have a ready answer for this, for it did seem more logical to blame the Germans for his suffering. But I endeavored to make sense out of it anyway.
“Perhaps it’s a matter of disillusionment. He obviously saw the British as agents of good, and he tried to ally himself with us, to do his own bit of good. Instead we rejected him, we foiled what he saw as his chance to rebel against an intolerable situation. And then he was captured by the very people he was trying to inflict harm upon and they turned that harm back on him tenfold. Maybe when he visited Landau after the war, it was his last chance to give some sort of meaning, of honorability, to everything he and his sister endured.”
“But he was rejected yet again,” Sidney finished for me. “Yes, I can see that. But why not both the Germans and British? Why is he directing his anger at only the British?”
“Because, in his mind, we’ve suffered the least,” Alec stated. “At least, if one confines their scope to the Western Front. The Belgians and French were invaded. Portions of their countries were ripped apart by trenches and destroyed by shells. The Germans, while the perpetrators of his torment, are starving to death by the tens of thousands. The country has been picked clean by war.” His expression was grave. “Moilien was imprisoned in Germany. As he made his way home, he would have seen it. They are already suffering for the part they played in the conflict. But the British and the Americans are a different story.”
He frowned. “The Americans are too far away for him to contemplate, but the British are not. And while we have endured our own share of suffering in the loss of life, we aren’t starving, and save for the Zeppelin bombers, our country largely avoided any direct devastation. Think about it. All he sees are the British officials, and the well-nourished, well-dressed tourists flocking over the channel—to gawk at the destruction, shed a few tears, and then return to their land of plenty. Tourists like those women at the café outside of Brussels.”
Sidney scowled at the reminder and turned to Rose. “Is that why we’re here? Because of the tourists?”
“One of the last things Adele told me was that her brother had been spending a great deal of time somewhere near Lille, France, so that’s why I’m here. Why you’re here,” she added glancing around at us.
“Have you been able to locate him? To uncover what he plans?” I asked anxiously.
She lifted her hands in frustration. “I do not know. One of my men located him in Lille some weeks ago, but then lost him again. Before the war, it would have been easy to locate a man with such facial scarring, but now there are so many with such injuries. And just as many who wear masks to hide them. It is all too easy to pass by unnoticed. Just another faceless, nameless suffering soldier.
“I suspect he means to harm the tourists in some way,” Rose added. “But where? And when? They are crawling all over this area of France and along this sector of the front. New ones arrive every day. Especially in these warm summer months.”
“So we have nothing else to go on?”
She shook her head. “I am sorry, ma rouge-gorge. In this, I have failed.”