THE FARMER MARQUET half fell, half stumbled down the badly lit stairs. He picked himself up and looked around. He was in the cellar of the Bloch villa.
Opposite was a narrow, oblong, barred window through which came a dampness from the sea. He noticed a fog was collecting, for the wind had died away. On the other side of the stairs another small window gave onto a vacant lot where, he knew, the boys of the village practiced football. There was no glass in either window.
The earth floor of the cellar was moist. The place was filled with odds and ends left behind by the Jewish Bloch family when the war had burst upon them, driving them from Nogent-Plage. Where were they now? What woman had used that rusty sewing machine? What child had played with that faceless doll? Who had sat on that old wooden bench or those chairs without backs?
He slumped down on the bench. The thought of Sebastian with the load of seaweed standing patiently in the street above struck him with such a stabbing pain that he groaned aloud.
“Ah, Sebastian,” he cried. “And my poor Pierre in Germany. He will never know what happened to his old father.”
The door at the top of the cellar opened and light penetrated the gloom. He glanced up from his misery as Lavigne, in his dirty white apron, was shoved roughly downstairs. The café owner, a stout man, picked himself up, rubbing his hip.
“But,” he shouted, “I tell you I had nothing whatever to do with it. I was inside washing dishes. I was inside when the shot was fired. I had nothing to do with it.” Then realizing that nobody was listening, he saw the futility of his protestations and shook his fist at the door above. “Ah, those Fridolins, those barbarians!”
The door opened again, and a German voice said, “Unter....”
Monsieur Varin, the teacher, was pushed down. Next came the Père Clement and young René Le Gallec, with whom he had been practicing football. The priest picked himself up as the door slammed and shouted, “But I had nothing to do with the shooting of the Hauptmann. I was playing football beside my church with this boy. The Herr Oberst knows I could have had nothing to do with it. He passed by, himself, but a short while before. He played with us. Ask the Herr Oberst....”
The door opened once more and Marcel Deschamps, the fisherman, was hurled down. Then a helmeted soldier with a submachine gun stomped downstairs, followed by a corporal. The corporal went over to the teacher, sitting on the bench and rubbing the knee he had scraped during his tumble into the cellar.
“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” he asked.
“Ja. Ich kann Deutsch sprechen.”
Then followed a torrent of guttural words, so fast that the teacher had trouble making them out. But he understood enough to put the sense of the remarks into French.
“This village is surrounded,” he translated. “Every exit is guarded. Every house in town is being searched. But we have orders from Headquarters that if the murderer of the Hauptmann Seeler is not found—or none of you confesses to the murder—you will all be shot within one hour. These orders are from our Kommandateur at Caen.”
The German corporal spun around and went up the stairs, followed at a respectful distance by the soldier. The door opened, then slammed shut. A key turned in the lock. Darkness and silence fell over the cellar.
Their eyes gradually became accustomed to the gloom. The farmer Marquet wept tears of despair. Monsieur Lavigne stalked in a rage up and down the dirt floor. The priest, hands extended, asked, “But who could have done such a thing? Surely it must have been somebody from outside the town.”
“Yes, certainly, it must have been a stranger. Someone from Évreux, no doubt.”
“They will find him soon, and we shall all be released, I am sure,” said the Père Clement.
Only Monsieur Varin was thinking clearly enough at the moment to fit the pieces together. It took no genius to guess what had happened—and also what lay ahead. The Silesian shock troops sent in as a garrison, the cutting of bridges along the coast, the soldiers in battle dress—everything told him the invasion was imminent. Some young hothead must have felt this was a chance not to be missed, a chance to throw the garrison into confusion by killing its commanding officer and so to hurt the outfit at this critical instant in the war. To a rifleman firing through the blinds of a second-story window the Hauptmann Seeler was an easy target.
Ah, thought the teacher, those crazy young people, acting as young people so often do, without thinking of others, with no regard for what might happen to those of us left here in the village. Naturally the Germans would avenge the death of the Hauptmann. Anyone could have foretold that.
And what difference who the assassin was. If the slayer escapes, we six will be executed. He rose from the bench.
“Come, my friends, the Feldwebel is now in command here. He has helped us before, but even if he has authority we mustn’t depend on him. He may know we are innocent, he will do all he can at Headquarters, but we must help ourselves. We must organize....”
“Organize!” snorted Monsieur Lavigne. “How can we organize locked in this cellar, with fifty minutes of life left?”
The teacher ignored his outburst. “Look, I have friends up the coast. Things have been happening, things that are the signal I anticipated. And see that fog coming in? What better weather for an invasion fleet to approach the coast? They plan these things, you know; they leave nothing to chance.”
Suddenly René Le Gallec, who had been watching from the narrow window, shouted, “They’re coming! I hear them! Listen!”
A rumble came from the sea. It grew louder, louder. Soon it turned into a massive roar. Together the men rushed to the window. There in the haze above the low-lying fogbank were planes, planes, more planes than they had ever seen before, so many that they seemed to blacken the sky.
The five men and the boy shouted, yelled, screamed, waved white handkerchiefs through the narrow, barred window, turned and embraced each other. Rescue! Deliverance! Release! Unquestionably those planes were headed straight for the Bloch villa. Already the antiaircraft batteries down the coast were sputtering, then the blockhouse just outside the town joined in. But the planes roared majestically on. Their sound was that of a thousand express trains, a thousand thunderstorms, drowning out the guns.
The invasion at last! Long-awaited, long-hoped-for! They were saved!
Now the planes were directly above, passing overhead, continuing on. None detached themselves to descend on Nogent-Plage. Whatever it meant, wherever they were going, it was no attack upon the garrison of the town. Soon the planes vanished from sight. The noise died away. The antiaircraft fire from the blockhouse stuttered and stopped. One by one, the men left the window. The Père Clement stood staring into space. The farmer sank back again on the bench. Young René Le Gallec crumpled to the floor as if hit by a blow.
The hostages heard the voice of the Herr Oberst up above, giving a harsh, crisp command. It seemed somehow out of character. It had an ominous sound. Then came the stomping of boots. Evidently they were reinforcing the guard outside the front door of the Bloch villa.
Below, in the cellar, five men and a boy faced death in forty-eight minutes.