Eric Ambler: Epitaph for a Spy

“Ah, Monsieur,” he said with a faint smile. “You are back. Nothing serious, I hope. The police came here this morning. They said they had your permission to take your passport.”

I looked as disgruntled as I could.

“No, nothing serious. A question of identity and a mistake which they took a fantastic time to discover. They were apologetic, but what can one do? The French police are wholly ridiculous.”

He looked serious, professed amazement and indignation, complimented me on my forbearance. He was clearly unconvinced. I could scarcely blame him. I was feeling too weak to play the outraged citizen with any hope of success.

“By the way, Monsieur,” he said casually, as I made for the stairs, “it is Saturday morning that you are leaving, I believe?”

So he wanted to get rid of me. I affected to consider the question.

“I had thought of doing so,” I said; “but I may decide to stay a day or two longer. That is,” I added, with a wintry smile, “if the police have no objection.”

He hesitated barely a second.

“A pleasure,” he said, but without enthusiasm.

As I turned again to go, it may have been my fancy, but I thought that his eyes were on the camera.

I find it difficult now to remember much of the next two hours. But I do know that when I reached my room there was for me only one question in the world-was there a train from Toulon to Paris on Sunday afternoon? I remember that I rushed to my suitcase and searched feverishly for the timetable.

You may find it odd that, faced with utter and complete disaster, I should be concerned about so trivial a matter as the train services to Paris. But human beings do behave oddly in times of very great stress. Passengers in a sinking ship will go back to their cabins as the last boat is casting off from the side, to save trifling personal possessions. Men on the point of death worry about small unpaid bills as they go forward to eternity.

What worried me was the prospect of being late on the Monday morning. Monsieur Mathis was very strict on the score of punctuality. Latecomers, whether pupils or teachers, incurred his grave displeasure. This was expressed in biting terms and a very loud voice at a moment when the additional embarrassment of an audience had to be suffered. The denunciation, moreover, usually followed some hours after the commission of the crime. The suspense could be very wearing.

If, I reasoned, I could catch a train from Toulon on Sunday afternoon and travel overnight to Paris, I might be at the school on time. I remember the feeling of relief I experienced on finding that there was a train which reached Paris at six o’clock on the Monday morning. My mind was working in a fog. Beghin had said that I should not be able to leave on Saturday. Terrible! Monsieur Mathis would be angry. Could I get to Paris in time if I left on Sunday? Yes, thank God, I could! All was well.

I think that if anyone had suggested to me at that moment that I should not be able to leave on the Sunday, I should have laughed disbelievingly. But there would have been hysteria in that laugh for, as I sat on the floor beside my open suitcase, fear was clutching at the mechanism inside my chest, making my heart thud and my breathing short and sharp, as though I had been running. I kept swallowing saliva, feeling for some curious reason that by doing so I would stop my heart beating so. It made me terribly thirsty and after a while I got up, went to the washbasin, and drank some water out of the tooth glass. Then I went back and pushed the lid of my suitcase down with my foot. As I did so I felt the piece of paper Beghin had given me crackle in my pocket. I sat down on the bed.

I must have sat staring blankly at Beghin’s list for well over an hour. I read it and re-read it. The names became ciphers, meaningless arrangements of shapes. I shut my eyes, opened them, and read again. I did not know these people. I had spent one day in the hotel. It was a hotel with large grounds. I had exchanged nods with them at mealtimes. No more. With my bad memory for faces I could probably have passed all of them in the street without recognizing one. Yet one of the persons represented by those names had my camera. One of those who had nodded to me was a spy. One of them had been paid to make his or her way secretly into military zones, to take photographs of reinforced concrete and guns so that some day warships out at sea might safely and accurately fire shells to smash to pieces the concrete and the guns and the men who served them. And I had two days in which to identify that person.

Their names, I thought stupidly, looked very harmless.

Monsieur Robert Duclos

French

Nantes

Monsieur Andre Roux

French

Paris

Mademoiselle Odette

Martin

French

Paris

Miss Mary Skelton

American

Washington, D. C.

Mr. Warren Skelton

American

Washington, D. C.

Herr Walter Vogel

Swiss

Constance

Frau Hulde Vogel

Swiss

Constance

Major Herbert

Clandon-Hartley

English

Buxton

Mrs. Maria

Clandon-Hartley

English

Buxton

Herr Emil Schimler

German

Berlin

Albert Koche (manager)

Swiss

Schaffhausen

Suzanne Koche (wife)

Swiss

Schaffhausen

A similar list of guests might have been compiled from almost any other small pension in the south of France. There was the inevitable English army man and his wife. There were the Americans, not quite so inevitable, but by no means unusual. There were the Swiss, and there was the sprinkling of French. The solitary German was odd, but not unduly so. Swiss hotel managers and their wives were common enough.

What was I to do? Where should I start? Then I remembered Beghin’s instructions about the cameras. I was to find out which of them had cameras and then report. I seized on this positive line of thought eagerly.

The obvious method seemed to be to engage them in conversation one by one, or couple by couple, and bring up the subject of photography. But that was no use. Supposing the spy had already discovered that his photographs were missing, that instead of his pictures of concrete and guns he had some lively low-angle shots of a carnival at Nice? Even if he did not immediately realize that he had somebody else’s camera, he would know that something had gone wrong and be on his guard. Anyone attempting to get conversational on the subject of photography would excite his suspicions. I must proceed by less direct means.

I glanced at my watch. The time was a quarter to seven. From the window I could see that the beach was still occupied. There were a pair of shoes and a small sunshade lying on the strip of sand visible from my room. I combed my hair and went out.

Some people can strike up casual acquaintances with the greatest ease. They possess some mysterious flexible quality of mind that enables them to adjust their mental processes rapidly to conform with those of the strangers facing them. In an instant they have identified themselves with the stranger’s interests. They smile. The strangers respond. There is a question and a reply. A minute later they are friends, chatting away amicably of trifles.

I do not possess this engaging faculty. I do not speak at all unless spoken to. Even then, nervousness allied to a desperate wish to be friendly renders me either stiff and formal or over-effusive. As a result of this, strangers either think me morose or suspect me of trying to work a confidence trick.

As I walked down the stone steps to the beach, however, I made up my mind that, for once at any rate, I would have to shed my inhibitions. I must be confident and friendly, I must think of amusing things to say, I must manage the conversation, be subtle. I had work to do.