Reginald Hill - The Collaborators

‘English,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Not at all,’ said Zeller. ‘I have no prejudice.’

He smiled then let his gaze fall to the case which Melchior had left on the table.

He read the inscription and said, ‘Good Lord. Is that…?’

‘What? Oh, yes. Dear Marcel. I was very young of course. A child. And he was old…ah, that cork-lined bedroom…’

He spent the next hour idly reminiscing about the past. His conversation was liberally laced with references to great figures of the worlds of art and literature. Nor was his familiarity altogether feigned. Though a gadfly, he’d been fluttering around the Left Bank too long not to have been accepted as a denizen.

Zeller was clearly impressed. Melchior soon had him placed as an intelligent and reasonably educated man by German standards, but culturally adolescent. Paris was to him the artistic Mecca which held all that was most holy. He needed a guide, Melchior needed a protector. They were made for each other.

But he mustn’t overdo it. Was that a flicker of doubt in those lovely blue eyes as he mentioned that his mother, a laundress in Vincennes, had been mistress to both Renoir and Zola? He quickly asked a question about the German’s family. The story which came back of a widowed mother living a reclusive life in the family castle high above the Rhine had to be true or Zeller’s invention outstripped his own!

‘Major Zeller. I thought it was you.’

A black Mercedes had drawn in at the kerb close to their pavement table. A man was looking out of the open rear window. He had a heavy, florid face with watery eyes in which hard black pupils glistened like beads of jet. Melchior felt something unpleasantly hypnotic in their gaze. Perhaps Zeller felt it also for he rose with evident reluctance from his chair and went to the car. But when he spoke, his tone wasn’t that of a man controlled.

‘Ah, Colonel Fiebelkorn. On leave? I hope you have long enough to take in all the sights.’

Melchior recognized aristocratic insolence when he heard it.

‘The interesting ones.’ The cold eyes slipped to Melchior. ‘A guide is always useful. Why don’t you introduce me to your friend, major?’

‘This is Abwehr business,’ said Zeller coldly. But Melchior had already come forward. He examined Fiebelkorn with interest. In his fifties, a powerful personality, he guessed. In the lapel of his civilian jacket he wore a tiny silver death’s head. Too, too Gothic!

‘Maurice Melchior,’ he said, holding out his hand.

‘Walter Fiebelkorn,’ said the German, taking it and squeezing gently.

Good Lord, thought Melchior. Two out of two! If all German officers were like this pair, this could yet be France’s finest hour!

‘I’m glad the security of the Fatherland is in such safe hands,’ said Fiebelkorn. ‘Major, Monsieur Melchior. Till we meet again.’

As the car drew away, Melchior said testingly, ‘Nice man.’

‘If you can think that, you’re a fool.’

‘Oh dear. And that will never do if I’m to be a secret agent, will it?’

His boldness worked. Zeller laughed and took his arm.

‘Let’s see if we can find something better suited to your talents,’ he said.

As the summer ended and the sick time of autumn began, Pauli caught measles. Soon afterwards Céci went down with them too. It was a worrying time but at least it focused Janine’s mind outward from her daily increasing fears for Jean-Paul.

There were all kinds of rumours about French prisoners, the most popular being that now the war was over they’d be sent home any day. But the long trains had rolled eastward since then carrying millions into captivity. Only the sick and the maimed came home, but at least most families with a missing man had learned if he were dead or alive.

But Jean-Paul Simonian’s name appeared on no list.

It was to her father that Janine turned for support and sympathy. She had never forgotten the look on her mother’s face when she’d run into the shop those seven years before and announced joyously that she and Jean-Paul were to be married. It had been her father then who had comforted her and made her understand just how many of his wife’s prejudices had been roused in a single blow.

Briefly, by being an anti-clerical, intellectual, left-wing Jewish student, Jean-Paul Simonian was offensive in every particular. The fact that his religious targets included Judaism was a small mitigation, and getting a job as a teacher was a slightly larger one. Charm, which he always had, and children, which they quickly had, had finally sown the seeds of a truce with his mother-in-law, but it was a delicate growth and peculiar in that Jean-Paul’s absence seemed to threaten it more than his presence had ever done.

Louise Crozier’s attitude to the Germans was soon another point of issue.

‘That nice lieutenant from the Lutétia was asking after the children this morning,’ said Madame Crozier one lunchtime.

‘The fat Boche? What business is it of his?’ said Janine.

‘He was only being polite,’ retorted her mother. ‘You might try it too. Politeness never hurt anyone. He always comes in on pastry day and asks for three of your brioches. I told him you hadn’t done any. He wasn’t at all put out but asked, very concerned, how the children were. I think he’s charming.’

‘He’s a pig like the rest of them,’ said Janine, who was tired and irritable. She had got very little sleep the previous night. ‘I don’t see why you encourage them to come into the shop.’

‘Don’t talk stupid!’ said her mother. ‘The war’s over, so who’s the enemy now? All right, the Germans are here in Paris, but they’ve behaved very correctly, you can’t deny that. All that talk about burning and looting and raping! Why, the streets are safer now than they’ve ever been!’

‘How can you talk like that!’ demanded Janine. ‘They’ve invaded our country, killed our soldiers. They nearly killed me and the kids. They’ve probably killed my husband or at best they’ve locked him up. And you talk as if they’ve done us a favour by coming here!’

‘I don’t think your mother really meant that, dear,’ said Claude Crozier mildly.

‘Permit me to say for myself what I mean!’ said his wife. ‘Listen, my lady, I run a business here. I don’t pick my customers, they pick me. And we don’t have to like each other either. But I tell you this, there’s a lot of our French customers I like a lot less than Lieutenant Mai.’

‘Maman,’ said Pauli at the door. ‘Céci’s crying.’

55

‘Shall I go?’ offered Louise.

‘No thanks,’ said Janine. ‘She doesn’t speak German yet.’

She left the room, pushing her son before her.

‘She gets worse,’ said Madame Crozier angrily. ‘I don’t know where she gets it from. Not my side of the family, that’s sure.’

‘It’s a worrying time for her what with the children being ill and no news of Jean-Paul,’ said her husband.

‘If you ask me, she’ll be better off if she never gets any news of him,’ said the woman.

‘Louise! Don’t talk like that!’

‘Why not?’ said Madame Crozier, a little ashamed and therefore doubly defiant. ‘It was a mistake from the start.’

‘He’s a nice enough lad,’ said Crozier. ‘And there was never any fuss about religion. The children are being brought up good Catholics, aren’t they?’

‘That’s no credit to him,’ replied Madame Crozier, who had never seen what consistency had to do with a reasoned argument. ‘You can’t respect a man who doesn’t respect his own heritage, can you? There’s someone come into the shop. Are you going to sit on your backside all day?’