The Roses of Picardie Read online

  When he arrived back in Cambridge, he started to inquire after Clovis. Before the fall of France he had received two or three letters in which Clovis wryly congratulated him on his good fortune in remaining at Cambridge and deplored the boredom and discomfort entailed by his own duties as a common infantryman of the Line – though he was at least lucky enough to be stationed some hundreds of miles behind it. The last of these letters, written some time in April 1940, had stated that Clovis, already promoted Corporal, was being considered for a Commission in some ancillary corps, even the approximate nature of which the censorship forbade him to reveal. All correspondence between Balbo and Clovis had then ceased, and Balbo, having verified with some difficulty that Clovis had not come to England among the Free French either as officer or private man, had resigned himself to hearing nothing more until the war ended. Well, now it had ended, there had been ample time for Clovis to send word, and no word had come.

  The first step which Balbo took was to write to an old school friend, a Captain Christopher d’Arcy Carr, who was on the staff of the Military Attaché in Paris. Balbo gave the designation of the unit with which Clovis had been serving when last heard of and expressed the hope that somehow or other the name of du Bourg de Maubeuge, Vicomte du Touquet, might perhaps be traced even in the chaotic aftermath of two invasions of France. Some weeks later Captain d’Arcy Carr wrote back to say that Clovis had apparently been granted an Emergency Commission in the rank of full Lieutenant in May 1940, his duties, which sounded dubious to say the least, being connected with the ‘constraint and reassurance of civilians in the event’ (by then the reality) ‘of a German breakthrough’; or in other words, as Captain d’Arcy Carr opined, Clovis had been one of the many chosen at that time to exert the prestige of a uniformed French Officer in persuading the French population to accept and even collaborate with, the victorious Germans. Whether or not Clovis had undertaken this invidious task willingly remained obscure; but it was quite clear, from the records left by the collaborating Police, that a certain ‘Chief Inspector Le Vicomte du Touquet, former Lieutenant of the Provost Corps’, had been very active in Amiens, from October 1940 to the summer of 1944, in controlling and disciplining such elements of the citizenry (particularly the lower elements) as were dissident from the Vichy régime or otherwise embarrassing to Marshal Pétain’s Administration. Chief Inspector du Touquet, it appeared, had been particularly adroit in extracting information from whores, petty criminals and keepers of estaminets, and in using it to seek out, destroy or delate to the Gestapo urban cells of the predominantly left-wing Resistance. Not surprisingly, the Chief Inspector had disappeared during the time when the spearhead of the Allied advance was thrusting towards Paris (though whether by his own agency or that of the hostile Maquis was not known) and had not been heard of since.

  So he found a use for his knowledge of the streets, Balbo had thought bitterly, and for the friends we made together that summer: well aware of their needs, vices and vulnerabilities, he had bullied, lulled, blackmailed or cajoled them into betraying their countrymen. Then Balbo inquired no more of Clovis and would perhaps in time have forgotten – had not Clovis turned up one evening, grinning rattily, behind the bar of the Hotel Terminus-Gruber in Strasbourg, whither Balbo had gone to attend an international conference of biochemists in September 1948. Appearances had been against him, Clovis declared next day, when he was off duty and they had a chance to talk privately. True, he was still using an alias (Baudouin Boule), and admittedly the reason why he worked in Strasbourg was that he liked to have a frontier handy (not that crossing into French-occupied Germany would change anything much); but in fact he was in little danger, having been in real trouble only with the fanatical left and being now forgotten (he thought) even by them, as they’d had plenty of fatter fish to fry during the last three years. In a year or two at most he would be able to resume his own name and identity…though for a while he might be prudent to stay away from Amiens. All of which was all very well, Balbo replied; but if he was to believe what he was told, Clovis had in fact double-crossed and betrayed his own people and the patriotic army of the Resistance. Even if, as Clovis claimed, he was in trouble only with the extreme left, that must be because others had shorter memories or (now the war was over and things were looking up) had assumed easier attitudes; but lapse of time and the apathy of the self-indulgent could not disguise or excuse Clovis’ wartime treachery.

  ‘You do not, mon vieux, understand.’

  ‘Understand what?’

  ‘How it was in those days of the Occupation. The Resistance – the Maquis – some of it consisted of brave and good men who wished only to free France from the Boche. But much of it, mon vieux, was made up of bad men, men of the left, who wished to remove the Boche only in order to impose their own brand of piggery. And indeed, when the British and Americans and de Gaulle came and freed us, such men for a time succeeded in all the confusion – until the British and the Americans and de Gaulle saw what was up and stopped it. Now, it was these bad men of the left – and only them – whom I myself had striven to be rid of.’

  ‘I don’t follow you at all, Clovis.’

  ‘Then listen, my dear, it is very easy to explain. You remember the people who were our friends in Amiens years ago? The tarts and the guttersnipes and the hucksters and the people of the fairground? The keepers of estaminets and the like?’

  ‘Indeed I remember them.’

  ‘Now, what these people wanted was to live as discreetly and quietly as they could under the Germans until the Allies came to free them and restore France to what she was in 1939. What they did not want was for the so-called Resistance to make trouble by annoying the Germans and then later to claim the right, as fighters against the Germans to impose their filthy politics when once the Germans were gone. So they came to me, these people who had been your friends and mine, and they said: “M’sieur du Touquet, you at least understand us. There is this man here and that woman there who are upsetting the Germans by hostile acts and making life more difficult for all. This man and that woman say they are fighting for our freedom, but we shall have that all in good time when the Allies come. Meanwhile we want peace – and we do not want this man and that woman, who are spoiling what little we have left to enjoy now and will assuredly spoil our freedom when the Allies bring it later. Alors, M’sieur du Touquet,” our old friends would conclude, “you are a police officer of the French Government: please rid us of this man and that woman.”’

  ‘And so they informed, and you…you turned “this man here and that woman there” over to the Gestapo?’

  ‘A neat way of being rid of the nuisance.’

  ‘A betrayal of patriots. Collaboration with your country’s enemies. Treachery.’

  ‘But the Germans were no longer our enemies. We were officially at peace with them. I was employed by the Government of France to help bring to the French people the good order which they wanted. Our enemies were those who destroyed good order – “this man and that woman” of the Resistance.’

  ‘These people who wanted good order under the Germans so far you have only instanced the rabble of Amiens.’

  ‘Our friends once.’

  ‘Yes. But rabble. Who else wanted good order under the occupying Germans? No one, we were told in England.’

  ‘Then you were told wrong in England. Mon vieux, nearly everyone wanted good order under the occupying Germans. Nearly everyone was ready, as you call it, to collaborate. Only, when the Allies came, it was considered advisable to pretend otherwise – and to turn against people like me, who were conspicuous by their position and because of that position could not pretend to have been other than they were. I myself anticipated being turned against in this manner by disappearing just in time.’

  ‘And now you’ve popped up here as a barman in Strasbourg. Well, Clovis: convince me that, as you say, nearly everyone in France wanted good order under the Germans, and I will exonerate you of having betrayed your country.’

&nb
sp; ‘But how to convince you? If only you had been here at the time. It is no good now. No one much bothers to speak against those like me any more, but no one comes either to speak for us, to admit that everybody, then, thought and behaved much as we did… But I think I see a way to convince you. Mon vieux, think carefully and honestly, and then tell me: what would have happened if the Germans had occupied England? Some men would have got away to be the Free English Army and to return with the Americans, but what of those who were left behind?’

  For some minutes Balbo thought carefully and honestly as he had been invited to think. Then he said: ‘Most of us, I believe, would have wanted good order under the Germans. The English would have been ready…even anxious…to collaborate. I pray to God that this is not true of me, but I suspect that it may well be. It is, in any case, true of a huge majority. Clovis, I acquit you. You gave the people of your country only what they wanted.’

  And so relations had been (albeit a bit cautiously on Balbo’s part) renewed. In 1949 Clovis, who had resumed his proper name and was now manager of a small hotel in Nancy, came over to England to the May Week Ball at Lancaster, bringing with him a soft and haughty red-haired girl of six feet and six inches whom he had previously billed as ‘Mlle de Stermaria, my fiancée – pots of cash’.

  The evening was gay and drunken; it revived the fondness that had been between the two men as boys, it removed any mistrust that still lingered in Balbo after the meeting in Strasbourg, and it marked, though neither of course could know it, the high point in the personal and professional fortunes of both.

  For after 1949 their respective affairs had begun to go downhill, in Balbo’s case the decline was gradual and at first hardly perceptible; in Clovis’ case much sharper. The trouble with both men had been dissatisfaction with what they were doing. Balbo, quite simply, had become bored with biochemistry as he came to realize that his line of research would reveal nothing new, would upset nothing old; was, in a word, at an impasse, leaving him with nothing to do but teach elementary formulae to first-year undergraduates. Clovis, for his part, had found it impossible to tolerate the airs and total lack of graces of the petty bourgeois salesmen and tourists who frequented his hotel; he was sacked, and deserved to be, a few months after the May Ball; and on top of this he was jilted by Mlle de Stermaria, whose parents had lost their money and who must now look out for fatter birds than Clovis (though sadly admitting to him that nowhere would she find her game so well hung). Whereas Balbo took refuge from his disappointments in a discerning (if never more than amateur) taste for the visual arts, and in a fastidious (if ever more copious) taste for the wines of Burgundy, Clovis’ retreat was into melodramatic rows and neat absinthe. Reared and nearly crushed in a horribly hard school, having fought every inch of his dirty and difficult way, Clovis had not the stamina left to cope with serious setbacks; and any chance he had of surviving on the managerial level which he had attained was destroyed by a sudden spate of denunciations (skilfully delayed till he had thought all danger was passed) from wartime partisans who were now bustling in regional politics. Once more Clovis disappeared into hiding…whence he emerged, nearly five years later, sodden with Pernod and self-pity.

  Fortunately or otherwise Balbo, whose father’s death had left him with a considerable private fortune and whose own deterioration was still vinous rather than spirituous, had been on hand to pick up the remnants. He had fed and clothed Clovis, indulged him with a long holiday in England, employed an expensive French lawyer to ascertain that his friend was no longer subject to public prosecution or private vendetta, returned with him to France when, in 1956, amnesty was guaranteed, and settled him in lodgings at Le Crotoy, where Clovis obtained employment as a waiter. Reform lasted only a matter of months. Rejected both as a lodger (too aristocratic in his habits) and as a waiter (too degraded in his habits) Clovis disappeared again, on this occasion with £2000 which he had coaxed as a loan from Balbo ‘to buy a little shop’.

  By the time Clovis turned up once more in rags and repentance two years later, Balbo himself was ruined. Or at least comparatively so. The family bank, in which most of his fortune was involved, had suddenly broken one summer’s morning, and when the fragments were counted and the few reckonable ones reassembled, Balbo was told that his private income, once £6000 per annum, would now be a bare £600. He was no longer in a position seriously to subsidize Clovis, and Clovis, when he heard the news, displayed admirable phlegm and understanding.

  ‘Never mind, mon vieux. I will just go away.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You will give me my fare back to France, I think.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And some money for food on the way.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And a little to have when I am home…wherever “home” may be.’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘And then no more.’

  ‘No more. Let me know how you go on…’

  But Balbo had heard nothing from Clovis of how he went on…until, years later in 1973, he read of ‘Monsieur du Touquet’s’ death in a French newspaper which he had bought while on a cheap and brief holiday in Nîmes. The paper said that there was difficulty in identifying the corpse; so Balbo had gone to Aix (at grievous expense and inconvenience) to perform the last duty to the friend whom he had not seen for fifteen years by attesting the well-remembered birthmark on the left thigh. A few months afterwards, he himself had finally forfeited his lectureship in biochemistry and with it, his Fellowship at Lancaster, having for the fifth or sixth time fallen flat on his face from brandy in the middle of a chemical demonstration and employed violently obscene language while failing to get to his feet. And now, here he was, a year after Clovis’ death, reading all about the poor sod in this nosy French paper…while he sat in the anteroom of a Cretan brothel, waiting to shag some overblown whore. With only £600 a year and the little he earned by teaching English, he couldn’t afford to be too fancy; cheap it might be living in Crete (provided he stuck to the sleazier restaurants and to Greek cognac at 6p a tot), but a fellow had to watch his treats. Where was that bloody Madame anyhow? And what, thought Balbo, scrunching up the Paris Fiche in his irritation and impatience, is the ‘explanation both fascinating and shocking’ of Clovis’ being hacked up which this filthy mag is going to publish next week?

  Well, if Balbo was right (thought Balbo) and if all this history was anything to go by, it was pretty obvious what was coming next. Yet surely not; after all this time it surely couldn’t be that – even in a silly season series in the Paris Fiche. Well (Balbo thought) wait and see.

  ‘My gracious, you are tearing this French book.’

  The indignant Madame eased the Paris Fiche from Balbo’s grip.

  ‘Ton-ton will be furious. She ’as it special from Parigi every week.’

  ‘I’d like to see next week’s copy when I come.’

  ‘But you ’ave torn this one.’

  ‘It’s next week’s I want to see. Are you letting me have Tonton now?’

  ‘No. Ton-ton is with another client. You can ’ave Cleo for three hundred drachs or Electra for two.’

  ‘What’s Cleo got that Electra hasn’t?’

  ‘One big clitoris. It stands up stiff if you rub it.’

  Just for a moment Balbo was tempted. But 100 drachmae was a lot of money in Heracleion; lots of lodging and lots of Greek cognac.

  ‘Make it Electra. Perhaps she’d like to shave first?’

  ‘What dat?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Balbo rose. ‘Bring me to Electra forthwith. And please ask Ton-ton to keep me next week’s edition of that mag.’

  Paris Fiche August 17, 1974

  THE CASE OF THE DEAD GAMESTER Part III

  Today our special correspondent continues and concludes his sensational investigation of the strange death of the Vicomte du Touquet in Aix-en-Provence a year ago.

  With what, then, are we presented in this weird affair?

  First, as readers of my initial article will r
ecollect, we are presented with the Vicomte’s miraculous gambling win in the Casino of Aix-en-Provence on the evening of 25 August of last year – a win, be it noted, which was accompanied by curious utterances from the Vicomte…utterances which implied to those who heard them that the Vicomte was in some fashion supernaturally protected or guided – and also, perhaps, threatened. Nor should we neglect to remind ourselves that there was irregularity, indeed mysteries in the Vicomte’s manner of entering the gaming-rooms; that, while he had a ticket, he had apparently neither purchased it nor been given it, but had simply…obtained it…without any knowledge on the part of the vigilant clerks of admission.

  Secondly, we are presented with the bloody butchery of the Vicomte a short time after he left the Casino with his enormous roll of notes – notes which the butcher did not attempt to remove from the cadaver.

  And thirdly, as the charming readers of last week’s Paris Fiche will vouch, we are presented with the Curse of the Roses of Picardie; with twelve ‘glistering’ and fateful rubies, first acquired by the Vicomte’s ancestors, after a sequence of murders and treacheries, early in the twelfth century, later assembled into a necklace by a Master Jeweller of Venice in the fifteenth century – twelve rubies, I say, which bestowed down the generations both pre-eminence of power and prematurity of death upon the Counts of La Tour d’Abbéville. The Rubies continued in the family, a legacy of mingled calamity and prosperity, until the mid-seventeenth century, when they were purloined from a frolicsome Countess by an opportunist painter, who gave them, on his death bed, to a Huguenot maid, one Constance Fauvrelle, who, in her turn, married a suitor called Comminges and then disappeared. Since then the Rubies have been seen neither by the Counts of La Tour d’Abbéville, nor by anyone else who is known to us.