The Last Judgement

‘They wanted everything I knew, and to make sure I gave it, they told me everything they did know already. There was little I could add. They had a complete picture. Drop-points, meeting-points, names, addresses, numbers. I couldn’t believe it. Then they told me how they’d got it all. Your husband, they said. He told us everything. Jules must have been spying on us and listening and reading scraps of paper for months to have accumulated it all. It was a systematic, complete and cold betrayal. And he got out, scot-free.’

‘Who told you all this?’ Flavia said with sudden urgency.

‘The interrogating officer,’ she said. ‘Sergeant Franz Schmidt.’

Another pause greeted this remark as the old woman coolly assessed how they were taking her story, and whether it was being believed. Eventually she felt able to go on.

‘I never said anything, and they were prepared to take their time. But at the start of 1944 that changed. They were getting more panicked. They knew the invasion was on its way soon and they needed any result fast. Schmidt stepped up the pressure.’

She stopped, and in the half-light of the room pulled off the glove from her left hand. Flavia felt her throat rising in protest at the sight. Argyll looked, then turned away quickly.

‘Fifteen operations in all, I think it was, and Harry was the best there was. They wanted to give him a knighthood for his expertise. This hand was his greatest success with me. As for the rest...’

With enormous difficulty, she pulled the glove over the hand again. Even when the scarred, brown claw with its two remaining misshapen fingers had vanished underneath its covering, Flavia could still see it, and still felt sick. Nothing could bring her to offer any assistance.

‘But I survived, after a fashion. I was still in Paris at the Liberation. They couldn’t be bothered to send me east, and didn’t have time to shoot me before the troops arrived. As quickly as possible, I was shipped to England. To the hospital, the asylum, and finally here. Then you come; to remind me, and tell me it’s not all over yet.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Flavia said in a whisper.

‘I know. You needed information, and I’ve told you what I know. Now you must repay me by helping Jean.’

‘What happened afterwards? To your husband?’

She shrugged. ‘He got let off lightly. He came back to France after the war, expecting that nobody would know what had happened. But Jean and I had survived. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I couldn’t see him. Jean was behind the push to get him brought to justice. Not for revenge, but for the sake of the people who’d died. Despite everything, he felt it was like condemning his own father. The commission wrote to me; very reluctantly, I agreed to give evidence.

‘Fortunately it wasn’t necessary. When he was confronted with the facts and the promise of our testimony, Jules killed himself. Simple as that.’

‘And Arthur?’

‘He was better off where he was. He thought I was dead, and he had a good family to look after him. Better he didn’t know. I wrote to his foster-parents, and they agreed to keep him. What could I do for him? I couldn’t even look after myself. He needed to start afresh, without any memories from the past, of either his father or mother. I asked them to make sure he knew nothing of either of us. They agreed.’

‘Rouxel?’

She shook her head. ‘I didn’t want to see him. His memory of what I was like was all I had left. I couldn’t bear to have him come into my hospital room and see his face change into one of sympathetic horror the way yours did. I know. There’s nothing you could do. It’s an involuntary reaction. People can’t help it. I loved him, and he loved me; I didn’t want that destroyed by his seeing me. No love could survive that.’

‘Did he not want to see you?’

‘He respected my wishes,’ she said simply.

Something unsaid there, Flavia thought. ‘But surely...’

‘He was married,’ she said. ‘Not to a woman he loved, not someone like me. But he married when he thought I was dead. After the war he discovered the truth; he wrote to me, saying that if he’d been free... But he wasn’t. It was better like that. So I accepted Harry’s offer as well.’

‘Do you know anything about Hartung’s paintings?’ Argyll asked, changing the subject somewhat dramatically.

She looked puzzled. ‘Why?’

‘All this started off with a picture which belonged to him. Called The Death of Socrates. Did your husband give it to Rouxel?’

‘Oh, that. I remember that. Yes, he did. Just after the armistice. He decided that the Germans would probably take them anyway, so he gave some pictures away to friends for safe-keeping. Jean got that, to go with one he’d already been given. A religious one, that was. Jean was quite perplexed and didn’t really want it, I think.’

‘Did Hartung know about you and Rouxel?’