Soldier No More

staircase ahead of them, like one of the Chateau Peyrony's resident spectres.

But, ghost or not, she was beckoning them now.

Their destination, as soon as they'd reached the main landing at the head of the stairs, was clearly marked by the bright strip of light under the door in front of them, even before the duty ghost tapped on it.

'Entrez.'

At least the voice was thoroughly unghostlike, with only the slightest quaver of age beneath its feminine strength.

Roche followed Jilly Baker out of the gloom into the light.

The first thing he saw, other than a general impression of a room full of things which only its size prevented from seeming cluttered, was the fire burning in a grate, set in a white marble fireplace surmounted by the inevitable ormolu clock and a huge portrait of what looked like the Empress Eugenie.

'My dear Gillian—' the voice, with its strangely softened 'G', orientated him immediately to the speaker '—how good of you to come!'

Unlike Madame Goutard, the shopkeeper's wife, Madame Peyrony had never been a great beauty—the face was too dummy5

thin, the nose too Roman, even allowing for the depredations of time which had sharpened both. And the eye which settled on Roche, too, did not appraise him with anything like the once-upon-a-time might-have-been Goutard longing: either he was out of her class, too far below it for consideration, or sex had never figured largely in her calculations of worth and need.

' English, Madame? Je crois . . . ici on parle francais, n'est-ce pas?' The confidence had come back into Jilly's voice, and into her face.

'One speaks French to those who need to have French spoken to them, my dear—like the incorrigible Alexandra, who has a good ear, but no mind . . . and that young man, David Audley, who has too much mind, but no ear.' Her eyes, which had been darting back and forwards from Roche to Jilly, finally settled on Roche. 'But there are those who do not need such instruction, so I gather . . . . Introduce me, Gillian, my dear.'

There was something wrong with her English. It was idiomatically perfect, but there was something he couldn't pin down in her pronunciation that wasn't right. And yet, even after years of listening to Englishmen murder the French language, he couldn't make out just where Madame Peyrony was wounding the English one.

'Pardonnez-moi, Madame—I mean ...' Gillian looked at Roche desperately. 'Madame—Captain David Roche, of Supreme Headquarters NATO, attached OEECD liaison, dummy5

Allied Forces Central Europe, Fontainebleau.'

Roche almost smiled, almost wanted to hug her for trying to do her best for him with that mouthful. It was unfortunate that Lexy had already spoilt it, that was all.

'Captain?' The demotion unsettled her momentarily.

'Madame,' Roche willed himself forward to take the yellow hand, which was as thin-skinned as the carpet under his feet was thin, equally time-worn. 'The incorrigible Lady Alexandra somewhat anticipated my promotion to higher rank, I believe.'

She smiled at him then, showing small ivory-white teeth quite unlike Madame Goulard's yellow fangs; and the smile was what he wanted, because what he wanted was what she knew about the Lord of the Devil's River Bend, and betraying Lexy was a small price to pay for that.

'But a para nevertheless? Is that the English?' The smile mixed hope with doubt now. 'We never had a ... a parachute soldier through here during the war, so I am unfamiliar with the correct word.' Those two old witches have both got nephews with the paras in Algeria, remembered Roche.

Well—he would give her what she wanted, a para or a horse-marine, or a Bengal lancer if she wanted it.

'Paratrooper, Madame.' He didn't dare look at Jilly, he just hoped she wouldn't give him away, that she would let him lie carefully And there was Lexy's father's advice on that subject, even on that same lie: Tell a whopper and make a dummy5

proper job of it! '3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment.'

That was a big enough one, anyway: the 3rd had dropped at Suez last year, with Massu's 2ieme RPC.

She looked at him proudly. 'My nephew is a para, Captain Roche—at this moment in Algiers.'

'With Massu?' Roche didn't have to pretend to be impressed: the word from Suez had been that Massu and his men had been impressive.

'With Massu, yes.' She inclined her head slightly. 'And Bigeard.' Then she shifted her gaze to Jilly. 'And now you may leave us, Gillian my dear.'

Jilly blinked at her. 'Madame?'

'Sit down, Captain Roche,' commanded Madame Peyrony, pointing to the chair opposite her own, beside the fire.

'But Madame—' began Jilly huskily. 'Madame—'

Madame Peyrony transfixed her with a look, ' I do not need a chaperone, at my age . . . You are going to the Tower tonight—

is that not correct?'

The orgy!

'Yes, but—' Jilly tried to look at Roche.