The Old Vengeful

—'

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'Oh—the clothes are okay—trust Faith to go for the county look . . . But you've turned into your younger sister, and I've become a baby-snatcher—'

The man who could see, could kill—

'Isn't that the Channel, Paul—?'

'On Madame's account?' This was to Madame Faith Audley, not to the nameless madame who had arrived with her, pressed neatly, but obviously not credit-worthy.

'I must settle up with you, Faith—'

'Settle up? Not bloody likely! David will pay—or Jack Butler will pay, don't you worry! You can't know what pleasure this gives me. Elizabeth—soaking them, for what they've done to you . . . Take the money and run, Elizabeth—'

Expensive luggage, already packed with her new clothes, from the skin upwards—

Polite cough. 'Madame's cosmetics are all in the vanity case.

And I have included both the Rimmel and the Clinique—the Clinique is not cheap, for the eye make-up, but it lasts very well—'

'All that?' Paul goggled at the cases, having already goggled dummy3

at Elizabeth. 'It looks like, we're not going away—we're running away! Is that what you've got in mind, Elizabeth?'

'I don't even know where we're going, Paul.'

'Isn't that the Channel, Paul—?'

He craned his neck round her. 'Looks very much like that, yes.'

'But I haven't got my passport.' Panic. 'I haven't even got a passport, Paul!'

He felt inside his breast-pocket. 'One passport. Though whether they'll recognise you from the picture we rustled up is another matter—'

The Frenchman in the funny little office on the even funnier little airfield regarded Madame— Miss Elizabeth Jane Loftus

— Occupation— Secretary— Place of birth— Portsmouth—

Residence— England—with the honest doubt any functionary should have had when faced with an enlarged press photograph of E. Loftus, as she had appeared in the Amazons

'A' Hockey Team (captain), and E. Loftus's younger sister, as processed by Madame Hortense and Monsieur Pierre, of Guildford, and dressed by Style, also of Guildford, and Madame Audley, of The Old House, Steeple Horley.

'Miss Loftus is my secretary,' said Paul, deadpan and confident, observing the Frenchman's incredulity and offering his own passport in explanation, alongside hers.

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The Frenchman looked at Paul, and then at his passport, and then at Paul again.

'Dr—Mitchell—'

Paul Lefevre Mitchell, Elizabeth read upside down—before the Frenchman turned the page. But then she decided that, however much she wanted to know the official description of Paul's occupation, it might seem inappropriate for his secretary to be interested in such detail.

'A business trip, Dr Mitchell?'

The false insouciance of the question first surprised Elizabeth, since she didn't think they bothered with such formalities any more. Then she felt insulted by it, in the guise of Dr Mitchell's secretary, and started to bristle.

'Yes,' said Paul. 'That is to say . . .'

The Frenchman caught Elizabeth's frown and quailed slightly.

'Historical research,' said Paul.

'Ah—yes!' The Frenchman studied Paul's passport again, almost gratefully, as though to confirm something he had known all along but had now skilfully established by interrogation. 'But of course!'

It occurred to Elizabeth that she might also feel flattered—or that Madame Hortense and Faith Audley between them deserved the credit for whatever insulting thoughts had passed through the man's mind—and then she felt a wave of dummy3

contempt for herself at such silly imaginings.

'Un moment!' The man looked around for something, and didn't find it, and vanished quickly through a door behind him with both passports still in his hand.

'Either they've had some trouble here—' murmured Paul out of the corner of his mouth '—or we're the first English to land on this field since 1940, and they've forgotten what to do.'

The sound of scurrying came through the open door.

'And either they're going to arrest us on suspicion of being escaping criminals, or they've lost their bloody stamp.' There was a hint of savagery in the murmur. 'But either way they'll remember us now, blast it!'

'Does that matter?'