The Old Vengeful

'And a girl?' Elizabeth's heart sank.

'A young girl. The sister of one of them, who was travelling with her brother, Miss Loftus.'

Elizabeth turned to Paul. 'Paul—?'

'Bloody marvellous!' Paul beamed at her, and then at Bouriennt. 'You're a magician, Bertrand. I never thought you'd find them, not in the time. But you have!'

'But. . . the girl, Paul?'

'Tom Chard mentioned a girl—obviously,' said Aske.

'Everything comes back to Tom Chard.'

'Not quite everything.' Paul cut back to the Frenchman, dismissing Aske. 'What happened, Bertrand?'

'Ah . . . now I am going to disappoint you! What happened is not at all clear... I have this friend in our society —a local history society, you understand, Miss Loftus—and he has a colleague who is an authority on the times hereabouts of the First Empire ... on the local administration under the Emperor Napoleon, and so on ... a man who knows his way round the records and documents of the period—'

'Bertrand—'

'All right. You are in a hurry, I know . . . The fact is, for security purposes the country was divided into small dummy3

districts, each with a police commandant, and the presence of this party was eventually reported to the officer at Chauny

—I say 'eventually', for it seems that they had lodged in one of the smaller towers here for ten days or more . . . the chateau as a whole had been derelict since the revolution, you understand . . . Yes, well... it was assumed that they were refractaires, and a party of police was sent to arrest them.

But when they searched the chateau they found that the birds had flown. Possibly they had been warned by the peasants ...

or perhaps they had a look-out. All that the gendarmes found was—a grave. A fresh grave.'

Elizabeth looked to Paul. 'Lieutenant Chipperfield, Paul?'

'Shh! Go on, Bertrand.'

Bourienne frowned at Paul. 'This was all routine so far, you must understand. Hunting deserters was one of their main tasks— French deserters . . . All through that previous winter, and into the spring, there had been a special drive to bring the conscripts to the colours as never before—every man or boy they could lay their hands on, the class of 1813 even. The whole of France was on the move, they said—the whole of Western Europe even. This was 1812, remember—'

'Russia,' said Aske. 'The great invasion! The dress rehearsal for 1941.' He nodded to Elizabeth. 'You remember what I said? This was the big year—1812!'

'The year of Salamanca,' said Paul. 'One of David Audley's maternal ancestors was killed at Salamanca, charging with Le Marchant's cavalry in Wellington's greatest victory, as he dummy3

never tires of telling us.'

'Greatest victory—phooey!' Aske sniffed derisively.

'Napoleon withdrew forty of his best battalions from Spain for Russia. Spain was a side-show, compared with Russia—

like Greece and North Africa were side-shows in 1941

compared with Russia. Once they'd dealt with Russia—

Napoleon and Hitler both—the rest was chicken-feed . . .

they'd have taken England next after that. In fact. . . in fact, the only difference between the year 1812 and the year 1941

is that at the very end of 1941 the Americans came in on our side . . . Whereas, in 1812 the Americans declared war on us, old boy!'

'This is Professor Wilder talking, presumably?' Outside his 1914 -18 War Paul wasn't so sure of himself.

'Professor Wilder and the facts.' Aske picked up Paul's uncertainty like a ?5 note in the gutter. 'Wilder says the trouble with us is that we've been brought up on Arthur Bryant and Nelson—we reckon we're winning the war from Trafalgar in 1805 onwards. But the fact is that by the summer of 1812 we were losing it. Bad harvests . . . riots in the cities—the Luddites breaking up the factories and burning the corn-ricks . . . the pound falling against the franc. . . and war with the United States . . . and then Napoleon leading the greatest army of the age against the Russians.' He shook his head. 'In 1812, when poor old Chipperfield was being planted here, we were losing, believe me, Mitchell.'

dummy3

'Hmmm. . .' Paul cut his losses at a stroke. 'So they found a grave, Bertrand. And did they dig it up?'

'They dug it up, yes.' Bourienne didn't quite know what to make of the Mitchell-Aske byplay. 'And that is when it started to cease to become routine, my friend.'

'How so? He died of natural causes, surely? Blood-poisoning or gangrene, or whatever?'

Bourienne waved a hand. 'What he died of, I do not know.

But there was a British naval officer's uniform coat buried with him—that is when the trouble started . . . en effet, that is when the records start. Because until then it was no more than a police matter.'