ribbon. Of all the things I would have expected to find in Dr. MacDonald's possession, this was the last. And, I would have bet a month's salary, the most useless. They looked like love letters and I didn't particularly relish the prospect of making myself conversant with the good doctor's youthful indiscretions but just at that moment I would have read Homer in the original if I thought it would be any good to me. I untied the bow on the ribbon.
Exactly five minutes later I was speaking on the phone to the General.
'I want to interview a certain Mme. Yvette Peugot who was working in the Pasteur Institute in Paris in 1945 and 1946. Not next week, not to-morrow, but now. This afternoon. Can you fix it, sir?'
'I can fix anything, Cavell,' the General said simply. 'Less than two hours ago the Premier put the entire resources of all the services at our disposal. He's as windy as hell. How urgent is this?'
'Maybe life-or-death urgent, sir. That's what I've got to find out. This woman appears to have been on very intimate terms with MacDonald for about nine months towards and after the end of the war. It's the one period of his life about which information is lacking. If she's still alive and traceable she may be able to fill in this period.'
'Is that all?' The voice was flat, disappointment barely concealed. 'What of the letters themselves?'
'Only read a couple so far, sir. Seem perfectly innocuous though not the sort of stuff I'd care to have read out in court if I had written it.'
'It seems very little to go on, Cavell.'
'A hunch, sir. More than that. It is possible that a page has been abstracted from the security dossier on MacDonald. The dates on those letters correspond to the missing page— if it is missing. And if it is I want to find out why.'
'Missing?' His voice crackled sharply over the wire. 'How could a page from a security dossier possibly be missing. Who would have — or have had — access to those dossiers?'
'Easton, Clandon, myself — and Cliveden and Weybridge.'
'Precisely. General Cliveden.' A significant pause. 'This recent threat to Mary to let her have your head on a charger: General Cliveden is the only man in Mordon who knows both who I am and the relationship between myself and Mary. One of the only two men with access to security dossiers. Don't you think you should be concentrating on Cliveden?'
'I think Hardanger should be concentrating on Cliveden. I want to see Mme. Peugot.'
'Very well. Hold on.' I held on and after some minutes his voice came again. 'Drive to Mordon. Helicopter there will fly you to Stanton airfield. Twin-seat jet night-fighter there. Forty minutes from Stanton to Paris. That suit you?'
'Fine. I'm afraid I've no passport with me, sir.'
'You won't require it. If Mme. Peugot is still alive and still in Paris she'll be waiting for you in Orly airport. That I promise. I'll see you when I return — I'm leaving for Alfringham in thirty minutes.'
He hung up and I turned away, the bundle of letters in my hand. I caught sight of Mrs. Turpin by the open door, her face expressionless. Her eyes moved from mire down to the packet of letters in my hand, then met mine again. After a moment she turned and disappeared. I wondered how long she had been there, looking and listening.
The General was as good as his word all the way through. The helicopter was waiting for me at Mordon. The jet at Stanton took exactly thirty-five hair-raising minutes to reach Orly airport. And Mme. Peugot, accompanied by a Parisian police inspector, was waiting for me in a private room there. Somebody, I thought, had moved very fast indeed.
As it turned out, it hadn't been so difficult to locate Mme. Peugot — now Madame Halle. She still worked in the same place as she had done in the later months of her acquaintanceship with MacDonald — the Pasteur Institute — and had readily agreed to come to the airport when the police had made plain the urgency. She was a dark, plump, attractive forty, and had readily smiling eyes. At that moment she was hesitant, unsure and slightly apprehensive, the normal reaction when police start taking an interest in you.
The French police officer, made the introductions. I said, wasting no time, 'We would be most grateful if you could give us some information about an Englishman whose acquaintance you made in the middle forties—'45 and '46, to be precise. A Dr. Alexander MacDonald.'
'Dr. MacDonald? Alex?' She laughed. 'He'd be furious to hear himself described as an Englishman. At least, he would have been. In the days when I knew him he was the most ardent Scottish — what do you call it?'
'Nationalist?'
'Of course. A Scottish Nationalist. Fervent, I remember. Forever saying, 'down with the old enemy'—England — and up with the old Franco-Scottish alliance.' But I do know he fought most gallantly for the old enemy in the last war, so perhaps he was not so terribly sincere.' She broke off and looked at me with an odd mixture of shrewdness and apprehension. 'He — he's not dead, is he?'
'No, madame, he is not.'
'But he is in trouble? Police trouble?' She was quick and clever, had seized at once on the almost imperceptible inflection in my voice.
' I'm afraid he may be. How and when did you first meet him, Madame Halle?'
'Two or three months before the war ended — the European war, I mean. Colonel MacDonald, as he was then, was sent to examine a munitions and chemical factory that had been run by the Germans for years at St. Denis. I was working in the research division of the same factory — not from choice, I assure you. I did not know then that Colonel MacDonald was himself a brilliant chemist. I took it upon myself to explain to him the various chemical processes and production lines and it wasn't until I'd finished the tour of the factory that I found out that he knew far more about it than I did.' She smiled. 'I think the gallant colonel had rather taken a fancy to me. And I to him.' I nodded. Judging from the highly combustible tone of her letters she was considerably understating the case.
'He remained for several months in the Paris area,' she continued. 'I don't quite know what his duties were, but they were mostly of a technical nature. Every free moment we had we spent together.' She shrugged. 'It's all so long ago, it seems another world. He returned to England for demobilisation and was back inside a week. He tried to find employment in Paris, but it was impossible. I think he eventually got some sort of research job with the British Government.'
'Did you ever know or hear or suspect anything shady or reprehensible about Colonel MacDonald?' I asked bluntly.
'Never. If I had I would not have associated with him.' The conviction of the words, the dignity of manner, made it impossible not to believe her. I had the sudden hollow feeling that perhaps the General had been right after all and that I was just wasting valuable time — if, on bitter reflection, my time could be called valuable — on a wild-goose chase. Cavell returning home with his tail between his legs.
'Nothing?' I persisted. 'Not the slightest thing you can think of?'
'You wish to insult me, perhaps?' Her voice was quiet.
'I'm sorry.' I changed my approach. 'May I ask if you were in love with him?'
'I take it Dr. MacDonald didn't send you here,' she said calmly. 'You must have learnt of me through my letters. You know the answer to your question.'
'Was he in love with you?'
'I know he was. At least he asked me to marry him. Ten times at least. That should show, no?'
'But you didn't marry,' I said. 'You lost touch with him. And if you were both in love and he asked you to marry him, may I ask why you refused? For you must have refused.'
'I refused for the same reason that our friendship ended. Partly, I'm afraid because, in spite of his protestations of love, he was an incurable philanderer, but mainly because there were profound differences between us and we were neither of us old enough or experienced enough to let our heads rule our hearts.'
'Differences? May I ask what differences, Madame Halle?'
'You are persistent, aren't you? Does it matter?' She sighed. 'I suppose it does to you. You'll just keep on until you get the answer. There's no secret about it and it's all very unimportant and rather silly.'
'I'd still like to hear it.'
'No doubt. France, you will remember, was in a most confused state politically after the war. We had parties whose views could not have been more divergent, from the extreme right to the very furthest left. I am a good Catholic and I was of the Catholic party of the Right.' She smiled deprecatingly. 'What you could call a true-blue
