Nice airport was swarming with would-be skiers off some cancelled or diverted flight. The floors were piled with tartan-coloured luggage and skis in long red plastic cases, the desks surrounded by suntanned men in short fur jackets of the sort women wore to the 1953 Coronation.
Maxim and Agnes hired a Citroën Deux-Chevaux and, after a few mistakes, untangled themselves from the complex of fast new coast roads and began weaving up into the hills behind the city. For the first twenty miles the land was all used up, busy and untidy with olive groves on every slope, red-tiled villas, garages, souvenir shops and pylons. But after that it thinned out, and the rock bones of the hillsides showed through.
"The French," Agnes said, as they passed a very old farmhouse, "let their buildings flourish but keep the trees very much pruned and in their place. In Britain it's the other way round: it's an offence to enlarge your house or cut down your trees. What a basis forentente."
Maxim smiled and went on winding the bouncy little can of a car around the sharpening bends. Above, the sky was a hard cold blue, and against it they could suddenly see the place they had come to visit. And miles before they got there, it could see them.
The Chateau de Carette had always been small, by castle standards. Now it was just the tall square keep, a shaft of grainy honey-coloured stone rising firmly out of a rabble of extra buildings and wings that had been built on down the years. There was almost no sign of the curtain wall and its gatehouse that had originally defined the boundaries, but Maxim could see just where it must have led around the subtle curves and advantages of the hilltop. A soldier's eye is the same, whether he's positioning a laser target designator or a frightened peasant with a crossbow.
The rough driveway – the French don't take gravel seriously – led around to a small door set in one corner of a newish wing. A worn Citroen Safari was parked untidily by the edge of a bank of rough grass that slid down towards the valley. Maxim put the Deux-Chevaux in beside it.
"He's watching us," Agnes said suddenly.
"Yes."
"Do you feel it, too?"
"Not particularly. But he would be; it's what the place was built for." The keep reared above them, its narrow top windows still holding an all-round view: down the valley, up the valley, across the hills to either side.
The arched door, criss-crossed with ironwork, opened just before they knocked on it. A dour old man-servant poked his head out and grunted at them.
"Nous sommes M'mselle Algar et Major de Chasseurs Maxim"Maxim said in a very flat accent. He had already learnt that Agnes spoke the language almost perfectly, but she was letting him lead.
"Vous avez des cartes de visite, M'sieur, M'mselle?" The old boy had wet blue eyes and the look of a Dracula with indigestion.
Solemnly, they both handed him calling-cards. What on earth does Agnes put on hers? Maxim wondered. They were led down a stone corridor into a wide reception room, and motioned to stay there.
The interior of the keep had been torn out, or possibly fallen down, and rebuilt recently in a more-or-less mediaeval style. But real money had been spent: you don't pick up floor beams over twenty feet long just by strolling around Cannes market. The furniture was thick, dark, square, and the walls partly rough-plastered, partly raw stone that felt slightly warm to the touch, the way southern stone does even in winter.
Agnes was humming: "Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen…"
The servant came back and led them upstairs, breathing in dry gasps like the swish-swish of a stiff broom. At each floor, the glimpses of decor got more and more personal: thick rugs in front of fireplaces that were obviously used, the sparkle of silver and glassware.
The last flight was a steep stone newel curling up a small turret at one corner. The old man stayed at the bottom, wheezing loudly.
At first sight, Colonel de Carette was both dapper and plump. He was shortish and Maxim knew he was just about sixty. The face was round but not fat, with a sharp nose and very expressive thick eyebrows. He had a neat little moustache, still a lot of silvery-black hair and he could never be anything but French, or think of trying to be.
"M'mselle Algar. "He brushed her hand with his lips. "Enchanté. And Major Maxim." They shook hands. "Will you take a glass of wine? It is from the region only, so you will not expect too much…" The bottle was waiting, misted with cold, on a silver tray. He poured three glasses.
"May I ask you not to smoke? The doctors…" he waved a hand. "And I believe the weather in England hasn't been too good? We even had a few flakes around the hills here. But I think perhaps wesee more snow than most of England." Beyond the tall windows on the east wall they could see a grey corner of the Mediterranean and then the jagged white peaks lifting out of a hazy horizon. The Ligurian Appenines, far across the Italian frontier.
The room was the whole top floor, with windows on all sides and a fireplace with a small wood fire burning in between the two on the west wall. It was low-ceilinged, for its size, and obviously de Carette's private hideout. There was no mock-medievalism about the furniture and panelling, just comfort and a respectable untidiness: piles of books and papers but no dirty glasses or full ashtrays. On a big table at the north end, dozens – maybe hundreds – of model soldiers were laid out in the formal patterns of an eighteenth-century battle.
Maxim glanced at Agnes and wondered if she was thinking what he was: we're privileged to be met in this room instead of downstairs. That means he's going to talk to us. It doesn't mean he's going to tell us the truth.
De Carette chattered on, pointing at views through the window, picking up little silver and china ornaments and showing them to Agnes. His English was very fluent, contrasting with his French habit of cocking his head, bird-like, at a fresh angle for every new phrase.
When they had finished the first glass, he poured refills and then they all sat down. Now it begins, Maxim thought. De Carette had dressed the part carefully, in a dark green velvet smoking jacket over narrow check trousers, a precisely folded silk kerchief at his throat.
"And what, if it not is a secret, is a major of the light infantry – I believe you said you were achasseur? You know of course that I was once of the Chasseurs d'Afrique? – what is he doing in Number 10 Downing Street?"
"What's any major doing without a command?"
"Yes… it'can be an… anuncertain rank."
"It can last a long time."
"But for you, obviously it will not." It was politely put. He didn't ask Agnes what she did, so he probably knew. There would be well-placed friends in London.
"And now, what may I do for you?"
They had talked over this moment and hadn't managed to think of any better tactic than honesty, though Agnes had certainly tried.
Maxim began his party recitation. "A couple of years ago, a man called Bob Etheridge died in Montreal. When he knew he was dying, he wrote a letter to a man in our Ministry of Defence, Gerald Jackaman." But de Carette gave no flicker of recognition. He smiled and nodded. "Jackaman committed suicide last November. His widow took the letter and – we now know – offered to sell it to the Russians. Whether or not they have it, we have no idea. Somebody killed her. We do know the letter says something about Professor John White Tyler. We hoped you might be able to tell us what could be in it."
"Ah yes. John is somebody quite important, now."
Agnes said: "He's coming up to some delicate negotiations on European defence, soon. Of course, we'd rather you didn't spread that around."
De Carette smiled again, accepting that she had passed a little of the responsibility onto him. "Yes… John would be good for that work… But why do you ask me?"
"You, Tyler and Etheridge were the only survivors of that last Long Range Desert Group patrol," Maxim said. "It's the only thing that connects you. He doesn't mention either of you in his book again."
"You might always ask John himself."
"We may have to," Agnes said. "But that won't stop the Other Side, if they haven't got the letter, coming and asking you. They can read books, too."
De Carette's eyebrows leapt into a sardonic slant. "Are you trying to frighten me, Miss Algar?"
"Am I succeeding?"
But he just sipped his wine and cocked his head back at Maxim. "This letter seems… like the jewel one takes from the idol and then, whoever owns it, he must die. What did poor Etheridge die from?"
"Drink."
De Carette slanted his eyebrows again and began a cold chuckle. Abruptly it became a retching cough. He stiffened and went very pale, Maxim and Agnes leaning forward but unsure how they could help. Then de Carette lifted his hand feebly and waved them back. For a long time he sat very upright in his seat, seeming to hold his chest together with his hands.
At last he took out a folded handkerchief and wiped his lips, ignoring the sparkle of sweat on his deep forehead. After a sip of wine, he said carefully: "I am very sorry, but it is all right now. But tell me… what is John Tyler dying from?"
Maxim blinked at him, puzzled. Agnes shrugged and muttered:"Le baisage."
"John? That is strange… in the desert, he was like a monk."
"In the desert, did you have any choice?"
"A-small amount. And certainly a choice of conversation."
Maxim asked: "And what are you dying of, sir?"
De Carette seemed to ignore him. He got up slowly and walked around the room, weaving carefully between the furniture until he reached the south wall. That was the only one with window seats built into it. He stared down into the valley.
"I saw you coming. I have watched for a long time because I knew that one day somebody would come. And I thought they might be too late. The doctors told me I havela tuberculose. You see, they cannot call it cancer of the lung because the government owns the monopoly of tobacco and so we do not have cancer of the lung in France. It is probably forbidden by some law of some thirteenth of July…"He lifted his hands in a weary gesture, and turned back from the window.
"So you are right, Major. And… I also thought to write a letter. But I could not decide where to send it. My wife is dead, my sons… I am not sure they would understand. Perhaps you will, Major." He came back and sat down. "Some more wine…"
Maxim got up quickly and poured it; that just about killed the bottle, and de Carette took a small telephone from beside the fire and gave orders.
"The family de Carette has always been of the Army. Some to the Navy, but most to Saint-Cyr. You can see…" The panelled walls were lined with austerely framed photographs of groups of officers, some sitting in rigidly posed rows, some grinning across the crumpled mudguard of a Sherman tank. Many were far too old to be of this de Carette, but his career was all there: the stiff-necked graduate of Saint-Cyr, the sous-lieutenant among black troops in Africa, sharing a jeep with Ledere, being decorated by de Gaulle, in Hanoi with de Lattre de Tassigny…
But not in the desert with John White Tyler.
An old lady came into the room carrying a new tray of glasses and a bottle, the cork already drawn. De Carrette thanked her brusquely.
"And so… when I had my commission, I was humiliated to be posted to Africa. We all knew, we young officers, that a war must come in Europe – was that hope, perhaps? – but nothing could come to Fort Archimbault or de Possei. But a soldier who argues with orders is arguing with his luck, perhaps his life. We listened on the radio as France died, day by day, and we cursed God. Yet the officers who stayed there were defeated or dismissed. And the few – there were some – who tried to maintain the Army of the Armistice at Vichy, to keep something sacred from the politicians and Germans, something they could one day build on again (perhaps I understand those men better, now) after the war they were assumed to be collaborators and anybody who had been in Africa was a hero."
He smiled at Agnes."Enfin, I became a hero."
But not quickly. He was among the first to come north and join up with 8th Army in the desert, but his knowledge of English doomed him to a series of liaison jobs with the Staff. He saw little action except in Cairo bedrooms – "They were all spies, those girls, but they learned nothing from me, not in any way, alas. I was very young…" Then it was 1942. Alamein, and what really did seem like the last push westwards. He was to go forward to Benghazi and on by single-engined Waco down to join the Long Range Desert Group, who needed a French officer. His contact would be Captain John White Tyler. "But of course, you know all this from John's book."
"We'd like to hear your version, sir," Maxim said.
De Carette took a mouthful of wine and cocked his head as if he were tasting it for the first time. "It is bizarre. What I most remember is how we all smoked cigarettes, all the time, whenever anything happened or did not happen… I smoked far more cigarettes than I fired bullets…"