The Designer(57)

‘They had it coming,’ she said grimly. ‘They attacked the crowd without provocation. They’re nothing more than paid thugs.’

‘They’re doing their job – trying to protect France.’

‘From people who speak their mind about injustice?’ she asked scornfully. ‘Is that this communist revolution you keep talking about, Henry? You told me the world needs freshness and youth; a new start. That’s exactly what the communists are promising.’

He was infuriatingly unmoved. ‘What they promise and what they deliver are two different things, Copper. You’re not too young to remember that when the fascists came along, they were also promising freshness, youth and a new start. They and the communists deliver the same horrors.’

‘As a capitalist, you would say that.’

‘You may find this hard to believe, but there was a time when I called myself a communist.’

‘I do find that hard to believe.’

‘Well, it’s true. When one first heard of the communists in Russia, one was excited, inspired even, by the ideal of universal brotherhood. But then they started to murder one’s relatives, not to mention their own followers, and one realised that the ideal had merely cloaked a darker and more hideous form of tyranny, and that the extended hand of universal brotherhood was a bloodstained claw intent on grasping complete power.’

‘France isn’t Russia.’

‘It may soon become Russia. The communists are buying lock-ups and storing trucks and cars. They’ve set up printing presses so they can issue leaflets – as well as print false passports and ration books. They’ve dug up the radio transmitters, machine guns and grenades that they hid after the Germans left. They’re well-armed – and they’re organising nationwide strikes that will paralyse France and throw the country into chaos.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘It’s my job.’

‘Spying?’

He laughed. ‘Gathering intelligence is the preferred term. I saw what the communists did to my country,’ he said, his tone light but his words serious. ‘I would not like to see the same fate befall la belle France – or the rest of Europe.’

‘Sorry,’ she said, rubbing her eyes tiredly. ‘I’m just tired.’

‘Is there anything else bothering you?’ he asked delicately.

Copper sighed, running her fingers through her knotted red hair. ‘When you proposed to me, you said you didn’t want to change me, or tell me how to run my life.’

‘And I meant every word.’

‘Well – and I’m grateful to you for getting me out of the cooler and all – if you meant it, you shouldn’t have come galloping into the gendarmerie on your white horse.’

‘You were enjoying it in there?’

‘I was gathering material for a great story. Until you came along.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes!’

‘Very well,’ he said after a pause. ‘Next time you are arrested, I will content myself with bringing you a stale crust.’

‘That’s more like it, buster,’ she said. She laughed a little and then cried a little. Wisely, he said nothing. After a while, she dried her eyes with the hanky he passed her and took a shuddering breath.

‘I apologise for galloping in,’ Henry said at last. ‘Having lost one wife, I’m not at all anxious to lose another before she’s even mine.’ They were driving through the 7th arrondissement, the wealthiest and most privileged part of Paris. Now he pulled up in front of an elaborate wrought-iron gate. ‘Here we are.’

‘What is this place?’ she asked.

‘It’s my home.’



The house was half-hidden behind a stone wall. They opened the abundantly curlicued gate, entering the overgrown garden. The house itself was stately and serene, its fa?ade clad in ivy.

‘It’s like Madeline’s house,’ Copper exclaimed. ‘An old house in Paris all covered with vines.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘But instead of twelve little girls in two straight lines, it has until lately been tenanted by several dozen Gestapo officers. It was one of the first houses requisitioned by the Germans, of course, knowing as they did who I was.’ He unlocked the door and they went in. The grand old place was silent, the rooms still in the disorder left by the hastily departing Germans. Fine furniture, some of it broken, was scattered around. The walls were bare. ‘They took my collection of Impressionists with them,’ he said dryly. ‘But left me this.’

On the wall of an imposing dining room was a large oil painting of Adolf Hitler in his brown uniform, glowering at them from under his forelock. ‘Now there’s an ugly sight,’ Copper said.

‘I never cared for it, myself.’

‘Why don’t you take it down?’

‘I leave it there to remind me what we’re fighting,’ he replied. ‘And because, if they took van Gogh and left Hitler, they know they’re beaten.’

Despite the ill treatment the house had sustained, it remained beautiful. He led her from room to room, explaining that it had been built in the time of Napoleon III in the full Romantic style. The ceilings and mouldings were exquisite. From the upstairs windows, there were views of the golden dome of the H?tel des Invalides.