Chapter 19 D-Day Minus One #3
Flynn pulled the fob watch out of his pocket; it felt like winching up an anchor. He dangled it in the air for a moment as if he was attempting to hypnotize Badger.
“I’ve looked everywhere for that,” Badger grinned and reached out to take it. Flynn pulled his hand back, and Badger frowned. “What is it? What’s going on, Flynn?”
“Aren’t you going to ask me where I found it?”
“Well, I’ve got a feeling you’re about to tell me.”
“Half Moon Street.”
“Ah.” Badger fell silent.
“Ah—exactly.” Flynn handed the watch over and said, “What were you doing there, Badger?”
“What were you doing there, Flynn?”
“Long story, but I wasn’t killing Delphine Dubois, if that’s what you’re implying. Were you?”
“No.” Badger gazed thoughtfully at the watch in his hand and gave a rueful smile. “Thought about it,” he said. “But someone had beaten me to it.”
“She was dead?”
“Shot through the heart.” Badger laughed mirthlessly.
“So all this time you knew Delphine was dead,” Flynn said, “and you knew that I didn’t kill her.”
“Knew she was dead, Flynn, didn’t know you didn’t kill her. Not at first, anyway. You’d been in some kind of a fight, and you were behaving very oddly that morning. I mean, I couldn’t believe it when you said that it was Delphine Dubois who you’d been on a date with.”
“Not a date.”
“But you must see that it looked like an outlandish coincidence.”
“You didn’t stop to wonder why I would kill a woman I barely knew?”
“Men kill women they barely know all the time, Harry.”
“You knew her, though. She was your ghost who wasn’t dead, wasn’t she? The one you saw in Savoy Court that day. How did you know her? From the war?” Flynn hazarded, “She was one of your agents in the SOE?”
Badger sighed. “Can we get a seat somewhere, Flynn?” (They were standing in the middle of the Fairway.) “A cup of tea, perhaps? I’m parched.”
“The Fairway Café over there.” The café was empty apart from a panicked waitress who said, “We’re not open until tomorrow, gentlemen. We’re just setting up.”
“We’d just like a seat for a minute,” Badger said suavely, employing his Norfolk-toff manners.
The ten-shilling note he produced helped as well.
The woman was so impressed that she bobbed a little curtsey and, despite their protestations, said she’d rustle up a pot of tea for them.
“Helped choose those uniforms,” Badger murmured when she was gone. “Rather nice, don’t you think?”
“I’m all ears, Badger.”
“You can’t tell anyone any of this, Flynn. It’s strictly off-limits, do you understand?”
“Sure.”
“Delphine Dubois’s real name was Colette Paquet, codename Columbine.”
“A dove.” Flynn thought of the pigeon flapping haplessly around in her flat in Half Moon Street. A soul looking for escape. He shrugged off the idea—too close to poetry.
“More hawk-like by nature. She’d been a crucial part of a large réseau—a Resistance network that stretched across nearly all of France.
She was the mistress of the British SOE agent in charge of the network in Paris, and at the same time she was, literally, in bed with the enemy—a senior Abwehr officer.
She betrayed—eagerly, I should say—the entire réseau to German intelligence via him.
God knows how many men and women she knowingly sent to their deaths.
I was the one who recruited her, God forgive me.
I knew she was tricky, but I thought she could be handled.
“The story was that the French Resistance took its revenge and she was summarily executed after the Liberation. There was a coffin, a burial, a death certificate. I was shown a photograph of her mother and a priest standing next to an open grave. I tried never to think about her again.”
“Until that day you saw her in Savoy Court.”
“Had to make sure it was her, see her with my own eyes. Confront her, I suppose. I don’t know what I was thinking really.
She’d been brought over by MI6 before D-Day.
They thought she might have information that might be useful for the invasion.
After I saw her resurrected in Savoy Court, I asked about a bit.
I’m a persona non grata with the Security Service these days.
Caught with my trousers down. Not a metaphor.
But I asked a couple of chaps who’ll still talk to me.
Apparently she was given a new identity, and then she seems to have disappeared back into the woodwork after the war. ”
They fell silent when the waitress returned as promised with a pot of tea and fussed about with the tea things. “And I’ve toasted you gentlemen a teacake each,” she said.
“You’re an absolute star, madam,” Badger said.
Flynn waited until she was out of earshot before continuing. “And the British SOE agent in charge of the network, her lover, I’m guessing that was Giles Dangerfield.”
Badger was surprised. “How did you work that out?”
“Doesn’t matter. Was he a collaborator too?”
“Dyed-in-the-wool traitor, a renegade and a turncoat. He was one of Mosley’s top dogs before the war, never abandoned his beliefs. I tried to tell Baker Street, but no one wanted to hear.”
“And he was never suspected after his return?”
“He forestalled any questions by claiming to be a triple agent and that all his hobnobbing with the Sicherheitsdienst—the German intelligence—was a cover for getting information about missing French and British agents. He was just another traitor hiding in plain sight, he was even recruited into MI6 at the end of the war. The Security Service has always been awash with traitors.”
“So it was Dangerfield who contrived to bring Delphine over? Dangerfield who arranged her supposed death, gave her a new identity?”
“Regretted it almost immediately, I imagine. I expect he found that it was easy to keep a mistress in Paris during the war, not so easy in London afterwards when you’re under scrutiny from all sorts of people, but especially your wife.
Jocasta Hunt is not a woman to be trifled with.
I expect it was a relief to get shipped off to Northern Rhodesia, but when he returned, Columbine was still here—a liability for a man looking to resurrect a political career.
Better eat this teacake, Flynn, or the waitress will be disappointed in us.
It’s quite good. I wish we could come off the ration—I miss having lashings of butter, don’t you?
They’ll have to milk Orange Blossom twice a day, won’t they? We could churn butter on site.”
“Forget about your cow. Did Dangerfield kill Delphine? For real, this time? Or have her killed?”
“I’m out of the loop on that one, I’m afraid. I know she’s not the sort to go quietly. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
Did Badger know more than he was letting on? After all, his life was predicated on secrets, wasn’t it? What others was he keeping?
“There was no body in the flat,” Flynn said.
“No? I suppose whoever killed her must have got rid of it.”
“Dangerfield killed her.”
Badger nodded slowly as if he approved of Flynn’s conclusion. “Wouldn’t surprise me. He’s certainly capable.”
“You didn’t tell the police?”
“God, no. I scarpered out of there like a scalded cat. I would have been the prime suspect if anyone had made the connection between Columbine and me. And motive, opportunity, all that kind of stuff.”
“So you didn’t tell anyone?”
“Well…”