Diana Glass
The Help
‘Firstly, there are aspects of yourself that I think you have been concealing, my dear. Your fluency in French for a start. When you speak it in our company, it is with a marked English accent, and full of errors. But every so often you forget, or perhaps you think you are not overheard, and it sounds quite different.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I say.
‘At those times you speak it like a Frenchwoman; or as close to as my ear can detect. I suppose if one is fluent, it is a challenge to pretend not to be. It would be like me trying to pretend not to speak English properly. It must be very trying. It would be easy to forget and make mistakes. But what a curious thing, for someone to conceal their proficiency in a language. It must mean that you are concealing some aspect of yourself.’
She is right. It has been difficult, to remember not to slip back into a language that comes almost as easily – though a little less easily these days – as my mother tongue.
‘And of course that wasn’t all. There was your laundry.’
‘My laundry?’
Miss Marple looks a little flustered. ‘This is not the sort of thing one should really talk of in polite company.
But there was that laundry bag of your underthings that was delivered to me in error.
For a woman of your position and salary one would expect good, serviceable cotton.
Not silk of the finest momme, trimmed in leavers lace.
Each of those pieces, and again I apologise for my indiscretion, would cost more than your monthly wages.
If they had been several years old, that would have suggested a falling on more straightened times.
But I like to go up to London for the sales, to refresh my linens.
And I saw at least two of those pieces in the “new” collection last year in Harrods.
It was the lilac silk that stood out particularly in my memory.
They belonged in the wardrobe of a wealthy young woman.
‘It is a little like pretending to be worse at French. Someone wanting to make themselves look better off – well, that is understandable. But the opposite … well, that is something one sees much less often. It made me think that you hadn’t taken this job for the money.
You had taken it for some other reason.’
I try my best to brush this off. ‘I don’t know what to say, Miss Marple. Perhaps I am just silly with money.’
‘No, Diana. There is nothing silly about you whatsoever. You are the sort of person who always has a plan, I think. Speaking of which, I think it was no coincidence that we came here at the same time as Anthony Narracott, was it? On the train journey up here, Dolly was trying to recall what it was that prompted her to choose this hotel and you were so quick to remind her that it was the advertisements. I remember thinking at the time that you seemed anxious to deflect any credit from yourself.’
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ Mrs Bantry says, suddenly.
‘I hadn’t really any idea of coming to the mountains before you came to work for me.
When we first met I told you that I was looking for some help at home and with booking some travel …
but you were the one who suggested I come here.
I had wanted to go to the Caribbean, originally, as I had heard the warmth was very good for one’s joints.
But you said that the cold air and the waters of the hydro here would be better.
‘I think that you did it subtly, over a little while, so I didn’t notice what you were doing at the time.
It is only when I think back on it now …
like at the end of a game of Bridge, when it becomes clear that one’s opponent has been playing a truly fiendish strategy all along.
’ Mrs Bantry frowns. ‘But the dates,’ she says, thoughtfully.
‘That at least must have been a coincidence: that we were here at the same time as Narracott.’
‘Ah,’ says Miss Marple. ‘Yes, it could only be this weekend, because the hotel was full on all other dates. At least, according to Diana, who booked the whole trip herself.’ She turns to me.
‘Was it really full, in all other weeks? It seems unlikely – such a huge place, so newly re-opened.’ Almost kindly, she adds, ‘You don’t have to tell me but it will be easy enough to check. ’
I shake my head, which seems to be about the most I can manage. ‘No.’
‘It is as I thought then,’ Miss Marple says.
I can feel my hands shaking, so I fold my arms to hide them.
Miss Marple continues, ‘Now we have the photographs, of course, of the two dead men, which I believe you were trying to conceal from us when we entered the room. You wanted to remove them, I think, before we spotted them.’
‘I—’
But then Miss Marple changes the subject.
‘Your fiancé,’ she says. ‘I am sorry to bring up something painful for you, my dear, but he was French, wasn’t he?
’ And then, before I can answer: ‘You know, I think it’s only the second time I’ve ever seen such a ring.
We had a French Mam’zelle at school and I used to admire hers.
The two silver hearts and the seven garnets à la Duchesse Anne: it’s a wonderful example of the type: a beautiful French antique.
Not a style one really sees in Britain. I do pride myself on a certain attention to detail in such matters. ’
I shouldn’t have worn it. Except I have to wear it, close to me always. It is the only thing I have left of him.
‘There is something else I have noticed about you. You run towards danger. The train, for example. It made me realise that you are someone who is very brave … and possibly also somewhat reckless. It led me to wondering whether your work for the FANYs in the war might have had something more to it than sitting in an office in England. Would that be correct?’
The eyes are so very blue in her pale, heavily lined face. Suddenly I feel a great weariness. What is the point in pretending any longer? I’ve kept all this inside for such a long time. I have more to lose now, I realise, by staying silent.
I take a deep breath. ‘They stole something. Narracott and Crane. I knew they would come back to try and take hold of it. I wanted to make sure they couldn’t.
Make sure I got hold of it instead. Not for myself, but in honour of some very brave people who died in vain.
But it wasn’t me who killed them. I promise. ’
I turn to Mrs Bantry. ‘I admit it. It was me who suggested this place to you, not the brochures. I had been keeping an eye on Anthony Narracott for a while. That’s why I took the job on the switchboard at his offices.
I was here, during the war. Well, not quite here.
On the other side of the mountains, in France. ’
‘The FANYs?’ asks Miss Marple.
‘Well … at first.’ I will not – cannot – name the organisation I became a part of.
Instead I say, ‘My mother was French. People like me … we were useful, during the war.’ I have a sudden vivid memory of how it actually felt to get the call-up.
The thrill of it. When you are as young as I was only seven years ago – and I mean this more as a state of mind than of age – you believe you are immortal.
‘Very brave work,’ Miss Marple says.
‘Yes. I suppose so,’ I say. ‘Though a lot of people were very brave.’
‘But many were not,’ Miss Marple says. ‘Very easy, for people to claim, in hindsight, that they were. Who is there to check?’
‘Especially if everyone else is dead,’ I say. The words are out in a rush, before I can stop them. ‘I know this for fact: Anthony Narracott was not brave. Neither was Bruno Crane. There— there is ordinary cowardice and then there is something far, far worse …’
I find that I am shaking. I am incriminating myself, I’m sure. And yet I can’t stop. It might as well all come out now.
‘There was a German caravan,’ I tell them, ‘full of gold, coming through France to Switzerland, because that is how the Nazis funded their war machine – with gold that the Swiss magicked into banknotes.’ Gold stolen from the central banks of occupied states …
but also from people’s homes, from their fingers …
from their very teeth. ‘It was our job to intercept it … like a hold-up, I suppose you could say. I was seconded to help an Alpine chapter of the Resistance, as a pianist.’
‘A … pianist?’ Mrs Bantry asks incredulously.
‘Sorry – a radio operator. It was how I met my fiancé. The chapter … they called themselves “the wolves of the mountain”.’
Somehow dusk has already fallen. When did that happen?
I stare out into the growing darkness beyond the window and for a moment I am somewhere else entirely.
That night. The soft rain. The scent of the wet earth after a spring day of surprising heat.
The headlamps, rising over the curve of the hill and then coming closer and closer through the pitch black, wobbling and blurring a little in the light drizzle.
The single lights of the two motorbike outriders, the twin lights of the truck.
Crouching behind boulders among the damp gorse, legs scratched through my thin trousers by its barbs. My heart in my chest like a hunted rabbit’s; though we were supposed to be the hunters that night. Fabien beside me; his hand over mine, warm and dry. Only when I make the call.
‘What about the others?’ We were supposed to be receiving support from another Special Operations group.
‘They haven’t shown. We’ll have to make do. It has to be now.’
Closer, closer, until they were nearly upon us; until they were nearly past. And then the howl – the howl of the ‘mountain wolf’, our signal – and all of us springing from the shadows.
The driver: shot dead almost instantly; the two outriders too. A couple of others with their hands up. But then, horrible surprise, a second set of headlights. A second truck, unexpected reinforcements – members of our group falling now.
I was punched back by something. I didn’t feel the pain at first. Just a strange wetness, a tight pressure.
And then agony all at once: livid, incredible – my whole shoulder on fire.
My legs gave out and I fell forward into the gorse.
I could only watch, helpless, from my prone position, my head on one side, as they were all killed.
People I had slept and eaten beside, exchanged childhood stories with.
People whose parents had given me shelter, whose children I had looked at picture books with.
People who had become family in a matter of weeks, because what we shared was more binding than blood.
All now lying dead or dying in the road.
‘Your fiancé, too?’ Mrs Bantry asks.
‘What?’ I had forgotten I had an audience – I had forgotten where I was. I was there, that damp spring night in 1943, on the other side of the mountains.
‘No,’ I say. By some miracle, he was unhurt. ‘And then they arrived.’
Just when it seemed it was all over, two men appeared as if from nowhere.
Our help, at last. We had expected more of them, but they would make all the difference.
In a matter of bloody minutes the rest of the Germans were dead.
Most of our group were dead, too. Only four survivors.
Fabien and I (barely), and the two British officers.
‘Fabien – my fiancé – got up, went to meet them in the road, to thank them. And then he turned to start checking on some of the others in our group … I thought at first he had tripped. Even though I heard the sound.’
One of the newcomers had raised his gun and shot him at point blank range, in the back of the head.
A terrible silence. Then a few more shots, which I suppose was them making sure of the others.
The teenager. Look. Is he still alive?
Who could they mean: the teenager? There wasn’t any teenager. Then I realised that it must be me, with my short hair, clean jaw and bulky men’s clothes.
‘Go and check, Crane. Shoot if you’re not sure.’
He stood over me. I could hear him panting, felt the toe of his boot nudge me in the ribs.
Oh God, oh God, he was whispering, over and over.
He sounded terrified. I could only play dead and pray.
It wasn’t difficult – I felt near death.
Could hear the sigh he made; the sigh of someone deciding upon a course of action.
I knew then that he was about to shoot. Maybe I even longed for it, because what did I have to live for, now?
Then the sound of his steps, retreating. The two of them talking at a distance once more.
Are you sure?
Yes, dead as a doornail.
Before I slipped into blissful oblivion again the last thing I heard them say was: ‘… over into Switzerland. Neutral territory. Hide the stuff there and come back for it if we ever win this war.’
‘The next thing I knew, I was being transported to a prisoner of war camp in the Vosges. I stayed there until Liberation. I had no idea who those men were – they had had noms de guerre – but I knew from the accents that they had been British.’
The next time I saw one of them was in the Evening Standard, at an Underground station. There on the third page: one of our most promising new politicians. Wartime hero; Victoria Cross. I didn’t even consciously make the connection at first, but my body knew: I had to run and vomit onto the tracks.
I feel now a little as though I have just vomited – or when one does after a storm of crying. Shaky, weak, every nerve ending exposed … and yet purged of something.
‘I took a job at the War Office,’ I say. ‘And then I began to tail him, using everything I learned in my training.’
It wasn’t even difficult, to listen in on his drinks with Bruno Crane in the grimier drinking holes of the capital, stand in line behind him as he made his bookings at the travel office for a few months’ time. He thought he was so clever, so wily – but he was arrogant and arrogance made him stupid.
‘My dear child,’ says Miss Marple, with true sympathy.
‘Such terrible things. I am so sorry, for all that they did to you, for all that you lost. You do see, though, that all of this … this awfulness provides you with a rather strong motive for having wanted both these men dead? And then, with Inspector Moreau finding the photographs—’
‘Yes,’ I say, and even I am surprised by the fierceness of my tone.
‘But what I had planned for Anthony Narracott was worse than death. A man like Narracott lives on his reputation. I wanted to see him eviscerated, publicly, by exposing what he did. Hence the photographs. I wanted to find the gold and hand it to our government. And I wanted to make sure that our country could never be led by a man like him. Ultimately, I hoped that with a little evidence he might be tried for treason. He would be hung for that, I suppose. So, in a roundabout way I did want him dead. But not by my own hand. That would have meant stooping to their level.’ I take a deep breath.
When I speak again my voice is so harsh I don’t even recognise it as my own.
‘I didn’t want to kill him. I wanted to destroy him. ’