"Good God, Jack, you're not seriously suggesting that Harry and the Drayton girl were on that boat?"
"We just don't know, sir, and what's more, there's no possible way we can find out."
"Exactly, so sit down, stop worrying about it and have a cup of tea, Jack. You know what your trouble is." Munro reached for the toast. "You don't have enough faith."
Sarah had washed her hair, using some homemade soft soap Helen had provided. She still looked a mess, and when Helen came into the bathroom she said, "It's no good. You need a hairdresser."
"Are there still such things?"
"Oh, yes, if you go into St. Helier. The general run of shops still function. The opening hours are shorter. Two hours in the mornings and two in the afternoon for most places."
She tried combing the girl's hair into some semblance of a style and Sarah said, "What's it been like?"
"Not good, but not too bad if you behave yourself. Plenty of people think the Germans are all right and a lot of the time they are, but step out of line and see what happens. You have to do as you're told, you see. They even made the Jersey States pass anti-Semitic laws. A lot of people try to excuse it by saying all the Jews had left, but I know two living in St. Brelade now."
"What happens if the German authorities discover them?"
"God knows. We've had people sent off to those concentration camps we hear about for keeping Russian slave workers who were on the run. I have a friend, a teacher at Jersey College for Girls, whose father kept an illegal radio. She used to spread the BBC news around to her friends until an anonymous letter brought the Gestapo to the house. They sent her to prison in France for a year."
"An anonymous letter? You mean from a local person? But that's terrible."
"You get bad apples in every barrel, Sarah. Jersey is no different from anywhere else in that respect. And weVe got the other kind as well. The postmen at the sorting office who try to lose as many of the letters addressed to Gestapo Headquarters as possible." She finished combing. "There, that's the best I can do."
Sarah sat down, pulled on silk stockings and fastened them. "My God!" Helen said. "I haven't seen anything like that for four years. And that dress." She helped Sarah pull it over her head and zipped it up. "You and Martineau. What's the situation there? He's old enough to be your father."
"My father he very definitely is not." Sarah smiled as she pulled on her shoes. "He's probably the most infuriating man IVe ever met and the most fascinating."
"And you sleep with him?"
"I am supposed to be Vogel's tart. Aunt Helen."
"And to think that the last time 1 saw you, you had pigtails," Helen said.
In the kitchen, she put two spoonfuls of her precious China tea into the pot, but Gallagher made his excuses. "I'll go and put Mrs. Vibert off," he said. "It'll only complicate things having her around. Always the chance she might recognize you, Sarah. She knew you well enough, God knows."
He went out and Helen, Sarah and Martineau sat around the table drinking tea and smoking. There was a knock at the door. When Helen opened it, Willi Kleist stood there.
Martineau got up. "You want me?"
"WeVe brought your Kubelwagen, Standartenfuhrer," Kleist told him.
Martineau went out to have a look at it. The canvas top was up and the body was camouflaged. He looked inside and said, "That seems satisfactory."
Ernst Greiser was sitting behind the wheel jf a black Citroen. Kleist said, "If there's anything else we can do..."
"I don't think so."
"By the way. Captain Muller wanted me to tell you he's spoken to Colonel Heine, the military commandant. Apparently he'll be at the Town Hall this afternoon if you'd care to call in and see him."
"Thank you, I will."
They drove away and Martineau went back inside. "Transport problems taken care of. I'll go into town this afternoon, call on the military commandant, then Muller and his friends at this Silvertide place."
"You'd better go in with him and get your hair done," Helen told Sarah. "There's a good hairdresser at Charing Cross. You can tell her I sent you." She turned to Martineau. "Very convenient. It's close to the Town Hall."
"Fine," he said, "except for one thing. She mustn't say you sent her. In the circumstances that would be quite wrong." He got up. "I feel like a breath of air. How about showing me round the estate, Sarah?"
"A good idea," Helen said. "I've got things to do. I already had eight to cook for tonight so I've got my work cut out. I'll see you later."
After leaving de Ville Place, Kleist and Greiser started down the road, but after about a quarter of a mile, the inspector touched the young man on the arm. "Let's pull in here, Ernst. Stick the car in that track over there. We'll take a walk back through the woods."
"Any particular reason?"
"I'd just like to have a look around, that's all."
The cart track was heavily overgrown. Greiser drove along it until they were out of sight of the road, and they got out and left the Citroen there, taking a field path across the woods of the de Ville estate. It was very quiet and really rather pleasant, only the sound of the birds, and then a young woman carrying a basket appeared unexpectedly from beyond the high granite wall at the end of the field. It was impossible to see her face. For one thing, she was wearing a headscarf, but the old cotton frock was tight enough to reveal, even at a distance, a body that was full and ripe. She didn't notice them and followed the path into the wood.
Kleist said, "Now that's interesting." He turned to Greiser and smiled. "Would you say we should investigate, Sergeant?"
"Very definitely, Herr Inspector," the younger man said eagerly and they quickened their pace.
The young woman was in fact Mrs. Vibert's daughter, Mary. After Sean Gallagher's visit to tell her to take the weekend off, the old woman had remembered the eggs she had promised Helen de Ville for the evening meal. It was these that the girl was taking to the house now.
She was only sixteen and already blossoming into womanhood, but not very bright, with a simple, kindly face. She loved the countryside, the flowers, the birds, was never happier than when walking alone in the woods. Some little way in, there was an old granite barn long disused, the roof gaping, the doors hanging crazily It always made her feel uneasy, and yet drawn to it by a strange fascination, she paused, then walked across the grass betwen crumbled walls to peer inside.
A harsh voice called, "Now then. What do you think you're doing?"
She turned quickly and saw Kleist and Greiser advancing toward her.
After leaving Mrs. Vibert's, Sean Gallagher walked down to the south meadow where he had three cows grazing, tethered to long chains in the Jersey manner. They were a precious commodity in these hard times and he stayed with them there in the sunshine for a while then started back to his cottage.
When he was still two fields away he saw the Germans walking toward the wood, saw and recognized Mary. He paused, shading his eyes against the sun, saw the girl disappear into the trees, the Germans following. Suddenly uneasy, he started to hurry. It was when he was halfway across the field that he heard the first scream. He cursed softly and broke into a run.
The weather was the best of spring, delightfully warm as Sarah and Martineau followed the track from the house through the pine trees. There were daffodils everywhere, crocuses and snowdrops in profusion, camellias blooming. Beyond, through the trees, the waters of the bay were blue merging into green in places Birds sang everywhere.
Sarah held his arm as they strolled along. "God, that wonderful marvelous smell. Straight back to childhood and those long hot summers. Did they ever exist, I wonder, or was it all an impossible dream?"
"No," he said. "They were the only true reality. It's the past four years that have been the nightmare "
"I love this place," she said. "It's an old race, the Norman stock here, and the de Villes are as old as any of them We go back a long way. Robert de Ville fought at the Battle of Hastings with Duke William of Normandy "
"Good old William the Conqueror?"
"That's right. He ruled Jersey before he became king of England, so its we who colonized the English, if you like, not the other way about."
"There's arrogance for you "
"These are my roots." she said "Here I belong. This is home. Where do you belong. Harry?"
"Stateless person, that's me " he said lightly "For years an American living and working in Europe No family left worth speaking of "
"Citizen of the world?"
"Not really " He was upset and it showed in a sudden angry unease. "I just don't belong. Don't belong anywhere.
Could be I should have died in those trenches back in nineteen eighteen. Maybe the man upstairs made a mistake. Perhaps 1 shouldn't be here at all."
She pulled him around, angry. "That's a terrible thing to say. I'm beginning to get rather tired of the cynical and sardonic bit, Harry Martineau. Can't you drop your guard just occasionally? Even with me?"
Before he could reply there was a sudden scream. They turned and looked down to the barn in the clearing through trees and saw Mary struggling in Kleist's arms, Greiser standing to one side laughing.
"For God's sake, Harry, do something," Sarah said.
"1 will, only you stay out of it."
He started down the slope as Sean Gallagher ran out of the trees.
Kleist was excited, the supple young body squirming against him. "Shut up!" he told her. "Just be a good girl and I won't hurt you."
Greiser's eyes were shining, the mouth loose. "Don't forget, Inspector, fair shares for all, that's my motto."
Gallagher arrived on the run, shouldering the sergeant out of the way like a rugby forward. As he reached Kleist, he stamped hard behind the German's left knee, causing the leg to buckle and punched him hard in the kidneys. Kleist grunted and went down, releasing the terrified girl.
Gallagher picked up Mary's basket and gave it to her and patted her face. "It's all right now. love," he said. "You run on up to the house to Mrs. de Ville. Nobody's going to harm you this day."
She ran like a frightened rabbit. As Gallagher turned, Greiser took a Mauser from his pocket, his eyes wild. Kleist called, "No. Ernst, and that's an order. He's mine." He got up, easing his back, and took off his raincoat. "Like all the Irish you're cracked in the head. Now I shall teach you a lesson. I shall break both your arms."
"Half-Irish, so only half-cracked, let's get it right." Sean Gallagher took off his jacket and tossed it to one side. "Didn't I ever tell you about my grandfather, old Harvey le Brocq? He was sailing in cod schooners at the age of twelve, bosun on windjammers on the grain run from Australia. Twelve times round the Horn by the age of twenty-three."
"Talk away," Kleist said circling him. "It won't do you any good."
He rushed in and swung a tremendous punch which Gallagher avoided with ease. "In those days a bosun was only as good as his fists, and he was good. Very good." He ducked in and landed a punch under the German's left eye. "When I used to come over from Ireland as a kid to stay with him, the village lads would work me over because I talked funny. When I went home crying, he took me out in the orchard and gave me the first of many lessons. Science, timing, punching, that's what counts, not size. God, as he often reminded me, and he was a lay preacher, had never intended the brutes to rule on earth."
Every punch the German threw was sidestepped, and in return, Gallagher seemed to be able to hit him wherever he wanted. On the hillside a few yards away, Sarah, Marti-neau and the Vibert girl watched as the Irishman drove the inspector back across the grass.
And then there was a sudden moment of disaster, for as Gallagher moved in, his right foot slipped on the grass and he went down. Kleist seized his chance, lifting a knee into his forehead and kicking him in the side as he went down. Gallagher rolled away with surprising speed and came up on one knee.
"God save us, you can't even kick straight."
As he came up, Kleist rushed at him, arms reaching to destroy. Gallagher slipped to one side, tripping the German so that he went headfirst into the wall of the barn. The Irishman gave him a left and a right in the kidneys. Kleist cried out sharply and Gallagher swung him around. He grabbed him by the lapels and smashed his forehead against the bridge of the German's nose, breaking it. Then he stepped back. Kleist swayed and fell.
"Bastard!" Greiser called.
Gallagher swung around to find the sergeant confronting him with the Mauser, but in the same moment a shot rang out, kicking up dirt at Greiser's feet. They turned as Marti-neau walked down the slope, Walther in hand.
"Put it away!" he ordered.
