The Black Baroness (51 page)

The little Colonel stood up and, extending his hand, added: ‘
Bonne chance, mon ami
, and, should the qualms natural to a chivalrous man at the thought of killing a woman make you hesitate at the last moment, remember now that France has lost one Army through the defection—or shall we say indecision?—of your countrymen it may lie with you to prevent the Army of another great Power being added to her enemies.’

Gregory nodded gravely. I shall not forget.’ And taking Lacroix’s hand he shook it with the same earnestness as if he were signing a solemn pact.

As he went downstairs a few moments later he knew that on the following day he would be setting out upon the most horrible mission that he had ever undertaken. He was going to the country of assassins to become an assassin. In his heart of hearts during these last days he had doubted if even his urge to revenge Erika would ever bring him really to that point; but now, in order that the cause of justice, toleration and liberty should not have the weight of 50,000,000 Italians flung against it in its darkest hour, it was necessary that the Little Black Baroness should die.

On the following morning, Wednesday, June the 5th, Gregory slept late and lunched early. At twelve-thirty he received a telegram from Sir Pellinore, which read: ERIKA NO WORSE NO BETTER DON’T PHONE WILL WIRE YOU IF SHE SHOWS ANY CHANGE:
and with this cold comfort he had to be content for the time being.

Punctually at one o’clock the porter at the Saint Regis rang up to say that a Monsieur Riband had called for him in a car, and on going down
Gregory
exchanged warm greetings with the fat little French detective who had arrested and later cooperated with him in the previous October.

As they drove through the sunny streets of the capital, which was much more crowded than when Gregory had last seen it, owing to the great influx of refugees, they exchanged views upon the war, but neither had anything very cheerful to say so Gregory was glad when they turned off the main road into the grounds of a small château outside Choisy and he saw a solitary aeroplane standing outside a hangar.

Ribaud Introduced him to the pilot, Raoul Desaix, a lean, lantern-jawed, middle-aged man, and five minutes later he was waving good-bye to the detective as the plane took off.

It was a four-seater civil aircraft with a cruising speed of 160 miles an hour so Gregory knew that it would be about four o’clock before they reached the Mediterranean. There was little aerial activity south of Paris. The skies were a clear, bright blue and they were flying at no great height, so he was able to amuse himself by watching the landscape unfold beneath them.

From 2,000 feet there was no indication of war at all. The fields, villages and isolated châteaux looked very peaceful and it was an utterly different world from that other part of France through which he had passed by tank, on foot and in the train during the two preceding days. By half-past three the main colour of the patchwork quilt of fields and woods below had begun to change from a greenish hue to the greyish-brown of the olive orchards and myrtle scrub of Provence. They left Avignon, with its great Papal Palace and broken bridge across the Loire, on their left, and Nimes, with its Roman amphitheatre on their right, to pass right over Aries, and a few moments later the plane came down on a private landing-ground just north of Marseilles, They refuelled there and went on, following the line of the coast until they passed over Hyères, with its islands, then, leaving the Côte d’Azur with its miles of famous pleasure-beaches on their left, they passed out over the Mediterranean.

The colouring of the scene—the deep blue sea creaming upon
the shore in a tiny white line, the gold of the beaches, the greens and the browns of the scrub, vineyards and woods, then far away to the north the mountains with the white-capped peaks of the Italian Alps standing out against a sapphire sky—was as vivid as that on a picture postcard. They had hardly left France behind when Corsica rose out of the sea ahead of them. It was perfect flying weather and the only bump they had was caused by the currents rushing up the ridge of mountains in the northern neck of the island, and as they passed over the sunbaked volcanic stone Gregory felt that he could have reached down and touched it with his hand. Five minutes later they could see Elba, a little island as flat as a pancake set in the wine-dark sea on their left, and Monte Cristo’s Island, little more than a huge rock, right below them; then the coast of Italy loomed up, and a little before half-past six they came down on the airport outside Rome.

Gregory used his own English passport and Desaix having made arrangements for garaging the plane they drove to the Hotel Ambassador, where they both booked rooms, and Gregory then went at once to make contact with Monsieur Antoine Collimard. The shop was shut but he was fortunate enough to find the French hairdresser at home above it, which suited him much better than being seen entering the shop by a number of assistants when it was open.

Collimard proved to be a Basque. He was small, dark-complexioned, with a little hook nose and quick, intelligent brown eyes. Gregory presented Colonel Lacroix’s chit which had attached to it the original photograph of the Reverend Eustace Arberson.

The Frenchman studied Gregory’s face carefully for a moment and said: ‘I think I can do it well enough for a casual acquaintance to mistake you for this man at a distance, at all events, and naturally the clergyman’s clothes will help a lot. But you must appreciate that, while I could make your face into a mask which would be the image of his in semi-darkness it is impossible to use make-up which would alter the shape of your nose, chin and forehead in daylight.’

‘I quite understand that,’ Gregory smiled, ‘but, to the best of our belief, the Baroness has never set eyes on the Reverend Eustace so a superficial resemblance is all that is required, and it’s more a matter of altering my own face—which she has seen for just one moment—than of making it resemble his. Do you
know if she’s still at the Villa Godolfo?’

‘No. But I will find out. In any case, you can do nothing tonight as it will take me some hours to prepare the moustache and to study the matter of the eyebrows. There is also the question of clothes. You will see to that yourself, I take it?’

‘Yes. Rome bristles with shops that sell clerical outfits, so I should have no difficulty in finding things to fit me tomorrow morning.’

‘
Bon!
Come here a little after twelve, bringing your things in a suit-case, and by the time you leave I will have transformed you as far as lies in my power into the Reverend Eustace.’

Gregory thanked him and, returning to the Ambassador’s, tried to put a telephone call through
to
London but he was told that there would be at least six hours’ delay, so he booked one for the following morning. That night he had dinner with Desaix, whom he found to be an amiable though not particularly gifted man whose only grouse was that as he was over forty they would not let him fly a fighter plane in the service of his country.

Gregory endeavoured to console him by saying that he was doing every bit as good work by making secret trips like the present for Colonel Lacroix, and he explained that he did not know how long he would be in Rome but that he might have to leave in a great hurry. It was agreed that he should vacate his room the following morning and that they should see nothing of each other until the time came for a quick get-out to France; also that the airman should remain at the Ambassador’s, going out only to places from which he could return in twenty minutes and leaving with the hall-porter the telephone number of the place at which he could be found.

Afterwards, up in his room, Gregory read the forged letter of introduction from the pro-Nazi Mayor of Bordeaux to the Baroness, together with the particulars of the Mayor and the Reverend Eustace which had been in the packet from Lacroix that Riband had handed him that morning. In an hour and a half he had committed to memory all the available data about the man he was to impersonate and went to bed.

Having spent a restless night, due to worry over Erika, Gregory took his London call only to learn that she was still in grave danger. He then paid his bill and went out to do his shopping. Since he had abandoned his suit-case in Ghent eleven days earlier his only luggage had consisted of shaving and washing
gear which he carried slung around his shoulders, in a small gas-mask container; so, after changing some of his English bank-notes for Italian
lira
, it was a joy to be able to re-equip himself with fresh underclothes, dressing-gown, brushes and pyjamas as well as the black suit, black slouch hat and clerical collars necessary to his new role. With the whole of his purchases packed into a large Revelation suit-case he arrived at Collimard’s at a quarter-past twelve.

‘I fear that I have some bad news for you,’ was the Frenchman’s greeting. ‘
La Baronne Noire
is in Rome no longer; she has left her villa out at Marino and gone north; one assumes to keep in touch with
Il Duce
, who is said now to be inspecting his troops in the Cottian Alps and other places on the French frontier.’

‘Damnation!’ muttered Gregory. ‘Still, I suppose Mussolini is pretty certain to make his headquarters in Turin, so if I go there I ought to be able to get on her track.’

Collimard shrugged. ‘Who can say? She left Rome only last night, but she may quite well be back here in a day or two.
Il Duce
is not a man to stay in one place for long and he moves very swiftly; if you go north you may pass her on her way south again.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Also, you will find your disguise uncomfortable and worrying at first, so it is far better that you should wear it for forty-eight hours before putting it to the test.’

‘But the matter is so frightfully urgent.’

‘All right; go if you wish, but you would be far wiser to wait at least until I have been able to secure further news for you. By tomorrow I may have fresh information about
Il Duce’s
intentions.’

‘You’re right,’ Gregory admitted reluctantly. ‘There’s no sense in my setting off on a wild-goose chase without even knowing for certain where she is.’

Collimard then set about changing Gregory’s appearance. He washed and set his hair
à la
Adolf Hitler so that it hid the scar over his eye, then he proceeded to pluck his eyebrows in one place and add single hairs, with minute particles of very strong gum, in another, until their shape was completely altered. He next opened a packet of false eyelashes and trimming them to half their length added them one by one to Gregory’s own so that although his did not appear longer they
became very much thicker. After that he placed more false hairs just in front of his ears, thereby giving him short side-whiskers, and, lastly, he attended to the moustache.

‘There!’ he exclaimed in triumph when he had done. ‘You must use only a very soft brush each morning, and you are bound to moult a little as you turn in your sleep each night, so you must come to me to be touched up every two or three days, but I do not believe that your best friend would know you.’ And when he looked in the mirror Gregory had to agree that his face had been changed beyond anything he would have believed possible.

Having dressed in his clergyman’s clothes he thanked Coilimard for his artistry and, going out, took a taxi to the station, where he mingled with the crowd, and a few minutes later took another one to the Hotel Excelsior, as though he had just arrived by train.

After registering there as the Reverend Eustace Arberson, and handing in his passport in that name for the usual police check-up, he wrote a note to the Baroness, on the hotel paper, saying that he was in Rome for some days and asking permission to call. Enclosing the letter of introduction with it, he posted it in the hall, then purchased the latest papers and sat down in the lounge to see how the war was going.

Lacroix’s belief that the German preparations for the next stage of their offensive had been completed on the Tuesday night had proved correct. On Wednesday morning, June the 5th, the battle for France had opened at 9 a.m. On a hundred-and-twenty-mile front, from the Somme to the Aisne, the Germans had attacked with great masses of troops supported by over a thousand dive-bombers. Hitler’s weather still held in France, but the paper said that the smoke of battle had been so thick that it had blotted out the bright June sun. The enemy had made no progress until the afternoon, but they had then succeeded in securing bridge-heads across the river and their tank columns had struck through Amiens, Peronne and Laon towards Paris. The French Cabinet had met to discuss the new crisis shortly before midnight.

That evening Churchill had made a statement in the House in which he had frankly referred to Dunkirk as a ‘colossal military disaster’ sustained by the British Army, which had enabled the enemy to acquire strategic bases of great importance and many of France’s most valuable industrial areas. Britain had lost vast
quantities of material and over 30,000 killed, wounded and missing, but 335,000 British, French and Belgians had been saved and the R.A.F. had covered themselves with glory. The B.E.F. was to be reconstituted and, said Mr. Churchill, Britain would never surrender.

Owing to the pro-German bias of the Italians the Government-controlled Press had printed Mr. Churchill’s speech only in small type on the back page of the paper. The front page was devoted to that day’s news; the announcement of a new French Cabinet in which Daladier, the sworn enemy of Italy, was out altogether, Reynaud’s taking over Foreign Affairs as well as the Premiership; and a statement that although the French centre was reported to be holding for the moment it must soon give way, since the Germans had hurled 2,000 tanks into the battle.

Another headline on the front page announced Italy’s declaration that a band of twelve miles round her coast and that of Albania must now be regarded as dangerous to shipping and that exit permits would be distributed to foreigners who guaranteed to leave Italy within two days.