The Other Side of Silence

I went to the red room’s door, held my breath, and listened. I could hear nothing but silence, but I didn’t doubt that they were probably talking about me; I’d given the Englishmen a great deal to discuss. And even if they didn’t believe a word of it, at least I’d managed to upset Anne French. That alone would have been worth the effort. After a while I lay down on the floor by the window and closed my sore eyes. I’m not sure how long I slept but it was still dark when I awoke and for several pleasant minutes I stayed there with no knowledge of who or where I was. According to Betty Cornell’s Popularity Guide, you should always be yourself, but a lifetime’s experience had taught me differently. With my background, being yourself can easily get you killed. Minutes passed and I got up and made a token effort to push the shutters again, but they were just as unyielding as they’d been before. So I walked back to the radiator and managed to find what was left of the water they’d given me earlier. I drank it and returned to the door and listened. This time something was different. The house remained silent but now I felt a cool draft of air on my feet and when I dropped down onto my stomach to peer under the doorway I felt it on my face, too. A door was wide open somewhere. The front door perhaps. And an old prisoner’s instinct told me that if the front door was open then maybe another was, too. I stood up, grasped the brass handle, turned it gently, and pulled. The red room door was unlocked and opened with barely a creak. At the end of a long, unlit corridor I’d paid little attention to earlier, the main door was standing wide open. I waited for several long, frigid moments to see if someone came in, but I had a strong feeling that no one would and that the British had gone. I walked to the front door as quietly as I could and stepped outside onto the terrace, into the overgrown front garden, still half expecting that someone would emerge from the shadows and hit me, or worse, put a bullet in me. But nothing happened except I learned where I was. The house was situated somewhere on the slopes of Mont Boron, just to the south of Villefranche and overlooking Nice, to the west. It was a typical three-story bastide with peeling yellow walls and blue shutters. There were no lights on in any of the windows and no cars parked on the drive. The place looked deserted, almost derelict. For a moment I considered making a run for it down the graveled drive. Instead, curiosity got the better of me and I went back inside the big house. The room with the cobwebbed chandelier was deserted now except that my shoes lay on the table, next to my watch, a packet of cigarettes and some matches, and a set of small keys on a ring. I put on my shoes, grabbed the keys, and started to explore. Gradually it became even more obvious that the house was empty. I even risked switching on some lights, and it wasn’t long before I found Harold Hennig, chained to a radiator in one of the larger bedrooms up on the first floor like some forgotten prisoner in the Bastille. I decided that if I looked anything like him I was in bad shape. He was unshaven and had a blue eye the size of a beetroot from when he’d been slugged.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding,” I said.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he said, blinking uncomfortably at the light.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m supposed to be the caretaker. They’re gone, you see. The English. And I don’t think they’re coming back. Dunkirk all over again. There’s no one here but you and me and-for all I know-the man in the iron mask.”

“Are you sure?”

“The longer I stay here talking, the more sure of it I am.” I dangled the keys in front of his face. “I found these on the table in the room next door.”

“So?”

“Nothing. But I’ve an idea they might fit that bracelet you’re wearing.”

“How come you weren’t chained up?”

“Somebody had to release you, I suppose.”

“They obviously don’t know us very well,” he said.

“It’s best you don’t remind me of that,” I said. “I’m just liable to change my mind about this.”

I tried the key on the handcuffs he was wearing. The lock opened.

“Why are you helping me?”

“I’m not sure anyone else would come and find you here. The place looks more or less disused. I guess I’m not the type who can leave a man to die like that. Chained to a radiator like an abandoned dog. Even if it is what you probably deserve.”

“Thanks.”

“I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention it.”

“If the English spies left you unchained they must have believed something of what you said.”

“Perhaps.” I thought about Kim Philby, the Soviet agent in MI6, and reflected that but for my remembering his name, the English wouldn’t have believed a word of it.