The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

well?”
    “A governess I had before I went away to school. She was French. And then skiing at Chamonix in the winter, Cap d’Antibes in the summer, I kept in practice. Just seemed to have an ear for it. And never much liked lying on the beach, so I’d go and talk to the fishermen and the waiters,” Jack replied. “Then, the interpreter’s course was something to do while I was in Quetta. Couldn’t play polo all the time. So I was assigned to liaison duties during the phony war, based in a corps HQ at Longwy on your Maginot line. I suppose that’s how we first met, when they were looking through the files in Cairo for any odd bod whose docket said he spoke French when you came back with General Koenig’s boys, after Bir Hakeim.”
    François nodded. “And you, McPhee. Your French is good, too.”
    “Usual way, François. A sleeping dictionary, a petite amie . I was in France in 1939, best year of my life. Springtime in Paris, a girl, a crazy idea that maybe I could be a writer. Can’t figure whether I fell in love with her or with France, and while I was working it out, I ended up speaking a language I never could handle at school, although they tried hard enough. Hell, you learn a lot in bed.”
    “Perhaps we should try to find you a pretty teacher of demolitions,” laughed Jack. “Then you’d sort out your fuses and your ammonal fast enough.”
    “Explosions in bed,” grinned François. “There’s an idea.”
    “Don’t worry about me, you guys. We have the best part of another year of training before we get sent in. Figure it out. We in the Jedburgh teams are meant to drop into France just before the invasion to help coordinate the Resistance. There’ll be no invasion this year, not with the American troops still coming in, and the new front in Italy. Besides, the summer’s just about over and we can’t cross the Channel with the storms coming on. We’d never be able to ensure supplies to the beachhead. So the invasion will be next year, May or June, ’44. So we’ll drop into France in May. That gives us nine, maybe ten more months. More training. Winter in Scotland, underwater demolitions training in those freezing lochs. I have all the time in the world.”
    “You are right, of course,” François said. “Except for one thing.”
    “What’s that”?
    “The Germans. More precisely, the Abwehr and the SD, the Sicherheitsdienst, and the Gestapo. They are not idle. They roll up the Resistance cells with a dismaying regularity. If the clever chaps in Baker Street who devised this whole operation think that there are too few networks on the ground for us to work with when we drop in, they may send some of us in early, to have the time to build up our own teams. At least, that is what my Free French masters think in Duke Street. And since Jean Moulin managed to forge the various Resistance factions into a single structure, the Gaullists probably know the situation better than the Englishmen in SOE.”
    “But Jean Moulin has gone, disappeared, arrested,” said McPhee. “Night and fog, that good old German way.”
    “It is a dangerous game, Resistance, and a lot of people disappear. It will be dangerous in Europe for a long time I think. After the Germans, we might be playing it against the Russians,” said François. “And I think we three will be playing it long before next May, McPhee.”

CHAPTER 4
Time: The Present
    L ydia had expected to find Clothilde difficult. She would have been entitled to be furious at a wasted trip. Instead, she found the Frenchwoman a comfort, as she helped satisfy the demands of the police for an authoritative opinion on what the stolen rock was and what it might be worth. She was quite splendid with the man who came from the insurance company, informing him that he might count himself fortunate that Lydia had listed the value at a mere ten thousand pounds.
    “For once, we can use the word priceless and mean it,” she had snapped, eyes ablaze with professional righteousness. Lydia found her admirable. And Clothilde was even useful with the hapless Justin, who was obviously terrified of her. And she bullied the directors into matching the ten thousand pounds she decided her museum could offer as a reward. So after the paperwork and the meetings with directors and the police and insurance affairs had all been dealt with, it was evening, and when Clothilde asked Lydia if she could recommend a quiet hotel, she insisted that the Frenchwoman come and