The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [53]
“So who was this Robert Jules Lebeau?” Marshall asked when the waiter was finished. He hadn’t imagined Robert as a shopkeeper. He had thought Robert might be a diplomat. Or a journalist perhaps.
“He was a convoyeur who met aviateurs north of Paris,” Nicolas told him. “I’m guessing that he was the contact for the Vallon family and very possibly the youth you remember coming to them on his bicycle.”
Nicolas gave Marshall a brief history of the various escape networks for downed airmen. After the largest one, the Comète, was infiltrated by the Gestapo and nearly destroyed, the Bourgogne smuggled airmen from Paris to Spain.
“Did you ever hear of Dédée de Jongh?”
“I don’t think so.”
“She was a young Belgian woman très forte, very strong, very courageous. She began the Comète and escorted many aviateurs herself across the Pyrenees. She was just a girl. But never mind. You could not have known her.”
Nicolas sipped his bowl of coffee and winced at its heat. Marshall liked the idea of drinking coffee out of a bowl, but he had poured in too much milk, making the coffee too weak. A loud bus whooshed past, flooding them with fumes. Nicolas waited for the noise to subside, then reported some findings about the chief of the Bourgogne network—Georges Broussine, a well-known journalist.
“One of Papa’s old contacts remembered Broussine, and he knew that Lebeau had been to Chauny to meet flyers, and then Papa recognized the names. So I think it is likely that they are links between Chauny and the family you stayed with in Paris.”
“Your father said he didn’t know any names.”
Nicolas shrugged. “Papa knows more than he allows. Anyway, the Bourgogne chief still lives here, but he does not answer me. He may be out of the country. Perhaps in the meantime we will find Monsieur Lebeau and get our information.”
Bells in the nearby church were ringing the hour. Marshall had walked past that church, at the intersection of Maine and Leclerc, several times on his way to the Métro, but he had paid no attention to it.
He said to Nicolas, “That church has probably been standing there for time out of mind, tolling its bell. I never took time to notice things like that before. Not since I was in hiding during the war.”
Nicolas said, “Marshall, the churches did not ring their bells during the Occupation. You heard no church bells then.”
20.
MARSHALL WALKED AROUND THE CITY AIMLESSLY, HIS HEAD in a muddle. He was in a detective story, yet he wasn’t the detective. He was the reader, or an innocent bystander caught up in an intrigue. He was tempted to chase down Robert Jules Lebeau the épicier himself, but he recognized that Nicolas wanted to help, and Marshall didn’t want to deprive him of that satisfaction.
Nevertheless, a couple of days later, he found himself in the nearby suburb of Saint-Mandé on the épicier’s block, a short street of small shops off the avenue du Général de Gaulle. The fruits and vegetables were in bins outside the shop. It was a simple grocery store. At the small counter inside stood an attractive young woman in an Indian tunic and jeans, her limp hair tied in two loose hanks. He selected a plum and went inside to pay.
“Bonjour, madame,” he said.
“Bonjour, monsieur. C’est tout?”
“Oui.” She was occupied with tying some string on a package, and he waited to ask about Lebeau. He paid for the fruit, then hesitantly asked for water to wash the plum.
“It is clean!”
“Vraiment?”
“Vrai.” She was shooing him from her shop.
“O.K.,” he said, wondering which one of them had been rude. Maybe his French was at fault.
At the door, he turned. “Is your name Lebeau?” he asked.
“Non. He is not here.”
“Monsieur Lebeau owns this market?”
“Non. It is mine.”
“Where is Monsieur Lebeau?”
She shrugged and began furiously punching some numbers on her small