“That’s the surprising thing. We can’t find any evidence of an O.A.S. connection at all.”
“Probably did it for adventure,” Mallory said. “He only needed half a dozen men in the crew to agree with him. They could have coerced the rest.”
“Sounds feasible,” Adarns said. “Let’s move on.”
Various slides followed. There was an Admiralty chart of lie de Roc, with the harbour, the hotel and General Grant’s house all clearly marked. St. Pierre was little more than a rock lifting a hundred or so feet out of the sea and crowned by the Victorian Gothic Castle.
Mallory shook his head. “God knows how they ever man-aged to build the damned thing out there.”
“Eighteen-sixty-one,” Adams said. “A self-made indus-trialist called Bryant. Bit of a megalomaniac. Saw himself as king of the castle and so on. Cost him better than a hundred thousand to build the place and that was real money in those days.”
“I can’t see a jetty. Is it on the other side?”
“There’s a cave at the base of the cliffs. If you look care-fully you can see the entrance. The jetty’s inside.”
The castle faded and another picture took its place. It was that of a distinguished-looking man with silvering hair}eyes calm in a sensitive, aquiline face.
“De Beaumont?” Mallory said.
Adams nodded. “Philippe, Comte de Beaumont. One of the oldest of the great French families. He’s even a rather distant blood relation of you-know-who, which makes the whole thing even more complicated.”
“I know quite a lot about his military history,” Mallory said. “After all, he’s something of a hero to paratroopers the world over. He came over here during the war and joined de Gaulle, didn’t he?”
“That’s right. Received just about every decoration poss-ible. Afterwards he went to Indo-China as a colonel of colonial paratroops. The Viets picked him up at the sur-render of Dien-Bien-Phu in 1954. After his release he re-turned to France and was posted to Algeria. He was always
at loggerheads with the top brass. Once had an argument with the old man himself at an official reception over what constitutes war in the modern sense.”
“That should have been enough to get him put out to grass on its own.”
Adams shrugged. “They needed him, I suppose. After all, hewas the most outstanding paratroop colonel in Algeria at that time. Handled all the dirtier jobs the top brass didn’t want to soil its fingers with.”
“So he helped bring de Gaulle back to power?”
“That’s right. A prime mover in theAlgerie Frangaise movement. The General, of course, kicked him right in the teeth by granting independence to Algeria after all.”
“And de Beaumont cleared out?”
“After Chalk’s rather abortive little coup last year. Whether or not he was actually mixed up in that little lot we can’t be certain. The point is that he left France and bought this place on St. Pierre from Hamish Grant. Caused quite a stir in the French papers at the time.”
“And he’s kept his nose clean since then?”
“As a whistle.” Adams grinned. “Even the French can’t turn anything up on him. He runs a boat, by the way. Forty-foot twin-screw motor-yacht namedFleur de Lys. The very latest thing for deep-sea cruising with depth-sounder, automatic pilot and 100 h.p. DAF diesels. A bit of a recluse, but he’s been seen in St. Helier occasionally. What do you think?”
“I’d say he has the kind of inbred arrogance that can only come from a thousand years of always being right, or at least thinking you were,” Mallory said. “Men like him can never sit still. They usually have to be plotting at one thing or another. Comes from that natural assumption that anything conflicting with their own views must be wrong.”
“Interesting,” Adams said. “He has more the look of a seventeenth-century puritan to me. One of the thin-lipped intolerant variety. A damned good colonel in the New Model Army.”
“Jesus and no quarter?” Mallory shook his head. “He’s no bigot. Simply a rather arrogant aristocrat with a limited field of vision and an absolute conviction of the Tightness of his own actions. When he decides on a plan of attack he follows it through to the bitter end. That’s what made him such an outstanding officer. For men like him the rot sets in only if they step outside themselves and see just how much the whole damned thing is costing.”