In the end, unable to stand the suspense, Slymne slipped down the car deck as soon as the
French coast was sighted and made hurried a inventory of the cars. Glodstone's Bentley was not
among them. And when he drove off the ship at Calais and followed the Toutes Directions signs, he
was even more confused. Presumably Glodstone was crossing on the next ferry. Or was he going to
Boulogne or even sticking to his original instructions to travel by Ostend? Slymne turned into a
side road and parked beneath a block of flats, and, having considered all the permutations of
times of ferry crossings and destinations, decided there was only one way to find out. With a
sense of doom, Slymne walked back to the office and was presently asking the overworked clerk in
broken French if he could trace a Monsieur Glodstone. The clerk looked at him incredulously and
replied in perfect English.
'A Mr Glodstone? You're seriously asking me if I can tell you if a Mr Glodstone has crossed,
is crossing or intends to cross from Dover to Calais, Dover to Boulogne, or Dover to Ostend?'
'Oui,' said Slymne, sticking to his supposedly foreign identity, 'Je suis.'
'Well you can suis off,' said the clerk, 'I've got about eight hundred ruddy cars crossing on
the hour by the hour and thousands of passengers and if you think '
'Sa femme est morte,' said Slymne, 'C'est très important...'
'His wife's dead? Well, that's a different matter, of course. I'll put out a general message
to all ferries...'
'No, don't do that,' Slymne began but the man had already disappeared into a back office and
was evidently relaying the dreadful news to some senior official. Slymne turned and fled. God
alone knew how Glodstone would respond to the news that he was now a widower when he'd never had
a wife.
With a fresh sense of despair Slymne scurried back to his car and drove wildly out of Calais
with one over-riding intention. Whether Glodstone arrived at Calais or Boulogne or Ostend he
would still have to come south to reach the Château Carmagnac, and with any luck would stick to
the route he'd been given. At least Slymne hoped to hell he would, and since it was the only hope
he had he clung to it. He might be able to head the swine off and the best place to start would
be at Ivry-La-Bataille. The place had the sort of romantic picturesqueness that would most appeal
to Glodstone and the hotel he had booked him into there was Highly Recommended in the Guide
Gastronomique. As he drove through the night, Slymne prayed that Glodstone's stomach would prove
his ally.
He need not have been so concerned. Glodstone was still in Britain and had worries of his own.
They mostly concerned Peregrine and the discrepancy between his appearance, as altered by dyeing
his hair dark brown, and that of William Barnes as depicted on his passport. The transformation
had taken place in the London hotel. Glodstone had sent Peregrine out with instructions to get
some dye from a chemist and had told him to get on with it. It had been a bad mistake. Peregrine
had been booked into the hotel an unremarkable blond and had left it sixteen hours and ten towels
later, looking, in Glodstone's opinion, like something no bigoted Immigration Officer would let
out of the country, never mind allow in.
'I didn't tell you to take a bath in the blasted stuff,' said Glodstone surveying the filthy
brew in the tub and the stained towels. 'I told you to dye your hair.'
'I know, sir, but there weren't any instructions about hair.'
'What the hell do you mean?' said Glodstone who wished now that he had supervised the business
instead of protecting his reputation as a non-consenting adult by having tea in the lounge. 'What
did it say on the bottle?'
'It was a powder, sir, and I followed what they said to do for wool.'
'Wool?'
Peregrine groped for a sodden and practically illegible piece of paper. 'I tried to find hair
but all they had down was polyester/cotton mixtures, heavy-duty nylon, acetate, rayon and wool,
so I chose wool. I mean it seemed safer. All the other ones said to simmer for ten minutes.'
'Dear Lord,' said Glodstone and grabbed the paper. It was headed 'DYPERM, The Non-Fade
All-Purpose Dye.' By the time he had deciphered the instructions, he looked despairingly round
the room again. 'Non-Fade All-Purpose' was about right. Even the bathmat was indelibly dyed with
footprints. 'I told you to get hair-dye, not something suitable for ties, batik and macramé. It's
a miracle you're still alive. This muck's made for blasted washing-machines.'
'But they only had stuff called Hair Rinse at the chemist and that didn't seem much use so I
'
'I know, I know what you did,' said Glodstone. 'The thing is, bow the devil do we explain
these towels...Good God! It's even stained the shower curtains, and they're plastic. I wouldn't
have believed it possible. And how on earth did it get up the wall like that? You must have been
spraying the filth all over the room.'
'That was when I had a shower afterwards, sir. It said rinse thoroughly and I did in the
shower and some got in my mouth so I spat it out. It tasted blooming horrible.'
'It smells singularly foul too,' said Glodstone gloomily. 'If you'll take my advice, you'll
empty that bath and try and get the stain off the enamel with some Vim, and then have another
bath in clean water.'
And retreating to the bar for several pink gins, he left Peregrine to do what he could to make
himself look less like something the Race Relations Board would find hard to qualify. In the
event DYPERM didn't live up to its promise and Peregrine came down to dinner unrecognizable but
at least moderately unstained except for his hair and eyebrows.
'Well, that's a relief,' said Glodstone. 'All the same, I think it best to get you on the most
crowded ferry tomorrow and hope to hell you'll pass in a crowd. I'll tell the manager here you
had an accident with a bottle of ink.'
'Yes, sir, and what do I do when I get to France?' asked Peregrine.
'See a doctor if you fell at all peculiar,' said Glodstone.
'No, I mean where do I go?'
'We'll buy you a rail ticket through to Armentières and you'll book into the hotel nearest the
station and be sure not to leave it except to go to the station every two hours. I'll try to make
it across Belgium as fast as I can. And remember this, if you are stopped at Calais, my name must
not be mentioned. Invent some story about always wanting a trip to France and pinching the
passport yourself.'
'You mean lie, sir?'
Glodstone's fork, halfway to his mouth, hovered a moment and returned to his plate.
Peregrine's peculiar talent for taking everything he was told literally was beginning to unsettle
him. 'If you must put it like that, yes,' he said with an awful patience. 'And stop calling me
"sir". We're not at school now and one slip of the tongue could give the game away. From now on
I'll call you Bill and you can address me as...er...Patton.'
'Yes, si...Patton,' said Peregrine.
Even so, it was a worried Glodstone who went to bed that night and who, after an acrimonious
discussion with the hotel manager on the matter of towels, took the Dover road next morning with
Peregrine beside him. With understandable haste, he booked him as William Barnes on the ferry and
by train to Armentières and then hurried away before the ship sailed. For the rest of the day, he
lay on the cliff above the terminal scanning returning passengers through his binoculars in the
hope that Peregrine wouldn't be among them. In between whiles, he checked his stores of tinned
food, the camping gas stove and saucepan, the picnic hamper and the two sleeping-bags and tent.
Finally, he taped the revolvers to the springs below the seats and, unscrewing the ends of the
tent-poles, hid the ammunition inside them. And as the weather was good, and there was no sign of
Peregrine being dragged ashore by Immigration Officers, his spirits rose.
'After all, nothing ventured, nothing gained,' he replied tritely to a gull that shrieked
above him. In the clear summer air he could see faint on the horizon the coastline of France.
Tomorrow he'd be there. That evening, while Peregrine struggled to explain to the desk clerk that
he wanted a room at the hotel in Armentières and Slymne drove desperately towards
Ivry-La-Bataille, Glodstone dined at a country pub and then went down to the ferry terminal to
confirm his booking to Ostend next morning.
'Did you say your name was Glodstone, sir?' enquired the clerk.
'I did,' said Glodstone, and was alarmed when the man excused himself and went to another
office with an odd look on his face. A more senior official with an even odder look came out.
'If you'll just come this way, Mr Glodstone,' he said mournfully and opened the door of a
small room.
'What for?' said Glodstone, now thoroughly worried.
'I'm afraid I have some rather shocking news for you, sir. Perhaps if you took a seat...'
'What shocking news?' said Glodstone, who had a shrewd idea what he was in for.
'It concerns your wife, sir.'
'My wife?'
'Yes, Mr Glodstone. I'm sorry to have to tell you '
'But I haven't got a wife,' said Glodstone, fixing the man with his monocle.
'Ah, then you know already,' said the man. 'You have my most profound sympathy. I lost my own
three years ago. I know just how you must feel.'
'I very much doubt if you do,' said Glodstone, whose feelings were veering all over the place.
'In fact, I'd go as far as to say you can't.'
But the man was not to be denied his compassion. The years behind the booking counter had
given him the gift of consoling people. 'Perhaps not,' he murmured, 'As the Bard says, marriages
are made in heaven and we must all cross that bourne from which no traveller returns.'
He cast a watery eye at the Channel but Glodstone was in no mood for multiple misquotations.
'Listen,' he said, 'I don't know where you got this idea that I'm married because I'm not, and
since I'm not, I'd be glad to hear how I can have lost my wife.'
'But you are Mr G. P. Glodstone booked for the Ostend boat tomorrow morning?'
'Yes. And what's more, there isn't any Mrs Glodstone and never has been.'
'That's odd,' said the man. 'We had a message from Calais just now for a Mr Glodstone saying
his wife had died and you're the only Mr Glodstone on any of the booking lists. I'm exceedingly
sorry to have distressed you.'
'Yes, well since you have,' said Glodstone, who was beginning to find the message even more
sinister than the actual death of any near relative, 'I'd like to hear who sent it.'
The man went back into the office and phoned through to Calais. 'Apparently a man came in
speaking French with a strong English accent and wanted to find out on which ferry you were
crossing,' he said. 'He wouldn't speak English and the clerk there wouldn't tell him where you
were landing, so the man said to tell you your wife had died.'
'Did the clerk describe the man?'
'I didn't ask him and frankly, since...'
But Glodstone's monocle had its effect and he went back to the phone. He returned with the
information that the man had disappeared as soon as he'd delivered the message.
Glodstone had made up his mind. 'I think I'll change my booking,' he said. 'Is there any space
on tonight's ferries?'
'There's some on the midnight one, but '
'Good. Then I'll take it,' said Glodstone, maintaining his authority, 'and on no account is
that fellow to be given any information about my movements.'
'We don't make a habit of handing out information of that sort,' said the man. 'I take great
exception to the very idea.'
'And I take exception to being told that a wife I don't have has just died,' said
Glodstone.
At midnight, he took the ferry and was in Belgium before dawn. As he drove out of the docks,
Glodstone kept his eyes skinned for any suspicious watchers but the place was dark and empty. Of
one thing, Glodstone was now certain. La Comtesse had not been exaggerating the brilliant
criminal intelligence he was up against. That they knew he was coming was proof enough of that.
There was also the terrible possibility that the message had been a warning.
'If they touch one hair of her head,' Glodstone muttered ferociously and adjusted his goggles
as the Bentley ate the miles towards Iper and the obscure frontier crossing beyond it.
'Gosh, it's good to see you, sir...I mean Patton, sir,' said Peregrine when the Bentley drew
up outside the railway station that morning. Glodstone peered at him from behind his one-eyed
goggles, and had to admit that he was fairly pleased to see Peregrine. He was terribly tired, had
had no sleep for twenty-four hours and the border crossing Slymne had chosen for him had been so
obscure that he'd spent several hours trying to find it.
'I'll get some breakfast while you fetch your kit from the hotel,' he said, 'I don't want to
be delayed here too long. So step lively. You see, they know I'm coming but that you're with me
they do not know.'
And with this strangely accurate remark, Glodstone climbed down and entered a café where, to
his disgust, he was forced to make do with café au lait and croissants. Half an hour later the
Bentley, which had attracted a disconcerting number of vintage car buffs around it, was once more
on the road.
'We've stolen a march on them so far,' said Glodstone, 'but there's no doubt they know La
Comtesse has been in communication with me. Which goes to show she has been badly served. And so,
from now on, we must be on our guard and keep our eyes open for anything suspicious.' And he
recounted the story of the man who had visited the booking office at Calais and had left the
warning message. 'Which means they may be holding her against our coming.'
'Your wife?' asked Peregrine. 'I didn't know you had one.' For a moment Glodstone took his eye
off the road to glare at him and looked back just in time to avoid crushing a herd of cows that
was blocking the way.