Here Be Monsters by Anthony Price Page A

there on June 6th, in Normandy. And they knew they couldn’t question such a story without making an issue of it. Especially not after I’d reminded them of the Vive le IRA slogans they had failed to erase.’
    Not bad at all, thought Elizabeth. ‘When the safety of the Royal Family was involved, all foreigners expected John Bull to be at his most truculent. ‘And they believed that?’
    ‘No, Miss Loftus. If they had believed that I would have said so.’ He paused, and as the pause lengthened she felt herself sucked into it.
    ‘So what did—‘
    ‘If you will let me finish, Miss Loftus.’ He cut her off smoothly. ‘They pretended to believe me. And then they were uncommonly helpful and cooperative. They allowed me to interview three witnesses—two Frenchmen and an American youth. The Frenchman had been engaged in clearing up the area, after the previous day’s ceremonies. The American youth was the grandson of an officer in one of their destroyers, which gave close support to the American troops who stormed the positon in 1944.’ He paused again. ‘I take it that you are aware of what happened on the Pointe du Hoc, Miss Loftus?’
    ‘Yes, Major.’ It might be smarter to feign female ignorance, but there was a limit to what female flesh-and-blood could endure. “That would be D, E and F Companies of the 5th Rangers. And the destroyer was presumably the Satterlee .’
    ‘Yes.’ Not a nod, much less a smile—not even a bloody blink! Even Father had more grace on the rare occasions when she produced the right answer! ‘The boy had been delayed by an accident involving the truck in which he’d been hitch-hiking. But he was an excellent witness, observant and intelligent. I have no reservations about him.’
    Elizabeth frowned, and plunged over her own cliff before she could stop herself. ‘He saw Parker fall?’
    ‘No, Miss Loftus. I did not say that. I neither said it, nor implied it. I said the boy was an excellent witness. If he had seen the man fall then my investigation would not have been unsatisfactory. None of these witnesses saw the man fall. Neither did two adult Americans who were also on the headland at the time. I was shown transcripts of their evidence. All five of them arrived on the scene after he had allegedly fallen—the boy, one of the Americans and one of the Frenchmen almost immediately, within sight of each other, the other two shortly after.’ He paused. ‘Altogether there were seven people in the vicinity.’
    Seven?
    ‘Indeed?’ She was not going to be caught so easily again: the as-yet-unaccounted two must wait until the Major chose to summon them. ‘Why were you not able to interview the Americans—the adult ones?’
    He stared at her in silence for a moment. ‘I was told that they had returned to America. Their evidence was certainly of no significance in transcript. They merely confirmed what the boy and the Frenchman said, but in less detail.’
    ‘Who were they? Why were they there?’
    ‘I was told that they were tourists.’
    It was like playing a game—a game of snakes-without-ladders, from which he evidently derived some secret ego-inflating pleasure. But she was at least beginning to get the hang of his rules. ‘And is their transcript to be relied on?’
    ‘No, Miss Loftus. I did not say that. But so far as it went it was factually accurate, I believe.’
    Whatever he stated as a fact was a fact, and ‘I believe’ prefixed a genuine opinion. But ‘I was told’ indicated an untruth. Those were his rules. But since she was boss it was about time she started making the rules. ‘Why were the French so helpful?’
    ‘The fact that I was there at all meant that I’d been tracking him. They didn’t know how much I knew already. Perhaps they thought I might give them something.’
    Some hope! thought Elizabeth. ‘And the missing eye-witnesses?’
    ‘Eye-witnesses?’ He produced no reaction, of course.
    ‘Seven people, you said, Major.’ Now for her