The Jackal hides at the Château de la Haute Chalonnière

The Jackal hides at the Château de la Haute Chalonnière after escaping on foot from the area where his car was found, using a farm lorry, a taxi, and a village van to reach the estate without openly announcing his destination. The episode brings his flight into Colette de la Chalonnière’s private world: she recognizes him as the man she had recently met at Gap and welcomes him, while his conspicuous luggage and the trail he leaves behind give Claude Lebel’s search a new direction.

From the forest to Egletons

At dawn, the Jackal has reached a road after laboriously retracing the Alfa Romeo’s passage through the forest and sweeping away its light marks in the moss and twigs. He has spent the night walking, and his clothes are grimy; carrying his cases, he waits for a lift. At 5:50 a farm lorry towing a hay trailer comes by. He presents himself as a soldier on weekend leave, hitch-hiking home after reaching Ussel and intending to continue toward Tulle, where he claims to have an uncle who can help him find transport to Bordeaux. The driver accepts the story and takes him to Egletons.

The Jackal thanks the farmer, slips away behind the station, and enters a café. Over coffee, he asks for a taxi and uses the wait to wash, change into a fresh suit, and brush his teeth. The taxi arrives at 7:30: an old Renault, rather than a vehicle likely to draw attention. He asks for the village of Haute Chalonnière, learns it lies eighteen kilometres away in the hills, and directs the driver there. Each stage is a small act of concealment: he offers the farmer a plausible destination, does not linger at the station, and uses hired transport for the approach to the estate.

A discreet arrival at the estate

The Jackal has the taxi stop in front of the Café de la Poste on the village square, not at the château. He unloads his luggage into the café after the taxi leaves, keeping the driver from learning that the estate is his destination. The square is already hot; inside, the customers turn to examine the newcomer. The Jackal’s route depends not only on disguising his intentions but on separating each carrier from the next: the farmer knows the story of the weekend pass, and the taxi-driver knows only that he has been taken to the village.

He then secures a van and a local escort for the final two kilometres up to the château. As he travels, he reflects that the peasantry of the Auvergne are so reserved with outsiders that they are unlikely to betray his presence. The thought captures both the usefulness and the uncertainty of his plan: he is relying on strangers’ reticence, not on a prepared safe house or a formal network. His arrival is arranged through ordinary transport and local assistance, and the luggage that accompanies him makes the concealment imperfect even as he avoids naming the destination to the taxi-driver.

Colette is at the château after returning the previous afternoon from Gap. She has been reading a letter and thinking about the course of her life and her recent lover. When she sees a village van in the courtyard and a man beside three suitcases and a hand-grip, she recognizes the gleam of his blond hair. Her surprise turns to pleasure: she understands that he has followed her. The recognition establishes that their encounter at Gap was not incidental to his arrival. She goes to dress, and the château becomes a place where the fugitive is received not as a stranger but as a lover.

The police turn a trail into a search

The arrival occurs against the larger mobilization Lebel has been ordered to lead. After reading Colonel Rolland’s report, Lebel receives a directive from the Minister of the Interior: he is to establish his own office and draw on the resources of the organizations represented at the briefing, without a limit on expenses. He makes Lucien Caron his sole assistant and secretary, arranges for an office bed and basic supplies, and demands ten outside telephone lines with a permanent operator. These measures turn the investigation into a command operation, but its secrecy is as important as its scale.

In calls to foreign police colleagues, Lebel describes the unknown target as a political contract assassin with several successful killings, while admitting that the authorities have neither a name nor more than a poor description. The request is deliberately tentative: at this point he cannot present it as a formal inquiry between police forces because the intent to commit an offence may not yet have entered the preparation stage. The uncertainty surrounding the suspect contrasts with the extensive powers given to Lebel; the manhunt must be built from fragments, and information cannot yet be circulated as an ordinary wanted-person alert.

When news reaches Lebel, he directs Commissaire Valentin to send a strong team to Ussel and make the abandoned car the centre of a square search. Officers are to ask at farmhouses, shops, cafés, hotels, and woodcutters’ shacks about a tall, blond, English-born man who speaks good French and carries three suitcases and a hand-grip. Lebel anticipates the danger that publicity would create. He tells Valentin to keep the press away, offering a car-crash explanation to quiet local reporters, and orders that if the fugitive is located the police should surround him rather than approach him. The luggage described in the search matches the Jackal’s passage through the village, while the instruction not to close in reflects the danger of turning a lead into a confrontation.

Records, fingerprints, and exposure

The investigation also moves through archives and routine records. Throughout the night, officials check the Pantheon archives again for the name Alexander James Quentin Duggan. A card records that a passenger of that name entered France from Brussels on the Brabant Express on July 22; another report records him on the Etoile du Nord Express from Paris to Brussels on July 31. A hotel card from the Prefecture of Police shows a stay near the Place de la Madeleine from July 22 through July 30 and gives a passport number matching information received from London. These entries establish a documented French itinerary under Duggan’s name, though they do not themselves place him at the château during his later flight.

Caron favors raiding the hotel, but Lebel chooses a quiet visit in the small hours and speaks to the proprietor without waking the other guests. The proprietor’s account satisfies him that the man had left by August 15. The choice illustrates Lebel’s preference for controlled inquiry over conspicuous force: he seeks information while limiting the chance that a public police action will alert the fugitive or disrupt the investigation.

Later, Lebel receives Valentin’s report from Tulle and asks whether the car has been fingerprinted. Valentin confirms that prints have also been taken from the room at the château, and that hundreds of sets match. The report connects the abandoned vehicle with the estate through forensic evidence, converting a refuge that appeared protected by distance and local discretion into another point in the police record. The episode’s movement from hidden arrival to recoverable traces marks the narrowing gap between the Jackal’s improvised escape and the manhunt closing around him.