Ussel

Ussel is a brief but decisive waypoint in the pursuit of The Jackal. Its station square offers him a late-night stop on the road toward Egletons; nearby woods conceal the Alfa Romeo he abandons, and the car’s eventual recovery draws local police into the search for him.

A stop on the road south

Just before one in the morning, The Jackal drives his blue Alfa Romeo into the Place de la Gare at Ussel. A café opposite the station is still open, with late travellers waiting for trains. Cold and stiff after driving mountain roads, and hungry after going most of a day without a meal, he orders buttered bread, four hard-boiled eggs, and white coffee. The stop is practical: while he eats, he consults a telephone directory to find the number for the Baron de la Chalonnière, whose address is the château at La Haute Chalonnière. The village is not on his road map, but the number is listed under Egletons, which he locates about thirty kilometres farther along the RN89.

The car left in the woods

A little before two, after passing a roadside sign placing Egletons six kilometres away, The Jackal decides to leave the car in the woods bordering the road. He enters through a private drive marked by a barrier and a hunting notice, removes and then replaces the pole, and drives half a mile into the forest before switching off the headlights. The hiding place is outside Ussel rather than in the town itself, but the stop has set the route and the car’s eventual discovery in motion.

Discovery and identification

On the morning of August 20, gamekeeper Marcange Caller finds the abandoned sports car in a clump of rhododendron while pursuing a wounded wood pigeon. The concealed branches have been cut and stuck into the ground; their pale stumps have been smeared with earth. Bird droppings on the seats suggest that the car has been there for several days. Caller takes the bird and his gun home, intending to mention the vehicle to the village constable.

Near noon, that constable reports the car to the commissariat at Ussel by hand-cranked telephone. Asked whether it is white, he checks his notebook and says it is blue; he also reports that it bears French registration, while its make is unknown. The local response is initially routine: a tow truck is promised for the afternoon, and the constable is asked to guide its crew to the woods. The officers are short-staffed and already occupied with the search for an Italian sports car sought by senior officials in Paris.

From local report to manhunt

The car reaches the pound at Ussel after four. During an identification check, a maintenance worker notices the poor paintwork and scratches a wing with a screwdriver, exposing white beneath the blue. The number plates also appear to have been reversed; when the front plate is removed, it displays MI-61741. The discovery turns an apparently abandoned blue car into a concrete lead in the search for The Jackal.

Claude Lebel receives the news just before six from Commissaire Valentin at the regional police headquarters in Clermont-Ferrand. He orders a large team to Ussel, directing officers to search outward from the place where the car was found and ask at farmhouses, shops, cafés, hotels, and woodcutters’ shelters. They are to look for a tall, blond Englishman who speaks French, has three suitcases and a handgrip, and may look as though he has slept rough. The instructions also show the limits of the lead: officers should keep the press away and, if they locate the man, surround him rather than approach. Ussel thus marks the point where an isolated act of concealment becomes a coordinated search of the surrounding countryside.