Paris Requiem (2 page)

James studied the letter, wondering what it was that struck such a curious note for him. Perhaps it was that Elinor had not once mentioned Raf. Nor was there any reference to this unknown Marguerite de Landois. On top of it, Ellie claimed that she was resting at home, whereas when he had
telephoned
earlier, there had been no reply.

He fumbled for his pipe and filled it slowly as he took up his position by the window once more. With the first billow of smoke, it came to him that this was the first time Ellie had ever broached the subject of her condition directly to him. In the past it had been an unmentionable given, a matter reported on by their mother in hushed tones. He allowed himself a small sigh and turned his attention to the square.

A hurrying figure caught his eye. Something about the grace of the man’s form, the passionate cut of the face, the agile speed, like an ancient Olympic runner weaving his way skilfully between strollers, brought to mind his brother. But this wasn’t Raf, James determined, as the figure grew closer. He looked at his watch again. With a wave of irritation, first at his brother for his incorrigible waywardness, then at himself for rising like a tin soldier to the trumpet call of familial duty, he headed for the streets.

His carefully erected plans and the order of his days, James noted with passing irony, were already succumbing to the siren song of the city.

Three hours later, having wandered a little, snacked in a
terrasse
and stopped at the American bank, James was hurtling across the river in a hackney cab. From his vantage point, both arteries, solid and fluid, seemed equally busy. Beneath him brightly painted barges moved alongside dark, heavy goods vessels and light fishing skiffs. The shores were lined with wash boats. As they turned onto the quay, he noticed a group of stout women carrying baskets loaded with linen.

When the cab reached its destination on one of the old streets of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, he hopped out, no longer certain he had done the right thing in coming. The agreeable note he had received bore little relation to the grim, darkened stone and austerely formal façade of the house in front of him. Heavy doors creaked, as he considered. A
carriage
emerged. The horse, the vehicle, the coachman in his black cutaway, all bore a marked resemblance to those that had ferried him from the station not so very many hours ago.

He murmured his name to the uniformed footman, who ushered him through an arched passage into a courtyard. Its aspect astonished him. He was in a garden. Cherry trees in full blossom graced every corner and dappled the light. Orange shrubs grew from ornate stone urns to flank long windows with their glossy leaves. Wisteria climbed, softly purple against a wall. The unexpectedness of it all rendered it even more beautiful. He stopped for a moment to take in a bird’s song and sniff the fragrant air.

‘You like my greenery, Mr Norton.’

James veered to see a woman walking towards him. He had an impression of slenderness, a graceful step, light hair intricately coiffed, a dress in the same shade as the wisteria,
an outstretched hand which was so proffered as to demand a response of hand and lip.

‘Madame de Landois.’ He bowed, found his voice. ‘Your English is very good.’

Her laugh rustled. ‘I do my best.’

‘And your secret garden, exquisite.’

‘Ah, for that you must thank Pierre. He spent his childhood in England.’

James nodded sagely, though he had no idea to what she was referring. On closer inspection though, he noticed that her eyes were warmly brown, like milk chocolate, but streaked with yellow and as full of humour as her voice. He wondered if he cut a comical figure, standing there now, his hands
hidden
in his pockets like an awkward youth. He straightened himself as he felt her direct gaze.

‘I am so glad you could come. We shall be quite alone.’ She tilted her chin a little. ‘Yes, the resemblance to your brother is clear. Not the eyes, of course. And you are – how do you say, a little more
costaud
– sturdier. But the rest … I hope you are not too tired. Come. Tea will restore you.’

She was already through one of the glazed doors and he followed dreamily, shaking himself once he was inside as if to throw off a mesmerist’s far too pleasant pass.

The airy room that bordered the side of the garden had a grand piano at its far end. Next to it stood an easel,
supporting
an unfinished canvas.

James cleared his throat. ‘You paint, I see.’

‘That is to flatter me, Monsieur. I dabble. It helps me to see things clearly. And to pass the time.’

‘You have too much of it?’ It was an idea he had never really contemplated. Time, for him, was something there was never quite enough of.

She stopped to consider him. ‘Sometimes there is that
illusion
. Yes.’ Irony played over her features. ‘I am a woman after
all, Monsieur. A French woman of little gainful employment. But I see we shall get on.’

It came to him that he was no longer used to the
company
of women.

They were at the base of a grand marble staircase and she moved her skirts aside to take the steps more quickly. ‘At this time of day, the light is best in the library. You will see.’

He did. The high-ceilinged room, lined with tomes he would have liked to examine at his leisure, seemed to float on a lake of pink blossom. A small round table, sparkling with silver, had been set in one of the tall window alcoves.

He pulled back a chair for her, surprised that the splendour of the house did not dictate the constant presence of servants. She seemed to read his mind.

‘I thought it would be pleasant to be informal. You
Americans
prefer that, no? Everything is ready.’ She gestured at the array of small cakes and sandwiches and poured amber liquid into thin porcelain. ‘We shall help ourselves.’

James filled his plate, but he didn’t eat. He was too full of questions, yet altogether uncertain where to begin.

‘This is all very kind of you.’ He stammered a little.

‘Oh, I am kindness itself. When I choose, of course.’

He met her smile. ‘I’m happy that you’ve chosen then. I shall thank my brother for it. Have you known him long?’

‘How does one measure the length of friendship,
Monsieur
? Months, years, seem to have little to do with it. Let us say that I count Rafael’ – she gave the name the lilt of all its syllables – ‘and Elinor amongst my good friends. When they asked me to help look after you during your stay here, I was more than happy to agree.’

James was not indifferent to the stress she had put on Ellie’s name.

‘Rafael is so busy these days and Elinor, sadly, indisposed.’

‘So she says. She preferred to see me tomorrow.’ He had a
sudden image of Ellie in a darkened room and he noticed that he was tugging at his collar. ‘Is it very worrying?’

Madame de Landois’s voice was soothing. ‘I have
recommended
her to the best doctors. Let us hope one of them will find a cure for her.’

‘Yes.’

‘She has such a complexity of character. It can produce such a complexity of symptoms.’

James sat back in his chair with abrupt awkwardness. He found he didn’t like this stranger speaking of Ellie with that peculiar mixture of familiarity and clinical distance, as if she knew her better than her own brother.

Madame de Landois arched a well-formed eyebrow. ‘Have I overstepped myself. It is only that …’

James cut her off, more rudely than he wished. ‘Do you know where my brother might be, Madame? He hasn’t come to me yet. And I had hoped to catch up with him today.’ He stopped himself and changed tack. How could this patently aristocratic woman possibly know where his brother had got to, let alone anything about the murky business that had brought James to Paris. ‘I have so little time, you see.’

‘Rafael is negligent.’ She filled James’s pause lightly. ‘But I know he is “chasing a story”, I think you say. And when he is chasing …’ She held her hands up and shrugged. ‘
C’est comme ça
. So much has been happening these last weeks. The Cour de Cassation, our supreme court’s decision to look again at the Dreyfus case. Then the attack on our new President by this madman, the Conte de Dion, at the races. Such tumult. I don’t know if you had the news of all this on shipboard.’

‘Indeed. Nonetheless …’

‘You would like to see your brother immediately,
n’est-ce pas?’

James met the irony in her eyes and had a passing sense that she was older than he had first assumed, closer to his
age, perhaps, than to Raf’s. But the intervening decade only hovered over her expression without quite settling on her face. He found himself wondering about her husband. It was unthinkable that she didn’t have one.

‘Yes, I can see it now. You share Rafael’s tenacity, but you are reticent, more secretive. Though you have cultivated a certain bluntness to hide it. Or perhaps had it thrust upon you?’

A knock at the door saved him from having to answer. Madame de Landois seemed a little taken aback as she called out a ‘
oui
’.

A trim, balding man came in and in a low voice proceeded to pour out a hurried sequence James couldn’t quite catch.

‘Faites-le monter, Pierre. Apportez une autre tasse.’

It took the last phrase for James to shed his prior thoughts and realise that the man was a servant.

‘Are you interested in life in France, Monsieur Norton?’ Madame de Landois’s next question caught him off guard.

‘I … I hope so. Do I strike you as too enmeshed in my own affairs?’

‘No, no. It’s understandable.’ She studied him, then rose to pace a little. It gave him the full benefit of her fine figure. She was, he decided, remarkably pretty, rather tall, too, for a French woman.

‘You may, however, be interested in my visitor.’ She carried on with her previous thought. ‘I doubt that you have ever met quite his kind before.’

Her expression bore the glimmer of a challenge. James was more than prepared to rise to it.

A thin, stoop-shouldered man shifted from foot to foot at the open door, as if to cross its threshold marked a transgression.

Despite the warmth of the weather, he was all but muffled in a shabby black coat. His streaked, ragged beard half
covered
his gaunt face. Dark eyes blazed from between jagged
cheekbones. His prominent forehead was moist with
perspiration
, the ungroomed hair above an untidy grizzle. A
sizeable
black felt hat sat in his hands. He played nervously with its brim as he bowed and bowed again.

‘Thank you for seeing me, Madame. Thank you.’ He spoke in a deep baritone of a voice, his tones hesitant, accented.

The slowness permitted James to understand him clearly. He also understood that the man was unmistakably a Jew – a Jew of the kind he had only ever glimpsed before in the nether reaches of New York.

‘Come in, Monsieur Arnhem. Please sit down. Take a cup of tea with us.’

‘No, no.’ The man stretched out a staying hand. ‘I don’t wish to disturb. I would not have bothered you, except for my worry. My great worry.’

‘Please, Monsieur Arnhem.’ Madame de Landois insisted. ‘And let me introduce you to Monsieur James Norton. I believe you have met his brother.’

A shadow crossed the man’s face, but he bowed again, deeply. ‘Honoured, Monsieur. I am honoured.’ He quickly turned his attention back to Madame de Landois. ‘Rachel …’ he faltered, ‘I mean Olympe. Olympe would not be pleased if she knew I were here.’

James edged forward on his chair. Olympe was the name of the woman his mother had called a harlot, the woman with whom Raf was purportedly enmeshed.

The man continued. ‘Olympe has always named you as a great friend, a benefactress. And I didn’t know where else to turn. Forgive me. Forgive.’ His fingers fretted with his hat, edging it into circular motion.

‘Do please sit down, Monsieur Arnhem.’ Madame de Landois took the hat a little impatiently from his hands and placed it on a side table. ‘Now, tell me what the problem is.’

‘Rachel. We were due to meet for lunch on Monday. Two
days ago. Rachel never lets me down. She is a really good daughter, you must know that, whatever our disagreements.’

James’s cup rattled in its saucer as he placed it roughly on the table. Olympe was this man’s daughter. This man’s. That could only mean … He swallowed hard. No wonder his mother had insisted on his mission. Olympe was the
daughter
of a Jew. He tested his own reaction, but the man’s
narrative
gave him no time for reflection.

‘Olympe didn’t come. I waited, waited well beyond the time. There was no message from her at home either. I went to her rooms. I am barred from them, but I went. No sign of her. Nor at the theatre the next day. They had not seen her since last Thursday. They are angry. It isn’t like her. No word. Nothing.’

Like a wiry mongrel contained for too long, he seemed about to leap from his chair, but the chains of decorum kept him in place. He looked round the room distractedly. ‘I have this premonition.’ His voice had become a hoarse plea. ‘Please, have you heard anything from her? Do you know where she might have gone?’