Paris Requiem (28 page)

‘But you, I take it, will tell him. If only to exonerate Rafael.’

He met her eyes for a long moment. ‘Did your husband know Olympe?’ he asked, not altogether certain what had impelled the question. ‘You said he was still living here when you first met her.’

She caught the sense he hadn’t yet altogether grasped himself. ‘Yes, Olivier met her. But if you’re suggesting that we quarrelled over her, you’re quite wrong. She wasn’t Olivier’s type. And even if she were, James, that would hardly be
a reason for a parting of the ways.’ She got up abruptly and he sensed that in his haphazard speculation, he had touched some nerve, though he wasn’t certain which it was.

‘Forgive me. I’m being unpardonably rude. The day has worn me out, made me forget the gratitude we all owe you. I’m also worried about Raf. And about Ellie.’ A sigh escaped him.

‘Oh yes, dear Elinor. A fine woman. But I fear her emotions conspire against her. She is not like our French women who, given the necessary means, manage to order their lives to accommodate at least some of their desires. As you say, our habits are more lenient.’

James stifled a gasp. He had never thought of Ellie in such terms.

‘How did the consultation with Dr Ponsard go?’

He was about to tell her what he had witnessed, but bit back his words. The revelation somehow felt too shameful. Instead, he shrugged. ‘Well enough, I think. She is to see him again for further treatment.’

Marguerite nodded sagely.

‘Did he help Olympe?’

Her eyes filled with sudden tears. ‘I believe so,’ she
murmured
, then rose slowly and with evident fatigue. ‘It has been a long day, James, and now it’s very late. My coachman has the evening off, so he won’t be able to ferry you. But you’re altogether welcome to stay the night, if it suits you. Pierre will see to your needs.’

As if the man had been waiting to hear his name, a soft knock sounded.

Marguerite stretched out her hand.

James touched it with his lips. ‘You’re very kind.’

‘Ah that, my friend. I’m not sure you’re yet in a position to judge.’

Before he could counter her, she was out the door.

H
e woke to a clatter. In the sticky mists of dream, he thought of rocks falling on wood. A torrent of rocks on the wood of a coffin, imprisoning its occupant forever, burying her secrets in the silence of cold stone.

He opened his eyes with a shudder. The dusky room refused recognition. Not until his feet reached the silky texture of the bedside rug did he remember that he had spent the night at Marguerite’s, that he had allowed himself to be beguiled by the notion that if he spent the night here, the house might somehow offer up a key to the enigma of its occupants, their shrouded connections. Instead he had fallen asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow only to wake to this present disorientation.

He padded over to the window, drew back the curtain and pushed open a shutter. The light was already bright. On the street below him a carriage picked up speed. The horses’ manes flew, their smooth backs streaked by sunlight. He caught a glimpse of the driver. Marguerite’s driver. Beside him sat a capped youth, who he was almost certain was Antoine.

It came to him that if Antoine was here and racing away in
Marguerite’s carriage, Raf must have sent him, which could only mean his brother was in trouble.

He dressed quickly and was about to put on his jacket when there was a knock at the door.

‘
Huit heures et demie. Comme vous avez précisez, Monsieur.’
A young aproned maid, bearing a tray stood at the door and reminded him of the appointed breakfast hour. She walked past him, deposited the tray on a corner table and poured coffee.

‘Is Madame de Landois up?’ he asked.

The girl gave him a curious, almost chastising look. ‘She usually comes down at about eleven, Monsieur.’ She curtsied and was out of the room before James mustered his thanks.

As he buttered the neatly sliced baguette and drank his
café au lait
, he ran through possibilities which extended from Raf’s having suffered an injury to Chief Inspector Durand’s men having cornered him at a place from which he now needed to flee without being seen. All the possibilities struck him as unlikely. What was far more probable was that Antoine was seeing to some pre-arranged errand and Marguerite had once again kindly offered her carriage. And from the maid’s demeanour, it would be the summit of bad manners for him to trouble Marguerite in order to find out.

Some forty minutes later, he was out in the cool morning air and walking with a determined step in the direction he had set himself. The necessity of his course had come to him with his second cup of coffee. He had been a fool not to attend to it sooner.

The banks of the river were a hive of morning activity. Shoulders bent to the task, men unloaded timbers from one barge, pallets of brick from another as far as the eye could see. Voices rose in a chorus of orders and grunts. But the
houseboat
was moored exactly where he remembered it, probably by police command.

Tattered sheets hung from a washing line. They shrouded the cabin. As they fluttered in the breeze, he noticed a pair of supple black boots at their base, shiny against the whiteness. For some reason he paused and an image of Marcel Bonnefoi sitting in the Ritz bar crowded into his mind. But the man couldn’t be here. A moment later, the sheets parted and their owner emerged from behind them like an actor in a play. It was the young blonde woman he had last seen nursing her babe. She was wearing a coarse beige frock and gesturing someone through the curtain of sheets.

Chief Inspector Durand’s barrel-chested figure emerged. James took a step backwards. The man was beginning to feel like a double, an erratic shadow who appeared before or behind him wherever he went.

He turned away. It was too late.

‘Monsieur Norton,’ the Chief Inspector hailed him and moved quickly in his direction. ‘What a coincidence.’ His cunning eyes narrowed. ‘Or is it that you, too, are interested to know what people have come to visit the man who rescued Mlle Fabre’s poor drowned body from the murky waters of the Seine? Your brother, needless to say, has been. And treated our boatman with rather more belligerence than was altogether necessary …’

Durand put his arm through James’s and led him forcibly away from his original destination. ‘Your brother is his own worst enemy, Monsieur Norton. He treats us, my men, myself, the whole apparatus of state, as if we were rank incompetents, or worse, criminals.’ He shook his large head solemnly and tsked beneath his breath. ‘It is hardly calculated to endear him to us or to our investigation. But then desperate men can hardly be counted on to be reasonable, can they, Monsieur Norton?’ He cast a glance of mingled guile and complicity at James.

James shrugged off the man’s arm. ‘My brother’s desperation, if that is what it is, is hardly rooted in the motives you
attribute to him, Chief Inspector. He is simply a grieving man, a man in search of answers.’

‘We shall see. We shall see.’ Durand gave him a
philosophical
smile.

They had reached the quay and the Chief Inspector seemed to have little inclination to see James go. ‘Walk with me, Monsieur Norton,’ he said in a tone which was less invitation than command. ‘There is no point your going back to the houseboat, I assure you.’

James allowed himself to be led. He could hardly do otherwise and he might be able to work the situation to Raf’s advantage. ‘My brother may have the rashness of youth,’ he began, ‘but …’

Durand cut him off. ‘He is not a friend of the forces of law and order. You may not know this, Monsieur Norton, since you are a stranger to our city, but your brother’s associates are the dregs of the journalistic world. That man Touquet, for example.’ Durand spat emphatically. ‘He’s a gutter rat, chewing away at the very foundations of civilisation, poisoning its waters.’

‘You don’t say?’

‘I do. Why even his wife left him. Divorced him on grounds of adultery. With prostitutes, I imagine. That’s why he’s so enamoured of their cause.’

‘Really! Is divorce so easy to obtain here, then?’ James thought of Marguerite.

‘Pah. It’s the bane of the Republic.’ Durand suddenly picked up a stone from the path and flung it into the midst of a construction site. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Monsieur. I am not an anti-Republican. Oh no. Quite the opposite. I am a staunch servant of the Republic. But this! Since ’84, when the law was introduced, the divorce rate has spiralled. It attacks one out of every nine marriages. One out of nine. Marriage should be indissoluble. For the good of the community, you
understand. The family, after all, is its cornerstone, the axis of stability. And the family now is severely threatened. Our birth rates have plummeted. Only the foreigners and the halfwits breed. Soon we will be half the size of our old enemy. That is a terrifying prospect. France half the size of Germany!’

‘Indeed. You are married, Chief Inspector?’

A lightning scowl crossed Durand’s face, but he answered blandly enough, puffing out his chest a little. ‘Oh yes. And I have two fine boys. But there is a related problem. You undoubtedly sniffed it out for yourself the other night at Madame de Landois’s gathering.’

‘I don’t altogether follow you.’

‘Women. They no longer accept anything. They refuse their place. In marriage and in everything else. They question everything.’

James had a distinct memory of the Chief Inspector
pontificating
on women’s innate suggestibility. He didn’t question the contradiction. ‘Oh yes?’ he urged Durand on, wondering where the conversation would take them.

‘Yes. And the men in those circles are no better. Feminised, that’s what they are. Over-refined, sensitive, lacking in moral fibre, nervous. Like the Jews. Like women. They can only point their guns out of drunken passion or at themselves. We must stop the rot, Monsieur. The enfeeblement.’

James murmured agreement.

‘It’s the nerves, Monsieur. They are shattered. The modern disease. We sleep badly, eat and drink too much or too little. The speed, the crowding, the noise, the excessive demands and excessive democracy, the emancipation of women, all of it rots the social fabric. How well do you know the beautiful Madame de Landois?’ he asked with no transition.

James faltered, realising this was where Durand had been leading. ‘Not at all well, Chief Inspector. She’s a gracious woman. Hardly like the images you’ve just conjured up.’

‘You don’t think so? What is the nature of her relation with your brother?’

James pretended not to have heard. Given the rush of passing traffic, it was easy enough. ‘I know she was very attached to Olympe Fabre. She took the woman in hand when she was still a girl. Raised her to the heights she reached. Almost like a daughter.’

‘A daughter, you say?’ Durand frowned and was silent for a moment, as if he were performing a feat of mental arithmetic.

‘I didn’t mean literally, Chief Inspector. I meant in terms of the sentiment she had for Olympe.’

They had reached the Rue du Bac and James pulled out his watch. ‘I will leave you, Chief Inspector, or I will be late for my appointment.’

‘In the 6th, is it? Or the 7th? You are seeing Madame de Landois? Do remember, Monsieur Norton, these
aristocrats
are not like us. We can so easily be taken in by their smooth manners.’

‘Indeed, Chief Inspector. But you needn’t worry. I am not so fortunate as to be meeting Madame de Landois. Just an American friend. A Mrs Elliott,’ James heard himself saying.

The Chief Inspector nodded shrewdly. ‘By the way, Monsieur, I wish to interview your sister. My men were prevented access. Her companion said that number one, she was ill, and number two, she spoke no French.’

James had a mental image of Harriet, barring the gates like some armed, antique goddess to shield his sister.

‘Yet despite her illness, Mademoiselle Norton came to the funeral.’

James stiffened, stretched to his full height so that he
towered
above the man. ‘In a wheelchair, as you may have noticed Chief Inspector. Elinor is indeed ill. The doctor has insisted on complete rest. Her trip to the cemetery was against his specific orders.’

‘Indeed, Monsieur. I see your women, too, are loathe to listen.’ He considered James for a moment. ‘You understand, we still have no confirmation of your brother’s movements from the day of Olympe Fabre’s disappearance until midday Sunday. Your brother’s housekeeper, I think you’ll agree, leaves something to be desired as a witness. One of my men tells me he knew her well – when she was on the streets.’

‘Indeed, Inspector. My brother may be naïve, but he is kind-hearted. He took the woman in because of the child. He loves children.’ Suddenly seeing the advantage of the line he had stumbled onto, James pursued it home. ‘That is why it is clear to me, Inspector, that if Raf knew of Mlle Fabre’s
pregnancy
, that would have made him even less capable of any violence than he already is.’

Durand considered for a moment. ‘That is all fine and well, Monsieur, but we still have no witnesses to your brother’s
movements
. What we do know from Mlle Fabre’s landlady is that he certainly turned up at her apartment. What we don’t know is what he may have taken away with him. Good day, Monsieur.’

James watched him walk away, quickly, officiously, as if the pavement crowds must needs part for him. When he could no longer distinguish his figure, he turned and with a sigh, retraced his steps.

It was almost too late now to make a stop at the houseboat, though he was drawn there. Something about the place niggled at the edge of his consciousness and when he reached the embankment, he found himself making a detour towards the boat. He called out a ‘
bonjour
’ and walked up the ramp.

The young woman appeared again through the curtain of sheets. She was cradling her infant and she stared at James with visible apprehension. ‘My husband’s not here.’

‘That doesn’t matter.’ He smiled. ‘You remember me, don’t you? I was here that night – when the body was found.’

She flinched as if he had hit her. He suddenly noticed the bruise on her cheek, her pallor, the untidiness of her hair. ‘How’s your little one?’

‘Asleep.’ She clutched the babe more closely to her, all the while bunching the sheets behind as if to prevent his entry.

‘I … I just wanted to ask you some questions about that night. You know that young woman, she was my brother’s … well, his sweetheart.’

Her eyes grew wider.

‘He can’t sleep, can’t rest. He wants to know everything. Everything that happened to her. And I’m trying to help him. How did your husband find the body?’

She took a step backwards.

‘Please tell me about it,’ James urged softly. ‘I’d like to hear it for myself.’

She hesitated, then blurted out. ‘There was this banging, like an animal knocking itself against the hold, trying to escape. Horrible. I went to see what it was and there was this white shirt billowing. Then hair …’ She stopped abruptly. ‘Go away. Go!’ she wailed, then stumbled back behind the sheets, leaving him only with an image of black boots running along the deck until they too vanished from view.

Mystified, he played over her words and manner as he walked, speedily now, along the uneven path which wound through the mammoth construction site that would soon be the Universal Exposition. The sounds of hammering and sawing were everywhere. Grit flew through the air like so many June bugs intent on attack. Dust rose in clouds from half-erect structures. Workmen shouted in incomprehensible languages.

The flags of various nations billowed, demarcating zones. Behind the Italian one, the intricate lacework of vaulting arches and unglazed windows seemed to combine with a whiff of Mediterranean herbs and a heavy meaty smell. Perhaps the
interior was in fact a huge canteen. As the American zone gave way to the Austrian, then to the architectural vagaries of the Hungarian and the British, he felt he had entered a world of shifting façades where the senses could no longer be trusted.

He forced himself to concentrate on his task. He examined faces, though he had only a vague image of the one he was looking for.