Paris Requiem (34 page)

‘Did Raf know about this?’

‘I can’t tell you that for certain. We never talked about it. But he certainly knows …’ She stopped herself.

‘Knows what?’

She laughed again. ‘Haven’t you guessed yet? I would have thought that Rafael might have mentioned it by now.’

‘Mentioned what?’

She walked over to the desk, took something out of a drawer, and strolled back towards him, her posture subtly different, a thrust to her shoulders, a stiffness in her hips. There was a monocle in her eye. ‘
Enchantez, Monsieur Norton
.’ Her cheek twitched slightly.

James blinked, his gaze racing to her feet as if he might see supple black boots there, striped trousers. ‘Marcel
Bonnefoi
? You?’

She nodded, let the monocle fall. ‘I’m sorry, James. It was Olympe’s and my little joke.’ She giggled again and he had a sudden rushing sense of an unthought-of aspect of their relationship. Girls inventing pranks. Playing. Perhaps more than that.

‘I half guessed,’ he murmured. ‘There was something, some resemblance I couldn’t place. Does Raf know?’

‘About Marcel? I’m not altogether sure. Olympe may have told him. I haven’t. I did it just for her. To amuse her, really. To give her an untroubling admirer. It wasn’t exactly Marcel I thought he might have mentioned.’ Her eyes twinkled mischievously.

He stared at her. ‘Antoine. Antoine, of course.’ A candle suddenly illuminated dusky regions in his mind. ‘All those times I saw him rushing to and from the house. In the
carriage
. And just before. When I was with Durand. That’s how you knew … Why you were so long.’

She nodded. ‘You’ll forgive me that, at least.’

‘I’m not sure,’ he mumbled. ‘I feel duped.’

‘It wasn’t intended that way. It’s just for convenience. The adventure is secondary. There’s so little I can allow myself to do as Madame de Landois. You do see that? And I can help Rafael out. Disappear into a crowd. Move quickly without the weight of these skirts. You don’t realise how fortunate men’s fashions are.’

‘But Marcel Bonnefoi? Why serve him up to me?’

She shrugged. ‘You wanted to meet him. He obliged. I couldn’t just blurt out the game to you. Not then. You can give off such a severe aura, James. I thought it might altogether scupper our friendship. Don’t you see?’

He didn’t see. The air was thick with duplicity and something else, an unnaturalness. Through the miasma he sniffed at treacherous liaisons. ‘Did you know about Olympe’s visits to the brothels?’

‘What?’

‘I think you heard me. She went to see friends.’ He gave the word the emphasis of quotation marks.

‘I wasn’t her keeper, James.’

‘But you were, outside the cast of the play, the last person we know to have been with her? How was she? What did you talk about?’ His voice had turned inquisitorial.

Marguerite leaned back into her chair. ‘Don’t think I haven’t gone over and over it in my mind. She was fine, happy really, full of plans. Not in the least a woman on the verge of suicide, if that’s what you mean. She even mentioned the word marriage. She said she thought she might go with Raf to America, after the play had finished its run. To see what life there might be like. To see if it was really the wondrous land of dream. To see whether it might be the answer to her family’s plight. She was excited.’

‘Did you say anything to blunt her hopes?’

She looked down at her hands. The gold wedding band glistened on her fourth finger. ‘I’ve never been to America, James. There was little I could say.’

‘I meant about marriage to Raf.’

‘No. No. I said nothing. Well, perhaps only to intimate that in my case marriage had not been altogether a success. But she knew that. And she didn’t mention anything about a pregnancy. Don’t look at me like that, James.’

‘Like what?’

‘As if to suggest that in some jealous rage, I might have wished her ill. Yes, yes, of course I confess to a passing pang. That would hardly be unnatural. But you have to understand that Olympe was like a daughter to me. Certainly she thought of me as something of a mother. A partial replacement, in any case. And she never knew that there had been anything between Rafael and myself – except friendship. Which is in truth what there is.’

‘She never knew?’ James felt as if he had sunk into the depths of perfidy.

‘Well, no. Rafael never told her. In consideration of me, as much as anything else I imagine. Sometimes I wish I had never told you. There was no real need.’

‘I guessed.’

‘You suspected,’ she corrected him. ‘Suspicions in our
world are as pervasive as air. We may feed on them, but they’re proof of nothing.’

He changed the subject. ‘Have you learned any more about the Salpêtrière files. From your intern friend. He isn’t you as well, is he?’

‘No, he isn’t. Though the idea did cross my mind. Then flitted away. That’s a serious matter. I should hear from him tomorrow. I’ve upset you, James. That wasn’t my intention. Almost more with my masquerading than with the blackmail, a far more serious offence in my estimation.’

He couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘I need to phone Touquet’s office. Do you have the number?’

She gave it to him with the expression of a penitent and left without a nod.

Watching her go, James felt breathless, as if he had penetrated into some protean region beneath the waves where shapes shifted with fugitive speed, too quick for the senses to settle on. Or as if he had been swallowed up in the inner recesses of some oriental harem, a labyrinth where the dance of veils was
perpetual
, beckoning him onwards towards the core of some feminine mystery which metamorphosed into billowing gossamer as he approached, hiding rather than revealing. Door after door in an endless corridor, veil after veil, so that he lost his bearings, was dizzy with the pursuit of an ever changing object for which neither his eyes nor his values could provide a solid measure.

He picked up the telephone and put it down as quickly. He wasn’t ready for Raf. What was it the Chief Inspector had said to him one day? Yes, he had complained of this world of his where women were no longer women and men not men. Perhaps he had more in common with the Chief Inspector than he had suspected.

With a sudden longing for home, he wished for clear demarcation lines, for things to be as they seemed. He wondered if that might ever be possible again.

Harriet opened the door to him. It was a relief to see her scrubbed face, unencumbered by wiles or mystery.

She put a finger to her lips. ‘Elinor’s asleep.’ She ushered him into the dining room.

‘How has she been?’

She lowered her eyes, smoothed a wrinkle in the
tablecloth
, then looked up at him again, shaking her head. ‘Not well. She slept through part of the night, then woke to scribble in her journal. She didn’t acknowledge me, hasn’t
acknowledged
me all day. And she won’t eat.’

‘What did Dr Ponsard say?’

She shrugged. ‘Well, he did examine her thoroughly. She was quite calm. You remember that. You were still here. He prohibited the wearing of corsets.’ She flushed slightly, then raced on. ‘And he gave her some sleeping powders. Something for the temperature, too.’

‘No prognosis?’

‘He came back around noon to check on her. She didn’t recognise him. Or at least she pretended not to … I don’t know James, I really don’t know.’

‘And …?’

She smoothed her dress with something of an injured expression. ‘He had a box with him, coils. He told me to bring a large bowl of water. Her bare feet were put into it. When he caught me staring, he told me to leave them. I think he applied current to her body.’ She shivered, then looked round and lowered her voice. ‘I think he may also have
hypnotised
her.’

‘Oh?’ James imagined Ellie walking around the room with those sleepwalker’s eyes.

‘Yes. Because when he finally called me back, he told me that she had taken a little cold broth and brioche and that I was to monitor her and report to him when he came in tomorrow.
While he was talking, Elinor started to retch, to vomit
everything
up on the floor. Ponsard reprimanded her sternly. Elinor gave him a smile. It wasn’t a nice smile, more like a challenge, as if she was going to show him.’ She shuddered again. ‘I cleaned up and then he ordered me out once more.’

‘Poor Harriet. I’m sorry. Where was Violette?’

‘She was running some errands.’

‘Did Ponsard say anything more?’

‘Before he left, he said he was a little worried that there might be some blockage in her oesophagus. He had wheeled her out on the terrace. He thought a little air and change of scenery might do her good. When I went in to her, she was scribbling in her journal again. She’s slept or scribbled all day since. She won’t eat or take her medicine, not even the
digestive
powders he prescribed. She doesn’t know me.’

Harriet’s eyes had filled with tears and she turned away to wipe them.

‘Why don’t you go home and rest, Harriet. I’ll keep an eye on her. You must be exhausted.’

‘No, no. It’s not that. I’m comfortable enough here.’ She gave him one of her direct looks. ‘My own quarters are nothing to write home about. Though I would like a walk. I have a few things to see to. But I’ll be back in an hour or two. I’m sure Elinor wouldn’t like you to … to see her like this.’

‘She’s been poorly before, Harriet. And she’s come through. She always comes through.’ He said it with more certainty than he felt.

After Harriet had left, he tiptoed into the salon. Ellie was asleep in her chair beside the divan. Her head drooped down on her chest. She was wearing a belted burgundy robe. The ruffle of a white nightgown peeked from her sleeve. Her notebook was perched on a table by her side, which also contained an assortment of powders and pitchers. There was a stale smell in the air.

He picked up a book, chose a far chair and settled into it. He didn’t look at the book. His spirit was heavy, his head full of too many riddles. He used the quiet moments to try and sift through all the things he had learned in the last
twenty-four
hours. He had no sense of how long he sat there, but the next thing he knew, Ellie’s voice roused him from his reverie.

‘Jim, you’re home. I’m so glad, but there’s no good news for you I fear.’

Ellie was swaying in her chair, one hand clasped round her stomach as if she were in pain, the other playing erratically with her hairpins.

‘No, no.’ Tears flooded her eyes. ‘Maisie’s no better.’

‘Maisie? Maisie?’

Ellie sobbed, clapped her hands to her ears. Her back was arched in agitation. ‘She’s fading, Jim. Fading. It’s all my fault.’

‘Your fault?’

‘Yes. I never told you. I was afraid.’ She grasped the arms of her chair as if to lever herself up, but her hands stayed there, clenched into white fists. Her eyes were preternaturally large. She spoke in fits and starts. ‘My embroidery. I dropped it. Dropped it on the stairs. I didn’t realise. Didn’t know. Maisie tripped. Tripped on it. The babe too.’ She slumped backwards, limp as a sack.

‘Tripped on it,’ James repeated, his mind in turmoil.

‘Yes. There. I’ve told you. You should go up to her. She’ll want to see you.’ She tilted her head. Her smile had a milky sweetness. ‘She loves her, Jim.’

For a fleeting moment, as if Ellie’s conviction were
contagious
, James had the impression that were he only to locate the stairs of the Boston house and ascend them, he would find Maisie resting amidst lace and linen. Maisie with her gentle faraway gaze, her frail pallor.

He took a deep breath. But there was no air in the room. With a brutal clatter, he threw open the windows and turned
on his sister. ‘Maisie’s dead, Ellie. We’re in Paris. Paris. Do you hear me. And you know that perfectly well. You know that.’

Her hands clasped her stomach, she swayed. ‘You’re angry with me, Jim. You have a right to be angry. But pity me too. There’s a worm in my stomach. It’s eating away at me. Eating.’ Her eyes pleaded with him, then grew opaque. ‘You rest. You must be tired after a day at the office. I’ll go to Maisie. Yes.’ He could barely make out her words.

With a sudden movement, she propped herself up from the chair. For a lightning second, James thought she was going to walk. Instead, she lunged to the floor in a heap of blankets.

He rushed towards her. She had collapsed into a faint. He dampened a cloth in water, applied it to her temples, her wrists, whispered her name, carried her to the divan and laid her gently on it. Covering her lightly, he sat to watch over her in a mounting panic.

He couldn’t follow the wanderings of her delirious mind, as fluid and capricious as a wraith which knew no boundaries of time or place. Could it be that in an attempt to come to terms with her own condition, Ellie had transported herself back to an invalid Maisie – a Maisie who had lain abed for months with near-perfect equanimity?

When her eyes fluttered open, he breathed a sigh of relief. But she didn’t focus on him now. As he brought a glass to her lips, he felt he had become transparent.

She drank in short thirsty gulps, then lay back, her gaze fixed on the ceiling.

‘That’s right, Ellie, you rest now. Sleep a little if you can.’

She offered no response.

‘If you need anything, I’m here. Just call me.’

Her silence was as disturbing as her speech. He went back to his chair and watched her out of the corner of his eye. A pale glint of late sunlight fell on her and streaked her with a vertical gash so that it seemed to cut her in half. She didn’t
move. Not even when tears cascaded down her face. He
hesitated
, then went to wipe them.

‘You’re kind,’ she whispered.

He waited for her to say something more, but she receded into her silent place. Her breathing grew even and he realised that she must have fallen asleep.

Fetching a piece of paper, he settled at the table. He was determined to make use of his time, to put some order into the disparate strands of their inquiry. Everything seemed to have taken on a fraying centrifugal force and his mind ached for cohesion. He was about to write down the names of the key players about whom he harboured any degree of suspicion, when instead he found himself printing Rachel Arnhem-Olympe Fabre at the top of the page, and beneath this what amounted to a chronology of her life and its points of intersection with the people he had encountered at such a fast and furious rate in these last days.