Paris Requiem (6 page)

The crowded omnibus rattled and bumped through the streets. James and Raf had hopped on it for lack of a cab. They sat on its top level, glad of open air after their time in the bleak underground tunnel.

Raf was enclosed in his own capsule of silence. The frown had become a permanent fixture on his handsome face. James, having thrown a second cursory glance at him, decided to speak his mind nonetheless.

‘There’s so much I don’t understand,’ he began hesitantly, then blundered on. ‘Olympe wasn’t … wasn’t one of those girls, was she? A prostitute?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then why …? What does what we’ve just seen have to do with her?’

‘I don’t know. I’m just tracking possibilities … It could be that … Read those articles. It’ll be clearer to you then. There were previous drownings, too.’

The omnibus stopped and James waited for the
passengers
to settle and the return of noise to pose his next
question
. ‘With my lawyer’s hat on, it’s still not clear to me why you’re so certain it couldn’t have been suicide. Sometimes one doesn’t know people as well as one presumes.’

Raf turned on him. ‘All right. Let’s forget what your little brother thinks. Let’s just look at the facts. You’ve got a
beautiful
young woman, gripped by her vocation, doing well at it. Let’s presume she’s had a bad day, a pitch-black one and determines to throw herself into the Seine. Does she bother to strip down to her undergarments first and risk being seen by a passer-by or picked up by a cop and taken to the Quai de l’Horloge? Doesn’t she just plunge, shoes and all?’

‘You’re telling me that …’

‘Yes. That’s just what I’m telling you. Didn’t you know? Olympe didn’t have a dress on when she was found. So
someone
must have been with her. Someone must have undressed her, brought her to the water’s edge like that.’

‘I see.’ James considered. ‘On the other hand, she might have been a parsimonious soul and left her clothes on the riverbank. Maybe on the outskirts of town somewhere. She might even have just been wanting a swim and accidentally …

Raf let out a laugh which was more of a bark. People turned to look at him. He lowered his voice. ‘We’re hardly in Mark Twain country here, Jim. No clothes left on riverbanks. Still less by women on their own. And Olympe wasn’t a swimmer.’

‘No. I didn’t really imagine so. I was just trying it on. I know so little about her, it’s hard to be of help. Have you tracked her last days? When did you last see her?’

‘That’s the pig of it. I last saw her a week ago. On Thursday afternoon. I couldn’t meet her after the theatre. That Deputy, Déroulède, who heads the League of Patriots had just been acquitted for fomenting a conspiracy to unseat the government after President Faure’s death. I wrote about that last month for the
Times
. Did you see it? Anyhow there was a large demo in the Saint-Antoine area. I was covering it. Friday I was busy writing it all up when I heard that Paty de Clam was being arrested – one of the officers who’d conspired against Dreyfus, way back in ’94. And Saturday, the Supreme Court decision about the retrial came through. More protests from the anti-Semites and riots and calls to action. I went to Rennes to check out the reaction of its good citizens to the Court’s decision to hold the new Dreyfus trial there. So I’d been working like a coolie. I was due to see Olympe on Sunday. I went round to her rooms. She wasn’t in. No note for me with the landlady – which is where she usually leaves one. And no sign of her anywhere. The neighbours hadn’t
seen her. She didn’t turn up at the theatre either. You know the rest …’

‘Have you been into her rooms?’

He nodded once sharply. James could see that imagining it cost him an effort. He asked softly, ‘Any clues? Any notes? Could you tell what dress she might have been wearing?’

‘Nothing.’ He rubbed his eyes.

‘I’d like to have a look at her place sometime. To get a sense of her.’

Raf studied him. ‘All right. But I can’t take you there now. The next stop is yours by the way.’

They were on the Grands Boulevards. Theatres dotted the avenue, their façades bright with posters.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I remembered last night as I was trying to reconstruct our last few meetings that Olympe had said something about
visiting
an old friend of hers. A milliner. She hadn’t seen the girl for some time and a visit was overdue. I didn’t have any details, not even a name, so I dropped in on Arnhem this morning.’ He paused for too long as if he had lost the thread.

‘And her father knew.’

‘He came up with a possibility. I’m going to see the girl now.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

Raf grimaced. ‘You think that if you don’t let me out of your sight, I won’t get into any more trouble, Jim. Is that it? And you can get me home quicker.’

James smiled ruefully. ‘Maybe. Maybe something like that.’

At the church of Saint-Germain, they hopped off the
omnibus
and made their way south along the Rue du Cherche-Midi. Raf kept up a rapid pace. James had a feeling it would have been a run if he weren’t at his side.

As they neared the Boulevard Montparnasse, a shouting
crowd ruptured the quiet of the narrow street and halted their passage. There were banners again, this time announcing the League for the Rights of Man and demanding justice for Dreyfus in bold letters. The alliance between the sabre and the holy water sprinkler, the military and the church, was condemned in scrawled placards.

The protesters looked young. They were facing a set of heavy wooden doors in front of which stood a rank of soldiers in resplendent uniform, so theatrical that they could have been part of the chorus in an opera.

‘I’d forgotten,’ Raf tugged at James’s arm and simultaneously waved at a bearded youth. ‘There was a demonstration
scheduled
for today. Students and the League. For Dreyfus and against the officers who set him up on the spying charge. I was thinking of covering it, but there’s no time now. Let’s go round.’

They squeezed towards the edge of the crowd and had just about managed to make their way to a side street when from somewhere above a projectile landed on James’s hat, whisking it off his head. He saw it there on the ground, tomato-
splattered
, then trampled by innumerable feet. Raf was
screaming
, his fist raised towards a balcony where an elderly man stood scowling.

The crowd pressed at them. Someone handed him his hat with a laughing exhortation of
‘C’est la guerre
’. War indeed, James thought, and with a sense of exhilaration threw the battered boater at the man who had launched the missile. It hit the terrace rails and leapt off in the opposite direction.

Raf was grinning. ‘Careful there, Jim. You risk becoming a paid-up member of the Dreyfus squad.’

‘Could be worse, I guess.’ James grunted.

At last they reached the far end of the fray. Behind them the crowd had burst into song, a rousing chorus of
Ça ira.
’

‘I’ll get you a new hat, Jim.’ Raf was still grinning as they crossed the Boulevard Montparnasse.

‘Why were they demonstrating there? Is it a barracks?’

‘No. It’s the military prison where Dreyfus was held before they shipped him off to Devil’s Island. And Paty de Clam, one of his chief accusers, has been in there under arrest since last Friday.’

They walked, more quickly again now, while James told Raf about the demonstration that had greeted him on his arrival at the Gare Saint-Lazare and his sense that the policemen were only playing at maintaining order.

The frown returned to Raf’s face. ‘Yes, I can imagine. They’re hardly Dreyfusards.’ He seemed about to embark on an explanation, then stopped and pointed to a storefront which formed a triangle where two streets merged. It bore the name, Odette.

‘We’re here.’

A few hats with lavish plumes sat in the store window. A bell tinkled as they pushed open the door.

It brought a woman from a back room. She was stout, her hair carefully coiffed, her blouse ruffled over her bosom. She smiled a gracious greeting and swept her arm around the small premises as if it contained the entire wealth of the Bon Marché.

Raf explained in his charming way that they wanted to see a Mademoiselle Louise Boussel who worked there.

The woman’s demeanour changed. ‘No. No. I’m sorry,’ she said stiffly. ‘She’s no longer with us.’

‘Oh, that’s too bad. We wanted particularly to find her. Have you an address for her?’

‘No. If that’ll be all …’ She seemed about to whisk them from the shop.

‘It’s only that …’ Raf lowered his voice. ‘She’s come in for a small inheritance. From a cousin in America.’ His eyes fell to the gleaming mahogany counter. ‘Look, Jim. Some fine gloves. Ellie would like a pair, don’t you think? These white
ones, for summer.’ He met the woman’s face again, his smile seductive. ‘Would any of your other girls perhaps have an address for Louise?’

Avidity vied with disapproval in the woman’s face and
triumphed
. ‘Do have a look around. I’ll ask for you.’

A puff of steam together with the sound of chattering voices came from the door as she disappeared behind it. Raf winked at James.

She was back a moment later with a young woman who curtsied prettily, all the while examining them with a shy
sauciness
in her look. A lemon scent rose from her skin. Her cheeks were slightly moist.

James shivered and forced his attention to the older woman, who was now eager for a sale. He took his time, finally choosing a pair of cream-coloured gloves. He asked for them to be wrapped. To his side, he could hear Raf eliciting the necessary information. He didn’t dare look back at the girl. She was so like the other one. He hadn’t realised he remembered so well.

As the door of the shop closed behind them, he let out a sigh of relief.

‘It’s quite a trek, Jim. And probably not pretty. Are you sure you’re up to this?’ Raf quizzed him while they walked briskly towards Montparnasse. ‘You’re looking a little the worse for wear.’

James shrugged. ‘In for a penny …’

‘The girl offered to take us there after she’d finished. But I thought that would prove too much of a delay.’ He studied the piece of paper on which he had noted an address and hailed a cab.

‘It’s not a neck of the woods I know. Apparently, after she lost her job Louise moved in with her sister.’

‘Why did she lose it?’

‘She didn’t say. I imagine some story that involves a man – from the look of Madame, in any event. These milliners are
only a step away from prosititution. It’s a big enough step, mind, but a shifting one.’

They rode in troubled silence. The wide boulevard,
glittering
in its newness, gradually gave way to a maze of smaller, older streets and then fields of detritus. Shacks, their roofs covered in card and rag, dilapidated coaches converted into hovels, sprawled across the wasteland. Children, with the thin limbs and vast urchin eyes of poverty, watched their
passage
. To their left behind a derelict wall stretched a crumbling two-storey edifice, its stucco long forgotten, its façade a series of rickety doors and peeling shutters.

The driver pulled up and waved vaguely towards a lane. Raf asked him to wait, insisted despite his protests.

They walked, Raf counting houses, and knocked at a
ramshackle
door. From within came the sound of crying, but no other response. James tried the door next to it and a
wrinkled
, white-haired woman poked her head from the window. ‘I’m looking for Louise Boussel,’ James said in his best French.

The woman screwed up her eyes and stared at him.
Suddenly
she started to shriek and rattle her shutters. ‘
Laure. C’est la police. La police.’

Neither James’s attempt to deny her statement nor pacify her served any purpose. The screaming continued even after the door at which they had first knocked creaked open. A painfully thin woman with dark, ragged hair emerged from it and shut it swiftly behind her.

‘
Arrêtez
. Stop,’ she screeched back at the old woman and only then looked up at Raf and James. She wiped her hands on her apron, smoothed it a little and shot them a regal glance. Behind them, three men had gathered, their stance exuding menace. Two small children threw stones desultorily against a wall.

‘May we come in?’ Raf asked softly. ‘We’re friends of Louise.’

The woman pushed back a strand of hair and stood her ground. ‘Louise isn’t here,’ she said firmly.

‘Are you sure? We really are friends. Friends of Olympe … of Rachel Arnhem, too. That was why we wanted to speak to Louise.’

The woman stared at them. ‘You’re not French?’ she asked.

‘Americans.’

Her gaze softened. ‘You’re friends of Rachel,’ she repeated as if to herself. She looked round quickly, took in the presence of the men who were now eyeing them curiously, and with a shrug opened the door.

They stood in a dark, cramped space. A table, two rickety chairs, a wicker basket stuffed with what could be clothes or rags and a mattress made up its furniture. On the mattress, a baby lay, kicking its bare legs in the air and cooing softly.

‘Louise … Louise doesn’t live here.’ The woman’s eyes filled with tears. ‘She was only staying for a few weeks. Between jobs.’

‘Do you know where we can find her?’

The woman turned her back to them.

‘Please. We don’t mean her any harm.’

‘Louise … she was picked up. Four days ago.’ She swung back to face them with a savage gesture. ‘She wasn’t doing anything wrong. Nothing. Just walking home. She was near the Jardin des Plantes. And they took her in. In their black coach. Bastards. As if she was a whore. Straight to the Palais de Justice. She spent all night there.’ She suddenly clutched at James’s lapel. ‘You can help her. I’m sure. They put her in the infirmary. The prison infirmary. I saw here there yesterday.’ The tears were rolling down her cheeks now. ‘It’s horrible. Please. Get her out.’