Paris: The Novel (82 page)

When Hortense arrived from Monte Carlo, she made the necessary arrangements. She was quiet and efficient. At the funeral, she ensured that there were two dozen clients, and various people who had been involved with his charitable works, including even Jules Blanchard. It was a dignified gathering that would have gratified her father very much. In the funeral address, which was given by the priest who attended the home, the facts of Ney’s ancestry were rehearsed—including even a hint that he might have been related to Voltaire—as well as his indefatigable efforts to secure the comfort and happiness of all those in his care.

Not the least of Ney’s achievements, it was now discovered, was to have secured a grave in the cemetery of Père Lachaise. Not quite in the avenue where his distinguished relation’s grave had been placed—among other great Napoleonic military men—but within sight of it.

Soon after the interment, Hortense departed for the south again, having instructed Adeline and Édith to run everything exactly as usual until her return in May.

It was not until the second week of May that Hortense came back from Monte Carlo. To their surprise, she arrived in the company of a very handsome olive-skinned gentleman named Monsieur Ivanov who, she explained, was her financial advisor.

“Ivanov: That’s a Russian name, isn’t it?” Aunt Adeline asked him.

“It is Russian,” he replied, “but my mother was Tunisian.”

Monsieur Ivanov had sleek black hair, brushed back, and his clothes were perfectly tailored. He said little, but he was always at Hortense’s side.

Hortense stayed in her father’s house for a month. She looked in at the home most days. Aunt Adeline told her that her father had desired to have a celebration when Mademoiselle Bac was a hundred, but Hortense said she was very busy and that it would have to wait.

One day she came by with a middle-aged couple and spent two hours looking over the building, inspecting every room.

It was the middle of June when Hortense called in one fine evening.
Thomas and Édith were sitting with Aunt Adeline in her room, after putting their children to bed.

“I have news for you,” Hortense said. “I am returning to Monte Carlo immediately. The home has been sold. The new owners have no need of any help, however, so you will all have to leave. The new owners will take over tomorrow, but you can stay another two weeks.”

“But we have nowhere to go,” Thomas protested.

“You have two entire weeks.” She shrugged. “That should be plenty of time to find something. At least temporary.” She turned to Monsieur Ivanov. “There is a picture of me in the hall. Take that. It belongs to me. I have to go and say good-bye to one of the residents now.”

While Aunt Adeline, Thomas and Édith sat in stunned silence, and Monsieur Ivanov went to take the portrait down from the wall, Hortense made her way upstairs. Édith went with her. She wasn’t going to accept this without a protest.

“Surely, Mademoiselle Hortense, you can give us more time, at least. I have four children.”

“You will have to think of something. I will give you a reference.”

“My aunt and I have served your father many years. Did he not remember us in any way?”

“No.”

Hortense did not pause on the main floor, but continued up to the attic. While Édith stood in the doorway, she entered the room of Mademoiselle Bac. It was silent.

“Mademoiselle Bac,” she said clearly, “can you hear me?” No sound came from the iron bed. “Monsieur Ney is dead.” Hortense paused. “The place has been sold, and everyone has gone. You are all alone.” She paused again, to let this sink in. “It is time to die now,” she said. Then she left.

They went down the main stairs. Down in the hall, Monsieur Ivanov was holding the painting.

“What did you tell the old lady?” he asked.

Hortense shrugged.

“The truth.” She opened the big front door. “Let’s go.”

And Édith was left alone in the hall, wondering what to do next.

•  1907  •

Roland de Cygne could hardly believe his ears. He was Captain de Cygne these days, and his friend the captain was now a commandant. Yet for all his respect for his mentor, he thought the commandant must be mistaken.

“I assure you,
mon cher ami
, that it’s true,” his mentor continued. “I didn’t tell you at the time, because thanks to that waiter at the Moulin Rouge—to whom you owe your life, by the way—the fellow was frightened off. But we were all watching out for you. After your father’s death, you will recall, the regiment was posted away, and there was less to worry about. But now that we are to return to Paris, I feel obliged to mention it to you.”

“And the name of this lunatic, or villain—I don’t know what to call him?”

“Jacques Le Sourd. I know nothing about his whereabouts, but no doubt he can be found. Whether he would still like to kill you … Who knows.” He smiled. “Just watch out, if you go visiting any of the courtesans of Paris again!”

“I think,” said Roland, “that I’ll pay a visit to the waiter. What’s his name?”

“Luc Gascon.”

Luc was easy to find. He had his own bar these days, just off the Place Pigalle, a quarter mile east of the Moulin Rouge.

He was stouter than before, but just as charming. And when Roland told him who he was, he nodded.

“I thought I recognized you, Monsieur de Cygne. I knew that your regiment had been away. Welcome back to Paris.”

Roland briefly explained how he had found out about Le Sourd.

“You understand,” he said, “that until recently I had no idea of the service you had rendered me.”

“I know, monsieur.”

“I should like you to accept this, to show my gratitude,” said Roland, and handed him an envelope, which Luc quickly inspected.

“You are more than generous, Monsieur de Cygne,” he said. “I could open a restaurant with this.”

“Just don’t spend it at the races,” Roland said with a smile. “But the question now is, what should I do about Le Sourd? Do you have any idea why he wanted to kill me?”

“
Non, monsieur
. I never discovered.”

“I should like to talk to him. Do you know where he is?”

“Give me a day, and I shall find out, monsieur. But it might be dangerous for you to interview him.”

“I’ll take a pistol,” said Roland.

It was good to be back in the family house again. Now that he was based in Paris, he thought he might use the house, as far as his regimental duties allowed. Most of the rooms were under dust covers, but his old nanny was still living there with a housekeeper and a maid to keep the house going, and he spent a pleasant evening talking to her.

Most of the time, when he was away on his regimental duties, Roland did not need to reflect on political matters. But finding himself back again in his family’s old mansion, in the great historical center of France, he could not help being struck by the mutability of the past and present.

The ancestors who had lived in this house had doubtless considered England their traditional enemy, as she had been for so many centuries. Yet now all that was changed. Bismarck’s German Empire had arisen. France had suffered the humiliation of 1870, and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine. When he was a boy, who had his teachers at the Catholic lycée along the street told him were his enemies? The Germans of course. His generation’s duty? To avenge France’s dishonor.

And who were France’s allies now against the kaiser’s German threat? The English, linked to France by the Entente Cordiale, together with the Russians, who feared the kaiser too.

Wherever one looked in the streets of old Paris, from the ruins of the medieval walls to Notre Dame, to the bleak grandeur of Les Invalides, it was always the same story: Men called to glory, or to defend
la patrie
; men killed, in many thousands. The struggle for power, and, intermittently, the attempt to find a balance of power among the nations, until the peace broke down once again.

Would his own generation do any better? he wondered.

Luc Gascon was as good as his word. He came by during the evening with the address of Le Sourd’s workplace, a printer’s on the edge of Belleville, and even the days of the week when he might be found there.

Roland set out late the following morning. His plan was simple. He would have lunch at Maxim’s. After that, he would go and interview Le Sourd. The late afternoon and evening he left open. If things went wrong, Le Sourd might have killed him by then. Or he Le Sourd. In either case the evening might be disrupted. No point in making plans one might not keep.

Before he set out, he discovered a small problem. His service revolver was not easy to conceal. Although it fit into the deep pocket in his outer coat, it might be discovered when he took off his coat at Maxim’s. The alternative was to put the gun in an attaché case.

But this presented a social difficulty. For just as no gentleman in Europe would be seen carrying a parcel if he could avoid it—there were servants, or in worse cases women, for that—even an attaché case, in the mind of Roland de Cygne, made one look too like a businessman, instead of an aristocrat. Had he been in uniform on his way to a staff meeting, that would be an entirely different matter; but he was going to Maxim’s for lunch.

It took him several minutes to think about it. If he’d taken his own conveyance, he could have left the revolver there. His father’s jaunty carriage was still in the coach house, though without horses or coachman, and Roland had been thinking of buying himself a handsome motor car, a Daimler perhaps. But until he did so, he had no transport, so he’d have
to take a cab. Once he got to the restaurant, he’d leave the case at the hat and coat counter, of course, and with luck no one he knew would see him arriving with it. He wondered whether, after lunch, he could discreetly remove the revolver, slip it into his coat pocket, and leave the case at Maxim’s to be picked up later. For if Le Sourd by any chance killed him, the thought of the newspapers reporting that his body had been found with an attaché case was highly irksome.

Yes, he decided, he’d try to do that.