by Katie Fforde
Now, as they drove, he asked, ‘How’s your head this morning?’
‘More or less OK. I did drink a lot of water and took a painkiller before I went to bed,’ said Caro. ‘What about yours?’ Alec and Pascal had stayed up even later, drinking cognac, sorting out the world.
‘I’ve felt better, I must admit.’
‘Have a rummage in my bag. There are painkillers and a bottle of water.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. After he had found what he needed, he said, ‘It’s good to have you along.’
She shot him a smile. ‘Driver, provider of medicaments, general good sort …’
He smiled and closed his eyes.
Finding somewhere to park wasn’t easy but thanks to Alec’s sharp eyes and Caro’s ability to park in spaces hardly longer than the car, they found somewhere.
‘You are a very good parker!’ said Alec when, finally, they were able to get out of the car.
‘For a woman? Don’t even think it!’
‘I swear I wasn’t! There’s no way I could have got into that space.’
‘If you drive in London you have to learn to park. Now, where is this apartment?’
This question was answered by Pascal, who was ahead of them, hanging over a balcony. ‘There you are! I’ll let you in.’
Caro felt she was going back in time and was now in a nineteenth-century novel involving makers of millinery or lace. The stairs were very narrow, twisty and badly lit. As they climbed she wondered how an elderly man would manage them. She was panting slightly when they reached the top.
‘Entrez,’ said Pascal. ‘I’ve explained why we’re after the sample. I’ll make coffee.’
Monsieur Dolinière looked part of the armchair he was sitting in. He was very bent over and thin and yet had a nobility about him. He had dignity and obviously a strong sense of his place in society. It was all Caro could do not to curtsey when she was introduced. He was very gracious.
Although all the conversation was in fairly rapid French, she found she could understand most of it if she concentrated. When she needed a break she looked around the apartment. It was like a mock-up of an old building that you might find in a museum.
The walls were dark although they had possibly started life as cream. They were entirely covered in shelves on which stood bottles and bottles that had once contained perfume. Some of them still did, she realised, although the dark-brown liquid would surely no longer smell very much like the original. The furniture – a small sofa, a couple of armchairs and a selection of dark-wood tables – was all crammed in the middle of the room.
Yes, Monsieur Dolinière knew of the perfume. And yes, his grandfather had made it. Did he keep a sample when it had been ordered by the powers that be that all samples should be destroyed? Bien sûr!
After this statement, pronounced with a flourish, there was a long pause. Finally Pascal asked if they could possibly smell the fragrance.
Caro interpreted most of this through M. Dolinière’s body language and finally she worked out he’d said, ‘Yes, if you can find it.’
‘I will make more coffee,’ said Pascal. ‘We will need it.’
‘I’ll make it,’ said Caro. ‘I find the labels on the bottles quite difficult to read.’
‘So do we,’ said Alec.
Caro opted to make the coffee nonetheless. She wanted to see M. Dolinière’s kitchen. It was tiny and like a section of an antique shop that specialised in kitchenalia. Elizabeth David would have felt at home there. She loved it.
Eventually Pascal said, ‘I think this is it.’
M. Dolinière asked to see the vial. ‘That is the one,’ he declared triumphantly, as if he’d found it himself. ‘There was a bottle in the museum of perfumery, of course, but it was destroyed after the accident. This is the only one left.’
Caro didn’t mention the sample Serena Swan’s maid had kept and first Pascal, then Alec, and finally Caro took a deep sniff. Caro couldn’t begin to distinguish any of the original ingredients as the sample just smelt musty.
‘It’s going to take ages to identify the ingredients,’ said Alec, in English.
‘Why ages?’ said M. Dolinière, also in English. ‘I have the recipe.’
Pascal and Alec looked at the old man with their mouths open.
‘You kept the recipe?’ said Pascal, also in English.
‘But I thought the house that originally made it destroyed all copies of the recipe?’ said Alec. ‘That keeping it was punishable by death, practically!’
M. Dolinière looked extremely smug. ‘My father was an apprentice at the time. He worked hard on this parfum, fetching ingredients. He kept a liste de courses.’
‘And you still have this list?’ Alec sounded incredulous and Caro saw the old man stiffen.
‘Bien sûr,’ he said, reverting to French. ‘And of course you may read it, but not take it away from here. It is precious.’
Caro caught a panicked glance between Alec and Pascal. ‘It will be incredibly hard to recreate the perfume if we can’t take the recipe to the lab,’ said Alec in rapid English.
‘I know!’ Pascal turned to M. Dolinière. His French was too fast for Caro to follow easily but she could tell from his body language that he was pleading and M. Dolinière was shaking his head, becoming more adamant as Pascal became more beseeching.
Caro was good with elderly gentlemen; it was one of her skills. She gently moved Pascal away and smiled at M. Dolinière. Then, in her best French, she asked if it would be possible to copy the list. ‘If we could do that, there would be no need for such a very special and precious document to leave this room.’ She smiled again, sensing a slight weakening in the old man’s stern demeanour. ‘I will do the copying myself and wash my hands very carefully before I start.’
M. Dolinière kept everyone in suspense for a very long time, it seemed, but at last his expression softened, a scintilla of difference Caro wouldn’t have spotted if she hadn’t been studying him very carefully. ‘Very well. You may copy it. But out of respect for my grandpère, you must use a proper pen, not a “biro”.’ Even in French, his distaste for such a newfangled invention was apparent. Caro was glad she hadn’t suggested taking a picture of the recipe on her phone. And thinking about her phone reminded her it was plugged into an adaptor, charging up. Never mind, Alec would have his.
‘Has anyone got a fountain pen?’ Caro asked her companions, slightly desperate.
Alec and Pascal both shook their heads. ‘There’s a shop in town,’ said Pascal. ‘I’ll buy one.’
Alec and Caro sat while M. Dolinière dozed and Pascal presumably dashed up and down the streets of Grasse finding a fountain pen. Caro fervently hoped he also bought a notebook to write in.
Caro was wondering if she would be able to read and accurately transcribe the list of ingredients. Goodness knows what Alec was thinking about but he looked stressed too.
At last Pascal arrived with a couple of fountain pens so Caro could choose her nib and a hard-backed notebook of the most old-fashioned sort he could find, Caro suspected. He apparently didn’t want to risk M. Dolinière taking against anything because it was modern and newfangled.
‘Very well, you may copy the list,’ M. Dolinière said, in English this time. ‘The list is in that book in the corner.’
It took a few false goes before the right book was located and after an awful lot of furniture-shifting and small lamps being found, Caro was able to start.
M. Dolinière, however, did not want to stay and watch her copy even though the list was so important to him.
‘Gentlemen, I suggest we go out and have cognac while the lady transcribes the list.’
There was a silence while Alec and Pascal wondered how to deal with this. Then a second later Alec said, ‘Pascal, if you would escort M. Dolinière? I feel I should stay with Caro in case there are difficulties with the handwriting or ingredients whose names are strange to her.’
‘That would be very kind,’ said Caro, in French.
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When they had finally got M. Dolinière out of his chair and down the stairs and Pascal had accompanied him outside, Caro and Alec regarded each other.
‘Have you got your phone?’ she asked Alec.
‘Of course’, he said, and produced it. ‘Oh. No battery.’
‘What? Not any? I just want to take a photo of the list.’
‘Not a peek. Where’s your phone?’
She winced. ‘Charging up in my bedroom.’
‘I can’t believe this!’ said Alec.
‘No point in moaning, I’ll just have to copy it out. We are so dependent on technology. I can’t believe it.’
‘I’m tempted to go out and get a bottle of brandy so we can indulge too,’ said Alec. ‘Do you fancy it?’
‘It would be nice but I have work to do and I suspect it won’t be as easy as copying out a shopping list should be.’ She peered at the paper that had been reverently laid on the table for her to transcribe. ‘I can’t read the first ingredient,’ she said, suddenly daunted by her task. ‘This is not going to be easy.’
The trouble was, the list had been written quickly and a lot of the ingredients were abbreviated. Also, the ink was faded and the handwriting hard to read.
‘OK, well,’ said Alec. ‘I’m fairly sure that’s tuberose. And at least the numbers are clear.’
‘You dictate and I’ll write,’ said Caro. ‘It will be easier for you because you nearly know what you’re looking for.’
‘It’s not easy writing,’ Alec said a little later having spent some time studying one particular ingredient. ‘This could be “frankincense” but it could also be “I sneezed in my hanky”.’
‘Let’s go with frankincense,’ said Caro, ‘as it’s ever so slightly more likely. Though if something seems wrong later, we’ll see if what we need is a bit of snot.’
To her huge embarrassment, Caro’s stomach rumbled audibly before they were even near the end.
‘I’ll go out for sandwiches,’ said Alec. ‘We’ve been here hours. There are so many ingredients!’
‘And how do we know they are all for this one perfume? If you’re fetching ingredients you might get stuff for other perfumes at the same time?’
‘It may well all become clearer when we get it to the lab.’
‘OK, off you go. I don’t want to be caught with half a baguette in my mouth when M. Dolinière comes back. It would look disrespectful.’
‘Can’t have that! I’ll be back in a flash.’
When Alec had returned with encouraging brown bags of delicious things, Caro said, ‘Listen, I’ve been thinking.’
‘What?’ Alec replied.
‘M. Dolinière said he had a recipe, but he gave us a shopping list.’
‘Yes?’
‘I think he might have the actual recipe, with quantities.’
Alec frowned. ‘You may be right. And if he has, it would save us hours and hours of time. After all, the end result is open to interpretation.’
Caro nodded. ‘As long as Scarlet feels it’s as near to the original as it could be. And likes it.’
‘Well, we can certainly make her something she likes.’ He handed Caro one of the packages. ‘Here, eat this. I spotted Pascal and M. Dolinière having lunch. That should give us time to have ours and then look through his library for the recipe. That was good thinking on your part, Caro.’
Caro crunched into the end of her baguette, trying to ignore the feeling of slight weakness at hearing Alec say her name.
They got the rest of the list jotted down quickly in the middle of the beautiful notebook Pascal had bought so they could remove the pages for their own use. Then they searched systematically through the old notebooks and files on M. Dolinière’s shelves. But there were so many of them. They seemed to represent centuries of the perfumier’s art. They weren’t even halfway through before they heard Pascal and M. Dolinière returning. When they entered the room, Caro was back with the fountain pen and the hard-backed notebook and Alec was dictating the names of obscure ingredients, most of which were extremely abbreviated.
‘You are not yet finished?’ said M. Dolinière in English, not notably softened by – going on the brandy fumes – a bibulous lunch.
‘No, I am being slow,’ said Caro, smiling as apologetically as she could manage.
M. Dolinière inclined his head graciously. ‘It’s a shame for now you must go. I need a siesta.’
‘Would it be possible for me to continue here while you sleep?’ suggested Caro. ‘And when you awake, I could perhaps make you a tisane?’
M. Dolinière appeared to consider this possibility. ‘Non,’ he said, reverting to French. ‘You have had plenty of time to write out the ingredients.’
Caro took a deep breath, went across to the chair where M. Dolinière was now sitting, and crouched down at his feet. ‘M. Dolinière,’ she said in her best, most formal French. ‘You and your family are among the most respected perfumiers in the world of perfume. I feel sure, having kept the secret of this great perfume close to your hearts for these many years, that somewhere you have the exact recipe. You would not let this treasure stray far from this centre of great perfume. It is here, and I beg you to let us read it. Perhaps copy it,’ she added, pushing her luck and with no clue if all this flattery was doing a bit of good.
‘Why should I do this?’ M. Doliniere had a very aristocratic air about him.
‘If you allow us to recreate this unique fragrance, the name of Dolinière will become as famous as it deserves to be. All the modern perfume houses will pay homage to the greatness of your name.’
Caro wished she’d had time to work on this speech. Quoting a few specific famous perfume houses would have been good but at that moment she couldn’t think of a single one. But of course, if she’d quoted the wrong name, that might have made things worse.
The dark, stuffy room seemed like an old sepia photograph: immovable, historic and – for Caro – very, very tense. No one except M. Dolinière seemed to be breathing. Caro’s knee clicked, the sound like a pistol shot although it couldn’t really have been that loud. It didn’t help that she knew she would have difficulty getting up from her cramped position. She might have to tip sideways and get up from the floor using all fours.
‘Very well,’ he said, sounding sad to be giving in. ‘If you promise to acknowledge the house of Dolinière, I will allow you to have this recipe.’
Stiffly Caro got herself upright again while Alec and Pascal thanked the old man a million times in French, English and back again.
He seemed pleased at last. He had allowed himself to let go of the secret he had kept for so many years and it apparently felt the right thing to do.
‘You may copy the recipe,’ he said. ‘And you may take it away to do so. I need to sleep now. Bring it back at four o’clock.’ He looked sternly at Caro. ‘That will that be long enough, huh?’
‘Of course,’ said Caro, trusting Pascal had access to a scanner, or at least a functioning mobile phone ‘I will be as quick as I can.’
Chapter Thirteen
Pascal had given Alec and Caro the use of his private lab, high up in the attic of his apartment in Grasse.
‘What an amazing view!’ said Caro, panting slightly after the walk up several flights of stairs.
Apart from the many other rooftops that could be seen from that height, always fascinating to Caro, there were glimpses of balconies with pots of geraniums and climbing plants, cats washing themselves in the sunshine and, lower down, streets with cars crawling along the narrow roads, cafés with waiters putting fresh cloths on the outside tables, teenage girls giggling at groups of teenage boys, men and women with paper-covered baguettes under their arms and exchanging news and views with friends and neighbours. And far away, after miles of countryside that included vineyards, farmland and rivers, were the snow-capped Alpes Maritimes.
But it was very warm, even with the window open and the fan on. Caro really wished she’d worn the one dress she’d bro
ught with her and not the jeans and top which had seemed like summer clothes when she had packed them back in London.
‘I might borrow Pascal’s lab coat, if you think he wouldn’t mind,’ said Caro.
‘What, put on more clothes, in this heat?’ Alec was surprised.
‘Not exactly. The loo’s down a floor, isn’t it?’
Caro came back wearing only the lab coat over her jeans. As it was loose on her it was cooler than her own clothes had been, although the jeans were hot and clingy. Modesty made her keep them on as the last button on the lab coat came halfway up her thighs.
Alec didn’t bother with a lab coat and just wore his short-sleeved shirt loose over his long shorts.
They began. First of all Alec replaced civet oil with the base modern perfumiers preferred (for reasons of animal cruelty, Alec explained) and ambergris with the synthetic version. When he was fairly sure his base was right, he went on to recreate the heart of the fragrance.
Caro read out the ingredients and quantities from her copied-out recipe when they were present, but often the numbers were unclear or absent, so Alec had to make a judgement and put in the amount he thought was right. It was very time-consuming.
They’d been at work for a couple of hours when Alec sighed. ‘Pascal has been brilliant, letting us use all this’ – a hand gestured to the ‘perfume organ’, a sample of practically every odour known to man and perfumiers – ‘but it’s still really difficult.’
‘We must be nearly there,’ said Caro, who’d been writing down the quantities Alec had used each time he added something.
‘What do you think of this?’ Alec said, waving a paper wand he had dipped in the most recent attempt.
‘It’s lovely,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think there’s any point in creating this perfume exactly as it was if it’s not going to suit Scarlet.’
‘How are we going to know if it does or not?’ said Alec. ‘She’s not here.’
‘I’ll know,’ said Caro. ‘It’s a bit weird, which is why I haven’t mentioned it, but I’ve got a memory for scent that is almost spooky. And I can smell things on television. Of course I don’t really smell the things but I think I do. It’s probably just an overactive imagination but if there are sewers or rotting bodies on TV I have to change channels.’