Wilhelmina de Courcelles, Hôtel Ritz. Surely Pierre would not have done this for Daisy’s sake? Of course not. Pierre cared only for his own skin.
Whereas Legrand—I promise I won’t let them take her. Or you.
And he would keep that promise. Legrand was not a man who broke his promises.
They reached the foyer. Without looking at Daisy, Legrand opened the door a few centimeters, looked into the vestibule, and slipped free.
Gone.
Daisy closed the door and leaned against it. Everything was dim and shadowed; night had settled fully outside the windows and in her chest as well, swallowing her ribs and her vital organs, everything. Gone. But of course he was gone; that was right. She was married. She had a husband, however monstrous, and children. She had no business taking this one good thing she had done, these few good deeds, and desecrating them with some sordid act of adultery. She closed her eyes and saw his fingers, operating the safe; she saw his eyes and smile, heard his voice, and her eyes hurt with the strain of her unshed tears. She felt as if someone had reached inside her chest and torn her heart out, still beating.
The door moved. Daisy jumped back.
Through the opening came Legrand, his head and shoulders and then his whole body. He edged around the door and closed it behind him, while an amazed Daisy stepped back and took in the sight of him.
“The damned concierge is having some conversation with one of your neighbors in the hallway,” he said. “Do you mind if I wait a few more minutes?”
Daisy turned and went down the hall to the kitchen. “I’ll pour some brandy,” she said.
They sat not in the drawing room but in the little nook off the dining room, furnished with a sofa and a lamp table, where Daisy liked to read when she had a moment to herself, which wasn’t often anymore. “It’s my favorite part of the apartment,” she explained. “The only room I like at all.”
Legrand sat at the other end of the sofa, leaning forward, dangling the snifter between his hands. “I grew up in a rather grand house myself,” he said. “And I had a spot just like this one, where I liked to go when I needed a bit of time by myself.”
“Somewhere in England.”
He looked up at her, and for an instant she thought he was going to deny it. Then he lifted his brandy in a little salute. “Somewhere in England.”
She smiled. He smiled.
“Then why are you here?” she asked. “This isn’t your fight.”
“If you hadn’t noticed, my dear, we are at war together.”
“Yes, but Paris itself. Our people. It’s one thing, training in an army. This, right inside occupied Paris, it’s so intimate. And dangerous.”
Legrand settled back against the sofa. “I spent a great deal of time in France, before the war. It’s a second home to me. It was like an escape from England and all that provincial life. All those daughters of the local squires, in their cardigans and their brogues and their prim little dresses.”
“Very sweet girls, I’m sure.”
“Sweet, yes. But not very interesting. Not what you’d call cosmopolitan.”
“Oh? Am I cosmopolitan?”
He tilted his head and looked at her, and the warmth of his gaze made it seem as if he was actually touching her. “I wouldn’t say cosmopolitan, exactly. But you’ve seen things. You know things. You have this—this marvelous earthy quality, as if you understand much more than you let on, and it makes me . . .”
“And it makes you what?”
He looked away, at the wall, and finished his brandy. “Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“You’d laugh at me. Anyway, I shouldn’t say it.”
“Why not?”
Legrand turned back to her. “Because you’re married.”
“You’ve said things to married women before. Don’t say you haven’t.”
“Yes, but you’re different.”
“Different how?”
“You have a conscience.” He set down the snifter on the lamp table and stood. “I’ll just see if that talkative concierge of yours has run out of breath.”
But when he cracked open the door, the noise of female chatter drifted upward from the staircase, punctuated with a cackle of laughter.
He shut the door again and looked over one shoulder at Daisy. “I could kill them, you know.”
“Please don’t. People will talk.”
“Then I don’t suppose you’ve got a drainpipe out back? Something I can shimmy down?”
“Can you do that?”
“I’ve had some practice.”
“Follow me,” she said.
The bedrooms were in the back. She was loath to take him into the children’s room—so she told herself, anyway—or to her own bedroom with Pierre, God forbid, with its grand, canopied, ridiculous bed. Instead she led him to the guest bedroom, which was naturally unoccupied, a modest room dressed in blues and yellows. There were two windows at the back. Legrand peered at both of them and judged the distance to the drainpipe, and to the alley three stories below.
“Is it safe?” Daisy whispered.
“Safe as houses.”
He started to open the window, and she put her hand on his arm.
“You’re wrong,” she said. “I used to have a conscience. But it was made of fear, and doubt, and this shame I had, because I had no father, no mother, this crazy grandmother, this crazy childhood inside a hotel. That’s why I married Pierre. I wanted to be respectable.”
Legrand turned away from the window to face her. She hadn’t turned on any lamps, and the room was dark, his face in utter shadow. Probably he couldn’t see her any better than she could see him.
“Do you still feel this shame?” he said.
“Sometimes. But mostly I’m afraid I will always be respectable. I’m afraid I will never know what it’s like to be free.”
Legrand put his hand on her hair and cupped the curve of her head. “My dear Daisy,” he whispered. “My dear, brave love.”
“Tell me your name,” she whispered back.
“It’s Kit. Short for Christopher.”
“Kit.” She went on her toes and kissed his lips. “Kit.”
His arms went around her and pulled her gently against him. Outside the window, Paris went on and on, drinking and smoking and clattering, finding a way to survive. But here it was calm and dark, it was everything. She smelled the brandy on his breath, the soap on his skin. She thought, This is it, I can’t go back. The old Daisy is gone.
She slid her arms around his neck and kissed him again, and this time he kissed her back. Slow and serious, because this was important.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Babs
Paris, France
April 1964
I felt my high ponytail swish slowly and gently as I walked down the gallery connecting both sides of the Ritz, eyeing the beautiful wares in the boutique windows. Precious had said I should experiment with shopping on my own here as all of the shops met with her approval, but I hadn’t yet found the courage to actually enter one.
I wore another one of my new dresses, a bright green confection with a deep square neckline and short puffed sleeves, but it was so short I was afraid to sit down for fear of exposing myself to unsuspecting passersby. I’d brought my trusty jumper with me to drape over my lap if needed and that had made me feel much better. Or at least dressed. I could only hope I wouldn’t run into Precious as I was quite sure she would relieve me of the jumper posthaste.
I looked down at my gold wristwatch, relieved to see that it was time to meet Drew at the Vendôme entrance, and quickly increased my pace before any of the salespeople had a chance to notice me.
My heart gave a little flip as I recognized the back of Drew’s head and the broad width of his shoulders beneath a dark suit jacket. But then I spotted the leggy Gigi next to him, and my footsteps slowed involuntarily. I briefly thought of hiding behind a potted palm as Drew and I had done the previous day to avoid Prunella, but then
Gigi turned her head and spotted me.
“Mrs. Langford. So lovely to see you again. I just gave Drew more of what he asked for.”
There was something indecent in what Gigi said, but I was at a loss to describe exactly what. Drew turned and smiled excitedly, holding up a folder. “She found Pierre Villon. He still lives in Paris.”
“How wonderful,” I said, my heart sinking. I’d half hoped that we’d heard the last of the Villons and the talisman when we’d spoken to Monsieur Deneaux.
“He lives in the eighteenth arrondissement, which isn’t very nice,” Gigi explained. “Of course, with Andrew here you are quite safe. He’s so big and strong, oui?”
I did my best to smile and nod nonchalantly as if I hadn’t had the same thought a dozen times a day since I’d met Andrew Bowdoin.
“I must get back to the office. Give me a ring if you need anything else, Andrew. I’m always happy to help.”
Gigi winked at Drew then gave a more formal goodbye to me before leaving, heads turning as she and her legs walked across the floor to the door. Drew was more interested in the papers inside the folder than looking at Gigi, making me like him even more.
“There’s a lot of interesting stuff in here.” He closed the folder. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“To see Pierre Villon.” He started walking toward the door.
“But he’ll be at work, won’t he? Shouldn’t we make some sort of an appointment?”
“Hardly,” he said, allowing me to exit in front of him. “He doesn’t have a job. Apparently the French have long memories and don’t feel inclined to employ a man who spent ten years in prison for war crimes.”
“War crimes?”
“I suspected as much when Mr. Doonox mentioned that the Villons lived in an apartment that was way above Pierre’s pay grade. During the war, the only people who lived well were the Nazis, and those who worked with them.”
“And how would you know about him being in prison?” I asked, hurrying after him in my new chunky heels.
He held up the folder Gigi had given him. “Gigi is a miracle worker when it comes to giving me what I need.”
“How nice.” He gave me an odd look, forcing me to unclench my jaw.
We walked past the line of taxis. “How are we going to get there?”
“Metro. Have you taken it yet? It’s really convenient and the nearest stop, the Tuileries, is a quick walk. It might take a while as we have to change trains a couple of times. I hope you don’t mind, but it’s probably best not to take a car.”
I tried not to appear too excited about traveling across the city with Drew at my side. Barring my recent travel to Paris, it was probably one of the most exciting excursions I’d had since taking the trip to Cambridge to bring Robin home. “I don’t mind,” I said, keeping my voice neutral.
We sat side by side on the jostling train, our arms bumping against each other at regular intervals. He appeared not to notice, but I felt an odd jolt each time. I noticed a young man sitting opposite openly staring at me, and I shifted in my seat, glad I’d thought to drape my jumper over my lap for modesty’s sake.
When we eventually emerged up the steps from the underground tunnels onto Paris’s Right Bank, I immediately wanted to return to the Ritz. Despite the nearby white dome of the Sacré-Coeur Basilica and the proximity of the river Seine, there was certainly a seedy quality to the neighborhoods we walked through. Many of the buildings were covered with painted words and symbols, some of them quite shocking, which made my cheeks heat. Either Drew was good at pretending he hadn’t noticed, or he was too focused on our errand to pay attention to anything else besides the map and the written directions on the piece of paper he held in front of him.
Young women wearing even shorter skirts than I was lurked in doorways calling out greetings to Drew in French. He asked me to translate, but I pretended I didn’t understand what they were saying. He stopped in front of a drab cement building, its architectural style as obscure as its year of origin. Bins of foul-smelling garbage sat at the bottom of the steps where two tomcats wound their way around and between them, staring at us suspiciously.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” I asked, remembering what we’d read in the newspaper articles about Pierre Villon’s mother-in-law living at the Ritz. Surely her son-in-law couldn’t possibly live in such a place.
Drew looked at the piece of paper and then at the painted number on the side of the front door. “This is definitely it.” He put his foot on the bottom step. “Stay behind me, all right? Until I know it’s safe.”
I nodded, feeling my heart squeeze a bit, but not wanting to tell him that as a girl who played with her older brothers and their friends I knew how to throw a punch and where to land a kick. I did as he requested and followed him through the peeling-paint door and into an entryway that smelled of boiled cabbage and Robin’s room after he returned from a football match. Mail slots to the right listed the last names of tenants next to their flat numbers.
“There,” I said, pointing to the top right. “Villon—number 310.”
He nodded. “Come on. Doesn’t look like there’s an elevator so we’ll take the stairs. Stay close to me, all right?”
I nodded, my heart doing that odd squeezing thing again. We climbed to the third floor, listening to the lives of those behind the doors as we passed. A baby crying, a woman shouting. A man singing in Italian. It was all somehow sad, that the demoiselle’s husband should live here in this dismal, foul-smelling place.
When we reached number 310, we stopped and stared at the door where the word collaborateur had been painted in thick red letters in scarlet accusation. It appeared that someone had once tried to scrub it out, but the outline of the word remained like a ghostly reminder. We looked at each other for a moment and then Drew knocked on the door, beckoning for me to stand back. It took three knocks before we heard an epithet coming from behind the door, and then slow footsteps approaching.
“Who is it?” The French words were slurred.
Before Drew could speak, I stepped forward. “My name is Mrs. Barbara Langford and I’m with Mr. Andrew Bowdoin. Are you Pierre Villon? We’d like to talk to you about your wife, Marguerite Villon, and her connection to the de Courcelles family.”
“Daisy?” The door flew open, revealing an unkempt man with greasy hair that was more salt than pepper and a paunch that tested the integrity of the buttons on his dirty shirt. He was quickly trying to button the remaining buttons, the gaping holes displaying corpulent white skin and graying chest hair. The scent of cheap wine on his breath washed over us, making me almost choke. “I am Pierre. Come in, come in,” he said, beckoning us into the squalor of a one-room flat that reeked of spilled spirits. Which was a blessing, really, as underneath it all the stench of unwashed skin clung to the walls and moth-eaten rug like spilled milk.
“Who is Daisy?” Drew asked.
The little man looked up at Drew, the difference in their heights almost comical. Except the expression on the man’s face was anything but. The man responded in passable English. “Marguerite was her real name, but everyone always called her Daisy.” His eyes welled up with tears and I couldn’t help myself from touching his arm and leading him to a sofa. I sat down with him, ignoring the dark stains that could have been food or perhaps not. I preferred not to think of it.
“And what happened to Daisy?” I asked gently, holding on to his hand. I heard Drew take a deep intake of breath.
He shrugged his shoulders then returned to slumped defeat. “I don’t know. She disappeared during the war, along with Madeleine and Olivier.”
“Your children?”
“Yes. A boy and a girl.” He shook his head sadly. “I never saw them again, either.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I started to ask him to tell me more about them, but Drew interrupted me.
“Did you ever hear from Daisy or the children? To let you know that they’re alive?”
Pi
erre perked up for the first time. “Not a letter, but a photograph. It was sent to me anonymously when I was in prison.” He stood and slowly shuffled to a bedside table with a single drawer, its knob missing. With the stubby end of a finger he pried it open and then removed a single photo. He looked down at it for a long moment, letting out a sigh of despair sounding as if it had come from his every pore.
“They are older in this photograph than they were when I last saw them, which means they survived the war, yes?”
“Yes, it would,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster. There was no need to crush the last hope this man had managed to cling to. I took the photograph as Drew moved to stand next to me while we examined it. They were beautiful children, the daughter with two long dark braids, a few years older and slightly taller than her brother. They appeared to be in the awkward early teen years, the evidence of childhood fading from the boy’s rounded cheeks and the girl’s wide eyes, their legs long and spindly like a colt’s.
“They’re lovely,” I said, handing the photo back to Pierre.
“And you don’t know who sent it?” Drew asked with an incredulous tone, his eyes narrowed slightly as if he were interviewing a witness to a crime. I wanted to tell him to stop, that Mr. Villon had already suffered enough.
“Non. I liked to assume it was Daisy, because that would mean she was still alive. But there was nothing to trace where it came from or from whom. That would have been so like her. She had good reason to despise me, but she would have wanted me to know that Madeleine and Olivier were safe and well.”
“Why would she despise you?” I asked gently.
Milky brown eyes turned to me. “She considered me an inadequate husband. I tried to give her nice things, to provide for us in the way in which she’d been raised. She had lived at the Ritz, with her grandmère, her entire life, until we married. I only wanted the best for us. But she . . .” He shrugged. “She and I liked different things.”
All the Ways We Said Goodbye Page 31