“Then we are going to find a bakery, Sophie, and we’re going to make a plan.”
“Why a bakery? I was thinking more like, a police station? Or a post office, or a mayor’s hall?”
“The most important part of planning is having something to eat. There would be fewer wars if prime ministers ate doughnuts at government meetings.”
“And then?” she said. “And then what?”
“And then,” said Charles, “we go hunting.”
High up above the Seine, thirty feet up in the air, a pair of brown eyes was watching the street below. They watched a buggy pull up to the Hotel Bost, and a girl clamber out. The eyes noted the twitch in the girl’s fingers, the tense excitement in her shoulder blades. They saw her biting her teeth together in determination and dragging a cello case off the cart, and watched her jump back, flustered, out of the path of a motorcar. The eyes saw her anxiously open the case and pull out the instrument and check it front and back, and then squat on the sidewalk and pluck out a thrumming tune with her finger and thumb.
The sound was soft, and almost drowned by the traffic below, but the brown eyes flickered, as though impressed.
8
THE PLAN SOPHIE and Charles Made was, of necessity, simple. Sophie wrote it out on a scrap of paper.
1. Find rue Charlemagne.
2.
Sophie’s pen hesitated over number two. Then she drew a large question mark. She underlined it in red ink and put the list in her pocket, and went to find Charles.
Charles’s room was nice, though you could not call it smart. There were two spindly chairs, on which a succession of bottoms had left their mark, and two rugs, on which a good deal of expense had been spared. Even the bedside candles looked secondhand, but the linen smelled of lavender. The wind was blowing from the river, and the air was brackish. Sophie had never felt so much at home in a hotel. Usually they gave her the shivers.
The hotel itself was a tall, gangly building, sandwiched between two more imposing blocks of apartments. It was cheap, because, as Sophie had just discovered, there was no indoor toilet, only a wooden box in the garden, but apart from that it was perfect. From the window, thin streets and sidewalk cafés wove away from them down toward the river.
Sophie sat on Charles’s bed and bounced. Above the bed there was a painting of a man in a beard that curled at the point.
“I like his beard,” she said. “He could use it as a paintbrush.”
Charles looked up, startled. “What?” Then he laughed. “Did you find the bathroom?”
“Yes. We’re sharing it with a family of spiders, though. And there’s a bird’s nest in the ceiling joist. I quite like it.”
“Good. Shall we go and explore your room? Let me carry your case. No? As you wish.”
Sophie’s bedroom was in the attic of the hotel. There wasn’t much to explore. The doorway was so small that Charles stayed outside and let her go in alone. Once she had set down her cello case, there was barely room to stand.
“Look!” she said.
The walls were covered in ink sketches, arranged higgledy-piggledy to pick up the most possible light. They were done in quick black strokes; they looked like they were fidgeting in their frames. “I like these. They look French.”
“They look like music,” said Charles. He tucked his head into his neck and peered farther in. Then, “No window?”
“Skylight,” said Sophie.
A tiny four-poster bed was hung with white cotton at the sides, and open at the top. There was a window set into the slanting roof. Looking up, Sophie realized that the reason Charles hadn’t seen it immediately was that it was so thickly encrusted with bird droppings on the outside that it matched the white ceiling.
“Do you think it opens?” she said.
“I can think of only one way to find out.” Charles edged his way into the room and laid his newspaper on the bed. He set his feet on the newspaper, and pried open the catch. The window did not open when he pushed, nor when he jabbed at the hinge with his umbrella.
“Rusted hinge,” he said. “Easily solved. It’s not painted shut, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Do you think the hotel will have some oil?”
“It’s unlikely. But we’ll find you some oil tomorrow.”
“Thank you.” She stood on the bed and squinted through the gaps in the pigeon mess. She could see red chimney pots, and blue sky. “My heart feels too large for my body,” she said. “It all feels so familiar, Charles, and I don’t know why. It does, though. Do you believe me?”
“Paris?”
“Yes, sort of. Maybe. But I was actually thinking, the chimney pots. They look familiar, and they’re such a good color.”
Charles was a scholar, and scholars, he always said, are made to notice things. He must have heard in her voice how much she wanted to be alone, because he strode swiftly to the door. “I’ll leave you to explore. Half an hour, Sophie, and then we’ll find a map and get ourselves to rue Charlemagne. If it’s near the river, it can’t be far from here.”
9
RUE CHARLEMAGNE WAS easy to find. It was a ten-minute walk through cobbled streets, and window boxes full of red carnations, and children eating hot buns in the road; ten minutes in which Sophie’s heart looped the loop and danced a jitterbug and generally behaved in a way entirely out of her control. “Hold steady,” she whispered to herself. And then, “Stop it. That’s enough.”
“Did you say something?” said Charles.
“No. I was singing to the pigeons.”
The shop had a plaque above the window. There was a violin in it, resting on a bed of silky stuff, and some flowers. Everything except the violin was covered in dust.
Inside, it was the sort of over-full shop where everything looks ready to fall off the shelves. Sophie pulled in her stomach as they went in, and glanced nervously at Charles. He was so long. He did not always take care where he was putting his legs.
“Hello?” said Sophie, and Charles added, “Good afternoon?”
Nobody answered. They stood stock-still, waiting. Sophie counted five minutes tick past. Every ten seconds, she called, “Hello? Bonjour? Hello?”
“I think it’s empty,” said Charles. “Shall we come back later?”
“No! We’ll wait.”
“Hello?” called Charles again. “I have a cello child here. She needs your help.”
There was a noise like a horse sneezing, and a man appeared from a door behind the counter, rubbing his eyes. He was stooped, and his paunch sat over his belt like a mixing bowl stuffed up his shirt.
“Je m’excuse!” he said. He spoke some quick sentences in French.
Sophie smiled politely but blankly. She said, “Um.”
“Pas du tout,” said Charles.
“What did he say?” Sophie whispered.
“Ah!” The man smiled. “I said, ‘I was having my nap.’ You are English.” His accent was thickly French, but he spoke easily. “Can I aid you?”
“Yes, please! At least, I hope so.” Sophie laid the plaque on the desk. She crossed all eight of her fingers. “It’s this.”
“It was screwed to the lid of a cello case,” said Charles. “Can you tell us anything about it?”
The man did not seem at all surprised. “Bien sûr. Of course.” He fingered the plaque. “This is mine. I engraved it myself. These are tacked to the inside of the cases. Under the green baize.”
“Yes!” Sophie uncrossed her fingers, recrossed them. “Yes, that’s where it was!”
“It must be old, then,” said the man, “because we stopped using brass ten years ago. We found it was rusting under the baize.”
“Why are they under the baize?” asked Charles. “Surely that rather defeats the point?”
“But, of course—so they don’t scratch the cello, but the address is there, if it is needed.”
“And”—Sophie held her breath, and then had to let it out so she could speak—“do you remember which cello it went
with? Do you remember who bought it?”
“Of course. Cellos are expensive, my child. A man will make only twenty in his whole life, perhaps. You see the serial number—291054—that means it was a twenty-nine inch. I have made only three such cellos in the last thirty years. The norm, as I am sure you know, is the thirty-two inch.”
“Who bought this one, though?” Sophie inched the plaque closer to him on the desk. “This is the only one I care about.”
“That particular cello, I think, was bought by a woman.”
“A woman?” Sophie’s insides spun about. But she held steady. “What kind of woman?”
“A handsome kind of woman, I think.”
Charles said, “Could you be more specific? How long ago was this?”
“About . . . fifteen years. Perhaps more, perhaps less. She seemed fairly normal, as beautiful women go. Beautiful women are usually a little odd, I find.”
“What else was she like?” Sophie said. “Please? What else?”
“She was tall, I think.”
“And what else? What else?” said Sophie. She pulled the neck of her jersey up to her mouth and bit down on it.
“What else? I’m afraid nothing very much.”
“Please?” There was a roaring in Sophie’s ears. “It’s important. It’s so important!”
“Well, I remember she had a musician’s fingers. Very pale, like the roots of a tree.”
“Yes? And what else?” said Sophie.
“She had short hair, and a lot of movement around the eyes.”
“What color hair? What color eyes?”
“Lightish, I suppose. Yellow hair. Or orange. Je ne sais pas.”
“Please! Please, try! It’s important.”
“I would like very much to help you,” he said, “but I must admit that I am not good at faces. I am better at instruments.” He squinted at the two of them, standing side by side in the gloom. “But she looked, I think, very like you. Not you, sir. You.”
“Are you sure?” asked Sophie. “Do you swear you’re not making it up? Swear that you’re sure?”
“Ma petite belle, when you are old, you are rarely sure. Being sure is a bad habit.” The man smiled. His skin creaked. “Don’t go.” He lowered himself into a seat. “I have an assistant. He was there when we sold it. He will have a better memory. These days I only remember music.”
The assistant was hard and angular where the owner was soft and wispy. The two spoke in French; then the younger man turned to Charles.
“Yes,” he said, “I remember. Her name was Vivienne.”
A name, coming so suddenly, was like being punched. Sophie’s breath left her body. She could only stare.
Charles said, “Vivienne what?”
The man shrugged. “I don’t remember. A color, I think. ‘Rouge,’ perhaps. I don’t know. ‘Vert,’ perhaps. Oui, I think ‘Vert.’ ”
“Vivienne!” Sophie’s insides pirouetted. Vivienne. It was a word to conjure with.
Charles said, “Thank you. Do you remember anything else? Was she married? Did she have a child?”
“She was not, and she did not.” The assistant had tough eyes, and a sneering mouth. “But she was poor—her clothes were a disgrace—and I would not be surprised to hear of any number of children. She looked the sort of person to end in trouble with the law.”
“What?” said Sophie.
He sniffed. “She had a lawless-looking mouth.”
Charles saw Sophie’s face. He intervened. “And was she a professional musician?” he said.
The assistant shrugged. “Women are not professional musicians in France, sir, thank God. But she played that cello, in the shop, until I stopped her.”
Sophie said, “You stopped her?”
“Little girl! Please do not take that tone with me. She was disturbing the other customers.”
“Was she good?” she asked. This man didn’t seem to understand how important it was, and she wasn’t sure how to make him see. She drummed on the desk with her fists. “Was she wonderful?”
He shrugged again. “She was a woman. Women’s talents are limited.” Sophie wanted to hit him, hard, with all the muscle she had. She wanted to bludgeon him with one of the violins on the wall. The man said, “She was peculiar.”
There was a cough. The old owner had come round from behind the desk and was standing at his assistant’s elbow. He held a cello bow like a horse whip. “Try a little harder, please, Mr. Lille.”
Mr. Lille flushed. “I meant, she was peculiar in musical terms. She played funeral marches in double time. She played Fauré’s Requiem without the necessary dignity.”
“She did?” said Sophie.
“She did!” The owner smiled. “I remember that! That I do remember! She said she knew nothing but the funeral marches, from living near a church.”
“A church?” asked Sophie. “Did she say which?”
“Non. But she said people should be able to dance to music, so she learned the church tunes and played them double time.”
Sophie loved the sound of that. It was something she would like to do herself. “And she was good, wasn’t she? I just know she was good.” Her fingers tingled.
“Good has nothing to do with it. It was indecent,” said the assistant. “She made solemn music frivolous. It wasn’t . . . comme il faut.”
“Could you demonstrate it for us?” said Charles.
“No,” he said, “I could not.”
The owner straightened his back. It cracked like a revolver shot, and Sophie winced. “I could,” he said.
Mr. Lille looked staggered. “Monsieur! Think of what your doctor said.”
“As a favor to the little girl.” He pulled a cello from its case. “Listen.”
The music started slowly. Sophie shivered. She had never liked the Requiem. The old man bit his tongue and quickened his pace. The music sped up, to a march and then to a run, until it sounded rollicking and sad at once. Sophie wanted to clap in time, but the rhythm was hard to capture. It was music that kicked and spun. “It’s like a rainstorm,” she whispered to Charles. “That’s the music a rainstorm would play.”
“Yes,” said Charles, and the man overheard and called over his playing, “Yes, exactly, chérie! That is it exactly!”
Soon—far too soon for Sophie—the man put down his bow. “There,” he said. “Something like that. She was faster than me, I think.”
“But,” the assistant said, “she did not play as elegantly as Monsieur Esteoule. She rushed with her bow. The young are foolish, and prize speed.”
Charles raised an eyebrow. Eyebrows can be powerful, and Mr. Lille looked quelled. “I admit,” said Mr. Lille, “that I have never heard anyone play as quickly as the girl.”
“Vivienne,” said Sophie. She said it in a whisper. “She was called Vivienne.”
“Yes, Vivienne,” said Monsieur Esteoule. “I remember clearly now, I think. She was extraordinary. Mon Dieu, the speed! I would not have thought it possible.”
“But it was not a proper way to play,” said the assistant. “I was not impressed.”
“I was,” said Monsieur Esteoule. “I was. And I am not easily impressed.”
Sophie left Charles to do the thanking and the farewells. She couldn’t speak. She needed to keep the music in her head. Sophie had a corner of her brain—it felt near the front, and to the left—in which she kept music; now she stored this music away there.
10
HAVING A NAME Changed Everything. Charles made an appointment with the police record office for the next day. He filled in the form with neat capitals.
“Nom du disparu,” he said. “That’s ‘Name of missing person.’ Vivienne Vert.” Then he hesitated. “It says, ‘Name of supplicant.’ ”
“Is that us? What shall we put?” asked Sophie. “Are we going to lie? We’re not going to give our real names, are we?”
“Certainly not. But even then it’s rather difficult,” he said. “Technically, my darling, we’r
e on the run. In fact, I think perhaps you had better stay at the hotel.”
“But couldn’t we just give fake names?”
“Yes, of course. But London may have sent out a wire by now, to the nearby ports. There will be descriptions.”
“But you said it would be days.”
“I had hoped it would. I would still be far happier if you stayed at home.”
“Why me and not you, though?”
“I am nondescript, my darling. You are memorable. I fear you are, if you’ll forgive me, spectacularly describable. The hair, you know.”
Sophie considered. She thought of waiting in her attic bedroom while Charles was gone. It made her feel sick. “No. I have to come.”
“Are you sure?”
“I won’t talk. But I have to come.”
Charles hesitated. “Do you have a skirt?”
“Yes. At least, I have a dress.”
“Do you have a hat? Something to hide your hair?”
“Yes. Miss Eliot gave it to me. It makes me look like a poodle, though.”
“Excellent. A police description will make no mention of a poodle. Wear it.”
Sophie woke early on the next morning. She got dressed quickly; or rather, she tried to. It wasn’t easy to breathe that morning. It seemed there was too much hope in her chest for the air to fit alongside.
The police headquarters was a large building. Too large, Sophie thought, and too cold. But the receptionist was sweet-faced, and Charles offered her his box of mints while they waited. She looked surprised, and then grinned and took three. Sophie refused them; it was hard enough to swallow as it was. Charles and the girl were laughing over something in French, and the sound echoed too loudly around the marble hall. Sophie wished they wouldn’t. People were staring. She moved a little farther off and pretended to read the French notices on the walls.
The receptionist was watching her. The girl tugged at Charles’s lapel, and when he politely inclined his head, she whispered in his ear. Then she looked at Sophie, and laughed again. Sophie scowled, embarrassed. The clerk appeared just as the echo of the laugh was dying, and the girl ducked her head and began straightening some papers.
Rooftoppers Page 5