I'll See You in Paris

by Michelle Gable

  Picture an old woman, he said, sitting in an ornate, drafty home beside the sea. Before her is a young girl. The girl is beautiful, all light and gossamer. Though she is luminous, she is also unsteady, glinting like a candle’s flame.

  “So you’ve come for the job,” the old lady said.

  “Yes,” answered the young woman, who went by Pru. “I found it in the paper.”

  She was nineteen years old, a bookish girl who left university after only one year to get married. In April she learned there would be no marriage and so Pru had spent the prior six months addled, confused, bumping around as if lost in a pinball machine. But in her purse was the newspaper ad that might finally help her land.

  WHITE COLLAR GIRL NEEDED. Oxfordshire, England. Personal assistant req’d for cultured older woman living alone. 400 dollars per month and free board. No exp necessary. Only a love of literature and the English countryside.

  The girl matched the admittedly slim requirements. She had the right experience, which was none, and did love books. Though she’d never been to England, Pru recognized this post as the answer, the precise action she needed to take. It was time to go away, to travel far. The Atlantic Ocean was the distance she ached for.

  “I can give you references,” Pru said when the woman didn’t respond. “I’m a literature fiend and I’m close with the—”

  “How old are you? Twenty if you’re a day.”

  The woman was the niece of the would-be charge, but seemed far too old to call anyone aunt. Regardless, she’d evidently drawn the short end of the family stick and was responsible for dickering with the old bat in England. Best to foist caretaking duties onto a stranger for some nominal fee. What was money for if not for that?

  “I’m nineteen,” Pru said. “And I’m very independent.”

  “I’m sure you are.” The woman sniffed. “But don’t you have better prospects? By which I mean any other prospects at all?”

  “I’m college-educated,” she said. A stretch, to be sure, but not a lie. “And I was engaged to be married.”

  “You were engaged?” the woman said with a wheezing giggle. “A broken engagement. Well, well, well, you’d fit in with my aunt quite well.”

  “Not broken,” Pru said. “He died.”

  The words stunned even her. Pru usually didn’t have to say them herself. There was always someone else around to relay the ghastly tale.

  “He died?” the woman gasped.

  “He died,” she returned with a nod.

  He died, he died, he died.

  Pru repeated the words in her head. Even now they didn’t feel right though she’d been there when Charlie’s remains returned home. She’d watched as they installed the box of him into the family mausoleum.

  “So the answer is no,” Pru said. “I have not a single prospect.”

  She shivered and wrapped a shawl tight around her shoulders. Pru was slight, a slip of a girl. On top of that the grand Newport home was cavernous and cold. The windows were open, baroque curtains drooping around them like heavy eyelids.

  “Oh my. He passed? Was it in Vietnam?” The woman made a face as Pru nodded. “He died in Vietnam. Lord have mercy. He’s one of those.”

  “One of what?” she asked. “A soldier? A brave man?”

  Pru feigned ignorance but understood what this woman saw, what most of the nation believed.

  The war had long since worn out its welcome. Citizens were dying at an alarming clip. Those who survived were judged as baby-killers or nancy boys. What the bloody hell had they been up to anyhow? They should’ve won the blessed thing by now. The lads were nothing like their fathers, who had previously saved the world.

  In Pru’s mind, Charlie was a hero. But he was also an idiot. His parents expended tremendous effort to backdate a fictitious sporting injury and Charlie declined to accept it. It did not sit well with him, the lying. But the lie would’ve saved his life.

  “Bloodthirsty heathens,” the woman muttered under her breath.

  “He died in April,” Pru said, eyes watering. “During the Easter Offensive. They found his body somewhere near Kon Tum. His name was Charlie.”

  “Isn’t that the nickname for the Viet Cong?”

  “It is.”

  “Ha! The irony.”

  Pru sucked back a thick swallow of tears.

  “A damned shame,” the woman said. “All of it.”

  “I agree entirely.”

  “And now you need a job. A way to support yourself.”

  Pru nodded again, tears shimmering on her lashes. She’d stupidly hoped Charlie’s family might help, perhaps provide a job at their dry-goods conglomerate. Pru could type memos. She could warm someone else’s coffee.

  Alas, she reminded them of Charlie, which reminded them that he chose his death. They couldn’t forgive him. And they couldn’t forgive her for not convincing him to stay.

  So, yes, she needed to support herself. But more than that, she had to recover from all she’d lost.

  “Why not return to school?” the woman asked. “Finish your studies?”

  “My family no longer has the means,” she said simply.

  Her parents died when she was young, the money for her studies frittered away by the relatives who raised her. Pru received a scholarship, but when she left because of Charlie the administration made it clear: she was giving it up for good.

  “No longer has the means,” the woman echoed with a remote chuckle. “Well, isn’t that how most good stories begin?”

  And so she hired Pru on the spot.

  The woman didn’t ask for references, or for her to verify the “love of literature and the English countryside.” Pru chalked it up to her appearance, to those clear green eyes and wide-moon face. Charlie used to say she was heavenly, ethereal. It was a touch flowery, but Pru knew her daintiness and quiet demeanor were often confused for a certain grace.

  After the proper documents were secured, an attaché escorted her overseas. He was a butler of some sort and seemed equal parts annoyed and tickled by the adventure. All throughout the plane ride and in the hired hack to Banbury, Pru deliberated his purpose. It was 1972 and young women traveled unattended. As far as she could tell, his only business in England was to deposit her on the doorstep of an estate called the Grange.

  “You didn’t have to come with me,” Pru said as they made the final leg of their journey. “I realize it’s a bit late to say so, but I could’ve traveled on my own.”

  “This is for your own safety. The mistress of the manor is quite a force.”

  “So chivalrous,” she mumbled. “And I don’t find sweet old ladies particularly intimidating.”

  Suddenly the car sputtered to a stop in front of a stone house.

  This? No, this could not be the place. The manor. The so-called estate.

  Pru had been in the Newport home, Graycliffe. It was on the beach, fifty rooms they’d said, and so opulent it outshone its commendably palatial neighbors. But this “Grange” looked downright uninhabitable, leaning so far to the left that, well, God help town residents if there ever was a mudslide.

  The home didn’t even have a proper roof. It might’ve been thatch-style once, but was now splintered and disintegrating. More windows were broken than were intact and reams of chicken wire encased the property. All around assemblages of livestock pecked and snouted at the dirt.

  “Is this…?” she began.

  A man burst through the front door. He was reedy and ancient, sporting a wide straw hat, soiled trousers, and no shirt. He waved madly at his visitors.

  “Get away!” the person yelled. Pru quickly ascertained he wasn’t waving but brandishing a revolver. “Get away or I’ll shoot you between the eyes! I’ve done it before!”

  “I thought she lived alone?” Pru said, heart pounding.

  Then she realized. This wasn’t a man. The screaming, ranting figure was a woman.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Ah yes,” the attaché said with a sneaky smile. “We hav
e arrived. Welcome to the Grange.”

  Seven

  THE GEORGE & DRAGON

  BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND

  OCTOBER 2001

  Over the years, rumors placed the Duchess in London and Rome and Paris. A few spotted her at the Hotel Splendide in Cannes. Renowned priest Abbé Mugnier reported she was not traveling but instead holed up in a dilapidated estate in Chacombe-at-Banbury, an Oxfordshire hamlet.

  According to reports, the priest visited his old friend once a year, on Christmas Day. If he tried more often, Gladys shooed him away with warning shots or a vicious pack of snapping geese. Sometimes she leaned out a window and dumped a bucket of water on his head.

  The world was skeptical of Mugnier’s reports from the Grange but the doubting always struck this writer as bizarre. Here was a religious man, a fellow known as “le confesseur des duchesses,” the confessor of duchesses. Surely he would know of which he spoke. When I tracked down his fifty-seven cahiers de moleskine at the Diocèse de Paris, I found the proof I sought.

  —J. Casper Augustine Seton,

  The Missing Duchess: A Biography

  “It wasn’t the most auspicious welcome,” Gus said, draining the last of his cider. “To be greeted by century-old nude breasts. And a gun.”

  Annie tried not to blush.

  Half of her wanted to chastise this dirty old man for mentioning boobs while the other half was sniggling like a thirteen-year-old boy. She felt at times old-fashioned and hopelessly juvenile, as if she could’ve been born in 1879 or 1979. Maybe that’s what happened when you grew up on a farm and were raised by someone like Laurel, who was about as nonworldly as a person could get. It was a marvel Eric found anything in common with her at all.

  “Have I offended you?” Gus asked. “My apologies. I can be a real duffer. Comes with age. Though I don’t know what my excuse was before.”

  As he fidgeted, Annie thought she could hear his bones creak.

  “Not offended!” she chirped. “And frankly I’d be more put off by the gun. So that was her, I presume? The duchess? No offense, but how scary could she have been? She was, what, ninety years old by the time Pru answered the newspaper ad?”

  “Ninety-one. Alas, my dear, we have not established the identity of the screaming harpy. It was the woman rumored to be the duchess, but whether she actually was the duchess remains to be seen.”

  “What do you mean, ‘remains to be seen’? You’ve read the book, right?”

  “Yes. It’s been a while, but I’ve read it.”

  “Look, I know we’re playing this coy game. No spoilers and all that. But let’s be honest, we already know it’s the duchess.”

  She turned the book to face Gus.

  “Read this part,” she said and ran her finger below the words. “‘Amongst the writings found.’ Start there.”

  Amongst the writings found in Abbé Mugnier’s journals were detailed descriptions of his visits to the Grange. In his diaries he also had a receipt from the Royal Oak, a pub not far from the Grange itself.

  Oddly, few believed the claims of l’abbé, when he was alive and especially after he died. The man was probably a pettifogger, they decided, mooching off the privileged and prestigious as he did.

  Plus, what would the Duchess of Marlborough, this most illustrious creature, want with the hovel he described? She once lived at Blenheim for Christ’s sake, where her blue eyes were painted on the portico ceilings and winged sphinxes with her face marked garden paths.

  At Blenheim she entertained the likes of King George and Queen Mary if you’re one for royalty, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford if you’re partial to film. How could Gladys Deacon leave this grandeur to live alone? Her only guest an aged priest, her only companions a cavalcade of forever-breeding spaniels?

  Annie clapped the book shut.

  “Basically this … priest to the stars,” she said, “confirmed the duchess lived at the Grange. And the author agreed. Where’s the big mystery?”

  “Well, if you can’t trust a writer, then whom can you?” Gus said, a sparkle playing at the corners of his gray eyes. “Writers are never fib-tellers or fabricators of any sort.”

  “You’re really going to string this out for me, aren’t you?” Annie said, smiling in return.

  “What do these paragraphs tell us?” he asked. “An old man claimed to see her, once a year, on Christmas. Odd date, given the duchess hated the holiday. And the author?” He snorted. “Well, here’s a piece of advice, something you should’ve learned at primary school. Don’t believe everything you read.”

  “That’s the damned truth,” she grumbled. “So the woman at the Grange. She was crazy? Demented? Violent? All of the above?”

  “All, some, or none of the above,” Gus said. “Depending on who you’d ask. Walking around naked and wielding firearms does not typically lead to a reputation for sanity. On the other hand, some thought it was a ruse, that she pretended to be crazy in order to keep people away.”

  “Like with the angry geese.”

  “Yes. Or the powerful weed killer she used to spray ‘fuck you’ in her front lawn.”

  “Not for nothing, but this woman, if she was ‘the duchess.’” Annie rolled her eyes and held up air quotes.

  “Let’s call her Mrs. Spencer. She would’ve preferred it.”

  “Works for me. Well, this Mrs. Spencer was a real piece of work. Maybe even, how do I put this elegantly?”

  “A bit of a bitch?” he said with a wink. “You’re going to have to get that blushing under control if you plan to sit around pubs with the likes of me. But you are correct. Mrs. Spencer and the duchess were both described using a host of unflattering terms, such as sociopathic, ruinous, and out for blood. Of course Pru, our American assistant, knew none of this.”

  “You have to feel for the old broad,” Annie said. “The woman was alone for decades. That’d make anyone nutty. Why’d the family wait so long to hire someone?”

  “Mrs. Spencer didn’t want anyone else to live at the Grange. Her niece Edith tried to intervene dozens of times over the years, a promise to her mother that she’d look after Auntie. But just as the old woman shooed away priests with gunshots and cold water, she used decidedly less pleasant tactics with people not of the cloth.”

  “‘Fuck you’ in the lawn,” Annie guessed.

  “Precisely. Bows and poisoned arrows, too. Unfortunately, over time, Mrs. Spencer’s behavior grew more erratic. Perhaps she was becoming increasingly senile, or suffering from lack of attention. Whatever the case, third-party complaints about her increased. Phone calls were placed overseas. The family could no longer ignore the situation.”

  “Something had to be done,” Annie said. “Still. It’s pretty remarkable that she was living independently at ninety-plus years.”

  “If she truly was independent,” Gus said. “Because of course there was Tom.”

  “Tom? Who the heck is Tom?” She opened the book and flicked through some pages. “I don’t see any Tom in here. I thought she lived alone?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Tomasz was a displaced Polish man. He’d been with Mrs. Spencer since 1951 or so the story went. A handyman, she claimed. The only loyal man in her entire wretched life.”

  “So what happened to him?”

  “No one knew. Was he alive? Dead? Had he even existed in the first place? Because though townspeople had heard his name, took for granted rumors of his existence, no one reported seeing him after 1955, though he’d lived at the Grange some twenty years by the time Pru showed up.”

  “Did anyone recall meeting him? Ever?”

  “A few people,” Gus said with a shrug. “In the early fifties. After that, nothing, although Mrs. Spencer referred to him often. To would-be visitors she’d screech ‘Watch out! Tom will get you!’ Or ‘Don’t go near the barn! Tom is in there!’ Tom was almost always ‘in the barn.’ A queer place for the handyman of a falling-down estate.”

  “Why didn’t anyone check?” she asked. “Sneak a lo
ok?”

  Gus tossed his head back and laughed, deep and low and from his gut. She felt her face redden and burn.

  “It seems a simple enough solution,” she sniffed. “I don’t know why you find it so hilarious.”

  “Sure. Simple enough if you don’t mind a bullet to the arse.”

  “But it’s a big property, right? Why wouldn’t someone prowl around? See what was up?”

  “A brilliant idea. That is, aside from the aforementioned bullets, the barbed wire, a herd of wild boars, a few poisoned spears, as well as about a dozen other hazards. Other than that, a winning plot!”

  “I get it, the estate was impenetrable.”

  “Mostly. Plus everyone was anxious about what state he’d be in, this Tom, in the barn for twenty years or more.”

  “What did they imagine?” she asked. “A dead body? A live, withered one chained to a wall?”

  “Yes and yes.”

  “I assume Pru didn’t know about him. Or any of the other threats.”

  “No, she did not,” Gus said. “It’s why Edith Junior settled on the diaphanous young American. She’d tried to hire a half-dozen staid British-governess types but they all sussed out the situation and declined the post. The family was lucky, really. Pru had no experience but was the exact right person for the job.”

  Eight

  THE GRANGE

  CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND

  NOVEMBER 1972

  “Hello, Mrs. Spencer,” the attaché said. “This is your new companion, Miss Valentine.”

  “Valentine. What a name.”

  “Perchance you might put on a shirt. Display a little polish.”

  “What the hell do I need with polish at my age, Reginald?” The old woman slipped the revolver into an ankle holster and hitched up her trousers. “Or a companion for that matter?”

  “My name is Murray. As I’ve told you countless times.”

  “Hello there, I’m…”

  Pru went to shake Mrs. Spencer’s hand but the woman yanked all appendages out of reach, contorting her face as if Pru might be riddled with disease.

  “Your manners are immaculate, Mrs. Spencer. It’s always so nice to be reminded.”