The Song Peddler of the Pont Neuf

by Laura Lebow

  “Juliette is in trouble, madame,” I said. “Haven’t you heard the news in the streets?”

  “What news? I don’t have time to follow all the news. I recently received several orders for holiday dresses, so Agathe and I are very busy here.”

  I looked around the barren shop. There were no scraps of colorful fabric or ribbons anywhere in the room, and no evidence of any fancy dresses in various stages of preparation. “Juliette was sent to a party with a group of young women. She’s accused an Austrian diplomat of raping and beating her.”

  Agathe gasped.

  Madame Dupré barked with laughter. “So it is as I expected, she’s been forced to turn to prostitution. That will teach her a lesson.”

  Agathe clenched her jaw and gripped her needle.

  “I’ve been looking for Juliette since the story came out yesterday,” I said. “I thought that perhaps one of you might have an idea of where she might go if she were in trouble.”

  The mistress stepped over to a large cupboard, opened it, and put on her cloak. “I haven’t a clue, monsieur,” she said. “I suggest you find a den of thieves. You’ll probably find her there.”

  I looked at Agathe. “Do you know—”

  Madame Dupré grasped my arm. “Come, monsieur, you must excuse us. I must ask you to go. I must deliver an order to a client, and it would not be proper for me to leave you alone with Agathe.” She scooped up the package from the table and herded me to the door. As she pulled it open, she turned to her assistant. “Agathe, don’t let me find that you’ve put more wood in that stove while I’ve been out.” She pushed me out the door and then followed me onto the street, slamming the shop door behind her.

  She nodded goodbye to me and made her way down the street. I took a few steps in the other direction, and then turned and watched until she reached the end. Poor Juliette, I thought. I didn’t condone theft, but I could understand why the girl had run away from that harridan.

  As the mistress disappeared around the corner, a ragged man pushing a rattling handcart came down the street. I turned toward the Place Baudoyer. But before I could take a step, the door to the shop banged. I felt a tug at my sleeve.

  “Is it true what you said, monsieur, about Juliette?” Agathe perched on a wooden crutch, her thin hips thrust forward like those of a broken doll. She glanced down the street to be certain that her mistress was gone and then returned her gaze to me. Now that I could see her up close, I noticed that her eyes were a deep violet, with intelligence behind them.

  “I don’t know what has happened to her, Agathe,” I said. “That’s why I must find her.”

  She shifted her body against the crutch. “Madame is lying to you, monsieur. Juliette was no thief.”

  “What do you mean? I thought she took things when she ran off.”

  “She never stole anything from the mistress. Those candlesticks are in a trunk in the bedroom in the back of the shop. I searched for them when Juliette disappeared, after Madame told me she had dismissed her for stealing. That rosary that Madame said Juliette took? Madame lost it herself on the way home from church one day.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Why did Juliette run away? Because the mistress mistreated her?”

  She shook her head. “No, no, monsieur. Juliette was miserable here, that is true. She told me several times that she wanted to find a new mistress, but she had no money to buy out her contract with Madame and arrange a new one. No, you don’t understand. Juliette did not leave of her own will. The mistress sold her.”

  My mouth hung open. “Sold her?”

  “To a madam, a woman who runs a fancy brothel. This isn’t the first time Madame has done that. I’ve been with her for ten years now. Juliette is the fourth girl who has disappeared. Madame finds a pretty girl and arranges for her to become an apprentice. Some of them couldn’t even sew a straight stitch! After a few months, she sells the girl to the madam. You’ve noticed the mistress’s fine dress, and the large watch she wears? She bought those soon after Juliette disappeared.”

  “Why haven’t you told the police about this, Agathe?” I asked.

  She flinched as though I had struck her. “What would I say, monsieur? No one would believe me. Look at me. I’m a cripple. No one listens to me. Even if they did, the police are not going to come over to this part of the city to investigate a mistress’s abuse of her apprentice.”

  I sighed. “I am sorry, Agathe. You are probably right. Do you have any idea where Juliette might be? Did she have any family nearby?”

  “No, she was alone here in Paris. The mistress only takes on apprentices who have no family in the city. Then she can do what she wants with them.”

  “Can you think of any place where she might hide?” I asked. “Did she ever mention a place that she liked to visit?”

  She thought for a moment. “Well, she loved the shops in the Palais Royal. I’ve never been there, but from the way Juliette described it, there doesn’t seem to be anywhere there for a young woman to hide.”

  “That is true,” I said.

  “She did talk about a certain place, though, when we were working.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “I don’t know where it is,” she said. “But Juliette used to tell me that on days when she was sent out on errands by the mistress, she liked to stop there and sit for a while. She said it was a place that made her feel safe and happy.”

  “A shop? A café?”

  She shook her head. “No, apprentices don’t have money to go to shops and cafés. It was someplace else. She told me that when she was there she felt protected, but that she was still able to see the sky. Juliette grew up on a farm far from here. She complained about how dark the city was, especially this street. She was very homesick, I think.” She glanced behind her. “I must go in, monsieur, before the mistress returns. She only went a few blocks to deliver a dress.”

  I walked back to the shop with her and held open the door while she pulled herself over the stoop. “Thank you Agathe,” I said. I offered her a few coins.

  “No thank you, monsieur. Keep your money.” She looked down at her crippled legs. “What would I do with it? Please, just find Juliette. I’d like to know that she is safe.”

  My jaw clenched in anger as I left the rue de la Tixéranderie. Madame Dupré had exploited a young girl who had trusted her. And the madam had lied to me, leading me to believe that she had rescued Juliette, when all along she had traded coins for her, as if the girl was a heifer for sale at Les Halles. I was determined to find Juliette and help her.

  But where was she? Agathe had said that Juliette stopped at her special place when she was out during the day on errands for Madame Dupré. I knew from my sister that most seamstresses served clients and purchased their materials in their immediate neighborhoods. If Juliette had been sent out to buy thread or fabric, or to deliver a message or a finished dress to a client, she would not have traveled far from the rue de la Tixéranderie.

  “She felt protected there, but liked that she could still see the sky,” Agathe had told me. I searched my memory. Where were such places around here, in the parish of Saint-Paul or the lower end of the Marais? It was unlikely that Juliette’s special place was a garden. There were many fine ones behind some of the old mansions in the area, but they were all private. A young girl wouldn’t have been able to wander into one and sit for a while without being chased away by a guard or servant. But what about a church? There were several churches nearby, and most were full of small chapels and nooks where Juliette could have rested for a few minutes. But she would not have been able to see the sky from these places, as they were all indoors. Perhaps, though, I thought, when she had described the place to Agathe, Juliette had not meant the real sky. Perhaps she had found contentment looking at a painting that contained the sky, or a stained glass window.

  I had some time before police court began and I could be certain that Duval was away from his lodgings, so I decided to stop into some of the church
es to see what I could find. I walked around the corner to the Church of Saint-Gervais. I slowly circumnavigated the building, but could not find any place that could have served as Juliette’s refuge. I went to the front of the church, pulled the heavy door open, and stepped inside. I strolled up and down the nave, peering into the side chapels, but found them all empty. I spent several minutes looking up at the stained glass windows. There were many of these, depicting the marriage of the Virgin, the Virgin at the temple, and the resurrection of Lazarus—but none showed any blue sky.

  “May I help you, my son?”

  I turned to see an old verger with rheumy eyes.

  “Hello, Father. Yes, I am looking for a friend who is missing. Has there been a young girl, blond hair, fourteen years old, visiting the church over the last few days?”

  “Not that I’ve seen,” he said. “We have our usual parishioners from the neighborhood of course, who come in and just sit in the pews for a while. Many of them are lonely and just want conversation. Some cannot afford to heat their rooms, so they come in here. We let them be. But most of those people are elderly. I haven’t noticed any young people hanging about.”

  I thanked him and left the church. I made my way a few blocks west, toward the Place de Grève. The small Church of Saint-Jean behind the Hôtel de Ville was locked. It was unlikely that it would have been Juliette’s secret place. I walked into the Place de Grève, where a long line of downcast men, gaunt women, and crying children waited outside the city’s Bureau of Poor Relief. I circled the Church of Saint-Esprit, but saw no niches or shelters outside either the church or the small orphanage it owned next door that would have attracted Juliette. My inquiries to the vicaire inside the church led nowhere.

  I walked north a few blocks to the large gothic priory in the rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie. The church had been closed for at least ten years because the elders had embezzled its funds, but I wanted to see if there was any way to enter the building. But when I arrived, I found most of the doors chained shut. The few left unchained did not give way to my tugging and pushing.

  My stomach rumbled with hunger. It was now dinnertime and I had nothing to show for my morning’s activity. What was I doing? I’d spent Tuesday tracing all of the prostitutes named Geneviève from the police log. Now I was on another search, for Juliette.

  I turned toward the rue des Blancs-Manteaux, with the idea of taking dinner in my favorite tavern in the Marais. A memory suddenly came to me. Hyacinthe and I had explored every part of this area when we were boys. One day, during a sudden rainstorm, we had found shelter in a small medieval cloister in a monastery somewhere nearby. Where had it been? Somewhere near Hyacinthe’s house in the rue du Puits. Ah, yes. I turned around and walked to the rue des Billettes. Midway down, on the left side of the narrow street, a door stood open. I hurried to it and stepped over the age-worn stoop into the cloister.

  The courtyard was a small quadrangle surrounded by a covered walkway. A low wall formed a border between the stone pavers of the walkway and the central yard. Heavy stone pillars sat spaced along the wall, their tops tapering to meet the ceiling of the walkway. The monastery buildings hovered over the quadrangle, casting the walkways in shadow, but as I leaned over the short wall and looked up, I could see the sky. Leaden clouds had begun to move in, obscuring the morning’s sunshine. The cloister was silent. The noise of the street was muffled by thick, old stone. As I looked around, my shoulders sagged. I had wasted more of my day. No one was here.

  As I turned to leave, I heard a small whimper. I leaned over the wall and cast my eyes around the walkways, squinting to see into the shadows. Another whimper. There, in the far corner, where I had seen what I had thought was a pile of cleaning rags left by the monks, I made out a small figure huddled on the cold stone floor.

  “Juliette!” I hurried across the courtyard.

  She sat with her back against the stone wall, hugging herself and staring blankly across the yard. A thick cloak had been thrown over her lap. Her blond hair was greasy and limp, and her face was covered with dark bruises, as if someone had daubed delicate porcelain with splotches of black and deep purple paint. Someone, perhaps one of the monks, had spread ointment on the largest of the bruises.

  I knelt on the stone beside her. “Juliette, it is Paul Gastebois, Aimée’s brother,” I said. “What happened to you? Can you tell me?”

  There was a glimmer of recognition in her eyes. “Did Aimée send you, monsieur?” she asked in a small voice.

  “Yes,” I said. “She’s been very worried about you.” As I reached out to touch her face, she flinched. I dropped my hands. “Who did this to you, Juliette?”

  She took a ragged breath, but did not answer me.

  “Was it the Austrian diplomat, the man you met at the party in the rue de Grenelle?”

  She buried her head in her hands. Her shoulders shook as she wept. I moved over and took her in my arms. This time she did not recoil. I held her and made comforting noises as she sobbed into my shoulder. After a few minutes, I took my handkerchief from my pocket and handed it to her. She pulled away from me and wiped the tears from her face.

  “Please, Juliette, you must tell me what happened,” I said. “I was at the Hôtel d’Estrées Sunday night. I saw you leave the party. I know that you were not attacked there. Did the diplomat follow you home?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  I leaned in as she continued in a low voice. “I met him at the party, it is true. But he was not interested in me, or in any of the other girls.”

  “Did anyone else approach you while you were there?” I asked.

  “Yes, a few young men. I flirted with them for a bit, but they were too nervous to take it any further.”

  “No older men? Perhaps a foreigner?”

  “No. The other girls met some gentlemen and went off to the chambers with them. I sat on a sofa to wait.” She twisted the handkerchief in her hands. “When they returned we left the party. Madame requires us to be home by midnight.”

  “The carriage took you directly to the rue de Richelieu?”

  “Yes. It dropped us outside the door. The other girls ran inside and the coachman drove away.”

  I nodded.

  “Sometimes I just want to be alone, with no one getting after me,” she said. “Madame watches everything that we do when we are in the house. So I lingered outside even though it was cold. I only planned to stay out for a few minutes.”

  “And then?”

  “A man came from across the street and bade me good evening.”

  “Had he been at the party? Did you recognize him?”

  “No. He had not been there. I would have noticed him. He was tall and very handsome. He spoke with a foreign accent.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  “He told me that he’d seen me coming and going from the house. He thought I was beautiful and he wanted to spend some time with me. He asked if I wanted to earn some extra money. Madame Rolle would know nothing about it—I could keep it all for myself. He said that if I came with him for just a little while, he would pay me well and then take me home.”

  She pulled the cloak around her. “I decided to go with him. He was very good looking, and young—maybe a bit older than you, monsieur. He was not at all like the fat old men with stinking breath who usually visit me at Madame Rolle’s.” She shuddered. “And Madame takes most of the money I earn. I thought it would be nice to have some money of my own, to spend at the Palais Royal, or maybe to even buy passage on a coach to visit my sister at her new husband’s farm.”

  “Where did he take you? Did he have a carriage?”

  “No, we walked. I don’t know the city very well, but I know it was nearby. We had only turned a few corners when he said we had arrived. It was a tavern. There was a man playing a violin and many men sitting at tables drinking. I remember the sign over the door—a windmill.”

  The tavern in the rue des Moulins, where I had followed Cobenzl’s watcher.
/>   “What happened then?” I asked.

  She blew her nose into my handkerchief. “He took me upstairs to a bedroom. He locked the door—” She shuddered.

  “Take your time,” I said. “You had relations with him?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But it was very different from what I usually do with the men at Madame Rolle’s. He told me to undress. As soon as I had removed my underclothes, he was on top of me, thrusting into me. I begged him to stop. I told him he was hurting me. He put his hands around my throat and started to choke me. Then, when he was finished—” Tears ran down her delicate face.

  I took her hand and squeezed it gently.

  “He started to hit me. He punched me in the face, and around my shoulders. I tried to get out from underneath him, but he was too strong. I thought he was going to kill me.” Her shoulders trembled. “I must have fainted, because I don’t remember him leaving the room. When I came back to consciousness, I was bleeding from my womanly parts. I couldn’t move, everything hurt so much.”

  “Did you stay there all night?” I asked.

  “Yes. I tried to get up, but when I finally dragged myself from the bed, I could not find my dress. He had taken my clothes with him. The door was locked. I screamed and banged on it, but no one came. Finally I crawled back to the bed and cried myself to sleep.”

  A tear ran down her cheek.

  “The next morning he came back. He gave me my clothes and told me to get dressed. My beautiful dress had been torn and had dark smears on it, like blood. I begged him to let me go. He laughed and said that he was not finished with me yet. He gave me a mirror and showed me my face. He said that after what he had done to me, I’d be lucky if Madame Rolle would have me back. I would have to live in the streets and sell myself to the basest of men.”

  “But he had something he wanted you to do for him,” I said.

  “Yes. He said that if I would help him play a trick on a friend, he would give me plenty of money. All I had to do was meet a reporter and tell him that an Austrian diplomat had raped and beaten me at the party.”