From a Paris Balcony

by Ella Carey

But he didn’t look bored. He was still watching her.

  Sarah took in a long breath. “. . . Louisa West, was a debutante in the 1890s. A Bostonian who—”

  “Came to Paris?” He tilted his head. “Unusual.”

  “England.”

  “Of course.”

  “Louisa married into English aristocracy. But we know that her husband, a Lord Henry Duval . . .” She looked at him.

  “Go on.”

  “Well, Henry was something of a rake. He spent a lot of time in Paris, with the Montmartre set. Artists, actors . . . courtesans. Marthe, I think.”

  “So, are you just interested in their lives, or—”

  Sarah shook her head. She was still horribly aware of her appearance, but she sensed that Laurent didn’t care about that a bit. He seemed to be listening. And for some reason, Sarah found herself wanting to talk.

  “Legend has it that my great-great-aunt Louisa jumped out of a window to her death at a party in Montmartre. In 1895. But her death was hushed up by Henry’s aristocratic family, so far as the story goes. They were keen to avoid scandal. No investigations, no questions. Nothing. Louisa’s death was accepted as suicide—swept under the rug—and Henry’s family simply moved on.”

  Laurent nodded.

  Louisa took a deep breath. “But it turned out that my family wasn’t able to deal with Louisa’s death as easily as Henry’s. Louisa’s father lost everything he had built up—a successful trading company in Hong Kong, and interests in railways back home in the States. The rest of the family kept away, cousins deserted my branch of the family, and, well, I have no family left right now, and so it seems important to me to find out. It was never investigated. I think I should discover the truth.” She stopped. Just short of saying that she had been desperate to get away from Boston as well.

  “I’m interested,” he said. “Tell me more.”

  When Sarah spoke again, she was acutely aware of the silence in the room. He had flicked the music off completely. “Last week, I found a letter from Marthe de Florian to Henry Duval among my late father’s possessions. I don’t know why my father kept it, and I don’t know what it means. But it was hidden away.”

  “Go on,” he said.

  “It was written the morning after Louisa’s death. Marthe was telling Henry to get out of Paris, to go back to England, because he knew too much. But what does that mean?”

  “Why do you think your father never told you about the letter?”

  Sarah shook her head. “That doesn’t surprise me. My father never wanted to make waves. I’m certain that he would have just wanted to leave the past in the past. He just accepted things as they were. I expect he thought it was far too hard to open the family-collapse box of snakes. He might not have even thought about it. Some people don’t take an interest in these things . . .” Her voice trailed off, but Laurent nodded as if he understood.

  “That’s true, they don’t.”

  “I want to find out what happened to her now. Because there were personal repercussions for her, for her memory, let alone the impact on the family at the time. And I just don’t know if that was fair.”

  Laurent tilted his head to one side. “You want to find more correspondence between Henry and Marthe de Florian.”

  Sarah put her empty coffee cup up on the mantelpiece. “So far as the story goes, Henry spent more time in Montmartre than at the family estate in England. I know there weren’t many top courtesans in Paris during the Belle Époque—Carolina Otero, Liane de Pougy, Marthe de Florian—it’s not surprising that Marthe and Henry had been in touch, in some ways. It sounds as if Marthe knew what happened at the party, at the very least.”

  “Have you done any more research?”

  “I’ve looked online at newspaper archives to see if I can find any references to Louisa’s death. I’ve scanned 1895 and 1896. Even though my French is not very good, I can read the basics, and the only mention of my ancestor that I found was a brief statement: Louisa died at a party here in Paris. And the address where she died.”

  “Okay. That’s good.”

  Sarah smiled. “I admit I was hoping that the party was here, right in this apartment. But it was in a building on the corner of Rue Lepic and Rue Robert Planquette.”

  “Rue Lepic is the extension of Rue Blanche.” Laurent was frowning now.

  “I know. I’ve google-mapped the building. It overlooks both streets. It’s seven stories high, so if she was on the top floor it would have been awful. Her descent . . .”

  “Yes.” Laurent ran a hand over his chin. “Okay. You need to walk up there. Have a look at it.”

  “I was planning on doing that today. If I woke up. Which I did.”

  Laurent regarded his watch.

  The front door opened. The entourage. Funnily enough, Sarah had forgotten about them, and when she heard the sounds of their singsongy voices ringing through the apartment, she frowned. She almost sensed that she had seen the real Laurent for the past few minutes. But that was silly. She had only just met him.

  “Would you like me to come with you to look at the building later on this morning?” he asked, standing up, moving toward the door that the models would come through. “Why don’t you go and have some breakfast, get yourself organized, and tell me when you want to go up.”

  “But aren’t you working?”

  “The models have a shoot with Elle magazine this afternoon. They have to be there at twelve to get ready. They are being picked up at eleven thirty.”

  The thought of having Laurent along was appealing. Sarah had not yet sorted out what she was going to do once she was standing in front of the place where Louisa had died.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Giselle appeared in the doorway. “We have had a fifteen-minute break, now,” she muttered in her sultry French accent. “And you are still in your . . . negligee.” She eyed Sarah with a particular brand of distaste.

  Sarah looked down at the floor and almost started to giggle. “Negligee’s not quite the right translation, Giselle.” She shot a look under her eyelashes at Laurent. Something akin to a grin appeared on his face.

  Sarah turned around and returned to her room. She had never had such a long conversation in her pajamas with a stranger—let alone a Frenchman—in her life.

  After a bath scented with her very own Jo Malone and an indulgent breakfast of pain au chocolat and more coffee at a local café, where Sarah had managed to read a little of the newspaper in French, she was back at the apartment, ready to go see the building where Louisa’s life had ended so abruptly over a century earlier.

  Laurent was wiping down his brushes when Sarah entered the room where he worked. All she could do was stand back and admire the portrait of Giselle that seemed almost complete now. The girl stared out of the painting, confident in who she was. It was all so very French.

  “It’s stunning,” Sarah said.

  “I don’t know.” Laurent put the last of his paintbrushes down. He seemed almost humble, looking at the painting with her. There was nothing of the show-off about him at all. “You get to a point where you just have to sign off. I’ve made some sketches of Adela and Suzette, taken some photographs. They are next.”

  “I can imagine that there comes a time where enough is enough.” Sarah moved over to the window, leaned against the chaise longue for a moment.

  There was such atmosphere in Marthe’s apartment. When Sarah viewed the room from the window, she didn’t see Loic and Cat’s modern interpretation; she saw decadence, a crowded palette, a riot of expensive gifts and porcelain and shawls draped on ostriches and gilt wallpaper resplendent. She saw chandeliers and deep golden light. And a woman, lying on the chaise longue, all dressed in silk.

  It was as if the place were pregnant with the past, as if everything that had happened here loomed somewhere unseen, just out of reach—like Louisa’s story. Gone forever, but somehow not done yet.

  “Are you ready?” Laurent pulled a jacket from where it hung over a
chair near the canvas.

  Sarah nodded. What she was going to do when she was standing in front of the place where Louisa had died was quite another question.

  Laurent waited for Sarah to step first out of the apartment, before turning left along Rue Blanche and heading toward Montmartre.

  Sarah had to admit that she enjoyed walking through old Paris with this handsome French artist in his chic black jacket and faded jeans. At the same time, she felt comfortable being quiet with him as they made their way toward that infamous old Parisian district of Montmartre.

  She was so enjoying looking at the street. They passed several restaurants, their lunchtime menus set out on blackboards on the sidewalk. When the street opened up to the large square at its end—Place Blanche—the atmosphere altered so much that Sarah had to stand still and stare.

  “The hub of the Belle Époque,” Laurent said.

  Sarah took in the iconic red windmill and the street entrance with its sign in faded old script: The Moulin Rouge. The square’s fancy Parisian light posts and elegant buildings spoke of Haussmann’s Paris, but the Moulin Rouge was something else. Nowadays, it looked seedy, a piece of Las Vegas dropped right into a square in Paris. The windmill no longer spun and it, like Marthe’s apartment, was another silent reminder of the infamous Belle Époque.

  “Would you like to go straight to the building?” Laurent asked after a few moments.

  Sarah nodded. As they crossed the square and walked up Rue Lepic toward the apartment where Louisa had spent her final evening, the architecture changed again. The buildings here were simpler in style than those in other parts of Paris, and the street felt a little cluttered. Tiny shops took up every bit of space—from hot dog stands and French tabacs to lurid bars. The street was lined with cobblestones, and graffiti had been splashed onto some of the walls.

  “It’s like stepping into a different city,” Sarah breathed. “What a contrast it must have been, coming here, for Henry, having grown up in England on some grand estate.”

  “I know,” Laurent said. He walked straight ahead with purpose, but he stopped every now and then when Sarah did, seeming quite content to wait while she let her eyes roam.

  “Imagine what it was like at the turn of the nineteenth century.”

  “Not the place for a well-brought-up girl from Boston,” Laurent said.

  “About that.” Sarah turned to Laurent. “You see, this is where it gets a bit confusing. This is where I have trouble equating a suicidal Louisa with the girl who has been described through the generations. The information that has been passed down about Louisa may be scanty, but I do know a few things. My father told me that apparently Louisa wasn’t keen on the idea of a conventional marriage. She was sympathetic to women’s liberation and her mother had little time for her. I’m just wondering if that reputation caused her to be dismissed so easily after her death by society and by the family she had married into in England. Maybe Louisa’s tragedy wasn’t given the attention it deserved because she was unconventional, a bit of a problem. Clearly, neither family wanted scandal. I can see that. Does that make sense?” She shot a glance at Laurent. He was frowning.

  “What was your father’s attitude toward her?”

  “He said it was very sad, but that she was regarded as something of a black sheep, and that there was nothing that could be done about it.” Sarah marched on. Walking seemed to be getting her mind going. She was also feeling a little more alert—her jet lag had abated since this morning.

  “I can’t strike suicide out completely,” she said. “I suppose she could have become depressed about her lot, felt trapped, and taken her life. And it seems that Marthe was trying to ensure Henry hushed things up too. There was a lot of protecting of everyone who was still alive—but what about Louisa? What about the way she has been portrayed? Did she become a scapegoat? Someone to blame for the family’s misfortunes? It can happen. It’s easy enough to get everything wrong. And I just don’t know if that’s entirely fair.”

  Laurent stopped for a moment. He leaned against a motorbike and something passed across his face. And Sarah remembered what Loic had told her about him. That something was troubling him so much that it had changed him completely. Sarah realized she was doing all the talking. She looked out at the shops around her—the cafés and restaurants of Montmartre, their shiny neon signs dull in the light of day.

  “It’s not good to cover things up. Let’s go.” Laurent brushed his hands down his jacket and moved on, his eyes focused straight ahead.

  Sarah followed him in silence up the street. A few steps later he stopped. Neither of them spoke as they looked at the building on the corner of Rue Robert Planquette. It was a beautiful, typically Parisian building—its facade stood out among the other buildings on the street. The perfect setting for a party. The last place you would expect to see a death.

  Each floor held floor-to-ceiling tall windows, with Parisian balconies decorated with low, wrought-iron railings that were intricately patterned and painted a smart black.

  Sarah couldn’t help visualizing the night of the party; light from the windows would have shone out onto the street. Her thoughts marched on, and she wondered which balcony had been the one . . . and stopped. Instead, she forced herself to focus on what the rest of the street must have looked like back then, with its secret dens and freethinking poets and artists, street hawkers, circus performers, prostitutes.

  Laurent was staring at the building too. “Is there anything more you’d like to do while we are here?”

  Sarah had thought about that. “The building would house a lot of apartments and I have no idea who owned the apartment that held the party. I very much doubt anyone living here today would have a clue about something that happened in the building over one hundred years ago. But I wanted to see it.”

  “The letters are a much safer bet.”

  “They are. I admit that I haven’t gotten beyond this stage with my plans. Which is unlike me, because I’m such a planner—apparently.” Sarah shook her head. What was she saying? What did she mean? She had only just met Laurent, and here she was, telling him her family history and giving him a rundown of her personality as well.

  Laurent sounded close. “The fact that you’re determined to find out what happened for your family’s sake, for Louisa’s sake, is admirable. But I do think it’s going to be very hard.”

  Sarah turned back toward Place Blanche. “I know.” But she had to do something. She needed a focus, something that she cared about. She had lost everything that she held dear.

  Laurent stopped at an intersection just beyond Place Blanche. “Are you confident finding your way back? I have to go to the magazine now. I need to touch base with the editor. And are you sorted for dinner tonight?”

  “I can find my way back. And yes, I’ll work things out for the evening. Thank you.”

  He smiled at her, turned, and disappeared down a street.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Ashworth, 1893

  Louisa gasped when she came down the main oak staircase at Ashworth on the evening of the ball. The banisters had been decorated with twists of ivy and jasmine. The salon was resplendent with flowers from Ashworth’s extensive hothouses and gardens, and a crowd of elegant people were already gathered in the vast room beneath the tower.

  The duke and duchess, along with Henry and a man who was clearly Henry’s younger brother, Charles, stood in line at the entrance to the salon, receiving guests.

  Louisa stopped and regarded Charles. He looked very close in age to his older brother, and if she were honest, Charles was the more striking of the two. While he shared his brother’s coloring—tawny eyes, dark eyebrows—Charles’s features were finer than Henry’s. He looked to have been cut from more delicate cloth.

  Charles was chatting with a guest, his entire face lit up with warmth. Henry looked a little bored. She stopped herself from giggling and took another step down the stairs. The general opinion in society seemed to be that Charles’s di
sposition was so different from his brother’s that it was almost impossible they were of the same blood. Henry, of course, had the reputation of a rake. He was all about fun. And Charles, according to chat that Louisa had heard among the other ladies at the palace, was seen as the more serious of the pair.

  Now, Louisa saw Henry spot her on the staircase. He excused himself and made his way over to where she stood. She watched while Charles looked up, fast as a whippet, his eyes taking her in. Even from this distance she could make out his frown. She held Charles’s gaze for a moment, tilting her chin a little. She could guess his thoughts. An American, chasing his brother—after the title, like countless other women no doubt had been? The thought revolted her. Such a label was the last thing she wanted, but in some ways, she could understand the concerns Charles might have. A knot formed in her stomach.

  “Louisa West,” Henry said, stepping up to take her arm. “You look stunning. I could drop dead on the spot.”

  “Oh, thank you,” Louisa laughed. Her new dress had been delivered from London just on time. It was pale pink silk—cut to show off her décolletage. Sheer, filmy gauze swept around the bodice and a black velvet belt was built into the waist. The skirt fell in swathes to the floor and finished with a little train. She shot a glance back at Charles. He was still looking at her. For some odd reason, that pleased her. She turned back to Henry.

  Henry was looking particularly dashing himself in his black formal suit and tie. His hair, which he often allowed to roam quite free, had been swept back, showing off his eyes to perfection.

  He guided her around the dance floor, waltzing and chatting most amiably with his acquaintances as they turned about.

  “Would you come with me for a moment?” Henry asked all of a sudden, after he had quite monopolized her for the dance.

  He was smiling at her now, and if she were given to imaginings, she could have interpreted the way he was looking at her as indulgent—interested, keen. But there was none of that fluttering on her part—nothing building up in her system that her friends chattered on about when they talked about romantic encounters. She was able to think with absolute clarity. Louisa knew there were merits in that when it came to men. In some ways, she wanted to feel clearheaded around Henry, to be able to think. At least she was not feeling the annoyance that she usually experienced.