‘I have no idea where that is.’
Léon’s sympathetic ejaculation was pleasant to hear. Emilie did not know then, but she learned later that it was part of his business routine for him to speak to unattached young women on railway stations, and that in the dim light he had been deceived into thinking her far younger than she was. But, having begun the conversation, he continued it. She told him the truth, that she had come from Brittany in search of work.
‘Can you cook?’ he asked.
‘By farm standards well,’ she replied. ‘By Paris standards doubtless excruciatingly.’
He had liked the dry note of humour in her voice.
By a stroke of extraordinary good fortune I can offer you employment,’ he said, ‘for I myself am looking for a housekeeper.’
Afterwards Emilie had realised that it said much for Léon’s personality and the confidence that he invariably evoked in his victims that she had no qualms at all about leaving the station with him and driving to his house.
It was a fortnight before she discovered that her duties as housekeeper involved a more personal relationship with her employer, and it was a long time after that before she discovered how exceptional indeed was the interest Léon took in her.
Frenchmen seldom mix business and pleasure, and as Léon’s business concerned only women and the possibilities of their attractions, he was to all intents and purposes inoculated against the wiles of feminine charm. But, as Emilie was to learn slowly and painfully in the years ahead, a man’s physical temperament is often a tortuous thing with unexpected twists and turns where one least expects them.
Léon Bleuet, whose sole interest was in catering for the amusement and pleasure of other men, was seldom pleased or amused himself. He had a strong feminine streak in him, in strange contrast to his appearance of bluff geniality which was accentuated by his being stout.
He enjoyed being bullied and ordered about by a woman, the sharp edge of her tongue was more enticing to him than honeyed words.
To him a woman was most captivating when her eyes were dark and flashing with anger, her voice raised, her whole body tense with antagonism.
Emilie could hardly believe the truth when she first discovered that Léon was attracted to her by her very brusqueness and by the aloof disdain with which she treated him almost from the moment she first entered his employment.
Her gratitude towards him at having offered her both shelter and employment on the night she arrived in Paris lasted for but a very short period – indeed only until she discovered how inefficiently his house had been kept and how uncomfortable a succession of ill-chosen servants had made him.
The place was dirty to begin with, and if there was one thing that Marie Riguad had taught her daughter almost from the moment she could toddle, it was to keep a house clean. Emilie scrubbed and polished, washed and brushed until the place shone and the atmosphere was impregnated with the fresh fragrance of soap and beeswax.
While she worked, Emilie found her respect for her employer vanishing with the dirt she threw away. He might look prosperous, she thought, but he could not be much of a businessman to let his home get into this state. Used to speaking her mind, she said what she thought when Léon Bleuet returned for his midday meal, and soon she found herself giving him what she called a ‘talking to’ every time he was at home.
Surprisingly he made no attempt to stop her, in fact he seemed to enjoy her caustic comments, to delight in her barely concealed dislike, and he sought her society more and more.
When she first arrived, he was invariably out for dinner, but soon he began to dine at home, having his meal at an early hour because he said it was essential for him to be at his place of business not later than seven o’clock.
Emilie was not particularly curious as to what he did. So long as he paid her, she was not interested as to where the money came from or how it had been earned. When he told her the truth, she accepted the information with a shrug of her shoulders. It neither astounded her nor horrified her. While there were men in the world their tastes must be catered for, she supposed, although it did nothing to enhance her already very low opinion of the male sex.
Léon’s proposals which concerned herself came into a very different category.
‘It is no use you talking to me like that,’ she said. ‘I have got no use for men. I hate them! My father was an English nobleman and a lot of good he did my mother. I have never met a man I would give a snap of my fingers for, and I have been brought up to be respectable. I don’t intend to be anything else, and if that’s what you want, then I had better be looking for other employment.’
To her astonishment Léon Bleuet asked her to marry him. She was too astonished to blurt out an instantaneous refusal, and while she hesitated, he told her something which made her hesitate still further before giving him a definite answer. What he revealed in that moment was what he was worth.
She had not thought of him until then as a rich man, but even though he was by no means wealthy by some standards, to Emilie the value he placed on the various establishments he owned and the considerable sum to his credit at the bank seemed astronomical. His income for a week exceeded the sum they had managed to live on for a year at the farm in Brittany.
Emilie hesitated and was lost. She married Léon Bleuet – married him because he could pay Mistral’s school fees. Marriage she reckoned would enable her to live in comfort until the girl was grown up and would make it possible for her to save at the same time. Léon was not a young man. When he died, she would be a widow with a considerable fortune.
But there he had lied to her. The first part of the contract was fulfilled to the letter. Mistral’s school fees were paid and Emilie lived in comfort, but when Léon Bleuet died, she discovered that the bulk of his money had been left to his nephew, a young man for whom he had a deep affection, while she had been left only their house in Paris and the property at 5 Rue de Roi.
Emilie could never decide whether the latter legacy had been a joke on the part of Léon or whether he intended it to make up for his deficiencies in other ways. He had considered it the best and most paying of the houses he owned, and it was of all his interests his favourite.
Nevertheless he knew what she thought of the place, he knew, too, that she had never crossed the threshold nor taken the slightest interest in it save from the point of view of how much it contributed to their income. To leave it to her, to make it his only provision for her after five years of married life, was to all intents and purposes an insult.
Emilie did not at first realise exactly what a difference Léon Bleuet’s death was to make to her. When she visited his lawyer three days after the funeral she was already aware of the contents of Léon’s will so that she was steeled to endure a certain loss of comfort. After the lawyer had spoken to her of the value of the house in which they had lived, pointing out that, as it was in an unfashionable part of Paris, it would be difficult to effect an advantageous sale, she had spoken of 5 Rue de Roi.
‘I shall sell it,’ she said. ‘Have you any idea what it will fetch?’
The lawyer put his glasses on his nose and shuffled amongst the papers on his desk.
‘I anticipated that would be your decision, Madame, and I have therefore made a few tentative enquiries. I think you would do well to obtain ten thousand francs for this property, as a going concern, of course.’
‘Ten thousand francs!’ Emilie’s voice rose almost to a scream. ‘Is that all?’
‘It is, and if I may say so, Madame, quite a reasonable price. I am informed by people who know about such things that the place in the last few years was not doing so well as previously.’
Monsieur Bleuet did not give it so much personal attention as he had done in the past. The clientele, which was always of a particularly select class, has deteriorated a little, maybe the fashion has changed. These places rise and fall, you know, and no one knows quite what makes a rendezvous which has proved extremely popular suddenly become démod�
�.’
‘Ten thousand francs!’ Emilie muttered. ‘How am I to live on it? If that is all I am to have – ’
Mistral was eleven. She saw another seven years of waiting ahead until she could put her plan into operation, the plan which was always in her thoughts by day and of which she dreamed at night. Seven years – seven vital years in which Mistral must have special instruction, special grooming, special lessons so that she could be well versed in the part she had to play!
Money, money, money! She had to have money, it was essential, but where and how could she obtain it?
Emilie’s fingers drummed for a moment on the lawyer’s desk, then suddenly her head went up and her lips tightened.
‘I shall not sell the property,’ she said sharply.
‘Madame! But what will you do with it?’ the lawyer expostulated.
‘I shall run it myself,’ Emilie replied.
She was never to forget the moment where she crossed the threshold of the big stone house standing in a discreet side street conveniently near the fashionable quarter of the city. It impressed Emilie as she had not expected to be impressed. The grey walls picked out in gilt were in good taste, the staircase with its soft carpet, the mirrors which reflected and reflected the well-proportioned salon were restrained and not without charm.
There was nothing wrong with the house itself, it was the personnel who, Emilie knew immediately with are unwavering instinct, were at fault.
The Madame in charge, a silly, overdressed middle aged woman with frizzed hair and are irritating giggle, was far more embarrassed by Emilie than she was by her.
The girls, too, were not as well dressed as they might have been, and their hair was untidy, their make-up badly applied. There was a laxness and a lack of discipline about their behaviour. Emilie knew that she could put her finger on the weak spots.
She applied herself to turning out, cleaning and polishing 5 Rue de Roi as she had applied herself to Léon’s own home five years earlier. Within a month of her taking the reins of management into her own hands the receipts were doubled, in six months they were trebled, and in a year the house was spoken of as the smartest and most expensive place of entertainment in the whole of Paris.
The results gratified Emilie in two ways. First in knowing that her efficiency was conducive to making her into a wealthy woman in her own right, and secondly in lowering still further her opinion of men.
In the past she had hated those she had known, now she despised them all for being fools, hoodwinked, deceived and besotted by the shrewdness of women. Emily gained a great knowledge of men during the next seven years, and the value of that knowledge was proved by the very substantial sum she obtained when she sold 5 Rue de Roi.
As she thought of the place, a succession of men passed before her eyes – Léon Bleuet, with his perverted pleasure in her hatred of him, the men with whom she had to pretend to be friendly because they were good clients of the house, old men, young men, tall men, short men, fat men, thin men, men of all nationalities, men with only one object, only one interest at the moment when Emilie met them.
‘You are a real friend, Madame!’ they would say when Emilie did them some particular service.
But while she smiled her thanks, they had no idea of the loathing with which she regarded them, of the scorn with which she took their money. Men, always men, and little to choose between those who were rich and ready to purchase an hour’s forgetfulness from the cares and troubles of their everyday world and hangers on like Henry Dulton who was ready to extort every possible penny by exploiting the weaknesses of the human race.
Henry Dulton! Emilie’s thoughts brought her in a circle back to where she had started. It was then, as she looked out of the window, staring at the blue sea with unseeing eyes, that she heard a knock on the door. She had sent Mistral and Jeanne out together with instructions not to return until four thirty, and so, as she was alone, she must cross to the door and open it herself, open it to the ill fortune which she knew was awaiting her outside.
Henry Dulton came into the room. He set his hat down on a chair and looked at Emilie in his usual sidelong manner, his eyes half veiled by their flickering, colourless lashes.
‘You wish to see me, Monsieur?’
Emilie’s voice was cool and impersonal. Henry Dulton looked to see if the door was shut behind him and his lips twisted themselves into the travesty of a smile.
‘Your servant, Madame Bleuet.’
‘I think you have made a mistake. I thought that was what had happened when I received your card. I am not Madame Bleuet and I have no knowledge of having met you before.’
Henry Dulton’s smile was a little more pronounced. He advanced further into the room and, taking a silk handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his moustache.
‘I was not born yesterday, Madame.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
The words were icy. Henry Dulton put away his handkerchief, glanced round the room and seated himself in the most comfortable chair.
‘Let us dispense with the preliminaries, Madame,’ he said. ‘I recognised you. It was impossible for me not to do so after all the years we have known each other. I know who you are and you know that I know it, therefore let us be frank with one another and talk business.’
Emilie drew a deep breath. She was defeated by the man’s very assurance, but she made one last desperate stand.
‘You have made a mistake, Monsieur,’ she said, ‘and I must ask you to leave the room. I am not Madame Bleuet and I defy you to prove it.’
‘That would not be difficult,’ Henry Dulton said quietly, looking not at Emilie but at a diamond ring he wore on his little finger. ‘I have but to tell some of the people who are making so many enquiries regarding the identity of Madame Secret and her beautiful niece, Mademoiselle Fântóme, and if their interest is sufficiently aroused, my assertion can always be verified by the Police.’
‘By the Police!’ Emilie echoed in an uncertain manner.
‘Why not, Madame, if you have nothing to hide?’ Henry Dulton asked. ‘And I assure you that the curiosity regarding you in Monte Carlo is so intense that there are quite a number of people who would be prepared to pay for the information.’
Emilie dropped her pretence.
‘How much do you want?’ she asked, and her voice was harsh.
Henry Dulton stroked his chin.
‘Now we are talking sense,’ he said. ‘I thought it would not be long before we became friendly – as we always have been, Madame. But first will you permit me to congratulate you on the admirable way in which you have taken Monte Carlo by storm? It is a masterpiece, a work of art for which any artiste would be proud to take credit.’
‘I asked you how much,’ Emilie said.
‘And I will answer you,’ Henry Dulton said. ‘One hundred thousand francs.’
‘A hundred thousand! You must be insane.’
‘On the contrary, Madame, extremely sane and quite sure of receiving the money.’
‘And where do you think I can get such a sum?’ Emilie asked.
‘I know from where you have already got it,’ Henry Dulton replied. ‘You see, dear Madame Bleuet, the new proprietor of 5 Rue de Roi is a friend of mine.’
Emilie sat down suddenly in the chair opposite him.
‘But why do you imagine that I would give you all that money?’
‘You would give it to me to keep silent,’ Henry Dulton said. ‘I have no idea what your scheme is, Madame, I have not yet guessed the whole secret of Madame Secret, but whatever it is, it is of importance to you, of great importance, and unless this scheme, whatever it may be, is to fail, it is essential that I do not speak of what I know.’
Emilie seemed to slump suddenly in her chair. The regal bearing which had been the admiration of many women in Monte Carlo vanished and instead she looked an old and tired woman. But her eyes were dark with anger and hatred.
‘It is too much,’ she said. ‘It is impossible.’
&nb
sp; Henry Dulton shrugged his shoulders.
Then I shall speak of what I know,’ he said. ‘There are several people already who have approached me with a view to finding out who you are and of course, what is of more moment, who is Mademoiselle Fântóme.’
‘You cannot tell them that,’ Emilie said. ‘You have no idea who she is.’
‘Does it matter?’ Henry Dulton asked. ‘Any pretty girl in the company of the notorious Madame Bleuet requires but one name. There were Lulu, Fifi, Ninon and Desirée. They had no other name! Did it matter? Who cared?’
Emilie jumped to her feet.
‘Do you dare to speak of my niece in the same breath as those low creatures?’
‘So she really is your niece,’ Henry Dulton said. ‘I am surprised. I had no idea you had one.’
‘Will you be quiet, you sewer rat, you parasite living on the fat of other people’s bodies?’
Emilie’s voice shook with emotion and her face was white with rage. But Henry Dulton only smiled his twisted smile and remarked,
‘Hard words make little impression on me, Madame. It is only money that counts, only money.’
‘Yes, my money, money I have worked for, money I have saved for, if it comes to that, and now you would take it from me, beggar me at the moment of my triumph.’
‘I have left you some,’ Henry Dulton replied softly.
‘That is kind of you,’ Emilie said sarcastically.
Then, even as she spoke, his eyelashes flickered and she knew as surely as if he had said it aloud that, even if she paid him this time, he would come for more and yet more. He would rob her of everything she possessed, break her in fact, and even then she could not be certain that he would keep his word and not reveal what he knew. He was utterly untrustworthy, as treacherous as a shifting sand, as dangerous as an adder.
She raised her hands for a moment to her temples, pressing hard in an effort to make her brain think clearly, to find a solution to this almost unsolvable problem.
An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition Page 67