by Rhys Bowen
I told him I’d be bringing Liam over later, then went to buy food for my evening meal. Meat was horribly expensive so I settled on a piece of fish and some more cheese. I gazed with awe at the selection of cold meats, cheeses, and pátés. Since I didn’t know the names of any of them I could only point, feeling like an idiot. Then up the stairs again for a good breakfast. The fact that there was still no telegram, no communication at all from Sid and Gus only reinforced my fear that something terrible had happened to them. Even someone lying in a hospital bed can arrange to have a telegram sent. This had to be more than a simple accident or missed train or even a sudden sickness. Were they prisoners or no longer alive?
It was almost a physical pain to let this thought enter my head. Sid and Gus had become the sisters I never had. I couldn’t bear it if anything had happened to them. But there was also fear for myself. What was I supposed to do alone in a strange city? Would Daniel rather that I returned to New York or that I stayed on here alone? Then there was the question of money. I had a little to keep me going, but not enough to pay rent for months to come. Ah, well, I thought with a grim smile. I could always become an artist’s model. It appeared my face and coloring might be in demand. This ridiculous notion cheered me up a little. I fed Liam some mashed carrots, dressed him for the day, left his dirty diapers soaking in a pale of borax, then carried him over to Madeleine. She did indeed seem pleased to see me and I lingered longer than I really wanted to, chatting to her, answering her questions about New York and my life there. She was intrigued to know that my husband was a policeman.
“But that is so dangerous, no?” she asked. “I would be in fear every time he left me. You must be a brave woman.”
“No,” I said. “I am also in fear, but it is his job. Right now I worry about him all the time. I hate to be so far away from him.”
“Then why did you abandon him and come here?”
“I had to leave the city because bad men were making threats on the life of me and my child. They blew up our house and killed my sweet servant girl.”
“Mon dieu, you poor little one,” she said. “How tragic for you to be alone like this. You and I will be friends, no?”
And she held out her hand to me. I took it, feeling the warmth of that chubby, work-worn hand in mind. “Thank you,” I said and blinked back tears.
Liam was already delighted to return to his Noah’s ark so I tiptoed away and off I went. My mention of Aggie had me thinking of her again. My present worries had pushed her loss from my mind, but now I pictured her in stark contrast to the round and healthy-looking Madeleine. Poor little Aggie who never had a chance to know joy in her life. And the guilt flooded over me again.
I thought I caught a glimpse of the group of young artists sitting in the Nouvelle Athènes. I wondered when they got any painting done. I asked the man in the ticket booth at the Métro station for directions to the Jardin du Luxembourg. He told me to change to Line 1 as I had done the day before, to get out at Châtelet station, cross the Seine, traverse the Île de la Cité, cross the second bridge until I came to the Boulevard St. Michel. If I followed that I should come to the Jardin. It seemed like an awfully long way. I just hoped I located this rich American called Stein quickly and that she hadn’t also decided to vanish. I tried to remember whether Sid or Gus had mentioned her in any of their letters. An American art collector and a female one at that was just the kind of person whose acquaintance they would have sought, surely?
I came out of the Métro at the Châtelet station to find it was already raining. I opened my brolly and headed for the bridge across the Seine. Holding it tilted down against the wind and rain I almost didn’t notice the magnificent fortress on the other side of the bridge and had to stop—windswept and rain blown, midway over the Seine—to admire it. There were mutterings of annoyance while the crowd had to part around me but I didn’t care. As I continued I passed between imposing yellow stone buildings, one with an arched gateway and sentry boxes beside it, the other with columns and a gilded portico. I took them for palaces until I read that the one with the arch was the Prefecture of Police. This then was where Inspector Henri said he could be found. And the one opposite was the Palais de Justice. I was glad I wasn’t a criminal. The French clearly took their justice seriously.
I had forgotten that this was an island, or not quite understood the Métro man’s directions because I was surprised to come to another bridge over another branch of the river. There were houseboats lining the bank, children playing in the rain on one deck, a line of laundry hanging limp and sorrowful on another. Bateau-Lavoir, “laundry boats,” I said to myself remembering the name of the building where the artists lived in Montmartre. Then I was on the Left Bank and the feel of the city became quite different from the elegance of the Right Bank I had encountered the day before. This area was full of students, lively young men gesticulating as they walked and talked, smoking little brown cigarettes, with books tucked into their jackets to keep them from getting wet. And on kiosks and walls there were placards advertising cabarets, or with cartoons containing political messages on them. Then there was one that had Justice for Dreyfus written across it in bold black letters while over it someone had painted in bright red paint All Jews Out of Paris. I remembered the young artists talking about the anti-Drefusards and saw that it was indeed a topic that was dividing the city. I passed several more such posters as I went down the Boulevard St. Michel, most of them with a message of hate painted over them. I wondered how many people could possibly agree with this foul sentiment. Enough to deface every placard, I thought.
I stopped to ask about the Rue de Fleurus and learned it was on the other side of the park. On a sunny day I would have welcomed a stroll across such delightful gardens but walking beneath chestnut trees that dripped rain onto me was not quite as desirable. The park was deserted apart from a couple that huddled together under his rain cape and a nursemaid who was stoicly determined to give her young charge his daily fresh air, no matter what the weather was like. There were miniature waves on the boating lake. The carousel stood idle. I was feeling thoroughly damp and bad tempered by the time I finally reached the other side of the gardens and located the Rue de Fleurus.
This was also deserted. I had hoped to find a neighbor and ask where Madame Stein might live, but nobody was venturing out. It was another typical Parisian street of uniform stone buildings and ironwork balconies, as if one giant hand had designed a whole city in one fell swoop. Of course I found out later that this was true. In the mid-nineteenth century the emperor Napoleon III had decided to tear down the unsanitary and crowded medieval city and asked Baron Haussmann to modernize it. Haussmann created the wide, treelined boulevards and uniform style of buildings that make the city so unique and attractive.
Not knowing what to do next I started peering at the plates beside front doors, hoping to find one of them that said Stein. Luckily she did not live too far from the park and I found her quite soon. I rang her doorbell then walked up to her apartment on the second floor. As I tapped on the door a strong female voice yelled, “Come in!”
I opened the door and stepped into a narrow hallway.
“If it’s the butcher take the meat through to the kitchen,” the voice went on in English. “And it better be a nice plump poussin this time, not some scrawny old hen that has died of old age.”
The voice came closer and a big-boned woman with a towel around her head came out into the hall. She stopped in surprise when she saw me.
“You’re not the butcher,” she said.
“No, I’m not.”
“Then what the deuce are you doing in my front hall?”
“My name is Sullivan and I came to see you. I’ve just arrived from New York and…”
“Came to see me? My dear girl, you should know that I never see anybody before luncheon. I’ve only just woken up. It’s simply not civilized.” She turned back to where the hall disappeared into darkness. “Leo!” she yelled. “Make sure you don’t come
out in your underwear. There’s a young lady standing in our foyer.” Then she turned back to me. “If you want to pay a call on me, then come to one of my salons like everybody else. You’ll usually find people here most evenings although Saturday night is when we have our big weekly shindig. A painter, are you? Or a buyer? Because I should warn you that you won’t get me to part with any of my paintings.”
It was as hard to stop her as a train thundering down the track at full speed. “Mrs. Stein,” I began.
She held up her hand. “Hold it right there. It’s Miss Stein or Gertrude if you like. I’m not big on formality. I’m not married either. Never intend to be.”
“But you spoke to someone called Leo,” I stammered, wondering if I had committed a faux pas and Leo was perhaps her lover.
“My brother. We’re sharing the place at the moment, and sharing our passion for collecting art too. I suppose you’d better come in. We can’t stand talking here.”
She led me through to a light and airy drawing room. It was elegantly but sparsely furnished. I couldn’t tell what the wallpaper looked like because every inch of the walls was covered in paintings—some of them quite lovely—portraits of young women with flowing hair, ballerinas on stage, picnics in a park, and some quite incomprehensible—wild daubs of bright color with cats hanging in midair and women with two faces. I wrenched my gaze away as she said, “Well, sit down then. What was it you wanted?”
I perched on the edge of a brocade sofa. “I wondered if you had come across two friends of mine. American women—Miss Walcott and Miss Goldfarb.”
“Yes, I met them when they first got here,” she said brusquely. “Why, have they sent you with the olive branch? Are you supposed to mediate a peace between us?”
“A peace between you? Had you quarreled?”
“Let’s just say there was a parting of the ways. They came to one of my Saturday night salons. I rather liked Goldfarb—got a good brain, one could tell. Didn’t think so much of the other one. A bit wishy-washy. She brought a couple of her paintings to show me. I thought she might have a smidgeon of talent and told her so, but she needed to take some lessons in the handling of color. Hadn’t got a clue about mixing shades. I said I could recommend someone to tutor her. I guess she didn’t care for that too much because the next time I met them she said she had been promised an introduction to Bryce. I pointed out that if she went to Bryce she would no longer be welcome at my place. ‘You have to choose carefully,’ I said. She replied that she didn’t wish to offend me but was hopeful he would include her in his upcoming exhibition.”
Miss Stein paused, leaning forward toward me in her chair as she continued rubbing her hair inside the towel. “Personally I didn’t think she had much of a chance with him. ‘He’s stuck in the depths of Impressionism,’ I said, ‘and he thinks women only belong in the kitchen or the bedroom.’ Besides, what about Miss Goldfarb? We know what his opinion was about Jews. Exactly why I broke off all contact with him. Still, he got his just desserts in the end, didn’t he, although I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, I suppose.”
“You know about Reynold Bryce’s death?” I asked cautiously.
“Of course. It was in the International Herald this morning. Stabbed by a hotheaded young Jew, so they surmise.”
“They know who killed him?”
“A young Jewish man was seen running away down the street about the time he was killed,” she said. “I’m not surprised, frankly, after his outspoken tirades against Jews. I’d have willingly done it myself, odious man. He liked to think of himself as the doyen of American artists here, but all he wanted really were sycophants around him, people who painted the way he did, no innovators, nobody with creative genius.”
I was trying to process what I had just learned. If a young, zealous Jew killed Reynold Bryce then his death might have nothing at all to do with Sid and Gus’s disappearance.
“So do you remember when was the last time you saw my friends?”
She stared out of the window. “Some time ago. Not recently, that’s for sure. You have to understand that I see a lot of people.”
“Not recently,” I repeated.
“Why are you so keen to know when I saw your friends?” she demanded.
“Because they’ve disappeared. I don’t know where they’ve gone and I’m worried about them.”
“Perhaps they got tired of Paris and went to seek the sun on the Mediterranean. Lots of people do.”
“No,” I shook my head firmly. “They haven’t gone away, not deliberately anyway. All their things are still in their apartment. And they invited me to stay with them. They knew I was coming.”
“Well, that’s a rum do.” She rubbed her head vigorously with the towel. “What do you suppose might have happened to them?”
“I don’t know, that’s the problem,” I said. “I don’t know where to start. I know they were in contact with Reynold Bryce because there was a postcard from him posted just a day or two before they vanished.”
“So where are you staying?”
“At their apartment at the moment,” I said, “although the landlady keeps suggesting that I move on. I suspect she’d like to relet their room, although I don’t think she can throw me out until the end of the month.”
“Well I suppose we could always put you up here, if it came to that,” she said.
“That’s very kind, but no thank you,” I replied. “I have a small baby, for one thing. And I want to stay on at my friends’ place just in case some mail or any kind of message comes that might give me a clue as to where they’ve gone.”
“Quite right.” She nodded. “So there’s no hint at all as to what might have happened to them?”
“None at all. It’s as if they vanished in the middle of a normal day. There was food still on the table, Miss Goldfarb’s cigarette holder, Miss Walcott’s shawl. I was really worried when I heard that Reynold Bryce had been murdered, because I thought that perhaps…” I paused, and then said, “But if the killer was a young Jewish man, then surely a fellow Jew would not have been one of his targets.”
“I wouldn’t have thought so. Unless he was deranged. Some of these young artists do go off their rockers, you know. Or aren’t quite stable to begin with and then they drink enough absinthe and go off the deep end. Have you spoken with any of their friends?”
“I don’t know who their friends are. I know that Augusta Walcott has a cousin here. He arranged the introduction to Mr. Bryce.”
“Oh, yes. Willie Walcott. Another of Bryce’s golden boys, following him around and hanging on his every word. Of course young Willie is a very pretty boy, in fact I shouldn’t be at all surprised if…” She broke off, but then added, “Well, none of that matters now.”
“Do you have any idea where I’d find Willie Walcott?”
“He lives somewhere in Montparnasse,” she said. “Most of the American painters favor that area over Montmartre. Americans like their creature comforts, don’t they? And Montmartre does tend to be a trifle primitive—and wild.”
“Do the Americans have a gathering place where he might be found?”
“I’d try the Closerie des Lilas on the Boulevard Montparnasse,” she said. “Not too far from here, although I doubt anyone would be there at this hour. Far too early for people to want to socialize.”
I had to smile. “I’m sorry I disturbed you,” I said. “I have a young child and I’m used to rising at dawn these days. I’d forgotten that life is more leisurely for other people.”
“Do you have a husband somewhere or have you dumped him?” she demanded frankly.
“He’s back in New York. He’s a policeman and there was a spot of trouble so he wanted me safely far away from the city.”
“I see.” She frowned. “You don’t think your spot of trouble could have anything to do with your friends’ disappearance?”
This had never occurred to me before and I felt myself going cold all over. Could the Italian gang have such a long reach that t
hey were able to harm my friends this far away? Were they at this minute enjoying watching my feeble attempts to find Sid and Gus before they swooped to attack me? In which case—my heart did a terrifying lurch—Liam wasn’t safe with the baker’s wife.
I stood up. “I have to go,” I said. “I’m sorry to have troubled you.”
“Not at all. I quite enjoy a little drama. Write down your name and address, and I’ll let you know if I hear anything. You’re welcome to come on Saturday night and ask people yourself. You never know. It’s a small community here. We enjoy minding each other’s business.”
I wrote on the back of my American calling-card and handed it to her.
“We may see you on Saturday then,” she said.
“I’m not sure about that. I can’t leave my son in the evening.”
“Bring him with you. We’ll find a closet to put him in.” Then she laughed at my shocked face. “Other parents have done it before now. In my experience, which isn’t great, I confess, babies can survive almost anywhere.”
“Unfortunately mine has already learned to crawl and is turning into an escape artist,” I said. “But thank you all the same. I’ll see when it comes to Saturday.”
She held out her hand to me and pumped mine heartily. “Best of luck to you. I’m sure it will all turn out all right. Things usually do.”
Not for Reynold Bryce, I thought as I walked down the stairs.
Eighteen
I was in the right part of the city to go immediately to seek out Willie Walcott, but Miss Stein had created a new fear for me—that Sid and Gus’s disappearance might have something to do with my “spot of trouble” in New York. Surely an Italian gang couldn’t have found out about my trip to Paris and sent someone to harm my friends? And even if they’d heard that I was to be sent to Paris, how could they have discovered Sid and Gus’s address? Then I realized that an Italian gang in New York might well have affiliates back in Europe. If they were resourceful and powerful enough they might have infiltrated the New York police, or bribed someone there to report on the doings of Captain Sullivan and his family. Someone could have seen the cable, addressed to my friends. It was entirely possible that they now knew where I was and were watching me, waiting to strike.