Paris Requiem

by Lisa Appignanesi

  ‘What was his name?’ Raf’s voice was a hiss. James threw him a stern look.

  Louise shook her head. She looked frightened. ‘I … I don’t remember.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ James said. ‘He wanted to marry Rachel?’

  ‘Yes. He wanted to look after her, I think. He was … well … older. I only met him once or twice. He didn’t speak much. He had big features and his skin was all pockmarked. Anyhow Rachel didn’t want to get married. She refused him.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Nothing really. Well, they moved soon after that. We didn’t see each other so much.’

  ‘But this man had come back into her life?’

  ‘Oh no, Monsieur,’ she threw Raf a sidelong glance. ‘No, no. Not like that. She’d had a letter from him. That’s all. Or maybe he’d come once to the theatre. I had the impression she wasn’t altogether pleased to see him. She gave me a ticket, too, you know. To come and see her. And then this happened … they put me in here.’ A look of disgust covered her face. She crumpled the smock material into a tight ball.

  ‘But you’ll be cured, soon.’ James offered softly.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Her eyes filled with tears again. ‘Poor Rachel. She can’t be cured. There is no justice in the world, is there, Messieurs!’

  James waited for a moment. ‘When did Rachel change her name?’

  Louise looked beyond them, as if a window had been cut into the bare wall. ‘I’m not sure exactly. I think someone, a friend, told her a different name would sound better on the stage. When we met up again, after they’d moved. It was a good year later, maybe more. Anyhow, she’d already invented it then. Olympe … it comes from a picture someone said she looked like.’ The girl paused. ‘Isak … that was the man’s name. I remember now.’

  She suddenly looked like a girl of no more than sixteen, all triumph and grief and wide-eyed perplexity bundled up together in a slight form.

  ‘Isak. You don’t remember a second name?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t think I knew it.’

  ‘But Olympe’s father would know.’ Raf muttered. He was already reaching for his hat.

  ‘Oh yes. Of course. It was an offer of marriage,’ Louise said gravely.

  They walked her back to her bed. The box lay on it spreadeagled, a lone pastry left in its depths like a superstitious offering.

  After the rank closeness of the infirmary, the sky had a wondrous height. Without needing to consult, they strolled, breathing in the welcome air, each of them reflecting separately on what they had learned. When they passed a patisserie, Raf wanted to go in to have more cakes delivered to Louise. James dissuaded him. It seemed more sensible to wait until she got home, when at least she could share them with dear ones, rather than provoking the jealous hostility of the other inmates. For once, Raf acceded. He was suddenly in a hurry.

  ‘We must go and see Arnhem.’

  ‘Not now, Raf. It’ll wait.’

  ‘What do you mean, it’ll wait. This Isak, if he’s had anything to do with Olympe’s death, won’t wait.’

  ‘We don’t know that Arnhem will have any inkling of where to find him.’

  ‘More than we have.’

  James hesitated. ‘It’s the Sabbath.’

  ‘Olympe never …’

  ‘But her father may. And we must go and see Ellie. You didn’t last night. Where were you anyway?’

  Raf waved his arm vaguely and then more purposefully to hail a passing cab. ‘I’m a working man, you know. I had some matters to attend to. Look, we’ll go via Arnhem’s. I’ll just pop up for a moment, ask him, and then we’ll carry on.’ He instructed the driver before James could stop him.

  James lowered his voice. ‘I want to go through some things with you – having read all the material you left for me yesterday.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘If I’m following your thinking correctly, you’re definitely ruling out suicide and imagining that Olympe was murdered in one of four ways.’

  ‘Four? Did I enumerate them?’

  ‘No, but I did.’ James counted the possibilities on his fingers. ‘One. There’s a killer on the loose who targets solitary women. Women he probably thinks are prostitutes. Two. This killer is somehow linked to or is a member of the morality police. Three, the killer not only targets women alone – but Jewish women alone. Therefore the killings aren’t random. The man knows who they are, knows their origins. He’s a bigot, either with a direct gripe or a political one, if the two are separable. Four. There is no link whatsoever between any of the deaths cited in the papers and Olympe’s. Any or each of them was a separate unrelated affair.’

  Raf was staring at him with a bemused expression.

  James carried on. ‘And now we have five: Olympe’s death may be the result of a crime of passion, committed by a rejected suitor. So which of these possibilities do we pursue first?’

  ‘Your implacable logic does me in, Jim. We pursue all the possibilities, of course.’ His voice rose. ‘Olympe isn’t a case, for me. Some cipher subject to law 400 or 2002. She’s Olympe. Wonderful, irreplaceable Olympe. You must understand that. You’ve been there, after all. In your own way.’

  James didn’t answer immediately. He stared out the window. They were driving along the street they had walked just two nights ago. In the sunlight, it looked tawdrier, but less frightening. The bars had a fatigue about them, their energies spent in the night. Rubbish lay scattered in the unkempt streets. Children kicked bits of it in desultory games. A woman with a plain, unpainted face and broad hips smacked a little boy on the bottom. He burst into a howl.

  James sighed. ‘I’m sorry if my logic offends you, Raf. But if we’re going to get anywhere, be any more useful than Durand – whom you’ve probably been too hard on – I suggest we split up the territory. Rationalise our efforts. Touquet is evidently an expert on the vice police. Get him to sniff around there. See if any of them knew Olympe, for whatever reason. And so on. You – well, judging from your Dreyfus articles, you must have contacts aplenty amongst the patriotic and anti-Semitic leagues …’

  Raf nodded.

  ‘Hang out with them a bit. See if anything smells like a lead. You remember you said there were demos, rioting on the day that deputy was acquitted. That was a Thursday, wasn’t it – the last time Olympe was seen. Maybe, just maybe, she got caught up in something unpleasant.’

  Raf shivered. ‘All right. What about you?’

  ‘Well, I guess that leaves me to probe Olympe’s past and present.’ He put out a hand to stay Raf’s protests. ‘In a way, it makes more sense, Raf. I’m not involved. Also my French is better in one to one’s.’

  ‘I’ll work with you.’ Raf’s flare of jealousy was unguarded.

  ‘Fine. The first thing you can do is take me to her rooms. I need to get a sense of her.’

  Arnhem wasn’t in. After leaving a note, they carried on towards the Boulevard Malesherbes. James wondered at his own surge of relief as their vehicle moved into more decorous streets. Here was the Paris of dream and history, with its spacious boulevards, its elegant women and dapper men, its majestic buildings a stage set for the theatre of everyday life. This was the Paris the newspapers lauded in their evocation of the belle époque. But there was nothing beautiful about the underbelly of the city. It festered in poverty and gave off a distinct aroma of menace.

  He let his eyes play over the fresh green of the plane trees, their dappled bark, and for a moment he was overcome by a nostalgia for the gentle roll of the Massachusetts countryside with its dense colour, the simplicity of the pursuits it fostered. Yet he had to admit to himself that he had woken this morning with a sense of new energy, a kind of lucidity which had too often eluded him in these last years.

  A woman stepped gracefully from a stationary carriage. Long, gloved fingers rose to adjust a hat. Madame de Landois came into his mind. He must arrange to see her soon. There were things she would be able to tell him about Olympe that would almost certainl
y have eluded his brother-in-love.

  For once the curtains were wide open in Ellie’s apartment. So too were the doors to the terrace. Motes of dust paraded in the sunlight as if relieved to be allowed to fly. Harriet Knowles ushered them in with her direct gaze. ‘Elinor will be so pleased. You’ll join us for lunch, of course.’

  James nodded, aware that Raf might demur.

  ‘I’ll alert Violette. You’ll find Elinor on the terrace.’ She met Raf’s eyes for a moment, then looking away with the swiftness of veiled disapproval, she strode towards the kitchen.

  ‘Is that my dear elder brother I hear?’ Ellie’s melodious voice reached them as they made their way through the room.

  ‘You do.’

  ‘And my oh so remiss younger one. Well, Raf, it has been an age. You’d think we were divided by an ocean rather than a corridor.’ She fixed Raf with her dark eyes. James could feel him wriggling like a butterfly about to be pinned in a collector’s cabinet.

  ‘I’ve been busy, Ellie. Preoccupied.’ He patted her on the shoulder.

  Poised in her wheelchair, so that she could take in the trees and the placid activity of the street, Ellie looked for all the world as if she were at the seaside. She was wearing a fresh blue-striped dress with a row of tiny buttons at the bodice. Beneath the straw hat, which protected her from the terrace sunshine, her hair was newly coiffed. Her fine aquiline nose trembled a little in response to Raf’s comment.

  Sensing danger, James interceded. ‘You’re feeling better, Ellie. I’m so pleased.’

  ‘Yes, Jimmy, as you can see.’ She gestured grandly towards the cumbrous mass of the chair. ‘I’m about, if not altogether up. Harriet has been a veritable ministering angel. She’s cheered me no end.’

  The woman had come up silently beside them. Her face was grave.

  ‘But it isn’t time for cheer, is it, Raf?’ Ellie’s tone grew soft. ‘I’m so sorry. So very sorry. Olympe was such a rare being. I can’t bring myself to accept it.’ Tears moistened her eyes. She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve. ‘She shouldn’t have done it. If anyone … it should have been me.’

  ‘Stop it, Ellie.’ Raf was brusque. He turned away abruptly.

  James saw Harriet cast a bitter look at his back.

  ‘There’s no crime in suicide, whatever the clerics say.’ Ellie’s voice rang a challenge after him, ‘I’ve thought about it a great deal. After all, we’re born without being consulted. Why consult at the other end?’

  ‘Hush, Ellie.’

  ‘Help me in, Harriet. I can’t get used to manoeuvering this blasted contraption.’ She crushed the chair’s weight against a rail as she tried to turn it round, then waved her hand in irritation.

  ‘We should have the men move some of the furniture back against the walls. It would give you more space.’ Harriet soothed.

  ‘That’s a splendid idea.’ James was already through the door, repositioning one armchair, then a second, creating an aisle. The encased bird met his eye. ‘What if we clear the surface of this table, as well, Ellie?’

  She wasn’t listening. She was calling after Raf who had preceded them. There was a glimmer of fear on her face. The front door slammed.

  James had the impression he had walked in on a relationship he no longer understood. What was it that had set his younger siblings at odds? He caught Harriet’s gaze. She seemed to be signalling something he couldn’t make out.

  He remembered the present he had left on the hall table and rushed to fetch it. ‘A little token, Ellie. I thought you might like it.’

  Her eyes fell on him from a distance of miles. ‘You are a dear one, Jim.’ Her fingers pulled ineptly at string until at last the box he had purchased for her in the Arcades lay revealed. ‘Oh it’s lovely. Look, Harriet. All these secret drawers. What shall I hide away in them?’

  They watched her, like parents wary of an unpredictable child.

  As suddenly as he had left, Raf reappeared. He held a bottle of wine in one hand, a package in the other. ‘And here’s something else, sister mine. For our days out in the Bois de Boulogne.’

  Ellie looked up at him. ‘Oh, I hope we will go, Raf. I do hope so.’ Her voice fluttered, hiding a tremor.

  ‘We will. Never fear.’ Raf was making a great show of uncorking the bottle. ‘And meanwhile, a little of this red in our veins won’t do any harm. What do you say, Harriet?’

  Harriet smiled for the first time, revealing a row of strong teeth. ‘I say we can go in to lunch.’

  Elinor was pulling on the gloves. ‘Perfect. So clever of you to get the right size.’

  ‘Thank Jim, Ellie. He seems to have become an expert.’

  James saw Ellie’s face tighten, but she was gracious. ‘Yes, perfect. Thank you, Jim. All I need now is a parasol. And a new pair of legs.’ Her laugh teetered, reminiscent of a sob.

  The dining room gave out onto the gloom of a narrow courtyard. Burgundy curtains arched the windows. A stiff white cloth covered the mahogany of an over-large rectangular table set with gold-rimmed china. On an expanse of sideboard, which reminded James of the Boston family home, Violette had spread an assortment of cold meats, cheeses, breads and condiments. A small bowl of pinks and lily-of-the-valley sat like a breath of fresh hope in the midst of the dark stolidity. James sniffed Harriet’s hand in their choice.

  He wondered at the change the woman had wrought in Ellie in so short a span and he smiled at her in gratitude. He would have to take her aside and speak to her about his sister’s condition. She would, he was certain, be full of the good sense his siblings seemed to have left behind like forgotten tools, so that the construction of their daily lives had gone seriously awry. That reminded him that he must write to his mother as soon as he got back to the hotel.

  Violette served them, James first, then Raf, then Ellie, and finally Harriet, as if she had intuited her place in an unspoken hierarchy. James tried to remember what he knew about the Knowles family, but came up with a blank. Ellie’s animated voice overrode his thinking. Her cheeks had grown flushed with the effort or pleasure of gaiety. She was in control again, entertaining them as she was wont to do in Boston when friends and family gathered.

  ‘Harriet’s been reading to me, you know. She’s afraid I may grow stupid and cease to be good company for her.’

  ‘That’s not true, Elinor,’ Harriet demurred.

  ‘True enough. When you arrived, she was reading to me from the Figaro. President Loubet is apparently recovering well from his attack at the races by that demented aristocrat. Canes aren’t killing-implements, it seems. Only a passing injury for “the synagogues’ candidate” – did you know that’s what they call him, Jim? Bet Raf never put that into one of his articles.’ She laughed. ‘I wonder whether the attack will make Loubet a fiercer Republican or still his ardour. He really shouldn’t have chosen the day of Zola’s return from exile to go to the races. You know he was never elected by the populace, Jim? The senate and the assembly stitched it together, after old Faure croaked in the arms of his mistress. Quite a country, isn’t it? Rather more eventful than our staid Mr McKinley. They’ve had more governments here in the last years than I think I’ve known in my entire lifetime at home.’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate, Ellie.’ Raf emptied his glass.

  ‘I know. All this heated democracy is rather more exciting for you journalists. Everyone takes you so seriously, too. Almost as seriously as the politicians themselves.’

  ‘That may not be so different,’ James said. ‘Mr Hearst managed to engineer quite a fuss over the Cuban war. Anyhow, you’ll be home in quieter spheres soon enough, Ellie.’

  ‘Are you going to bundle us all up, Jim? Put us in your cabin trunk? Better, I guess, than a coffin.’ She stopped herself, stole a glance at Raf.

  ‘Do have some more of this beef, Mr Norton.’ Harriet covered over for her.

  ‘I will, thank you.’ James helped himself.

  ‘There was an article about Olympe, too. A very nice piece. Heartfelt. About the
tragedy of her suicide.’ Ellie seemed unable to stop herself.

  ‘Where?’ Raf leapt up from the table.

  ‘Don’t be rude, Raf.’ Ellie snapped. ‘It’ll wait for coffee. There’s nothing there you don’t know already.’ She calmed herself. ‘It was about her career, her wonderful talent. She was wonderful, Jim. I wish you had been able to see her on the stage. And she sang … she sang like an angel. An Italian angel – the very best contralto. It was astonishing. She was quite delicate.’

  ‘I wish I had known her.’

  Raf had stopped eating. ‘The Figaro said suicide?’

  Ellie nodded. ‘I think so, too, Raf. You didn’t know her as I did.’

  ‘Didn’t I?’ Raf’s lips were so stiff, the words seemed to come from somewhere else.

  ‘She had a deep melancholy about her. A kind of inner pessimism. We women talk to each other about things. And I did know her well – and well before you.’

  Raf sprang from his seat with the speed of an arrow propelled from its bow. As he raced towards the front room, he cast Ellie a look of bitter hostility.

  ‘You do goad him, Elinor. There’s no need,’ Harriet murmured.

  ‘But he’s partly to blame. And he won’t face it.’

  ‘Why is he to blame?’ James asked.

  Ellie looked at him as if he were a stranger who had asked an impertinent question.

  ‘He shouldn’t have led her to think of marriage. It was altogether impossible. She wasn’t one of us. It confused her.’ She was staring out the window, seeing things that were invisible to him.

  ‘And you know he did?’ The notion troubled him. He hadn’t gone that far in his thoughts.

  Ellie nodded once, almost imperceptibly, then slumped suddenly into her chair as if all her musculature had given out.

  ‘I’m tired, Harriet. I think, I really think I should lie down.’ She smiled sweetly at James. ‘You’ll forgive me, Jim. Violette will serve you dessert. And do tell Raf, when he calms down, to come and see me later.’