Paris Requiem

by Lisa Appignanesi

  ‘Of course, he’s implicated. I’ve already told you that. Everyone who knew her is implicated.’

  ‘Not implicated emotionally. But in fact. More murder than suicide.’

  Her face crumbled. Horror spread slowly over her features.

  He felt brutal. But she needed to know. Understand that there was a world out there more intractable than her sensibility.

  ‘First the package. Now … Oh Jim, I’m frightened. So frightened.’ She drew the shawl tightly round her, as if it were a protective carapace. It couldn’t cover the terror on her face.

  ‘It’ll be all right in the end, Ellie.’

  The assurance was all in his voice. Her fear had wriggled across the room to heave itself onto his lap. He was forced to confront it. It weighed on him, so heavy and threatening that he clenched the arms of his chair like a man on a sinking dinghy. The events of the day whirled before his eyes, their menace suddenly manifest as if until this moment he had sheltered behind the shield of Raf’s ire and energy. Behind the shield of necessity too. The need to act the utterly calm elder brother. With Raf gone, the scene in the magistrate’s chambers, Durand’s hostility, that parcel of reeking hatred and excrement played out their full measure of danger. One woman dear to Raf was already dead. What would come next?

  He took a deep breath, stirred himself from the chair. Harriet was speaking and he ordered himself to listen.

  ‘I’ve suggested to Elinor that we could arrange to sail after she’s had the two appointed treatments, which would make it the end of next week. The seas should be calm. And this is no place for her now. It’s making her weaker with each passing day. What do you think, Mr Norton? And you could come and make this place your own until you join us. It would save Elinor having to arrange everything.’

  He met the solemnity of her eyes. There was the solace of competent good sense in them. And an undeniable strength. It buoyed him up. ‘That sounds altogether fine, Harriet. And I dare say we won’t tarry too long.’

  Ellie, that rapt look on her face, was staring into the middle distance. It wasn’t clear whether she had heard them.

  James went out on the terrace and let the cool breeze play over him. A man in workers’ blues was coming out of their building, a soft hat pulled low over his brow. Was this the kind of man who had delivered the reeking package? Was he a mere factotum sent by some higher-up to transmit a threat? Had Raf’s questions about Olympe and the other dead women been so unsubtle as to warrant such a reply? Or was it an article for the French press that had occasioned the vile threat? But what content could warrant such an obscene act?

  No, more likely that the culprit had acted on his own steam, was no messenger, but the very ruffian whom Raf had done battle with, who had given him his black eye. He watched the man in blue cross the boulevard. That somehow was easier to bear. An individual act of passionate loathing, hateful in itself, but certainly less dangerous. The accompanying letter certainly bore witness to that. Yet how could a random individual know about Raf’s links to Olympe?

  The man in blue looked up now, his eyes directly on the terrace where James stood. In a flash, James recognised his brother. He stepped back inside, gasping despite himself.

  ‘What is it?’ Ellie asked, alert once more.

  ‘Nothing, nothing.’ He turned back to her. ‘I was just thinking about that package.’

  ‘What package, Jimmy?’ Ellie asked sweetly.

  With a nod at the balding butler who had taken his hat and walking stick, James slipped silently into Marguerite de Landois’s garden room and surveyed the scene. Marguerite was at the piano, urging a haunting melody from its keys, her body swaying slightly as her fingers produced a poignant dissonance.

  The music brought unbidden tears to his eyes. For a moment, he had a vision of a girl at Marguerite’s side, a dark-haired girl with tragic eyes lost in the sounds her bow summoned as it slid over strings in counterpoint to the piano’s rhythm. This girl, he noted to his own surprise, bore no relation to the half-naked creature on the postcard in his jacket pocket. She was all innocence. Perhaps Raf was right. Perhaps James’s own imagination had leapt to see similitude, where there was only racial resemblance.

  The ghost Marguerite’s playing had invoked for him disappeared. In its place stood the painter Max Henry. He was leaning against the piano, his eyes shut. In the smattering of chairs in front of him sat a few of the other figures he had seen at the funeral. The actress Oriane half reclined on a chaise longue, her eyes leaping from object to object with distinct cupidity. The stout man with the pugilist’s features, whom Touquet had addressed, was looking through an artist’s folder. Touquet, himself, had either not come or had already left.

  On the table at the far side of the room James saw the remains of a buffet, empty glasses, used plates, a half-eaten cake. There was a casual abandon to it all, so very different from the last gathering he had come to in this house. Perhaps it was the sudden glimmer of sunlight, softly pink to mark the day’s end, dappling the garden. It made him feel he was in some country home, far from the nervous bustle of the city. He sank into the nearest chair and closed his eyes, letting the lingering adagio of the music play through him.

  Like a small, rustling stream that had disappeared underground, the melody faltered on a melancholy chord and fell away into silence. For a moment, no one spoke or moved. Then, with a little shake of the head, Marguerite rose and the room stirred into motion.

  She walked towards James, greeted him. ‘That was one of Olympe’s favourite pieces. We used to play it together. She liked to call it Paris Requiem. Because it made her imagine other kinds of places. Countryside, woods – calmer, softer places.’

  ‘She’s said her goodbye now.’ He hesitated. Marguerite’s face looked slightly askew, vulnerable, shadowy with emotions that didn’t want society. He mumbled an apology for his lateness, made excuses for Raf. Her eyes interrogated him, but she seemed to understand his inability to explain and ushered him over to Max Henry.

  ‘Ah Monsieur, I am honoured. You’ve paid me the greatest compliment an artist can have. You’ve bought one of my canvases.’ He bowed. ‘Olympe was a singular model. And much more. Her death robs us all.’

  ‘You knew her well?’ James asked.

  The man’s dark eyebrows rose into two distinct points, like antennae. ‘Not well, no. Not in the way you mean. But well enough. She had a particular quality. The quality that makes actors, perhaps. She could mould herself by the movement of a shoulder or a lip into another character.’

  ‘We’re going, Max.’ Oriane was at their side, together with the flat-nosed man, who James now learned was the theatre director. There was no time for more than quick introductions, since a performance called. And after a few minutes of flurried goodbyes, James found himself alone with his hostess.

  ‘No, no. You must stay.’ She poured him a glass of wine, urged canapés on him. ‘I have no desire at all to be alone.’ She slipped into English. ‘Tell me what happened with Chief Inspector Durand? Where is Rafael?’

  James shrugged and as they sat down opposite each other in an intimate corner of the long room, he started to recount the day’s events. She listened intently. When he mentioned that Raf had been asked to give the magistrate a sample of his handwriting, she blanched, her face starkly white against the black of her high-necked dress.

  ‘Decidedly, the Chief Inspector is over-reaching himself. What did he ask him to write? What was the letter you saw?’

  Did he trust her altogether, James wondered? Nonetheless, he summarised the letter’s blackmailing content. She rose abruptly, started to pace, changed her mind and fetched cigarettes from the table. ‘Tell me that again, James,’ she said as she fitted her cigarette into an alabaster holder.

  He lit it for her, lit his pipe as well while he spoke. He couldn’t read her expression. It was as if the smoke and a self-generated mask had combined to hide her face.

  ‘You’re certain Durand found the letter in Olympe’s
rooms?’

  ‘That’s what he said. I can’t be certain, of course.’

  She was pacing again and he called her back. ‘Why? Does the letter mean something to you?’

  ‘No … I don’t know. It just seems so implausible. But they didn’t keep Rafael there, did they?’ She swung round, her face suddenly so naked with emotion, that he averted his eyes. Yes, he had been too right. His throat tightened. She loved Raf.

  Yet his rightness made even a greater mystery of things. Made him despondent, too, as if he had still hoped otherwise. He checked the tremor in his voice.

  ‘You care for him very much.’

  She met him on it, holding his gaze. ‘I do.’ She hesitated. Then her laugh rang out, a high clear sound which held only a little mirth. ‘But if you are imagining things, Monsieur Norton of Boston, please stop. All that between us is long over. We are, as you say, friends. That is the miracle.’

  James felt heat suffuse his face. Her directness left him a little breathless, but like a fresh breeze it cleared the air. He returned her smile, which had a note of weariness in it to match the mellowness of her eyes. ‘Over because of Olympe?’ He heard himself say.

  ‘Yes, perhaps. Because of Olympe. Certainly the first and perhaps the second.’

  So Olympe had displaced her in Raf’s affections, though perhaps affections wasn’t the right word. Marguerite still had a goodly part of those. Why had his brother preferred the younger woman?

  ‘Yes. It should please you to know, as an older brother, that Raf is American enough to like his passions quite honest and open, and with a future attached. Though that future has now been stolen from him.’

  She looped pearls round a finger. For a second James thought her pressure might break the strand.

  ‘Did you know that Olympe was pregnant when she died?’ He only realised how cruel the question was, coming hard on the heels of his last, when he took in the storm it provoked. Her hand shook. Her eyes grew black. A frown etched lines where he had never seen them.

  ‘Did Raf tell you?’

  ‘Chardon announced it. The autopsy revealed it.’

  ‘Poor, dear Olympe. Did Raf know?’

  James shook his head.

  ‘That’s a relief.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It must mean that she didn’t either.’ She was murmuring. Almost to herself. She puffed at her cigarette.

  A verminous thought scuttled through his mind. He didn’t want it there, but it forced its way in, making his lips dry, his heart pound. Could Marguerite through some overweening female jealousy have done something to unsettle or unbalance the younger woman. Something which had directly or indirectly led to her death? Could she have known about Olympe’s pregnancy and suggested that Raf wouldn’t stand for it. She had all the necessary intelligence and subtlety for such a ploy. And now Raf was returned to her. He had seen him, after all, scurrying towards her house at an unseemly hour.

  No, no. He himself was becoming unbalanced.

  ‘What is it, James? Something else has happened. You’re hiding it from me. You can tell me.’ He met the candid pressure of her eyes and suddenly wondered whether the jealousy he read there was all his own. Of Raf, with her. He sought for something to hide it.

  ‘There was a rather unpleasant event when we got back to Raf’s place. Far more menacing in a way than Durand’s veiled threats.’

  ‘Go on.’

  He told her as lightly as he could about the parcel and its accompanying letter.

  ‘So Rafael has gone off to try and find out where that came from.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t imagine that it is connected with Olympe’s death. Sometimes your brother, James, is too hot-headed by half. These people, they are pigs. In a moment of collective frenzy, they might use their fists, even bombs. But an individual murder of an actress who has a certain reputation … no. I don’t believe it.’

  James nodded. ‘But someone must have known of Raf’s connection with Olympe. The letter was clear on that. Did he tell you that he’s been trying to uncover if there’s a link between Olympe’s death and those of the other women, the Jewish prostitutes. That might have unsettled someone.’

  Marguerite shuddered. She stubbed out her cigarette with shaky fingers.

  He rushed to reassure her. ‘Though you’re probably right. The parcel was an empty threat. What worries me more, if I’m honest, is what Olympe’s sister, Judith, told us. Is there anyone you know who might be able to gain access to the Salpêtrière’s files? Specifically, the pathology files, the ones to do with Dr Vaillant’s wards.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  James elaborated his suspicion that Olympe, led on by her sister’s fears, had stumbled on dangerous matter and been brutally stopped. He didn’t mention his notion that she might have been taken for Judith, but he did tell her about the repellent Dr Comte and about Vaillant’s lecture.

  ‘That indeed is worrying.’ Marguerite’s lower lip trembled as she spoke. It gave her face a softness he hadn’t dared to imagine. It made her, if anything, even more beautiful, like a girl who hadn’t yet hardened into the moulds life demanded. ‘Did you mention any of this to our Chief Inspector?’

  James nodded. ‘But it wasn’t a trail which seemed to interest him. Dr Vaillant works with the police and Durand seems more intent on giving Raf a rough time than anything else for the moment.’

  ‘I’ll try to speak to him tomorrow.’

  ‘And at the hospital itself? Do you have any contacts.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  Darkness had fallen round them. James only grew alive to it when Marguerite reached to turn on a lamp. At that moment, there was a knock at the door followed by the butler’s face. Marguerite went to confer with him.

  ‘Will you stay and have dinner with me, James?’

  He hesitated and she rushed on. ‘I have no plans and I would really rather not be alone. Unless you would prefer a restaurant.’

  ‘No, no. Dinner here would be grand. Thank you.’

  ‘Good. I’m so glad. Make yourself at home. I’ll just be a few minutes.’

  He must have dozed off for the next thing he knew someone was shaking him and he was stepping out of a deep, dank, hole – a grave, yes, where a succession of women lay. Maisie, sleeping peacefully. And Rachel twice buried, as herself and as Olympe and in two different garbs, one white and girlish and innocent, the other a concoction of veils shielding only nakedness from the musty earth which smelled painfully of excrement and lilac. But also Marguerite, her face shifting with the light so that she was a girl and then a wizened hag. No, no, it was his mother and Ellie, her mouth round in a soundless scream. All of them merging so that the grave became a catacomb with winding earthen paths and an assortment of doors behind which shadowy figures hid and mocked his slow, stiff passage.

  His eyes felt sore from too much grit and too much seeing and he barely recognised the figure who muttered the soft ‘Monsieur, Monsieur, si vous voulez bien …’

  James shook himself awake. The waves of sleep still pulling at him, he followed the butler up the stairs and along a corridor. ‘If Monsieur would like to do his toilette …’ The man opened a door, waved his arm in an arc and with a bow left him.

  James found himself in an ample bedroom. Its dark blue curtains, narrow bed, and sturdy writing table, bore a distinctly masculine flavour. An inner door led to a bathroom and as if he were under an injunction to follow Pierre’s orders, he did as the man had bade him. A razor, badger brush and shaving soap lay neatly laid out by the sink and he made use of them.

  The brush seemed still to contain some moisture. Someone had used it recently. As if in a dream, he opened a wardrobe door and found a selection of men’s clothes. He stared at these and wondered if he was still asleep, then wondered again if they might be Raf’s, if this might be the room Raf used when he stayed here. Or perhaps Marguerite still kept a room for her absent husband.

  He examined the clothes with a curiosity
which made him leery of himself and decided they couldn’t be Raf’s, the shoes certainly were far too small, the boots too highly polished. With an uneasy sensation, he closed the door and went to sit at the writing desk, despite himself opening the drawers, as if he had been metamorphosed into a mannerless Chief Inspector Durand who would stop at nothing.

  He found some writing paper and envelopes and then in the second drawer, a lone silk ascot of blue-patterned paisley. He lifted it to his nostrils and sniffed, then stared out into the dark street, the shadows of dream gradually dispersing into a reality he would rather not have confronted. Raf had worn a tie just like this one when he was last in Boston. James remembered it clearly, had thought to himself that with that tie and jaunty corduroy jacket, Raf must think he was masquerading as the Prince of Wales.

  Dinner was not in the grand dining hall but in a more intimate chamber which James characterised for himself as a breakfast room. It wore all the traces of Marguerite’s particular charm – a subtle understated taste which spoke of hidden depths and an intelligence which was still opaque to him. By the window there was a round table of medium size set for two with delicate china and glistening silver, at its centre a bowl of artfully arranged flowers. The furniture was mellow walnut with a light rococo touch. But the paintings were all in the modern style, bright daubs of colour merging into shape only if one kept one’s distance. There were decorative clusters of vine and flower clambering over women’s gowns and along walls. There were lilies like dabs of moving light in dappled pools. There was a dance hall in which women in rustling skirts kicked their legs high, their faces harshly animal-like in the yellowish glare of lamplight.

  ‘Do you like my little collection, James?’

  Marguerite had come into the room silently and he veered in surprise, his nod over-hearty.

  ‘Later I will show you the one I have of Olympe. It’s not by Max Henry and I’m not really certain it will be to your taste …’ her voice trailed off and then as if she were carrying on an argument with herself, she added emphatically. ‘But I like it very much.’