‘Olympe was obviously much painted in her brief life.’
She flashed him a dark look and he realised that he had made it sound a reprehensible matter, though he wasn’t sure that was what he had intended.
‘If you move in the circles in which Olympe increasingly moved, it’s hardly rare. Actors, artists, bohemians, they mix and mingle.’
‘And you?’
‘Do you mean have I been painted?’ She gestured him towards a chair and he suddenly took in her gown, no longer black, but a rustle of palest peach silk which made her skin glow. Her mood had changed with her gown.
He nodded. ‘Not that any painter could do you justice,’ he heard himself murmur in an uncharacteristic compliment. ‘But what I also meant was that these are your circles too. I find that slightly curious, given all this.’ He gestured at the house, its ostensible wealth.
She laughed. ‘Artists have always needed patrons.’
‘You don’t behave like a patron. You behave like one of them.’
‘I shall take that, too, as a compliment, though I know you didn’t intend it as such. You don’t altogether approve of my friends, nor I take it of your brother’s.’
‘Are they the same on all counts?’
‘Hardly.’ Her smile was impish. ‘I believe the other night at my soirée you met a few whom Raf would rather not countenance. He is not always tolerant, though I suspect his intolerance differs from yours. But that is as it should be.’
He considered this not altogether happily as Pierre came into the room balancing a tray. He watched the impeccable ease with which he served them, the heavy silver spoon dipped in the tureen, the carefully poured wine.
‘What I think I was getting at,’ he said when the man had closed the door behind him, ‘was that I find it slightly difficult to understand the facility with which you move between what you call the bohemian … and these others … these …
‘The gratin of the Saint-Germain.’
He nodded and returned her teasing smile. ‘Yes, and my brother.’
‘You might add yourself.’
‘I hardly count. I’m just passing through.’
‘Now it is you who are searching for compliments.’
‘No, no.’ He tasted the soup. ‘Maybe it’s the fluidity of social relations here that constantly surprises me.’
‘I never thought I would hear that from an American. Yours is the country where people rise from nowhere. Where mobility is everything.’
‘You mustn’t believe the myths. We’re as jealous of our hierarchies as the next nation.’
Her smile took on an edge. ‘But by here, I take it you mean my home, not Paris in general.’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘And by social, you mean rather more …’ Her laugh tinkled. ‘You are suspicious of me, James. I’m not sure whether I should be flattered at the interest it shows, or made desolate. Let me tell you a little about myself. Perhaps it will help. Paris, you know, is not my first home. Like you, like Raf, perhaps even like Olympe, I’m something of a foreigner. And we foreigners have to learn to mould ourselves and the world around us a little, if we are to survive.’
‘You’re foreign?’ His tone conveyed all his astonishment.
‘Yes, in a way I most decidedly am. If not to France itself, then to the mysterious ways of this city. I’m a country girl.’ Her eyes teased him. There were flecks of yellow in them, like a cat’s and they drew him in hypnotically as she began her story.
It was a story of an ancient and noble family, rich in lands though no longer in money. Marguerite was the last of her particular line. Her father had already been old when she was conceived and had girded his loins for a son, not the daughter who had emerged. He had pretended not to notice the difference and had proceeded to bring her up as if she were the boy he had set his heart on, particularly once her mother had died when Marguerite was eight.
She had been given the freedom of the vast estate and the sizeable manor. She rode and walked and swam and played with the peasants’ and gamekeeper’s children. She hunted with her father, learned to set traps, skin rabbit and pluck pheasant. By the time she was nine she could handle a pistol adequately. The rifle had come soon after.
Not that her father put no store on a more cerebral education. He was a passionate naturalist and her earliest memories were of collecting samples of the local flora and fauna with him – of watching ants construct their extraordinary labyrinths, or woodlice at work on garden rubble. The house had a fine library and she was allowed free rein there as well. Governesses and tutors came and went, leaving her with a smattering of mathematics and chemistry, some Latin and more English, not to mention a love of drawing, particularly the butterflies in her father’s collection.
All this went on happily enough until she was sixteen, when a cousin of her father’s suddenly appeared from Paris and convinced him that this was no way to bring up a girl. Within a month, a wood had been sold off and, funds in hand, she was sent to Paris to live with her cousin and learn the ways of the capital. Translated into common speech this meant, of course, the art of finding a suitable husband.
‘You can’t imagine the shock of it.’ Marguerite gave James a smile dazzling in its irony. ‘Not only the city with its labyrinth of streets and daily round of sensations. But the complete physical re-education. I literally had to learn how to walk, how to smile, how to lower my eyelids and turn my head and lift what seemed an eternity of skirt, not to mention an assortment of china and silver.’
‘You seem to have learned very well,’ James met her on it as Pierre cleared the dishes. They moved to the corner sofa for coffee.
‘Oh yes. I had excellent teachers. I’ll introduce you to my cousin one day. She’s no longer in her prime, but she’s a formidable woman. Quite frightening in fact. And within a year she had me engaged, to an altogether suitable party – moneyed, sufficiently so to save our family estate, and titled, though perhaps not quite so grandly as my father. And wonderfully eligible.’
‘The Conte de Landois?’
‘The very one.’
‘But you didn’t get on?’
‘The families got on. It was a fine match. And he cut a fine figure. So fine that for a time, I was really altogether passionate about him.’ She looked away, her voice receding into a near whisper. ‘He was a man of considerable experience and he taught me many things. More things than I think you would wish to know about, James.’
It took him a moment to guess at what she meant. He hid his discomfort behind a cloud of smoke. When he met her eyes again, they shone with a troubled light. He had a sense that a lock had been turned and he was peeking into a bedroom. The bed was dishevelled, a bare leg rested against a sheet. He gazed down at the floor, but her voice brought him back.
‘And the count was proud of me, too, quite enchanted at first.’
‘Yet the marriage was not a success,’ James heard himself say in a voice that had a creak in it. Part of him wanted her to hurry on. This was dangerous matter.
Her smile had a trace of weariness. ‘There are things that go on between a man and a woman, as you well know, that are not altogether easy to explain. Olivier was, is much older than I am. He’s a man of the world, but where I was concerned he grew a little too forcefully restrictive.’ She laughed, turned her face away, though not quickly enough, so that he saw pain flash across it.
After a moment she said in a small dreamy voice. ‘The sphere of my possibilities shrank. It became far narrower than in my childhood. We were obviously incompatible.’
‘Yet you didn’t divorce.’
Her laugh tinkled. ‘Here we sometimes say that though love cannot last, marriage must. Olivier and I reached an accommodation. Now we get on very well. At a distance. He has learned to appreciate the country. And I the city. Which is why I began to tell you all this, I believe. Because I started off as something of a foreigner, not to mention an ardent observer of natural life, I’m drawn to the diverse company yo
u wondered about.’
‘Amongst which you include my brother.’
‘Very much so.’ She smoothed her silk skirts with an air of almost girlish modesty.
He watched her in silence for a moment and he reflected on all that she had said.
‘You know, if I were Durand and I knew of your relationship with my brother, I would say that perhaps you had far more reason to want to see the end of Olympe than Raf, himself. The passion in that case would make sense. The crime passionel as you call it.’
Marguerite’s laugh held a touch of exhilaration. He suddenly imagined her with a pistol. ‘I can assure you, James, that I have usually won my men in other ways.’
‘But not, it seems, my brother.’
‘The story may not be over.’ Her eyes challenged him as if she were willing him to probe further or to meet her in a duel. ‘You don’t approve?’
‘No, perhaps not. But nor would I have approved of Olympe.’ He paused, chuckled at the bravery of the words that had leapt into his mind which he now spoke out loud. ‘Perhaps I would merely have wanted you both for myself.’
She studied him with what he suddenly saw as the cool glance of the naturalist. ‘You’re a handsome man, James. And you have a rare honesty.’ She rose and walked towards the windows, pulling the curtain back to peer out into darkness. When she turned back to him, there was a tremor in her voice. ‘What you say about Durand is, of course, true. I’m surprised he hasn’t been to question me.’
‘Your status shields you. Then, too, he might not know about your relations with Raf.’
‘But you, I take it, will tell him. If only to exonerate Rafael.’
He met her eyes for a long moment. ‘Did your husband know Olympe?’ he asked, not altogether certain what had impelled the question. ‘You said he was still living here when you first met her.’
She caught the sense he hadn’t yet altogether grasped himself. ‘Yes, Olivier met her. But if you’re suggesting that we quarrelled over her, you’re quite wrong. She wasn’t Olivier’s type. And even if she were, James, that would hardly be a reason for a parting of the ways.’ She got up abruptly and he sensed that in his haphazard speculation, he had touched some nerve, though he wasn’t certain which it was.
‘Forgive me. I’m being unpardonably rude. The day has worn me out, made me forget the gratitude we all owe you. I’m also worried about Raf. And about Ellie.’ A sigh escaped him.
‘Oh yes, dear Elinor. A fine woman. But I fear her emotions conspire against her. She is not like our French women who, given the necessary means, manage to order their lives to accommodate at least some of their desires. As you say, our habits are more lenient.’
James stifled a gasp. He had never thought of Ellie in such terms.
‘How did the consultation with Dr Ponsard go?’
He was about to tell her what he had witnessed, but bit back his words. The revelation somehow felt too shameful. Instead, he shrugged. ‘Well enough, I think. She is to see him again for further treatment.’
Marguerite nodded sagely.
‘Did he help Olympe?’
Her eyes filled with sudden tears. ‘I believe so,’ she murmured, then rose slowly and with evident fatigue. ‘It has been a long day, James, and now it’s very late. My coachman has the evening off, so he won’t be able to ferry you. But you’re altogether welcome to stay the night, if it suits you. Pierre will see to your needs.’
As if the man had been waiting to hear his name, a soft knock sounded.
Marguerite stretched out her hand.
James touched it with his lips. ‘You’re very kind.’
‘Ah that, my friend. I’m not sure you’re yet in a position to judge.’
Before he could counter her, she was out the door.
SIXTEEN
He woke to a clatter. In the sticky mists of dream, he thought of rocks falling on wood. A torrent of rocks on the wood of a coffin, imprisoning its occupant forever, burying her secrets in the silence of cold stone.
He opened his eyes with a shudder. The dusky room refused recognition. Not until his feet reached the silky texture of the bedside rug did he remember that he had spent the night at Marguerite’s, that he had allowed himself to be beguiled by the notion that if he spent the night here, the house might somehow offer up a key to the enigma of its occupants, their shrouded connections. Instead he had fallen asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow only to wake to this present disorientation.
He padded over to the window, drew back the curtain and pushed open a shutter. The light was already bright. On the street below him a carriage picked up speed. The horses’ manes flew, their smooth backs streaked by sunlight. He caught a glimpse of the driver. Marguerite’s driver. Beside him sat a capped youth, who he was almost certain was Antoine.
It came to him that if Antoine was here and racing away in Marguerite’s carriage, Raf must have sent him, which could only mean his brother was in trouble.
He dressed quickly and was about to put on his jacket when there was a knock at the door.
‘Huit heures et demie. Comme vous avez précisez, Monsieur.’ A young aproned maid, bearing a tray stood at the door and reminded him of the appointed breakfast hour. She walked past him, deposited the tray on a corner table and poured coffee.
‘Is Madame de Landois up?’ he asked.
The girl gave him a curious, almost chastising look. ‘She usually comes down at about eleven, Monsieur.’ She curtsied and was out of the room before James mustered his thanks.
As he buttered the neatly sliced baguette and drank his café au lait, he ran through possibilities which extended from Raf’s having suffered an injury to Chief Inspector Durand’s men having cornered him at a place from which he now needed to flee without being seen. All the possibilities struck him as unlikely. What was far more probable was that Antoine was seeing to some pre-arranged errand and Marguerite had once again kindly offered her carriage. And from the maid’s demeanour, it would be the summit of bad manners for him to trouble Marguerite in order to find out.
Some forty minutes later, he was out in the cool morning air and walking with a determined step in the direction he had set himself. The necessity of his course had come to him with his second cup of coffee. He had been a fool not to attend to it sooner.
The banks of the river were a hive of morning activity. Shoulders bent to the task, men unloaded timbers from one barge, pallets of brick from another as far as the eye could see. Voices rose in a chorus of orders and grunts. But the houseboat was moored exactly where he remembered it, probably by police command.
Tattered sheets hung from a washing line. They shrouded the cabin. As they fluttered in the breeze, he noticed a pair of supple black boots at their base, shiny against the whiteness. For some reason he paused and an image of Marcel Bonnefoi sitting in the Ritz bar crowded into his mind. But the man couldn’t be here. A moment later, the sheets parted and their owner emerged from behind them like an actor in a play. It was the young blonde woman he had last seen nursing her babe. She was wearing a coarse beige frock and gesturing someone through the curtain of sheets.
Chief Inspector Durand’s barrel-chested figure emerged. James took a step backwards. The man was beginning to feel like a double, an erratic shadow who appeared before or behind him wherever he went.
He turned away. It was too late.
‘Monsieur Norton,’ the Chief Inspector hailed him and moved quickly in his direction. ‘What a coincidence.’ His cunning eyes narrowed. ‘Or is it that you, too, are interested to know what people have come to visit the man who rescued Mlle Fabre’s poor drowned body from the murky waters of the Seine? Your brother, needless to say, has been. And treated our boatman with rather more belligerence than was altogether necessary …’
Durand put his arm through James’s and led him forcibly away from his original destination. ‘Your brother is his own worst enemy, Monsieur Norton. He treats us, my men, myself, the whole apparatus of state, as if we w
ere rank incompetents, or worse, criminals.’ He shook his large head solemnly and tsked beneath his breath. ‘It is hardly calculated to endear him to us or to our investigation. But then desperate men can hardly be counted on to be reasonable, can they, Monsieur Norton?’ He cast a glance of mingled guile and complicity at James.
James shrugged off the man’s arm. ‘My brother’s desperation, if that is what it is, is hardly rooted in the motives you attribute to him, Chief Inspector. He is simply a grieving man, a man in search of answers.’
‘We shall see. We shall see.’ Durand gave him a philosophical smile.
They had reached the quay and the Chief Inspector seemed to have little inclination to see James go. ‘Walk with me, Monsieur Norton,’ he said in a tone which was less invitation than command. ‘There is no point your going back to the houseboat, I assure you.’
James allowed himself to be led. He could hardly do otherwise and he might be able to work the situation to Raf’s advantage. ‘My brother may have the rashness of youth,’ he began, ‘but …’
Durand cut him off. ‘He is not a friend of the forces of law and order. You may not know this, Monsieur Norton, since you are a stranger to our city, but your brother’s associates are the dregs of the journalistic world. That man Touquet, for example.’ Durand spat emphatically. ‘He’s a gutter rat, chewing away at the very foundations of civilisation, poisoning its waters.’
‘You don’t say?’
‘I do. Why even his wife left him. Divorced him on grounds of adultery. With prostitutes, I imagine. That’s why he’s so enamoured of their cause.’
‘Really! Is divorce so easy to obtain here, then?’ James thought of Marguerite.
‘Pah. It’s the bane of the Republic.’ Durand suddenly picked up a stone from the path and flung it into the midst of a construction site. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Monsieur. I am not an anti-Republican. Oh no. Quite the opposite. I am a staunch servant of the Republic. But this! Since ’84, when the law was introduced, the divorce rate has spiralled. It attacks one out of every nine marriages. One out of nine. Marriage should be indissoluble. For the good of the community, you understand. The family, after all, is its cornerstone, the axis of stability. And the family now is severely threatened. Our birth rates have plummeted. Only the foreigners and the halfwits breed. Soon we will be half the size of our old enemy. That is a terrifying prospect. France half the size of Germany!’
Paris Requiem Page 26