Paris Requiem

by Lisa Appignanesi

  ‘Sorry, Jim.’ Raf was rubbing his eyes. His hair was dishevelled. He was wearing James’s pyjamas. ‘I must have been dreaming. Something about sabres and lopped heads.’ He grinned. ‘Good thing I recognised you.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘It seemed a good place to be.’ He glanced at the watch on the bedside table and whistled. ‘Do you realise that it’s after three.’

  James spied the whisky bottle on the table. ‘Not too late for a drink. I need one, what with you scaring the daylights out of me.’ He poured them both a measure. ‘What are you doing here?’ he repeated as he handed his brother a glass.

  ‘Well, I tried to go home, but there was this surly-looking guy hanging around the apartment, so I changed my mind. One of the Chief Inspector’s crew, I imagine. By the way, I’ve located the nasty little band of creeps who sent me that odiferous present.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Ya. A mean-minded trio of right-wing journalists. Didn’t like my position on Dreyfus – or on anything else for that matter. And don’t like the fact that I’m foreign and attacking the honour of la belle France. So they thought they’d teach me a lesson. A practical joke, you might say.’ He let out a guffaw. ‘They hired someone else to do their delivery work, of course. I gave them a talking to and threatened retribution. Not that in my present circumstances I can imagine the police taking action.’

  ‘Do they have anything to do with Olympe’s death?’

  After a moment’s hesitation, Raf shook his head. ‘Not directly anyhow. They’re just windbags. They create a climate in which others can act on the hatred they foment.’ He pounded the pillows, then propped them up and smoothed the sheets. ‘Guess you’d better have the bed, Jim. It’s your room after all. I’ll finish the night on the sofa.’

  ‘How come you didn’t go to Marguerite’s? You spend enough nights there.’

  Raf shot him an acerbic look. ‘Do I detect a note of malice in your tone? Or is it just good, clean curmudgeonly envy?’

  ‘Neither. I’m tired. I’ve got to have a wash.’ James closed the bathroom door behind him.

  When he came out again, Raf was stretched on the sofa and smoking a cigarette. The desk behind him, James now noted, was littered with the letters he had taken from Olympe’s apartment.

  ‘I can’t sleep any more.’ He surveyed James. ‘Just to put your mind at ease, I did speak to Marguerite and she said it was better I didn’t come round. I had a feeling she was worrying about Durand, about the fact that I’m being followed.’

  ‘Why?’ James asked. His guilt made him aggressive. It was he after all who had planted the seeds of worry in Marguerite. ‘It’s not as if Durand doesn’t know about the two of you.’

  Raf blew a smoke ring into the air. ‘To tell you the truth I don’t quite understand what’s got her suddenly worried. It’s not like her. I think she’s hiding something from me.’

  ‘Really?’ James had a sudden image of the men’s clothes hanging in Marguerite’s spare room. They were too small for Raf. ‘Do you think she has another lover?’

  ‘Another lover.’ Raf mimicked his tone. ‘You’re sounding jaded, Jim. So quickly, too. It’s not a question of another. Marguerite and I aren’t any more. Haven’t been since I met Olympe.’ He paused over the name, his face suddenly despairing. ‘Marguerite must have told you that. Would have if you had asked. But it’s not the kind of thing you ask, I imagine. I know how much you disapprove of me.’

  ‘Yet you stay at her place.’

  ‘Sure. It’s a big house. And it’s sometimes convenient. We like to talk. We’re good friends. Don’t give me that disbelieving face, Jim. It doesn’t suit your sweet temperament.’

  ‘A jealous friend, I imagine.’ James followed his own line of thought. ‘You with a younger woman. One you could consider marrying, one she had to a certain extent shaped.’

  ‘There isn’t a trace of jealousy in Marguerite.’

  ‘I’m beginning to suspect you’re the innocent.’

  Raf glared at him. ‘She knows I’m devoted to her. She’s like – well she’s like a fairy godmother to me. She’s given me so much, taught me everything.’

  Even with his limited knowledge of women, James had the distinct impression Marguerite would hardly be happy with that description. But he kept his counsel.

  After a moment, Raf said. ‘So you think she has a lover?’

  James shrugged. ‘All I know is that there were men’s clothes in the spare room. A smaller man than you. Suits, boots …’ He yawned.

  Raf chuckled. ‘So you haven’t guessed?’

  James wasn’t listening. It had suddenly come to him. That matter that had niggled at him for days. All at once, it was there, clear, beyond the sleepy haze of his mind, like a sentence in bold capitals he should have been able to read before. He leapt up. ‘That’s it, Raf. We have to go back to the barge. First thing tomorrow.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The boots. The boots the woman on the boat was wearing. They were sleek, supple, expensive. Not at all in keeping with the rest of her grimy clothes.’

  ‘So? So someone gave them to her.’

  ‘No, no. It’s something else. I suspect they came from Olympe. From her body. Before or after her death, I don’t know. It’s something the woman said, too.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Jim? Where have you been anyway? You’re all wired up. A bit like the electricity pavilion they’re building for this great new century of ours.’

  James sighed, promised himself that he’d visit the barge first thing in the morning, then told Raf where he’d been, told him tersely about Bernfeld and about Touquet’s letter and his visit to the Hotel Monpiquet. About Caro and Dr Comte.

  By the time he had finished, Raf was pacing, his face a livid scowl. ‘So you think that Caro and Comte together …’ He slammed his fist on the desk. ‘Let me get this straight. Caro’s running a white slave ring. Trafficking in women. Comte services their medical needs and if they act up or are past their use, he takes them off to the Salpêtrière. And eventually they end up as useful subjects for scientific autopsy. Small brains, lesions, whatever. It’s too ghastly. And the powers that be turn a blind eye. Anything’s better than having to change the immigration laws. And Olympe must have somehow got mixed up in it, made them fear exposure, so they did her in. Like they did those other women in. Bastards.’

  ‘We’ll have to build the evidence step by step, Raf.’ James tried to calm him.

  ‘That reminds me,’ Raf stopped his pacing and reached to extract Olympe’s notebook from the litter on the desk. ‘I went through this earlier. The initials H.C. definitely appeared. Henri Comte. She must have gone to see him. That’s it, Jim. Tomorrow we go and bludgeon a confession out of him.’

  James took a deep breath. ’As I said, Raf. Slowly. We have to get Durand on board. We haven’t any proof yet of a link between Caro and Olympe. Except that she went to the Monpiquet. We don’t know why she went there or what she did. We need to get our hands on the hospital files too, check out Judith’s story and see if any of the deaths in the hospital were of girls who had been prostitutes. I imagine there are others involved, probably Madame Rosa …’ His voice trailed off, cracked in discomfort.

  James’s cautionary note visibly irritated Raf. ‘Who’s this Madame Rosa, then? Is that your source, the one you slept with?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Don’t look so deeply offended. Loosen up. It’s not a crime. We have bodies. We have senses.’

  ‘We have other more important parts, too.’ Anger leapt from James’s voice. He realised it was directed as much at himself, at his shame over Eugénie, as at Raf.

  ‘You mean a soul, I imagine?’ Raf scoffed. ‘You really think a just God would have had Olympe murdered? You really think that? You’re a fool then.’

  James kept himself still. ‘I meant a moral intelligence. A mind. We have minds. They give us a sense of what is right. Of justice.’


  ‘Justice, indeed. What’s justice for the rich man is hardly justice for the beggar. Let alone the female beggar.’

  There was such deep-rooted rancour in Raf’s sudden attack, that it robbed James of his last ounce of energy. His legs felt weak, as if the very foundations on which he had erected his life were crumbling. He lay back on the pillows. ‘Would you rather I went home, Raf? I’m obviously just in the way here. Whatever I do, whatever I say, you just snipe at me. And none of it is really my business. I’ll take Elinor with me and we’ll board the first available ship.’

  They stared at each other across the room.

  ‘Sorry, Jim. Sorry. Don’t know what’s come over me.’ Raf turned his back on him and fiddled with the papers on the desk. ‘Old habits, I guess. Half the time, when I’m with you, I feel I’ve been turned into a kid again, the useless and rebellious black sheep of the family, so I lash out or run off. As if you and Father were both standing over me, judging, shaking your heads, robbing me of any breathing space, telling me whatever I touch is wrong.’

  He turned back to James, his face suffused with guilty emotion. ‘Sorry, Jim. In fact you’ve been incredibly helpful through all this. And of more use than I’ve been.’

  James stared at him through a fog of incomprehension. Blurry incidents from the past floated through it. An image came to him of the two of them standing before their father in his study. Raf was being reprimanded for some minor misdemeanour. But their father’s love for him was palpable. It was there in the very heat of his sorrow over this trifling transgression. James rarely transgressed and rarely felt the warmth of that love.

  ‘You’re wrong about that, Raf. Father adored you. Of the two of us, you were his decided favourite, let alone Mother and Ellie’s.’

  Perplexity played over Raf’s features. ‘That’s not how it felt to me, Jim. Ellie, maybe … but we won’t go into that. Father saw you as perfection itself, the perfection I could never aspire to. God, I resented it.’

  James shook his head, bewildered by this declaration, saddened, too. ‘In fact, Raf, I was always a little jealous of you. Still am probably. Your talent for life. Even Maisie adored you.’

  ‘That’s the whisky talking.’ He topped up James’s glass with a shaky smile which did nothing to eradicate the frown etched on his forehead. ‘You’re trying to tell me that all these years, the two of us have been doing a little green-eyed family dance, each of us imagining the other as parental pet?’

  ‘Maybe. Probably.’

  He met James’s eyes, his own darkly serious. ‘You know, I like you, Jim. Like getting to know you again. And I really am glad you’re here, even if it’s not altogether evident from my actions. I guess I haven’t been feeling too good. And I’ve been taking it out on you.’

  ‘It’s hardly been an easy time.’

  ‘No.’ Raf sat down, his elbows on his knees, his chin propped on his hands. He gazed at the muddle of papers on the desk. ‘Sometimes, I feel everything’s running away with me. This Bernfeld business and the money, the blackmail, the thugs and their white slaves, all that on top of Olympe’s death. It makes me realise that there was so much about Olympe I didn’t know. She kept so much from me. So much.’ He leapt up to scrunch one of his own letters into a ball and fling it across the room, then with a sheepish look went to pick it up.

  ‘Maybe it was her way of being kind,’ James said softly. ‘She didn’t want to shatter your illusion of perfection. The sense you had of her.’

  ‘So she didn’t ask for my help. Was afraid to tell me, as if she thought I wouldn’t love her if she did.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘The way I sometimes used to be afraid of you. Still am now and again. My perfect big brother.’

  ‘The far from perfect big brother,’ James grumbled, ‘needs to get some sleep. You too, Raf. Let’s hope things look clearer in the morning.’

  The Dauphine had all the accoutrements of a chic establishment – striped awnings, clean, marble-top tables with curving ironwork, comfortable wicker chairs, an ample indoor area, where floors and counters sparkled, not to mention polite waiters and a clientele whose hats and parasols had evidently come from the best of establishments. James found himself agreeably surprised. He chose an indoor table in a quiet corner, drank a welcome café au lait, his first of the day, and waited for his appointment with the pianist. He didn’t, he realised, even know her full name.

  Raf had gone by the time he woke. It was already late. The note he had left had uncharacteristically thanked James for his patience and for buoying up his little brother. Raf explained that he was off to see Touquet to talk their findings over. He was planning to drop in on Louise Boussel again, too. And maybe later, they could all arrange to see Durand together and make a concerted attack on the direction of the Chief Inspector’s investigations. Only he could influence the magistrate.

  James glanced at his pocket watch. It was fifteen minutes past the appointed time. He began to think he had been naïve, a little too trusting. He should have bullied any information the woman had to give while he had her in front of him – whatever the consequences. Just as he reminded himself that at that point he had not been too keen for another confrontation with Marcel Caro, a stolid matron in a metallic blue dress appeared in front of him. It took him a moment, the sight of a gap-toothed half smile, to recognise in this stout, somewhat callous-faced, but really altogether ordinary personage, the pianist he was waiting for.

  ‘Monsieur …’ She didn’t meet his eyes.

  ‘Please. Do sit down. I had all but given you up. Madame …?’

  ‘Simone. It isn’t always easy to get away. To get away privately. I had to invent an errand. Some ribbon, some buttons for the girls’ clothes. I do a lot of sewing.’ She looked at her roughened hands with a melancholy expression.

  He ordered a pot of tea at her request, added some patisserie in the hope of easing her visible nervousness, then asked softly, ‘How long did you know Olympe Fabre?’

  The woman’s dark, hooded eyes filled with tears. ‘Poor little Rachel. Such a sweet child she was. Continued to be, too. She wasn’t ashamed of us. I couldn’t believe it when I heard.’

  James waited until she had wiped the corners of her eyes with a dainty hanky.

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘Oh it must be a month ago, now. Maybe more. She came to visit. She dropped in on us every now and again.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Well, me, really. She had this plan that when she had earned enough money, she and I and her sister, Judith, would take a place together and I would look after them both. It was her secret dream.’ Her plump cheek dimpled and she met his eyes at last.

  James had a sense that the dream was as much her own as Olympe’s.

  ‘You know Judith?’

  ‘I knew Judith first. We worked in the same … the same house once upon a time. Not Madame Rosa’s. Judith’s stay was brief. She became too ill.’ She paused as the waiter placed slabs of tart before them. Her eyes took on an avid glint. But she restrained herself. ‘What is your interest in us, Monsieur?’

  ‘My brother was in love with Olympe. We’re trying to find her killer. We’re helping the police.’

  She shivered. ‘I see. I wish I could help you.’

  ‘You may be able to.’ James eyed her keenly. ‘Was Olympe interested in the other … the other members of your establishment.’

  ‘She was a friendly soul, Monsieur. She talked to them from time to time. Tried to cheer them. Brought little presents.’

  ‘No more than that?’

  Her eyebrows rose. ‘She wasn’t like that, Monsieur. Not like some of the girls. At least I don’t think so.’

  James wasn’t sure he had caught her meaning. ‘What about Marcel Caro? What do you know about him?’

  Her fingers tightened around the fork she had picked up. Her face grew wary. ‘I don’t know the name.’

  ‘But he was there last night. A heavy man. Oily skin. Dark hair. A boxer’s face.
From what I understand he’s a regular.’

  As if James’s words had conjured the man up, he suddenly saw the mirror image of his portrait peering through the front of the café. Yes, it was Caro, a suited Caro with a straw hat on his head, his sallow cheeks bright in the warmth. He was sitting at one of the terrasse tables near the open door, his profile turned towards them. James wondered if he could hear their exchange. He must have followed Simone here. Either that or they were working together.

  ‘I can’t say that I’ve noticed him.’ Simone was saying. She swallowed a sizeable piece of tart. ‘I usually have my back to the salon.’

  ‘I think you’re lying.’

  ‘Really, Monsieur. That is quite uncalled for.’

  Bile rose in him, hot and black. He felt like slapping her, wiping away the show of propriety, the dainty way she brought the serviette to her lips. The source of his venom was a mystery to him.

  ‘And what’s called for, I suppose, is more sullied girls. Girls wooed from their distant homes and sold as slaves to your establishment. Slaves. You’re a coward and a liar, Madame.’

  ‘And you understand nothing. Nothing. And let me remind you that you seem more than willing to use these sullied girls,’ she scoffed, pushed back her chair.

  James gripped her arm. He pinned it against the table and simultaneously flashed a look towards the man on the terrasse. Caro was still there, a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

  ‘Explain to me what I don’t understand.’

  She glanced at his hand, seemed to consider the outcome of a struggle, then settled back, not without a flash of poison in her eyes.

  ‘What you don’t understand, Monsieur, with your gilded spoons and your fine clothes and your independent income, is that these girls, these girls wooed from their distant homes, as you so beautifully put it, are far, far better off as living flesh than as dead meat chopped up in some pogrom. They’re really no worse off than servants here. They’re not slaves. Now will you let me go. Please. You’re hurting me.’