They were, he decided, one of the artist’s boxes writ large, a number of smaller rooms surrounding the main workshop with the hands on the wall. Each held boxes in various stages of completion, from bare wood through everything but the glass covering. He suspected that the contents of the rooms were linked in Moreau’s mind, although it was impossible to connect them into any kind of theme: one room had bones, but also a dozen woven baskets containing nails and snips of wire. In another, all the contents were circular, from coins to tiles to the decorative ends of stick-pins. A third room had a lot of bird-related objects—skeletons, feathers, and broken eggshells—but also contained a sheaf of photographs showing opera singers, moving-picture actresses, young children of both sexes, and apparently random shots of streets, many of them blurred as if a camera’s shutter had gone off accidentally. They could easily have been the work of Man Ray, but none were of Pip Crosby.
Sarah’s voice in the next room had taken on the strangled accents of desperation—Moreau seemed to be exhorting her to pull off her hand, that he might examine it—and even though Stuyvesant was not finished, he laid down the photos and went to her rescue. He had seen what he needed—or rather, he had seen what he was not permitted.
Moreau’s guilty glance had been in the direction of a sturdy set of shelves that almost looked as if they were mounted against a wall. Almost.
“Thank you, M. Moreau,” he said, heartily plunging his own grip between the man and Sarah. “I have to say, your Displays have that … how could I put it? That frisson of visceral excitement that a person only encounters in the presence of True Art. If I happen to find any exciting objects, I’ll be sure to keep you in mind. C’mon, Sarah, let’s leave the man to his work.”
And before Moreau could object, Stuyvesant retrieved the photograph of Pip Crosby which the artist had quietly tucked in beneath the others: he wasn’t about to leave the girl with this weird man. He then herded his accomplice back the way they had come, through the rooms and up the stairs to the startlingly bright entranceway.
At the gate, he spotted a box with a hinged top, mounted against the wall. Gingerly, he lifted the top, then leaned forward to see what was inside: a dead rat with one black ear. He dropped the lid and trotted to catch up with Sarah, already halfway down the block.
As he drew near, her steps slowed, and she shot Stuyvesant a glance under the brim of her cloche. “Thank you for coming to my rescue.”
“No, thank you, for distracting him so I could have a look around. What a lunatic!”
“And what on earth was that you said, about a frisson of excitement?”
“Visceral excitement, don’t forget the visceral. Some artists were talking in the bar the other day, must have been about Moreau’s boxes.”
“Ah, that explains it. I could hardly keep a straight face when you came out with that, it was so unlike you.”
“What, you don’t think I have an appreciation for art?”
“I know you do, but not for Didi’s sort of contraptions.”
“I will admit, they have a way of getting under your skin. Which I guess is what those guys were trying to say, but—Jesus. Fossilized crap? I can see why the neighbors put a rat in his box.”
“The rat is a gift, not a comment. That’s how Didi will view it, anyway.”
“What does he do with dead rats?”
“Puts them in one of his corruption boxes. I suppose I should have shown them to you, but really, I can’t bear thinking about them. There’s a kind of beetle that eats flesh, and he has a bunch of them that he uses to clean the bones.”
“Inside his house? That’s … disgusting.”
“I know. And something even more disturbing? Do you know what he said to me, the first time I met him? I came to see if he could make me a hand, and he’d been examining my wrist, making a mold, and doing sketches of my right hand for comparison. He said, ‘I regret I do not have your bones.’ At the time, I thought he meant there was some way he could rebuild my hands around the bones.”
“He didn’t?”
“I think he just wanted the bones. He buys … bits from the hospital, when—Oh, really, that’s enough. I can’t talk about it. Do you think it’s too early for a drink?”
But again Harris Stuyvesant was not listening to her. Harris Stuyvesant was staring off into the Paris street, his eyes seeing a box full of beetles.
If you had a body on your hands, and you wanted its bones …
He shook himself. Jesus Christ, Harris, your imagination is going berserk around all these artsy types.
THIRTY-TWO
IT WAS NEVER too early for a drink in Paris, although the tables were mostly empty. He pulled out a chair for Sarah well away from the only other customers, an elderly couple with matching glasses of wine and a tiny quivering dog on the woman’s lap. When they had ordered, he offered Sarah his silver case, and lit their cigarettes.
She closed her eyes and tipped her face to the sun.
The contrast with Nancy Berger’s gesture three days earlier was striking—Sarah Grey wasn’t about to give a public moan of pleasure—but more than contrast, Stuyvesant was hit by a memory. The first time he’d seen Sarah was also in sunlight, the bright spring sunshine of an English garden in bloom: pale hair blazing, a tilt of mischief to her head, laughter in her eyes. A sight guaranteed to lift a man’s heart. Even a man not already inclined towards small, curvy, golden-haired women.
“So, Harris, what have you been up to all this time?”
Waiting for you. “Like I said, doing odd jobs for odd people. Right now I’m looking for Pip Crosby.”
“Without much success.”
“Unfortunately. Although at least it brought me to you.”
The feeble joke made her turn away from the sun; made her sit forward to scrape cigarette ash into the little tray. Made her raise her defenses against him.
He’d known since he saw her at Bricktop’s on Wednesday. He’d seen it last night, and it had been standing in front of him for the past hour. No, be honest: it had been in front of him for three years, in Sarah’s absence and Bennett’s silence.
This was not the sunlit young woman he’d fallen in love with. That Sarah was gone.
The Sarah Grey before him was someone else entirely, her personality as radically transformed as her poor body. He’d tried—he was still trying, like mad—to cling to that vision of Sarah, the shining, carefree, blaze of a girl; trying to look past the thin face and guarded eyes to the exuberance that had captured his soul.
And he failed.
Because her eyes? He’d seen that look before, in soldiers coming back from the Front; in the victims of violence; in those whose trust had been betrayed.
Sarah Grey had walked through dark places, alone. A part of her would forever remain in darkness.
Oh, God. If he’d moved faster, in April 1926. Just a little faster …
“Harris, you look unhappy. What’s wrong?”
He studied her face, and saw both fear of what he was going to say, and the determination to let him say it. Courage like that took a man’s heart and wrung it out.
So he smiled, and he lied. “There’s nothing wrong, honey. I just was thinking, I feel like I ought to introduce myself.”
Whatever she saw in his face gave her pause. After a moment, she set her defenses aside along with her cigarette, to extend her hand across the table.
“How d’you do,” she said in a posh accent. “My name is Sarah Grey.”
At the touch of her, that warm little paw in his, feelings threatened to spill back, but he forced them down. “Harris Stuyvesant, at your service.”
“Are you an American, sir?”
“Sure as shootin’, ma’am. And you like Americans.”
“I did, once upon a time. These days, I know rather too many of them to be impressed by a mere accident of nationality.”
“How sensible of you.”
“I am a sensible person, Mr. Stuyvesant.”
It was a
warning. He smiled. “I can see that.”
After a moment, she returned his smile, and if it lacked the wattage of a spring day in an English garden, it was nonetheless real.
Peace, declared and accepted.
The glasses arrived, and he watched as she grabbed hers and put half of it down her throat. “You really don’t like that little man, do you?”
“I loathe him. Although as I said, his lack of social graces is hardly reason enough to shun him.”
“It’s a lot more than bad manners and standing too close. If I were you—if I were any woman—I’d take care never to be alone with him.”
“Oh, Harris, you can’t think …”
“I can. I do.”
“But my dear man, the fellow is an absolute invertebrate. Even I could knock him cold.”
“So long as you didn’t accept a drink from him first.”
Her green eyes went wide. “You really believe …? I couldn’t imagine … Well, actually I sort of could imagine. How awful of me. But you may be right. Although I’m not sure how I’d explain to Dominic that I can’t make any more deliveries to his pet artist.”
“Tell him your fiancé objects.”
“Ah,” she said. “Yes. About that …”
“Are you actually engaged? You don’t have a ring.”
“I’m going to marry him,” she said firmly.
“I take it he doesn’t know? About me?”
“He does now, more or less. I hated to do it, because he has something that’s taking up all his time at the moment, but he had to know. Look, Harris—”
“I’m happy for you, really. Even though I’d love to rip out his guts and decorate the Pont Neuf with them.”
She chose to see only the joke, and let her eyes give him a low-wattage sparkle.
“So, tell me about your cop,” he said. “How’d you meet?”
He took great care to keep his face polite, interested. That of a friend, not of a man. With no trace of the dreams inhabited by green eyes, the string of noncommittal affairs, the three years of sticking close to London …
Friends.
And whatever else she saw in his face, whatever memories she had or suspected in him, she did see the friendship.
“Coincidentally, he was doing what you are now: looking for a missing girl. But then, that’s his job, missing persons.”
“When was that?”
“Almost exactly a year ago,” she said. She’d been sitting with a book in the Jardin des Plantes when Doucet came through the park with the photograph of a pretty, pale-haired girl. The conversation had quickly wandered from his missing girl to her book, and her nationality, then to the weather (Sarah being, after all, British). Before long they found themselves at a table with cups in front of them, followed somewhat later by a second table, with glasses. The next day there was a visit to the girls’ school where she was working, and the following day, he enlisted her help in a tour of Montparnasse cafés, and after that …
He’d been clever, Stuyvesant had to give Doucet that. He’d seen at once that although Sarah would instantly reject a romantic advance, she might be cajoled into helping him. And once under her guard, he could work on her softer side.
The sympathy in his face may have slipped, just a little, after several minutes of besotted conversation, because Sarah stopped. “Oh, Harris, you don’t care for all that! What about you? Has it really been three years of odd jobs?”
“Hasn’t your brother mentioned what I’ve been up to?”
“Not in a while. I thought you said you hadn’t seen him?”
Stuyvesant made a mental note to slap Bennett Grey around a little, next time he was in arm’s reach. “I haven’t, but I send him a lot of picture postcards.”
“If they’re color pictures, the neighbor lad probably steals them.”
“Robbie? You may be right. But I’ve been around. A job here, a job there. Driver for an American movie director looking for a castle. Bodyguard. Three or four missing persons. Plongeur—dishwasher—in a high-class restaurant. Doorman in a house of ill repute. That one was … different.”
“I’ll bet! Were the girls all beautiful and pampered? Or, ill-treated and searching for a patron?”
“Sarah Grey, you are reading all the wrong sorts of novels. The girls were perfectly nice and well behaved.”
She didn’t believe him. It took some doing to convince her that the girls had been surprisingly conservative, even prim, outside of their bedrooms. (He, personally, having had no experience of the interior of those bedrooms. Of course not.) Talk and drinks brought color to her face. It was all very amiable.
And if there was a grinding sound deep in the breast of Harris Stuyvesant, a noise that came from suppressing the impulse to pull her head forward and kiss her hard, he took care to keep it well concealed.
She gave her wrist-watch a glance, and exclaimed at the passage of time. “I need to go pretty soon. I have a thousand things to do before next week.”
“What’s next week?”
“The full moon event in the catacombs. Dominic’s calling it a Danse Macabré, although there may not be enough room for dancing. Have you already forgotten the invitation you forced him to make?”
“I doubt I could force that man to do anything, and yes, I do remember. Although I don’t remember anyone mentioning catacombs. Why there?”
“Because it’s Dominic.”
“Okay. But if it’s a full moon event, why hold it underground?”
“I know, and with the equinox only five days later.”
“And Christmas just around the corner.”
That lovely chortle, twisting his heart. “Not entirely a non-sequitur, in fact. But it’s what he wanted, so it’s what I’ll do. I should warn you, it’s formal.”
“Not the usual collection of Montparnasse bums, then?”
“A few. Those who can be trusted not to wear corduroy and sandals.”
“Are there any?”
“Absolutely. Haven’t you ever seen Djuna Barnes in full plumage? And Man Ray’s new girl, she’s something.”
“Lee Miller.”
“You’ve met her?”
“Something’s the word.”
“The sort of girl who makes me feel short and dumpy.”
“Never that.”
“Thank you, Mr. Stuyvesant.”
“What about Didi Moreau? Is he coming?”
“Lord, no. Not even Dominic can make him a reasonable party guest.”
“You know, it’s funny, I’d never heard of Moreau before I got here, but this week I’ve seen those Displays of his all over. Even Pip had a couple.”
“That’s what happens when you have a patron like Le Comte.”
“They’ve known each other long?”
“No, in fact I put the two of them together, a year and a half ago.”
“Quick work.”
“Didi’s a disturbing personality, but his work is solid. Profound, even.”
“I’ll take your word for it. What about your brother—what does he make of your new crew?”
“Bennett’s visit was before I started working for Le Comte. Are you asking if my big brother has vetted my boss?”
“Nah, I’m just curious what he made of them all. He’s a clever man, your brother.”
“When it comes to weeding out the disreputable, you mean.”
“Not too sure about that—he seems to like me okay, which doesn’t say much for his judgment.”
She laughed, then glanced at his suit. “Harris, perhaps I shouldn’t say anything, not knowing your financial situation, but if you have a smidge extra cash, you might see that your dinner jacket is up to snuff.”
“I may not be grand enough for your crowd, eh?”
“They’re not my crowd, and it only matters if you want to blend in. And, maybe your shoes …”
He stood up before he could say something asinine. “I’ll see what I can do. Thanks for taking me to see that very odd egg.”
“When I rob his house,” Stuyvesant vowed, “your boss will never find out.”
“Harris! You’re not going to rob the poor fellow!”
“Wouldn’t think of it,” he said, adding silently: Not today, anyway.
He offered her his right arm. She hesitated. He looked down—and remembered. “Oh, Jesus. Sorry, other side.”
“No, that’s okay,” she said, and threaded her left arm through his right elbow.
He couldn’t help glancing at the hollow metal fingers resting on his sleeve. The paint was worn at the tips, the thumb dented and bent a fraction outward with an impending crack at its base. He impulsively reached his hand over to cover it, although whether to warm it or to conceal it, he couldn’t have said. He squeezed her arm into his side, feeling the straps that covered her flesh-and-blood forearm.
“It really is all right,” she said. “It was hard at first, of course, but now it’s mostly frustration, when I can’t figure out how to do something with it. I may actually go back to a hook and just ignore the stares. At least I’d be free of Didi.”
He stopped moving, but she tightened her arm to keep him from facing her.
“Harris, I need you to be my friend about this. Please, please don’t act like Bennett. Every time he looks at my hand he goes all tragic, as if he’d set the bomb. I was not a child, remember. I made a choice; I watched a friend die; I live with the consequences. Not you. Not Bennett. Don’t try to take that away.”
His left arm gathered her in, until she was leaning against his chest with his chin on her cloche.
He understood. To believe she’d caused a friend’s death was hard enough; to think she’d done so through a well-intentioned accident—that would be intolerable.
But he also knew the truth. Sarah Grey was guilty of nothing but loyalty and friendship and the passionate commitment to a cause she believed in. That it was the men in her life who bore the blame: her would-be lover, Harris Stuyvesant, who had failed at his job; her brother, Bennett, who had made a choice that threw her to the fire.
The Bones of Paris Page 19