Our Lady of Pain (10 page)

When he entered Le Salon des Aigles later to meet the rest of the party, he decided not to tell Rose she had been featured in the newspaper. She would only worry. The salon got its name from the medallions depicting Fortitude, Truth, Wisdom and Abundance, each flanked by large eagles.

He stood up as Rose entered the room, thinking she had never looked so beautiful. Her white gown was cut low and clung to her figure in the new long, soft line. It was decorated round the neck and down the front with blue fleurs-de-lis. A collar of pearls set off the whiteness of her throat, and pearls were woven into her brown hair. Over one gloved arm, she carried a ruffled chiffon cape of the same blue as the fleurs-de-lis. She moved gracefully towards him over the Aubusson carpets.

He kissed her gloved hand. “I have never seen you look so fine,” he said.

Rose smiled but reflected she had never felt so uncomfortable. Odette had lashed her tightly into a long corset and she wished she could escape somewhere and loosen the ties.

The duchess made her entrance. She was wearing a grey silk gown laden down with jewels. Again, she had so many diamonds on her head, her neck and about her person that Rose wondered how she could even move. Her jewels sparked fire from the Bohemian crystal objects which decorated the room.

“So we are all present?” said the Duchess. “Good. We’re off to Maxim’s.”

They could have walked because Maxim’s also fronted on the Place de la Concorde, but Becket was waiting for them in a newly hired Panhard.

The swing doors of the famous restaurant were held open for them. Hands relieved them of their wraps, although in the case of the duchess it took some time because her diamonds had become caught in her various scarves and stoles.

They made their way past the buffet with its elegant fringe of gilded youth, past the long line of tables to the end of the room, where there was an open space with more tables. A little farther and up two steps, and there was a section set about for dining with a view of the lower floor.

This was where they were to take supper. This is where the best-dressed and wittiest women dined with their male relatives and friends. Down below, a red-coated band was playing waltzes as couples whirled around. The whole restaurant seemed infused with a restless gaiety.

“I do not think any of the ladies dining around us are the type to know someone like Madame de Peurey,” said Rose.

“No, they’re not. But I see an old friend of mine. I shall wave. Ah, he’s coming over.”

An elderly roué bent over the duchess’s hand, his corsets creaking.

“You look ravishing,” he said. “You will take Paris by storm.”

The duchess introduced Harry and Rose, naming her elderly admirer as Lord Featherstone.

“Do sit for a minute, Jumbo,” she said. “Have some champagne.”

“Gladly. I shall feast my eyes on the divinity that is Lady Rose.”

“I wouldn’t do that, you naughty old thing. The captain here would call you out. I need to find a certain Madame de Peurey.

“Zuzu? That takes me back. What a wonder she was. They fought duels over her.”

“And where is she now?”

He cast an anxious glance at a formidable matron at his table. The duchess followed his glance. “I did not know you were married.”

“I’m not, yet. Postage-stamp heiress. Widowed. Wants the title and I want her money. I’d better get back.”

“Madame de Peurey. She was one of yours for a bit. Where is she?”

“Have you a piece of paper?”

Harry produced a small notebook and pencil. Featherstone scribbled an address. “Right, I’m off. I can feel my postage stamps disappearing by the minute.”

“You see?” said the duchess triumphantly. “I knew it would be easy. Now, let’s eat.”

Rose began to feel light-headed towards the end of the meal. Parisian gaiety frothed around her. Down on the floor, couples swung around in the waltz. The duchess broke off eating to greet old friends who had come up to her table.

“I never thought I knew so many people in Paris,” she said cheerfully. “I was sure they must all be dead.”

The supper consisted of eight courses. By the time the brandies and petits fours were served, Rose glanced at an elegant bronze clock on the wall. Four in the morning! Lucky Daisy. She would have been asleep for hours.

The Dowager Duchess carried an air of solid assurance which belonged to
a less uneasy age. That slightly raucous note of defiance was absent from
her pronouncements. She did not protest; she merely ignored. Nothing
unpleasant ever ruffled her serenity, because she simply failed to notice it
.

—
VITA SACKVILLE – WEST

Two bottles of champagne, seclusion and a magnificent double bed proved to be too much for Daisy and Becket. They were to be married, after all.

Daisy, despite her chorus-girl background, was still a virgin, but as she confided, giggling, to Becket, a dance number where she had to perform the splits five times a night in the past had no doubt eased the way to losing it painlessly.

The gaiety of Paris, the excited feeling that everything goes, had entered into them and they made a happy night of it. Even when Daisy dimly heard the party returning, she did not leap up in alarm but snuggled closer to Becket and closed her eyes in contented sleep.

They set out after lunch on the following day. Rose was delighted to see Daisy look so glowing and happy. Harry, on the other hand, eyed her narrowly, and hoped the wretched girl had not been doing anything she ought not to do.

They cruised along under the budding trees on the Bois, then through a toll gate and out past Neuilly and the Boulevard d’lnkermann to where Madame de Peurey’s large house was situated.

It was a large white villa, typical of the outer suburbs of Paris. Becket went ahead and knocked at the door, and when a maid answered it, presented their cards. She disappeared into the villa and returned after a short time. Becket turned round and beckoned to the party that they were to enter.

The maid bobbed curtsies as they entered and then moved to the front of the party and led them through large shady rooms to a garden at the back. Rose expected to meet an elderly woman, still beautiful and elegant, this famous coquette who was reputed to have broken so many hearts.

At first she thought that the round little woman who rose to meet them must be some sort of companion, but she said in a grating voice, “I am Madame de Peurey. To what do I owe the honour of this visit? Pray sit down.” She spoke English with a heavy, guttural accent.

They arranged themselves in cane chairs shaded by a vine trellis. Madame de Peurey was dressed in a narrow skirt and a blouse with a high-boned collar over which heavy jowls drooped. Her feet were encased in square-toed boots and she sat with her legs apart.

“As you will have seen from my card,” began Harry, “I am a private investigator and I am investigating the murder of Dolores Duval.”

“Poor Dolores,” sighed Madame de Peurey. “Without me, she would have given it all away. I took her to my lawyers when she embarked on her first liaison. Ah, what a success she was! Then the Baroness Chevenix started to scream that Dolores had stolen her jewels and it was all over
Gil Blas.” Gil Blas
was a journal which delighted in reporting the scandals of French society. “I advised Dolores to leave France for a little. I told her it was perhaps time she took the unfashionable route of getting married. We do not normally marry,” she said calmly. “But with the English milords marrying low creatures like chorus girls, well, I told her she could be a duchess.”

“Who were her friends?” asked Harry.

“Just me, I think. The others were jealous of her. She appeared from nowhere some years ago. Poof! Just like that. She told me she was brought up on a farm in Brittany.”

“Whereabouts in Brittany?”

“Saint Malo. She said the farm lay just outside.”

The air in the garden was becoming unseasonably warm. Madame de Peurey unselfconsciously hitched up her skirt to reveal muscular calves in black stockings.

“I do not wish to appear vulgar,” said Harry, “but did Miss Duval leave a significant sum of money?”

“She owned a pleasant villa near here and an apartment in the Sixteenth, and then, on my advice, she invested well in stocks and shares.”

Madame de Peurey rang a little silver bell on the table in front of her and when her butler appeared, she ordered tea. “And bring my album.”

The duchess, who had remained silent, raised her lorgnette. “Do you not wish you had led a decent life?”

Madame de Peurey threw back her head in a full-throated laugh. When she had finished laughing, she said, “And where would I be now? Worn out with childbearing and housework? Believe me, I am a success and
you
are impertinent.”

The duchess pretended she had not heard the last sentence.

“Ah, here is my album,” said Madame de Peurey. “Sit by me, Lady Rose, and I will show you what I was like in the old days.”

Rose moved her chair over next to the courtesan and opened the album. There were early photographs of madame riding a white horse in the circus. She had indeed been beautiful, like a plump cherub, all dimples and curls. “That’s me with my first, a timber merchant,” said Madame de Peurey. “I moved on up the social ladder after him. Now there is me with the next, the Viscount Patrick. Such legs he had! A great catch. And there is the carriage he bought me so that I could drive in the Bois.”

Madame de Peurey smelt strongly of a mixture of mothballs and patchouli. Rose longed to move her chair away. Harry came to her rescue. “I would like to see your photographs,” he said. “If I might change places with you, Lady Rose?”

Rose gratefully retreated to the chair he had vacated. She wished this odd visit would come to an end. Daisy had fallen asleep, her face turned up to the sunlight filtering through the trellis of vines. Rose watched Harry as he bent his dark head over the photographs and felt a sudden frisson of desire. He looked up at that moment and gave a little half smile. Rose blushed, lowered her head and played with her fan.

Tea arrived. Madame prattled on about her past but they could not find out any significant information about Dolores or why she had been killed. The duchess barely said a word. She considered such persons as Madame de Peurey highly undesirable and so she simply pretended the woman wasn’t there. Any qualms she might have had about Rose being in such company were suppressed by her thoughts that her ducal presence was enough to bestow respectability on the flightiest girl.

Back at the hotel, Harry suggested they should travel to St. Malo on the following day. The duchess grumbled, but Rose wanted to go and Rose had to be chaperoned.

The weather was still fine when they set out with Becket at the wheel. Daisy had enjoyed another night of passion and was pleasantly sleepy. They decided to check into a hotel when they arrived at Saint Malo. Dolores had been photographed for a postcard—postcards of famous beauties sold well—and Harry had bought several to show around the town to see if anyone recognized her.

Daisy was disappointed when she found that her room adjoined Rose’s and so there would be no chance of a night in Becket’s arms.

The following morning, Harry told them all to relax and look around the town while he went off with Becket to see if anyone knew of the farm where Dolores had lived.

Rose and Daisy walked along the ramparts of the fortress town. A steamer advertising Chocolat Meunier lay below them in the harbour, being boarded by tourists.

Daisy was dying to confide in Rose, but decided against it. She felt sure Rose would put down her loss of virginity to her low background.

Harry moved farther and farther out into the countryside, stopping at farms and showing them Dolores’s photograph. He was about to give up because the light was failing and he was tired and dusty when he saw a little farmhouse set up on a rise.

He ordered Becket to drive up to it and got stiffly out of the car, his old war wound throbbing.

Harry knocked at the door. A child answered it and stared up at him. Harry, in slow and careful French, asked if he might speak to her father or mother. She was pulled aside by a young woman who demanded to know Harry’s business. He showed her the photograph of Dolores. She stared down at it and then jerked her head as a signal that he was to follow her indoors.

A family were seated around a kitchen table having their evening meal. There seemed to be three generations—grandparents, parents and three children. A pot of cassoulet stood in the centre of the table and the kitchen smelt sweet from the bunches of herbs hanging from the rafters. The woman who had called him in explained the reason for his visit and the photograph was passed from one work-worn hand to the other.

When it got to the old man at the head of the table, he said something and Harry caught the name Betty.

He approached him. “Do you recognize this woman?”

“Looks like our Betty,” said the old man.

“Your granddaughter?”

“No. She came along out of nowhere one day. In a bad way she was. No shoes. Hungry. We gave her food and then said she could stay if she worked on the farm. Said her name was Betty. That was all.”