Paris Requiem (30 page)

‘Why?’

He shrugged.

‘Maybe he didn’t match up to you and your brother’s
perfection
.’ There was a touch of acid in her voice.

James stared at her, grappling with some elusive meaning. ‘No, no,’ he stammered. ‘I think Father didn’t consider him altogether suitable. Or maybe it was Ellie herself. He wasn’t, as I remember it, quite up to her wit. And in the event, nothing came of it. I think he went back to California. No, no. Wait a minute … That came later. After Father had his first attack.’

‘His first attack?’

‘Yes. Ellie was wonderful. She nursed him. Nursed him through it. Had a cot moved into his room. Mother doesn’t like people being sick.’ Only as James said it did he realise the truth of it. It struck him as a treacherous thought. He gave Harriet a shamefaced glance. But the woman was off on her own tack, talking almost as if to herself.

‘So to Elinor it could seem that your father was at fault. Was the stumbling block on her path to marriage.’ She flushed as she said it. ‘I’m sorry this is unpardonably rude of me. I shouldn’t be interfering. It’s just … it’s just that I’m trying to make sense of what Elinor was saying.’

‘What was she saying?’

‘That. Blaming a man. Your father, I think.’ She waved her hand, wouldn’t meet his eyes.

He had a sudden vision of the histrionic blaze that would
attend any such accusation of Ellie’s, like an actress playing out her hour of tragedy in a litany of fierce adjectives. His father’s dying, demanding body.

‘Yet she adored him, you know,’ James said softly. ‘His little girl. His favourite.’

‘Perhaps the two aren’t mutually exclusive.’

He met her clear, intelligent gaze. ‘No, perhaps not,’ he paused. ‘And in her delirium, she took you for him.’

Harriet was silent.

‘What else did she say?’

Harriet shivered ‘She talked about your brother. I think it was about your brother. It was all mixed up.’

The doorbell rang and she rose with visible relief. ‘Let’s hope that’s the doctor.’

‘Harriet,’ he called her back. ‘Thank you for your patience. Your loyalty to Elinor.’

For a moment, she looked as if he had insulted her, had somehow taken on the wrong tone. Perhaps she thought he was treating her as a servant. ‘You’ve been …’ he faltered. ‘You’ve been a true, a generous friend.’

She turned away abruptly and made for the door.

Dr Ponsard listened attentively to their joint account of Ellie’s present plight. ‘Has anything happened since we met on Monday to distress her particularly?’

‘I’m afraid she insisted on coming to the funeral of a friend who died under somewhat suspicious circumstances.’ James was about to go on and tell him about the disgusting package which had made its way into the apartment, but held back. He remembered what the pathologist at the Salpêtrière had said about the political affiliations of the medical profession – though he couldn’t quite imagine that the kindly Ponsard would share such scurrilous views. In any event, there was no need. Ponsard was already making his way towards his patient.

In the dusky, curtained room, Ellie lay utterly motionless on the divan. She was like some pale effigy of herself. Her arms were folded across her bosom, her profile finely etched, as if some master mason had chiselled her replica on a tomb.

Panic clutched at James’s throat. Not another death. In the stillness, he thought he heard the faint rustle of ghosts –
Maisie
, Olympe, floating through the air to embrace his sister. He rushed to take Ellie’s hand. It was colder than stone.

‘Ellie, Ellie dear.’ His voice felt strangled. ‘Dr Ponsard has come.’

Her eyes fluttered open. ‘Jimmy. Hello Jimmy. Have I been asleep?’

He nodded, relieved that she recognised him, and kept hold of her hand.

‘Good day,
Docteur
, or is it evening?’ Ellie switched
effortlessly
into French. ‘Did we have an appointment for today?’ Her forehead creased into a puzzled frown.

‘Non, Mademoiselle,’ Ponsard took over. ‘But you’ve taken a turn and your brother asked me to come and see you.
Perhaps
the bromide I prescribed has had an adverse effect. I shall examine you and see what we can do to make you comfortable.’

‘Comfort,
Docteur
. I’m not altogether certain I remember what that is.’

The sound of Ellie’s familiar irony flooded through James like a benediction. He stepped aside to let the doctor take over.

Ponsard was smiling reassuringly. ‘We’ll do our best to remind you.’ He whisked a thermometer and stethoscope from his bag. ‘Perhaps Mademoiselle here can assist me.’ He gestured at Harriet. ‘I’ll need to take a little look at your chest.’

Harriet made to lower the blanket and unfasten the buttons of Ellie’s blouse.

Ellie stayed her hand. ‘Where’s Raf, Jimmy? Is he all right?’

‘He’s fine. Just fine. Working. What we need to worry about now is you. No one else.’

‘That’s kind of you, Jimmy. But perhaps you might worry about me from next door. Since they’re going to turn me into an anatomical study.’

‘Of course, of course.’ James scuttled from the room. As he closed the door behind him, he saw Ponsard take the box with its protruding wires from his bag. So he was going to apply electricity again.

James shuddered and went to sit in the dining room. He wondered how it was that Ellie could now be so different from the person Harriet and indeed Mrs Elliott had described. She seemed so very much herself again. Nowhere was there a trace of delirium, if it had been delirium. Ellie’s hand had been so cold, not at all feverish.

Not so very long ago he had read an article about what the writer called ‘altered states.’ Two or maybe three distinct consciousnesses inhabited the same person, yet the core one was not aware of the others. Mediums moved into
different
spaces when their spirits, or whatever they were, spoke through them, it was said. So did witches and saints long ago. But Ellie was none of those.

Was there any way of knowing why one state gave way to another and what controlled the slippery movement? Like becoming a new person everytime you crossed the threshold into a new room. Yet there must be something that held all the rooms together. Even the room in which the paralysed Ellie could miraculously walk. It was unutterably eerie that the Ellie who spoke to him and recognised him had no notion of that. Amnesia.

James searched his pockets for his pipe. He had forgotten it. He swore softly.

Maybe the mechanism which controlled the remembering and forgetting was as simple as that, as simple as his being completely unaware of how and why he had forgotten to tuck his pipe and tobacco pouch into his pocket. He must have left
them behind in Marguerite’s breakfast room late last night. So much had happened since then that it seemed an eternity ago.

He allowed himself the pleasure of thinking about the beautiful Madame de Landois for a moment and felt a
languor
creeping over his limbs. What had she done today while he was busy trailing the hapless Bernfeld and confronting the Chief Inspector? He let his mind play over the possibilities, saw her at the piano, at her easel. Saw her with Raf in his workers’ blues in some insalubrious café.

He shook himself and remembered that one of the letters he had picked up at the hotel seemed to bear her hand. Quickly he pulled out the envelopes and tore open the
appropriate
one. Yes, it was from her. He read quickly.

Marguerite had not been sitting at her piano. She had found that the nephew of a friend was an intern at the Salpêtrière and she was going to see him to ascertain whether he was an appropriate person to undertake the delicate matter they had talked about. The delicate matter of checking through the files of the recent dead at the hospital. Along the way, she had also learned that Dr Vaillant, despite his pronounced views on the subject of Jews, really did have an impeccable medical reputation.

James put the letter down and wondered whether he had leapt to wild conclusions simply because of the bewildering atmosphere of the hospital with its wards of raving patients. He considered Judith Arnhem for a moment and then with a helpless shrug, tore open a second letter.

It contained a telegram from his mother. Every sentence was a question or command, though the first might just as well have been the second, he thought treacherously. She wanted a firm date for their return, a prognosis for Ellie, and letters – particularly from Raf.

The third letter was a total surprise. It bore Touquet’s
signature
and it asked James if he was still ready to help out with
their investigations. If so, he should go to the Hotel
Monpi-quet
and/or the neighbouring Lafleur. There followed a list of instructions and a warning. Should he by any chance encounter the burly Marcel Caro, he was neither to tangle with him, nor ask any leading questions which might in any way
jeopardise
what was proving a delicate operation. Caro, it turned out, was a former member of the vice squad, had probably left it to line his pockets more luxuriantly.

James read the letter through twice, then steeling himself, went to knock on the door of the sitting room. Once Ellie was settled and asleep, he knew exactly where he had to go.

T
he night was hot, the air as close and muggy as an old blanket stale with perspiration. The street had not been electrified. Gas lamps cast yellow shadows furtive in their hurry, like the passers-by with their glinting downcast eyes and hunched shoulders. From somewhere a cat miaowled a high-pitched call. It merged into that of a wailing child.

James hesitated. The sign beneath the flickering lantern distinctly named his destination, but he didn’t like the look of the heavy door with its curled and peeling paint, the darkened, shuttered windows. A caped policeman paused on the opposite pavement to cast him a suspicious glance. James squared his shoulders, wondered for another moment how on earth he had got himself involved in such unsavoury business, and let the solid bronze knocker fall.

A man in an indeterminate uniform, somewhere between bellhop and circus ring-master, let him in, sizing him up with shifty eyes before leading him along a narrow hall. Halfway to the stairs, he opened the door on a large room.

James had an impression of peacock feathers and vast potted ferns, overstuffed sofas in plush, faded red, a musky
perfume and women – women dancing languorously arm in arm to the tinkle of an upright piano; women lounging on chairs; women seated at a table in an alcove, an array of cards spread before them. Women in bright silks and floating white chemises; women wearing nothing but corsets which revealed pale gartered legs and plump bosoms; women with hair piled atop their heads or floating halfway down their backs or demurely braided. At the piano, too, there sat a woman with heavy bare arms and fat folds in her neck and an aureole of frizzled hair. One of these women now stood before him. He forced himself to focus.

‘Bonsoir, Monsieur.’ She smiled at him from a gash of red and beckoned him through.
‘Venez, venez
. I’m Madame Rosa.’

She was a solid woman of about forty with an ample body swathed in coral satin which swished as she moved. She had lustrous black hair, heavy eyebrows and the shrewd features of a shopkeeper.

‘If I’m not mistaken, it’s your first visit. I have no doubt that my girls will be able to meet each and every one of your tastes. It was wise of you to come early.’ She winked at him, her expression openly lascivious as she directed him to a place on a sofa between two rouged creatures. They proceeded to disburden him of his jacket with little breathless moans of, ‘So hot tonight. What a summer.’

A moment later, there was a glass of wine in his hand and the Madame was murmuring, ‘Take your time. Look around, but if you want my recommendation, I think Clarice might suit you. Clarice,’ she said more loudly and one of the dancing figures turned in their direction, a pale pretty blonde, with a tiny waist and the wide sleepy eyes of a child. She smiled languorously, touched her hand to her high, pert breasts and continued with her dance.

The woman at his side was caressing his thigh. Warring sensations attacked him – revulsion coupled with a stirring in
his groin, a desire to flee and a strange, heavy passivity, which made immobility pleasurable, like the lull of a steaming bath.

He forced himself into alertness. He was here on business. And the place was slightly less sleazy than he had feared.

He stayed his neighbour’s fingers with his hand and turned to examine her more carefully. She was a tiny redhead with a smattering of freckles on the bridge of her nose and pale dilated eyes which met his with an absent stare that sat oddly with her pursed and inviting lips. With a polite smile, he got up to explore.

A woman waltzed into his arms, a gamine of a French girl, he was almost certain of that. He took a few turns with her and looked round. On a distant sofa, half obscured by a palm, there sat a more promising figure. He moved his partner towards her. The woman had the dark waving hair, sharp nose, almond eyes and matt complexion that might mean an Eastern origin. Beneath the exaggerated make-up, she looked astonishingly young, no more than seventeen he thought. Her bare shoulders were thin, birdlike and she had the slightly startled air of a forest creature trapped in the light. She held herself rigid, as if touch were not her trade. With a bow towards his partner, he sat down beside the girl.

She made herself small and moved away.

‘Eugénie!’ The Madame’s injunction and an admonishing nod woke her from her reverie and resulted in a tilt of the head and a forced smile in James’s direction.

James returned it. ‘Bonsoir, Eugénie.’

‘Bonsoir, Monsieur.’

There was an accent in her voice which boded well.

‘Why don’t you ask Monsieur to dance, Eugénie. You dance so well.’ Madame Rosa turned to stage-whisper archly at James. ‘She’s quite shy, Monsieur. New to us.’ She winked at him again and bustled away as two customers appeared at the door. There were other men, too, he now noticed, some
discreetly positioned in chairs, others dancing like him. From a first estimate, none of them seemed particularly
remarkable
, indeed rather more bourgeois than he had anticipated.

The girl moved delicately in his arms, not too close. He sniffed the cheap perfume of her hair and wondered how to begin his questioning.

As they danced, the vista of the room opened before him. From the card-players’ alcove, he now saw a small man emerge, a buxom corseted woman in tow. They disappeared through a back door. A moment later a different couple came through it, a stout, bearded man in a striped waistcoat and a statuesque brunette with the strong features of a biblical Judith who had just severed the head of Holofernes. James tripped over his partner’s feet as he stopped to look at the man. The recognition shocked him. Dr Comte. What was the man doing here?

He was suddenly aware that Eugénie was trembling,
edging
them in the direction of the piano, away from Comte. She buried her face in his shoulder, like a child seeking invisibility.

Could there be some nefarious connection between Comte and the brothel? James’s mind raced. Did he perhaps supply girls from the Saint-Lazare wards to the brothel keeper? He thought of Olympe’s friend, Louise Boussel, and
superstitiously
looked round for her. Then he averted his face, keeping his frightened partner in the shelter of the upright. Yes, it would make a kind of sense. He needed to talk to the woman Comte had been with. That was now imperative. But Eugénie was clinging to him.

‘Where are you from, Eugénie?’ he asked, to make use of his time.

The girl didn’t answer. She had all-but tucked herself against the wall and only kept up the motion of the dance with a slight, swaying of her body against his.

‘Are you from Russia?’ he hazarded.

Still she didn’t answer. He realised she was standing on tiptoe and peering over his shoulder. Keeping an eye on Comte’s movements, he thought. All at once her knees seemed to give way. Only the pressure of his arms kept her up. He half lifted her round in a twirl to see what had caused her panic.
Standing
by the door through which James had entered were Comte and a swarthy gorilla of a man, heads bowed in swift
conversation
. The swarthy man was glowering, angry about something.

Then Comte was on his way and the swarthy man was striding across the room as if he owned it, tapping a few bottoms as he went. He disappeared into the card-players’ alcove with Comte’s statuesque companion.

The woman at the piano was murmuring something to Eugénie in a language James couldn’t understand.

He took in her face for the first time. She was older, probably as old as Madame Rosa, gap-toothed and jowly, but with a blowsy bonhomie about her.

‘Take the girl upstairs, why don’t you, Monsieur.’ Her stubby fingers pounded at the keys while she spoke and never lost a beat. ‘She’ll please you well, you’ll see, even if she doesn’t speak much.’ She gave James a broad grin and
murmured
something in that foreign language again to Eugénie, who dutifully took his hand and led him to the corner door.

James followed recalcitrantly, his eyes straying towards the alcove. As they passed it, he saw Dr Comte’s partner. She was sitting, her legs provocatively crossed to show a length of thigh as she puffed at a cigarette. The swarthy man’s hand gripped her arm. He was whispering something in her ear. Whatever it was he said, made her clench her lips in a
stubborn
expression.

The man could just be the infamous Marcel Caro, Touquet had warned him about. The description fitted.

He wished he could abandon Eugénie and join the couple. But the girl was tugging at his hand and Madame Rosa
was suddenly beside them, nodding encouragement. He had an unhappy sense that if he left Eugenie now, she would pay dearly for it.

The girl led him up a short, steep flight of stairs to a warren of rooms, finally stopping at a nether door. She opened it with visible reluctance, then positioned herself on the edge of a bed which took up most of the room’s space. She looked up at him with wide, fearful eyes, as she slowly unhooked her bodice. Pale breasts emerged, soft, pink-tipped. He put out a staying hand, but she misinterpreted his gesture and shyly brought it towards her. He touched soft, smooth flesh and despite all his intentions, felt himself grow hard. With a flicker of self-disgust, he sat down beside her and after a moment started to stroke her hair.

‘Who is the man who frightened you so much downstairs, Eugénie?’ he asked. ‘I don’t like to see you frightened.’

She didn’t answer.

‘Is his name Marcel Caro?’

She trembled and he put an arm reassuringly round her.

‘How long have you been here, Eugénie?’

‘Three months,’ she whispered. Then, as if she had given away a secret and remembered her drill, she moved swiftly to work away at his buttons, to caress with a demure hesitation which moved him oddly so that he couldn’t bring himself to stop her hands. And a moment later, she was on her knees in front of him, her lips playing, her mouth warm round him and he forgot why he was here, forgot everything except the sensation of fluttering fingers on his groin, of heat and wetness and rushing breath and that sudden clarity of emptiness which was half pain, half pleasure.

Afterwards as he watched her wipe her lips and fingers neatly on a cloth and fasten her bodice again before
stretching
back on the pillows, he felt a mixture of shame and
desolation
. Her look was still timid, but she patted the place beside
her in open invitation. It was clear that she didn’t want to go back downstairs yet. Of course not. It would mean
confronting
another customer. Or perhaps Madame Rosa would think she had been too quick and hadn’t done her work adequately. With an inward sneer of self-derision, he took out his wallet and put what he thought must be a more than adequate sum on the night table beside her.

She looked at the money and smiled abruptly, a warm spontaneous smile, like a girl who had been given the Christmas present she had ardently wished for. She patted the cushions beside her again.

‘Three months in Paris,’ James took her hand. ‘That’s not very long. Where are you from?’

She fingered the chain at her throat. A charm hung from it. With a start, James stared at its shape. Yes, it was a Hebrew character mounted on gold, a character like the ones in
Bernfeld’s
letter that Arnhem had translated for him. A character like the one Raf had described to him on the charm Antoine had found in the depths of that underground shaft.

‘You’re Jewish?’ James smiled.

The girl started, then nodded without returning his smile. He stroked her hair again, gently.

‘Who brought you here?’

She shivered. ‘From the Ukraine,’ she whispered now.

‘I’m from Boston. From America.’

Her eyes lit up and she suddenly clutched his wrist and repeated, ‘America’. She repeated it again and again, as if the word itself were a charm. ‘I have cousin in America.’

‘Oh yes? Would you like to go there?’

Her delight turned to wariness again. James didn’t understand the shift.

‘That’s a pretty necklace. Does the letter mean anything?’

‘Chai,’ she said. ‘It means life. The man give it me. The man who supposed to bring me to America.’

‘Oh?’

Tears leapt into her eyes. ‘Instead bring me here. To work. To pay for my travel. But never be able to pay. Never enough.’ The tears spilled down her cheeks.

James patted her hand.

‘Did anyone come with you. From the Ukraine I mean.’

‘Two girls. But I don’t know where they go.’ She looked around her, as if someone might be eavesdropping. ‘Maybe you know them.’ She whispered two names.

James shook his head.

‘No. No, of course not. They change our names.’

‘Who?’

She stared at him for a long moment, then shivered. ‘That bad man. He meet us at the train.’

‘Marcel Caro?’

She leapt up, wrung her hands. ‘No, no, Maro. You know him?’

‘Only by reputation,’ James murmured, wondering if the girl had elided the name or whether it might be a nickname. He waited a moment. ‘And that other man, the doctor? Do you have anything to do with him?’

She wrapped her arms around herself as if she was suddenly cold, but her expression was defiant. ‘I’m clean. Clean.’

It came to James that Comte might extract services in return for medical visits. Yes, he could well be the brothel’s state-appointed medical examiner – a position which would allow for extortion on a smaller or larger scale. He turned his attention back to Eugénie.

‘Yes, yes. Of course you’re clean. Don’t be frightened,
Eugénie
. I only want to help you.’

Tears moistened her eyes. ‘Help? No one can help. Too late.’

‘It’s never too late, Eugénie. While you have life. Which reminds me, did you by any chance meet a young woman here called Olympe Fabre? Or Rachel Arnhem?’

The girl shook her head slowly. ‘Were they your special …?’

‘No, no. It’s not that. I’ve never been here before.’

Suspicion suddenly sharpened her features. She clutched at his arm. ‘Are you … are you police?’