Shallow Be Thy Grave (16 page)

“God. I can’t believe she didn’t tell me. Give us a hand with these carrier bags.” Grace took her door keys out of her pocket. “What now?”

 “I wanted to ask you some more questions.”

Was it Lily’s imagination or did Grace’s cheeks turn pink? “I’ve told you everything I know.”

“What do you know about Monsieur Beaumont?”

This time, Lily was quite certain she wasn’t imagining things. Grace’s complexion definitely turned darker. Lily pulled a couple of carrier bags from her hand and carried them up the steps. “Let’s go inside. I need you to tell me everything.”

Once the bags were in the kitchen, Lily sat on a bar stool and stared at Grace. “How long’s she been having an affair with him?”

“You know?” asked Grace. She put her own carrier bags up on the table but made no move to unpack them.

“I want you to tell me.”

“She was trying to end it,” said Grace. “Well, most of the time. But he wouldn’t let her - kept persuading her to change her mind. He’s very persuasive. Apparently, I mean. I tried everything to get her to see sense. But you know how stubborn she is.”

“Does his wife know?”

“Fiona says not, but I don’t know. I mean for one thing, it’s practically expected for French men to have affairs, and he chases anything that breathes. She’s not stupid. She’s a lawyer.”

  “Is that why Fiona moved out?”

“The guilt was too much. Seeing them together. I think she hoped he’d make up his mind, decide - if he wasn’t getting his cake and eating it. I told her men like that never leave.”

“What does Brigitte think?”

“I don’t know. Brigitte isn’t the easiest person to get along with. To be honest when her and Fi became best friends,” Lily could hear the bitterness in Grace’s tone, “I didn’t see Fi half as much. Brigitte thinks I’m a spoiled rich kid.” Grace shrugged her shoulders as if to say she wasn’t bothered but Lily wasn’t fooled.

“You don’t think,” Lily stared up at the ceiling, wondered whether she had the strength to say it out loud. “You don’t think, Monsieur Beaumont might have…”

“Killed her?” shrieked Grace. “Oh my God, you don’t think she’s dead, do you?”

“No.” Lily said quickly. Then she paused. “Jo thinks it’s a possibility.”

“No,” Grace’s bright blue eyes filled with tears.

“No one’s spoken to her for over a week now,” said Lily. She started unpacking the carrier bags she’d carried in. She had no idea where anything went so just piled the shopping on the worktop. “No one knows where she is. We’re going to go to the police this evening. But Jo’s worried. Do you know where Brigitte’s from?”

“She’s always really vague.” Grace moved across the room to the fridge. It was the biggest fridge Lily had ever seen and when Grace opened the door, Lily’s couldn’t believe how much food it contained. Every shelf was rammed full of cakes, jars, items she didn’t recognise.

Grace returned to the table with a large chocolate cake on a plate, cream spilling out of it on all sides. She pulled a knife from the drawer and cut two quarters. “I’ve always suspected she’s from the East.”

“East what?”

“Eastern Europe. But she’s been living in France for at least a couple of years I’d have said. She’s totally fluent.”

Lily shook her head as Grace offered her one of the pieces of gateau. She took a seat on one of the bar stools. “I don’t know what to do. Fiona’s probably mentioned, I gate-crashed her life once before.”

Lily glanced at Grace, to see how much Fiona might have told her about their shared past. Grace didn’t say anything, but then her mouth was full of cream cake. Lily had a flash of memory, a picture of her mother, cheeks like a hamster’s. She tried to shake the memory from her mind.

“We don’t want to get them into trouble,” Lily carried on. “But where are they? Why haven’t they rung anyone?”

Grace didn’t speak for a few moments, and Lily knew she was trying to digest the indigestible. Lily should know, she was still having stomach cramps. She laid the empty carrier bag on top of the pile of shopping.

Finally, just as Lily was fighting back a Slimmer’s World recommendation, Grace swallowed and said, “He is sleazy - Philippe Beaumont.” She paused a moment and Lily could see she was trying to decide how much to say.

“You’ve got to tell me everything. I’m her sister.”

 “One of the other nannies said he made a pass at her. While he was with Fiona. Don't tell her I said that.” She hesitated again, poked at Lily’s unwanted piece of gateau with her fork, and said slowly, “But I still can’t see him hurting anyone.”

“What if Fiona had threatened to tell his wife?”

Grace considered this as she started on Lily’s gateau. The fact she didn’t immediately dismiss the idea worried Lily. She lit a Lucky Strike.

 “What about Brigitte?”

Lily exhaled, felt immediately calmer. Was this the feeling food gave to people like Grace? She couldn’t imagine it was. “What do you mean?”

“Well, even if we were to imagine him capable of killing Fi, why would he kill Brigitte? I mean, they’ve both disappeared.”

Lily didn’t answer.

“There’s another explanation,” said Grace, slowly. “I mean, it doesn’t help us any, but what if Brigitte’s family got hold of them before they left?”

“It’s possible,” she conceded. “Me and Jo are staying at Brigitte’s flat.” Lily noted Grace’s confused expression. “They, they left a window open.”

Lily coughed and then found she couldn’t stop so went to the sink to help herself to a glass of water. When she’d finally got her airways back under her own control she looked across to Grace. “This bloke came round the other night.”

“There’s bottled in the fridge.”

“Have you ever heard Fiona mention someone called Bruno?”

Grace shook her head, but her mouth was again full of chocolate cake.

“Madame Beaumont said Brigitte was working as a prostitute. Do you think that’s true?”

Again Grace didn’t deny the accusation with the speed and vehemence Lily was looking for. Instead, she seemed to take the accusation at face value, “God, really?”

Lily watched her weigh up the information, seeing whether it slotted into the jigsaw she had built of Brigitte’s life. Lily knew she wasn’t dismissing it. “Well, Fiona certainly never told me that. God, this is really serious. I wish I’d...”

Whatever regrets Grace had, she didn’t share them. Instead, she forked another mouthful of cake. “You’re going to have to go to the police.”

“Do you know where I might find Beaumont?” Lily asked. “He’s not at his office. I saw him jump into a cab.”

“He has a flat. It’s tiny. Fi took me there once. It’s basically a room with a double bed and a sink, but the way Fiona was about it, you’d have thought it was a palace.”

“He has a flat?”

“I think he wanted her to move in, so that he could drop in for sex any time he pleased. I didn’t say that, of course. We went to the market and she bought a wall hanging.”

“Have you got the address?”

“It’s on Rue St Honoré – I don’t know the number, but I can describe it to you. There’s a doorman. They’re like serviced apartments, or something. I think they’re called Saint Paul Apartments.”

“And Fiona had a key?”

“Yeah. She’d meet him there on her afternoon off.”

Lily’s heart suddenly leaped at this new piece of information. She’d found a place where Fiona and Brigitte might be hiding. And if it was as small as Grace was saying it was, then it might explain why they hadn’t taken all of their stuff.

“I’m sorry,” said Grace.

 Lily glanced across the room and realised the au pair was crying.  She’d crumpled into an almost foetal shape by the washing machine. Lily got down off her bar stool, and then hovered, unsure what to do. “What’s up?”

The sobs got louder. “I’ve been a terrible friend. I was jealous, when she met Brigitte. I felt like she just dropped me. And now she’s in trouble and I’m probably her closest friend in Paris and I don’t know where she is.”

How do you think I feel? thought Lily but she didn’t say the words out loud. Couldn’t bear to allow herself to acknowledge the guilt that lay, a still pool, in her stomach. “Well, look, don’t cry. I mean there’s no point. We’ll find her.”

But even as Lily said the words, she knew she didn’t believe them.

Lily checked the time before leaving Grace, still sniffing into her chocolate cake, in the house. Tears frightened the shit out of Lily, always had. She was both repulsed by and envious of people who gave in to their emotions like that. How easy life would be if she could only curl up in a ball and cry her friggin’ heart out.

It was half past two. She had enough time to find this pad of Beaumont’s. Grace had lent her a street map of Paris and marked the exact location of the flat. ‘A knocking shop, a doss house’, Lily heard Aunt Edie’s voice in her head. She wondered briefly whether she should go back and pick up Jo and Stuart, but they might not get back until six o’clock. The idea that Fiona might be holed up, there in the Love Shack, alive and well, was more excitement than Lily could stand. She rolled a cigarette and hurried to the nearest underground station.

She felt at home on the Metro, loved its Art Deco vibe. She had the sudden realisation that she could be part of this city. She loved the size of it, the pace - the stylish people going about their business and the fact that she was totally anonymous. Ok, people still stared at her dreadlocks, but for the first time in her life she was living in a place where no one knew her. The fact that there was no chance of bumping into anyone she knew was liberating and intoxicating. In Leeds, even though she and Jo kept themselves pretty much to themselves, she knew they had a reputation. In fairness, they were difficult to ignore. But here, in this city where she couldn’t speak a word of the language she had a flash of a feeling she at first had difficulty placing. She felt like she belonged.

 She found the Saint Paul apartments without any trouble, located next door to the Patisserie that Grace had described, with astounding attention to detail. The building itself was tall, sandy white stone, with ornate lanterns on either side of the front entrance. Lily took a deep breath and entered the glass cocoon that enshrined the automatic revolving doors.  She was spewed out the other side, into a grand, marble-floored entrance hall. It took her a moment to get her bearings, see the lift opposite and move towards it. She hadn’t taken more than three steps when a doorman, wearing the kind of uniform a porter in an Agatha Christie novel would wear, put out a restraining arm. He said something to her, from the inflection she guessed it was a question, but she didn’t understand a word. She pulled a face at him, which she hoped conveyed the information that although she clearly didn’t belong her, she was no threat and should be allowed to go about her business unimpeded. Grace hadn’t been able to remember the number of the apartment, only that it was on the fourth or fifth floor. Lily had been hoping she’d be able to go door to door, banging on each one if necessary, until she found Fiona. The doorman looked like he had other ideas. He said something else to her, or possibly it was his first sentence repeated.

“Monsieur Beaumont,” Lily said, trying to look like she knew exactly where she was going. The doorman shook his head and muttered another string of incomprehensible nonsense. What was it about French? thought Lily. She couldn’t tell where one word stopped and another started.   She did that thing that all foreigners do when they aren’t being understood. She shouted. Slowly. “I. Need. To See. Monsieur Beaumont.”

The doorman shook his head. Lily couldn’t decide whether he was saying he didn’t know a Monsieur Beaumont, or whether he was just saying he wasn’t in today.

“I need to go to his apartment. Emergency.”

The old man didn’t seem impressed. He made a movement with his hands, like he was bouncing a basketball. Lily knew he wanted her to calm down, but knowing that this could all be over in moments - or still miles from being solved - made her tetchy. “He’s kidnapped my sister! Kidnap?” She grabbed his arm, and pulled him towards her, trying to simulate a kidnapping. “Taken her away. I need to find her. I’ll call the police.”

The doorman pulled her over to the front desk and pointed to a deep red leather chair. He beckoned her to sit in it while he disappeared behind the desk and into a small room that looked like an office, not that Lily could see very much. She sat in the chair and waited, assuming the doorman was ringing up to Monsieur Beaumont’s flat. What would she say to him? She was tired and hungry, she realised as she connected the pains in her stomach with the fact she hasn’t eaten anything all day. She felt the buzzing, the jangling of her thoughts and knew she was dangerously close to the edge.

A moment later the doorman was back. “Une momento, s’il vous plait.’

Lily took a breath. Finally she’d got the message through. A surge of feeling swept her body - maybe Fiona was on her way down right now. “Fiona?”

The doorman nodded and returned to his position, behind the desk.

Lily felt faint. “Merci,” she said to the doorman. Her eyes fixed on the lift, waiting to see a sign that it was on its way down. Three minutes later she got her wish. The numbers above the lift lit up to indicate someone was travelling down from the sixth floor. Lily felt her mouth dry as she watched the number of the floors light up in descending order. Six, five, four, three.  She held her breath, so engrossed in the countdown she didn’t notice the two male security guards appear by her side, until one of them actually spoke to her. “We would like you to come with us outside please,” said the man nearest to her.

“I’m here to see my sister,” said Lily, not taking her eyes off the lift. “Don’t you dare touch me.”

“Your sister is not living here.”

“And how do you know that? You haven’t even asked me her name.” At that moment the lift doors peeled apart and a dark, well-dressed woman stepped out. The realisation that it wasn’t Fiona hit Lily like a punch. The woman’s carefully made up face frowned momentarily, on seeing Lily standing in the foyer. Like Lily wasn’t the kind of person she was accustomed to seeing when she stepped out of the lift.