The Alice Network

by Kate Quinn

  “Au revoir.” Eve reached over to his plate, picked up a toast point, ate it slowly. “‘I must lie down where all the ladders start, in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.’”

  “That’s not Baudelaire,” he said.

  “Yeats. I told you to find another poet.” Eve picked up her hat. “In that foul rag and bone shop you call a heart, René, take the time to admit you are afraid. Because your fleur du mal has come back.” She took Charlie’s arm in a grip like steel and turned for the door. “Sleep on that.”

  CHAPTER 39

  CHARLIE

  I stopped outside the restaurant and stood gulping for air, as though I’d just stumbled out of a poison cloud. I could still hear that flat metallic voice telling me he’d reported Rose to her death just to be safe. That it had pleased him.

  Eve had described him so often. The unwavering eyes, the long fingers, the elegant surface. But she had not done him justice. That hadn’t been a man sitting across the table from me. It had been a human viper.

  I wanted to be sick. But Eve moved past me, heading down the street nearly at a run, and I forced myself into motion.

  “Eve, we don’t have to run.” Dashing to catch up. “He’s not coming after you.”

  “No.” Eve never stopped. “I’m going after him.”

  For an instant my heart howled agreement. I thought of that man, and I didn’t feel any of the queasiness I’d experienced when I first realized Eve’s revenge might be murderous. Half a glass of champagne in René Bordelon’s company would be enough to convince anyone that sometimes even old men deserved to die.

  But common sense struggled through the red haze of fury, and my heart lurched. “Eve, wait. You can’t risk it, you—”

  “Hurry up!” She kept striding, blazing eyed, through the twisting streets. A tall Frenchman took one look at her expression and stepped out of her way. My mind raced, pulled in two directions. Stop her, common sense argued, even as rage screamed, Why?

  Turning the last corner, I saw the Lagonda in front of our hotel, blue and gleaming. I sagged in relief. I needed Finn: his calm, his quiet logic, and if all else failed his implacable arms keeping Eve from charging into disaster. But he wasn’t beside his beloved car, and inside, the desk clerk passed me a note covered in his back-slanting scrawl. “He went out to have drinks with the garage mechanic,” I said, replying to Eve’s look of brusque inquiry. “They’re offering him a job, something about engine restoration—”

  “Good.” Eve took the stairs two at a time. I crammed the note in my pocket and followed.

  The desk clerk called after me. “Madame, a telegram for you from Roubaix—”

  “I’ll come back for it,” I flung over my shoulder. By the time I burst into Eve’s room, she already had the Luger out of the bedside drawer. The sight of it stopped me dead. “Shit,” I said for the first time in my life.

  Eve gave a grim smile as she peeled off her gloves. “You cannot possibly be surprised.”

  I pressed my fingers against my pounding temples. Fury was definitely giving way to fear. “You’ll go to his house and kill him, then? Just wait till he comes home from slurping up rillettes, walk up to his door, and put seven shots into his skull?”

  “Yes.” She pushed the first bullet home. “‘A charming little villa,’ the waiter said. Just p-p-past the mimosa fields off the Rue des Papillons. It shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “Put that pistol down and listen to me. Whether you succeed or fail, you’d go to prison. Don’t you understand that?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I do.” I seized her by the arm. “I want my daughter to have a godmother.”

  She slid the last bullet into place. “And I want to see that man dead.”

  Part of me agreed. But his life wasn’t worth trading for Eve’s future—he’d already eaten too much of her past. And I wasn’t going to risk ruining my own future, just as it was starting to be patched together, by assisting in a murder. “Eve, stop and think.”

  “I have.” Eve checked the Luger’s barrel. “If I kill René at his home, there shouldn’t be any witnesses. He hasn’t got a wedding ring, so there’s no wife or children to get in the way. I intend to leave his rotten body on the floor and walk out free as a bird.”

  “The restaurant knows you were looking for him, asking where he lived. Not just the restaurant today either. We’ve been making inquiries all over Grasse for weeks.” Maybe logic would reach her; I scrambled to marshal my arguments. “If he turns up dead now—”

  “The police might look for us, but how? We all gave false names, to the hotel here and everyone else. Besides, I d-don’t intend to stay in Grasse long enough for people to come looking for me.”

  “And how are you getting out of Grasse, with Finn not here to drive? How are you even getting to René’s house first?”

  “Cab, if necessary.” She sounded so calm, as though she were planning tea. In the restaurant I’d sensed the fear behind the ice, seen her hands trembling in her lap under the table. Now she soared in some place far above fear, remote and relentless as a gliding eagle. Tossing the pistol into her satchel, Eve kicked out of the pumps she was wearing as respectable Mrs. Knight, and thrust her feet into her old sandals. “Come help me kill him, if you like. You have a right to want him dead too.”

  “No. I won’t help you murder that man.”

  “You don’t think he deserves to die?”

  “He does, but I want something worse than death for him. I want to see him exposed, humiliated, imprisoned. I want him held up to the world so they can see what he really is. That will kill him slowly, Eve. The worst punishment in the world for a man as proud as that.” I took a deep breath, willing her to hear me. “Let’s go to the police. We have the photograph of him surrounded by Nazis, we have your testimony, we can call on the woman in Limoges who saw him shoot that sous-chef in cold blood. René Bordelon might have powerful friends, but so do you. You are a war heroine; people will believe you. So turn him in and make his life a living hell.”

  For me that would be good enough. To see that man in a cell, knowing he’d been put there by Eve and me, suffering the public abuse of De Gaulle’s France that held collaborators and profiteers in as much contempt as vermin. No more chilled champagne and rillettes, just humiliation and the kind of gray prison days Eve had suffered.

  “He’ll never sit in a cell, Yank.” Eve’s voice was implacable. “René Bordelon has made a career of avoiding c-c-consequences. If we accuse a respected local man with money and powerful friends, it will take time to prove those accusations. He’ll use that time to rabbit, because he always runs. He’s outrun the bad decisions of two wars, and he’ll run now because he knows I won’t stop coming for him. If I rely on an arrest warrant, he’ll be gone before it comes to his door, and he’ll resettle somewhere I’ll never find him.” She picked up the satchel with her Luger. “So I’ll rely on a bullet.”

  I wanted to throttle her. “Don’t you see how many ways that could go wrong? He could easily shoot you, or call the police and see you carried off in handcuffs—”

  “I’ll take the risk.” She looked down at me as I stepped between her and the door. “Out of my way, Charlie St. Clair.”

  I looked her right in the eye. “No.”

  She started toward me. I didn’t try to push her back. I wrapped my arms around her and held fast. “Are you going to drag me down the stairs screaming every step of the way?” I said, and realized I was near tears. “I won’t let go, Eve. I won’t.”

  I’d lost my brother. I’d lost Rose. I wasn’t losing anyone else I loved.

  Eve went stiff in my arms, as though she was about to fight—but then she sagged. I heard the glottal sound of a sob tearing loose from her throat, and then the satchel slid to the floor. We stood there a long time as Eve wept, as the sky in the open window behind her turned purple with twilight. I just held her, relief shuddering inside my chest.

  She
wouldn’t say anything at all when the tears dried up. She let me persuade her to lie down, took the whiskey I poured, shivering now and then under the blanket I laid over her. I sat by the bed nibbling my thumbnail, wishing silently for Finn. He knew better than I how to take care of her in these moods. I heard her breathing deepen and tiptoed downstairs to the hotel front desk, but they had no idea where Finn had gone with his mechanic friend. “Your telegram, madame,” the clerk reminded me. “From Roubaix.”

  I’d completely forgotten. It had to be from Violette. My heart was suddenly pounding for entirely new reasons as I snatched the paper. The words were terse, even for a telegram.

  Lie confirmed. A Mlle. Tellier responsible.

  Golden choirs erupted in my head. I felt ten feet tall. I’d been right in my suspicions; I’d been right. For once I had it in my hands, the power to fix what was broken. This—this—was what Eve needed.

  I sprinted back to her room, heart pounding. “Eve, look—”

  The door gaped open. The bed stood empty. The satchel with the Luger was gone.

  I hadn’t even been gone five minutes. She must have been up and moving the minute I tiptoed out, as cool and collected as she’d been shaking and crying just moments before. Fear roared through me again, hammering at my temples like spikes of ice. I ran to the open window, searching the street below, but I saw no tall gaunt figure. You sneaky bitch, I thought in a wave of fury, at her for tricking me and at myself for being tricked.

  I knew where she was going. I couldn’t telephone the police, and I couldn’t wait for Finn. The Lagonda sat at the curb below.

  I stuffed Violette’s telegram into my pocket, snatched the car keys from the bedside table in my room, and ran.

  CHAPTER 40

  EVE

  It was, Eve supposed, a dirty trick.

  “Faster,” she told the cabdriver, tossing a handful of francs into the front seat. She didn’t care if she spent every coin she had. She wouldn’t need any for a journey back.

  The cab sped along as Eve sat relishing the comforting weight of the Luger in her lap, her eyes dry. All those crocodile tears, easily shed and just as easily wiped away. Underhanded and unscrupulous, but she’d seen no other option as she looked at Charlie standing implacably between her and the door, soft mouth set in a firm line. Eve smiled. What a different girl from the truculent, uncertain little thing she’d first found on her doorstep.

  I’m sorry I won’t ever see you again, she thought. I am so sorry for that.

  “You look very serious this evening, madame,” the cabdriver said, jocular. “Didn’t you say you were going to visit a friend?”

  “Yes.”

  “A long visit?”

  “Very.” Eternal, in fact. Eve had no intention of leaving René Bordelon’s house once she entered it. That was the reason she didn’t fear prison. A dead woman couldn’t be put behind bars.

  The Luger held seven shots. Six were for René, and it might take all six—evil men clung hard to life. The last shot, Eve was saving for herself.

  “Just like you, Cameron,” she murmured aloud, not seeing the darkening streets of Grasse slipping by. Instead she saw a grainy headline from a newspaper clipping: “Soldier’s Death.” When had that been, ’22? No, ’24. The words had stabbed Eve through a massive hangover. Concerning the death of Major C. A. Cameron—

  The world had disconnected. Eventually Eve had managed to pick up the clipping again—from an overseas paper, mailed to her by a solicitor—and read through dry, burning eyes. There was a strangled sound, and it took her a moment to realize it was coming from her own throat.

  —death of Major C. A. Cameron of the Royal Field Artillery, who died at Sheffield Barracks as the result of a revolver wound; the coroner returned a verdict of suicide.

  Cameron, dead. Cameron with his warm eyes and his Scottish lilt. Cameron kissing her bruises away, murmuring, You poor brave girl . . .

  By ’24 they hadn’t seen each other in what, five years? Not since that day in Folkestone. But they’d telephoned sometimes, generally in the small hours of the night when one of them was drunk. Eve had known he was back from Ireland; he’d talked a little of his training school, talked with more excitement of being made military attaché to Riga . . .

  But instead, he’d blown his brains out.

  The evidence shows that the deceased had brooded over his nonappointment as an attaché at Riga, the newspaper announcement read, canceled due to his having undergone a sentence of penal servitude.

  The army had punished him for the old sin, Eve had thought bitterly. They didn’t mind an officer with a soiled reputation if there was a war on, but afterward he was just an embarrassment.

  I’ll go on working until I can’t anymore. His voice rang in her ears once again, so loud and clear he might as well have been sitting in the cab with her. Then I suppose I’ll die. Bullets, boredom, or brandy—that’s how people like us go, because God knows we aren’t made for peace.

  “That we aren’t,” Eve murmured.

  It wasn’t until the solicitor arrived on her doorstep the following day that she fell apart completely. The solicitor who had mailed her the announcement of Cameron’s death in the first place, now bringing legal papers and assuring her of his complete discretion . . . telling her that the pension paid to her account for the last five years had not come from the War Office after all, but from Cameron. That he had ensured it to continue after his death, tied it up in his will in a private bequest without his family’s knowledge and separate from his widow’s funds. That it was well-invested, the earnest solicitor intoned, and should continue for Eve’s life.

  She chased the solicitor out, shrieking, and then she collapsed utterly, crawling into her bed like a wounded animal and hiding there for months. How did you do it, Cameron? she’d wondered, staring at her own Luger. Barrel to the temple? Under the chin? Or between the teeth, the kiss of cold steel and gun oil the last sensation on earth? Eve had played those games often in the years that followed, on dark nights when the guilt wouldn’t let her sleep. Putting the Luger through the paces of suicide . . . but she had never quite pulled the trigger.

  Too much of a stubborn bitch, she used to think. No fatal streak of romanticism or nobility in her soul, not like Cameron’s. But now, as the cab streaked out of Grasse and past the mimosa fields, Eve wondered if it had been not stubbornness but fate. Maybe guilt and grief could not be sated until justice had its turn first. Maybe it was the cold spy-trained part of her brain whispering that despite Cameron’s decades-long lie, an enemy was still out there to be dealt with. And until he was, the bullet between the teeth could not be fired.

  Well, tonight the enemy would die. For Lili, for Rose, for Charlie, for Eve. Tonight, Evelyn Gardiner’s fight would be finished. More than thirty goddamned years past due, but better late than never.

  She thought of the last bullet, knowing Charlie would hate her for firing it and so would Finn—but it was partly for them, as they’d realize later. A murderer dead next to her victim left them utterly in the clear. No one would be punished for this but the guilty. They could swan off into the sunset together, bless them.

  “Madame, we have arrived.”

  The cab halted at the end of an access path that led perhaps a quarter mile toward a gracious little jewel of a villa. Its white walls shone in the moonlight, and its roof peaked against the dark sky. Several windows showed light through the curtains. He was home. Eve wondered how long René had sat in that restaurant nibbling his toast points after she and Charlie left. Not long, she suspected. That told her something: he was still frightened of her.

  You should be, she thought.

  “Shall I drive you to the doorstep, madame?”

  “I’ll walk,” she said, and swung out of the cab.

  CHAPTER 41

  CHARLIE

  I’m sorry, Finn, I thought every time I heard the Lagonda’s gears grind. I hadn’t driven much in the last year, it was now full dark, and I could hardly r
each the pedals—the car was groaning at me as I steered her through the narrow French roads. I swear if there is so much as a scratch on your baby when this is done, I will make it up to you. The brakes gave a resentful squeal, and I winced.

  I didn’t drive particularly well, but I drove fast. I was outside Grasse in no time, and then the fun started. “Just past the mimosa fields” wasn’t exactly a pinpoint instruction in a city surrounded by acres of flowers. A half-moon climbed as I hunted, aware that Eve was ahead of me and time was ticking by. I thought of her facing me in the hotel, telling me to get out of her way. She’d looked like a worn-out knight lowering his visor for one last charge, haggard, gaunt, composed, serene.

  My brother had had that expression the last time I saw him alive, I realized. The expression that said “I am ready to die.”

  Not Eve, I thought. Please not Eve! If I failed her, lost her, I was never going to forgive myself.

  The Rue des Papillons sported several private paths leading to country villas for the rich. The first I tried led to a house with a prominent for sale sign, the second to a family home where about six children were trooping inside for supper, clearly not René’s domicile. Now I leaned forward, and against the dark sky saw the dim peak of another house. Heart hammering, I pulled as much to the side as I could and scrambled out. There was a mailbox, and just enough moonlight to read the curling script: GAUTIER.

  This was the house. I saw no cab, no sign of Eve. Let me not be too late, I prayed, and began running toward the house. The scent of mimosa hung faint and sweet in the air, smelling as I imagined a baby’s hair would smell. My hand went to the tiny bump of my stomach as I ran, and I had a moment’s stark terror not for Eve’s safety but for my own, because it wasn’t just me who could be hurt tonight.

  No one will be hurt tonight. I would make sure of that. Somehow.

  I rounded the corner of the house, heading toward the back door.