Belle

by Lesley Pearse

  Gabrielle suddenly felt queasy, for Belle could have had the misfortune to meet someone very dangerous. While most businessmen away from home wanted nothing more than uncomplicated sex, there were always those who were perverted and cruel and saw a prostitute as fair game for any sick activity they had in mind.

  She put her hand under the ruffle round the high neck of her dress and ran her fingers over the bumpy scar there. Her son Henri had just had his first birthday when she had the misfortune to meet the man who called himself Gérard Tournier. He seemed like a perfect gentleman, agreeing to fifty francs, then took her to supper first. But instead of accompanying her back to her apartment as they’d agreed, he’d taken her into a back alley and slashed her neck with a knife. She was lucky in that she was found before she bled to death, but the resulting hideous scar was a permanent reminder of what she used to be.

  ‘Belle’s smarter than you were though,’ Gabrielle told herself, tucking the note into the pocket of her apron and leaving the room, locking it again behind her. She knew if Belle wasn’t back by the morning she must enlist someone’s help in finding her because she was sure she couldn’t live with herself if the girl was found dead and she had just stayed here and done nothing.

  Gabrielle had cut herself off from everyone she knew during her time as a prostitute. She wanted no reminders of her old career. And she never wanted Henri to discover what she’d done in the past. But there was just one person connected with that world that she remained in touch with, for she had nursed Gabrielle back to health following the attack in the alley, and looked after Henri. When she got up the next morning to find Belle still hadn’t returned, Gabrielle resolved to go to Lisette after she’d given the guests their breakfast and Henri had gone to school. She didn’t expect her old friend to have any idea of where Belle could be, but she might know people who would.

  Unless she was taking Henri out for the day, Gabrielle rarely went beyond a half-mile radius of the Mirabeau, and then only to buy food, because she felt safer close to home. She never made any effort with her appearance either for by looking dowdy she attracted no attention to herself. But she felt compelled to make an effort for her visit to Lisette and changed into an old but still smart grey and white dogtooth check costume. The jacket was rather too well-fitting for a woman who liked to conceal her shape in loose clothing, but she tied a white scarf at a jaunty angle to hide her scar, added the black velvet hat with a half-veil she wore to Mass, and was pleased that she neither stood out nor looked too drab.

  When Lisette had taken care of her over a decade ago they had both had rooms in the same house in Montmartre, but a year afterwards, when Gabrielle had left Paris to act as housekeeper for Samuel Arkwright, an English painter in Provence, Lisette went to live and work in a bordello. They kept in touch only by the occasional letter, for although Gabrielle cared deeply for Lisette, she had no wish to be reminded of the life she’d once shared with her.

  Lisette’s nursing skills were her saviour as a few years later, after she’d given birth to a little boy, she went to work in a nursing home in La Celle St-Cloud. The two women had met up only once since then, shortly after Gabrielle had returned to Paris following Samuel’s death. Lisette said little about her own circumstances that day for she was more concerned with Gabrielle’s grief at losing Samuel and whether she was doing the right thing in investing the money he had left her in a hotel.

  Gabrielle was well aware of her own shortcomings. She didn’t have a gregarious nature, in fact since she was attacked she had become a solitary soul who couldn’t make small talk, and shied away from other people. Guests sometimes commented that she was sullen and uncommunicative, and had the Mirabeau not been so well placed near the station, she could have run into difficulties. Fortunately, however, there was a continual stream of people needing a small, comfortable hotel like hers and she didn’t have to rely on guests returning.

  Once on the train to La Celle St-Cloud, Gabrielle began to fret that Lisette might have moved on, as she hadn’t heard from her for nearly a year. But she comforted herself that if that was the case, at least she had tried to do something to find Belle.

  She found the nursing home easily enough and knocked on the door. It was opened by an old woman with a white apron over her black dress.

  Gabrielle apologized for calling but said she needed to see Lisette urgently. The old woman told her to wait outside.

  A few minutes passed before Lisette came to the door, looking anxious as if fearing she was going to hear bad news. When she saw her old friend, her pretty face broke into a wide smile.

  ‘Gabrielle!’ she exclaimed. ‘How good to see you! What brings you out here?’

  Gabrielle asked if there was somewhere they could talk and Lisette said she could come out for a cup of coffee with her; she’d just have to tell someone what she was doing.

  Within five minutes they were walking down to the square and Gabrielle explained as briefly as possible that she had a guest who had gone missing after going to see a man. ‘I’ve grown fond of the English girl,’ she said. ‘As you can imagine, once I knew how she was earning a living I started worrying about her safety, but she is just the way we were, confident that no one would harm her. I hoped you might know someone who could help me find her.’

  ‘She’s English?’ Lisette said. ‘How old?’

  ‘About eighteen, I don’t know for sure. Her name is Belle Cooper.’

  Lisette looked startled. ‘Belle? She has dark, curly hair, blue eyes?’

  ‘You know her?’ Gabrielle asked incredulously.

  ‘Well, it sounds like the same girl,’ Lisette said, and explained how she’d nursed a girl of that age, name and description two years earlier. ‘She was taken to America,’ she finished up. ‘But I had a man come looking for her too, a friend of her family. That must be getting on for a year ago now.’

  ‘Was his name Etienne?’

  Lisette frowned. ‘No, he was English, about thirty or so. But why did you ask if it was Etienne?’

  ‘It was a name she gave me, the last evening I saw her. She said she trusted him.’

  They had reached the café in the square now, and sat down at a table outside well away from other people. Lisette looked stunned.

  ‘What is it? Do you know someone called Etienne?’ Gabrielle asked.

  Lisette nodded. ‘He was the man who escorted her to America.’

  Gabrielle had expected little of this meeting, and to find that Lisette knew Belle and the man she’d named was almost too much for her. Her heart began to race, and beads of perspiration formed on her forehead. ‘Can you tell me everything you know?’ she asked. ‘It seems you know far more about Belle than I do.’

  Lisette hesitated. ‘I am not out of the business like you,’ she said sadly. ‘But I’m sure you remember how it is? I have only told you this much because you are an old friend and I trust you. I have my son to think of.’

  Gabrielle understood exactly what she meant, and she took the other woman’s hand between her own in reassurance. ‘I haven’t forgotten anything. But anything you can tell me will just be between us.’

  Lisette told her everything she knew then: how Belle came to need nursing, how much she had liked her, and then about Noah Bayliss coming to see her.

  ‘I liked him a great deal too,’ she admitted. ‘I almost weakened to take up his offer of help to get me away from here. But I was too afraid.’

  Gabrielle nodded. The people behind bringing young girls to France were ruthless, and it would be hard for Lisette to trust any man enough to keep her and her little boy safe.

  ‘But surely if this man Etienne was the one who took Belle to America he’s as bad as all the others? Why would she say she trusted him?’

  Lisette shrugged. ‘Most of us caught up in this business have been forced into doing things we know are wrong, usually because they have a hold over us. That doesn’t mean we are all bad. I would say Belle must have touched Etienne’s good side, just as she did
me, and you. She would’ve been with him for a long sea voyage, and they must have become friends. The Englishman Noah wanted me to try and contact him, to find out where he’d taken her. I tried at the time, but failed.’

  Gabrielle sighed. ‘I don’t suppose he’d be any help with this now anyway.’

  ‘Probably not,’ Lisette said. ‘Especially as I heard he’d left the business. A story went round that his wife and two children were killed in a fire and he is a broken man. Of course, that might not be true. I’ve heard stories like that before, it could just be to keep all of us fearful.’

  ‘You mean someone could have done it purposely?’ Gabrielle said in horror.

  ‘Such things have been known, if someone steps out of line,’ Lisette said, looking around her furtively as if afraid she might be overheard.

  Both women fell silent for a few minutes. Lisette finished her coffee and said she had to go. ‘I do have an address for Noah though,’ she said as she signalled to the waiter for the bill.

  ‘Really?’ Gabrielle gasped. ‘Will you let me have it?’

  Lisette nodded. The waiter came over and Gabrielle paid him. The two women got up and began to walk away from the café. ‘I’ll slip in and get it for you,’ Lisette said. ‘I imagine your news will only make things worse for her family, but if Noah comes to Paris to see you, which I’m sure he will, please make him understand I can’t be involved.’

  As the two women were talking together in La Celle St-Cloud, Belle was lying on the bed in the small locked room, trying very hard not to give in to complete panic.

  She could only guess at the time by looking at the one tiny hole in the board over the window. It wasn’t even large enough to put her little finger through it. When she put her eye to it she could see nothing but a spot of sky. She didn’t know the hole was there until daybreak when a pin-prick of light came through it. She had searched the room for something sharp to make the hole larger, but without success. She had removed the thin mattress from the bed only to find there were no springs, just rope criss-crossing the wooden frame, and she had felt all over the floor with her fingertips hoping to find a nail or screw, but there was nothing.

  The tiny beam of light was brighter now, so she had to assume it was afternoon and the sun was shining on it. But time didn’t have much meaning anyway, not as the rumbles of hunger increased steadily in her belly. There was water in the jug on the washstand, and she had drunk some of it earlier, but as she didn’t know when Pascal would come back, she had resolved only to take a few sips now and then.

  She fervently hoped he would come back tonight. But what was he going to do with her then? She doubted he would let her go, he’d be afraid she would go to the police or the manager of the Ritz. But he couldn’t keep her here indefinitely. Was he planning to take her somewhere else? Or would he kill her?

  She had dismissed that thought as preposterous earlier in the day; she’d even imagined him coming back and apologizing, or saying he’d done it just to teach her a lesson. But as time went on it seemed much less ridiculous, for it was the only sure way to guarantee her silence.

  Who did the house belong to? She felt it was unlikely that it belonged to Philippe Le Brun as there was no possible reason why he would want her imprisoned in it. She was sure it wasn’t Pascal’s; a mere concierge would not be able to afford such a place. Was he in league with the owner, and the pair of them planned to sell her to another brothel? Or send her overseas again?

  These thoughts went round and round in her head until she felt she would go mad with them. She’d tried banging on the walls and stamping on the floor. She’d listened intently, hoping to hear someone, if not in this house, next door, but there was just silence. She suspected this house was taller than its neighbours, and perhaps the walls in this room were not joined to another house.

  She felt Gabrielle must have been concerned when she didn’t return home, especially after the warning she’d given her. But would she do anything about it? What could she do? She didn’t know who it was that arranged Belle’s meetings with gentlemen.

  She wondered though how long it would be before Gabrielle searched her room and found the money hidden in the space beneath the drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe. There was one thousand, seven hundred francs there. Enough to deter any hard-pressed landlady from reporting her guest missing.

  It seemed to Belle that she was jinxed, for whenever she thought her life was about to take a turn for the better, something horrible happened.

  Back in Seven Dials she’d been so happy to meet Jimmy, but that very night she witnessed Millie’s murder. After the hideous ordeal in Madame Sondheim’s brothel, she thought it was all over when she found herself in the nursing home with Lisette looking after her. But then she was sent to America.

  There was that small window of happiness with Etienne in New York and on the way to New Orleans, but it wasn’t long before she found herself trapped at Martha’s and believing Faldo Reiss could be her ticket home. That turned out to be another form of imprisonment, but working with Miss Frank at the milliner’s made her feel hopeful yet again. Then Faldo died, and Miss Frank turned against her.

  She trusted Madame Albertine in Marseille, but she had betrayed Belle by setting her up with Clovis.

  Then finally, just when she was about to go home to see her mother, Mog and Jimmy, Pascal did this. Why did he? He must have made a lot of money out of her, why wasn’t that enough for him?

  Would it have turned out differently if she’d been enthusiastic about going to bed with him?

  Somehow she doubted that. He knew this room was up here, he must have planned to lock her into it. Maybe he’d been getting frightened that he’d lose his job if it got out about what he’d been doing on the side?

  She should have known after that evening in the café in Montmartre that he wouldn’t just give up on his desire to have his way with her. She’d felt deep in her bones that there was going to be trouble ahead. So why hadn’t she acted on her instinct and left France then? What sort of a fool was she to think seeing Paris in the spring was so important? But if it had really been just that, she could have stopped accepting engagements and moved to another hotel so Pascal would think she’d gone for good. She had enough money, but she wanted still more because of her stupid pride and not wanting to go home empty-handed.

  A sick feeling welled up inside her as she faced the truth about herself. She knew many prostitutes had been forced into the work in the beginning, and others got into it through desperate need or even plain stupidity, but every whore she’d ever met had remained one because they were either lazy or greedy.

  She began to cry then out of shame. She was an innocent when she was snatched by Mr Kent and sold to Madame Sondheim, but why on earth did she allow Martha to corrupt her into believing it was fine to service ten men a night? Why did she lose her moral code?

  She had always prided herself on being brave, but the brave thing to do would have been to have gone to the police in New Orleans and told them what had happened to her and why. This would have been so much better than striving to be the top girl and patting herself on the back because she’d learned a dozen ways to make her clients ejaculate quickly so she could move on to the next poor sod who hadn’t got a woman of his own.

  How many other girls’ lives had been ruined by Kent and his associates? How many mothers and fathers were grieving over lost daughters? If she had only found the courage to speak out, she might have saved some of them.

  It occurred to her then as she cried out her shame that it was all of this that had made her mother cold and seemingly indifferent to her child. Belle had no idea how and why Annie became a whore, and now she probably never would. But she could see now that Annie had done her best to shield her from what she did. All those rules about never going upstairs after six, keeping her away from the girls and encouraging her to read books and newspapers, were so she’d know about the bigger world beyond Seven Dials. Even allowing her to think of Mog as
another mother was an act of unselfishness. For kind, gentle and loving Mog was the best of influences, teaching Belle right from wrong, good manners and to speak well, so that she wouldn’t go the same way as her real mother.

  ‘I’ve let her down,’ Belle sobbed into the mattress, and the thought of that was worse than anything Pascal could do to her.

  Chapter Thirty

  Gabrielle looked thoughtfully at the address Lisette had given her as she rode home on the train. If she was to write to Noah Bayliss at that address it could be a week or longer before it got to him. That was too long, she’d have to send him a telegram.

  But what would she say in it? ‘Help needed to find Belle’ wouldn’t be much good if he’d already tried to find Belle and failed. ‘Belle in danger come quick’ would be frightening for the girl’s mother. Yet whatever she put, whether she frightened him or not, it was still going to be another couple of days before he got here.

  She would send a telegram anyway, but meanwhile what she needed was someone, preferably a man, who knew the smartest hotels in Paris and those who procured girls for their guests and might even be able to identify the initials on that note Belle had been sent.

  There was a time when she had known half a dozen such men, but not any more. She felt certain that Belle’s Etienne would have been ideal too, but if Lisette didn’t know how to find him, what chance had Gabrielle got?

  It was a stroke of amazing luck that Lisette had nursed Belle, yet perhaps not such a coincidence as she first thought, for after all Lisette was employed by people who bought and sold young girls. Gabrielle thought that once Belle was found she must persuade Lisette to get away with Jean-Pierre and sever all links with those terrible people.

  Out of the blue, just as the train was slowing down and puffing into the station, Gabrielle suddenly remembered that Marcel, who ran the laundry two doors away from the Mirabeau, was from Marseille. By all accounts he’d had a chequered life before going into laundry work. She was a good customer of his, so even if he didn’t know Etienne, he might be able to give her some advice.