Belle

by Lesley Pearse

  Gabrielle went straight to the post office and sent a telegram to Noah. ‘Contact me for news of Belle’ she put and added the address of the Mirabeau.

  ‘The pretty, dark-haired girl?’ Marcel asked after Gabrielle had told him she was concerned about one of her female guests who had disappeared. ‘Yes, I’ve seen her go past the window.’

  As Gabrielle began to tell him she suspected foul play, Marcel ushered her into a tiny office just off his laundry. It was very hot and steamy in there but she was glad to talk to him in private, as people kept coming in and out of the laundry on the street.

  Marcel was short and rotund, almost bursting out of his shirt. His round, shiny face glistened with sweat, and his receding black hair and drooping moustache were oily.

  ‘She told me she had a good friend from Marseille, and knowing you were from there I hoped you might know him. His name is Etienne Carrera.’

  Marcel’s eyes widened. ‘I know of him,’ he said in a tone that suggested Etienne was to be treated with caution. ‘But your young guest, how would she know such a man? He has a bad reputation.’

  Gabrielle explained as briefly as possible about Belle’s abduction and how Etienne escorted her to America two years ago. ‘She told me she trusted him, so that would mean he was good to her. I don’t care what kind of man he is, I just hope he may be able to help me find her.’

  ‘I heard from my family in Marseille that he lost his wife and family in a fire,’ Marcel said thoughtfully. ‘It was the talk of the town some eighteen months ago, for most people think it was no accident and someone wished to punish him.’

  ‘I heard that too. But do you know where he is now?’

  ‘I could telephone my younger brother and ask him. They were friends as boys. I know Pierre went to the funeral of his wife and sons.’

  Gabrielle put her hand on Marcel’s arm. ‘I would consider that a great kindness,’ she said with sincerity. ‘If he does know, will you ask him to tell Etienne that I believe Belle is in danger and that she gave me his name as a friend and someone she could trust?’

  Marcel patted Gabrielle’s shoulder in understanding. ‘I will come along to see you just as soon as I have spoken to Pierre. I can see you are very worried about this girl. You liked her?’

  ‘Very much,’ Gabrielle admitted, suddenly aware that apart from Henri, Belle was the first person since Samuel died that she had cared about. ‘She has had very hard times. I wish to see her reunited with her family. I think this man Etienne would wish that for her too.’

  Marcel nodded. ‘Leave it with me.’

  Mrs Dumas opened her front door and blanched to see a telegraph boy standing there holding out a telegram. ‘It’s for Mr Bayliss,’ the boy said.

  Mrs Dumas felt relieved it wasn’t for her. ‘He’s not home, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘But he will be very shortly.’

  She took the telegram and closed the front door, looking at the envelope and wondering what it contained. Was one of his parents sick or even dying? She fervently hoped not for she had grown very fond of Noah and he was doing so well now he’d been taken on to the staff of The Times.

  Just half an hour later Mrs Dumas heard a key in the door, and rushed out into the hall to check if it was Noah. It was. He looked hot and bothered for it was a warm day and he must have walked home from Fleet Street.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s a telegram for you,’ she said. ‘I do hope it’s not bad news. But I’ve got the kettle on, dear.’

  Noah looked anxious, but smiled after he’d read it. ‘I don’t think it is bad news. Someone in Paris has news of Belle.’

  Back in the days when he used to rush home hoping for a letter from Lisette, he had given his landlady a censored outline of Belle’s story, omitting that she was brought up in a brothel and had been sold into prostitution. But that hoped-for letter never came, and once he’d been taken on as a reporter for The Times and worked longer hours, gradually his visits to Mog, Garth and Jimmy had become less frequent too.

  Last time he went to the Ram’s Head Garth had told him he and Mog were planning to get married soon. They wanted to find another public house somewhere in the country, and as Jimmy was virtually running the Ram’s Head now, he could take it over if he wanted to.

  Jimmy had grown into a strong, steady young man, honest and forthright, and he rarely mentioned Belle any more. Yet Noah knew he still thought about her, for though he had walked out with two or three young women, it was clear his heart still belonged to Belle.

  Mog hadn’t entirely given up hope of finding her, but she did her best to hide the core of sadness within her. She had a good life with Garth and Jimmy and filled her days with baking, cleaning and sewing. She had told Noah once that she felt deep inside her that Belle would reappear one day, and that thought sustained her.

  As for Annie, her boarding house had become so successful she’d taken over the house next door too, but she had little contact with Mog now. Noah had written another article about Belle and the other missing girls just last December, hoping that after such a long time someone might come forward with new information. He had interviewed several of the mothers for this article, Annie included, and it had struck him that although she appeared hard and cold, in fact she probably grieved for Belle as strongly as Mog, but just couldn’t articulate her feelings.

  From time to time Noah had heard whispers about the Falcon. A young girl was found dead in a field on the outskirts of Dover, her death attributed to a large dose of sedative. She came from a village in Norfolk and was last seen at a local fair, talking to a man who fitted the description of Mr Kent. Noah had managed to get a look at the inquest report, and there had been rope marks on her wrists and ankles as if she’d been tied up, but the rope was removed after her death. Noah was convinced Kent was responsible and that he’d been planning to get her over to France the same way he had taken Belle, but when he found she’d died he just dumped her body and hoped the police might think she’d killed herself.

  There were other girls missing too, several of them from Suffolk and Norfolk. Many of the policemen Noah talked to were in agreement that Kent was involved, and that he’d just moved his operation to a different area. But there was no evidence, and on the several occasions they had taken him in for questioning, he always had a watertight alibi. One senior police officer had told Noah that if they could just find one of the missing girls and get her to testify against him, he was sure other people would come forward with further information about his crimes.

  But now this woman in Paris had news of Belle. Noah knew The Times would happily pay his expenses to go over there, and also get their French counterparts to offer him every assistance in the hope that he would find her and bring her home to testify about Kent and his operation. Noah’s heart thumped with delight, not only at the prospect of seeing her reunited with Anne and Mog, but also because of what it would mean to him personally to get a lead story of human trafficking that every newspaper in the land would want.

  And maybe he’d see Lisette again too.

  In less than an hour after opening the telegram, Noah was on his way to Charing Cross to catch the last train of the evening to Dover. He considered stopping off at the Ram’s Head to tell Mog the news, but decided against it in case things didn’t work out as he hoped. He had telephoned his editor who, as he had expected, gave him his blessing and promised to telegraph ahead and ask the office in Paris to stand by to offer him assistance and an interpreter if necessary.

  Gabrielle was laying up the breakfast tables at nine in the evening when the bell on the front door rang. She hurried to it, to find Marcel there.

  ‘Did you find out anything?’ she asked, and beckoned for him to come in.

  ‘My brother does know where Etienne is, but it’s a few miles from Marseille out in the country. Pierre promised me he’ll go out there on his bicycle at first light tomorrow to see him and give him your message.’

  ‘Bless you, Marcel,’ she said, and impulsively leane
d forward to kiss his cheek. ‘Did he think Etienne might come?’

  ‘All he said was that Etienne was the kind of man who would always help a friend. But he added that he hasn’t been himself since the fire. So all we can do is hope.’

  ‘Stay and have a glass of something with me?’ Gabrielle asked. For the first time in years she didn’t relish being alone. She had grown more and more terrified for Belle as the hours passed. She had pictured her body being thrown in the Seine or lying in a back alley. Even if Belle was still alive she couldn’t bear to think of what might have been done to her. She had been down on her knees in front of a picture of the Virgin Mary praying for her to keep Belle safe, but her faith wasn’t sufficiently strong to truly believe that was enough.

  Etienne stood at the door of the tumbledown cottage he lived in and watched Pierre cycling back down the rutted lane towards the road to Marseille. It was a beautiful spring morning, warm sunshine had made wild flowers spring up all along the lane, and the sound of birdsong all around him made him feel a little less despairing. It had been good to see Pierre again, they’d shared so much innocent fun as small boys, and even though their paths had taken them in such different directions as grown men, there was still a connection between them.

  Etienne had wished for his own death after burying Elena and his boys. He’d hidden himself away in this cottage and spent the entire winter drinking himself into oblivion, barely eating anything, not bathing, shaving or even changing his clothes. The only time he went out was to get further supplies of drink.

  It was only as the weather improved in early March that he noticed his surroundings. He woke one morning on his straw-filled mattress, and the sun shining in the window highlighted the filth he was living in: empty food cans and wine bottles everywhere, the table covered with mouldy bread, unwashed plates, the floor unswept since he moved in and covered in ash from the fire. He noticed an evil smell – whether it was coming from him, or from food that had fallen to the floor and rotted, he didn’t know, but he knew it was time he did something about it.

  He was so weak that he could only tackle the mess in small stages, resting in between. Just getting enough water from the pump outside, filling the old copper and lighting the fire beneath it left him breathless and aching. But he didn’t open a bottle, and that night, after sweeping out the rubbish and burning it, bathing himself and washing his clothes, was the first that he’d fallen asleep sober since the fire.

  He was physically strong again now; long, hard days of clearing the ground around the cottage had built up muscle. Mending the roof, cutting wood for the fire and making new shutters for the windows had stopped him drinking and eased his grief.

  There were still days when rage consumed him. He wished he knew for certain if the fire in the restaurant had been set deliberately to punish him for daring to tell Jacques he wouldn’t work for him any longer. If he could be sure he would have killed Jacques. But there was no proof – the source of the fire appeared to be the cooker.

  The question Etienne had to ask himself now was whether it was wise to go to Paris and look for Belle. He’d made the break from Jacques, he could feel his old spirit gradually returning in just the way green leaves were unfurling in the hedgerows. But returning to Paris would undoubtedly bring him back in contact with the kind of scum he’d turned his back on.

  Yet he could picture Belle’s sweet face as she nursed him when he was sick on the steamer, he could hear her gasps of delight as they explored New York, and he remembered only too well how tempted he’d been that night when she got into his bunk.

  She had crept into his mind so often in the months after he left her in New Orleans. He’d hoped he would be sent back there so he could check on her, and he’d felt pangs of guilt when he looked at Elena, for surely such thoughts of another woman were as much adultery as the physical kind?

  But just the knowledge that Belle had cited him as the one person she trusted meant he must go to her aid. What did he have to lose? Everything he held dear was gone.

  He turned to go back into his cottage. If he left now he could be in Paris tonight.

  Belle sobbed when the heel of her shoe clattered to the floor. She had spent hours hammering on the board over the window, trying desperately to make a hole in it. The heel broke on the first shoe, and then she’d begun again after a sleep, but now the second heel was broken too she couldn’t go on. It wasn’t as if she’d even made any headway – all she had to show for her efforts was a slight indentation in the timber. But at least while she was hammering there was a glimmer of hope. Now that was gone.

  Hunger was making her weak and dizzy. She was no longer sure whether it was two or three days she’d been here. Was that Pascal’s plan? To make her so weak she wouldn’t be able to fight him when he came back? Or was he intending to leave her here to die?

  From time to time she could smell food cooking, it wafted in to tantalize her. If there was a restaurant that close, why couldn’t anyone hear her shouting and banging? She’d been doing it mostly when there was no light coming through the small hole, with the idea that someone was more likely to hear when there was less noise on the streets. But she couldn’t distinguish between evening and night, or how long she’d slept at one time.

  Twice she had heard an accordion playing. It was a common sound in Paris, one she’d found enchanting when she had been free. If that sound could reach her ears, why oh why couldn’t anyone hear her?

  She shuffled back to the bed, feeling the bent and broken hairpins beneath her feet which she’d tried and failed to fashion into tools to pick the lock on the door. She had nothing more to use now; she’d taken out the whalebone stiffeners in the bodice of her dress and removed her suspenders, and broken every last one of them. She was defeated. And there was less than two inches of water left in the jug to drink.

  She might as well just lie down and wait to die. It was hopeless.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Gabrielle was sitting at her desk in the hall when a man walked in. She noticed his pale grey suit first, for it was sharply cut, and it was rare for any of her male guests to be that expensively dressed or to have the presence this man had. Then, as he spoke, the combination of his deep voice and his cold blue eyes stunned her for a moment. ‘I’m Etienne Carrera,’ he said. ‘I believe you are expecting me.’

  She could only gasp foolishly. ‘I was hoping you’d come, but I didn’t dare to expect it,’ she managed to get out, feeling like a silly sixteen-year-old. After a moment’s hesitation she got up and held out her hand to shake his. ‘I am Gabrielle Herrison. And I’m so very pleased to see you. Can I get you some coffee and something to eat? You’ve had a long journey.’

  ‘A coffee would be good while we talk,’ he said.

  She rang a little bell, and an older woman wearing a white apron came out of the dining room. ‘Ah, Jeanne! Would you bring some coffee for us up to my sitting room?’

  She led the way up to a half-landing and showed Etienne into a small room which overlooked the back yard. It was bright with the late afternoon sun, and simply furnished with a couch, a couple of armchairs and a table and chairs by the window. She removed some schoolbooks of Henri’s from one of the armchairs. ‘My son’s,’ she said. ‘He should be up here doing his homework but he’s slipped out. Do sit down.

  ‘I can hardly believe you could get here so quickly,’ she went on once she was sitting opposite him. ‘You must have left Marseille as soon as Marcel’s brother spoke to you?’

  He nodded. ‘I sensed the urgency. Now tell me, how long has Belle been staying here, and where had she come from?’

  ‘She arrived just after Christmas. I suspect she’d come from the south as Gare de Lyon serves that part of France. She didn’t tell me anything about herself, just asked for a room in English. But I guessed she’d run from someone as she was wearing an evening dress under her coat, with no hat, scarf, gloves or luggage. Later she asked me if I knew a good second-hand clothes shop as she’d had
her luggage stolen.’

  Jeanne rapped on the door and came in with a pot of coffee and cups on a tray. Gabrielle waited until she’d left the room, then quickly launched into how she’d guessed what Belle was doing for a living.

  ‘Normally when I realize this, I ask them to leave,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you will understand that trouble often follows such women. You let one in and her friends follow. I do not want this in my hotel.’

  Etienne half smiled in understanding. ‘So why did you let her stay?’

  ‘Because she was a lady; quiet, polite, clean and charming. She had a warm personality, always with a ready smile, and she was appreciative. But I am quite sure you will know all this?’

  ‘I do indeed. But did you say anything to her about what she was doing?’

  ‘No, I think I was afraid I would frighten her away.’

  Gabrielle went on then to tell him about how a boy would come with a note for Belle, then a fiacre would arrive later to take her to her appointment. She said that the girl was often out all night, coming back in the early morning. Then she moved on to tell Etienne what happened on the last evening she saw Belle leave.

  ‘I felt she already knew the man she was meeting. That was the only time I warned her, and advised her to give it up and go home to England.’ She looked right into Etienne’s eyes, her lower lip quivering with emotion. ‘You see, I know at first hand about the bad things that can happen to young girls like her. They may be fine for quite some time, but sooner or later they will come up against a man who is dangerous. And that is what has happened, I fear.’

  Gabrielle showed him the note she’d found in Belle’s room. Etienne studied it carefully. ‘Monsieur Le Brun, a common enough name! What made you think she’d met this man before?’