The woman snickered.
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” she said. “I’d love a one-way ticket to Paris myself right about now. No, dear, if you want to get to Paris, it requires a bit of a rigmarole.”
She leaned out her window and pulled a map from its bin on the wall.
“Here.” She laid it out in front of Annie, and then made several circles with a black Sharpie. “First you take the train to London Marylebone. About an hour’s ride. Then Marylebone to St. Pancras. Change trains there and two and a half hours later you’ll find yourself at Gare du Nord in Paris!”
“That doesn’t sound too complex,” Annie said and folded up the map. “When’s the next train to Marylebone?”
“We have a 10:40.”
“Oh! No! That’s too soon.”
Annie didn’t want to risk running into Laurel at the station.
“Okay…” the woman said, eyeing her dubiously. “There’s also the 11:04, and the 11:40…”
Paris. Could Annie really go to Paris? Gus said the writer was there, and she still had Win’s luggage tag in her jeans.
“Would you like a ticket, dear?” the woman asked.
“Um…”
So far there was Gus’s story on the one hand, and Laurel’s on the other, but what about Win’s? His story was in print but The Missing Duchess and the tapes in Annie’s backpack were surely not all he had to say.
“Miss? There’s a queue forming behind you. If you don’t mind terribly—”
“You know what?” Annie thwacked her mom’s credit card on the counter. “Yes. Please. One ticket to Gare du Nord by way of London. Paris, here I come.”
Sixty-two
THE GRANGE
CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
FEBRUARY 1973
“Miss Valentine! Seton!”
Mrs. Spencer stood in the doorway, looking rabid.
“They’re here! The people! They’re back!”
Pru was in no mood for another one of Mrs. Spencer’s fits. She’d just told Win that she loved him and he’d given no response. How was it possible for a full-grown man to be so thick?
“You don’t have anything to say?” Mrs. Spencer howled.
Pru was thinking the exact same thing.
“Mrs. Spencer,” she said. “Now is not a good time.”
“Actually…” Win glanced at Pru with a jittery smile. “I think you arrived at the optimal time. Saved by the bell. Close one, Miss Valentine. You’ll thank Mrs. Spencer later.”
“You really are something else,” Pru said.
She was not one for middle fingers but desperately wanted to use both right then. As usual, Win was under the boundless misconception that he had sufficient humor to get himself out of a thorny situation. With one well-timed joke, everyone might tee-hee along and forget what transpired. Unfortunately he’d never done the math, thus didn’t realize this worked for him zero percent of the time.
“Something strange is going on,” Mrs. Spencer noted.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Pru began.
“That’s nice. But I don’t actually care. I have bigger problems than the two of you.”
“I love him,” Pru blurted.
“Beg pardon?” Mrs. Spencer’s eyes bugged.
“That’s what he meant by ‘saved by the bell,’” Pru said. “I told Win that I loved him and he clammed up. You saved him from admitting he is capable of real, genuine feelings.”
“This is ridiculous,” Mrs. Spencer said. “Of course you love him. And he loves you. But if everyone can stop making googly-eyes at one another, we need to focus on me.”
“Look at him!” Pru said. “Just look at him! He has that stupid dumb look on his face. Ugh, I am so disgusted with myself.”
“He displays many dumb looks on his face, dear. And this type of behavior is why he’s unmarried and living with us.”
“Don’t mind me. You two carry on like I’m not here,” Win said. “Alas, it’s true, I’m a horrible, sophomoric individual who deserves the station in which I find myself.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Pru said.
“Now that we’re all in agreement,” he said. “Mrs. Spencer, what’s wrong? I’ve never seen you this out of sorts. And that’s saying something. Also, are you aware that your shirt is on backward?”
“I had to take my clothes off in town so they wouldn’t recognize me.”
“Great. Another visit from the police,” Pru moaned.
“Er, um … don’t you think disrobing might’ve had the opposite effect from what you intended?” Win asked.
He desperately wanted to share his astonishment with Pru, but of course she wouldn’t accept any of his lame attempts at camaraderie. He’d cocked up the whole thing as he so often did, their brief, tenuous friendship already strained.
“It was the only way to hide,” Mrs. Spencer said.
“Righto. Hide in the buff,” Win said with a firm nod. “Makes sense. Tell me, who were you hiding from, exactly?”
“The Marlboroughs!”
“Wait,” Pru said. “The Marlboroughs? Sunny’s family? I thought it was Edith Junior you were concerned about.”
“Her too. They’re in cahoots.”
“Are you sure?” Pru said. “Are you sure it was them?”
“I can diagnose that terminally weak Marlborough chin and lemon-frown anywhere. They’re here. They want me out of the way so they can wrest my things from me.”
“Your things?” Win said, eyes flicking around the room: to the books, the broken bed, the single typewriter, much abused. “What things?”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Apparently I don’t.”
Suddenly they heard a distinct stumping noise, the sound of boots clomping up wooden stairs. Without a thought, Pru bolted to Win’s side and clutched his arm.
“Mrs. Spencer?” said a voice.
She gripped tighter. Win placed one hand over hers.
“Should we hide?” Pru whispered.
“The gun,” Win hissed. “Where’s the revolver?
“Calm down, you two,” Mrs. Spencer said, for once the voice of reason, the sole unruffled duck. “It’s only Tom.”
“Tom?”
Pru took in a giant swallow of air. Her heart pounded so hard it left little space to breathe. She tried to catch Win’s eyes but looked away again, remembering she was livid.
“Yes,” Mrs. Spencer said. “Tom, my Pole. Normally he stays in the barn but desperate times and all that. Oh, Tom! We’re in here! Come meet the rest of my staff!”
Sixty-three
THE GRANGE
CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
FEBRUARY 1973
One might say Tom materialized in the room, but his entrance was more lumbering than that.
The man was two meters tall, or six and a half feet by Yank standards. He was no rangy thing either, weighing in at around twenty stone, the size of an American football lineman. He moved like one too.
“Tom?” Pru said, gaping.
Tom the Pole was fair-skinned, made almost exclusively of beige. His brow bone was heavy, a hard shelf above his face.
“Tom?” she said again.
His eyes skipped over her with some degree of apprehension. He seemed nervous, almost. Interesting for a man whose hands were the size of Pru’s skull.
“I’m sorry to come inside, Mrs. Spencer.”
“Please, Tomasz. I’m the one who should apologize! I’m so very embarrassed.” Mrs. Spencer grabbed at her throat. “I haven’t had a chance to tidy up this week.”
Pru lifted her eyebrows. This week? As far as she could tell, Mrs. Spencer hadn’t tidied up this year, or that decade, or even the one before it. The home had more litter in it than any given public park. There was a pile of dog feces that’d been in the room so long it didn’t even reek anymore.
“Mrs. Spencer,” Tom said. “I regret to report the Marlboroughs are in town. Not to worry, I shooed
them away. But my guess is they’ll be back.”
“They’re here?” Win said. “In Banbury? Are you quite certain?”
“Yes, I’m certain.” Tom narrowed his eyes, though the distance between them remained wide. “Who are you?”
“Don’t worry about him,” Mrs. Spencer said. “He’s just a writer.”
“The name’s Seton.” Win extended a hand, which went ignored. “They don’t teach manners in Poland, I gather. In any case, are you sure the people you saw weren’t trying to sell knives or encyclopedias? I know our girl Gladys likes to stir it up, but just because she claims to see the Marlboroughs, does not make it so.”
“You saw them too?” Tom said and turned to Mrs. Spencer.
In the new light, his eyes darkened, changing color like a hologram.
“Yes, that’s what I was trying to explain to these two nitwits,” she said. “I saw the Marlboroughs lurking around Banbury proper. They even sent an emissary to my front door, replete with stolen pup. Where did you see them?”
“Near the front gate. I chased them off with a hammer.”
Win batted a piece of hair away from his eyes.
“Remind me to stay off your bad side,” he said.
“It was the eleventh duke,” Tom said. “And various family members. They also had a barrister with them, plus a lekarz from St. Andrew’s.”
“A doctor.” Mrs. Spencer sighed. “Christ. What are we going to do?”
She looked back and forth between Pru and Win. Somewhere in the distance, a grandfather clock chimed.
“It might be time to … disappear,” Tom said, making some sort of gesture with his fingers. It looked like he was wagging kielbasa in the air.
“Hmm…” Mrs. Spencer said. “You may be right.”
“Disappear?” Pru said. “Where?”
Were they going to ship her back to America? Already? Her heart galloped. Then again, perhaps the farther away from Win the better. “Saved by the bell.” For the love of God. He had a perilous level of stupidity.
“Seton,” Mrs. Spencer said, spitting his name through her teeth like a particularly satisfying swear word. Pru knew exactly how she felt. “Didn’t you mention Paris? You have a home in Paris? Or something? I can’t believe they let you into that city.”
“Yes, Lady M., I do have a flat there.”
“Brilliant. We’re moving in.”
“Er, hold up. I’m not so sure that’s wise. Also, I’d prefer to stay at the Grange and finish your biography.”
“You’ll get your damned book,” Mrs. Spencer said. “As if I’d waste all this time with nothing to show for it. I’m only thinking of a different venue from which to conduct your work. Your home, is it large?”
“It’s a fair size,” he said. “About two hundred seventy-five square meters. Mrs. Spencer—”
“How many people live there? Parents? Siblings? Staff?”
“It’s been some time since we’ve had any staff,” Win said. “And my parents are dead. It’s only my brother at present.”
“Excellent!” Mrs. Spencer spun around. She pushed past Tom and out into the hallway. “We leave tonight!”
“Tonight?” Pru gulped. “You’re leaving tonight?”
“We’re leaving. The three of us. You, me, the writer.” She rolled her eyes. “We’re off to Paris. Seton, ring your brother. Tell him to make up the beds.”
Sixty-four
ÎLE SAINT-LOUIS
PARIS
NOVEMBER 2001
Almost immediately after Gladys and Sunny’s wedding, the duke became a royal pain in the arse. He grew so quarrelsome Gladys took to bringing a revolver to the dinner table just to keep him in line.
On top of this, he began paying undue attention to a fifteen-year-old girl named Theresa Jungman, whom he sickeningly called Baby. Though Sunny professed his undying love for this Baby, he went on to have many other mistresses, including Canadian actress Frances Doble. After many years of trysting, he promised to marry Frances and asked Gladys for a divorce.
And wouldn’t you know it, Gladys obliged. What did she need with Sunny and a title anyhow? They’d been wed for over a decade by then but in that marriage and throughout their home, Gladys proclaimed, “I still feel like a tourist.”
Alas, a third marriage for Sunny would not come to pass. He developed liver cancer and died in 1934, leaving Gladys with a permanent duchess title and most members of his family up in arms about her immutability in their lives.
Not that Gladys longed to hang around playing duchess. She hightailed it out of Blenheim as soon as practicable, loading up a half-dozen lorries, and spiriting her possessions out of town.
—J. Casper Augustine Seton,
The Missing Duchess: A Biography
Annie arrived in Paris in the late afternoon.
Winter was approaching. The sunlight fell low and flat across the city, casting long shadows, making the ground look as if it were perpetually dusk. Paris. She’d returned.
Annie’s breath caught as the cab turned away from Gare du Nord and onto Rue Saint-Martin. It’d been eighteen months since she was last there, which somehow felt like both yesterday and forever ago. That’s the way Paris was.
Had her French been less rusty, Annie would’ve asked the driver to take the scenic route: a jaunt down Rue Lafayette, with a quick circle around the Opéra and its stunning green dome and golden statues. She never tired of the building, even if it was a little too close to the harried Galeries Lafayette, a place forever socked in by buses and tourists toting wheeled suitcases crammed with newly acquired clothes.
Had they gone that way, past the Opéra, it would’ve been a relatively straight shot toward the Tuileries and la grande roue, the city’s famous Ferris wheel. No matter how tired, physically or otherwise, Annie couldn’t watch the carriages lift over the trees without feeling the lift of her heart.
Accessing the Île Saint-Louis from there would require only a short trip along one of the roads running parallel to the Seine. Rue de Rivoli, for example—the very first street Mrs. Spencer ever called home.
As they traveled across the bridge and onto the island, Annie glanced toward Notre-Dame and smiled in remembrance. When she studied in Paris, her roommate was an aspiring architect. Because of this, the girls spent untold hours in and around the cathedral, pointing out its gargoyles and flying buttresses, studying the gallery of kings and the spectacular rose windows. At once, Annie felt every second of those months. Why had she waited to come back?
“Where are you staying, mademoiselle?” the driver asked as they crossed the Pont Marie. “Which hotel?”
“Oh, I’m staying with a friend.”
A “friend” she’d never met. One who didn’t know she was coming. One who would be puzzled to see a girl show up on his doorstep in jeans, a slightly frayed T-shirt, and a backpack filled with cassettes. What the hell was she doing?
“The address, mademoiselle?”
“Yes, sorry. Twenty-four Quai de Béthune.”
Really. What the hell was she doing? Annie shook her head, at herself, at her folly, at the ridiculousness of the situation. Well, if nothing else, she was in Paris. As Mrs. Spencer would say, it was the best place to make a bad decision.
Annie turned toward the window as the roads narrowed and the buildings became less ornate. Though Napoléon III tasked Haussmann with turning Paris’s crowded streets into wide avenues with parks and squares, Île Saint-Louis maintained its medieval vibe. It was her favorite neighborhood in the city. Annie never could’ve fathomed the events that would lead her back.
“We have arrived,” the driver announced, stopping before an elegant seventeenth-century town home, one of the many lining the quays along the Seine.
“Merci,” she said, fumbling for her wallet. She’d taken out forty euros at the train station and hoped her mom wouldn’t notice the missing funds.
After paying the driver, she slammed the taxi door and looked up at the building’s tawny stone face, it
s white shutters, and wrought-iron balconies. So lovely, so simple, yet the interiors were probably grander than anything she’d seen in that city. Student housing was decidedly more pedestrian, even in Paris.
“All right,” she said to herself. “Let’s see what happens.”
Just as she was about to ring the intercom, a smartly dressed couple punched a code into the keypad. They popped open the black door and Annie slipped in behind them. They didn’t even notice she was there.
The couple kissed once in the lobby and then tumbled together into a ground-floor flat. Annie reached out for the second set of doors but found them locked. She glanced toward the brass-mounted directory, her eyes scanning the list. There he was. Seton, number six.
With an inhale that reverberated through the building’s stone lobby, Annie pressed the black button beside his name and launched a quick prayer up to the sky.
“Allô?” said a voice.
Allô. A small word, three quarters of a word even, but enough to send Annie’s stomach tumbling.
Once again, what the hell was she doing? Traveling to another country? Ringing the doorbell of a stranger? Granted, he was a man her mother once loved, but he was foreign to Annie. And probably to Laurel as well, decades having passed.
“Allô?” the voice said again.
Annie’s mouth felt gummed up and thick. The words were there but she could not spit them out.
Then, suddenly, she heard a loud buzz.
“Why don’t you come up?” he said. “Top floor.”
Sixty-five
ÎLE SAINT-LOUIS
PARIS
NOVEMBER 2001
“It’s been a long time since I’ve had a pretty girl show up unannounced on my doorstep,” the man said.
Annie stood in the doorway, dumbfounded.
He was tall, over six feet, and thin, almost awkwardly so. His eyes were dark, his features sharp, and he had a tangle of curly black hair. The man was attractive, in a goofy sort of way, but his looks were not what left her stupefied. He was familiar. Annie had met him before.
“Hello,” she said.
Where? Where had Annie seen him? Was this Win? Or some other person?
I'll See You in Paris Page 27
