Chapter 14
The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it.
Outside, Mirabelle headed in the direction of the river. For the first time since he died, she found she didn’t want to think about Jack, so she decided to ignore the drizzle and walk for a while as she focused her attention on what she told herself was the real matter in hand. Philip Caine. A cluster of raindrops fell from a tree overhead as she passed. The bright droplets splattered on the paving stone. She needed to think. Turning onto the rue de Rivoli, she halted outside a fancy-looking hotel sporting the French flag over its doorway. Eddie had said that France had recovered from the war more quickly than Britain, but it seemed that wasn’t the case for Christine Moreau. Seeing Mirabelle stop, the doorman at the hotel’s entrance stood to attention ostentatiously.
‘Madame.’
She cast a glance up the street, hesitating only a moment before going inside. Suddenly the instinct to call home was strong – you always reported back, even if, these days, she was her own boss. The thought of the office on Brills Lane was comforting. At least Vesta and Bill were always on her side. McGuigan & McGuigan was gloriously uncomplicated.
At reception she asked if she might make an international call. The porter directed her across the marble hallway to a telephone booth with a frosted glass window, beside a very grand staircase. The booth housed a comfortable velvet chair, a telephone and an overflowing ashtray. Mirabelle was glad to sit down. She put the ashtray outside on the carpet and closed the door. Being enclosed felt cosy. She regarded the telephone for a moment before lifting the mouthpiece and dialling the international operator, giving the exchange and number in French. When she hung up she had to wait only a few minutes before the bell trilled loudly. Mirabelle pounced on the receiver.
‘Vesta? Are you there?’
At the other end Vesta squealed. ‘You’re in Paris!’ she said needlessly. ‘What’s it like?’
Mirabelle was unsure how to explain her afternoon. ‘It’s raining,’ she said, rather lamely.
Vesta giggled. ‘It’s raining here too. It’s been terrible weather. Gosh, Mirabelle, you sound as if you’re only next door. I’m glad you called. I wasn’t sure how to get hold of you.’
‘Why? What’s happened?’ Mirabelle envisioned something dreadful. A body. Perhaps two. She wished she was in the office with Vesta making toast and Bill spoiling the dog. That way they could tackle things together. Vesta sounded pleased as Punch.
‘I came up with something from the papers. You know, in the library.’
Mirabelle caught up slowly. She hadn’t realised the girl would continue her research after she’d left. Brighton seemed distant – certainly more than a day away. Vesta carried on, oblivious.
‘I couldn’t turn up anything about Philip Caine so I went back to looking for Bradley and decided to keep going forwards to see what happened next. After Bradley got married in October 1942. To Lady Caroline Bland, you remember?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well. It’s the baby, you see – Jennifer June Bradley.’
‘What about her?’
‘They announced the birth the following June in The Times but they didn’t give a date, and that’s what I thought was fishy. I mean, you ordinarily say “Last Thursday born to” whoever it was … There’s usually a date or a day or something. The Bradleys didn’t put it like that. The announcement just said, “A daughter born to” or something. So I ordered the little girl’s birth certificate and lo and behold she was born on the seventh of February 1943. Now, a baby born that far before its due date would never survive, so the little thing wasn’t just early. Do you see?’
Mirabelle leaned back against the wall. ‘Yes. If she was born in February that means …’
‘I know,’ Vesta enthused, overjoyed to have uncovered something that constituted gossip. ‘It’s a cheeky middle name to give her, don’t you think? Quite clever. I bet they’ve been throwing her birthday parties in June all her life. But she’s a February baby. The child must have been conceived in May 1942 or perhaps June at the outside. And at that time Matthew Bradley was in a prisoner of war camp in Germany and Lady Caroline was still engaged to Philip Caine.’
‘It’s Caine’s baby,’ Mirabelle said slowly. ‘Of course. Caine and Lady Caroline planned to get married in the summer, before the pregnancy started to show, but then Caine was shot down over France. At the Army and Navy Club the man I spoke to called Caroline Bland a firebrand. She kicked up an awful fuss when Caine went missing in action. Well, no wonder – she was left in a sticky situation. She must have been beside herself.’
‘And then Bradley came home and married her.’
‘For his friend’s sake.’ Mirabelle pieced it together. ‘All this time I assumed he was a cad who had stolen her away, but now it would seem he did it to save the woman’s good name. I wonder if Caine knew. Do you think the men planned it? And that’s why Mrs Bradley came down to Brighton when she heard I was trying to find Caine. She doesn’t want any of this coming out. It was years ago – she thought they’d got away with it and then her husband put the bequest in his will and she was terrified it might all unravel. That’s what she meant about dragging people’s names through the mud – it was her name she was worried about, and her daughter’s.’
‘The thing I don’t understand,’ Vesta said, ‘is that if Bradley got out of France and made it home, why didn’t Caine too? He had something important to come back to, after all. Something worthwhile. Why on earth did they split up when they were over halfway? Men who escaped tried to stay together.’ Vesta had by now leafed through several escape memoirs and was becoming something of an expert. ‘Instead of that, only one of them made it, and when he got back he must have hooked up with Lady Caroline immediately – made an agreement, like you said. By my reckoning, he got home late in August and the couple married in the first week of October – that’s six weeks at most, perhaps more like five. They could hardly have done it more quickly, what with them having to announce the banns.’ Vesta knew the drill – she and Charlie had looked into a church service before they discarded the idea. ‘It takes three Sundays, and the wedding was in Durham Cathedral on a Monday. I reckon they tied the knot as quickly as they could.’
Mirabelle’s mind whirled. ‘You’ve done a marvellous job. Well done,’ she said.
Vesta’s grin was palpable down the phone line even at a distance of several hundred miles. ‘I’m not finished yet. I thought I’d go back to the library this afternoon. How’s it going over there?’
Mirabelle wasn’t sure how to put it. ‘Well, Paris is lovely. And Caine was alive if not well here in 1944, all right. But I haven’t found a trace of him since.’
She didn’t want to tell Vesta about being pursued by an unhinged woman brandishing scissors. The story of Caroline Bradley’s illicit pregnancy felt comfortably distant and she was glad to be able to focus on that.
‘It would be good to know why he stayed all that time in occupied territory – two years,’ Vesta mused. ‘That’s a big decision. I mean, surely he’d have preferred to come home and marry his sweetheart. And why didn’t he come home after the war to see her and the little girl? I’d have thought he would be curious.’
‘Perhaps it was too painful.’ Mirabelle tried to dismiss the uncharitable thoughts about Mrs Bradley that were now passing through her mind.
‘How shall I get hold of you if I turn up anything else?’ Vesta was nothing if not a grafter.
‘Send a telegram. I’m at the Hôtel Rambeau. It’s on the rue Lentonnet, close to the Gare du Nord.’
Vesta sounded the words as she noted them down and Mirabelle helped with the spelling.
‘I’d best get off. This is long distance.’
‘Have a nice time!’ Vesta hung up.
Mirabelle loitered a moment in the booth as the line went dead. She imagined the girl underlining the words and then putting aside the notepad. She stared at the telephone, realising slowly that there was n
o one else in the world she wanted to call. Pulling on her gloves, she emerged into the hotel hallway. Her heels clicked as she crossed the marble and paid the bill in cash at the reception desk. Well, she couldn’t help thinking, Mrs high-and-mighty Bradley had found herself in a ticklish situation. She was lucky. Although perhaps ending up marrying someone other than the man she presumably loved might not have been an entirely lucky break. She wondered how Matthew Bradley had felt about it. Had that night in the club in London been his last hurrah? When he had flirted with the pale-eyed secretary had he already booked his Monday morning wedding in Durham? No wonder his eyes had been so blank.
Mirabelle slipped back onto the rue de Rivoli with a shiver. The rain had not abated and she felt the chill. She asked the doorman to hail her a taxi and tipped him well for doing so. Were wives only lovers who got lucky, she wondered? Some of them were, it seemed. It was unfair. With a flick of her wrist, she directed the taxi to take her back to her hotel. She wanted to draw a bath and get some rest. It had been a momentous day, and now she needed to sift through the information she’d uncovered and think through what to do next. She settled into the leather seat, counting the lamp posts as the car went by, her eye drawn to one or two of the grander shops and to the wide grey sky above.
About halfway back to the hotel, rounding a corner, at the very edge of her field of vision she noticed an old Peugeot following the taxi. Her heart slowed, and then, as if she was on automatic pilot, she directed the driver to turn next left.
The driver objected, telling her it was the wrong way. But she was insistent.
He shrugged and turned left. The Peugeot followed. The car hadn’t even indicated. Mirabelle swivelled in her seat.
She asked the driver to turn left again. The driver did as she asked, and when the Peugeot followed once more Mirabelle strained to see who was inside, but it was impossible. The rain was too heavy to make out anything. Barring that, she knew only one way of finding out who it was. She directed the driver to drop her at the Gare du Nord. It would be easy there to disappear into the crowd and watch to see who emerged from the vehicle to follow her. Busy places were friendly places for a woman who didn’t want to be seen.
The station wasn’t far. As the cab drew up at the concourse, Mirabelle paid the driver and hurried towards the entrance without waiting for her change. The Peugeot halted only a few yards behind and lingered to one side, parked at an angle. It was a good vantage point for peering through the crowd – people with cases and without, businessmen and families. A small group of schoolgirls in blue uniform coats and red berets clustered together. Mirabelle darted round them and took up a position just inside the station entrance. A moment later the man in the Mackintosh and brown homburg got out of the car. This was intriguing. She had misjudged him. He hadn’t been hoping for an assignation after all – even in France this behaviour would be on the keen side. But what on earth was the fellow after if not that? She pulled behind a pillar, out of his sight line, and he ran past her into the station, looking left and right as he went.
Mirabelle slipped out of her hiding place and onto a side street. She waited round a corner, peering towards the concourse. The man came out again about two minutes later and looked around, his arms akimbo. Then he checked his watch and ran back into the station. From her vantage point Mirabelle sighed with relief. He would think she had caught a train. As she turned up the street and headed in the direction of the Hôtel Rambeau she couldn’t help smiling. The chap clearly had no training to speak of. The thought drew her attention back to the real conundrum – what had Jack Duggan and Matthew Bradley done to Christine Moreau that was so unforgivable and where on earth was Philip Caine?
Chapter 15
The past is a foreign country.
When Mirabelle woke it was still dark. She could smell the last of the cheeseboard she’d eaten in her room the evening before – an early dinner. The plate lay on the bedside cabinet. The dregs of a glass of red wine now smelled vinegarish and all that was left of the Camembert was a dry white crust. She fumbled for her watch and the light switch. It was only half past six. She had slept for ten hours. She had needed to. She hadn’t even dreamed as she lay under the creamy sheet with its thin over-blanket. The world had disappeared.
Getting up, she poured some water into the sink to wash her face and hands. The soap was homemade. The foam smelled of lavender. Drying her skin on the towel, she turned, cracked the shutter and switched off the electric light. Outside, the little courtyard looked cold but at least it was dry now. She lifted the blanket from the end of her bed and curled up in the chair by the window. Within a few minutes there was a low light in the sky as dawn broke over Paris in an icy roll of peaches and cream. The courtyard was planted with ivy that sneaked up the walls on all sides. There were three wooden tables with chairs placed on the east side where they would surely catch any afternoon sun. That was for a different time of year, when Paris was balmy in June and July before everyone abandoned the city in August because of the heat.
In the hallway she heard movement – a maid perhaps, or someone rising for an early breakfast. The floorboards in the hallway creaked and then fell silent. Before she slept, Mirabelle had tried to piece the puzzle together. It had whirled round and round in her head, and she had realised that in all the details she had uncovered there were too many stories, too many different points of view. No one had turned out the way she had originally expected. Bradley had married his friend’s pregnant fiancée. The men may well have agreed on the plan when they parted in 1942. That alone was strange, but still, for Bradley to keep his word and rescue Lady Caroline was an act of kindness that would have been beyond many men. But two years later Caine had lashed out at him. What was he angry about? And where had he gone?
And then there was Jack. Mirabelle wanted most of all to find out about Jack’s dealings in Paris during the war. His secrets. The idea scared her. Christine Moreau had been so furious with him, so hurt and betrayed. What had Jack done to leave the poor woman so damaged all these years later? Mirabelle didn’t like to admit it, but it had occurred to her that in some ways she was just as damaged. With a different upbringing or in a different world might she have lashed out that evening in the Duggans’ comfortable Hove drawing room? Had Jack really intended to leave Mary and marry her, or had he only been leading her on? Did he plan to keep her as his mistress, and if so had he really loved her at all? Mirabelle knew she couldn’t have lied to Jack. She never had. If he had lied to her, or even simply misled her, what did that betoken?
With a shudder as if she was in pain, she tore her gaze away from the little garden and the brightening sky and fumbled in the half-light to pull on her clothes. She fixed her hair in the mirror – a simple chignon, the French way. Her mother would have liked that. It was only just after seven o’clock. Opening the door to the hallway she could smell coffee brewing. Downstairs in the dining room to the front of the building, she gratefully accepted a cup of strong coffee and a small basket of bread and butter with a smear of dark jam – damson or blackcurrant, it was hard to tell. She ate without thinking, with one eye on the deserted early morning street, still thinking of matters that were long past.
When she judged that the local businesses would be opening their doors, she pulled on her coat and emerged from the hotel’s front door to wander along the pavement, passing the boulangerie where she had bought croissants when she arrived. The ghost of a breeze chilled the air. Mirabelle was almost out of leads. She had no friends here. Her next call was a long shot and the very last idea she had for turning up some information. She checked behind her to be sure that she wasn’t being followed, but the man in the homburg had apparently given up. On the corner, she bought a posy of snowdrops from a flower stall and popped three of the little flowers into her buttonhole. Then she continued in the direction of the Louvre – it was only slightly out of her way. Her grandmother had taken her to the grand old gallery regularly. The old lady understood that a child’s attention
span was short and had never allowed more than half an hour inside, so it had remained a perpetual treat. She had selected paintings to show Mirabelle that she knew would appeal to a little girl: an angel, a group of fairies and a bright waterfall that split the light into a rainbow.
‘Shall we visit our favourites, my little plum?’ she cooed. ‘It is important to love art, Mirabelle. As you get older it becomes more important. You will see.’
Now, walking the Parisian pavements, it felt right, somehow, to be here. Perhaps that was what the old lady had meant. In a changing world the images framed in gilded wood stayed constant. It was a long time since Mirabelle had visited a gallery. During her London days she had sometimes taken herself to the National. Her favourite paintings in those days were seascapes. Jack liked winter pictures of snowy rooftops and blizzards. They had wandered through the galleries together, hand in hand. Afterwards they headed for Soho and the privacy of an anonymous restaurant – somewhere away from the demands of Whitehall.
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