Headline

by Imogen Robertson

  He looked as if he was about to protest, but after meeting the Countess’s eye he dropped his chin.

  Yvette had curled up onto the floor where she could keep her eyes level with the shifting lights of the tiara. ‘This is good work, isn’t it?’

  He looked at her with a frown. ‘Evrard and Frédéric Bapst were craftsmen of the first rank, miss. It is a classic piece, the symmetry of the foliage—’

  ‘No, not that. The faking, I mean. I know you saw it as soon as you looked properly, but you did have to look, didn’t you? And you said you’re not sure about the smaller stones. To fool a man like you, with all your cleverness, even for a second,’ she snapped her fingers and they all jumped, ‘that has to be a good fake.’

  Beauclerc rubbed the bridge of his nose again. ‘If there is such a thing, then yes, they are good imitations. But there are many people in Paris making fake jewels, expert ones. You’ll see the signs saying “imitation” hung over half the displays in the boutiques of the Palais Royal.’

  ‘And the settings?’ Yvette pressed on. ‘I mean, to get the real diamond out and stick in a glass one without it looking wrong? You’d have to know what you were doing, yes?’

  Beauclerc looked once more towards the Countess for guidance, but she seemed absorbed in the view of her garden. ‘Yes, certainly. But this is Paris – centre of the world for fashion and jewellery. The best craftsmen from all Europe find their way here. I could name a hundred men who could make these fakes, and a hundred others who could set them.’

  Now Tanya leaned forward in her chair, her eyes bright. ‘But you all know, don’t you? All of you jewellers and designers, you all know this tiara and who owns it. It’s famous.’

  He stroked his chin. ‘Yes, of course. I admit that the list of people who, without an express command from the Countess herself, would be willing to do this work and had the capacity is rather shorter . . .’

  ‘Well then,’ Tanya said, drawing a tiny notebook from her bag and pulling out a pencil thin as a spider’s leg from its spine. ‘Give us that list.’

  CHAPTER 9

  Caveau des Innocents oil on canvas 64.8 × 76.3 cm

  One of the most notorious bars in Paris near Les Halles and known until the First World War as a haunt for the destitute and desperate. Though the patrons are huddled in the rough clothing of the working poor and seen by the light of smoking oil lamps, there is a sense of life and community in the painting. The focus of attention is the singer seated at the back table with her bright red shawl and the violinist who accompanies her, the handkerchief around his neck echoing the same red. The performance seems to transport her listeners, who lean in towards her just as the viewer is drawn towards her – and away from the surrounding shadows.

  Extract from the catalogue notes to the exhibition ‘The Paris Winter: Anonymous Treasures from the de Civray Collection’, Southwark Picture Gallery, London, 2010

  When Beauclerc had been hurried, sniffing and unhappy, from the house, Yvette assured the Countess that she could find which of the men on the list had done the work on the tiara if she were given a few days to look for them in the lower haunts of Paris. One of them would have more money than he should, she said, or would have been busy while everyone else was drinking over Christmas and New Year.

  Maud lay back on the Countess’s settee while they discussed it and let the talk flow over her. She had expected some relief from coming here. She remembered the middle-class living rooms of her mother’s friends where she had been petted and praised – the glow of self-worth she had felt. She had felt it again when the Countess gave her the portfolio of photographs during those perfect days before Christmas when she was loved and useful. Now, lying back empty and hollow while the others were so full of purpose, she realised she had been hoping to feel that again, had imagined the Countess tearful and grateful, praising and pitying her back into the world. It had not happened.

  ‘Fine!’ the Countess said at last, holding up her hand to stop the talk of the two other women. ‘Find who did the work and come and tell me. We shall see about the police after that.’

  ‘You mustn’t do anything that puts Maud in danger,’ Tanya protested. ‘If you do, I shall . . . I shall . . .’

  ‘What? Faint?’ Madame de Civray replied sharply. ‘Do not fret, Miss Koltsova. I’m sure we can persuade whoever did the work to turn in Morel, or Gravot if that is his real name. Such people do not normally keep their mouths shut for their friends.’ She took a breath. ‘I’m sorry, girls. Seeing the dead walk and then finding out about that damned tiara has rattled me.’

  Yvette looked up at her, eyes slightly narrowed. ‘It was brave of Maud to come here, Madame.’

  The older woman pursed her lips. ‘Yes, it was. I thank her for it and I shan’t forget it.’ But she did not look at Maud. ‘Do you mind if Arthur shows you out of the back door?’

  Tanya let them off at Place Pigalle before being carried off to the Louvre to play the part of the devoted student and Yvette supported Maud on her arm back to Valadon’s.

  ‘Let me come with you tonight,’ Maud said as she sat down on the bed and began to unbutton her boots.

  ‘No. No bloody way,’ Yvette said, shocked. ‘It is not the place for you and besides, you are not well enough. I can’t ask the questions I need to with you hanging over my shoulder. You don’t know the language – this is not drawing-room French – and you don’t know how to be.’

  ‘And where is my place?’ Maud’s disappointment at the Countess’s house was thickening, curdling into something bleak and wretched. ‘I will come if I have to follow you through the streets until I fall in the gutter. I want to see. And I cannot sit here quietly while other people plan and do around me. No more.’

  Yvette sat down heavily on the bed beside her, making the springs complain. ‘Where is your place? Who knows? No one does, Maud.’ She pulled her knife from her pocket and flicked it open, then began to pare her short nails. ‘Your place is just where you end up, I suppose.’

  ‘Tell everyone I am a new model just turned up with a few francs, and you’re using me to buy you drinks.’

  Yvette looked at her sideways and spoke softly. ‘Why? Why do you want to come? There’s nothing to see but misery and stink. A month ago, you would have swooned at the very idea of going somewhere like that. Anyone seeing you go into these places will assume you are a whore or a thief, possibly both.’

  ‘But now I am a ghost, Yvette, I can go anywhere. And I shall. I want to see, and why should I care what strangers think?’

  Yvette squeezed the blade shut, slipped the knife back into her pocket then hugged herself. ‘Christ, Maud, I hate it when you talk like that. You’ve always cared what other people think, and you’re not a ghost.’

  ‘I feel like one. An angry one. I can’t carry on thinking the world can be made into what I want it to be, Yvette. That got me killed. I want to see it as it is.’

  Yvette waited for a while then nodded. ‘All right – but say as little as you can. If they think you are not one of them in the Caveau des Innocents, they will kill you. Rest now. I’ll come back for you at midnight.’

  An arched doorway, an entrance into the cellars of what was once a great house in a dim street a stone’s throw from Les Halles. There was a man, hunched against the cold, leaning on the wall outside. His eyes drifted over them and he nodded. Maud wore clothes she’d borrowed from Valadon. A simple skirt and threadbare cotton blouse under a short black coat worn shiny at the elbows. She felt more comfortable than she had in the rose evening gown.

  Yvette pushed open the door and led Maud down a narrow stone staircase. The only light was from smoking candles stuck into the tops of bottles on the steps or occasional oil lamps swinging from large metal hooks, and the air was thick with the stench of sweat, sour alcohol and cheap black tobacco. The grey plaster walls were scrawled with names in household paint, a dark vermilion: Panther, Ugly Henry, Fat Emily. Not decoration, but some sort of declaration of existence.
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br />   At the bottom of the stairs, the two women reached the first of a series of low, vaulted rooms. There was a bar of sorts, with smeared glasses and unlabelled bottles. Yvette pointed at one then waited, leaning her folded arms on the bar, for Maud to pay. Against the walls were wooden benches and tables. Yvette picked up the bottle and a pair of glasses and took Maud to a spot in the corner of a second vault that led off from the first, poured the drinks and emptied the first glass immediately down her throat. Maud did the same. The wine scorched her throat, but after the first sting she felt it warm her, drive some of the noxious stink out of her blood.

  She began to pick out the details of the room. A man at the far end of the room was playing a violin, and seated at the table next to him, another was singing. The patrons nearest to them swayed with the music and joined in with the chorus. Maud could only make out a few of the words. He was lamenting his girl, shut away in Saint-Lazare, complaining that he had no comfort in life while she was gone. It seemed the song was addressed to the girl’s little sister. He was asking her to take up her elder’s duties. Each verse seemed to end with a joke or a pun that sent the crowd into fits of laughter before they sang out the chorus.

  The bar was beginning to fill and the reek of unwashed bodies, warmed by their closeness, soured the thin air. Yvette held her tumbler close to her face, observing the distorted crowd through the dirty glass. The song ended and another began, a woman singing this time in a low growl. Maud looked at the faces, mournful or intent, the way the men and women watched each other as much with their bodies as their eyes. Yvette slid out of her place and went to lean on the bar again; after a few minutes Maud realised she was talking to the man next to her. Yvette was nodding at him now, her eyes flickering to right and left while he spoke, making sure she was not overheard.

  While Maud watched, another man, his hair greased back from his forehead, took Yvette’s place beside her and said something to her she didn’t understand. She shrugged then felt his arm slide around her waist. His skin smelled of stale bread and onion and she could feel the warmth of his body through her clothes. He was whispering into her ear a mixture of compliments and obscenities, his fingers pressing into the flesh of her hip, his breath on her neck. Suddenly she was yanked to her feet. Yvette had pulled her up and was now leaning into her face in a rage, shaking her arm, talking fast and loud. The man who had been embracing her laughed, said something and grabbed his crotch. The others near to him hooted and applauded. Looking as submissive as she could, Maud took hold of Yvette’s hand and kissed her knuckles. She saw the slight flicker of surprise and amusement cross Yvette’s face before the girl remembered to be angry again. She delivered one last insult to the man, then wrapped her arm around Maud’s waist and carried her off.

  Her act of furious indignation lasted until they turned the corner into Rue Berger when she dropped her grip on Maud, leaned against the wall and began to laugh so hard the tears ran down her face. The street was quiet, the shop-fronts and pitches around Les Halles closed away for the night and the doors to the warehouses locked. A dog barked from behind one of the gates and Yvette pulled herself straight.

  ‘Oh Lord, oh I thought I would die when you kissed my hand! Did you understand what I was saying to you?’

  Maud put her head on one side. ‘Something about being a faithless bitch, I think. What did you find out about the names on the list?’

  Yvette waited to see some spark of amusement in Maud’s face, some acknowledgement of the adventure, but none came. She wiped her eyes on her cuff.

  ‘According to Freddy, one is dead. Another left Paris last year to try his luck in the provinces. Two of the others have been seen out and drinking most nights since Christmas. But there are two that no one has seen around for a while. The man I spoke to said the bloke who was the pick of Beauclerc’s list was Henri Bouchard, and he’s one of the ones not seen since before the holidays. Apparently he’d been trying to go straight, working out of a shop in the Palais Royal – but he’s not turned up there since then either.’

  Maud nodded shortly and Yvette felt a chill in her bones that had nothing to do with the coldness of the evening or damp in the air. ‘How did you get him to tell you these things?’

  Yvette pulled her shawl over her shoulders and turned north back towards Montmartre, walking briskly. ‘I told him I had a fellow interested in getting into the game of swapping real stones for fakes in the shops. Freddy used to do that too – before he got his face cut. Everyone could spot him after that so now he sweats in Les Halles butchering meat.’ She could hear Maud following her.

  ‘Are you angry with me, Yvette?’ Her voice was calm.

  ‘No,’ Yvette took her arm. ‘Just a little frightened for you. What would your lawyer brother say if he knew that you had been in that bar? With that man?’

  Maud considered it a while and as they passed through the pool of light from a gas-lamp, Yvette saw the suggestion of a smile cross her friend’s gaunt face. ‘He would have me committed, I think, and what’s more, if I had heard the story told about another woman from our town, of our class, I might have agreed with him. Isn’t it strange? A place you can go every day if you wish to, yet my brother would probably lock me away forever if he knew I’d let that man put his arm around my waist. Let us go and see the Countess.’

  Despite the lateness of the hour, it was still a little while before Madame de Civray returned from her evening engagements. The two women were summoned to her dressing room. The Countess sat in front of the three-part mirror taking the powder from her face with cold cream and brushing out her hair while Yvette told her what she had learned. After consulting her diary, she gave them a date.

  CHAPTER 10

  19 January 1910

  Henri Bouchard was drunk. Henri Bouchard made a habit of being drunk whenever he had the money and he had money now. It was not half of what he deserved though, not for a job like that. He let out a curse and some tart on the next table looked at him over her shoulder then turned back to her friends. He was a craftsman. They had treated him unfairly. Rushed him through his work and then paid him badly for it. Still, he had enough to get drunk in one of his favourite bars – one with a proper band and lots of girls dancing. Not like in Les Innocents where you had to face nose to nose what a failure you’d become. Only the desperate got drunk in that stink-hole. Here you still got a lively crowd ready to fight and flirt till dawn, but your drinks came in a clean glass.

  ‘What’s up, Uncle?’

  A young woman slid along the bench towards him. He growled and turned away. ‘Oh come on, Uncle, don’t be like that! My friends haven’t arrived and you look like you could use cheering up. Buy us a drink and I’ll sing you a song.’

  He half-turned towards her, his eyes narrow. She was pretty enough. Prettier than the women who normally offered to keep him company these days. Perhaps she could smell the money on him, little enough though it was. Still, what harm could a song do? He nodded to the waiter and the girl put her arm through his. He felt the ease of her warm his flank. A good feeling that, when it was cold in Paris – to feel the heat of a girl next to you, the smoky animal comfort of it. It made it almost a pleasure to remember the hell of the work camps on the shores of Guiana, where you were slick with your own sweat, and hunger clawed every breath, just to feel more sweetly the comfort of this now.

  If they’d paid him what the work was worth, he could have lived like this for good, but that Gravot was a swine. He knew too much about the old days – quoted him his own words back from the camp when Henri had liked to boast about the society ladies locking away paste worth five francs in their strong-boxes. And he remembered things – oh, Gravot had a memory on him. That was what had cost Henri his proper fee on this job: Gravot’s memory and Henri’s boasting. Henri recalled him arriving in the camp. Scrap of a lad; thought he was as like to die in his first week as live, but he held on, the little devil, learning from the old lags around him – sucking it all in with the burning air. And t
he men liked to talk. There was nothing else to do when they’d done fighting each other for scraps. Then there were his funny turns. They’d caught a wild pig once, and the guards were willing to look the other way for the best cuts of it. Killing it had turned into a bit of a festival and Gravot had seemed as blood-happy as any of them till Vogel had stuck a knife in its belly – and then he’d gone white as paper under his prison tan and started beating him up. Knocked Vogel flying and would have killed him too if they hadn’t dragged him off. Such strength he had in his wiry little bones . . .

  The band started up with one of the songs he remembered from his youth, and Henri’s foot tapped along to it before he even knew he was listening. Gravot was quite the gentleman these days. A fake gentleman, a gentleman of glass and gilt, but a good copy. Henri had been pleased to see him at first. Could hardly hear his ‘Good morning’ on the street outside the back yard lean-to where he worked for the blare of tropical birdsong Gravot seemed to bring with him. Then when it came to agreeing the price for the job, he showed what sort of ‘friend’ he was. No wonder he’d got rich while Henri was rotting in the back room of one of the cheapest jewellers in Paris, never allowed to handle anything worth more than a franc and with the steward’s eye always on him.

  ‘Uncle, I swear you haven’t heard a word I’ve said.’ The girl was filling up his glass and he half-smiled at her. She had pretty hair the colour of sand. Not one of the whores, nicer than that.

  ‘Something about a hat?’

  ‘Oh Uncle, you are funny. No, a skirt I made, and pricked my fingers open to do it and the madame comes in and it’s “no, no, not like that” – and I’m to do it all over, and it had taken me hours. Such fine work, and do they understand the quality? Not a chance. If I’d known the price they’d pay me I’d have stitched it so the seams would split on first wearing.’ She sighed and put her chin in her hands.