Headline

by Imogen Robertson

‘Five hundred francs does buy a great deal, Tanya. And many husbands might think of hiring you where they would not hire anyone else.’ Maud got out of the bed and the world did not spin or lurch. She felt as if she had new black blood in her veins. ‘I am going to see Miss Harris later this morning.’

  Tanya put the notebook back into her pocket. ‘Do you wish me to come with you?’

  ‘No, this I had better do by myself. And in your lists, Tanya, put something aside for sickness or accident.’

  Charlotte was with Miss Harris going through the accounts when Maud called, and though she had thought she would speak to Miss Harris alone, she remembered what Charlotte had said about Morel smiling too much and invited her to stay. They had heard nothing from the Morels about her supposed disgrace and so greeted her with pleasure. Miss Harris seemed a little disappointed when Maud lifted her veil and Miss Harris noticed she still looked rather drawn. Then Maud began her story. It felt as if she were relating someone else’s history. Once or twice Miss Harris put her hands together, palm to palm, and lifted the fingertips to her lips. It was something between a prayer and an attempt to stifle an exclamation.

  When Maud had finished speaking, Miss Harris was silent for some time. Then she reached out to take Maud’s hand across the table.

  ‘Oh Miss Heighton! I am so sorry.’

  Maud wondered whether, if the Countess had offered that generous sympathy, she might be back in England by now.

  ‘I want justice, Miss Harris,’ she said. ‘And I would like you to help me.’

  Miss Harris still held her hand. ‘He is leaving Paris, you say? The Countess intends to reclaim her money from him there before he can do more harm? Well, my dear. Certainly it seems that justice has been denied you in this world, but you shall have it in the next.’ Maud tried to pull her hand away, but Miss Harris kept hold of her. ‘No, my dear. You shall hear me. There is nothing – nothing – you can do to this man that will compare with the agony he will feel when he finds himself judged before his Creator. His sufferings will be terrible. He will see what he has done in God’s Holy Light and you will pity him. Yes, you shall. Pray for him, Miss Heighton. That is my advice. Go home, lead a good and useful life and pray for them both. They have damned themselves. God has saved you for some purpose, I am sure, but I am just as sure it was not to take revenge on the Morels. This is my advice to you, dear Miss Heighton. I shall not help you in any other way.’

  Maud’s hand was released. She stood and curtsied to Miss Harris with the greatest respect, but left without saying another word.

  She walked across Paris. The rain had been steady all day but rather than return to her grey room in Montmartre she walked the length of the Champs Élysées, passing the twin domes of the Grand and Petit Palais and crossing Place de la Concorde. She did not look at the place where Sylvie had shown her the stolen brooch or search for any sign of where Mme Prideux had died. The cars raced by her and the high omnibuses teetered past. When she crossed the river on the Solferino Bridge the embankments became quieter. The rain persisted but the cafés were still full, men and women going about their sanctioned public lives under the striped awnings and behind low, burning braziers. Some of the men stared, tried to speak to her, but she simply looked over the tops of their heads and they melted back into the crowds. She reached the Quai Conti, but only when she was at the bottom of Rue de Seine did she hesitate. Her chest ached again, a dark flowering. She could walk past the door, the windows, and glance up. If, at that moment someone – Miss Harris, Tanya or Yvette – had happened on her and offered her again their comfort and friendship, perhaps she would have left Paris that evening and she would have been saved. But no one came.

  She walked down the street looking straight ahead of her, crossed the Boulevard Saint-Germain, then just as she came opposite the house, she looked up and froze. Sylvie was standing in the window with her back to it, facing into the room. She still is, Maud thought. She still is when I am not there. How can that be? Knowing that Sylvie was in the Countess’s house had been pain enough, but to see her – her white neck with the blond hair gathered on top of her head – it was pain beyond all imagining. Then he appeared at her side. Morel. He took her in his arms and held her. Sylvie was laughing, her head thrown back. They are happy because I am dead, Maud thought. The idea seemed to take the air from her. Morel. The man who had thrown her into the water without a qualm, now wrapped around Sylvie and murmuring into her neck, telling her the places they would go with the money they had stolen, the wonderful, delightful life they would have together now Maud was rotting in the Seine and he had his fist full of diamonds.

  Morel seemed to feel something – he lifted his head and glanced out of the window, but Maud was already gone, dragging her bitter heart with her. As she walked away, the sellers of the afternoon newspapers began to call out for custom. ‘The waters are rising! The river mounts!’

  When she returned to the room she was soaked to the skin. At first she didn’t see Charlotte sitting by the stove with her legs crossed. She was smoking a cigarette, and on her knee was propped a book; it had the tell-tale thin paper and gilded edges of a Bible. She looked up at Maud’s bedraggled form.

  ‘I’ve lit the stove – I hope that’s not a problem. The room was freezing and I wasn’t sure how long I’d have to wait.’

  ‘Of course,’ Maud said, taking off the veiled hat and putting it on the bed. ‘What can I do for you, Miss . . .’

  ‘Just call me Charlotte,’ the woman said, waving the cigarette and looking back down to her reading. ‘It will wait. Put something dry on before you get sick again.’

  Maud did so, glancing at her visitor out of the corner of her eye as she changed out of her wet clothes. Charlotte was dressed, as ever, in black and wore thick-soled shoes. Her forehead was a little lined and Maud wondered if she could be as much as forty. When she had dressed, Maud dragged one of the wicker chairs over so she could sit opposite Charlotte by the fire. Charlotte closed her Bible and reached behind her chair, hauling onto her knee a basket complete with red gingham cover and took out a flask and bread and butter wrapped in greaseproof paper. Without saying anything she poured out milky tea into one of the china cups she had brought with her and handed it to Maud, along with one of the parcels of bread and butter. Then, when she had served herself, she said, ‘Miss Heighton, I wish you to know first of all that Miss Harris has done more good in this world than any other individual I have ever met.’

  ‘I understand,’ Maud said. She sipped the tea and a wave of nostalgia broke over her so sudden and complete it seemed an outside force. She thought of the tea room in Reeth where her mother had taken her once when she was a child, the charabanc ride up the North Yorkshire Dales and the shifting banks of green on the moor. It lasted only a moment and then she was back in her grey Paris room and listening to Charlotte.

  ‘She has brought more lost souls to God than you can imagine. Creatures that no one else would think worth a moment of their time have become good and useful members of their community. She has, through nothing but patience and kindness, turned drunks into true believers, whores into nurses. Even those who are still too lost in their own misery to conceive of a God who loves them will follow her into church because she believes – and they believe in her. She does not preach. She prays for them and offers them her love, no matter how miserable their condition. I am blessed indeed to see what wonders God can work through her.’

  Maud had nothing to say in reply, but continued to drink her tea and watch her. Charlotte leaned forward, lifting her index finger: ‘And she is right, absolutely right that you should leave the Morels to God and pray for them, but . . .’

  Maud looked at her over the edge of her teacup. ‘But you are not Miss Harris?’

  Charlotte sat back again, her plain face twisted with a half-smile. ‘Indeed, I am not.’ She put her tea onto the floor and from the basket produced a notebook. ‘Explain to me what you have in mind.’

  Maud reached for the b
read and butter. ‘I mean to haunt him.’

  When Yvette swung into the room an hour later, Charlotte had finished taking her notes. She smiled with real affection at the model and when Yvette crossed the room to kiss her, lifted up her cheek to receive the salutation with a slight blush.

  ‘There is still a good English community at Rheims,’ she said to Maud. ‘We have sent a number of girls there who needed to leave Paris and its associations behind them and they will have made friends. Every community relies on shared intelligence.’

  ‘And they will have the necessary authority?’

  ‘Naturally,’ Charlotte said, packing her basket again. ‘They are trusted. And we shall tell them to make it clear that if anyone buys those diamonds, their names will become mud amongst all of our rich American and English donors. And our Russian ones,’ she added with a vague smile. ‘It is easy to do the same in Paris. We shall shut all the doors to him and leave him loose on the streets for you to hunt.’

  Maud stood to shake her hand and see her to the door. It was strange how these habits of politeness re-emerged in the company of another middle-class Englishwoman.

  ‘Thank you.’

  The woman shook her head. ‘Do not. I suspect it is weak of me to assist you, but I cannot help myself, and as I have the nature God gave me, I suppose He must have some plan of which I know nothing. Or perhaps He means to test us and we are failing.’

  Yvette had thrown herself down on the bed and waved as Charlotte left them. She had snatched up one of the packets of bread and butter and now ate it lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling while Maud told her what Madame de Civray had said to Tanya, and then began to explain her own plans.

  ‘Morel goes to Rheims tomorrow. He returns on the twenty-third. If Charlotte is as successful as she hopes, he won’t be able to sell the diamonds. And while the Pinkertons may not be able to do anything illegal in France, I can. I am a ghost, after all.’ Perhaps she expected Yvette to protest in some way at this point, but she did not, just waited for Maud to continue. ‘I want to hire a pick-pocket to steal them back from him and frighten him at the same time. I want him to wonder if he is being pursued.’ She sat down on the bed. ‘I saw him this afternoon in the window at Rue de Seine.’ And when Yvette turned to stare at her: ‘I know I shouldn’t have gone. Don’t say it. He looked so happy, so pleased with himself.’

  ‘He won’t stay like that if the Pinkertons have their way. He’ll end up ruined,’ Yvette said evenly.

  ‘It’s not enough. I want him to be frightened. Scared. And for as long as I can keep him that way.’

  Yvette took her hand, wound her fingers around Maud’s and unravelled them again as if playing with a toy. ‘We want him punished too, Maud. Tanya and I. But we don’t want you to put yourself in danger again. You don’t care about that though, do you?’

  ‘I’d drag him down to hell myself if I could, even if I had to stay there with him.’

  ‘So you want to find a pick-pocket?’

  ‘Yes.’ There was a long pause.

  ‘But you don’t ask me for an introduction.’

  ‘I didn’t like to assume.’

  Yvette groaned and threw herself backwards onto the bed. ‘Oh Maud! You’ve become an avenging angel but kept the manners of an English miss and a proper sense of decorum to your inferiors.’

  ‘You’re not my inferior, Yvette. I know that,’ Maud said.

  ‘You thought I was when you first saw me. You proper English girls always do. More meat to be put up on the dais and stared at. Don’t be sorry. If we worried about the soul of every person we saw on the street, we’d go mad.’ Yvette clambered out of the bed and went to the cracked mirror to peer at herself. She saw lines beginning at the corners of her eyes. ‘I can help you. I would tell you to stay quiet and let me do the talking, but that’s never a problem with you. Are you strong enough for Rue Lepic after all your wanderings?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Now. Before I change my mind.’

  CHAPTER 13

  Rue Lepic was the steep narrow road that led to the summit of Montmartre, kinking and twisting up the hill. It seemed to get poorer and dirtier with every step climbed until suddenly they turned a corner and everything changed. They were surrounded by neat gardens in their winter rest, fruit trees and comfortable freshly painted villas. The street-lamps were being lit, and new patches of light and shadow lifted and glowed along the damp road. A man with long hair and velvet trousers sauntered past and nodded at Yvette. Maud recognised him, his grubby silk scarf. He was one of the men she had seen on the Boulevard Saint-Michel selling his sketches for two francs a time. He looked too old to be a student. Perhaps he was another of these men who had come to Paris in their youth and never escaped it. Maud shivered. To be trapped in Paris seemed no better to her than being trapped in her father’s home. As they passed the Lapin Agile on Rue Saint-Vincent they heard a great shout of laughter from inside. Someone was singing.

  Yvette didn’t look round and Maud followed, watching her. The model’s usual animation seemed to be draining away. She didn’t look at the people passing her and her shoulders were hunched. There had been something of this in her that evening in the bar behind Les Halles, but this was different. She was not playing at anything now; the strain showed on her thin face and made her look older. She turned into Rue des Saules and the respectable country village disappeared like fog. Here the apartment buildings were crushed and dirty, windows broken and boarded up with ragged-edged planks. In the thickening darkness, small groups of men and women watched them from the doorways and steps. The women wore clogs and skirts that showed their ankles, their hair short and framing their faces in straight black lines. The men were young in flat caps and striped shirts, coloured handkerchiefs tied around their throats. The uniform of the apaches.

  In the first boarding-house Maud had lived in, before she learned the brutal truths of Paris economy and moved somewhere colder and cheaper, there had been a rather silly middle-aged English couple who had invited her on a spree one evening. She had been lonely enough to accept and watched her money disappear in a couple of second-rate hostelries. The couple were determined to see the real Paris, and they had taken her to a restaurant where they claimed all the great writers of the city came to dine. Maud thought the clientèle were mostly tourists and the escargots were likely made of cat. Their pièce-de-résistance was to take her to an apache club. It was an over-priced and soulless little dance hall with rude waiters and a dispirited band, but it delighted them – and when a couple of young men fought on the dance floor for the attentions of a girl, they looked as if they would burst with excitement. The fight appeared unconvincing to Maud, and the gendarmes who arrived to break it up and throw the gawking English out onto the street did not make her think it was any more genuine. Their uniforms didn’t fit. Maud had seen a drunk hit a woman; the hissing violence of it, the suddenness of the action, the silence of the blow. These people made too much noise to be in any genuine pain or fear. Her hosts asked if she wished to come out with them again for another evening, and she refused as politely as she could, knowing that they would take it as a sign of her fear and fragility at the wild and debauched life they had shown her, and be rather thrilled at frightening her.

  These men here, talking and smoking in the muddy alleyways behind the Rue des Saules were not imitations of outlaws. What Maud had seen in that club was a blurred reproduction and here were the originals in vivid colour. The men and women she had seen at the Caveau des Innocents were older, worn with work and anxious only to distract themselves with drink and song and human warmth. Here the air crackled with calculation and suspicion and suppressed violence. One man stepped forward, his hands in his pockets. His face had a long pink scar that ran from just over his eye down to his jaw. ‘Yvette. Haven’t seen you in months, little sister.’ He looked at Maud, and she felt him weighing her up. She was wearing her veil and gloves. ‘Have you brought us a chicken for the pot?’

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p; Yvette took the knife from her pocket and opened it with a click that sounded like a gunshot in the quiet street. She spoke softly. ‘I’m here to see Mother, Louis. Touch my friend here and I’ll gut you like the pig you are.’

  He grinned. ‘Oh, Yvette with her little knife! Always ready to defend someone.’ He scratched the side of his nose. ‘Keep her then. We’re off to the Bois to find something fatter anyway. Come with us if you like. You can watch while I throttle some gentleman walking his poodle a little late. Even give you first go of his pockets.’

  A young woman appeared beside him and wound her arm through his. Her face looked like an angel’s, soft and clear with Prussian-blue eyes. The whites showed round the edge of them, making her face seem oddly bright, attentive. She could not have been more than fifteen. She pressed herself up close to Louis’s side. When she spoke, her voice was sharp-edged and her pretty face became older and harder.

  ‘Your real mummy hasn’t come to find you yet, Yvette? What was she – a princess? A lady? No sign of her after all these years? Remember the stories you used to tell us – how she was going to take us all away in a white carriage. Poor old Yvette. They never came to look for you, did they?’ She gazed up at Louis and whined, ‘She was always crazy, Louis. Don’t let her come.’

  Yvette lifted her chin. ‘Don’t fret yourself, Nina. I wouldn’t go anywhere with him.’

  He put his arm around the girl’s waist and she chirruped with pleasure like a cat grateful for its feed. ‘Too right. Leave her to her pipes and books till she has to earn her smoke money on her back. Maybe I’ll let you be one of my girls if you’re good.’

  ‘Get out of my way, Louis.’

  He stood back slowly to let them pass into the yard. ‘See you soon, sister. You’re starting to look old, you know. Another five years and you’ll be selling it for a franc a time with my other pets.’ He laughed and returned to the group he’d been standing with at the kerb, taking the girl along with him.