Headline

by Imogen Robertson

  The woman was overjoyed to love him again and swallowed his charm like champagne. By the time he led her across the Champs with the promise of one more glass of wine at one of the really good restaurants to celebrate their reunion, she was happy as a child . . . then it was only a matter of waiting till the right moment when the crowd was thick and the traffic was charging by.

  Christian took another drink and loosened his tie. He had not wished her to die, though he supposed in the long run, that was easier. A broken leg, the clanging of ambulances, her off her feet and out of the way for a few weeks was all that was necessary, but the car caught her and threw her in the air and into the path of another. He had walked away from the crowd gathering round the accident a little unsteadily. Killing was not easy. Maud too, the way she had tried to cling onto him. Disgusting, but necessary. It would make them rich, but still. Bloody diamonds.

  He and Sylvie had arrived in Paris planning another ‘investment scheme’, called there by all that beautiful American money flowing through the city like the river. One only had to dip in one’s hand . . . He had only seduced the maid to gather a little more information about the rich circle Madame de Civray had around her. Then he’d seen the tiara and thirsted for the stones – and the way she just left the tiara in its case in the dressing room! She didn’t wear it more than once a year, the girl had said. It was more temptation than he could bear. He came home and told Sylvie. Explained his hunger. She understood and worked out how he could have the diamonds. Dear girl. All her cleverness. The opium had been his suggestion. They both enjoyed a smoke from time to time, and it added just the right thickening to the story of Maud’s downfall. It had all gone beautifully. Even Lafond, who seemed sceptical at first, hadn’t been able to resist the testimony of the shop girl and clerk at the pawn office. The body hadn’t turned up at the morgue, but no doubt it would some day. The Countess had been an angel. Yet after two days of refusals, of seeing the diamonds turned away as if he were trying to sell paste, they began to feel like a curse.

  ‘Hey, fella, you look like I feel.’ A man in a brown suit was addressing him. Another American. Why did they always want to talk to everyone? It was as if they were constantly astonished to find other human beings on this side of the Atlantic.

  ‘Can I buy you a drink?’ the man went on. ‘I’ve been in this town three days and it’s been three days too long. There’s no sense of business in this place. No vision. No sense of opportunity. And my Gawd, the food! Still, the champagne is good. I buy for the best hotels in New York, but the way these people are, you’d think they were doing me the favour.’

  This chimed so neatly with what Morel himself thought about the place that he sat up and began to look more fondly on the man in brown. A drink or two later and he was positively cheerful. Feeling more secure now the drink was in him, he took out the little pouch with the bracelet in and showed it to his new friend.

  ‘What were you asking for them?’ Christian told him and the man laughed. ‘What, that’s about five thousand dollars, yeah? Hell, I know a bargain when I see one. Sure, I’ll take them off you for that. We’ll go to my bank first thing in the morning.’

  The clouds lifted from Christian and in the little bar, the sun began to shine. They ordered another bottle to seal their deal and their new friendship when the maid approached and told the gentleman there was a phone call for him at the booth by the reception desk. He shrugged. ‘Only be a minute, friend.’

  Time passed. The champagne in the American’s glass lost its sparkle. Who spends so long on the telephone? Christian put the bracelet back into his breast-pocket and went out into the lobby where the reception desk stood; the telephone booth behind it was empty. The clerk looked up with a polite smile and a slight gesture of the head that seemed to convey she was at her guest’s disposal, of course.

  ‘That American man – came out to take a phone call. We were having a drink together. Where is he?’

  The clerk smiled, though something in her eyes was blank and unwelcoming. ‘Our only American guest checked out a few minutes ago, sir.’

  Morel controlled his temper and went to pay the bar bill. Each note seemed to burn as he passed it over. He hated this town.

  CHAPTER 15

  23 January 1910

  The train rolled into Paris very late. Morel had enjoyed a carriage to himself for most of the journey, but for the last slow part of the trip his privacy had been invaded by a businessman from Éperney who sighed and shook his head over the newspaper. Christian tried to ignore him, staring fixedly out into the darkness and seeing his own handsome face ghostly in the glass. Why had that damned American run off? The diamonds burned next to his heart. Five thousand dollars for the bracelet was a bargain: he would take no less than seventy thousand for the grand jewel when they reached America, yet if he had no buyers they were worth no more than cobblestones. Of all the luck! No doubt the call was from one of the American’s contacts in the city and the deals he had thought dead had risen into life again. It was just a coincidence. That and the strange resistance of the diamond dealers in the city to grab a bargain. It meant nothing, it could mean nothing. He and Sylvie had been clever and this strange little trip aside there was nothing to indicate there was any sort of trouble brewing. Miss Koltsova had swallowed the story, so had the Countess and Lafond. He could smell the gunsmoke on the streets of Paris again, see the man, his hands all bloody. He wished Sylvie was with him. If this carried on, he might have one of those moments when he lost himself and came to, not knowing how much time had passed or where he was.

  ‘The waters are rising.’

  Christian turned away from his own reflection. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The waters, sir. Rising. Such losses in the provinces and now it seems Paris herself is threatened. The river is already higher than it has been for ten years and the waters keep coming.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  The man was so determined to talk that even this was taken as an invitation to conversation. ‘Our sins will find us out. Be assured, sir.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Our sins. Look at us with our electric lights and our underground railways. Motor-cars everywhere. The moving walkways at the exhibition in 1900. We rebel against Nature and she will punish us. It is the cutting down of the trees, it makes the wood spirits angry . . .’

  The man’s first words had sent a tremor of shock through Christian, but as he began to chatter about such nonsense, he relaxed a little. Still, high water in Paris. The river had been full when he left, but floods? Would it affect him, his hiding-place? No, not in a hundred years would the waters reach it. He felt a deep urgency to leave Paris as soon as they could. He would risk selling the bracelet there, after all. The chances of the Countess happening to hear that he had been selling diamonds was infinitesimal, and even if she did, what connection could it have to her with her tiara back in its case and the woman who had stolen it at the bottom of the river?

  Finally the train drew into the station in great clouds of hissing steam and Morel descended into the usual maelstrom of porters and guards, stepping round hatboxes and breathing in the cold heavy air of a damp Parisian evening. He walked out into the square in front of the station. After hours penned up in the train his instinct was to walk, but the rain fell steadily, and spiteful gusts of wind threw handfuls of it into his face, where it stung like gravel. He unstrapped his umbrella from the travelling bag and as he stood there he heard a shout in the centre of the square.

  ‘I’ve been robbed! My wallet!’ A tall man in a suit the same cut as his own was turning in circles like a dog chasing its tail. He spotted a gendarme and trotted off towards him, his umbrella raised. Like most of the other gentlemen in the crowd, Christian checked his valuables were still with him, slipping his hand into the breast-pocket of his coat and feeling the diamond bracelet in its little bag.

  ‘Madame Prideux!’ A voice shouted the name almost next to his ear. He took a step back and collided with a yo
ung man in working clothes. The young man steadied him.

  ‘Careful there, Dad!’ Then he disappeared into the crowd. Morel strained to see who had shouted the name and saw another man, older, approaching a young woman on the other side of the crowd and taking her arm. Christian could not see her face, since she was veiled and had her back to him, but there was something familiar about the shape of her. Before the impression could fully form, the man and woman were lost in the crowd.

  How common a name was Prideux? He had not met many, but the woman he had killed had two married sons. Had she had brothers? There were probably cousins scattered all over the country. Coincidence. The trip to Rheims, the disappointment was making him nervous and now he was seeing ghosts. The man probably didn’t say Prideux at all.

  Christian opened his umbrella and bent down to pick up his travelling case. He would walk, rain or no. The exercise would calm his nerves and he would take a glass in Café Procope before returning to the apartment. He did not like Sylvie to see him in this state, it made him feel weak in her eyes and he would wonder why she stayed with him; she with all her cleverness and beauty, she could pick whatever life she wished but she had come along with him, loved him when she said she had loved nothing in her life before. But she had not felt the fabric of those women’s clothes, felt their last breath on her cheek.

  Enough.

  ‘Disaster approaches!’ the newspaper-seller yelled as he crossed the square, pushing through the crowds. ‘The water is rising!’

  Christian took his time over his walk through the city and across the river. It was high, certainly. The steamers had stopped and the water seemed to be full of wreckage. Wine barrels and timber swirled along, tumbling under the Pont Neuf. It was an impressive sight in the darkness. The lamps shone down on the turbulent black waters, the noise of them had increased to a dark rush, punctuated by occasional muffled blasts as the flotsam and jetsam smashed against the stone piers. He glanced up at the pneumatic clock on the bridge and frowned; seven minutes to eleven. He was sure that he had seen the same time on the clock when he left the station. One of the other gentlemen crossing the bridge noticed his confusion.

  ‘There’s water in the works, sir. The clocks have frozen and we are out of time. Still, was there ever a better excuse for coming home a little late?’

  Christian managed to smile and nod, and felt for his pocket-watch. The movement shifted his coat against him and he sensed something different about the way the cloth lay against his waistcoat. He reached into his breast-pocket, then with the sweat starting out on his forehead in spite of the chill in the air, he turned out the rest. The diamond bracelet was gone.

  He looked up and saw the shape of a woman standing under one of the lamps one hundred yards behind him on the bridge. The waters must have started to disturb the gas supply, as he was sure the shadows were deeper than usual, but something about her, her figure, the way she held herself so straight was familiar – and she was staring at him. He felt a coldness wash over him, a fear that began in his body rather than his brain. Another barrel slammed against the support of the bridge and he turned instinctively towards the sound. When he looked back, the woman was gone but his fear seemed to rise in his throat. He began to walk quickly back the way he had come, examining the pavement and concentrating hard, trying to recall every face in the crowds he had passed through and refusing, refusing to think of that familiar silhouette on the bridge. Just a girl, an ordinary girl. Then he remembered the station, the shouted name, the young man with whom he had collided. His heart seemed to stutter and pound till he could not hear his own thoughts. He felt as if the smooth pavement under his feet was cracking open, showing the corpses and rot below.

  When Maud arrived back at Impasse Guelma, Yvette sprang across the room and grabbed her by the shoulders. Maud just had time to notice Charlotte sitting by the stove with her cigarette and her Bible on her knee.

  ‘Maud! You should have been here hours ago. What happened to you? We got the diamonds. Where did you go?’

  Maud took off her hat and set it down on the bed and started to pull off her gloves. Her hands were stiff with the cold and the damp. It seemed strange that they were so chilled, given the warmth she had felt spreading through her ever since the moment she had seen Morel’s panic.

  ‘Look,’ Yvette said, her face flushed. She pulled open the velvet pouch and Maud glanced at the string of fat square diamonds. They were a strange collection of lights. Pure reds, greens and purples flickered along their facets, made little bursts in their hearts.

  ‘They are very pretty. I can see why he was so upset at losing them.’

  Yvette looked at her, her mouth slightly open. ‘You followed him? That was where you were. You followed him.’ She sat down heavily on the bed then reached across and before Maud could resist, grabbed her wrist, squeezing the delicate bones until Maud winced. ‘You did not die, Maud. Do not make this your only reason for living.’

  She pulled her hand away. ‘I did not make this my only reason for living. He did.’ The room was very still and the words seemed to hang in the air between them.

  ‘Did it please you to see it? Did you think of us worrying about you at all?’ Yvette’s voice sounded dull and empty.

  ‘I did not worry,’ Charlotte said in English. ‘I thought you would want to see him suffer rather than come here and gloat over the diamonds with Yvette.’

  ‘What is “gloat”? I am sure I do not do it. But I wanted you to come back, Maud.’

  Maud sat down and tried to put her arm around Yvette’s shoulder, but the young woman shook her off and stood again. ‘I am not your pet,’ she said.

  Maud began to undo her hair. ‘No. I think more often we are yours, Tanya and I. We’re the innocents and you are wise Yvette who knows everything about poverty and opium and sex and crime and laughs at us. Well, I am learning. And Yvette, you do not know what it is like to be alone. You can surround yourself with people who admire you every day. You do not know what it is to be useless and alone and thrown away like rubbish. That man made me worthless. I want to see his mind crack and I want him to think of me as it happens – and I cannot care about anything else until I do see it.’ Her voice rose as she spoke until it was almost a shout.

  Yvette hesitated, then threw the diamond bracelet on the bed and left the room, slamming the door behind her. Charlotte stood up with a sigh and picked the bracelet up. Maud did not move. ‘What shall we do with this then?’

  Maud shrugged. ‘Keep it.’

  Charlotte turned it between her fingers. ‘It is the property of the Countess, but I suppose you do not necessarily want her to know what you are doing. Is that so?’

  ‘I suppose not. Her Pinkertons might wish to stop me so that Morel can take his money to America and they can steal it back there. I am like Henri. They would have no scruples about tying me up in a cellar, would they? I am dead already, after all.’

  Charlotte nodded, then rolled up her sleeve and fastened the bracelet around her wrist, and smoothed the material back down again to cover it. ‘I shall keep it for the time being and we shall see what happens. It is in God’s hands.’ She reached for her cloak and wrapped it around herself, looking more like a monk than ever.

  ‘Miss Heighton,’ she said, ‘I understand you feel guilty. Yvette went to a great deal of trouble to save your life, and risking it so blatantly in front of her must stir your conscience, but do not be cruel. I suspect that Yvette would much rather have been brought up in England as a respectable young woman than raised by wolves in the back streets of Paris, don’t you? That she manages to make friends with anyone who is willing to speak to her is a sign of her good and generous soul, and you throw it back at her as if it is a sign of her lack of worth. She has saved people, Miss Heighton. She has helped Miss Harris take children out of the hands of criminals and she has helped women like you survive where many have starved, sickened and died, or gone mad and destroyed themselves with no one to care. I have to ask, what have you
done?’ She then smiled and picked up her Bible. ‘Good night, Miss Heighton.’

  CHAPTER 16

  Flood oil on canvas 61 × 46 cm

  The picture seems to show the famous floods of January 1910 which brought Paris to a standstill for some weeks. It is unusual in that, rather than show us a grand vista of the floods with recognisable landmarks in the distance, the artist concentrates on the waters themselves, looking down into them. At the centre of the frame, the base of a lamp-post stands out at an angle, and though its lamp is beyond the frame, we can see the effect of its light on the water. Here an Impressionist technique is used for a painting of concentrated intensity. The waters are made of thick strokes of pure colour in a dizzying array of tints, circling round the pure black of the base of the street-lamp and almost completely filling the frame.

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

  24 January 1910

  When Tanya arrived at the Académie on Monday morning she found Yvette sitting at the top of the narrow staircase smoking and shifting her weight from hip to hip as if dancing to some tune in her head. As soon as Tanya rounded the curve in the stairs, she jumped to her feet. ‘Ah, you’re here!’

  ‘Where else should I be?’ Tanya said. ‘Why is the studio shut?’

  Yvette reached behind herself to tap at a piece of paper pinned to the door. ‘No school today! Monsieur Lafond encourages all his little students out onto the streets to see Paris face to face with disaster.’