The Paramour's Daughter

by Wendy Hornsby

  “It’s complicated,” I said. She did not offer me either her hand or her cheek.

  “Indeed.” When she raised her thick eyebrows, they disappeared under her wimple. She looked pointedly from Kelly to Casey to Gérard in turn. “Would you all please excuse us? I would like to have a word with this child who bears such a complexity of names.”

  “Certainly,” Kelly said, rising.

  Casey stood her ground. “I won’t leave you here alone, Mom. I promised Uncle Max.”

  I grasped her hand as I turned to the abbess. “Ma Mère, may my daughter stay?”

  There was an instant of hesitation before the abbess nodded her consent.

  Gérard leaned over and gave me la bise. “I will tell Maman you are safe.”

  I thanked him for being my guide, said good-bye to Kelly, and settled into the chair she had vacated. When they were gone, I turned to Ma Mère and, still holding Casey by the hand, told the abbess, “I know that you might feel some delicacy about discussing certain matters in front of my daughter. But she is an adult. She knows just about as much as I do about Isabelle Martin. I value her counsel.”

  “Yes?” The abbess offered a small smile, but I had no clue what she might be thinking. Nuns are like cops. They don’t reveal anything in their faces that they don’t want you to know. “And what is it you think I might be able to tell you, delicate or otherwise?”

  “Maybe you can give me some pieces to the puzzle that is Isabelle.” I looked at Casey. She gave me a reassuring smile and kept a grip on my hand. I loved that she was there with me, my wise child. I told the abbess, “Until ten days ago, I did not know Isabelle existed. Until ten days ago, I thought the woman who raised me was my natural mother.”

  “So, is it the puzzle of Isabelle or the puzzle of Marguerite you wish to solve?”

  “Both,” I said.

  She reached over and tapped a button on the corner of her desk two times. It buzzed in the next room—I could hear it through the door.

  “I thought maybe some tea,” she said, hands clasped again. “There is time before the service. Élodie will excuse you from accepting condolences if she knows you are with me. Now, it seems you have questions?”

  “To begin,” I said, “I have learned two things about Isabelle. First, she was an avowed atheist. Second, she was a scientist. So, why did she come here to give birth instead of going to a modern hospital?”

  Ma Mère considered the question. “Did you consider that she might have come to us for sanctuary?”

  “Sanctuary?” I thought about various connotations of the word. “For safety? For protection?”

  “That, yes.” She gave the slightest nod. “But we also offer sanctuary for people in need of quiet contemplation. A young woman who found herself in Isabelle’s situation might be of an unquiet mind, do you agree?”

  “Of course.”

  “Isabelle came to us twice before you were born,” she said. “The first visit was in the winter, shortly after she discovered her...” she glanced at Casey while she chose her words “...her situation. There was much for her to consider, and she wanted both peace, as you said, and protection.”

  Unquiet mind I understood, but danger? I asked the abbess, “Protection from what?”

  “The influence of others.” Ma Mère took a long breath and studied her folded hands for a moment. When she looked up again, she addressed Casey.

  “Katherine?”

  Casey was taken aback when she heard Ma Mère use her given name. “Everyone calls me Casey.”

  “I understand you were christened Katherine Celeste. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” Casey said.

  Ma Mère gave her a curt nod; question asked and answered. “Katherine, it might surprise you to know that even before your mother arrived on this earth, in some parts of Europe it was already legally possible for a young woman who found herself expectant to...” again a hesitation “...to terminate.”

  I asked, “Did Isabelle contemplate that option?”

  “Option?” Ma Mère did not like that word. “If Isabelle considered taking such an action, she wisely rejected it very early on. However, she felt pressured to act.”

  I thought through the possibilities of people who might want her to get an abortion. There were several. But the obvious one made my stomach hurt just to think about: the father. I fought back an unwelcome welling of tears. It was a visceral reaction, not a logical one.

  As she watched me struggle, a horrified pall washed over Casey. Her voice broke when she said, “Don’t even think what you’re thinking, Mom. Grandpa would never have wanted that. Grandpa loved you, Mom. He came over here and saved you.”

  When I had enough breath, I said, “After the fact, yes. But when he first learned... Poor guy sure got himself into a pickle, didn’t he?”

  “A pickle?” Ma Mère frowned; she didn’t understand the use of the word.

  “Une situation difficile,” Casey said.

  “A pickle.” The abbess made a note of it on a small pad of Post-its.

  The door at the back of the office opened and a young nun came in bearing a tea tray. Ma Mère spoke to her in Chinese. The young woman responded with a few words, set the tray on the desk next to her abbess, and, with head bowed, backed out of the room.

  Casey turned to me. “Ma Mère is fluent in six languages.”

  “In this world, it is necessary. How easy it must have been when all Christian children were educated in Latin.” The abbess picked up the teapot and began to pour. She held up a flowered china cup on a matching saucer and asked me, “Milk?”

  “Plain, please,” I answered, and she handed me the cup.

  The hot tea felt as good to hold as it did to drink. Even in the abbess’s office with all of its little space heaters, we needed our coats. I wondered how many layers of long johns Ma Mère wore under her heavy habit.

  “You said Isabelle came to you a second time,” I said.

  “Before you were born, yes.” Ma Mère poured milk into Casey’s tea, unasked, as she would for a child, and extended the cup toward her.

  “After the summer, near the end of her time, Isabelle came back to us. The pregnancy was a healthy one, but she had worked long hours for months on a project of some sort, a part of her doctoral work, and she was exhausted. Also, I believe there were a great many people offering her advice that she neither asked for nor wanted. So she came again for rest and quiet. When her hour arrived, she asked permission to give birth here.”

  “Privately?” I asked. “Or in secret?”

  “Yes, there is a difference, isn’t there?” After a moment, she said, “Quietly. We called a doctor from the village to attend. Isabelle’s mother, my sister and my niece helped her through her ordeal.”

  “And Marie Foullard,” I said. “Grand-mère Marie told me she was there.”

  She smiled as she nodded. “As I said, my sister, Marie Foullard, and my niece, her daughter Louise.”

  Casey chimed in with, “Should have guessed. I knew you had an inside source about what’s happening at the estate, Ma Mère.”

  I cocked my head, maybe to see the abbess from another angle. Nuns, I knew from experience, are not all sweetness and light. They plunge into the most benighted, infested parts of the world to be of service. Issues of faith aside, has there ever been a gutsier band of women?

  I remembered what Deputy Ray Valdez had said about my sister Emily going into the most crime-ridden projects of LA, unarmed, alone, tracking disease to protect the poorest and most defenseless people among us. In another age, Emily would have been a dandy nun. Issues of faith aside.

  Ma Mère watched me study her for a moment before she asked, “Do you have another question for me, Marguerite?”

  “Many,” I said. “But one in particular. Ma Mère, if you don’t mind, where were you during the war?”

  Appearing completely calm, hands again folded on the desk, she looked me directly in the eye. “I was a housekeeper at the Martin estate
during the German occupation.”

  I looked at her sweet face with new appreciation. She met my eyes and nodded slightly. Along with Grand-mère Marie and other women from the area, this pristine woman was a survivor of an unspeakable wartime ordeal. And her tormentors? Baptised in Calvados and consigned in flames to meet their maker.

  Church bells began to peal somewhere above us.

  “We are summoned.” Ma Mère rose and gestured toward the door. “There’s a shortcut to the chapel through here. Shall we?”

  “One more question, if you don’t mind,” I said, getting to my feet.

  “Yes, my child.”

  “That complexity of names,” I said. “I have figured out who Louise and Marie are, but who are Marguerite and Eugenie?”

  “Marguerite, of course, is for your grandfather’s mother.” She opened a cupboard beside her desk and pulled out a large plastic box with prayer cards and saints’ medals organized in slots. She selected a card and a medal and handed them to me: Sainte-Eugénie’s face was on both. Odd, I thought, Ste-Eugénie’s feast day is 25 December, Christmas Day, not my birthday in September.

  “That is perhaps one of the missing pieces to your puzzle, Marguerite.” Her hands disappeared into her sleeves. “Study it carefully. We’ll chat again.”

  14

  “And how’s Jemima Puddleduck?” Bébé slipped into the line between Casey and Jemima, positioning himself immediately behind his half sister as she began to ascend the stairs leading up out of the crypt after the interment of Isabelle’s ashes, trapping her between himself and a solid block of a man from the village.

  The stairway was so narrow that we had to walk in single file, a long, bad trip for the claustrophobic. With a dozen people in front of her, and twice as many behind, there was no way for Jemima to escape her half brother. Except for a perfunctory greeting when the family gathered for lunch, all afternoon she had made a point of putting distance between herself and Bébé.

  While Inspector Dauvin was keeping the investigation into Isabelle’s murder quiet until after the funeral, the family also, it seemed to me, had put a lid on whatever issues or feuds they might have among them until the main event was over. All morning I had felt a building dread for this moment when, with Isabelle safely tucked inside her niche, people would drop their company manners and get down to issues. We weren’t even out of the crypt yet, and Bébé, it seemed, had fired the first volley.

  Jemima turned her head and demanded, “Don’t call me Puddleduck, Bébé.”

  “What?” He pretended surprise. “But Jemima Puddleduck is an English literary figure beloved of millions of sticky little children the world over. You should be flattered.”

  “I’m warning you, Bébé.”

  “Very well, Puddleduck.” He looked over his shoulder at Casey and at me behind her, and winked, expecting us, I thought, to go along with him. “Tell you what, in honor of our newfound American cousins and your exalted status vis-à-vis Chris and Lulu, that you are their auntie, from now on I shall call you after a great American woman. Forthwith, you shall be Aunt Jemima.”

  When Casey made a choking sound Jemima turned, saw Casey nudge Bébé’s shoulder in reproach. Eyes narrowed, Jemima stopped short, holding up the progress of the entire group behind her, and peered around him to challenge Casey. “Does that mean something to you?”

  Casey shook her head, refrained from explaining who, actually what, Aunt Jemima was in the United States—an unfortunate stereotype adopted as a commercial logo that bore no resemblance to the too-thin, intentionally nearly albino teen who shared the name. Freddy had told me everybody loved Bébé, almost. Certainly Bébé wasted none of his charm on his half sister.

  Jemima glared at Bébé. “You’ll be sorry. My boyfriend will be here later. Have you any idea who he is?”

  “Aunt Jemima’s boyfriend? Uncle Ben, of course.”

  “Sergei Ludanov, Junior, you prat,” she said, adding a threat: “You’ll see.”

  “I’m quaking in my boots.”

  “You should be.”

  “Bébé, you’re awful.” It was Casey who came to Jemima’s defense. “If Sergei doesn’t beat you up, I might have to.”

  “So sorry.” Bébé, obviously chagrined, turned and wrapped his arms around Casey, kissed her cheek. “I’ve gone too far, haven’t I?”

  “It isn’t me you need to apologize to,” Casey said, pushing him away and turning him toward Jemima.

  Bébé bowed slightly before his half sister. “I’m a fool.”

  She accepted his gesture of contrition with a little bow of her own. “Just so we’re clear.”

  She turned her back and marched up the stairs. Bébé gave her a little space before following.

  To me, the truly chilling aspect of this exchange was that it was Casey, and none of the adults, who came to Jemima’s defense. Not even I.

  A drizzle fell outside, but no one seemed to pay much attention to it as they walked back up into daylight, such as it was. People sorted themselves into small groups, greeted each other, had a word or two, then split off to greet others. David, resplendent in his dark blue university dress uniform, a short knife in a scabbard buckled around his tunic, a very military-looking costume, had been watching for Casey, and came forward as she emerged from the church with me. At lunch he had explained to her—Grand-mère had seated the two together, again—that the Grandes écoles of France were in some ways similar to the American service academies, West Point and Annapolis.

  Casey certainly seemed interested in what he had to say. She had asked me earlier if she and David were related. I told her probably, but distantly, and that pleased her; he was very handsome, and very bright.

  Freddy came out of the chapel directly behind me and Casey. He walked beside us as we joined David, making small talk. But when Claude Desmoulins and Lena emerged, Freddy made his excuses and went to them; Claude hadn’t been at lunch. I spotted Uncle Max standing alone at the edge of the crowd. Leaving Casey and David to their conversation, I made straight for him.

  Uncle Gérard and Gillian stepped forward and intercepted me.

  “So, Maggie,” Gérard said, much chummier since our trip to the loo, Gillian as well. “How did the meeting go with Ma Mère? Did she answer your questions?”

  “Several,” I said. He had seemed affectionate when we were alone, and I trusted him then. But somehow, outside, with Gillian on his arm, towering over him, I felt my protective barriers come up again. I may have felt some grudging admiration for her, but I also knew she could be a steamroller, and I might be a boulder in her path. That collision could get ugly.

  She said, “You’ve had some opportunity to look around a bit. What do you think of the place? Must seem rather drab and primitive around here compared to ‘Los Anguhleeze.’ ”

  “Not at all. It’s lovely,” I said, partly to twit her. Knowing about Gérard’s scheme to obliterate the landscape to build mass housing, I added, “So peaceful, so genuine. I understand why the family cherishes the land and the people, and is so fierce about protecting this wonderful place. I hope the area remains this unspoiled forever. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I haven’t said hello to my uncle yet—he’s just arrived from America.”

  “Is that Max Duchamps?” Gérard asked, following my sightline. “I haven’t seen him for, well, a very long time. Wonderful stroke on the links. I’ll just say hello.”

  “I’ll give him your best wishes,” I said. “But if you don’t mind, I have some business to discuss with him. TV business. Please excuse me.”

  He acceded with a nod, but he seemed disappointed.

  Max held out his arms to me. As I entered his embrace, I removed the contents of my dress pocket and transferred them to his overcoat.

  Holding me close, he whispered, “What did you give me?”

  “Isabelle’s address book and some phone numbers she called when she was in LA; she contacted a private investigator. There’s a computer memory stick from Monsieur Hubert that has
Dad’s patent files. Let’s make sure his records match ours.”

  “What is it you want me to do with this collection?”

  “Call those people you call and get them snooping into the phone contacts,” I said.

  “Find out anything else, Sherlock?”

  “This and that.” I stepped back to look up into his earnest face.

  “Where is the document Hubert wanted you to sign?”

  “In my bag. I’ll show you later.” I squeezed his hand, happy he was there. “You and I need to talk, alone.”

  “Tell me when and where.”

  “Right now would suit me, but my dance card seems to be full at the moment. I’ve been put on notice that several of these people want a private minute with me.”

  “They all have bridges to sell you?”

  “I suspect they do,” I said. “Grand-mère has asked you to come back to the house for tea. Maybe I can get off teacup patrol for a few minutes so we can sneak away.”

  Grand-mère’s invitation didn’t seem to thrill him, but he nodded. He would come. “How is the old girl?”

  “All things considered, she’s all right,” I said. “You need to give her your condolences.”

  “I need to check on my girls first. How’s Casey doing with this mob?”

  “So far, fine.” We both turned to see where she was.

  Casey was still with David, near a small fountain. We saw her abruptly shift her focus away from David to glare at Claude Desmoulins, who stood nearby with Freddy and Lena. Something Claude said obviously upset Casey. Whatever he said upset Freddy as well, or, maybe he was upset that Casey overheard. She dipped her head close to David and asked him a question. His answer made her no happier. I knew the expression on her face: righteous anger. I was relieved when, instead of rebuking Claude, she looked for me, found me, and strode my way.