‘Madame, I should arrest you, but as that would leave your children without their mother’s love and care, we’ll leave the matter for now. Just don’t ever cross me again.’
A bargain, was that it? ‘I repeat, Inspector, that he murdered no one. The others did, and I would urge you to have them identified, charged, and arrested. I’m sure that you will find that among them were some, if not all, of those who violated me.’
Long after they had driven away, I remained staring out at the road until at last I felt it safe enough to check if all the locks were on before going slowly up the stairs while still listening for Dupuis.
Tommy was quietly playing cards with my children.
Swallows have lived in the attic. Plastered to the roof timbers, their nests form shallow cups that are drenched with long-dried, spattered grey. Rubbish is everywhere. Not a thing of value has been left. There are cobwebs, great nets of them, and they blow about in the draught that comes in through the broken windows. Again, there are scattered shell casings. Even so, I try to remember because it was here that so much happened.
The crates were stacked or leaning against one another among the relics of my husband’s family, who must have believed their secrets should remain hidden and that one never threw anything out lest those same secrets be exposed.
But Tommy was standing beside me. We were looking at the crates, and I knew we were both wondering if some of Nicki’s treasures were among them. The children were asleep in their rooms, the lantern was on a chest, and light from it was reflected in the bevelled glass of an antique cheval whose spindly stand was broken years ago.
‘Since Dupuis wasn’t interested in these,’ said Tommy, ‘we can only surmise that he’s not in on the whole picture.’
The Action gangs and the robbery, Schiller and the Nazi connection. ‘Hence Jules and the Vuittons will soon arrive to see if you’ve broken into any of them, all of which means that you will have to leave.’
There was a warmth and sincerity to his eyes that I desperately needed, but he said, ‘I have to, for your sake.’
‘Why not open a few of them?’
He shook his head. ‘They’re safe enough for now. That way, we can come back. I’ll talk to the firm and to Nicki, and we’ll see what can be done. There must be something. Those people can’t go unpunished for what they did to you.’
The attic was huge and cluttered with old and still very fine things. The light was soft as we threaded our way among wicker chairs, a baby carriage, a bureau, a washtub, a pile of carpets. There were boxes of china, lamps, and lanterns … The images come at me: a hat stand, a dressmaker’s dummy, spinning wheel, even a sheathed sword, but did an ancestor of my husband’s really go to war under Napoléon? Was he killed in Russia?
It was dark, for the lantern was now far behind us, giving a horizon that was irregular but glowed as if the sun were going down, and as Tommy reached for me, I was terrified and pulled away, but the kiss was so tender, he so hesitant and conscious of what had happened to me, I let it continue. Hands were soon placed on my hips, and though I flinched, I let them stay until the spasm passed and I felt myself pressing against him.
Dragging him back a little, I sat down on something. It was an end table. There was just room for me to wrap my legs about him, and I couldn’t think of anything else. I had to have him in me, had to forget the laughter and the shouting.
In a rush, my legs tightened, for he had lifted me up and was softly saying my name over and over as I felt his tears mingle with my own. Perhaps Georges was out there watching us-spying-and I hoped he was because then he’d see me doing this among the relics of my husband’s family.
Throwing back my head, I pushed myself against my lover, had to get closer and closer, had to have him in me deeper and deeper, and as I felt him coming inside me, I wanted to cry out but was silent.
The throbbing ended, the kisses lingered, and finally I murmured, ‘Now please take me to bed downstairs.’
Two nights later, the children and I saw him enter the forest. He wouldn’t be taking the train from the station at Avon, which was just on the other side of Fontainebleau. This much we knew for sure, and in the morning of that third day, I took the children to Paris. There were things I had to do, questions I had to ask.
Wind tugs at a torn photograph among the litter of others that have been dumped from drawers that are no longer present. It’s one of the first of my children-Jules obviously having taken the photo, happier days back then-Jean-Guy at his birth, love in my eyes as I lift a nipple to his anxious little lips and feel the tug of them. Did I once possess such a gentleness?
Another of Marie at the age of two is in the bath, splashing. Always, she loved to do that! Ah, mon Dieu, you should have seen her.
Another shows the dog we once had before Jules got tired of it and Georges hit the poor creature with the axe. Yes, the axe!
There are others of my father and mother, from the days before the 1914–1918 war. The candlelight makes the photographs a deeper shade of amber, but the wind comes back and a sudden gust sweeps through the house stirring the dust and the ghosts, banging things and creaking others as it drags the candle flame out and I let go of the photos to remember Paris in that winter of 1940, my sister near to death. André de Verville had come at my summons. He was a very good doctor, but even he was doubtful and furious with good cause, for the concierge hovered about the door to Nini’s room, and at his, ‘For God’s sake, Lily, do something!’ I gave her five thousand francs in exchange for her silence and promise to keep my sister’s room. Abortion was illegal, you understand.
‘We’ll take her to the hospital now,’ I told the woman. ‘Nothing will be said of where she lived.’ It’s a reassurance she questioned, as she should, but André, he went downstairs to bring his car closer while I sat in the chair he had vacated and I reached for Nini’s hand.
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘To do such a thing, Nini?’
Her eyes were closed. She was so pale. ‘Marcel told me what that husband of yours had let them do to you on the orders of the Vuittons. Me, I couldn’t keep the child a moment longer.’
‘So you went out and got some butcher?’
The nod she gave was very slight. There were tears and these flow freely. ‘I didn’t want it to live, Lily. I wanted us both to die.’
‘Did you love him?’
There was a brief smile, a shake of the head. ‘I only went with Jules to show you what that bastard was really like.’
She’d have done it too. ‘Imbécile, you could simply have told me!’
Again, there was that brief smile, gone too soon. ‘You wouldn’t have believed me.’
‘So he’s left you, just like this, that pig. I’ll kill him!’
Nini didn’t respond. Anxiously, I pressed my fingers to her wrist. The pulse, it was too faint.
She had a sepsis in her womb.
At a noise, the present comes back, and I know I must get that Luger before it’s too late, but am afraid to go down into the cellar, afraid of what it will tell me about myself, and can’t yet leave the memories of that visit to Paris.
The Fourteenth Arrondissement was the home of Breton immigrants, of impoverished writers, poets, and artists. Most of the prostitutes there were Bretonnes, chunky, blonde- or brown-haired farm girls who’d come in hopes of finding work of a different sort. Montparnasse was full of them. Cow-eyed, docile until beaten by their pimps, they eyed me as I walked along the streets, searching always until at last, I found the address.
Number 7 rue de l’Ouest-how I remember it still. There was a very long courtyard with a ramshackle, two-storey house at the far end, behind which there was a solid stone wall that rose out of question.