“The way she spoke to me,” the woman said slowly, “it was as though her emotions, her feelings about life, were uncertain. She didn’t know exactly what to do, so she left matters in the hands of fate. It didn’t mean all that much to me at the time—I have the hotelkeeper’s view of the world, disorder, chaos, stolen towels. I remembered later only because she was who she was, but I did remember. A letter had come, the clerk noticed the return address—he recalled who you were, certainly, and once I was told about it I had to do something. Probably the letter concerns only a forgotten handkerchief.”
“No. More than that.”
She nodded to herself, confirming what she’d believed. Opened her purse, took out a hotel envelope, reached over and placed it on the corner of his desk. Then stood up. “I hope this is the right thing to do,” she said.
Casson stood quickly. “Thank you,” he said. “Madame, thank you. I should have offered you something, forgive me, I, perhaps a coffee, or . . .”
A gleam of amusement in her eye. “Another time, perhaps.” He was clearly disconcerted—she enjoyed that, particularly in men like Casson. She extended a gloved hand, he took it briefly. Then she was gone.
He tore open the envelope, found the name and telephone number of a hotel in Lyons written on a slip of paper. At the end of the day he met Bernard Langlade for a drink. “Is it hard to find out who owns a hotel?” he said.
“Shouldn’t be.”
Casson told him the name and location. Langlade called him in the morning. “I take it back,” he said. “The Hotel Bretagne, on the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, is owned by a Société Anonyme, in Switzerland.”
“Is that unusual?”
“No. It’s done, sometimes. For tax purposes, or divorce. And, with time and money, you could probably find a name. Of course, even then—”
“No, thank you for looking, Bernard, but probably best just to let it go.”
Langlade made a sound that meant much the wiser choice. “Especially these days,” he said.
Especially these days. There was no calling Citrine from his infected telephone. Every call a new name on somebody’s list. He could still see Lady Marensohn across the table in the bar of the Alhambra Hotel. Perhaps it was over, perhaps they believed him, perhaps not.
He’d taken the Métro home from work that night, a man got off behind him. Made the first turn with him, then the second. Casson paused at the window of a boulangerie. The man looked at him curiously and walked by. Well, how am I supposed to know? he thought. You’re not, came the answering voice, you’re not.
Merde alors. After all, it wasn’t as though clandestine instincts were unknown in this city. All right, maybe it wasn’t the British Secret Intelligence Service one had to elude. But it was husbands or lovers, wives or landlords or lawyers. Casson let it get to be 7:30 in the evening, then left the apartment. By now, when he went out in the street, everyone he saw was an operative—an anonymous little man in an Eric Ambler novel who lived in a rented room and spied on Jean Casson. So, he thought, is it you—in your tuxedo? Or you, a clerk on the way home? Or you, the lovers embracing on the bridge. He hurried along, head down, through the rainy streets, through the fog that pooled at the base of the park railings. He trotted down the Métro stairs, left at the other end of the platform, reversed direction, doubled back, at last sensed he was unobserved and headed toward the river.
Chez Clément—the little sign gold on green, faded pastel and flaked by time and weather. At the end of a tiny street where nobody went, steamed glass window, the hum of conversation and the clatter of dinnerware faintly heard. Inside the door, the smell of potatoes fried in butter every night since 1890. Clément came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel. Face scarlet, mustache immense, apron tied at one shoulder. “Monsieur Casson.” It was like being hugged by a wine-drenched onion. How infernally clever, Clément told him, to stop by this evening, all day long they’d been working, at the stove, in the pots, what luck they’d had, one never saw this any more, perhaps the last—
No, alas, not tonight, he couldn’t. Casson inclined his head toward the cloakroom and said delicately, “Le téléphone?”
Not a telephone, the telephone. The one Clément made available to his most cherished customers. Clément smiled, of course. The heart had reasons of its own, they had to be honored, sometimes not at home.
He reached the hotel in Lyons. Madame was out.
Was there a message?
No.
12 April. 11:20 A.M. The rain continued, soft cloudy days, nobody minded. Casson walked down the Champs-Elysées, turned right on avenue Marceau, a few minutes later leaned on the parapet of the Pont d’Alma, looking down into the Seine. A blonde woman walked by; lovely, wearing a yellow raincoat. On the banks, rain beaded along the branches of the chestnut trees and dripped onto the cobblestones. The river had risen to spring tide, lead-colored water curling around the piers of the bridges, crosscurrents black on gray, shoals catching the light, rain dappling the surface, going to Normandy, then to sea. Just a boat, he thought. How hard would it be? Magic, a child’s dream. Carried away to safety on a secret barge.
Casson looked at his watch, lit a cigarette, leaned his weight on the parapet. He could see, at one end of the bridge, a newspaper kiosk— an important day, the headlines thick and black. German planes had set Belgrade on fire, armored columns had entered Zagreb, Skopje had been taken, soon the rest of Macedonia, and the Panzerkorps was driving hard on Salonika.
He crossed to the Left Bank, entered the post office on the avenue Bosquet. It was crowded, people in damp coats standing on line, smoking and grinding out their cigarettes on the wet tile floor. He waited for a long time, finally reached the counter, gave the clerk a telephone number, went to the cabine and waited for the short ring.
“Hotel du Parc.” The voice sounded very far away. “Hello? Are you there?”
Casson gave the name.
“Stay on the line.” The sound of the receiver being set down on a wooden countertop.
He waited. In the next cabine a woman was shouting at some relative somewhere in France. Where was the money, they were supposed to send it, it should have come days ago, no she didn’t want to hear about the problem.
The clerk picked the receiver up. “She’s coming now.” Then: “Hello?”
“Hello.”
A pause. “It’s you.”
“Yes.”
“I had to leave.”
“Yes, I know. How is Lyons?”
“Not so bad. I’m in a play.”
“Really?”
“Yes. A small part.”
“What sort of play?”
“A little comedy. Nothing much.”
“You sound good.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
The line hummed softly.
“Citrine, I wrote you a letter.”
“Where is it?”
“It went to the other hotel, but it came back. The woman there told me where you were.”
“What does it say?”
“It’s a love letter.”
“Ah.”
“No, really.”
“I wonder if I might read it, then.”
“Yes, of course. I’ll send it along—I just wanted to hear your voice.”
“The mail isn’t very good, these days.”
“No, that’s true.”
“Perhaps it would be better if you were to bring it.”
“Yes. You’re right. Citrine?”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
“When can you come here?”