Rosalie almost snatched the envelope from Pierre’s hand and ripping it open, extracted the single sheet of paper. She cast a quick eye over it and Pierre watched as the colour drained from her face. Without looking at him she read the letter again, more slowly this time, and then gave a moan of anguish.
For a moment Pierre thought she was going to faint. He reached out a hand to steady her as she sank down onto a bench as if her legs could no longer support her. Then she raised her eyes to him.
‘Is this really true?’ she whispered. ‘Has Hélène disappeared? Is Marie-Jeanne really dead? Tell me. Tell me what happened.’
Quietly, Pierre told Rosalie all they knew, all they had been able to discover from Arlette, and what they could piece together from the evidence in the house.
‘We have searched everywhere we could think of in case Miss Hélène had run away too, and was in hiding, waiting for her father to come home.’
‘But you can’t find her,’ Rosalie said flatly. ‘And Marie-Jeanne? Where is poor Marie-Jeanne?’
‘She was taken to the church last night, madame, and was buried this morning. I have come from her funeral.’
Rosalie closed her eyes and crossed herself, murmuring, ‘May she rest in peace.’ Beloved Marie-Jeanne who had been her nurse and nurse to all her children, murdered to protect one of them. And, it seemed, died in vain.
After a moment’s silence she asked, ‘Where is my husband now?’
‘He has ridden to Versailles to find Lieutenant St Clair. He thinks he’ll be able to help in the search for Miss Hélène. He sent me here with this letter, to break the news of what has happened.’
‘He should have come himself,’ Rosalie said bitterly.
Though Pierre thought so too, he said, ‘He was anxious to find Lieutenant St Clair as soon as possible and he thought he should stay in Paris in case Miss Hélène came home.’
Rosalie drew a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. ‘Well, Pierre,’ she said as she got to her feet, ‘we shall take the next train back.’
‘Madame,’ Pierre said, ‘Monsieur was most insistent that you should stay here in St Etienne.’
‘Was he?’ snapped Rosalie. ‘That’s too bad. How can I stay here when my daughter is lost in Paris?’
‘Monsieur needs to know that you and the children are safe here.’
‘The children are safe here, whether I am with them or not. Mademoiselle Corbine is perfectly able to look after them…’ Her voice trailed off as a thought slid, unbidden, into her mind; she had thought the same about Marie-Jeanne and Hélène, and she shook her head as if to dislodge the unwelcome thought. Tears welled in her eyes and she dashed them away. There was no time for tears. Now she had to be strong.
‘I have already left them with Mademoiselle,’ she said. ‘I was here at the station on my way back to Paris, to find out what was going on. The train is due any minute now.’
Pierre tried once more to dissuade her, but she said, ‘My mind is made up, Pierre.’
Night had fallen when they arrived in the Avenue Ste Anne. The house stood in darkness, along with so many of its neighbours.
‘I have a key to the coach gate, madame,’ Pierre said as he handed her down from the fiacre that had brought them from the station. Together they walked round to the stable yard, where they found, to Pierre’s surprise, that the gate was unlocked.
‘Emile must be back,’ Rosalie said as she pushed past him into the yard.
‘Wait, madame,’ Pierre whispered. ‘It may not be him. I will go in and see who is there. Please, madame, wait here.’ Leaving her hidden in the stables, he crossed the yard and quietly opened the back door. He felt for and lit the stub of candle that always stood ready just inside. As the flickering flame took hold, the shadows jumped around him and Pierre paused. He wasn’t armed but as he crept through the kitchen, he caught up a knife from the block and with knife in one hand and candle in the other, he stole quietly into the house.
Emile, sitting, silent, in the unlit drawing room, heard the back door open, the rasp of the match and the cautious footsteps. He picked up the pistol that lay by his hand and walked into the hall to confront the intruder.
The street lamp, shining in through the fanlight above the front door, gave the hall a pale, eerie light, by which he could make out the entrance to the kitchen passageway.
He saw the flickering light in the doorway and raising his pistol shouted, ‘Stop! Or I fire!’
‘Monsieur!’ came the urgent cry. ‘Don’t shoot! It’s me! Pierre!’
Emile lowered the pistol, demanding, ‘What are you doing here, Pierre? You should be in St Etienne with Madame and the children.’
‘Madame has returned with me—’ began Pierre.
But Emile interrupted, crying, ‘Here? I expressly said she was to stay there, in St Etienne.’
‘Well, I haven’t!’ Rosalie had followed Pierre into the house and speaking from behind him in the darkness of the passageway, she startled both men.
‘Rosalie!’ Emile stepped forward, taking both her hands in his. ‘You shouldn’t have come. It’s not safe for you here. I told Pierre you were to stay.’
‘And Pierre told me!’ returned his wife. ‘Don’t blame him. He couldn’t stop me coming.’
Wishing to leave his employers to themselves, Pierre said, ‘Shall I light a lamp, monsieur?’
‘No,’ Emile said firmly. ‘I want the house to remain in darkness. If they come back, they’ll think it’s deserted and I’ll be ready for them. I’ll call you if we need you.’ And thus dismissed, Pierre withdrew gratefully to his stable loft.
Immediately he had disappeared, Rosalie rounded on her husband.
‘How could you?’ she demanded fiercely. ‘How could you let someone take her?’
‘Rosalie, be reasonable,’ protested Emile. ‘I wasn’t here when—’
‘No!’ interrupted his wife. ‘No, you weren’t here, where you should have been. No—’ she corrected herself, ‘No, no one should have been here! We should never have come back to Paris in the first place! We were all perfectly safe in St Etienne. The war was over, the armistice was signed, but Paris was still a dangerous place to be. You knew that! You should never have brought us back.’
‘You’re right,’ snapped Emile. ‘The war was over, the armistice was signed. I needed to be back here to salvage what I could of my business. Without it we have no income. No money, Rosalie!’
‘But you didn’t have to bring the whole family back!’ cried Rosalie, her voice breaking on a sob. ‘Your little girls!’
Emile’s shoulders slumped. He knew she was right. If he had needed to come to Paris, he should have come alone.
‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘I know that now.’
‘Pierre says you went to your office that morning.’
‘I had to—’
‘No, Emile! If you’d set out at once, we’d all be safely in St Etienne. You’ve lost my daughter.’
‘She’s my daughter, too.’
‘And Marie-Jeanne, what about her?’ cried Rosalie, ignoring his reply. ‘If you’d left first thing, Hélène would be safe and Marie-Jeanne’d still be alive.’
For the first time her tears began to flow and once started they wouldn’t stop. Emile, his expression one of despair, moved to take her in his arms, but she pushed him away.
‘Don’t touch me!’
There was no food in the house so they went to their separate beds hungry, but before they went upstairs, Emile checked that the coach gate was firmly bolted, and he and Pierre dragged the heavy bookcase that stood in the hall across the front door.
None of them slept well that night and in the cold light of morning things looked as bleak as before; neither of Hélène’s parents knew what to do next. Pierre had gone out for provisions, so at least they had food in the house, but apart from pretending to eat the bread and cheese he had brought, and drinking coffee, they could only sit and look at each other.
Further recriminations were pointless and there was an uneasy truce between them. Hélène had disappeared, carried off by the intruders, but there had been no ransom note demanding money, giving instructions for her return. Nothing to give them any hope that she might still be alive.
It was afternoon when there was a loud knocking on the back gate and Pierre, demanding to know who was there, heard a soft voice reply, ‘It’s me, Georges! Quickly! Let me in.’
Pierre unlocked the gate and Georges slipped inside. He was not in uniform but as before, dressed as a common workman, with a hat pulled low, shading his face.
‘Thank God you’ve come, Lieutenant,’ said Pierre, as he bolted the door behind him.
‘Come to see my father,’ was all Georges said, before hurrying into the house.
His parents heard his voice and Emile stepped into the hall to meet him. He knew a moment of intense relief as he grasped his son by the hand and echoed Pierre. ‘Georges! Thank God you’ve come.’
‘I had an odd message saying that you needed me,’ Georges said, adding as he looked round the hall and saw the barricaded front door, ‘What on earth has happened here, Papa?’ At that moment Rosalie emerged from the drawing room. Georges stared at her in dismay. ‘Maman! What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in St Etienne?’
‘Come in and sit down,’ said his father, ‘and we’ll tell you everything.’
Georges listened in horrified silence to the happenings of the past few days. His beloved sister kidnapped. Marie-Jeanne dead. When Emile finally said, ‘So we don’t know what to do. What do we do, Georges? We don’t know how to begin to find her.’
‘Well, there’s no point in you staying here,’ Georges said bluntly. ‘I told you before, things are only going to get worse. You should leave at once and go back to St Etienne. There’s nothing you can do here and I have to warn you… though I really shouldn’t… that it won’t be long before Paris is besieged again.’
Emile looked startled. ‘Besieged?’
‘Papa, you have no idea what’s happening, have you?’ Georges spoke in frustration. ‘The National Guard have taken over Paris. The army is going to take it back. It’s civil war! It won’t be long before you can’t get in or out of the city again. You must take Maman to safety…’ he paused, holding his father’s gaze as he added, ‘before you lose her, too!’
‘Georges!’ cried his mother.
‘I’m warning you now, Maman,’ Georges said. ‘Another siege is coming and if you don’t leave for the country at once, you’ll find yourself trapped here. You need to be with the girls in St Etienne, and you, Papa,’ he turned to his father, ‘you need to be with Maman.’
‘But Georges—’ began his mother.
‘No buts, Maman,’ insisted Georges. ‘You must go today, now, if you’re to travel in safety. Clarice and Louise need you.’
‘But what about Hélène? She needs us too.’
‘So she may,’ Georges replied, ‘but at present you don’t know where she is and you can’t help her.’ He softened his tone a little and went on, ‘I will do all I can to find her, Maman, but looking for a small girl in the turmoil around us now is like looking for a needle in a field of haystacks.’ He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘But I do have contacts and I will see what I can learn from them.’
‘Contacts? Who are these contacts?’ demanded Emile. ‘We heard you were seconded to General Vinoy.’
‘And so I am,’ agreed Georges shortly. ‘Indeed, I shouldn’t be here as I’m on his business now. All I can do is to beg you… no, to tell you… to leave Paris at once. If you don’t, your other children may lose you, too.’
He got to his feet and walked into the hall. ‘That wouldn’t keep anyone out who was determined to get in,’ he remarked, waving a hand at the barricaded door. ‘You’re not safe here. For God’s sake, do as I ask you, Papa.’
When he had sloped off down the street, passing the house without a backward glance, his parents looked at each other in despair.
‘What do we do?’ Emile was at a loss and looked to his wife for a lead.
‘We should go,’ Rosalie said. ‘Clarice and Louise need us. Both of us. We should go to the station and catch the first train out.’
‘And Hélène?’
‘Hélène?’ Rosalie blinked hard to combat her tears. ‘Georges is right. We can do nothing waiting here to be trapped in the city. We must trust to him and his contacts, whoever they are.’
‘We will go,’ Emile said, ‘but we’ll go in the chaise. We still have the horse and Pierre can drive us.’
‘It’ll be quicker by train,’ objected Rosalie. ‘If we use the chaise we’ll have to stop for at least one night on the way.’
‘Does that matter, Rosalie?’ countered Emile. ‘We’ll have the chaise in the country, and you can travel in far more comfort. You know you don’t like trains.’
Rosalie had to admit that he was right there, she didn’t like trains, but at least they travelled far faster than a one-horse chaise. She was anxious to get back to St Etienne now; she needed to be with Clarice and Louise. Once back home in the country, she vowed she would never let them out of her sight. If Georges was right, they might get trapped in Paris and not get home for months. If it meant that they could leave the city straight away, then by all means, let Pierre drive them in the chaise.
‘If we can get out of the city before the gates close,’ Emile explained, ‘we can find an inn for the night and travel on first thing in the morning; we should reach St Etienne well before dark tomorrow.’
The decision was made and they prepared to leave. Emile and Pierre set to work securing the front door, nailing planks of wood across the frame while Rosalie packed up the remains of the food Pierre had bought that morning to take with them on the journey. Pierre harnessed the horse and brought the chaise out into the street. Emile closed and locked the porte cochère behind them and as afternoon slipped into evening, they drove away, leaving the house empty and silent.