When Agathe and Hélène returned to the kitchen, Agathe gave Hélène some linen to fold and the repetitive action seemed to soothe her. She sat at the table smoothing napkins and pillowcases, folding towels, setting the corners exactly together, her face a mask of concentration.
Once she glanced up at the airer, suspended from the ceiling where her clothes, washed by Agathe the night before, had been hung up to dry.
Agathe caught the look and said, ‘They’ll be dry by tomorrow, and then you can go home.’
As they did the various chores about the kitchen and in the house, Agathe chatted to her in the hope of eliciting a little more information. Once, Father Thomas appeared in the kitchen, and as he came through the door to tell Madame Sauze that he wouldn’t be in for dinner, Hélène shrank back into the corner. He ignored her entirely and having said his piece, disappeared, and Agathe could feel the relaxation in the child.
After the midday meal which they’d eaten together at the kitchen table, she sent Hélène upstairs to her room to rest and took the chance to slip back into the study to speak again with the priest.
‘She has told me nothing more yet, but she is more relaxed when we are alone together. I will try and find out where she lives as the day goes on. She let slip that she has a brother, but that brings us no closer to knowing who she is.’
‘Well, she did give us her full name,’ Father Lenoir reminded her.
‘I know, but then something made her stop. Do you really think her father killed this Marie-Jeanne?’
The priest shook his head. ‘How can we tell, Agathe? I think she is a little mad. Can we believe any of it?’
‘You can believe she’s afraid of men,’ said Agathe sombrely. ‘I’ve seen the bruises.’
It was as they were preparing the evening meal that Hélène finally named the street where she lived. The Avenue Ste Anne. It was only said in passing, and Agathe had appeared not to have noticed it, but it was with great relief that she was able to tell Father Lenoir where Hélène came from.
‘If we can believe her,’ said the priest. ‘If not, we can’t keep the child here, she’ll have to go to the sisters.’
‘The orphanage?’ Agathe was dismayed. The orphanage, run by the Sisters of St Luke, was a forbidding building two streets away in the Place Armand. It was home to ‘Children of Shame’, illegitimate babies left on its doorstep, or children left orphaned with nowhere to go. Surely Hélène didn’t belong there.
‘Suppose I go to this Avenue Ste Anne and see if I can find her family?’ Agathe suggested. ‘Perhaps her mother will be there and can come and fetch her.’
Father Lenoir shrugged. ‘I suppose you could,’ he said, ‘but should we be sending her back to a home where you say she has been so abused? Wouldn’t she be safer at St Luke’s?’
Agathe Sauze, who had seen the misery on the faces of the orphans as they were brought to Mass every Sunday, didn’t think so. No. It might be a place of safety from the world beyond its high walls, but it was not a happy place. She shook her head.
‘I would hate to see her go in there,’ she said. ‘Please allow me, Father, to visit the Avenue Ste Anne first and see what I can discover.’
The old priest sighed and washing his hands of the whole thing, said, ‘Agathe, you must do as you think best.’
The relief Agathe felt was enormous and she said, ‘I’ll go there this evening. Her family must be frantic with worry about her, and if they do live there, they’ll surely be home in the evening.’
When she had fed the household, Agathe took Hélène up to her room. ‘I have to go out, child,’ she said. ‘Can you read?’
Hélène looked a little startled and replied, ‘Of course I can, madame. I’m not a baby.’
‘Then I will bring you a Bible and you can read that while I am away. No one will trouble you. Father Lenoir is in his study and Father Thomas is at a meeting.’
Ten minutes later the housekeeper left the house and set out for the Avenue Ste Anne. She and Father Lenoir had consulted a map and discovered there was such a street in the Passy district and she decided to start her quest there. She hoped and prayed that she could find the family and that it was a loving one, not one where the father abused the child and the mother allowed it to happen.
She was able to travel by omnibus for much of the way, and as its horses pulled it steadily through the city, she stared out of the window at the bustle and the busyness in the streets beyond. How easily a child of Hélène’s age could become lost, disorientated in such crowded streets, Agathe thought. How easily she might fall prey to someone of evil intent. She thought of the child’s bruises and shuddered.
She alighted from the omnibus and walked the final mile to the Avenue Ste Anne. The evening sun was low in the sky as she paused at last on the corner. The road was tranquil compared with the streets through which she’d just passed. There were few people about, a man riding away on a horse, a couple entering a house further down, a chaise coming towards her, clattering over the cobbles, causing her to step aside from its flurry of dust. As she looked along the avenue’s gently curving length, she was dismayed. Surely Hélène couldn’t come from such a prosperous area. How was it possible that a child from such a place should be lost, injured and hungry? How had she come to be allowed out on her own? Surely a maid, a governess or an attendant of some sort would accompany her if she left the house without her parents. Slowly Agathe Sauze walked the length of the avenue. Almost all the houses were closed and shuttered, their owners having made discreet exits from the city as the National Guard had taken control. It crossed her mind that Hélène might somehow have become separated from the rest of her family in the flurry of a hasty departure, but surely they would have come straight back to find her. The whole thing was a mystery; none of what she knew made sense.
She walked the length of the avenue, wondering which of the houses belonged to the St Clairs, and finally decided to knock at one of the few occupied houses and ask. She took her courage in both hands and approached an imposing double-fronted house that had light gleaming through the fanlight above the front door. Her knock was answered by a maid in a black dress uniform, a spotless white apron and a starched white cap.
Agathe explained that she was looking for the home of the St Clair family which she believed was in this street. ‘Can you direct me to their house?’ she asked.
‘The St Clairs?’ replied the maid. ‘Oh yes, they live at number thirty-four, but you won’t find them there now. They’ve left Paris and the house is closed up.’ Lowering her voice she added confidentially, ‘Not surprising though, after what happened there, and poor Marie-Jeanne…’
‘Mathilde!’ A sharp voice came from inside the house. ‘Who are you gossiping with at my front door? Close the door at once.’
‘Do you know where they have gone?’ Madame Sauze asked quickly.
The girl shook her head and with a quick glance over her shoulder whispered, ‘But I saw them leave this evening.’
‘Mathilde!’
Mathilde gave her a regretful smile and hurriedly closed the door.
Agathe turned away from the house, despair in her heart. They’d left this evening. She had missed them. She should have come the moment she knew the name of the street.
Still, she thought wearily, at least I know I’m in the right place.
The maid had told her which house and now she set off to find it. The family might have just left, but perhaps there was a housekeeper or some other servant still there, who would know where they had gone.
The house stood further along, on the opposite side of the road, and was similar to the one she’d approached, but it stood in silent darkness. No glimmer of light shone from its windows, but even so Agathe stepped up to the front door to pull on the bell. As she did so, she saw that the door was damaged, wedged into its frame, a sturdy piece of wood nailed across it. What had the maid Mathilde said? Something had happened? Well, clearly something had. Someone had broken in here. And she’d mentioned ‘poor Marie-Jeanne’. Who was Marie-Jeanne, and what had happened to her? Hélène had said she had been shot by… someone. Was that really true? At least it seemed Marie-Jeanne was – or had been – a real person.
There was no reply to her ring, but by now she didn’t expect one. She had done all she could, and with a heavy heart Agathe walked to the omnibus and made her way slowly back to the Clergy House; she had been too late.
‘The trouble is,’ she said when she was back in Father Lenoir’s study, ‘the maid didn’t have time to tell me what had happened to this Marie-Jeanne. All I discovered was that the family had left this evening and the house was empty.’ She shook her head in bewilderment. ‘But why would they leave, with Hélène still missing?’
‘Who knows?’ said the priest. ‘But it brings us back to the child. What are we going to do with her? We can’t take her back to her family because they aren’t there, and she can’t stay here.’ He said this last with such finality that Agathe knew he would not change his mind. ‘She must go to the sisters at St Luke’s. When things have calmed down a bit, no doubt her family will return from the country and we can reunite them, but in the meantime, she must go to St Luke’s… You can take her there in the morning.’