14 January 1910
Yvette woke cold and uncomfortable, her head a little thick from the night before. Tant pis. She had needed a bit of a spree after spending so much of her time in a sick room, but she had not gone to one of the smoking dens and lost a day. That was good. She could be pleased at that, even if her head was pounding. The damp had got into the blankets and it was like trying to warm yourself with fog. She pulled what she could grab around her and shut her eyes, trying to will herself back to sleep. There was a groan next to her.
‘Yvette, you demon! I shall freeze.’ An arm snaked round her waist and pulled her back towards the middle of the bed. She could feel the strong lines of his thighs pressing against her own. One hand stroked up from her belly and cupped her breast. She could feel his stubble on her neck. ‘You’d better warm me up again.’
She was tempted. Then his other hand pressed on her bladder and she wriggled away from him and out of the bed. The floor was icy under her bare feet.
‘Oh, warm yourself up! I’m off.’ It was light already. She trotted behind the screen and squatted over the pot while he laughed.
‘Why can’t you be like little Marie? Stay here and sit by my side and darn my shirts. Play the housewife. I bet Marie keeps her friends warm in the mornings.’
Yvette emerged and started looking for her stockings. ‘Why should I care what she does?’ Damn, another hole. Still, it wouldn’t show. ‘Harley? Can I ask you something?’ She sat down on the bed beside him as she put on the stockings and pulled the ribbons tight.
‘Anything!’ He propped himself up then looked more serious. ‘My allowance from home doesn’t come for another week, but I do have a few francs still. I’ll share, even if you don’t darn my shirts.’
She grinned and kissed his forehead. ‘Save your money for paper and ink, there’s a good boy. No one keeps me but me. But I wanted to ask you: why would you steal something, then give it back?’
He yawned. ‘Depends what it was.’
Yvette studied him. He was two years younger than her, and at times like these, all tousled and sleep-warm, he looked like a child in a false moustache. He had come to Paris from London to write, but as far as Yvette could tell, whenever he was awake he was in one of the bars that clustered round Place du Tertre, talking and arguing with other young men. When she asked to see what he wrote, he said he was still gathering material. She was always happy to see him and liked talking to him about books. He blushed when he looked at her, which she found more touching than any practised flatteries. When he had money, he was generous and when he was poor, he did not ask her for her cash so sometimes she went home with him even though she knew his room would be cold and there would be nothing to eat.
‘Say, like a diamond necklace, something like that,’ she went on.
‘You planning to rob someone?’
She leaned over him to pick up her skirt and stepped into it. ‘Fine, if you can’t think of anything. I just thought, you’re supposed to be a writer, have some imagination or something…’
‘No – wait.’ He sat upright and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘What, give it back straight away?’
She sat back down and leaned against him, facing the other side of the room. ‘No, maybe a week later. Say you blame somebody else for it. Say you found it and are now returning it.’
‘Like the honest girl you are.’
‘Exactly. But you’re not honest. You’re not very honest at all.’
He put his arm round her waist again; his forearm lay across her narrow belly and she stroked the hairs on it as if he were a pet.
‘Maybe you’re not giving it back. Maybe you’re giving back something that just looks like it.’
Yvette snorted. ‘I don’t care who she is, a woman will recognise her diamonds.’
‘Are you sure?’ He sounded enthused, as if the idea had caught him. ‘I mean, what if you lever out a few of the stones and replace them with good glass imitations or something? Then the woman gets her necklace back, it looks the same, feels the same. Most of it is the same and you get to keep a few diamonds.’
Yvette stopped stroking his arm. ‘You could get a lot of money like that, couldn’t you?’ she said.
He stretched back out in bed again. ‘I suppose you could, if you knew what you were doing – thousands and thousands.’ He sighed. ‘I wouldn’t know a diamond if I found one in my glass.’
Yvette sprang up and struggled into her blouse. ‘If one turned up in your glass, you’d swallow it before you even saw it. I need my shoes.’
‘Over by the door. Are you really rushing off? I hate to see you go. Perhaps I’ve fallen in love with you.’
‘Men fall in love with the woman who is leaving or the one who has just arrived.’ She stepped into her shoes and picked up her jacket from the back of the chair. He was looking miserable.
‘Do you like me at all?’
‘When you say clever things, I do.’ She bent over the bed and offered her cheek to be kissed. ‘Au revoir, Harley.’
He took his kiss then rolled on to his side to watch her go. ‘What clever thing did I say? I’ll say it again.’
* * *
Tanya brought the letter to Valadon’s that afternoon.
Dear Miss Koltsova,
My thanks for your condolences. As to your questions, I can only say it causes me great pain to reply in detail, but I feel it is my duty both to correct any errors and give you fair warning if possible. I have never heard of anyone named Morel, but the name of Gravot is only too familiar to me. If my mother told you this man you know as Morel is in fact called Christian Gravot, then that is who he is – and a worse scoundrel has never walked the earth. He is a thief and a confidence trickster.
Forgive the vigour of my expressions, but from your letter I must conclude you have been told a number of slanderous lies about my family, and it grieves me excessively. I am therefore willing to lay before you the true facts regarding our dealings with Christian Gravot and his wife Sylvie, which led to my mother’s sad derangement.
My father was not a rich man, but he was honest. He worked as a clerk in our town hall from the age of fourteen until his retirement. He was awarded a medal for his distinguished service in 1893 and died in the autumn of 1905. My mother was housekeeper to the Widow Rochoux in our town from her marriage until 1907. She was a loyal servant, and on the death of her mistress she was generously remembered in that lady’s will. That same lady also provided for my education and that of my brother: her generosity has allowed us to become professional men. I am now senior partner in our town’s law firm. My brother holds a similar position in his wife’s native city. As these simple facts must make clear we are a family devoted to respectable service.
It is not the story of my mother and myself you have heard, but that of Madame Claudine Gravot and her son Christian, the snake you know as Morel. He was the child who saw his father’s body defiled, not I. You ask yourself perhaps how can I assert this with such confidence? I shall tell you. He and I are of an age and were school fellows in our youth. He told me the story himself, though I knew his mother beat him for doing so. Gravot wished always to be admired, courted and respected, but as he had neither the station, learning nor character likely to inspire such feeling, he instead told and re-told his lurid stories to gain the attention of the weak-minded and lead his more impressionable fellows on tours of petty and spiteful vandalism in our town. I was glad to leave his company. When he heard news of my improved prospects, he made an enemy of me. He was not unintelligent, and I think resented the opportunities offered to me and my brother. I shall not distress you with the details of his campaign against us; let me just say it confirmed him in my mind as a twisted and malicious child.
In 1883 at the age of eighteen he stole a diamond necklace belonging to one of the rich ladies who come and take the spa waters in our town from time to time. He was transported to Guiana for the crime. His mother owned a grocery store in one of the less pleasant quarters in town and died, bitter and spiteful before the new century began. I sold the business on his behalf and sent him the money when he returned to France at the end of his sentence. What happened to him between that time and his reappearance in our town in early 1908, I cannot say. He returned here with a wife and some appearance of wealth shortly after the death of my mother’s patron. He made great show of being a reformed character, and as such was welcomed into our community. His wife, Sylvie, was charming and beautiful though very young, and he himself seemed to have acquired a great deal of polish in his years away.
I am deeply grieved to say I did not realise how intimate this young couple had become with my widowed mother until it was far too late. My only excuse is that I had recently become a father myself for the third time, and had also taken on new responsibilities in my work. I deeply regret I was not more aware, but I was, in truth, as taken in by Gravot’s reformation as my mother was. I was simply glad she was not lonely.
The couple left our town in the middle of last year. Shortly afterwards, my mother came to me in some distress. It was only then I learned that she had ‘invested’ with Gravot all that she had inherited from my father’s modest estate as well as from her benefactor. She had also been persuaded to raise money against the value of her small house for the same cause. She believed she had invested in a diamond mine in Angola of all places, but the papers she had from them were worthless. That it was a gross criminal act is without doubt, but Gravot and his wife had so phrased the documents as to make the money appear a gift. My mother was not practised at reading legally phrased documents and had trusted the young couple too much to do more than sign them.
The house my parents had shared through forty years of marriage was sold and my mother joined my own establishment. Her last months with us were not happy. She felt both humiliated and angry, and nothing my wife or I could do would make her accept what had happened or see the impossibility of seeking redress. She would take no ready money from my hand, and sold what trifles she still possessed to fund her trip to Paris. I had hopes that her stated plan – to come to the capital for the sake of a little pleasure – was a sign of her recovery. I suspect now from your letter that my hope was false: she went to Paris in order to search for Gravot and his wife, and it is evident that she found them. She was missing for three weeks. I fear to imagine how she must have spent those days. I brought her body back from the city the week before Christmas and she rests now next to my father.
I close with a word of advice which I hope you will heed, even if it comes from a stranger. If you have not yet handed money to M. Gravot, do not, under any circumstances do so. If you have, consider it lost. I also request that if you have repeated to anyone the slanders of M. Gravot regarding my family, you will correct that error.
Begging you to accept the assurances of my best regard,
Jean Prideux
The women read the letter in turn.
‘The poor woman,’ Tanya said at last, handing the letter back to Maud.
Maud nodded and wondered about her own behaviour when Mme Prideux had arrived on her doorstep. If only the old lady hadn’t been so frightening. She had shut the door on someone who might have saved her – all to protect the peace of the monsters within. The thought made her afternoon black and kept her from sleeping half the long, dreary night.