20 January 1910
Maud was woken by Tanya, still upset and carrying a basket of pastries. The young women ate them sitting on the bed while Sasha made coffee on the stove, Tanya biting down angrily on each one and refusing to talk until Maud said she could eat nothing else. Only then did they exchange their stories of the previous evening. When Maud had heard Tanya spit out the scheme the Countess and the Pinkerton man had dreamed up, she rested her chin on her knees.
‘Yvette thought I was going to strike Madame de Civray last night,’ she said.
‘I wish you had,’ Tanya replied. ‘It would make me happy. A reward, she says! Like a bone for a dog.’
‘The butler would have broken my arm.’ Maud put her hand out in front of her and it did not shake. ‘You have to go to Lafond’s, Tanya. I shall take a trip to Printemps this morning. I need to buy something with a veil.’ She saw the question in the tilt of Tanya’s chin. ‘I don’t want anyone from the Académie to see me and ask questions.’
Tanya wiped the flakes of pastry slowly from her dress. ‘You are not going home then, Maud? The Countess is a selfish monster, but if there is nothing to be done here … I would happily pay your fare if that would be of help.’
‘Are you going to tell me to go home and forget it ever happened as well, Tanya?’
‘What else can be done?’ Maud said nothing. ‘It makes me afraid for you, Maud.’
‘Why?’
‘You are too calm. Too quiet. I feel as if you have made some decision and you are not telling me what it is. Oh Maud, it was such a brief flowering you had. Those few weeks when you were with the Morels, you bloomed. You were easy to be with, less serious, and now there is this … I wish to God I had never taken you to Miss Harris.’
‘Don’t you think in a way it is funny, Tanya? I spent the happiest weeks of my life with people who intended to murder me from the start. I think that’s funny.’
‘No, it’s not,’ Tanya whispered fiercely. ‘It’s tragic. And don’t tell me those are different sides of the same coin. I shall shriek here and now if you do.’
Maud shrugged. ‘I thought that talking to the Countess, letting her know I was innocent would make me feel easier, but it hasn’t. They are still out there in the world, and the Countess’s answer, the plan of her little men in long coats – it’s not enough for me. Morel has to suffer and he has to know why.’
Tanya took her hands between her own. ‘You have a life. You have talent. Of course it is wrong, it is unjust, but you know life is not fair. Leave them to God.’
‘No. I told you – it’s not enough. You know that. And I don’t have a life, Tanya. I’m still drowned in the river somehow and I need to get out.’ She spoke softly and simply as if she were reciting her plans for the day – a walk in the park, a little sketching, revenge.
‘And will this … punishment – will it help you?’
‘I don’t know. It cannot make me worse.’
Tanya stood up quickly and a small leather notebook fell from her pocket onto the bed. Maud picked it up ready to hand it to her, but something in Tanya’s expression made her curious and she opened the pages. Tanya protested, but seeing it was already too late turned away to pick up her hat from the armchair. Maud looked through the pages and saw neat lists of figures of groceries and rents, the prices of meals in the cheaper restaurants. ‘Tanya?’
‘Do you remember what Valadon said, that I will never be an artist because I like things to be pretty?’
Maud handed the notebook back to her. ‘I do.’
‘Well, it’s true. But I think wanting things to be pretty might make me some money. Portraits. Ones of wives and children in comfortable homes that might pay five hundred francs a time. I have been about it half the night and it seems to me that five hundred francs can buy a great deal.’ She looked both proud and a little ashamed, and frightened too that Maud would laugh at her. ‘I know that it is a lot for a portrait, but I think men would rather have me in their home, painting their families, than most other artists.’ She looked at the neat lists of figures again, then touched the jewelled pin at her throat. ‘Am I being stupid?’
‘Five hundred francs does buy a great deal, Tanya. And many husbands might think of hiring you where they would not hire anyone else.’ Maud got out of the bed and the world did not spin or lurch. She felt as if she had new black blood in her veins. ‘I am going to see Miss Harris later this morning.’
Tanya put the notebook back into her pocket. ‘Do you wish me to come with you?’
‘No, this I had better do by myself. And in your lists, Tanya, put something aside for sickness or accident.’
* * *
Charlotte was with Miss Harris going through the accounts when Maud called, and though she had thought she would speak to Miss Harris alone, she remembered what Charlotte had said about Morel smiling too much and invited her to stay. They had heard nothing from the Morels about her supposed disgrace and so greeted her with pleasure. Miss Harris seemed a little disappointed when Maud lifted her veil and Miss Harris noticed she still looked rather drawn. Then Maud began her story. It felt as if she were relating someone else’s history. Once or twice Miss Harris put her hands together, palm to palm, and lifted the fingertips to her lips. It was something between a prayer and an attempt to stifle an exclamation.
When Maud had finished speaking, Miss Harris was silent for some time. Then she reached out to take Maud’s hand across the table.
‘Oh Miss Heighton! I am so sorry.’
Maud wondered whether, if the Countess had offered that generous sympathy, she might be back in England by now.
‘I want justice, Miss Harris,’ she said. ‘And I would like you to help me.’
Miss Harris still held her hand. ‘He is leaving Paris, you say? The Countess intends to reclaim her money from him there before he can do more harm? Well, my dear. Certainly it seems that justice has been denied you in this world, but you shall have it in the next.’ Maud tried to pull her hand away, but Miss Harris kept hold of her. ‘No, my dear. You shall hear me. There is nothing – nothing – you can do to this man that will compare with the agony he will feel when he finds himself judged before his Creator. His sufferings will be terrible. He will see what he has done in God’s Holy Light and you will pity him. Yes, you shall. Pray for him, Miss Heighton. That is my advice. Go home, lead a good and useful life and pray for them both. They have damned themselves. God has saved you for some purpose, I am sure, but I am just as sure it was not to take revenge on the Morels. This is my advice to you, dear Miss Heighton. I shall not help you in any other way.’
Maud’s hand was released. She stood and curtsied to Miss Harris with the greatest respect, but left without saying another word.
* * *
She walked across Paris. The rain had been steady all day but rather than return to her grey room in Montmartre she walked the length of the Champs Élysées, passing the twin domes of the Grand and Petit Palais and crossing Place de la Concorde. She did not look at the place where Sylvie had shown her the stolen brooch or search for any sign of where Mme Prideux had died. The cars raced by her and the high omnibuses teetered past. When she crossed the river on the Solferino Bridge the embankments became quieter. The rain persisted but the cafés were still full, men and women going about their sanctioned public lives under the striped awnings and behind low, burning braziers. Some of the men stared, tried to speak to her, but she simply looked over the tops of their heads and they melted back into the crowds. She reached the Quai Conti, but only when she was at the bottom of Rue de Seine did she hesitate. Her chest ached again, a dark flowering. She could walk past the door, the windows, and glance up. If, at that moment someone – Miss Harris, Tanya or Yvette – had happened on her and offered her again their comfort and friendship, perhaps she would have left Paris that evening and she would have been saved. But no one came.
She walked down the street looking straight ahead of her, crossed the Boulevard Saint-Germain, then just as she came opposite the house, she looked up and froze. Sylvie was standing in the window with her back to it, facing into the room. She still is, Maud thought. She still is when I am not there. How can that be? Knowing that Sylvie was in the Countess’s house had been pain enough, but to see her – her white neck with the blond hair gathered on top of her head – it was pain beyond all imagining. Then he appeared at her side. Morel. He took her in his arms and held her. Sylvie was laughing, her head thrown back. They are happy because I am dead, Maud thought. The idea seemed to take the air from her. Morel. The man who had thrown her into the water without a qualm, now wrapped around Sylvie and murmuring into her neck, telling her the places they would go with the money they had stolen, the wonderful, delightful life they would have together now Maud was rotting in the Seine and he had his fist full of diamonds.
Morel seemed to feel something – he lifted his head and glanced out of the window, but Maud was already gone, dragging her bitter heart with her. As she walked away, the sellers of the afternoon newspapers began to call out for custom. ‘The waters are rising! The river mounts!’
* * *
When she returned to the room she was soaked to the skin. At first she didn’t see Charlotte sitting by the stove with her legs crossed. She was smoking a cigarette, and on her knee was propped a book; it had the tell-tale thin paper and gilded edges of a Bible. She looked up at Maud’s bedraggled form.
‘I’ve lit the stove – I hope that’s not a problem. The room was freezing and I wasn’t sure how long I’d have to wait.’
‘Of course,’ Maud said, taking off the veiled hat and putting it on the bed. ‘What can I do for you, Miss…’
‘Just call me Charlotte,’ the woman said, waving the cigarette and looking back down to her reading. ‘It will wait. Put something dry on before you get sick again.’
Maud did so, glancing at her visitor out of the corner of her eye as she changed out of her wet clothes. Charlotte was dressed, as ever, in black and wore thick-soled shoes. Her forehead was a little lined and Maud wondered if she could be as much as forty. When she had dressed, Maud dragged one of the wicker chairs over so she could sit opposite Charlotte by the fire. Charlotte closed her Bible and reached behind her chair, hauling onto her knee a basket complete with red gingham cover and took out a flask and bread and butter wrapped in greaseproof paper. Without saying anything she poured out milky tea into one of the china cups she had brought with her and handed it to Maud, along with one of the parcels of bread and butter. Then, when she had served herself, she said, ‘Miss Heighton, I wish you to know first of all that Miss Harris has done more good in this world than any other individual I have ever met.’
‘I understand,’ Maud said. She sipped the tea and a wave of nostalgia broke over her so sudden and complete it seemed an outside force. She thought of the tea room in Reeth where her mother had taken her once when she was a child, the charabanc ride up the North Yorkshire Dales and the shifting banks of green on the moor. It lasted only a moment and then she was back in her grey Paris room and listening to Charlotte.
‘She has brought more lost souls to God than you can imagine. Creatures that no one else would think worth a moment of their time have become good and useful members of their community. She has, through nothing but patience and kindness, turned drunks into true believers, whores into nurses. Even those who are still too lost in their own misery to conceive of a God who loves them will follow her into church because she believes – and they believe in her. She does not preach. She prays for them and offers them her love, no matter how miserable their condition. I am blessed indeed to see what wonders God can work through her.’
Maud had nothing to say in reply, but continued to drink her tea and watch her. Charlotte leaned forward, lifting her index finger: ‘And she is right, absolutely right that you should leave the Morels to God and pray for them, but…’
Maud looked at her over the edge of her teacup. ‘But you are not Miss Harris?’
Charlotte sat back again, her plain face twisted with a half-smile. ‘Indeed, I am not.’ She put her tea onto the floor and from the basket produced a notebook. ‘Explain to me what you have in mind.’
Maud reached for the bread and butter. ‘I mean to haunt him.’
* * *
When Yvette swung into the room an hour later, Charlotte had finished taking her notes. She smiled with real affection at the model and when Yvette crossed the room to kiss her, lifted up her cheek to receive the salutation with a slight blush.
‘There is still a good English community at Rheims,’ she said to Maud. ‘We have sent a number of girls there who needed to leave Paris and its associations behind them and they will have made friends. Every community relies on shared intelligence.’
‘And they will have the necessary authority?’
‘Naturally,’ Charlotte said, packing her basket again. ‘They are trusted. And we shall tell them to make it clear that if anyone buys those diamonds, their names will become mud amongst all of our rich American and English donors. And our Russian ones,’ she added with a vague smile. ‘It is easy to do the same in Paris. We shall shut all the doors to him and leave him loose on the streets for you to hunt.’
Maud stood to shake her hand and see her to the door. It was strange how these habits of politeness re-emerged in the company of another middle-class Englishwoman.
‘Thank you.’
The woman shook her head. ‘Do not. I suspect it is weak of me to assist you, but I cannot help myself, and as I have the nature God gave me, I suppose He must have some plan of which I know nothing. Or perhaps He means to test us and we are failing.’
* * *
Yvette had thrown herself down on the bed and waved as Charlotte left them. She had snatched up one of the packets of bread and butter and now ate it lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling while Maud told her what Madame de Civray had said to Tanya, and then began to explain her own plans.
‘Morel goes to Rheims tomorrow. He returns on the twenty-third. If Charlotte is as successful as she hopes, he won’t be able to sell the diamonds. And while the Pinkertons may not be able to do anything illegal in France, I can. I am a ghost, after all.’ Perhaps she expected Yvette to protest in some way at this point, but she did not, just waited for Maud to continue. ‘I want to hire a pick-pocket to steal them back from him and frighten him at the same time. I want him to wonder if he is being pursued.’ She sat down on the bed. ‘I saw him this afternoon in the window at Rue de Seine.’ And when Yvette turned to stare at her: ‘I know I shouldn’t have gone. Don’t say it. He looked so happy, so pleased with himself.’
‘He won’t stay like that if the Pinkertons have their way. He’ll end up ruined,’ Yvette said evenly.
‘It’s not enough. I want him to be frightened. Scared. And for as long as I can keep him that way.’
Yvette took her hand, wound her fingers around Maud’s and unravelled them again as if playing with a toy. ‘We want him punished too, Maud. Tanya and I. But we don’t want you to put yourself in danger again. You don’t care about that though, do you?’
‘I’d drag him down to hell myself if I could, even if I had to stay there with him.’
‘So you want to find a pick-pocket?’
‘Yes.’ There was a long pause.
‘But you don’t ask me for an introduction.’
‘I didn’t like to assume.’
Yvette groaned and threw herself backwards onto the bed. ‘Oh Maud! You’ve become an avenging angel but kept the manners of an English miss and a proper sense of decorum to your inferiors.’
‘You’re not my inferior, Yvette. I know that,’ Maud said.
‘You thought I was when you first saw me. You proper English girls always do. More meat to be put up on the dais and stared at. Don’t be sorry. If we worried about the soul of every person we saw on the street, we’d go mad.’ Yvette clambered out of the bed and went to the cracked mirror to peer at herself. She saw lines beginning at the corners of her eyes. ‘I can help you. I would tell you to stay quiet and let me do the talking, but that’s never a problem with you. Are you strong enough for Rue Lepic after all your wanderings?’
‘Now?’
‘Now. Before I change my mind.’