Block printed and of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century design, the wallpaper had been patiently stripped from opulent walls, dried, coiled, smuggled in, and sold to Madame Chevreul or simply handed over in return for a favour.
‘The Hôtel de l’Ermitage?’ he asked, now fingering an uncoiled curl of the paper as if a silk chemise he would trail down a girl’s thighs before teasing off her step-ins.
She must shake her head and shrug, felt Marguerite. He looked inside the cabinet, the tent, saw that the door to Madame’s bedroom was curtained off but easily accessible, saw the armchair she used, the throw rug on the floor, all such things, the luminescent gauze as well, the white ectoplasm that would appear to issue from Madame’s throat when in a trance.
‘Phosphorescent paint,’ he said, fingering the gauze now and smiling that smile of his, for, on drying, the gauze had been crinkled repeatedly to make it again soft and pliable.
Curbs and crosswalks in Paris and elsewhere were painted with its whiteness to aide pedestrians during the blackout, thought Marguerite, but Madame wasn’t going to be happy with her for having allowed him in here. Madame was going to tell Léa to see that she was punished severely, but what Madame had still not realized, or perhaps she had, was that such a punishment could be exciting in itself. Une flagellation.
And anyway there was nothing she could have done to have stopped him, a Gestapo.
‘Léa gets things from time to time,’ she said of the paint with a shrug.
‘In trade?’
‘Or by purchase.’
‘And if one of those guards asks for a little comfort?’
Another shrug, but curt this time, would be best, the glimpse of a smile, now shy and defenceless. ‘Don’t you want me to gaze into my crystal ball?’
This item was on another table, and of smoky quartz, about twelve centimetres in diameter. Damask-covered, the table would have seated two, with one chair against the wall that faced the tent.
‘You are a doubter,’ she said, her pulse quickening at the thought. ‘It’s best then to start with such a ball. Once that negativity has been banished, clarity will come. You will definitely be surprised by what I see. The instant I set eyes on you, I knew.’
They read palms and tarot cards too, and the Ouija board, and places for each were set about the room. ‘Caroline Lacy and Jennifer Hamilton were interviewed in here, amongst all of this?’ he asked.
‘If Madame has said so, then it must be.’
‘Where’s the divan?’
‘What divan?’
‘The one the two of them sat on while holding hands and being interviewed.’
No one had warned her of this, not Madame or Léa or Hortense, the cook. A lie would be best, then, but given with complete innocence and abandon. ‘We haven’t yet been open for business here, and are only now ready.’
‘But have to wait until things have been settled?’
It would be so easy to seduce him. Men like Herr Kohler exuded a sexuality over which they had but little control, though, unleashed, would it all be one-sided as Madame continually insisted of men? she wondered, but thought not, for he had both an emptiness to those pale blue eyes of his and a light that was gentle and kind.
In short, he was a man no woman should trust. ‘Please sit, Inspector. Let me gaze deeply into the ball.’
He did so, she too, their knees touching, he even setting notebook, pencil, cigarettes, and matches to one side, but a banging at the door into the corridor saved him and he knew this, for he smiled that smile of his and said, ‘Maybe we’d better wait for another time.’
Hortense would interrupt things. Hortense was always interrupting things, but Herr Kohler had also set one of those little phosphorescent lapel buttons the Nazis doled out to those in Paris and elsewhere who would wear them in the blackout and her hand had closed about it and his had closed over hers.
‘Ah, bon, ma chère mademoiselle. Bon,’ he said.
‘Actually it’s Madame Lefèvre, and my husband is in one of your prisoner-of-war camps. Which one, I’m never sure, for he’s a bit of a troublemaker and they seem to keep moving him around, but then. . Ah, mon Dieu, he and I have been apart for so long now, I think we both must feel as two entirely different people, each perhaps having found their true self but due to circumstance of course.
‘Sacré nom de nom, Hortense, I’m coming! Please don’t break the door down with that fist of yours. You will only disturb Madame and her guests.’
‘And Léa, of course,’ muttered Herr Kohler, having at last released her hand. Would he have crushed it if she had resisted? she wondered.
Steam rose from the baked eggs and cream that had only just given a first, well-savoured morsel. Alerted by the banging next door, the three of them had paused, Brother Étienne darting a glance at Madame Chevreul and then at Madame Monnier, they avoiding his questioning look of alarm.
‘Léa. . ’ began Madame Chevreul, her knife and fork still poised.
‘Answers, madame. Answers!’ insisted St-Cyr. ‘A suffragette, Madame Monnier? A mob leader before the Great War and now again?’
Dieu merci, the banging had at last stopped, thought Élizabeth, but it had to mean Marguerite had been forced to let Herr Kohler into that room of rooms. ‘Léa, you needn’t say a thing. Inspector, I won’t have this. Please show some respect if not manners. We are at our luncheon, late though it is. I told you and Herr Kohler not to listen to the harpies in this hotel. Whether Léa was a heroine of that cause or not has no bearing whatsoever now.’
‘But it has, madame. It has, and were you not a part of that cause as well? It was all about power, wasn’t it? Males dominating females to the point of not even letting women have the vote or as here in France where even a bank account or the freedom to travel without a father or husband’s sanction is still necessary, but now what do we have? Females dominating females. A suite of four rooms at the top of the heap when six are forced to share each of the other rooms? Three stoves with plenty of wood and even coal and a choice of foods most in the country, not just in this internment camp, have not seen since the autumn of 1940?’
How dare he question her like this? ‘Men. Why can’t you all be like Étienne? Kind to a fault, gracious to every woman no matter how demanding or objectionable? Always considerate, always gentle and concerned, never hesitating for a moment, Inspector. Always valuing the very crucibles of humanity, for without us, where would you men be?’
Ah, bon, challenged she had let past feelings and beliefs come swiftly to the fore. The eggs would become cold but could be reheated. ‘You never went home to England, madame? Why, please, was that?’
He had taken an educated guess, but she would not demean herself by giving him so much as a dismissive gesture. ‘I was married, was I not? My first duty, under God and the law, if no other, was to care for my husband, a badly disabled veteran. Blind, wasn’t he?’
Who had died in 1919 and likely couldn’t have given her the Art Deco jewellery that had come into fashion in the 1920s, they being a time for unleashed gaiety and relief from that terrible war as well as for the breeding and sale of Percherons. ‘Bien sûr, but there are no photographs of the family you left behind, only those of the two friends who were arrested with you.’
He hadn’t seen those of André, but how could he treat her this way? ‘We were force-fed. Tied, Inspector, each in her cell-bound hand and foot to those atrocious iron cots of the Old Bailey. Forced to suffer the indignity of male hands while a rubber hose was thrust, I tell you, thrust down our throats. One chokes, one vomits, one tries to catch the breath but thinks she is about to drown, and all the while it is men who are doing this to us, to God’s most delicate and intelligent of creatures? Men, I tell you. Men!’