The eggs were definitely getting cold. ‘Surely there would have been a matron present?’
‘Inspector. . ’
‘Brother, stay out of this. Let her do the answering.’
‘We were suffragettes, you silly man. The worst of the worst to those ignorant boors. Léa, who was but three cells from mine, had just turned seventeen. Repeatedly she fought them. Repeatedly they savaged her and then laughed at her nakedness and despair. Laughed, I tell you, while they turned the hoses on her.’
Brother Étienne urged caution and, reaching out to her, took hold of a hand but it was definitely not the time for calmness, felt St-Cyr. ‘Is this why you let her wear your jewellery when she leads a mob here?’
‘My jewellery? Léa, what is this he is saying?’
‘Drugged was she, Madame Monnier? Given a little more than a droplet or two of that tincture of valerian while having a nap before confronting my partner and me last night and leading us to the Pavillon de Cérès?’
‘Espèce de salaud, Madame was in the bath. I was only trying it on when the call came to lead that demonstration. We couldn’t have the Americans telling you we were to blame for the killings!’
‘Léa. . ’ began Madame.
‘Élizabeth, I. . ’
‘It is Madame Chevreul, please, and let us never forget it.’
Brother Étienne had set his plate aside, the eggs still swimming in their sauce, but the parsley looking lonely. ‘Madame,’ said St-Cyr, ‘though you claim to sleep like a baby after every séance, Cérès doesn’t let you.’
This sûreté was going to cause trouble unless stopped, thought Léa. ‘The goddess frequently insists that Mrs. Judith Merrill, my former employer at the time, still has things to tell Madame, Inspector. What it is like when one passes over, whom one meets and how one recognizes others. They were very close and always Madame is anxious for word even when in her sleep. To her great joy, her André is no longer blind, yet she tosses and turns.’
‘At the thought of his watching her?’
Quick to seize his frightful little moment, felt Élizabeth, the chief inspector snatched the portrait photographs from her dressing table.
‘This one?’ he asked.
‘White arsenic,’ whispered Brother Étienne with caution, again reaching out to her, the eggs now like a raft between them.
‘A most unpleasant death, Brother.’
Tears were rushing down Madame’s cheeks. ‘I knew, damn you. Immediately after Judith had taken it, I felt a loss that wouldn’t leave me. Weeks later, the return of the letters I had written to her from France only confirmed my worst fears, for Lord Merrill had chosen to include the death notice. Twenty-nine unopened letters, one for each year of her tender life, and nothing else but three puny lines of type in the Times and the lie of it: “Dead of an illness.” I hated him for what he had done to her, to all women. Is it any wonder, then, that we struck for our rights?’
There had been those in France who had wanted the vote and a say in other matters that concerned their everyday lives, felt St-Cyr, but there had never been the collective will to organize as strongly as there had been in Britain. ‘And your family, madame?’
Léa’s look was one of caution, Étienne’s that of heartfelt concern. ‘The father that I loved as a young girl does evermore had disowned me. Neither Nanny Biggs nor my two brothers who were much older than me would go against his will, those two especially since they stood to inherit my share of his estate.’
Bankrupt then, and in 1914, a volunteer. ‘And now, madame?’
This sûreté wouldn’t stop until he had uncovered everything. ‘Thanks to Colonel Kessler, we rule ourselves. Léa, please see what is happening next door.’
A worry to be sure. ‘A moment, Madame Monnier. You have your sources, as does your mistress. Has anything been stolen in the Hôtel Grand since the deaths of either Mary-Lynn Allan or Caroline Lacy?’
Was he ready for it, this grunt of a cow? ‘Nothing since the Lacy girl, the same for the Vittel-Palace.’
‘You have informants there as well?’
‘I hear things.’
‘Then Caroline Lacy was the petty thief-is this what you’re implying?’
‘Inspector, we were all but convinced of it,’ interjected Madame Chevreul.
‘But that is not what you claimed to my partner, madame. You told him neither Jennifer Hamilton nor Caroline Lacy could have been the thief.’
‘I was mistaken.’
‘You interviewed them in that other room, madame. They held hands, were never in here-had no access to this room and yet you are mistaken?’
That Guerlain presentation box. Jennifer Hamilton must have told him differently. ‘Léa, please go. Hortense and Marguerite may need you.’
‘Am I forgiven?’
‘Of course and as always, but never covet what can never be yours.’
A hand was touched, a cheek given a decisive peck.
‘Now, eat your lunch,’ said Léa. ‘Don’t let this vache spoil things. Hortense will only be upset if you do.’
The boot-snatcher, the ‘cook,’ had flung the door wide. Fists doubled, she came on in, reminding one of a difficult birth: no fault of the child’s, none of the mother’s, simply circumstance that had governed everything since.
She wasn’t just off a butcher’s block in some poverty-stricken London lane near the East India Dock; she was swift, deceitful, loyal to her mistress, and one hundred percent determined.
‘You are not to be in here unless Madame has given the permission!’
The rush of breath was fierce. ‘Even though I’m from the Gestapo?’
‘One of those? Pah! Briefcase men with nothing better to do than to interfere in the lives of others. Get out and we will discuss it in the corridor after I have locked the door.
‘Marguerite, has he interfered with you?’
‘Jésus, merde alors, I only wanted my fortune read.’
‘Your fortune? It’s a zéro. One can see this at a glance.’
‘I was about to read it for him,’ said the dove with utter innocence, ‘but now have no need since he is convinced. Desperate, ma chère Hortense.’
‘What did you try to take from him?’
‘A button.’
Hurriedly crossing herself, the cook turned away to close the door, giving herself a moment to swallow.
‘A button is nothing,’ she said, her back still to them. ‘Buttons go missing all the time. They are necessary.’
It rang when he spun it on the Ouija board. Only when it had stopped did he say, ‘This one’s not necessary.’
‘She is not the thief, monsieur. She simply took it to tease.’
‘You will forgive me?’ asked that one, stepping close to brush against him and finger his lapels, the clean, sweet smell of her and of lavender all too clear.
Hortense was now behind him, so good, yes good, thought Marguerite. ‘We read people in here, Inspector. We come to know all their secrets and desires.’
‘Right now I want some answers.’
‘To what, please?’
Hortense tapped him on the left shoulder. ‘It is to me you are to speak. To me,’ she said.
The other one let go of him but not before giving him a tiptoed brush against each cheek and the lightness of a brief embrace.
‘Merci,’ Marguerite whispered, leaving him perhaps with the lingering thought of more to come if he would but forgive her.
‘How much do you star-gazers rake in a week? And don’t be telling me this room hasn’t been up and running since you got here and probably well before that circus in the Pavillon de Cérès downstairs.’