“Sophie is such a arrogant creature. A beauty in her time but a shame she’s let herself go,” Rosa said. “I knew we’d get nothing from her.”
“On the contrary,” Serafina said.
They stood on the Pont Neuf admiring the statue of Henry IV and the charm of the Place Dauphine. But the flying buttresses of Notre Dame reminded Serafina of the creep of despair. For a while they watched the barges glide up and down the Seine until she said something about her feet.
“That’s all you can say of Paris is that your feet ache? Look around you. The style, the vigor, the glorious food, the pomp, the gilt, the spectacle.”
“Will you stop?”
“The parks and buildings, Haussmann’s magnificence, Paris glittering and transformed, the romance of it-so beautiful it wets my eyes.”
Serafina was amazed. The madam waxed poetic. She wished she could stick her feet in a bowl of hot water.
Rosa continued. “The buildings freshly whitewashed, the slate roofs gleaming with pale light, the doors covered in such luscious colors and such thick lacquer. Even the chimneys complement the scene. And look at the wide boulevards and how they’re paved. If I have to listen to you complaining about how cold you are one more time, I’ll scream, I swear it. We have an hour to spare before we meet with the prefect. Take Busacca at his word and have them design a hat for you. No wonder your feet are frozen.
Rosa had a point. They hired a fiacre and made their way to Busacca et Fils, Milliners, a large store on the corner of Rue de la Paix and Rue St. Augustin. A beam of sun shone on the glass. Hats, hats, hats filled the window, and the shellacked wooden facade was painted a lovely shade of chromium oxide. As they opened the door, a brass bell sounded their arrival. They were met by a man in a waxed mustache and frock coat.
“Ah, such a shame, you have just missed Madame.” He wrung his gloved hands. “She left not five minutes ago for an appointment.”
“When do you expect her return? I’ve a question I forgot to put to her earlier today.”
“Soon.” He smiled. “She went around the corner. She shouldn’t be long. If you care to wait, I will have my designer show you something to suit your extraordinary face.”
After she presented Busacca’s card, the clerk begged her to be seated at one of many small tables and rushed to the back of the store. She saw elegantly attired women at other stations, clerks dressed in black showing them hats with feathers, small pill boxes with elaborate veils. He returned with a woman wearing a smock, a measuring tape draped around her neck. She carried several hats, most of them in wool, some in velvet, others in straw; some large with interesting brims to guard from the sun, but all were serviceable and stylish at the same time.
“A woman is not dressed until she wears a hat, Madame.”
“This is not her usual costume,” Rosa said. “She’s a sleuth. She’s been following seedy types in different parts of town and dressing down for the occasion. Imagine her in suitable attire, please, and do design for a more mysterious but serviceable look. She’s not used to the bite of Paris stones in the spring.”
“Yes, Madame. We have women come to us from all over the world and in all manner of dress who are not used to wearing hats, especially if their climate is warm. But the right hat brings out the unique mystery of a face. And both of you have such interesting faces, I welcome the chance to design for you.”
The designer stuck a wool hat on Serafina. Ridiculous, too much red, it clashed with the rose color of her dress and made her hair look like an orange spider’s nest. But the designer fussed with it, shaping the brim, experimenting with different angles, with feathers, ribbons, veils. “No, no, won’t do,” the woman muttered. “But wait,” she said, through the pins in her mouth while her fingers flew. From her pocket she pulled out a small flower in various shades of rose and dark red, held it to one side, wedged in a large curving feather and a few light green velvet leaves and pinned the arrangement to the silk moire ribbon with a turquoise clasp.
“Now, Madame, regard,” the designer said, stepping back, one hand on her creation.
Serafina looked at her reflection in the glass. The hat had something, she had to admit. She smiled into the mirror. “A transformation. You are an artist.”
Rosa agreed and asked the woman for her card.
“Let me do something for you, Madame. Sit, please.”
As the designer worked to fashion a hat for Rosa, Serafina looked at her watch pin.
“I was hoping to speak with Madame de Masson, but the gentleman at the desk told me she had an appointment. Do you expect her back soon?”
The woman seemed not to have heard the question. Serafina asked it again.
“Yes, Madame, she should be back soon. Her doctor’s office is around the corner, on a small street in back of the store, the Rue St. Arnaud. We expect her very soon, to be sure.”
“Dear me, I hope nothing’s wrong,” Rosa said.
The designer was silent.
“So there is something wrong,” Rosa said. “Is there anything we can do to help?”
“Nothing any of us can mend, I’m afraid. She’s losing her eyesight, poor woman.”
Church bells chimed the hour.
“No more time. Best be going,” Rosa said and tugged at Serafina’s sleeve.
Chapter 9: The Prefect of Paris
On the way to their appointment with the prefect, Serafina thought about what she’d heard from the designer at Busacca et Fils.
“If Sophie’s going blind, how could she have identified Elena?” Rosa asked.
“I’m increasingly uneasy about her ability to identify anything, let alone the body of a niece whom, by admission, she seldom saw.”
“You mean Elena’s alive?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“Past who?”
“Elena, of course.”
“That’s interesting,” the madam said. “Why are we here?”
“To sort out the mystery, of course.”
“But that’s not why Busacca commissioned you, is it?”
“Don’t split hairs. Perhaps, just perhaps, I can bring her back to life.”
Rosa waved a hand back and forth in front of her face while Serafina wrote in her notebook.
“Anyway, this investigation is becoming interesting. Do you remember if Elena was right- or left-handed?”
“Why would I know a thing like that?” Rosa asked.
Serafina was silent as their carriage turned onto the Rue de Rivoli and was stopped by heavy traffic ahead.
“Plenty of time,” Rosa said. “How the French love to parade. But you’ve got to admit, they know how to dress.”
They watched as guards with their plumy hats trotted their horses two by two, trumpets blaring while their coach waited for them to pass.
“Perhaps Elena is ambidextrous. Given her temperament, it figures.”
Serafina made no reply.
“There you are, dreaming again. Loffredo would know, but he’s nowhere to be seen. You haven’t heard from him?”
Serafina bit her lip. “I sent a message to his hotel, his usual accommodation in the sixth arrondissement, but there was no reply.” She took deep breaths.
Rosa patted Serafina’s hand. “There must be a reason why he’s not shown up. Something simple, I’ll wager, like your forgetting he told you he’d be out of town, traveling in the south or some such explanation, so simple it slipped your mind.”
Serafina gave her a look and was silent, their carriage stopping for more congestion. She looked at her watch pin. “I hope the time on this thing is wrong. We have twenty minutes before our meeting with the commissioner or whatever it is they call him.” She felt her stomach doing somersaults and borrowed Rosa’s fan to wick away the moisture on her face. “How do I look?”
“Like a fairy princess. And they call him prefect. He’s a handsome one, and popular. Stern, but we’ll get around that. They say his salary is fifty-thousand francs.”
They were silent as they passed the gutted hulk of Hotel de Ville, a reminder of the disaster that was the Commune. In her mind Serafina heard the shouts, smelled the blood, the powder and the fury, reminding her of uprisings at home. But as their carriage turned into the quai and crossed the Pont Notre-Dame, she was entranced by the scenery and the dash of midmorning Paris, the clop of horses hooves, the city workers in their striking blue overalls and jackets, the sun glinting off the windows of their carriage. Presently they stopped in front of the prefecture of police and the driver helped them out of the carriage. He pulled out his watch and rubbed a dirty thumb over the crystal. “Plenty of time. Up those stairs and through that door. Tell the secretary you’re to meet with the prefect in ten minutes. My Belle Helene and I will be waiting over there.”