Murder in Montparnasse (10 page)

She was diverted from dark thoughts of death and war by the entry of her two adoptive daughters, Ember the cat and Molly the dog. Molly was sporting a fine new red scratch across her sensitive nose.

‘It’s her own fault,’ said Jane. ‘She wanted to play with Ember and Ember wanted to sleep. So she stuck her silly nose right under Ember and you can’t do that to a cat.’

‘Not if you want to preserve your nose intact,’ agreed Phryne. ‘Cats have strong opinions on dignity.’

‘There was a sort of blur and Ember was out the door and poor old Molly had a scratched nose. It all happened so fast that I don’t think she really knew what hit her.’

‘How are you, young ladies?’ asked Phryne. Both girls were glossy with health and shiny with good food and expensive soap. When she thought of herself at the same age, immured in that freezing cold school in the more depressing wilds of Norfolk, she could have laughed at the contrast. ‘And how was school?’

‘All right,’ said Ruth. ‘Chemistry was mercury reactions. Amazing. One moment it’s a red powder, the next it’s a silver liquid. And all the time it’s a metal.’

Molly, who was not generally allowed into this parlour, sniffed suspiciously at the hearthrug before throwing herself down on it and waving all four paws in the air. The girls joined her there. Ember scaled Phryne’s chair and perched on the arm, all four paws together and tail wrapped around, black as ink and poised like Loie Fuller.

Jane had a question.

‘Miss Phryne, is Mr Lin getting married?’

‘Yes, to a Chinese girl.’

‘And yet he’s still . . . seeing you?’

‘Yes. That was the arrangement,’ said Phryne coolly.

Jane thought about it. ‘That’s why Mr Butler is so upset?’

‘It is,’ said Phryne. Dot leaned forward and touched Jane’s arm and the girl fell silent.

‘It’s all right,’ Phryne told Jane. ‘You can ask me any question. I just don’t guarantee a reply.’

Jane wrinkled her brow and bit the end of her plait. ‘So he’ll have a wife and—’

‘Got it,’ announced Ruth, looking up from tickling Molly’s tummy.

‘What have you got?’ asked Jane.

‘Miss Phryne’s a concubine,’ said Ruth. ‘Like King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.’

‘Ruth!’ said Dot and Jane in one shocked exclamation.

‘Got it in one,’ said Phryne. ‘Break out the clever chocolates.’

‘And one for Jane,’ bargained Ruth. ‘She thought of the question.’

‘Done,’ said Phryne.

Jane and Ruth brought from the cupboard the large box of Haigh’s Superfine Assorted Chocolates, awarded by Phryne for clever answers. Ruth got two and Jane one, and Phryne gave a peanut brittle to Dot because she looked so distressed.

She almost managed not to think of who she had been when another person had pressed on her one last piece of crumbly wartime chocolate, and smiled on her very own family, who were well fed, and warm, and safe.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A girl came into the café and sat by herself at a
table near the window. She was very pretty with
a face as fresh as a new minted coin if they minted
coins in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin,
and her hair was as black as a crow’s wing and
cut sharply and diagonally across her cheek . . .
I’ve seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now,
whoever you are waiting for and if I never see
you again.

Ernest Hemingway,
A Moveable Feast

Phryne woke in fright. It was black dark. The wind had picked up, a northerly which would probably bring scorching heat tomorrow, Melbourne weather being what it was. You could look on it as changeable or you could look on it as unreliable, depending on personal preference. If you don’t like the weather, her mother had told her, go inside, turn around three times, and when you come out, it will have changed. And remember to take an umbrella wherever you go, she had added.

Phryne disliked the north wind with all the fervour of a Provençal whose opinion of the mistral has been requested or a Persian asked for a few favourable comments on the khamsin. It scraped at her nerves. She turned over and Lin Chung awoke. She snuggled into his silky shoulder, resting her cheek on the pad of his muscular chest. He smelt of saffron: they had been unloading spices all day at his import/export business in Little Bourke Street. She breathed in, deeply. A most exotic scent for an exotic man.

‘You are awake,’ she murmured.

‘So are you. The wind has changed. Listen to it claw at the house! In China this would be called dragon’s breath.’

‘Here, too. No one has a suitably diabolic name for that north wind. It’s tormented me since I was a child. Damn.’

‘What must you do tomorrow?’ he asked gently, feeling the tension sing through her body.

‘I have to try and find Elizabeth Chambers, so I am going to see her friend Miss Chivers, I am continuing to worry about Bert and Cec, Jack Robinson is coming back to talk to me and I must remember to tell him that I think his Billy the Match is working in Café Anatole, I have a fitting for my ball dress, you are coming to dinner with Camellia and . . . well, nothing else, really. A lot of things depend on things which depend, which makes me very uneasy. I like to be up and doing, even if it’s nasty, strange, or dangerous.’

‘I know. But there is something else, isn’t there? By my actions, I have disrupted your house.’

‘The Butlers? They will either change their mind or I will find someone else. A lot of people are looking for work. I have the name of a butler sacked by Mr Chambers, and I would be a better employer than that old grump even if he does get interviewed by the Hawklet about my scandalous household.’

‘There is something more,’ insisted Lin Chung.

Phryne hauled herself up on one elbow, found the switch, and put on her rose-shaded bedside light. Lying back on her moss-green pillows was a young man of unsurpassed beauty. His skin was golden, his hair as black as patent leather, brushed straight back. His slim, strong body was as smooth as amber and as electric. His unfathomable black eyes were regarding her with concern. If Rudolf Valentino had been born in Shanghai, he would have looked just so and another generation of women would have swooned over him.

‘I have been remembering the first time that I fell in love,’ said Phryne.

‘Ah,’ said Lin. He did not reach for her but sat up with his back against the pillows, prepared to listen intelligently. Phryne found this so seductive that she had to fight down a wave of pure lust.

‘His name was René Dubois,’ she said slowly. ‘Damn, where did I put my cigarettes? Pour us a glass of champagne, Lin, there’s some left.’

Lin obeyed. The champagne still held a little fizz and Phryne found her cigarette case and lit one, dragging the smoke in deep.

‘He broke my heart,’ she said, quickly.

‘Of course,’ said Lin Chung. ‘One’s first love always breaks one’s heart. That is what it is for.’

‘But Paris—Paris taught me something very valuable.’

‘And what was that?’

‘Paris taught me that I was beautiful,’ said Phryne.

She was lying prone on a blue satin shawl while three painters argued over her pose, and she was getting very bored, which was bad, and cold, which was worse. Even the presence of Kiki, Sarcelle’s wolfhound, did not help. He was sleeping under his blanket and was a lot warmer than the model.

The Atelier de Montparnasse was an impasse, a dead-end cobbled lane. On either side were continuous three-storey buildings, all composed mostly of wood-framed glass windows to let in the maximum amount of light. Washing was usually strung between them, done by a shifting population of mistresses and models and even, occasionally, wives.

In accordance with ancient custom, sculptors lived on the ground floor, due to the weight of their work. No one wanted to wake up in the shattered remains of their studio surrounded by lumps of marble which had once been called ‘Endeavour’ or ‘Spirit of Flight’. On the second floor were the painters and the workers in small crafts, clay and wood. On the top floor, reached by a precipitous creaking stair, were the poorest inhabitants, who were usually art students, prostitutes and people who had begged or stolen fifteen centimes and thus could avoid sleeping in the Bois.

Because of this and what Edouard l’Anglais called ‘drains’— or lack of them—the Impasse de Montparnasse smelt of hasty, squalid cooking, unwashed humans, clay, paint, poverty and a local spirit sold at the Luxe Café known as Laissez-le Tombez, because more than one bottle and anyone was down for the night, or possibly the foreseeable, very short, future.

Madame la Concierge, a large figure indistinguishable among greatcoats and shawls, occupied a small kennel outside her own apartment at the entrance to the Impasse. She demanded Danegeld from any who might try to come in; lately she had been harvesting a fortune from the quarrel between Dupont and Sardou, two picture dealers who were convinced that they were onto something in the work of Sarcelle, the Modernist. Sarcelle thought so too.

Enough was enough. Phryne sat up, dragged Kiki’s blanket around her (to his grave displeasure) and shouted, ‘Ça me suffit!’ into the argument.

There was a silence. Artists’ models were not supposed to speak.

‘Make up your minds,’ she begged. ‘I’m dying of cold. I give you one minute, then I’m putting on my clothes and I’m going home.’

This was not an idle threat. She might be proof against influenza, but she wasn’t immune to pneumonia.

‘No,’ said Sarcelle, ruffling a worried beard. ‘Don’t leave us. See what beautiful things we have made of you? See how beautiful you are!’

Phryne stuffed her freezing feet into slippers and draped Kiki’s blanket around her naked body. She shuffled along behind the easels and looked.

From Anton: one set of pinkish cubes which might have been anyone, including Madame Raphael, the concierge, who had a body like a box. From Edouard l’Anglais, one slight, delicate watercolour, a nymph with short hair staring into a pool, very airy and shadowless. That was she? So slim, so graceful? Sarcelle signalled to Véronique, his wife, and she flicked the cloth off the oil painting. Phryne gasped.

A naked woman, lying in a landscape composed of coloured blocks, blurred at the edges. Purples and blues faded into a dim distance. The body of the woman was perfect, pale as a pearl, her nipples lipstick pink, her hair and pubic hair black as pitch, redeemed from doll-like prettiness by the direct gaze of the eyes, which stared straight at the viewer, challenging, intelligent and bright spring green.

‘Had you never known how beautiful you are?’ asked Véronique, hugging Phryne. Véronique was a plump, pretty, comfortable woman, much tried by her highly strung husband. Sarcelle had been caricatured in the newspaper as all hair, beard, bones and high-collared Russian shirt. Everyone had instantly recognised him. His fellows were good artists in their way. Picasso had been kind about Anton’s cubism and Miss Stein had bought two of English Edouard’s delicate decorative nymphs. But Sarcelle, while he liked Phryne and his co-tenants and probably loved the devoted Véronique, adored Art with his whole passion, and seldom thought of anything else. He left the bargaining between Sardou and Dupont to his wife, who was from Burgundy and could squeeze a sou until it squeaked.

‘I will finish the painting and lay on the gold leaf tomorrow,’ said Sarcelle. ‘But you must not leave me. You are the most beautiful model in Paris, it is well known.’

‘I have a contract with DeBain, downstairs. He is doing a water nymph fountain,’ said Phryne, still astounded. No one had ever told her she was beautiful. First she had been a street Arab with scabbed knees, then a sulky schoolgirl (too thin and too disagreeable) and then an ambulance driver, valued for her strong wrists and good sense of direction under fire. But the woman in the painting was undeniably beautiful.

‘You are a great success,’ Véronique told her. ‘They all want you to pose for them, ever since Sarcelle discovered you. You are the body of the future; they dote upon you. Triple your fees,’ the Burgundian woman advised. ‘Except for Atelier Sarcelle,’ she added, for even artists must eat.

‘Madame,’ said Phryne from the depths of her dog-smelling blanket, ‘I will do as you say.’

‘I am not surprised that you were a success,’ commented Lin Chung. ‘But I am surprised that you had to discover your beauty. Although, come to think of it, it came upon me as a great shock, that night in Little Bourke Street, when I first saw you. Grandmother thought that you might be a deity of some kind, and I thought so too. A silver lady, with perfect Manchu colouring except for those strange, compelling eyes. Beautiful and strange.’

‘Precisely what I thought about you,’ returned Phryne, taking a deep gulp of the champagne. ‘Strange and beautiful, like and unlike.’

‘Paris taught you that you were beautiful,’ prompted Lin Chung. Phryne lit another cigarette.

René poured her another glass of thin colourless liquid.

‘It will make you warm,’ he urged. ‘Drink it in one gulp, or it will burn your mouth. And it is such a beautiful mouth,’ he added, tilting his head in a bird-like gesture to absorb her countenance. Phryne gulped, gasped, and sat down on René’s knee.

All around the friends of Adelie were getting rapidly drunk and talking and crying. Phryne had cried herself out on the walk back from the cemetery. The drink mounted rapidly to her head. All she could taste was aniseed.

‘Raki,’ said Toupie, reclining massively on two chairs by the wall. The café was packed. Outside it was beginning to snow. Inside the brass glittered and the palm trees swayed their fronds in the hot air. Phryne took off her coat and unbuttoned her shirt. René grinned and helped her with the buttons as her fingers had unaccountably turned clumsy. ‘That is firewater, my dear. And that young man is going to seduce you if you don’t watch out.’

‘Indeed,’ agreed Phryne, who had made up her mind on this point.

‘Well, you know your own mind,’ said Toupie. ‘Dolly!’ she called. ‘You know how you like seductions. Here’s one happening right before my eyes.’

Phryne reflected that she ought to be embarrassed. She wasn’t. From the first moment she had seen him, René was her destined lover, forever and forever amen. She had known that he would come along if she didn’t think about it. She hadn’t, and here he was.