Paris Requiem (47 page)

He read this statement several times. The boldness of it both shocked and moved him. Like some antique Queen, re-imagined by a great tragedian, Ellie had confronted both her perverse passions and their consequence. He stared out at the courtyard and felt the walls transform themselves into those
of a suffocating fortress – a prison of conflicting emotions condemning an Ellie riddled by jealousies to only one possible escape. She had taken it. He bit back a sob and forced himself to return to the pain of the journal.

If Olympe had become simply Ellie’s unnamed ‘She’, he would have to read very carefully. He leafed slowly backwards. The last lines in this journal had been in Ellie’s neat, finely honed script. But the preceding pages were filled with a loose, disjointed and all but illegible scrawl, the exclamation points so thick that they cut through the paper.

The handwriting worked on him with the same
insinuating
resonance as her voice had in the hours of her delirium. He felt he had been set adrift on stormy seas in some flimsy uncontrollable vessel poised to capsize at any instant. It was only with a gigantic effort of the will that he didn’t succumb to despair and kept himself on course.

Maisie’s name accosted him. Why had she surfaced at this particular juncture in his sister’s jumbled mind? He made out the word ‘stupid’, but the rest of the sentence was unreadable. Or perhaps he didn’t want to read. To know. To know any more about the embroidery Ellie had dropped on the stairs which hastened Maisie and their daughter’s end.

He shuddered away the insidious thought. That way lay madness. He turned pages hastily until he reached a clear section, the script as balanced as Ellie at her best.

A savage drummer beat at James’s temples. He rubbed them slowly, willing himself to read on and somehow decipher the jumble of the following pages. The writing was a scrabble, the words back to front. They swam before his eyes, bringing exhaustion in their train and with it a kind of emotional numbing, so that he felt a distance growing between himself and these pages as if they no longer belonged to his sister, to poor, dear Ellie, but to a stranger who had encoded a puzzle he had to solve.

It leapt out at him like a sudden illumination that his difficulty in reading the scrawl came from the fact that a good proportion of the words were in French, though accentless and randomly spelled. Simultaneously, he made out the words
pantalons et frock
. He began to translate a little randomly, filling in as he went, jumping over the impossible, the countless repetitions.

James’s breath wouldn’t reach past his strangled throat. He thrust the journal in a drawer, covered it over and threw himself onto the bed. He didn’t know how long he lay there or whether he slept, but his mind produced a rapid and repetitive blur of images, bleached out, like those leaping scenes at the cinématographe. Instead of the train coming towards him, it was Olympe’s falling body, propelled over a balustrade by the sudden wild heave of Ellie’s unexpected motion. He saw the savagery of his sister’s eyes, huge, beaming. He saw Olympe tumbling into the cold waters where he swam, unable to save her, unable to save the body that followed hers in quick succession either. Olympe, then Ellie. Olympe, then Ellie, in a demonic unstoppable flickering repetition.

When the images faded, it was only because the sound of insistent knocking had replaced the endlessly recurrent splash.

‘Jim, Jim. It’s late. And Durand’s here. He heard about Ellie. Come and talk to him.’

The Chief Inspector stood by the French windows and gazed out on the spectacle of the streets. He rocked slightly, balancing first on heels, then on toes, while his crossed hands rested on his stomach. Everything about him drooped, even his moustache. The expression he turned on James was lugubrious.

‘My sincere condolences, Monsieur Norton. Your sister was a fine woman, if a troubled one. It is a great loss. A great loss.’

‘Thank you, Chief Inspector.’

‘Arlette is just bringing coffee. You’ll join us?’ Raf looked as haggard as James felt. His eyes were glassy, encircled by soot.
He seemed to have slept in his clothes and have dreamt what James had been reading.

James waited until the coffee was poured and the croissants served. He still hadn’t determined quite what he would say to either Raf or Durand. He sipped the scalding liquid and reached for his pipe. Raf was watching him like an accused man searching out a judge’s verdict from telltale details – the lift of an eyebrow, the flicker of a nostril. James cleared his throat. It felt raw, as if he had been howling for hours at an ill wind.

‘Chief Inspector, I have spent the night perusing my sister’s journal. It is a strange document, intimate in the extreme, sometimes utterly incomprehensible. I fear she was even more tormented, more confused than any of us had imagined.’ James paused. His skin felt clammy. He was betraying Ellie. But it had to be done. For the sake of truth, if not of the law which had no jurisdiction over the realm to which she had fled.

He rushed on. ‘You remember that at an early point in your inquiry, you were convinced that Olympe Fabre’s death was the result of a crime of passion. You were right. You were only mistaken as to the source and nature of that passion. From what I can make out from my sister’s palpably delirious jottings, Olympe Fabre spent the last hours of her life with her. They went out together. Olympe pushed Elinor in her chair along the Pont Royal. I imagine she pushed her up to the very point Elinor chose for her own leap into the river.’

‘What?’ Raf’s coffee cup clattered, spilling grainy liquid into his saucer. ‘Say that again.’

James stilled him with a wave of the hand.

‘The two women argued. It seems they argued over the pregnancy Olympe had just confessed to our sister and over her clear intention to accept Rafael’s proposal of marriage. They must have argued vehemently and though it may seem
startling, I believe that Elinor rose from her wheelchair and lashed out at Olympe. The unexpectedness of the attack, the surprise of it must have led to Olympe’s toppling backward over the bridge. The balustrade on the Pont Royal is not a very high one, as you know, and our sister is … was … a tall woman. My sense is that after that, Elinor propelled the event out of her mind. Developed an amnesia. It was not altogether unusual to her, as Dr Ponsard will testify. When the scene came back to her, she set out to take her own life and to do so in the same place. Perhaps she saw it as a just punishment.’

Raf’s mouth had dropped open. The Chief Inspector tsked beneath his breath.

‘I shall give you the journal if you like, Chief Inspector. Much of it, as I say, is illegible. The rest in English.’

Durand was visibly embarrassed. ‘I shall have to look at it, Monsieur. Only the relevant passages. For our records, you understand.’

‘Of course.’

‘But I am certain the investigating magistrate will agree. The case of Olympe Fabre is closed. Accidental death.’

‘Thank you, Chief Inspector.’ James met Durand’s eyes in understanding. ‘Thank you.’

Raf’s mutterings interrupted them. He was running his fingers through his hair, pacing, talking as if to himself. ‘I should have known. I didn’t read the signs. She told me. Made it clear. A double jealousy. She didn’t want us together. I had intruded on a special friendship.’

‘Believe me, Monsieur Norton …’ The Chief Inspector, too, rose. ‘In my experience, it is almost impossible to prevent such explosions. They are like storms. One can sometimes see them coming, but we have no power to stop them. They take their own course.’

‘Still, I could have …’ Raf’s eyes were black with sorrow. His lips trembled.

James had a sudden scalding memory of Maisie, his raging helplessness at her death and their child’s. He thought of the hidden coils which charged all their relations. He thought of his own unshaped and murky suspicion of Raf, fuelled by childhood jealousies which mirrored Ellie’s, but had none of her force. He had discounted her, whether because of her illness or her feminine frailty, and all the time it was Ellie who had harboured the real secrets, who had been the engine of their grief and her own.

‘I don’t know if you could have done anything, Raf, short of altering history or changing the world we live in.’

‘It needs changing,’ Raf snapped at him.

‘As for that, Messieurs, we are in agreement,’ Durand intervened. ‘Perhaps in our new century …’ A small smile lit his face, so that he suddenly looked like a satisfied politician. ‘And may I remind you, my friends, that together we have made a little difference, perhaps accidentally, but it is a difference nonetheless. Our vice squad will be a little more wary of corruption. We have one white slave trafficker less, maybe more than one. That is not nothing.’ He bowed. ‘I leave you, Messieurs. Once more, my condolences.’

T
he ocean liner gleamed white against the indigo sea. Gulls circled its prow, inspected the proud chimneys and with a shriek, swooped towards the waves. Little Adam pointed and marvelled and pointed again, his cries more excited than the birds’. Her mouth a perfect circle, Juliette held on tightly to her father’s hand. Arnhem, his beard and hair freshly trimmed, was wearing a new suit and he nodded sagely at his children’s squeals, though his eyes held a similar awe. All around them, people clustered, shook hands, waved, kissed, wept.

Marguerite, stately in a dove grey suit, her face beautiful in its melancholy, leaned on her parasol and looked on. James approached her. ‘I guess it’s time for a last goodbye.’

She gave him her wry laugh. ‘I’m glad you say last, James. Because I sense you’ve been trying to say goodbye ever since you arrived.’

‘I haven’t been quite that bad, have I?’

‘No, no, not at all. And, despite the circumstances, your company has always been a pleasure. Not once have I felt a yawn stealing upon me.’

‘Coming from you, I’ll take that as a compliment. And you, you have taught me many things. Paris has taught me.’

She lowered her gaze and traced a pattern on the ground with her parasol. Her voice lost its banter. ‘I haven’t had a chance to say this before, but I am deeply sorry about Elinor. I console myself with the thought that she chose her own guillotine. That is something. Who knows whether when the moment comes we shall be as brave.’

He nodded.

‘I shall miss you. Arnhem and the children, too. I had grown very fond of them.’ She met his eyes, her own troubled. ‘I hope this notion of taking them to America was not simply your way of settling family debts.’

‘That too, of course. But if you had seen Arnhem’s face when I suggested it, your mind would be at rest. He wants nothing more than a fresh start. A fresh start for himself and his children for the new century was in fact how he put it. He added that Rachel wanted it, would have wanted it. When I told him I could facilitate the necessary papers, he was rapturous, though he insisted that all monies were to be understood as a loan which this time he would make certain he honoured.’

He paused, his voice catching as he looked at her. ‘We all shoulder our guilts best as we can. And our lives have become intertwined, willy nilly …’

His glance strayed towards the children.

She followed it. ‘Yes, I can see that. I can see that clearly. Perhaps you are right. That, at least, is for the best.’ She moved towards him and kissed him on both cheeks. ‘Come back, James. You’ve made many friends here.’

‘You, the most remarkable of them. But I leave my brother in your capable hands.’

‘As for that …’

‘What are you two smiling at?’ Raf was suddenly upon them, Harriet in tow. ‘Everything’s in order.’ He handed James
a sheaf of papers, then gripped him by the shoulders. ‘Thanks for everything, Jim. You’ll plead my case to Mother.’

James embraced him. ‘That’s one I’m never sure of winning.’

‘Never mind. Harriet will have a go. And she can explain Ellie to her. Tell her, as she told me, that she was a heroine before her time. I guess Olympe was, too.’ He looked out to sea, his handsome face sombre. ‘Maybe you’ll pass Dreyfus’s ship on its long homeward journey. Wave to him for me. Tell him far more of France is glad to see him back than was sorry to see him go.’ He gave James a lopsided grin.

The ship’s horn blared, filling the air, scattering the gulls, demanding attention.

‘It’s time, James.’ Harriet glanced up at him with shy
excitement
, then ran to shepherd the children and Arnhem.

Watching her, James had a glimmering sense that his future might no longer be altogether behind him.

His brother met his eyes in understanding and nodded, though nothing had been uttered. It had taken too many deaths and misadventures, but Raf and he seemed at last to be in tune.

After another flurry of kisses and handshakes, the travellers scrambled on board to stand on the deck and look out on the diminished figures of those left behind.

‘Do you think the new world really is better than the old?’ Arnhem asked with sudden solemnity.

‘I don’t know,’ James murmured. He lifted Juliette into his arms so that she could see Marguerite more easily. They both waved, a wave that for James encompassed not only Raf and Marguerite, but Ellie and the Olympe he had never met and her sister and even the Chief Inspector. ‘I don’t really know, Monsieur Arnhem. But we make of it what we can.’

‘I like your “we”, Monsieur Norton. I like it very much.’

THE END