City of Darkness and Light (27 page)

“We certainly enjoyed it when we went,” Sid said. “I must say I’m beginning to develop cabin fever, however pleasant our surroundings are.”

“It’s not that,” Gus said. “It’s this terrible thing hanging over your head. We’re all waiting for doom to fall.”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

“I’ll go straight to work in the morning,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “The first thing to do is to see if I can interview the housekeeper, and maybe find a way to get in and see the studio for myself.”

“But what do you hope to find there?” Gus asked.

“I’m not sure, and it’s possible that the police have already carried away any incriminating evidence, but it’s always good to start with the scene of the crime. At least, that was what Paddy Riley, my old mentor, used to say.”

“From what Inspector Henri said the housekeeper didn’t sound like a pleasant person,” Mary said.

“Maybe she just had an aversion to the police,” I suggested. “Some people do. Besides, I’ll be using all of my Irish gift of the blarney. I’ll have her eating out of my hand.”

“Isn’t Molly wonderful?” Gus said. “You should see all the clever cases she has solved back in New York.”

I wished they weren’t quite so confident in my abilities. For one thing I was not at all sure that I could charm a hostile Frenchwoman when my French vocabulary was sadly lacking. Still, I had promised to do my best. Liam was sleeping soundly when I went up to bed. I stood looking down at him, thinking how easy life was for babies and how quickly they adapt. He had come across an ocean, then from a seaside pension to a noisy Montmartre attic, and now to this tranquil street and had slept peacefully in each of them. I bent to kiss his forehead.

“I wish your daddy was here,” I whispered. “He’d know what to do.”

And he’d make sure that I stayed well away from a murder case, I reminded myself. So maybe it was a good thing that he was thousands of miles away in New York. I climbed into bed and lay listening to distant sounds. I was safe. I was among friends. I should have been able to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come. How could I possibly find out who killed Reynold Bryce? I was not the police, able to compare fingerprints or examine the details of Bryce’s life, and I didn’t have the ability to question large numbers of people. I’d be floundering in the dark as usual.

Start with what you know:
that was another of Paddy Riley’s favorite sayings. What did I know about Reynold Bryce? He had inherited wealth and had established a reputation for himself in the States as a painter of rather sentimental Victorian pictures. Then he had abandoned America and his wife and gone to live in Paris. He had never returned to the States. Why was that? Had it been a hasty departure? Could he have perhaps run off to Paris with another woman? But then it would have been the subject of general gossip. Why had he left his wife behind, or had she refused to accompany him?

What else did I know? He was bigoted, prejudiced, and opinionated. Such people make enemies. I also got a hint that he had an eye for the ladies. Was there one lady in particular at the moment? The housekeeper would know about that, surely.

Apart from that he frequented the American Club, where I was denied entry. I knew that he was a leader among the anti-Dreyfusards, a friend of Degas and of Monet. One of my first tasks should be to find out when and where his funeral would be held. Surely his old friend Monet would come to Paris for the funeral. Perhaps other friends would be there to chat and reminisce about him. With some sort of plan now in my head, I finally fell asleep.

*   *   *

I was awoken by a tap on my door and Celeste came in, bearing a cup of tea on a tray. “A fine summer day, madame,” she said. “Your friends say you prefer tea in the morning to coffee.” She set down the tray. “If you have laundry to be done, this is the time to give it to me.”

“I’m afraid my baby’s clothes get extremely dirty,” I said, but she waved this aside. “No problem, madame. I will take them when I come back for your tray.”

It seemed odd to have someone waiting on me again, and I couldn’t help thinking about little Aggie and her willingness to do the laundry. I pictured her scrawny form bent over the washboard as she scrubbed away. Poor young thing. She never had a chance to enjoy life.

Liam awoke and finding himself in a strange room, cried for me. I took him into bed with me and nursed him, bringing a feeling of peace to both of us. When I took him down to breakfast he was delighted to find his aunts from across the street waiting to play with him and didn’t complain at all when I slipped out. It was indeed a lovely day. The yellow stone glowed against a blue sky. It was the sort of day for picnics by the river, strolls though the gardens, shopping on the Boulevard Haussmann. But instead I turned onto the Rue François Premier and made for Reynold Bryce’s ground-floor apartment on the circle at the far end of the street, close to the river. I was relieved to find no policeman standing outside, but then wondered if that meant that the place was now locked up and the housekeeper would not be there either.
What would happen to her?
I wondered. Had Reynold Bryce left a provision for her in his will? Ah, that would be another avenue to pursue, if I could find out who his lawyer was. He was a wealthy man. To whom had that wealth been left?

I stood on the front steps of the building, staring at the little garden behind the railings. Sid had indeed been agile to have climbed into the tree and then have dropped down onto the street. To me, wearing a long, tight skirt, it looked almost impossible. But then terror gives people skills they didn’t know they possessed. Had the murderer really entered and left by that route? If so he must also be strong and agile. I looked at the windows. They now appeared to be shut—or was that one on the end not quite closed? But climbing up would be even harder than climbing down. There was a gate in the railings. I wondered if it was unlocked. I came back down the steps and walked around to it. I had just reached in to jiggle the lock open when someone called, “What are you doing, madame?”

I withdrew my hand rapidly and turned to see a gaunt, hard-faced, elderly woman in black, wearing an old-fashioned black bonnet, coming toward me at a rapid rate.

I glanced hastily around the little garden and my eye fell on the lilac bush. “Very well. I confess,” I said. “I love the smell of lilac and I wanted to pick a small sprig to take with me. Are these not public gardens?”

“No, madame, they are not. They are the private property of this building.”

“I am sorry. I am a visitor to Paris. Do you live here?”

“Yes, madame. Until now, that is. I was the housekeeper of the American, Reynold Bryce. You heard of his tragic demise, I expect.”

“I did. My condolences, madame. It must have been a great shock for you. And a great loss.”

“Indeed,” she said. “I had taken care of Monsieur Bryce since he came to Paris nearly twenty years ago. He was like a son to me.”

“He was a good employer, then?”

“Of course. I would not have stayed with an inferior employer. He was the best, madame. Generous. Liked my cooking. Of course I learned to cook the sort of food that Americans like, and he learned to appreciate the finer ways of French cooking.” She glanced up at the windows, now with shades drawn. “I won’t say he was the easiest man, especially if he was working. He did not like to be disturbed. And he liked to get his own way. One could not cross him. But that is how the great men are, isn’t it? Great art means great temperament.”

“And he lived here alone, all this time?” I asked.

“I was in residence, madame.”

“But I meant that he never remarried.”

“He had a wife at home in America, madame.” She sounded shocked.

“I knew this,” I said. “But she never came to visit him—never once in all these years?”

“No, madame. There was a falling out, but she was a good Catholic. She did not believe in divorce.”

“And he never found anyone else?”

She looked at me suspiciously. “You show great interest in this. Who sent you here? You are from a newspaper in America?”

“No. Nothing like that,” I said. “I show interest because I came here with a message from Mr. Bryce’s family.”

“He had no family,” she said sharply.

“No immediate family, that is true. But his second cousin Louisa. Did he not mention her? He was always fond of her when she was a child.”

“I don’t recall…” she said. “Maybe. I never detected him expressing any sentiment for a family member.”

“Anyway, she still has fond memories of him.” I had rehearsed this speech and made sure I could deliver it smoothly in French. “She was very young before he went to Paris, of course. However now she has married well and has now moved into a fine big house in Boston. She dearly wanted to have one of her cousin’s paintings on her walls so she asked me to call on him and see if there were any pictures he had recently painted and hadn’t sold.”

“He has not been painting much recently,” she said. “And she should understand that his paintings now command high prices—higher still now that he is no more, I should think.”

“Money is not a problem for her,” I said. “She was prepared to pay the correct price, you understand, but she wanted something fresh and new, not a painting that someone else had owned before.” I was rather pleased with this approach. It was something I thought up during my shower this morning, something simple that would arouse no suspicions and make no difficult claims for me. It appeared to have worked.

“Ah,” the old woman nodded. “She wishes to buy a painting.”

“The lady in Boston knew I was coming to Paris. ‘Please select a painting for me, my dear,’ she said to me. ‘I give you carte blanche to buy one. Tell Cousin Rennie it is for me and he will help you select a good one.’”

The housekeeper shifted her feet uneasily. “As I said, I don’t think you will find new paintings that remain unsold. He has hardly touched a canvas in a year or more. In fact I thought that maybe he had given it up all together. But then recently he found the urge to paint again. Not the charming landscapes he had been painting like his friend M. Monet, but a very different subject, you understand. Not one I approved of at all.” She glanced up at the windows with a frown, then looked back at me, shaking her head.

“This new painting, is it finished?”

“He only just started it.”

“And there are no other paintings in his possession that would now come up for sale? His cousin in America will be so sad to learn he has died.”

“Indeed she will, madame. We are all sad. M. Bryce is a great loss.”

“So I really hope his cousin Louisa will have a painting to remember him by. I wonder if it might be possible to see around his home and inside his studio for myself, so that I can write to her and describe which paintings his cousin might wish to purchase.”

“No, madame. That would not be possible,” she snapped. “The apartment is shut. Nobody is allowed to go in by order of the police. I myself have not been allowed to sleep in my room or to clean anything. I have been staying with my sister, which is most inconvenient as she has no room for me. I only came today to retrieve certain personal items, before the police decide to throw them out. And there is food in the pantry that will be spoiled soon, if it isn’t spoiled already. I had pies and cakes … Monsieur Bryce loved his pies, madame. I expect they have spoiled already, but I thought I would just see what could be saved.”

From the way she said this and her defensive posture I sensed there was more to her visit than looking for spoiled pies. She was uneasy, knowing that she shouldn’t be here. She had expected to slip in unnoticed and now here I was asking questions. I wondered if she only intended to help herself to a bottle or two of good wine or if she had her eye on something more valuable, like the silver, or maybe even a painting.

“Of course, it would be a shame to let good food spoil,” I said, nodding agreement and watching the hint of a smile twitch at her lips.

“It is too bad,” she said. “After all these years to be told that my services were no longer needed and I should find employment elsewhere. The inspector told me to come on Monday morning to give the place a thorough cleaning and then I’m finished. No more. I must find a new situation and I am no longer young. If I ever found the swine that took Mr. Bryce’s life, I would run him through with a knife myself.”

“The knife that killed him—I understand from the inspector that it was an ordinary kitchen knife.”

She shrugged. “He asked me if it came from my kitchen. I told him it was an inferior knife to the ones he would find in this establishment. Mr. Bryce only liked the best. Stainless steel, you know. Very modern. And now…” She turned away from me.

I put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I understand how hard it must be for you, madame.”

She nodded, putting her hand up to her mouth. “Mr. Bryce would never have wanted me to be cast aside in this manner. He appreciated all that I did for him.”

“Perhaps I could help you to go through the pantry to pack up the food,” I suggested but that clearly went too far.

“Certainly not, madame. That would be quite wrong,” she said. “I do not plan to stay long and I would be in much trouble if the police knew I had admitted a stranger. If you want to gain admission to this apartment to look at Mr. Bryce’s paintings, you must first ask permission from the police.
Bonjour.
” She gave a curt nod and then went up the steps, putting a key into the lock.

So much for my Irish powers of persuasion,
I thought. I didn’t think Inspector Henri would be too willing to accept yet another story from me.

Twenty-seven

I felt frustrated as I walked back to Miss Cassatt’s residence. Surely I should have been able to find out more from the housekeeper. Unfortunately she was clearly anxious to get in there, help herself to what she had come for, and then escape. I was in her way and there was no point in putting myself on her bad side. Had I learned anything from her, I wondered? Well, for one thing I knew that nobody would be at Mr. Bryce’s apartment on Sunday, if I could find a way in. Also I learned that he had not been painting much recently and his paintings now commanded a high price. So perhaps we had this all wrong—it might have been a simple art theft gone wrong. I wondered if the housekeeper knew which paintings had been hanging in the studio and whether one might be missing.