City of Secrets (19 page)

In a few minutes, Laurie arrived at their table. “Oh, there you all are!” he exclaimed. He shook hands with everyone, then pulled up one of the wicker chairs, sat down in it, and produced a parcel from his coat pocket. “Daisy, your photos have turned out splendidly. Have a look.”

Daisy had taken Maddie’s advice and asked Laurie to help her purchase the latest model of Kodak camera and show her how to use it. He had also offered to have the pictures developed by a French photographer who had a darkroom for the purpose. Now he spread the first batch out on the tablecloth to be admired.

“Oh, look,” Daisy said, “here we are at Notre Dame. How you are scowling, Mama! I believe you thought it was somehow irreligious of me to take a picture of a church.”

“But it’s a good likeness,” Maddie assured her.

“Of the church,” Laurie whispered to Maddie, just loudly enough to make Daisy giggle.

Nearly all the likenesses were good, since Daisy had no qualms about “shooting” moving objects and anything that took her fancy. Laurie had instructed her in the mechanical use of the machine but had refused to advise her on her subject matter; the result was like a family album full of Daisy’s friends—and even a few perfect strangers—enjoying Paris.

“Here you are looking into Fouquet’s window,” Geoffrey said, handing Maddie a side view of her bending over slightly to examine what she remembered now was a pretty cameo brooch, which she subsequently bought to send to her mother.

“Good gracious. I don’t remember your taking that one, Daisy.”

“That’s what’s called a candid shot,” Daisy told her. “Do I have that right, Mr. Fox? When the subject is unaware of being photographed.”

“That’s what’s known as being sly,” Geoffrey said. “And don’t you ever do it to me, young woman!”

“Oh, I needn’t do so with you, sir, for you pose so well,” Daisy told him, showing Maddie a picture of Geoffrey standing in front of the Ritz.

“Unfortunately, the Vendôme column appears to be growing out of my hat,” Geoffrey objected.

“Does it really?” Daisy took the picture back and showed it, ruefully, to Laurie. “I never thought of that.”

“Well, you’ll think of it next time, won’t you? That’s what’s known as poor composition.”

“That’s what is known as learning from experience,” Maddie said, making everyone laugh, including Daisy, so that when Laurie produced another roll of film and helped her to load her camera, even Maddie got into the merry spirit of the party posed around the garden restaurant table to have their image captured for posterity, and Daisy declared that her new efforts would be the best yet.

“Perhaps you can take some pictures at Mrs. Wingate’s salon,” Daisy suggested to Laurie, “and show me how to use the camera indoors.”

“No, thank you very much,” Laurie protested, making a little bow in Geoffrey’s direction. “No offense, sir, but I offered my services to your wife as her protégé of the week, but she seemed to consider photography not a sufficiently elevated art form for her debut as a hostess. I believe I have been displaced by a Hungarian violinist.”

“Good lord!” said Geoffrey. “Not that melancholy-looking young fellow whose hair keeps falling into his eyes? I can’t imagine how he can see to play.”

“I understand they play from their souls,” Maddie said, smiling. “Perhaps they don’t have to see.”

“Unfortunately, we shall have to see, as well as hear,
him
. I am instructed, by the way, to invite you all for Thursday at four in the afternoon, but if you prefer to have another engagement, I quite understand.”

But no one declined the invitation, however indifferently delivered. At least, as Maddie told Louise when she was later being dressed for the occasion, curiosity on the part of her guests would guarantee the success of Florence’s first salon, if not her subsequent efforts.

#

Florence had improved on her spacious hotel suite by adding extra lighting and an Aubusson carpet laid over the hotel’s for the occasion. A buffet table had been set up along the windows facing the Place Vendôme, for Florence had hit upon a surprisingly effective blend of South Carolina hospitality and English afternoon tea as a backdrop to her melancholy violinist. This young man managed, despite his hair and the abundance of potted palms surrounding him, to perform creditably enough that people were even pausing to listen to him now and then—between the more important business of exchanging gossip and commenting on other people’s looks and social credentials. When Maddie, Daisy, and Lady Jervis arrived, their hostess was not even to be seen amid the crush.

Laurie Fox, who had brought a camera despite its lack of artistic acceptability, looked around for somewhere to set it up. Lady Jervis searched for someone who spoke English and chose a plump woman in an unfashionable hat who was sitting on a sofa by herself trying to look unconcerned that no one seemed interested in speaking to her.

Maddie looked for Devin Grant and didn’t see him. She did not know whether to be relieved or not.  She finally tracked down her hostess, however, and said, “You are a resounding success, Florence. One can scarcely move without tripping over a cosmetics king or an artist’s agent, not to mention their wives.”

Florence sighed. “And their mistresses. But they are all Americans, my dear, and a few English, of course. I had so hoped for a Rothschild, or at least some minor baronne or comtesse.”

“I understand that Parisians, particularly Parisian ladies of the old families, are reticent about accepting the hospitality of those outside their circle,’’ Maddie said consolingly. “Particularly foreigners.”

“Besides,” Florence said, disregarding even the suggestion of herself being regarded as foreign, “Viktor promised faithfully to bring some of his musician friends, but not a one has put in an appearance.”

“I had no idea you wanted to become a patroness of the arts, Florence.”

“My dear, you know I am an utter ignoramus when it comes to anything of the sort, but think of being able to say one was the first to recognize the next Liszt or Sardou or Seurat!”

Maddie refrained from asking how one who could not distinguish merit in an acknowledged work of art could be the first to discern such merit in the infancy of the artist’s career, but perhaps it was best not to add to Florence’s frustration.

“What about that young man by the window?” she asked instead. “Judging by his clothes and the eager way he is consuming your little sandwiches, he may well be a starving artist.”

Florence raised her lorgnette to survey the too-slender but nonetheless handsome young man. She looked annoyed for a moment but said, “He must be one of Viktor’s friends, after all. I’ll go and welcome him.”

She drew a determined breath and made her way through the crowd like a ship parting the waves, and Maddie felt a pang of sympathy for her young victim, who looked startled when Florence approached him and introduced herself.

Maddie watched them for a while, trying to view the stranger as Laurie Fox might. She had been a little surprised to see how people she knew in Laurie’s photographs sometimes appeared different from her perceptions of them, and she had tried to learn from him to be more observant, to cultivate her ability to see people as keenly as he did, so that she would not be so surprised.

Despite his youth and general resemblance to every other young man Maddie had seen on the streets of Paris, there was something different about this one—a kind of haunted look, as if he had recently passed through an illness, or even some danger. He was well dressed, but his cuffs were frayed; and although his shoes had been expensive when new, they had since been repaired several times. He held himself stiffly, as if ready to run if the danger returned; yet his youth softened the posture enough that even Florence, who was talking intently to him, gave him a motherly squeeze of the shoulder.

But then Maddie saw his eyes and unexpectedly snapped out of the lethargy that had been weighing her down for days.

“Someone you know?” Geoffrey Wingate’s voice in her ear startled her.

“No—that is, I’m sure I’ve never seen him before. But there is something familiar about him.”

“That’s my wife.”

Maddie smiled, but the look of sheer hatred that she had seen in the young man’s eyes was still there, as if it were as fixed as their pale blue color. He was probably behaving perfectly nicely to Florence, not even aware that his eyes belonged somewhere else.

“Geoffrey, what do you know about anarchists?”

“
Dansons la Ravachole, Vive le son, De l’explosion
,” he sang softly. When Maddie looked at him, puzzled, he said, “Ravachol was an anarchist, one of the radical stripe, but like many others, not very efficient. He bungled the murder of a lawyer—couldn’t find the right apartment and so blew up the whole building, fortunately with no serious injuries. The government guillotined him and thereby made a hero out of him.”

“Peter Kropotkin said not all anarchists are like that, like the newspaper caricatures.”

“The illustrators must get their images from somewhere. Besides, even one half-educated fanatic like Ravachol can do more damage than a dozen civilized intellectuals like Kropotkin.”

“Do you think the young man standing with Florence might be such a fanatic?”

Geoffrey studied the boy for a moment. “There hasn’t been an incident of that kind in France for five years, but yes, he reminds me of someone, too.”

“Who?”

“Emile Henry. He had that same cold look, although he was just a boy too. When they asked him why he threw a bomb into a crowded railroad station café, he said he had waited until he could kill as many people as possible.”

Now Maddie wished that Devin Grant were there. His solid presence would have warded off the chilly sensation, so like that she had felt the day she arrived in Paris, that now struck her again. It occurred to her, too, that she knew too much about anarchism and not nearly enough about anarchists. What sort of haunted young men were they, the Ravachols and Henrys? And how could Teddy be one of them? What could have changed him so?

Then she had an idea. She looked around for Laurie Fox and, as she expected, found him off in a quiet corner setting up a camera on a tripod. He had aimed it in the direction of the young violinist who, despite his air of detachment and devotion to his music, was aware of being a target and had arranged himself in a more aesthetically pleasing posture.

“He’s a perfect boor,” Daisy pronounced when Maddie joined her and Laurie, “but so picturesque, don’t you think? Such soulful eyes!”

“Have you seen that fair-haired young man by the window?” Maddie asked. “He seems to be one of the same ilk.”

Laurie looked in the direction she indicated, and his eyes brightened. “Oh, yes, very good. Like one of Lautrec’s café idlers. I’ll do him—candidly, while he still looks like himself, then I’ll ask him if he’ll pose.”

Laurie moved his tripod and aimed his camera lens at the young man, who moved his head toward the window just then.

“Blast,” Laurie said and changed the plate.

He refocused and disappeared under the short black cloth attached to the back of the camera, waiting for his subject to turn his head in his direction again.

The young man’s conversation with Florence had become more animated, Maddie noticed. In fact, Florence was speaking angrily to him. Maddie could not hear what was being said, but she found herself holding her breath, hoping that Laurie would take the photograph before the boy walked off in a huff.

Then he turned at last—and saw the camera.

What little color there had been in his face drained out of it. He reacted instinctively, throwing the glass in his hand at the camera. It missed, landing noiselessly on an empty sofa behind Laurie, who came out from under the cloth to say, “What in heaven—?”

Together, Maddie and Daisy moved their heads toward the door.

But the young man had disappeared.

No one but Maddie, Daisy Jervis, and Laurence Fox had been aware of the immediate cause of the mysterious young man’s abrupt departure from Florence’s salon, and none of them could imagine the real reason behind his aversion to cameras.

Thinking quickly, Maddie asked Laurie if he had snapped the shutter before that glass had been pitched at him, but he had only the spoiled plate he had exposed before that. She asked him to develop it anyway, intending to tell Oliver Drummond as much as she could remember about the young man and to instruct him to find out whatever else he could in case the young man proved to be connected with the anarchist group Teddy had been involved in. Such an association would at least account for his skittishness about being photographed. A photograph, however blurred, could identify someone to the police.

Laurie, as usual, asked no awkward questions, and when Florence, still looking a little flushed, complained to them that people who left without thanking their hostess had no manners whatsoever, Laurie agreed without enlightening her and diverted Florence’s attention from the damp spot on her sofa by asking her to pose for him with Viktor. Maddie smiled at him gratefully. One could not be sure about Viktor, either, and a likeness of him might also come in useful.

“Laurie,” Maddie said, when he had escorted her and Daisy back across the square to the Ritz, “whatever became of the photographs you took of Florence? I don’t remember seeing them anywhere in her suite.”

He frowned and said, “They weren’t there, although I can’t tell you why. Mrs. Wingate received the parcel I sent from London, thanked me profusely, paid me, and said she was going to send them home to her friends. I had assumed she would keep one or two for herself, but it seems not.”

“She was dreadfully keen to be in the illustrateds too,” Daisy said. “Only because Mrs. Malcolm was, of course.”

“That’s the other odd thing,” Laurie said. “She changed her mind, saying Mr. Wingate wouldn’t like it.”

“That seems unlikely,” Maddie said. “I’m sure Geoffrey goes along with any whim Florence takes into her head, as you see from this salon nonsense. There must have been some other reason she did not wish to reveal to you.”