The Ways of the World (8 page)

‘What a coarse turn of phrase you people do have.’

‘It must arise from the sort of fixes we have to get
you
people out of.’

‘I don’t know what—’

‘Have you heard anything from
le Deuxième Bureau
?’

‘No. Should I have?’

‘They may have been keeping an eye on Madame Dombreux.’

‘Surely whatever her husband was up to was buried with him in Russia.’

‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. Certainty’s hard to come by in my line of business.’

Fradgley sighed. ‘I’ll put the Maxted brothers on the train tomorrow, Appleby. Along with their late father. As far as I’m concerned, my involvement in this matter ends there.’

‘I wish I could believe mine will too.’

‘Well, I must get on.’

‘Yes, yes. I’m sure there are memos you need to write. Good afternoon to you.’

Max had set himself a brisk pace and was at the Gare Montparnasse within half an hour. He had no way of knowing whether Madame Dombreux would be on duty, but was happy to take his chances. If she had already gone, he would simply have to press on to 8 Rue du Verger.

He could not see the cashiers clearly behind their grilled windows, but, after annoying several people by dodging from one queue to another, he found the one he was looking for.

The cashier was a young woman, dressed in an unflattering grey uniform. But, as Max drew closer, it became ever more obvious that she was really quite beautiful.

Her dark hair was gathered beneath her uniform cap. Her face was pale and heart-shaped and only a cast of weariness in her looks disguised her attractiveness. She kept her cool green eyes trained on the tickets and the money in front of her. Her expression was grave, her exchanges with passengers minimally polite. Max would have guessed, even without knowing, that she was someone only misfortune and adverse circumstances had reduced to issuing train tickets for a living. She had been bred for better.

He reached the head of the queue and drew her gaze by the simple means of saying nothing.

‘
Oui, monsieur?
’ she prompted, her voice soft and serious.

‘Madame Dombreux?’

She frowned and looked at him more intently. Then she covered her mouth in surprise. He heard her sharp intake of breath. Somehow, she knew who he was.

‘I’m James Maxted.’

‘Of course. You have Henry’s eyes.’

Her direct, unflinching reference to his father and the perfection of her English, in which an accent was barely detectable, took him aback. For a moment, he merely stared at her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I did not mean to—’

‘I need to speak to you.’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘And I to you. But we cannot speak here. Meet me in the Café du Dôme at a quarter to seven. It is on Carrefour Vavin.’

WITH TIME TO
kill, Max went into a café opposite the station, where he drank two coffees and smoked several cigarettes. The light outside started to fail and the streets became slowly busier as workers began their homeward journeys. Well-filled trams rattled by at intervals. He pondered the enigma of Madame Dombreux and her relationship with his father.
You have Henry’s eyes
. The phrase lingered in his thoughts, along with the manner in which she had spoken it. Whatever she had been to Sir Henry, it surely amounted to more than he had been led to believe.

It was a short walk along Boulevard du Montparnasse to Carrefour Vavin. He diverted to Rue du Verger and paused to stare up at the roof of number 8. It was growing dark now. Lamplight gleamed from some of the windows. It was easy to convince himself Madame Mesnet was peering out at him from one of them. He headed on.

There were several cafés spaced around the junction. The Café du Dôme appeared to be the busiest, with one or two hardy souls braving the terrace. Inside, most of the tables were occupied. There was laughter and shoulder-clapping banter and a miasma of cigarette smoke. Max could hear the click of billiard balls from an inner room. He found a perch on one of the banquettes close to the entrance and ordered a beer. He looked at his watch and wondered what he would say when she arrived.

A quarter of an hour slowly passed. Then a large, bulky figure entered the café, colliding with Max’s table as he did so. He uttered
no apology, probably because he had not noticed. He was a huge man, made to look huger still by a flapping, frayed tweed suit and wild head of hair, complete with bushy beard. He headed straight for the bar, waving his hand in acknowledgement as someone shouted his name. ‘
Eh, Raffaele!
’

Several of those standing at the bar greeted him familiarly. And his response clinched his identity. ‘
Buonasera … mes amis
.’ A brandy was downed in mid-sentence and another promptly ordered.

It was both an opportunity not to be missed and one fraught with difficulties. For all his bonhomie, Spataro looked every bit as volatile as an Italian artist might be expected to. Perhaps the shrewdest course of action would be to wait and see how he reacted to Madame Dombreux’s arrival.

But shrewdness sat ill with Max’s impatience to learn as much as he could before he was obliged to leave Paris. He stood up and threaded his way to the bar.

‘Raffaele Spataro?’ There was no response until Max had added a tap on the arm – an arm that felt like a solid mass of muscle. ‘Raffaele Spataro?’

‘
Si
.’ Spataro swung round and looked at him. ‘
C’est moi
.’

‘I’m James Maxted.’

‘You are English.’

‘Yes. Could I have a word with you?’

‘Ah. Words. That is all the English have.’

‘I don’t think the Germans would agree with you there.’

The remark seemed to make Spataro take stock of Max for the first time. ‘Do you want to buy me a drink,
mio amico
?’

‘I’d be happy to.’

Spataro laughed. ‘Then I leave you to pay for my brandy.’ He drained his second glass and smacked it down on the bar. ‘
Grazie mille
. I must go.’

‘Wait.’ Max laid a restraining hand on Spataro’s elbow. ‘I’d like to ask you a few questions about the death in Rue du Verger on Friday night.’

‘What is that to you?’

‘The man who died was my father. Sir Henry Maxted.’

‘Then I am sorry for you. But I know nothing.’

‘Your studio faces the roof he supposedly fell from.’

‘Supposedly? What is “supposedly”? He fell.’

‘Did you see it happen?’

Spataro shook Max off and gave him a glare in which there was just a hint of fear beneath the menace. ‘I saw nothing.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘
Si
. I am sure.’

‘You don’t look it.’

Spataro’s eyes widened. Suddenly, he grabbed Max by the tie and collar. Max felt his feet being raised from the floor. He smiled, which seemed to baffle the Italian. ‘What is funny?’

‘You are, Raffaele. It’s a good thing you’re an artist, because you’d make a rotten actor.’

Spataro’s face darkened and his grip on Max tightened. Then there was a shout from behind the bar. The
patron
intervened in a reproving volley of Franco-Italian that seemed to register with Spataro as something he was bound to take note of. He scowled and ground his teeth, then released Max and held up his hands in a placatory fashion. But it was the management of a favourite watering hole he was placating, not Max. ‘Leave me alone,’ he growled. Then he spun on his heel and stalked out.

Max rather expected the
patron
to give him his marching orders too. But he was positively sympathetic, refusing to let Max pay for Spataro’s brandies and referring to ‘
les artistes
’ with an expressive roll of the eyes.

One of the other customers massed at the bar spoke reasonable English and claimed to know someone who knew one of those who had found Sir Henry’s body. ‘A terrible thing,
monsieur
. Have the police found out what happened?’ Max assured him they had not. ‘
Naturellement
,’ came the cynical response.

Max decided to finish his beer outside. It was growing cold, but that hardly mattered. He wanted to be able to suggest to Madame Dombreux that they go elsewhere for their talk. After his encounter with Spataro, he felt too conspicuous for comfort at the Dôme.

He was not kept waiting long, but her arrival surprised him nonetheless. He was expecting her to approach from the direction of the station and to be recognizable by her uniform. Instead, she appeared suddenly beside him, dressed in her own clothes: skirt, coat and cloche hat. She had evidently gone home first.

‘Why are you out here?’ she asked at once.

‘I met your friend Spataro. He got a little … loud.’

‘Raffaele Spataro?’

‘The very same.’

‘He’s no friend of mine.’

‘That’s not what Commissioner Zamaron says.’

She frowned at him and shook her head, as if surpassingly sorry that he should believe whatever Zamaron had told him. ‘Why are you here, James?’ Her freedom with his first name was disarming in its effect.

‘I want to know why my father died.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, so do I.’ Her eyes brimmed with tears. ‘I am sorry. I loved him. His death like that … was so awful.’ She dabbed away some of her tears with a handkerchief.

‘I didn’t mean to upset you,
madame
.’

‘But you want the truth.’

‘Yes.’

‘And your brother? Madame Mesnet told me of your visit. I notice he isn’t with you. Does he want the truth?’

Max shrugged. ‘I can’t speak for him.’

‘Will you buy me a brandy, James? I feel a little …’

‘Of course. Is there somewhere else we can go? We’ll attract a lot of attention here.’

‘Yes. The Parnasse. Next door. It’s quieter.’

THE CAFÉ PARNASSE
was, as she had promised, quieter than the Dôme: fewer customers, less badinage, calmer altogether. Max watched her sip her brandy and went on watching her as he flicked his lighter for her cigarette. She was older than he by a few years. And some of those years had been hard ones, costing her much of the bloom she must once have had. She was beautiful, but no longer flawless. The cuff of her blouse beneath her check jacket was ever-so-slightly frayed. There was weariness in her looks and sadness in her eyes.

‘Call me Corinne,’ she said softly.

‘In that case, you’d better call me Max. I’m only James to my family.’

‘Max it is. The name suits you. Henry said you flew in the war.’

‘I did.’

‘Do you miss it?’

‘The war? Or the flying?’

‘Both. Or either.’

‘I haven’t flown a plane since I was shot down in April of ’seventeen. That’s nearly two years. I missed it dreadfully at first. Now … it’s not so bad.’

‘And you’ll be flying again soon, won’t you?’

‘Ah. Pa told you about that, did he?’

She did not answer. But Sir Henry had told her everything, of course. Max felt strangely certain of that. He was damned if he would embarrass himself or Corinne Dombreux by asking her to admit she and his father – her senior by at least thirty years – had
been lovers. She had said she loved him and that was enough. Nor was it hard to understand what might have attracted Sir Henry to her. She had an air of mystery and a hint of fragility likely to attract many men – including Max, come to that.

‘You speak very good English, Corinne. I’d hardly know you were French.’

‘My mother was English. And I went to school there. Both my parents wanted me to be the perfect English lady.’

‘You say that as if you disappointed them.’

‘Living here, as I do, isn’t what they had in mind for me. It’s not what I had in mind for myself.’

‘How did it come about?’

‘I married the wrong man, Max. I am the widow of the infamous Pierre Dombreux.’

‘I’ve never heard of him.’

‘I wish no one had.’

‘What did he do to earn his infamy?’

‘He betrayed his country … so they say.’

‘How?’

‘He was a diplomat, like Henry. My parents were very pleased when I married him. So was I. I loved him. I thought he loved me. He was posted to the embassy in St Petersburg. I went with him.’

‘And that’s where you met my father?’

‘Yes. There was nothing between us at first, except friendship, which flourished despite the difference in our ages. And a friendship is what it would have remained if Pierre had been faithful to me. But he was not. And he did little to hide it. Henry was a source of strength when I most needed it. He was the only friend I had in the whole of St Petersburg – Petrograd, as it was by then. When Pierre learnt of our closeness – which was entirely innocent at that point, though precious to me nonetheless – he sent me home to Paris in disgrace.

‘My parents believed every lie he told them. They disowned me. This was in the autumn of 1917, just before the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. The war was going badly. I had our apartment to live in, but no money. I found work as a seamstress. It was hard. I received a second schooling: in what the world is like for a woman
with no place in society. And there was worse to come. In March last year, when the Bolsheviks made peace with Germany, Pierre was accused of prompting them to do so by revealing secret plans the French government had supposedly approved for Japan to seize Vladivostok.

‘The first I knew of it was when the papers named him as a traitor. He had gone missing, it was reported. A few days later, I had a telegram from the embassy in Petrograd. His body had been pulled out of the Griboedov canal. He’d been shot through the head.’

‘Good God. That must have been a terrible shock for you.’

‘I’m not asking for sympathy.’ There was a flash of anger in her eyes. Her pride in herself had been dented by misfortune. But it had not been destroyed.

‘I’ll be sure not to offer any.’

Corinne frowned at him. ‘You’re a lot like your father, you know.’

‘My mother’s forever complaining of how
un
like him I am.’

‘Henry always said she misunderstood him.’

‘They’d grown apart, Corinne. You must know that.’

‘Yes. Of course. I can only speak of the Henry I knew. We wrote to each other after I left Petrograd. And he came to see me after he left himself, early last year.’ (Was that when their relationship had moved beyond the platonic? Max wondered. Or had his father waited until she was a widow?) ‘When he saw how I was living, he began sending me money, which I’m ashamed to say I accepted. I was evicted from Pierre’s apartment after his death. That’s when I moved here. I took the job at the station to try to make myself independent. I took other jobs as well.’