Paris - And My Love Page 11

  “Because,” Marianne said slowly, “you have something very odd in your handbag, Marcelle. You have Madame Florian’s missing brooch.”

  “I have? Oh, no! That’s impossible!” The other girl’s horror was so patent that there was no doubting its reality. “In my handbag Madame Florian’s brooch? Let me see.”

  She leaned forward, dropping two of her more awkwardly shaped parcels as she did so, and gazed into the bag. Then, at the sight of the sinister glitter, she gave a gasp and burst into tears.

  “I know nothing about it,” she exclaimed rapidly. “It has nothing to do with me. They will say that I stole it, but this is not true. I never stole anything in my life and I wouldn’t dare to start with Madame Florian’s brooch. But they will not believe me. They will say I am a thief and they will send me to prison and maman will die of shame.”

  “Nonsense,” declared Marianne, who privately thought maman was much too tough for that. “No one’s going to call you a thief while I’m around. Stop crying, Marcelle. We’re going to need all our wits for this.” And stooping down, she picked up the two dropped parcels.

  “But what shall I do?” The actual sobs had ceased, but the frightened tears still trickled down Marcelle’s cheeks.

  “I’ll think of something,” promised Marianne, spurred to some form of reassurance by Marcelle’s piteous appearance. “Can I come in with you, or is it too late?”

  “No, no. It’s not too late. But we must not tell maman,” Marcelle explained quickly.

  “Won’t she be asleep in bed, anyway?” asked Marianne, who felt she had never liked the sound of maman less.

  “In bed, but not asleep,” Marcelle said knowledgeably.

  “Oh, I see. Well—” Marianne glanced over her shoulder “—I’d better go and pay the taxi driver.” By the time she returned, the door stood open and Marcelle already had a dim light on in the tiny entrance hall of the apartment.

  “Marcelle...” called a fretful voice from one of the three rooms that led off the small hall.

  “Oui, maman—je viens, je viens.” Hastily Marcelle gestured to Marianne to go into one of the other rooms. Then, quickly removing the traces of tears from her face, she went into her mother’s room.

  Marianne, meanwhile, entered the small, shabby, but attractive sitting room—obviously the room of people who had very little money, but a room where someone had made the very best of things, with some taste and much care.

  Poor little soul, thought Marianne compassionately. She hasn’t much of a life. I must see she doesn’t suffer over this wretched business. But oh, dear—I hope she won’t be long!

  She sat down, stifled an involuntary yawn, and waited with what patience she could until Marcelle should have pacified maman. It seemed to her that the small ornate clock on the mantelpiece was ticking away almost all that was left of her precious sleeping hours, and she found herself wondering dazedly if she was ever going to get to bed that night—or rather, that morning.

  At last, however, Marcelle came in, still wearing the false smile of reassurance assumed for maman’s benefit, like a mask that she had forgotten to take off. Then she closed the door and dropped into a chair near Marianne, her pale young face suddenly drawn and scared again.

  “I explained to maman that you were my colleague and that you had had nothing to eat or drink all the evening because we were so busy. I said you had just come in for a biscuit and a glass of wine and that we should not be more than ten minutes, so at least we have a little while to talk. Will you have a glass of wine, Marianne?” She half rose from her chair in a weary but willing way that went to Marianne’s heart.

  “No, no, dear. Sit still. Let’s use our time for discussing this extraordinary business.”

  Marcelle made a helpless little gesture with her hands. “I don’t understand it at all.” Again there was that dangerous quiver in her voice. “I don’t understand how it could have happened, and I don’t understand what on earth I am to do.”

  “Well, let’s take things in their proper order.” Marianne spoke with a firmness that was steadying in itself. “First, how could it possibly have happened? Only by accident or because someone deliberately put it there.”

  “Someone—not me, you mean?” Marcelle said timidly.

  “Of course. I know you didn’t put it there,” Marianne declared in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “D-do you?” Marcelle’s pale face brightened a little “How do you know?”

  “First because I know you’re honest. Second because I know you haven’t the nerve to carry through a bold theft. And thirdly because, if you’d really taken the brooch, you would never have asked me to look for your key in your handbag. You couldn’t have forgotten the brooch was there, if you’d taken it. It would be the thing you would be aware of above everything else. If you’d stolen the brooch and had it laying in the bottom of your handbag, you’d have dropped every one of your parcels rather than let me get my hands on the bag.”

  “Well—yes. I suppose you’re right.” A faint look of relief began to dawn on the other girl’s face.

  “That means that it must have got there accidentally, or by someone else’s intention. Could it possibly have got there by accident?”

  “How?” inquired Marcelle stupidly, and Marianne saw that, in spite of everything, she was nearly dead with sleep.

  “Well—I don’t know. Was the bag open at any time? Was it anywhere near the stand? Could the brooch, by any stretch of possibility, have fallen into it?”

  “No, of course not,” said Marcelle quite simply. “My bag was behind the stall, just as yours was. The brooch was in the very front of the stand.”

  “True. I didn’t think it could have been an accident anyway, of course. I just wanted to—to eliminate the idea entirely,” Marianne admitted. “Then there’s only one other explanation, Marcelle. Someone took the brooch deliberately and just as deliberately put it in your handbag.”

  “But why should they?” Marcelle looked utterly bewildered. “If they wished to steal Madame Florian’s brooch, why not take it away with them at once? Why give it to me?”

  Marianne looked at her curiously.

  “Does anyone dislike you very much, Marcelle?”

  The other girl shook her head slowly.

  “Why should they?” she said again. “I do not quarrel with people, and I have nothing that anyone could envy.”

  All too true, thought Marianne compassionately. “Then—was it something to do with the bag itself?” She gazed thoughtfully at the offending bag as it stood upon the table, but there seemed nothing remarkable about it.

  “It’s quite like hundreds of other bags,” Marcelle pointed out. “Intrinsically good, because it came originally from the boutique. But—black, medium-sized, inconspicuous. Rather like the one that you yourself have.” She gestured vaguely toward Marianne’s own handbag, and Marianne’s gaze automatically followed hers.

  At the same moment a curious, premonitory little chill slid down her spine.

  “Marcelle ... Marcelle...” called the plaintive voice from the next room, and Marcelle nervously jumped to her feet and hurried from the room.

  Left alone, Marianne stared in a sort of fascination from one handbag to the other. They were not by any means identical, but they were superficially alike. Quite sufficiently alike for anyone in a hurry to mistake one for the other.

  “It wasn’t meant for Marcelle at all,” she said in a whisper. “It was meant for me. And it was put there by someone who hated me enough to want to do me real harm. What was it Marcelle said? That she doesn’t quarrel with people and she has nothing anyone could envy. That does apply to her, but—it isn’t quite true of me.

  In spite of her efforts to be just and objective, a very clear picture of Lisette, smiling secretly, rose before her.

  It’s absurd, Marianne tried to tell herself. I’m becoming obsessed with the thought of her. But she hates me, and I suppose she may well envy me my friendship and reconciliation with Nat
. Though, of course, the reconciliation came after the theft—or did she know that Nat and I were going to make up?

  As clearly as her weary brain would permit, Marianne reviewed the events of the evening again, and suddenly her hand went to her lips in a sort of dismayed gesture of realization.

  Why, of course! She had been talking eagerly to Nat at the very moment when the brooch must have been removed. If they had not indulged in a lengthy reconciliation, at least it must have been obvious that they were exchanging rapid, eager explanations about something.

  It couldn’t be ... Marianne thought. And yet, what else?

  At that moment Marcelle came back into the room.

  “Maman says our voices disturb her,” she explained in an apologetic whisper, though Marianne felt sure that their voices could not have reached maman though the closed door. “I am sorry, Marianne, but in a few minutes you must go. Maman’s nerves are so bad, you know, and the slightest thing upsets her.”

  “Yes, of course.” Marianne rose automatically to her feet.

  “But still we have discovered nothing about the brooch,” Marcelle said despairingly.

  “Yes, we have.” Instinctively, Marianne too had now dropped her voice to a whisper, in deference to maman’s nerves. “I’ve been thinking. That wasn’t meant for your bag at all, Marcelle. It was meant for mine. Someone—whoever did it—mistook your bag for mine.”

  “You mean—” Marcelle’s expression turned to one of incredulous hope and relief “—that the brooch should be in your bag and not in mine at all?”

  “Well, yes. I suppose one might say that,” agreed Marianne, who had not seen the situation in quite such compromising terms.

  “But then—in that case—” Marcelle reached for the offending handbag and actually began to scrabble about among its contents for the fatal brooch “—in that case—” she produced the brooch, which lay glinting and winking provocatively in the palm of her outstretched hand “—will you—will you perhaps take it?”

  “I—hadn’t thought of doing that.” Marianne looked taken aback.

  “What had you thought of doing, then?” Marcelle watched her anxiously.

  “I don’t know,” Marianne confessed. “It was only that I thought—I felt almost sure—that Lisette put the brooch into what she believed to be my handbag, so as to get me into trouble.”

  “Lisette?” In spite of maman, nursing her nerves in the next room, Marcelle allowed her voice to rise to an astonished squeak. “You think Lisette stole the brooch?”

  “Well, she hates me. She—she has designs on someone who—who means a lot to me,” Marianne explained rapidly. “I think, on the spur of the moment, she whisked the brooch away and slipped it, as she believed, into my handbag.”

  “But she knew you would find it when you got home.”

  “I think perhaps she hoped there would be a scene as soon as its loss was discovered, and that perhaps the police would be called and I would be branded as a thief right away.”

  “I would have been, you mean!” Marcelle went pale at the very thought.

  “Well, yes, as it turned out, you would have been suspected,” Marianne admitted. “But thanks to Madame Florian’s angelic behavior, the whole thing was glossed over for the time being.”

  “I said Madame Florian was an angel,” exclaimed Marcelle fervently. “She saved me from prison and maman from disgrace.”

  “At least she saved you from a nasty ten minutes of explanation,” agreed Marianne, who stopped short of Marcelle’s flights of fancy. “But we’re left with the brooch. And the explanations,” she added thoughtfully.

  “To whom shall we explain?” quavered Marcelle doubtfully. “Not to the police?”

  “No, no, of course not. They don’t enter into it.”

  “To Monsieur Florian?” Marcelle looked nearly as frightened at this prospect as at the thought of the police.

  “I, suppose so, yes.” Marianne, too, found herself quailing a little at the thought of trying to tell their fantastic story to Monsieur Florian. Particularly if he should turn that icy, speculative glance upon one. Until that evening she had not been really frightened of him. But she shivered slightly, even now, as she thought of the way he had looked when he said quietly, “Tell me what happened, mademoiselle.”

  “You, too, are frightened,” Marcelle said quickly. “You would not stand by me. You could not look Monsieur Florian in the face and expect him to believe that someone else stole the brooch and put it into my bag, thinking it was your bag. The story is too silly. Too—too improbable. And Monsieur Florian does not believe the improbable. He tears it to pieces and says in that cold voice of his, ‘That is a lie.’ ”

  And to Marianne’s intense dismay, Marcelle started to cry again.

  “Oh, Marcelle, please...” She would have been cross if she had not realized that the other girl’s nerves were worn to a thread by the miserable life she lived with her selfish, demanding mother. “Please, dear, don’t cry. It won’t help a bit. And of course I’ll stand by you. In fact—all right, you’d better give me the brooch, if the very look of it makes you panic.”

  “You—you mean it?” Timidly, incredulously, Marcelle held out the lovely, dangerous thing once more, and with a sense of misgiving that she sternly repressed, Marianne took it and put it in her own handbag.

  “Oh, Marianne, you are so good and kind. And so strong,” Marcelle said enviously. “You are brave and you do not cry, and you carry any troubles so lightly. But then, of course, you have only yourself to think about. You have no maman to consider.”

  “Well—” for a moment, and with intense nostalgia, Marianne thought of her dear, commonsense, reliable parent, home in England “—I have a maman, but she doesn’t come into the—the same category as yours, I guess. Perhaps it makes a difference.”

  “Oh, it does!” declared Marcelle fervently. “But what are you now going to do, Marianne. T-tell Monsieur Florian?”

  “No,” said Marianne, on a sudden note of inspiration. “I shall tell Madame Florian. By telephone, tomorrow morning. Or rather, later this morning.”

  “Madame Florian? Marianne—” the other girl gazed at her admiringly “—it is an idea of genius!”

  “Well, at least she will listen more patiently, and understand more easily, than Monsieur Florian,” Marianne said. “I will tell her exactly what has happened, and ask if she would like me to bring the brooch to her house, or whether she herself will fetch it from the boutique. And I will explain that I would find it a little difficult to tell our story to Monsieur Florian—and I think she will understand.”

  “Of course she will understand! If she has lived with him for nearly five years, she cannot fail to understand,” declared Marcelle cryptically. “And then she can explain to Monsieur Florian for us.”

  “Y-yes.” Marianne hoped it was all going to work out as simply as it sounded at the moment. But, at any rate, Marcelle now looked as though she might manage to sleep for the few hours remaining to them.

  She accompanied Marianne to the door, repeating her thanks in an emotional whisper. And Marianne, still terribly aware of her own happy, independent lot compared to that of the other girl, actually dropped a light kiss on Marcelle’s cheek before she went out into the chilly Paris dawn.

  Fortunately, it was a very short walk to her own place. So short that she thought sleepily, I must manage to see something of Marcelle. It shouldn’t be difficult, and the poor little thing certainly needs friends. I didn’t realize she was so near.

  The last effort of climbing the stairs to her attic seemed almost unbearable, and once she stumbled and hoped guiltily that she had not disturbed anyone. But at last she was safely in her own room, and nothing else mattered but the delicious thought of sinking into bed. Not the thought of Lisette. Not the presence of Madame Florian’s brooch in her bag. Not even the reconciliation with Nat.

  All that she wanted was sleep—sleep—sleep. And, as her eyes finally closed, she was aware of a vague tha
nkfulness that she did not have to listen for a querulous voice summoning her from the next room.

  She was, however, still subject to the tyranny of her alarm clock. And a few hours later it roused her ruthlessly from a lovely dream in which she was drifting lazily along a sunlit river in a punt, while someone—she was not quite sure if it was Nat or Roger Senloe—wielded the pole with impressive skill.

  “Oh, be quiet!” she admonished her shrill little clock, and groped sleepily for it, to stop its insistent clamor. However, she only succeeded in pushing it onto the floor, where it continued to ring with undiminished vigor, and so she really had to rouse herself and realize it was another day.

  Marianne was still less than half-awake, and she was almost dressed before she fully recalled the events of the previous evening. Half doubting her own senses, she looked into her handbag, to make quite sure she had not dreamed it all. For the scene in Marcelle’s apartment now seemed nearly as dim and fantastic as the scene in the punt.

  But the almost inimical sparkle of the unlucky brooch left her no room for wishful doubting. And soberly completing her dressing, she sat down to drink the hot coffee and eat the rolls that were brought to her room every morning.

  In the full light of day, her suggestion about telephoning Gabrielle Florian seemed rather less of an inspiration and more of an imposition. The obvious course was to go to her employer with her story.

  But—perhaps because of the short night and the series of shocks during the last few hours—she seemed to have very little to the strength and courage that Marcelle had confidently attributed to her. The idea of facing Florian himself was, at the moment, quite simply beyond her.

  I don’t know really why I took on the whole unpleasant business of explaining. The wretched thing was in Marcelle’s bag, after all, she thought crossly.