Last Twilight in Paris

17. Louise

17

Louise

Paris, 1953

Later that afternoon, I find myself in yet another place I never thought I would go: the police prefect.

Earlier, after looking for Ian at his apartment, I’d stepped out onto the street, uncertain where to turn next. Ian was not at work, and his apartment looked as though no one had been there at all. I was out of leads. Annoyance rose, mixing with my concern. What if something had happened to him? He could have had some kind of accident, or worse. It seemed more likely that, after we had parted badly the previous evening, he might have decided not to help me at all. I had come here to find out about the necklace, if there was a connection to Franny’s death. I would have to proceed on my own.

So I made my way to the local police prefect, situated in a small building on Rue Chauchat. It looks like any police station in Britain (or at least what I imagine—I’ve never actually been to one). There are metal desks and file cabinets, and cigarette smoke hangs in a halo below the ceiling. “I’d like to report a missing person,” I tell the very young officer behind the front desk. “He’s called Ian Shipley.”

“How long has he been missing?” The policeman takes out a notebook and pencil.

“About twelve hours, I think.”

I expect him to start writing down the information, but he does not. “That isn’t missing. That’s going out for a walk.” He seems pleased with his own joke.

“This is serious. My friend disappeared rather quickly and I’m concerned for his safety.”

He looks at me like I am a silly woman. “Maybe he simply left.” He has seen this before, a woman abandoned by a man, wanting to make it into something more.

“There’s something else,” I press. “My necklace is missing, too.”

“Did Monsieur Shipley give it to you? If so, perhaps he simply took it back.”

“No, I brought it with me from England to France. And now it’s gone.”

“Are you saying that Monsieur Shipley stole it?” The policeman is looking at me evenly now. He reaches for his pencil. “For that, we can file a report.”

“So for people, you have to wait longer than twelve hours, but for objects, you can search right away?” I ask. It is a refrain of my conversation with Madame Dupree the previous day, recalling how the Germans logged the belongings that came through Lévitan more precisely than the people to whom they belonged. The policeman does not reply. “Then, yes, I would like to file a report.” I’m not certain that Ian took the necklace intentionally, but if saying so will get the police to help find him, I’ll do it.

The policeman holds out a pack of Gauloises to me, and when I shake my head, he lights one for himself.

“Description?”

“He’s about six feet tall with brown hair.”

“No, I meant the necklace.”

“Oh.” I’d nearly forgotten for a second that the necklace is what the police are searching for, not Ian. “It’s gold and shaped like half a heart. It has the words watch and me engraved on it.”

“And the man you think took it?”

“His name is Ian Shipley,” I say again.

“He’s English as well?”

“Yes. I knew him from London. He works here in Paris now for the Foreign Office at the British Embassy. He worked for the Red Cross during the war.”

“What kind of work does he do?”

“I’m not certain.” I had not thought to ask. I realize then how very little I know about Ian and what he has been up to in the years since we had seen one another. How very little I really know about him at all.

“Did you come over to see him?”

“In a sense.” I consider explaining the locket and Franny to the policeman, then decide against it. It occurs to me then that telling the police about the locket and my errand here may not be the best idea. I am loath to trust anyone right now, and bringing up Franny’s death seems likely to only complicate matters when I need to be done here as soon as possible. If the people closest to me in the world do not understand the connection I see between the two, there is no point trying to explain it to a stranger.

“When did you see him last?” the policeman asks.

“Last night, we were at Le Petite Meridien. That’s the hotel where I am staying.”

“He was in your room?” The question seems too prying, irrelevant to the investigation.

“Yes.” The policeman raises an eyebrow. “And in the lobby and we took a walk,” I add hurriedly. “Why does that matter?”

“I’m only trying to understand your relationship so we can figure out where he might have taken the necklace. Was it in your room?”

“No. That is, yes.” I take a breath, trying to figure out the best way to explain it all. “I was carrying the necklace and I showed it to him. I thought he set it on the nightstand. Only, when I looked for it this morning, it was gone.” And so was Ian , I think.

“So you gave it to him?”

“No, I showed it to him.” My frustration rises. I am getting nowhere here. I pull out the business card Ian gave me and pass it to the police officer. “This is his home address.” He copies down the information.

“We will look into it. You are staying at the Meridien?”

“Yes.” I stand to leave.

“There’s one other thing, madam,” the officer says. “You ought to check if he has an address in London, if you have not already. Most often in times like this, missing people have simply gone home.”

“Thank you.” I take back the card and leave the police station quickly, eager to be out in the fresh air once more.

In the distance, cathedral bells toll six. The film, I remember suddenly. The man at the camera shop said to pick it up after four. Surely the shop is closed now.

I start back in the direction of the hotel, feeling my way through the unfamiliar streets. My mind races. Ian has disappeared without a trace—and he has taken the necklace with him. Why had Ian come to Paris in the first place? Maybe his motives were altogether different than I realized.

Ian is gone, I think as I reach the hotel. And so is the necklace. I will never really know the truth about what happened to Franny. I should pack up now and go back to England, resume my life. Upstairs in my room, I sink onto the bed. “I never should have come,” I say aloud. What was I thinking coming here? I am a mum who should be with my family. Not in an other country, trying to solve the mystery of someone’s death. It is time, I decide, to go home.

I go back downstairs to the front desk of the hotel. “I need help booking passage to London,” I say to the clerk.

“Let me check with our travel bureau.” He goes to the office behind the desk and picks up a phone, and I can see him talking in a low voice, but I cannot make out what he is saying. A few minutes later, he returns to me. “The next ferry is tomorrow at three from Calais. I can book you on a train at ten in the morning from Gare du Nord.”

“That will be fine, thank you.” I hate the idea of spending another night away from Joe and the kids, but there is no other choice. At least this will give me time to try to pick up the developed image from the film I left at the camera shop.

I hand him the money to pay for my trip and then walk to the bistro and order a sandwich for takeaway. When my food is ready, I take it back to the room and lock the door. I eat, then pack the few things I had brought. I imagine the children, waking up to another morning without Mummy. With any luck, I can be there tomorrow for bedtime.

I do not change into my nightclothes but sit atop the still-made bed, fully dressed with the lights on, too nervous to sleep. To pass the time, I think of my family. I brace myself to go home and make things right with Joe, planning how I will apologize for leaving and explain everything that happened. I pray that he will forgive me, that it isn’t too late. I am prepared to put the past behind me and live my life. I only hope it will still be there waiting for me now that I am ready to take it.

Despite my nervousness, my eyes grow heavy, and I doze off as the hour grows late. Sometime later, I awake with a start. I do not know how much time has passed. The lights are still on in the room. But through a crack in the window curtains, I can see the faintest pink, the gray sky lightening above the rooftops. It is morning, or almost. Time to go home.

As I stand, I hear footsteps in the hallway, drawing nearer. I imagine that it is Ian and his disappearance was a terrible dream. I expect to see him holding the necklace and talking about our next steps in finding its owner. I start for the door, then stop myself again, calming my expectations. More likely it is another guest, walking to their room. Or housekeeping, though it seems too early for that.

The footsteps stop outside my door. But the person on the other side does not knock. Instead, they turn the knob. Whoever is trying to get in has a key. I search frantically for a weapon but find nothing except a parasol. Desperately, I pick it up and raise it above my head, prepared to strike whoever stands on the other side of the door. It won’t be enough to do any real harm, but maybe it will stun the intruder for a few seconds so that I can flee. This is no longer just about the locket and the fate of the person who had owned it. There is a larger truth from the past that it held and someone who will stop at nothing to keep me from finding it.

I stand motionless, on edge, and prepared to strike.

Germany, 1944

I barely slept that first full night after Franny died. When dawn finally came, I awoke and dressed. Outside, the accident scene had been cleared. It was as if it had never happened.

Except that it had happened. Franny was dead. One minute, Franny had been vivacious and alive on the stage and the next minute gone. To have someone as young and beautiful as Franny, who had always seemed so invincible and larger than life, snatched in an instant felt stunning and wrong.

I went to see Ian in his railcar once more. In the doorway, I stopped. Images of the previous night flashed before my eyes and I was suddenly too warm. I pushed the thoughts away.

“Where is she?” My question sounded as though Franny might be alive and walking around the camp somewhere. I could not bear to think of her lying cold and alone in a hospital or morgue.

“She’s been transported home.” I was stunned. The war had made everything so much slower and I had not imagined it would be possible to send Franny’s body home overnight. A new wave of grief washed over me. Although I had known she was gone the moment I saw her lying on the ground, the fact that she was no longer physically here made the loss all the more real.

“Will we be having a memorial service?”

“I don’t think so. This is a German POW camp, Lou.”

“So it’s as if she was never here at all.”

“This is complicated. You know that.” I saw then that Ian’s eyes were red-rimmed, his face haggard with grief.

“But we are going to find out what happened to her, aren’t we?” I pressed.

“She was hit by a car.”

“That doesn’t seem very likely, does it? I mean, the area is practically deserted and there are so few vehicles out here at all, especially at night. Plus, what was she even doing out at that hour?”

“There’s a rumor she was meeting a man.” I thought maybe he meant the prisoner she had been talking to earlier through the barbed wire. “Like an affair,” he added.

“No,” I said, thinking of that night when Franny had confessed to me that she was a homosexual.

“Why not?” Ian pressed. “Can you really say you knew her all that well?”

“I can.” In truth, Franny and I had only been friends for a short while. I did not know much about her background, other than what she had shared. But I knew this much to be true: Franny had not gone out to meet a man. “That doesn’t make sense. You see, Franny didn’t like men.”

I could see him processing the idea, trying to understand. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, she was walking and was hit by a car. End of story.”

It could be, I reasoned. It was dark and the roads were terrible. I had warned her as much myself. Even as I thought this, I knew it wasn’t true. Something else had happened. It was not the end of the story for me.

“Hardly. There were no bruises or broken bones,” I persisted. “How do you account for that?”

“I don’t know!” he burst out, exasperated. “Can you please stop?” He reached out to touch my arm, but I stepped back, any warmth that I’d felt between us the previous night gone in the harsh light of day. His expression hardened. “Louise, we’re in an odd position here. Best if we ask these questions when we are all back home. There will be an investigation and an autopsy, I’m sure.”

I knew then that it would never happen. “We need to know now, while we were still here on the ground,” I insist. Here, the evidence was fresh and any possible witnesses within reach.

“We’re in Germany, enemy territory, for Christ’s sake! We can’t afford missteps. You need to leave this alone. I understand that you are sad, and I am, too, but there are much larger stakes at play here.” Before I could ask what those were, he walked off.

I walked aimlessly for much of the day. I could not bear to stay in the quarters that Franny and I had shared. But I also did not want to go inside the camp. As my grief set into place and my initial panic subsided, the questions and the pieces that did not make sense loomed larger than ever. I thought back to the days right before she had died, the sense of purpose. I had to find out why.

Ian was not going to help me, though. I started out to find the prisoner I’d seen her speaking with the night before she died, the cellist who had given her the necklace. But to go see him, I would have to go into the camp. My stomach churned. En tering the camp, even just for Franny’s concert, had been terrifying. To return there alone now, without a legitimate reason, was unthinkable. It was my only hope, though, if I wanted to find out more about what happened to Franny.

I went to the truck parked just outside the camp fence where the remaining packages were stored and took two. Then I walked to the gate of the camp. The guard, holding the leash of a fierce-looking Alsatian, eyed me warily.

“I’m with the Red Cross delegation and I’ve brought a package from Ian Shipley for one of the musicians, a cellist,” I said. I prayed he would not ask me the name of the cellist or notice that I carried two packages. The Alsatian growled.

“The musicians rehearse in barracks nine,” he said, stepping back to let me pass.

“I know where that is,” I said, hoping he would not insist on escorting me. He pointed in the direction of the practice hall, where I had previously accompanied Franny.

I kept my head low as I walked down the main road of the camp, partly to avoid drawing attention and also not wanting to see the horrific conditions around me. Then I remembered what Franny had said about bearing witness, and I forced myself to look up. The camp was almost deserted, the prisoners already at their daily jobs. Inside one of the barracks, I could see a man lying on the bottom pallet of a hard wooden bunk bed, too sick or weak to go to his job. Impulsively, I walked to the doorway of the barracks. “Here,” I said, handing him a care package. “It isn’t much and I’m sorry it is not more. But I hope it helps a bit.” Though he did not speak, his eyes widened with surprise and he gave a small nod of gratitude.

I continued on to the barracks where Franny had practiced with the musicians. Inside stood a man I recognized as one of the other musicians. “Pardon me…”

“Yes?” He looked apprehensive, but then he seemed to recognize me. “I’m sorry about your friend,” he offered.

“Thank you,” I said. I couldn’t believe how quickly the news about Franny had spread throughout the camp. “I’m hoping you might be able to help me. There was a cellist who played with Franny. I’d like to speak with him.” I noticed a cello leaning against the wall in the far corner.

“I’m afraid that’s impossible. He’s gone,” the man said, all but confirming my fear. “He was transferred out of here yesterday morning before dawn.”

Just hours after Franny’s death , I thought, a chill running through me. “Transferred?”

“Deported, really.” I questioned if his involvement with Franny had resulted in being sent east as a punishment. “To another camp, closer to the French border.”

“But why?”

“With our star performer gone, they claimed there was no need for a cellist. At least that’s what they said.”

“Were others transferred as well?”

The man shook his head. “Just him. And it was quick. Usually, you know a few days in advance. But he said nothing about it last night and today he was gone.”

He was transferred so suddenly, I felt certain it had to do with Franny’s death.

Just then I saw a guard eyeing me suspiciously through the window. “I should go,” I said. I did not want to cause trouble for this man. I handed him the care package I carried.

“Thank you.” He took the package from me and I started to go. “Wait, there is one other thing.” I turned back. “Did he give your friend a necklace?”

“Yes,” I said, surprised that he knew. “To deliver to his wife in Paris. Why?”

He ignored my question. “Do you know what became of it?”

“I can check among her belongings,” I replied, “but she may have been carrying it when she died.”

An urgent expression crossed the man’s face. “Please check and let me know. If it isn’t there, I can bribe one of the guards to check her personal effects.”

I started to ask him why the necklace mattered, why he would go to such trouble for a sentimental piece. But before I could speak, I noticed a guard striding purposefully toward the barracks, as though realizing I did not belong there. “I have to go.”

“That way,” the man said, pointing toward a door at the back of the barracks. I raced out. As I reached the front gate to the camp, I realized that I still did not know the cellist’s name. I had not asked and his friend had not offered it—perhaps a reflex of a prisoner to protect another. I wanted to go back and ask, but it was too late.

Once out of the camp, I rushed to the railcar where Franny and I had stayed. I wondered if they had taken her things. But all of her belongings were there just as she had left them, from the open makeup to a dress strewn across her bed. As if she might walk in at any second. Choking back a sob, I went to her bag and opened it. Once, it had felt like a violation of her privacy, but not anymore. I looked inside.

The necklace was gone.