CHAPTER 10
THE TIMES OFFICE, PARIS
‘James! In my office now,’ George bellowed into the newsroom from the doorway to his office.
The other journalists stopped typing and looked from George to Charlie in her tiny cubicle and back again, some shaking their heads, others muttering under their breath. She knew what her colleagues were saying: Charlie James. Le kangourou. Teacher’s pet.
Charlie swallowed, stood up and tried to block out the resentful glares. Her rapport with her editor, George, had mellowed in the months since she’d first moved to Paris, when he’d expected the new Australian reporter, Charlie James, who came with excellent references, to be a man.
To his chagrin, it was a female reporter who stepped off the Night Ferry train from London.
She’d acquitted herself well on the front line of news—even to the point of putting her life on the line to chase a story.
This had earned Charlie grudging respect from her editor.
However, there had been no such softening from the rest of her colleagues in the newsroom.
To them, now that case was over, Charlie James should know her place and go back to covering musical theatre and writing about stockings and lipsticks for the women’s pages of The Times.
Charlie was determined that her by-line was never going to appear on those vacuous pages again. From now on, it was only to be news and features.
Violet swivelled in her seat, grimacing in sympathy as Charlie strode towards George’s office.
‘Today, James.’ George rolled his eyes and stepped back for Charlie to enter, before swinging the door shut behind him and taking a seat behind his mahogany desk. ‘Sit, take notes.’
Charlie plonked into the chair and opened her notebook.
‘So. We have a situation in Tours. A stiff.’
Charlie shuddered. She’d never get used to how callous some newsmen could be when laying out the facts.
‘Tours?’ Charlie couldn’t help expressing her surprise.
The area was known for being the darling of the Loire Valley.
A place brimming with ostentatious chateaux, vineyards covering every hill; a river valley dotted with restaurants, and paths carved into the landscape for hikers, wine enthusiasts and tourists.
Still, she knew better than anyone that dark things could happen in the most heavenly settings.
‘Accident, sir? Natural causes?’ She balled her fists, internally chiding herself—she knew George hated being called sir.
George shook his head. ‘My contact at the Metro Police just called it in.’
Charlie tried to hide her disappointment.
Last week she’d had lunch and shared notes with her own contact, Inspecteur Bernard, seeking closure on the Maisy Bell case.
Or rather, seeking answers, but Bernard had closed the case.
There were no serious leads from the reward offered in the newspaper.
Clementine and Mason Bell were already making plans to sail home.
This troubled Charlie. Everyone had given up on Maisy Bell.
Everyone except Charlie James.
Perhaps Bernard was right and Charlie had started to take the case too personally.
Like Maisy, Charlie was a young foreign woman far from home, seeking adventure.
It seemed unfathomable that just three weeks ago, this young American woman had had dreams and aspirations of her own.
Now those dreams had been replaced with a void.
Maisy Bell’s story would remain unwritten and it saddened Charlie in ways she couldn’t quite put words to.
She’d thought that, over lunch at Chez Georges, Inspecteur Bernard had understood her attachment to this case.
Then again, Charlie’s persistence and attachment to the last story had helped to resolve the case, but at great personal cost. Perhaps she’d mistaken the inspecteur’s professional concern for something more.
She tried not to think of the weight of his hand on her own, the brush of his thumb against her skin.
Just as the inspecteur had pointed out at lunch, crime did not halt with one story. Here she was on a new day with a new story. Such was life on a newspaper.
George gave Charlie the facts and she wiggled her toes as she took notes, syphoning all thoughts of Bernard from her head as she tried to concentrate and catch the details from her editor much like a seagull waits for scraps at a beach.
‘Stiff was a chauffeur.’
‘Male?’
George gave her a withering look. ‘Yes,’ he hissed.
‘No name released—well, not to me, anyway. I guess they haven’t located the family yet.
See what you can do there.’ He gave her a pointed look over the top of his glasses.
‘They found a bullet in the base of his neck, so not a natural death. Body discovered by a pair of trail walkers in a forest just south of Tours. Another reason not to go bloody tramping through the countryside for pleasure, James.’ He shook his head as he hitched his belt up around his portly belly.
‘My wife tried to arrange a group of us to walk in the Cotswolds for three days, staying in some fancy hotel every night. I told her I’d skip the walking part but do the hotels—you can imagine how my better half took that. ’
‘Did you go?’ asked Charlie, confused at this sliver of a genial personal life from her boss. She couldn’t picture him out of a three-piece suit, tie and braces, let alone relaxing in the countryside or a quaint little bar, drinking whisky and eating Scotch eggs and mustard with friends.
‘Of course I went, James. My good wife runs holidays like a military operation. Earned my single malt, I promise you.’
Charlie studied her boss and tried to imagine someone in feminine form even more gruff and imposing than him.
Bewilderment must have been written all over her face, as George scratched his temple and said, ‘Enough of this chin-wagging. I want you to take yourself off to Tours to see what you can find. Better to go to the scene. Should be a couple of days, so go home and pack a bag before you take the train. Get Violet to give you enough to cover expenses. And James …’
‘Yes, George?’
He paused and took a deep breath, as though inwardly debating whether to say something. In the end, he said softly, ‘Take care out there.’
‘Will do.’ She nodded briskly as she closed her notebook, stood and left the room.
When the office door clicked closed, Charlie made straight for Violet’s desk.
As she approached, the scent of fresh-cut roses mingled with the new Schiaparelli perfume.
On Violet’s desk were neat piles of letters and expenses sheets she was completing for George.
Underneath those were colourful sketches of dresses that seemed to dance across the thick art paper.
‘Aleksandr could be an artist,’ said Charlie, admiring the line of a woman’s neck, the way the long emerald dinner dress seemed to shimmy over the woman’s waist and twirl about her feet.
‘He is an artist,’ corrected Violet.
‘Touché. I’ll be the first to say this place will fall apart without you, Violet. But when are you going to hand in your resignation and work with Aleksandr full time?’
‘My parents still don’t know about Aleksandr,’ she said mournfully. ‘I’ve told you a million times, they’d never approve.’
‘Of Aleksandr the lover or Aleksandr the finest young designer in Paris?’
‘Shh! Both.’ Violet giggled as she glanced over her shoulder. She wore a midnight-blue silk shirt and matching pencil skirt and her hair was pulled back into a high ponytail with a matching blue silk bow.
‘I don’t think it’s a secret.’ Charlie fingered the blood-red roses sitting in a vase on Violet’s desk. ‘Fresh roses, daises, peonies every week. You have a distinct glow about you—being in love suits you.’
‘Shh, you’re terrible, Charlie James. Who said anything about love?’ Violet swung her ponytail and batted her eyelashes. ‘Now help me. I have these new sketches from Aleksandr.’ She pointed to the drawings of long dresses, draped at the waist, with deep V-necks.
‘They look almost comfortable,’ Charlie joked.
‘Trust me, Aleksandr has put a wrap tie and a secret hook and eye inside all these and they’ll make every woman feel amazing.
Look at these samples.’ She pulled out a swatch of emerald silk, another of midnight blue and another of cinnamon.
‘Feel them. It’s not just about the colour, it’s about the way the silk moves across your body, like water. ’
‘I’ll take your word for it. I adore the blues. Like what you’re wearing.’
‘You always like the blue.’ Violet tilted her head and nodded towards George’s door. ‘What was that all about, anyway?’
‘There’s been a body found in a forest near Tours.’
‘Sad.’ Violet frowned. ‘Lost hiker?’
‘Looks like a chauffeur with a bullet hole in the back of his neck.’
‘Ew.’ She wrinkled her nose before she paused. ‘Did you say near Tours?’
‘Oui!’
‘Do you have to go there to cover it?’
‘Oui.’
Violet raised a finger in the air. ‘I have an idea,’ she said as she tugged some sketches of sundresses from the bottom of the pile.
The dresses showed lace at the bust and the hem.
‘I hear there are some great brocantes in Tours. We’ve been trying to get there to shop the antiques for weeks but there is so much on … ’
‘Maybe just having one job would help with that.’
Violet shot her an exasperated look. ‘I need to go speak with the market holders. I’ve tried reaching out to suppliers, but they don’t trust me because I’m British.’
‘Couldn’t you use one of your other seven and a half accents?’
Another withering look, but Charlie understood what her friend was implying. That was the thing about Paris, city of reinvention: it welcomed all, but was also very suspicious of anyone not French. It was a weird duplicity.
‘So, Tours.’ Charlie glanced at George’s office door, which remained firmly closed. ‘What’s your play? Are you going to come and help me? Maybe I need a translator?’
‘For a dead body?’ Violet burst out laughing. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, I’m certainly not laughing at the loss of a life …’
‘No, for the police.’
Violet looked confused. ‘The police speak French. You speak excellent French.’
‘Then how are you planning to get leave from your post here to come to Tours?’
‘George will let me go. I’ve been doing a lot of overtime and been to many evenings as his translator. I even went to Germany last week to translate his interview with that vile man, Chancellor Hitler. He gives me the creeps.’ She shivered. ‘A murder is a big story …’
The way Violet’s voice trailed off left no doubt that she was worried about the way Charlie’s last murder story had panned out. Charlie rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t need a babysitter! But I’d love your company.’
‘Just wait there.’ Violet held a finger out to Charlie as she jumped out of her seat and ran to George’s office, entering after just one knock.
Two minutes later, she emerged, failing to suppress a smile.
She swept down to retrieve a brown paper bag from the locked drawer of her desk.
She slid the brown bag and Aleksandr’s sketches into her huge Hermès bag and grabbed her scarf and hat from the stand beside her desk, before twisting the silk about her neck. ‘We, Miss James, are off to Tours.’
‘What’s in the paper bag?’ asked Charlie, confused.
‘Money for all our expenses. Trains. Hotels. Meals.’
‘You have parcels of money ready to go like that?’
‘Of course. A girl has to be ready at a moment’s notice in this town. Surely you’re beginning to realise that, my dear friend?’