“He lives in the eighteenth arrondissement, which isn’t very nice,” Gigi explained. “Of course, with Andrew here you are quite safe. He’s so big and strong, oui?”
I did my best to smile and nod nonchalantly as if I hadn’t had the same thought a dozen times a day since I’d met Andrew Bowdoin.
“I must get back to the office. Give me a ring if you need anything else, Andrew. I’m always happy to help.”
Gigi winked at Drew then gave a more formal goodbye to me before leaving, heads turning as she and her legs walked across the floor to the door. Drew was more interested in the papers inside the folder than looking at Gigi, making me like him even more.
“There’s a lot of interesting stuff in here.” He closed the folder. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“To see Pierre Villon.” He started walking toward the door.
“But he’ll be at work, won’t he? Shouldn’t we make some sort of an appointment?”
“Hardly,” he said, allowing me to exit in front of him. “He doesn’t have a job. Apparently the French have long memories and don’t feel inclined to employ a man who spent ten years in prison for war crimes.”
“War crimes?”
“I suspected as much when Mr. Doonox mentioned that the Villons lived in an apartment that was way above Pierre’s pay grade. During the war, the only people who lived well were the Nazis, and those who worked with them.”
“And how would you know about him being in prison?” I asked, hurrying after him in my new chunky heels.
He held up the folder Gigi had given him. “Gigi is a miracle worker when it comes to giving me what I need.”
“How nice.” He gave me an odd look, forcing me to unclench my jaw.
We walked past the line of taxis. “How are we going to get there?”
“Metro. Have you taken it yet? It’s really convenient and the nearest stop, the Tuileries, is a quick walk. It might take a while as we have to change trains a couple of times. I hope you don’t mind, but it’s probably best not to take a car.”
I tried not to appear too excited about traveling across the city with Drew at my side. Barring my recent travel to Paris, it was probably one of the most exciting excursions I’d had since taking the trip to Cambridge to bring Robin home. “I don’t mind,” I said, keeping my voice neutral.
We sat side by side on the jostling train, our arms bumping against each other at regular intervals. He appeared not to notice, but I felt an odd jolt each time. I noticed a young man sitting opposite openly staring at me, and I shifted in my seat, glad I’d thought to drape my jumper over my lap for modesty’s sake.
When we eventually emerged up the steps from the underground tunnels onto Paris’s Right Bank, I immediately wanted to return to the Ritz. Despite the nearby white dome of the Sacré-Coeur Basilica and the proximity of the river Seine, there was certainly a seedy quality to the neighborhoods we walked through. Many of the buildings were covered with painted words and symbols, some of them quite shocking, which made my cheeks heat. Either Drew was good at pretending he hadn’t noticed, or he was too focused on our errand to pay attention to anything else besides the map and the written directions on the piece of paper he held in front of him.
Young women wearing even shorter skirts than I was lurked in doorways calling out greetings to Drew in French. He asked me to translate, but I pretended I didn’t understand what they were saying. He stopped in front of a drab cement building, its architectural style as obscure as its year of origin. Bins of foul-smelling garbage sat at the bottom of the steps where two tomcats wound their way around and between them, staring at us suspiciously.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” I asked, remembering what we’d read in the newspaper articles about Pierre Villon’s mother-in-law living at the Ritz. Surely her son-in-law couldn’t possibly live in such a place.
Drew looked at the piece of paper and then at the painted number on the side of the front door. “This is definitely it.” He put his foot on the bottom step. “Stay behind me, all right? Until I know it’s safe.”
I nodded, feeling my heart squeeze a bit, but not wanting to tell him that as a girl who played with her older brothers and their friends I knew how to throw a punch and where to land a kick. I did as he requested and followed him through the peeling-paint door and into an entryway that smelled of boiled cabbage and Robin’s room after he returned from a football match. Mail slots to the right listed the last names of tenants next to their flat numbers.
“There,” I said, pointing to the top right. “Villon—number 310.”
He nodded. “Come on. Doesn’t look like there’s an elevator so we’ll take the stairs. Stay close to me, all right?”
I nodded, my heart doing that odd squeezing thing again. We climbed to the third floor, listening to the lives of those behind the doors as we passed. A baby crying, a woman shouting. A man singing in Italian. It was all somehow sad, that the demoiselle’s husband should live here in this dismal, foul-smelling place.
When we reached number 310, we stopped and stared at the door where the word collaborateur had been painted in thick red letters in scarlet accusation. It appeared that someone had once tried to scrub it out, but the outline of the word remained like a ghostly reminder. We looked at each other for a moment and then Drew knocked on the door, beckoning for me to stand back. It took three knocks before we heard an epithet coming from behind the door, and then slow footsteps approaching.
“Who is it?” The French words were slurred.
Before Drew could speak, I stepped forward. “My name is Mrs. Barbara Langford and I’m with Mr. Andrew Bowdoin. Are you Pierre Villon? We’d like to talk to you about your wife, Marguerite Villon, and her connection to the de Courcelles family.”
“Daisy?” The door flew open, revealing an unkempt man with greasy hair that was more salt than pepper and a paunch that tested the integrity of the buttons on his dirty shirt. He was quickly trying to button the remaining buttons, the gaping holes displaying corpulent white skin and graying chest hair. The scent of cheap wine on his breath washed over us, making me almost choke. “I am Pierre. Come in, come in,” he said, beckoning us into the squalor of a one-room flat that reeked of spilled spirits. Which was a blessing, really, as underneath it all the stench of unwashed skin clung to the walls and moth-eaten rug like spilled milk.
“Who is Daisy?” Drew asked.
The little man looked up at Drew, the difference in their heights almost comical. Except the expression on the man’s face was anything but. The man responded in passable English. “Marguerite was her real name, but everyone always called her Daisy.” His eyes welled up with tears and I couldn’t help myself from touching his arm and leading him to a sofa. I sat down with him, ignoring the dark stains that could have been food or perhaps not. I preferred not to think of it.
“And what happened to Daisy?” I asked gently, holding on to his hand. I heard Drew take a deep intake of breath.
He shrugged his shoulders then returned to slumped defeat. “I don’t know. She disappeared during the war, along with Madeleine and Olivier.”
“Your children?”