“You have far more important matters to attend to, I’m sure.”
At that instant, there was a roar of laughter from the Little Bar, and Bernard appeared at her elbow.
“Herr Lieutenant Colonel,” he said hurriedly, “there is a telephone call for you at the bar.”
The German answered without taking his gaze from Daisy’s face. “A telephone call? That’s odd. From whom?”
“The party wouldn’t say, I’m afraid.”
“Yes. Very well.”
Then the German did something strange. He lifted Daisy’s right hand away from the books, so that she had to shift her weight to keep her grip on them, and he kissed the tips of her fingers with his thin, soft lips.
“Madame,” he said, “you will please excuse me.”
Daisy tore her fingers away and darted past him to the stairs. On the fourth step, she turned to thank Bernard with her eyes, but it was not the doorman who remained there in the hall with the chandelier glittering on his pale hair. It was the German officer, who had taken a gold watch from some inner pocket of his uniform and now stared at the open case, inspecting the hour.
Now, Daisy might have spent her childhood inside the walls of the Ritz Paris, but that was the Place Vendôme side, in Grandmère’s permanent suite that was like an apartment lifted straight from the Palace of Versailles, except more homelike. (The Ritz liked to think of itself as a kind of grand country residence rather than a hotel.) This building, the rue Cambon side, connected to the main building by a long gallery that traversed the garden courtyard, wasn’t nearly as familiar to her. In fact, so flustered was Daisy by the encounter with the German, she turned down the wrong corridor and spent an awful, dizzy moment in total discombobulation, imagining the entire hotel had turned on some new and previously unknown axis. Then recognition came to her in a flash—oddly enough, the memory of some childhood game of hide and seek—and she turned back and went down the correct corridor this time, humbled, heart still pounding against her ribs, mouth dry, fingertips itching where the German officer had kissed them. She found Grandmère’s door and knocked on the louvered panel.
“Come in,” came her grandmother’s voice, almost inaudible because the doors at the Ritz were made of solid, heavy wood that actually hurt your knuckles a little when you knocked on them.
Daisy shifted the books to her left arm and used her right hand to turn the handle. Grandmère’s apartment faced northwest, overlooking rue Cambon from the third floor. You could see Mademoiselle Chanel’s atelier at number 31, now closed for the duration of the war. Only the perfume business remained open. Mademoiselle Chanel was too canny a businesswoman not to clear herself a fortune selling bottles of Chanel No. 5 to all the German wives. The afternoon light was just beginning to make itself known through the windows, illuminating the gilded Louis Quinze furniture—reproduction, but well-made reproduction, elegantly upholstered—and the two people who sat on the pair of sofas that flanked the fireplace, Grandmère and a man Daisy didn’t recognize, wearing a dark, rather shabby suit. They both looked at her in the doorway. The man stood. Daisy had a fleeting impression of glossy brown hair—a little too much of it, really—and a dry smile as she passed her gaze over him to find Grandmère.
“Why, what’s the matter?” asked Grandmère.
Daisy opened her mouth and glanced at the stranger. “Nothing.”
“You look like you’ve had a fright.”
“It’s just the stairs. And I took a wrong turn.”
“A wrong turn?”
“I keep thinking you’re in the old apartment.” Daisy stepped closer and set the volumes down on the sofa table. They made a soft, leathery thump on the wood, which was overpolished in the Ritz tradition. “Here are your books.”
“Thank you, my dear. Give your grandmother a kiss, now.”
Daisy smiled and bent to place a kiss on Grandmère’s cheek. She smelled of powder and perfume and something else, a new and pungent scent, not native to her grandmother at all. “You’re well?” she asked quietly.
“Quite well. Daisy, my darling, this is Monsieur Legrand, a friend of mine just arrived in Paris.”
Daisy straightened and turned. The man still stood politely in place before the opposite sofa with his smile and his glossy hair. The light picked out some gold among the brown. His eyes, however, regarded her with gravity. She pulled the sides of her cardigan closer together. “Monsieur,” she said, by way of greeting.
She gave him no hand to clasp, no cheek to kiss, so he just ducked his head briefly and widened his smile. His jacket was unbuttoned to reveal a knitted vest, as if he expected the weather to turn. “Madame Villon. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
His French was exquisite, absolutely without flaw, but Daisy had some idea nonetheless that this Monsieur Legrand was not a Frenchman. It wasn’t his voice but his bearing, his stance. Also the pipe, which she now noticed dangling from his right hand and recognized as the source of the unusual spicy odor, so out of place in her grandmother’s apartment.
“A friend of my grandmother’s? I don’t recall her mentioning the name before.”
“Ah. I suppose you might say I’m more of an acquaintance.”
“A new and trusted acquaintance,” said Grandmère. “Monsieur Legrand is a poet, darling. He’s begun working at the bookshop to support his literary ambitions.”
“A poet,” Daisy said dubiously. “Is this really a proper time for poetry?”
“For poetry above all, Madame Villon. It’s how we make sense of the world around us, isn’t it?”
“Good poetry, perhaps.”
He put his hand—the hand with the pipe—to his heart. “You wound me.”
“I beg your pardon. I’m sure your work is wonderful.”
“His work is tremendously important,” said Grandmère, “which is why I’m afraid it’s time for you to leave, monsieur, so you may return to it.”
Monsieur Legrand spread out his arms and bowed extravagantly. “As you wish, madame.”
“And you may return these books to the shop as well.” Grandmére reached forward and picked up a pair of slim volumes that rested on the edge of the sofa table, next to the fireplace. “I’ve finished them both. Quite good. Tell Monsieur Lapin that I approve of his selections.”
“I shall with pleasure, madame.” Legrand lifted a glass from the table—cognac, Daisy thought—and finished it off in a flick of his wrist. For an instant, his eyes closed, bringing all his concentration to bear on this mouthful of spirits, and no wonder. Grandmère kept only the best cognac, and God help the Nazi who tried to confiscate her private store in the name of the Reich. Daisy found herself staring at the intersection of frayed white cuff and bare wrist. His skin was tanned, and it was only May. He set the glass down, and the wrist disappeared once more beneath the cuff.
“Don’t forget your hat,” said Grandmère.
“Of course. Good day, madame.” He turned to Daisy and fetched up another smile. “Good day, madame. Until we meet again.”
He stuck his pipe in his mouth and made his way to the door, hardly pausing to snatch his hat from the commode as he went. He closed the door with just enough force to make a decisive click of the latch, and at that exact instant the room dimmed a degree or two, like the sun had gone behind some cloud in the western sky.