Debussy, a brilliant, if mercurial, pianist and composer, lived with his siblings and parents in the same apartment block as the Verniers on the rue de Berlin. He was both the enfant terrible of the Conservatoire and, reluctantly, their greatest hope. However, in their small circle of friends, Debussy’s complex love life attracted more notoriety than his growing professional reputation. The current lady in favour was 24-year-old Gabrielle Dupont.
‘It is serious this time,’ Anatole confided. ‘Gaby understands his music must come first and that is of course most attractive to him. She is tolerant of the way he disappears each Tuesday to the salons of Maître Mallarmé. It raises his spirits in the face of the continuing drizzle of complaint from the Académie, who simply do not understand his genius. They are all too old, too stupid.’
Léonie raised her eyebrows. ‘It is my belief that Achille brings most of his misfortunes down upon his own head. He is quick to fall out with those who might support him. He’s too sharp-tongued, too ready to cause offence. Indeed, he goes quite out of his way to be churlish, rude and difficult. ’
Anatole smoked and did not disagree.
‘And friendship aside,’ she continued, stirring a third spoonful of sugar into her coffee, ‘I confess I have some sympathy with his critics. For me, his compositions are a little vague and unstructured and . . . well, disquieting. Meandering. Too often I feel that I am waiting for the tune to reveal itself. As if one is listening underwater.’
Anatole smiled. ‘Ah, but that is precisely the point. Debussy says that one must drown the sense of key. He is seeking to illuminate, through his music, the connections between the material and the spiritual worlds, the seen and the unseen, and such a thing cannot be presented in the traditional ways.’
Léonie pulled a face. ‘That sounds like one of those clever things people say that mean precisely nothing!’
Anatole ignored the interruption. ‘He believes that evocation and suggestion and nuance are more powerful, more truthful, more illuminating than statement and description. That the value and power of distant memories surpass that of conscious, explicit thought.’
Léonie grinned. She admired her brother’s loyalty to his friend, but was aware that he was only repeating verbatim words he’d heard previously issue from Achille’s lips. For all Anatole’s passionate advocacy of his friend’s work, she knew very well that his tastes ran more to Offenbach and the orchestra of the Folies Bergère than to anything Debussy or Dukas or any of their Conservatoire friends might produce.
‘Since we’re trading confidences,’ he added, ‘I admit that I did return last week to the rue de la Chaussée d’Antin to purchase a copy of Achille’s Cinq Poèmes.’
Léonie’s eyes flashed with temper. ‘Anatole, you gave M’man your word.’
He shrugged. ‘I know, but I could not help myself. The price was so reasonable and it is sure to be a good investment, seeing as how Bailly printed only a hundred and fifty copies.’>
‘We must be more careful with our money. M’man relies on you to be prudent. We cannot afford to run up any more debts.’ She paused, then added, ‘Indeed, how much do we owe?’
Their eyes locked.
‘Really, Léonie. Our household finances are not something for you to concern yourself with.’
‘But—’
‘But nothing,’ he said firmly.
Sulking, she turned her back on him. ‘You treat me like a child!’
He laughed. ‘When you marry, you can drive your husband to distraction with queries about your own household budget, but until that time . . .However, I give you my word that from now on, I will not spend a sou without your permission. ’
‘Now you’re making fun of me.’
‘Indeed, not even a centime,’ he teased.
She glared a moment longer, then surrendered. ‘I shall hold you to it, mind,’ she sighed.
Anatole drew a cross on his chest with his finger. ‘On my honour.’
For a moment they just smiled at one another, then the teasing look fell from his face. He reached across the table and covered her small white hand with his own.
‘To speak seriously for an instant, petite,’ he said, ‘I will find it hard to forgive myself for the fact that my poor timekeeping left you facing tonight’s ordeal alone. Can you forgive me?’
Léonie smiled. ‘It is already forgotten.’
‘Your generosity is more than I deserve. And you behaved with great courage. Most girls would have lost their heads. I am proud of you.’ He sat back in his chair and lit another cigarette. ‘Although you may find that the evening comes back to you. Shock has a habit of taking hold after the event.’
‘I am not so timid,’ she said firmly. She felt completely alive; taller, bolder, more precisely herself. Not distressed in any way whatsoever.
The clock on the mantelshelf chimed the hour.
‘But at the same time, Anatole, I have never known you to miss the curtain before.’
Anatole took a mouthful of cognac. ‘Always a first time.’
Léonie narrowed her eyes. ‘What did keep you? Why were you delayed?’
He slowly returned the broad-bellied glass to the table, then pulled at the waxed ends of his moustache.
A certain sign that he is not being entirely truthful.
Léonie’s eyes narrowed. ‘Anatole?’
‘I was committed to meeting a customer from out of town. He was due at six, but arrived rather later and remained longer than I had anticipated.’
‘And yet you had your dress clothes with you? Or did you return home before joining me at the Palais Garnier?’
‘I had taken the precaution of bringing my evening clothes with me to the office.’
Then with one swift motion Anatole got up, crossed the room and pulled the bell, stopping the conversation in its tracks. Before Léonie could quiz him further, the servants appeared to clear the table, making any further dialogue between them impossible.
‘Time to get you home,’ he said, putting his hand on her elbow and helping her to her feet. ‘I will settle up once I have seen you into a carriage.’
Moments later, they were standing outside on the pavement.
‘You are not returning with me?’
Anatole helped her up into the cab and fastened the catch. ‘I think I’ll pay a visit Chez Frascati. Perhaps play a couple of hands of cards.’
Léonie felt a flutter of panic.
‘What shall I tell M’man?’
‘She will already have retired.’
‘But what if she has not?’ she objected, trying to delay the moment of departure.
He kissed her hand. ‘In which case, tell her not to wait up.’
Anatole reached up to press a note into the driver’s hand. ‘Rue de Berlin,’ he said, then stepped back and banged on the side of the carriage. ‘Sleep well, petite. I shall see you at breakfast.’
The whip cracked. The lamps banged against the side of the gig as the horses jerked forward in a clinking of harness and iron shoes on the cobbles. Léonie pushed down the glass and leaned out of the window. Anatole stood in a pool of smoggy yellow light beneath the hissing gas lamps, a trail of white smoke twisting up from his cigarette.
Why would he not tell me why he was late?
She kept looking, reluctant to let him out of her sight, as the cab rattled up the rue Caumartin past the Hotel Saint-Petersbourg, past Anatole’s Alma Mater, the Lycée Fontanes, heading for the junction with rue Saint-Lazare.
Léonie’s last glimpse, before the carriage turned the corner, was of Anatole flicking the burning end of his cigarette into the gutter. Then he turned on his heel and walked back into Le Bar Romain.
CHAPTER 6
The building in the rue de Berlin was quiet.
Léonie let herself into the apartment with a latchkey. An oil lamp had been left burning to light her way. Léonie dropped the key into the china bowl that stood beside the silver post salver, empty of letters or calling cards. Pushing her
mother’s stole off the cushion, she sank down on a hall chair. She slipped off her stained slippers and silk stockings, massaging her sore toes and thinking of Anatole’s evasive-ness. If there was no shame attached to his actions, then why would he not tell her why he had been late to the opera?
Léonie glanced along the passageway and saw that her mother’s door was closed. For once, she was disappointed. Often she found Marguerite’s company frustrating, her topics of conversation limited and predictable. But tonight she would have been grateful for a little late-night company.
She took up the lamp and walked into the drawing room. A large and generous room, it occupied the entire front of the house, overlooking the rue de Berlin itself. The three sets of windows were closed, but the curtains of yellow chintz that hung ceiling to floor had been left open.
She placed the lamp upon the table, then looked down on the deserted street. She realised she was chilled to the bone. She thought of Anatole, somewhere in the city, and hoped he was safe.
At last, thoughts of what could have been started to creep up on her. The high spirits that had supported her through the long evening drained away, leaving her frightened and fearful. She felt as if every limb, every muscle, every sense was overtaken by the memory of what she had witnessed.
Blood and cracked bones and hate.
Léonie closed her eyes, but still each separate incident flooded back, distinct, as if caught in the click of the shutter of a box camera. The stench as the homemade bombs of excrement and rotting food burst. The frozen eyes of the man as the knife plunged into his chest, that single paralysing moment between life and death.
There was a green woollen shawl hanging over the back of the chaise longue. She wrapped it around her shoulders, turned down the gas lamp and curled up in her favourite armchair, her legs tucked beneath her.
Suddenly, from the floor beneath, the sound of music began to filter up through the floorboards. Léonie smiled. Achille at his piano again. She looked to the clock on the mantelshelf.
Past midnight.
Léonie welcomed the knowledge that she was not the only one awake in the rue de Berlin. There was something soothing about Achille’s presence. She burrowed deeper into the folds of the chair, recognising the piece. La Damoiselle Élue, a composition Anatole often claimed Debussy had written with Léonie in mind. She knew the assertion to be untrue. Achille had told her that the libretto was a prose setting of a poem by Rossetti, which in its turn had been inspired by Monsieur Poe’s The Raven. But false or not, she held the piece close to her heart, and its ethereal chords precisely suited her midnight spirits.
Without warning, another memory swooped down upon her. The morning of the funeral. Then, as now, Achille hammering endlessly on the piano, black notes and white seeping up through the floorboards until Léonie thought she would be driven mad with his playing. The single palm leaf floating in the glass bowl. The sickly aroma of ritual and death that insinuated itself into every corner of the apartment, the burning of incense and candles to mask the cloying sweetness of the corpse in the closed casket.
You are confusing what was with what is.
Then, most mornings, he had disappeared from the apartment before light had given shape back to the world. Most evenings he returned home long after the household had retired. Once, he had been absent for a week without explanation. When Léonie finally mustered the courage to ask him where he had been, he told her only not to concern herself. She supposed he spent his nights at the rouge et noir tables. She knew, too, from the gossip of the servants, that he was being subjected to vociferous and anonymous denunciations in the columns of the newspapers.
The physical toll upon him was obvious. His cheeks grew hollow and his skin transparent. His brown eyes were dulled, permanently bloodshot, and his lips withered and parched. Léonie would do anything to prevent such a deterioration again.
Only when the leaves were returning to the trees in the Boulevard Malesherbes, and when the paths of the Parc Monceau were filled once more with pink and white and lilac blooms, did the attacks upon his good name suddenly cease. From then, his spirits improved and his health recovered. The older brother she knew and loved was restored to her. Since then, there had been no more disappearances, no more evasions, no more half-truths.
Until this evening.
Léonie realised her cheeks were wet. She wiped away the tears with cold fingers, then wrapped the shawl tighter around her.
This is September, not March.
But Léonie remained sick at heart. She knew he had lied to her. So she kept vigil at the window, allowing Achille’s music below to lull her into a half-sleep, whilst all the time listening for the sound of Anatole’s latchkey in the door.
CHAPTER 7
THURSDAY 17TH SEPTEMBER
Leaving the lady sleeping, Anatole crept from the tiny rented room. Careful not to disturb the other lodgers in the boarding house, he walked slowly down the narrow and dusty wooden stairs in stockinged feet. A gas jet burned on each landing, as he descended one flight, then another and another, until he was in the passageway that gave on to the street.
It was not quite dawn, yet Paris was waking. In the distance, Anatole could hear the sounds of delivery carts. Wooden traps over the cobbles delivering milk and freshly baked bread to the cafés and bars of the Faubourg Montmartre.
He stopped to put on his shoes, then set off. The rue Feydeau was deserted and there was no sound except the clip of his heels on the pavement. Deep in thought, Anatole walked quickly, to the junction with the rue Saint-Marc, intending to cut through the arcade of the Passage des Panoramas. He saw no one, heard no one.
His thoughts were rattling around in his head. Would their plan succeed? Could he get out of Paris unobserved and without raising suspicion? For all the fighting talk of the past hours, Anatole entertained doubts. He knew that his conduct over the coming hours, days, would determine their success or failure. Already Léonie was suspicious and since her support would be critical to the success of the endeavour, he cursed the sequence of events that had delayed his arrival at the opera house, then the extraordinary ill fortune that had decreed that the abonnés should have chosen that very night to stage their most bloody and violent protest to date.
He took a deep breath, feeling the crisp September dawn seeping into his lungs, mixed with the steam and smoke and soot of the city. The guilt he had felt at having failed Léonie had been forgotten in the blessed moments while he held his lover in his arms. Now it returned, like a sharp pain in his chest.
He determined he would make it up to her.
The hand of time was on his back, pushing him home-wards. He walked faster, wrapped in thought, delight at the night just past, the memory of his lover imprinted upon his mind and body, the fragrance of skin on his fingers, the texture of her hair. He was weary with the endless secrecy and obfuscation. As soon as they were away from Paris, there would be no more need for intrigue, to invent imaginary visits to the rouge et noir tables or opium dens or houses of ill repute to cover his true whereabouts.
That he had been under attack from the newspapers and unable to defend his own reputation, was a state of affairs that sat uneasily with him. He suspected Constant to have had a hand in it. The blackening of his name affected the situation of both his mother and his sister. All he could hope was that when the matter was out in the open, there would be time enough to repair his standing.
As he turned the corner, a spiteful gust of autumn wind blew at his heels. He pulled his jacket tight around him and regretted the lack of a neck scarf. He crossed the rue Saint-Marc, still wrapped in his thoughts - thinking of the days, the weeks to come, not the present within which he walked.
At first he did not hear the sound of footsteps behind him. Two sets of feet, walking fast, getting closer. His mind sharpened. He glanced down at his evening clothes, realising he looked an easy target. Unarmed, unaccompanied and possibly with winnings from a night at the tables in his pockets.
Anatole walked faster. The footsteps, too, quickened.
Certain now he was being marked, he darted right into the Passage des Panoramas, thinking that if he could cut through to the Boulevard Montmartre, where the cafés would be opening their doors and there was likely to be early morning traffic, milk deliveries, carts, he would be safe.
The few remaining gas lamps burned with a cold blue light as he passed along the narrow row of glass-fronted shops selling stamps and ex-voto trinkets, the furniture-maker displaying an ancient cabinet with dilapidated gilding, the various antiques dealers and sellers of objets d’art.
The men followed.
Anatole felt a spike of fear. His hand went to his pocket, looking for something with which to defend himself, but finding nothing that would serve as a weapon.