Edwardian Murder Mystery 04; Our Lady of Pain

¦

They could have walked because Maxim’s also fronted on the Place de la Concorde, but Becket was waiting for them in a newly hired Panhard.

The swing doors of the famous restaurant were held open for them. Hands relieved them of their wraps, although in the case of the duchess it took some time because her diamonds had become caught in her various scarves and stoles.

They made their way past the buffet with its elegant fringe of gilded youth, past the long line of tables to the end of the room, where there was an open space with more tables. A little farther and up two steps, and there was a section set about for dining with a view of the lower floor.

This was where they were to take supper. This is where the best-dressed and wittiest women dined with their male relatives and friends. Down below, a red-coated band was playing waltzes as couples whirled around. The whole restaurant seemed infused with a restless gaiety.

“I do not think any of the ladies dining around us are the type to know someone like Madame de Peurey,” said Rose.

“No, they’re not. But I see an old friend of mine. I shall wave. Ah, he’s coming over.”

An elderly roue bent over the duchess’s hand, his corsets creaking.

“You look ravishing,” he said. “You will take Paris by storm.”

The duchess introduced Harry and Rose, naming her elderly admirer as Lord Featherstone.

“Do sit for a minute, Jumbo,” she said. “Have some champagne.”

“Gladly. I shall feast my eyes on the divinity that is Lady Rose.”

“I wouldn’t do that, you naughty old thing. The captain here would call you out. I need to find a certain Madame de Peurey.”

“Zuzu? That takes me back. What a wonder she was. They fought duels over her.”

“And where is she now?”

He cast an anxious glance at a formidable matron at his table. The duchess followed his glance. “I did not know you were married.”

“I’m not, yet. Postage-stamp heiress. Widowed. Wants the title and I want her money. I’d better get back.”

“Madame de Peurey. She was one of yours for a bit. Where is she?”

“Have you a piece of paper?”

Harry produced a small notebook and pencil. Featherstone scribbled an address. “Right, I’m off. I can feel my postage stamps disappearing by the minute.”

“You see?” said the duchess triumphantly. “I knew it would be easy. Now, let’s eat.”

Rose began to feel light-headed towards the end of the meal. Parisian gaiety frothed around her. Down on the floor, couples swung around in the waltz. The duchess broke off eating to greet old friends who had come up to her table.

“I never thought I knew so many people in Paris,” she said cheerfully. “I was sure they must all be dead.”

The supper consisted of eight courses. By the time the brandies and petits fours were served, Rose glanced at an elegant bronze clock on the wall. Four in the morning! Lucky Daisy. She would have been asleep for hours.

? Our Lady of Pain ?

Six

The Dowager Duchess carried an air of solid assurance which belonged to a less uneasy age. That slightly raucous note of defiance was absent from her pronouncements. She did not protest; she merely ignored. Nothing unpleasant ever ruffled her serenity, because she simply failed to notice it.

– Vita Sackville-West

Two bottles of champagne, seclusion and a magnificent double bed proved to be too much for Daisy and Becket. They were to be married, after all.

Daisy, despite her chorus-girl background, was still a virgin, but as she confided, giggling, to Becket, a dance number where she had to perform the splits five times a night in the past had no doubt eased the way to losing it painlessly.

The gaiety of Paris, the excited feeling that everything goes, had entered into them and they made a happy night of it. Even when Daisy dimly heard the party returning, she did not leap up in alarm but snuggled closer to Becket and closed her eyes in contented sleep.

¦

They set out after lunch on the following day. Rose was delighted to see Daisy look so glowing and happy. Harry, on the other hand, eyed her narrowly, and hoped the wretched girl had not been doing anything she ought not to do.

They cruised along under the budding trees on the Bois, then through a toll gate and out past Neuilly and the Boulevard d’Inkermann to where Madame de Peurey’s large house was situated.

It was a large white villa, typical of the outer suburbs of Paris. Becket went ahead and knocked at the door, and, when a maid answered it, presented their cards. She disappeared into the villa and returned after a short time. Becket turned round and beckoned to the party that they were to enter.

The maid bobbed curtsies as they entered and then moved to the front of the party and led them through large shady rooms to a garden at the back. Rose expected to meet an elderly woman, still beautiful and elegant, this famous coquette who was reputed to have broken so many hearts.

At first she thought that the round little woman who rose to meet them must be some sort of companion, but she said in a grating voice, “I am Madame de Peurey. To what do I owe the honour of this visit? Pray sit down.” She spoke English with a heavy, guttural accent.

They arranged themselves in cane chairs shaded by a vine trellis. Madame de Peurey was dressed in a narrow skirt and a blouse with a high-boned collar over which heavy jowls drooped. Her feet were encased in square-toed boots and she sat with her legs apart.

“As you will have seen from my card,” began Harry, “I am a private investigator and I am investigating the murder of Dolores Duval.”

“Poor Dolores,” sighed Madame de Peurey. “Without me, she would have given it all away. I took her to my lawyers when she embarked on her first liaison. Ah, what a success she was! Then the Baroness Chevenix started to scream that Dolores had stolen her jewels and it was all over Gil Blas.” Gil Blas was a journal which delighted in reporting the scandals of French society. “I advised Dolores to leave France for a little. I told her it was perhaps time she took the unfashionable route of getting married. We do not normally marry,” she said calmly. “But with the English milords marrying low creatures like chorus girls, well, I told her she could be a duchess.”

“Who were her friends?” asked Harry.

“Just me, I think. The others were jealous of her. She appeared from nowhere some years ago. Poof! Just like that. She told me she was brought up on a farm in Brittany.”

“Whereabouts in Brittany?”

“Saint Malo. She said the farm lay just outside.”

The air in the garden was becoming unseasonably warm. Madame de Peurey unselfconsciously hitched up her skirt to reveal muscular calves in black stockings.

“I do not wish to appear vulgar,” said Harry, “but did Miss Duval leave a significant sum of money?”

“She owned a pleasant villa near here and an apartment in the Sixteenth, and then, on my advice, she invested well in stocks and shares.”

Madame de Peurey rang a little silver bell on the table in front of her and when her butler appeared, she ordered tea. “And bring my album.”

The duchess, who had remained silent, raised her lorgnette. “Do you not wish you had led a decent life?”