Justice Hall

CHAPTER NINETEEN

In London we would be noticeable; in France, invisible. We carried with us the odds and ends that would transform us into more ordinary citizens, since I had no intention of inhabiting the itchy cassock longer than necessary, but it was as priests that we left the hotel the next morning, as priests we boarded the train. We occupied our hard third-class benches as far as the French shore, when the newly boarded French conductor spotted us and led us up the train to first class and told us to be welcome. Properly speaking, we ought to have crouched with all humility in our luxurious seats. Holmes, however, had other ideas, and before I knew it he had found the Hughenforts, manoeuvred a change of seats, and was greeting Mme Terèse, bending forward to squint at her son through the thick glasses he wore, making admiring noises.

Thus we spent the last portion of the trip, with the rich French countryside passing our windows, in conversation with our quarry herself.

Holmes, at least, was in conversation with her, his fluent French with the accents of the south tumbling out like that of a priest on holiday, far from his parishioners and made free by the knowledge. I sat to one side, glumly reading my Testament and wafting a general air of disapproving youth over my elders.

And elder she was. Lionel Hughenfort had been born in 1882, and married when he was thirty-two. This woman must have been pushing forty then, if not actually past it—I could not help wondering how many other children she’d had before Thomas. She was now a buxom, comfortable fifty-year-old woman, well preserved but showing signs that her life had not been one of contemplation and ease. In her relief at escaping the judgmental English relations, she rattled on in garrulous abandon, proving not at all difficult to steer. She was unread but with a shrewd native intelligence, and hugely proud of her clever schoolboy of a son—although she made an effort not to gush, so as to save the child from embarrassment. She proved darkly suspicious of all things English, and revealed once a brief flash of Gallic pride at some unnamed but recent triumph over the citizens of that country, who were all of them—most of them, she corrected herself—sly behind their beefy grins. Had not her own husband been forced to flee to Paris, to escape his own family? And had not that same husband’s brother come screaming and scheming to pull asunder what God Himself had joined? Oh, some Englishmen were true gentlemen, she would give us that, generous and fair—her poor dead husband’s relation, for example, who had come to see her during the War to give her money for a new suit of clothes for the boy and sent gifts from time to time, now he was a true gentleman—but even they had their plans, and it would not do to put one’s self too firmly into their hands, would it, Father?

And as for a mother’s responsibility to her son, the sooner half of France lay between Those People and the boy, the better.

No, she would have nothing to do with British soil, not until her boy was old enough to view glitter and pomp with a certain detachment. Although their pounds, when translated into good clean francs, those were acceptable, wouldn’t you agree, Father?

At this point, the child Thomas moved over from his mother’s side to mine, either because he’d heard her opinions on the subject before, or because he had just got up his nerve to approach me. In either case, he decided to try for a conversation with the younger priest.

His “Bonjour” was friendly and not in the least tentative. I returned it, and then he asked what I was reading. I told him. He said it did not look like French, and I agreed that it was Latin. The ice being broken, it then appeared that he had a question.

“Father, someone told me that Jesus was not a Christian. Can this be true?”

Concealing my amusement, I explained to him that “Christian” meant a follower of Jesus Christ, and that therefore the man himself could not, strictly speaking, have been one. “In fact,” I added, “Jesus himself was born into a Jewish family, worshipped in the Jewish temple, thought of himself as a Jew. It was only later that his followers decided that what he represented was a new thing.”

The boy’s mind was supple and inquisitive, which I thought a remarkable paedagogic achievement for the son of a woman with no great intellect, and we talked for a time about the Old and New Testaments, about the kinds of stories each contained, about the differences between God and Jesus Christ. I could see him floundering at this last morass—no surprise, since many adult minds did the same—and turned him away with a question about his preferences in school.

I had to wonder who his actual father might have been.

On the outskirts of Paris it transpired—oh how astounding and blessed a coincidence!—that we, too, were heading to Lyons, and we, too, not until tomorrow, in the afternoon! It was unlikely, of course, that we would again be moved up into first class by a devout conductor, but perhaps we would see Mme and the young scholar while boarding our respective cars? And perhaps, Holmes ventured piously, as we were to pass several days in that city, we might one afternoon call upon her? When the boy was home from his studies, say, and free to join us for a visit to the seller of ices?

Mme Hughenfort was a woman easily reached through an appreciation of her son. With no whisper of hesitation, she gave Holmes the address that no Hughenfort had been able to discover. He noted it down in a fussy hand, closed and tucked away his miniature note-book, and thanked her.

At the station, we retained our small, battered valises but assisted Madame in transferring her bags to the hands of a porter, and we stayed with our new friends, chatting amiably, until both were safely within a taxi. There we paused, ever polite, until she had given the driver her destination.

Her voice reached us clearly through the glass.

Holmes kept no bolt-hole in Paris, but he knew the city well enough to give our own taxi driver the name of a large, busy hotel frequented by commercial travellers, across the street from Mme Hughenfort’s chosen accommodation. Our hotel occupied nearly half of a city block, and had entrances on three streets; no-one would notice a couple of suddenly defrocked priests passing through the lobby, and no maid would unpack the younger priest’s highly irregular female garments from the larger valise.

We took adjoining rooms, shed our identifying black garments, changed into more usual attire, and passed through the lobby separately to meet in a nearby brasserie, whose front windows just happened to overlook the front door of Mme Hughenfort’s hotel.

We did not expect to see her. Digging up information on the woman’s personal life was the purpose of accompanying her to Lyons, where there would be neighbours and shopkeepers to be questioned. However, less than twenty minutes later I glanced up from my soupe à l’oignon and nearly tipped the rising spoonful onto my shirt-front.

“Holmes—look!”

Strolling in our direction, looking the very essence of a French provincial family in the big city, came Mme and Thomas Hughenfort, accompanied by a swarthy man not much taller than she and equally stout. She did not look coquettish enough for it to be a recent friendship, and for a moment I thought the man might be a brother, come to fetch his sister and nephew home safely from the capital city. Certainly the boy seemed, if not overjoyed to see him, at least accepting of his presence, and even responded to one jovial folly with a grudging smile. But then the fingers of the two adults intertwined surreptitiously, in an exploration that was more foreplay than greeting, and I knew this was no brother.

“Russell,” Holmes said with an urgent note in his voice, “I believe they are coming this way. The two of us might trigger a memory; I suggest one of us leave quickly.”

I was already on my feet and dropping my table napkin on my chair. “I’ll meet you back at the hotel,” I told him, and slipped out of the door while the trio was still crossing the street.

My own three-star luncheon was a baguette and some cheese in a park, feeding the crumbs to the pigeons. I then went into a few shops to add to my meagre possessions. Back in the hotel, with nothing at hand but the Testament, I had just reached the Book of Romans, and was struggling with Paul’s arguments concerning justification by faith, when a key scraped in the lock of the next room. I lowered my book and waited. Holmes popped through the shared door.

“On your feet, Russell. The lady’s decided that she was indiscreet, that the wicked English, being capable of anything, could have stooped to subverting the priesthood to prise her address out of her. She and the boy will take the train today; the good monsieur, about whom I know only that he calls himself Tony, will turn the tables and lie in wait for the priest, in order to follow him to Lyons on the afternoon train tomorrow.”

I burst into laughter at the convoluted plot. “He didn’t suspect the priest of being anything but?”

“Apparently not. Nor has it entered their heads that a person in a cassock may smile and smile and be a woman. Their innocence is, I have to say, both charming and encouraging.”

“What time is the train?”

He glanced at his pocket-watch. “You have twenty-three minutes to reach the station.”

I handed him the Testament and began throwing off one set of clothing and pulling on another, pinning my hair to support my new hat, dabbing on powder, colouring my lips, and generally changing into another woman. The cassock, men’s shoes, heavy spectacles, and the rest of that persona were already in the valise I had brought here. My other clothing, English and French, went into my newly purchased leather suit-case. I turned my overcoat so the plain cloth was inside and the fur without, and dropped it nonchalantly over my shoulders. Holmes copied the address Terèse Hughenfort had given him and slipped it into my handbag along with a city map he’d picked up somewhere.

“Where shall I meet you?” I asked him.

“Take a room at the Hôtel Carlton. I’ll find you there. And as an alternate, at noon in the new basilica. Now, be off.”

I had no trouble getting a ticket to Lyons, taking my seat in first class, and gazing out of the windows until Mme Hughenfort appeared, struggling with luggage and a foot-dragging son. Neither, I would guess, was happy to have their Parisian holiday cut short.

They sat in the second-class cars. Which was fine with me; all I intended to do was follow them, with luck to the address I had in my bag, and watch to see where they went next. I suspected they would merely gather a few things and retreat to a friend’s house until Monsieur Tony caught them up, but it would be best if we did not lose them until we were certain.

When we were under way, I unfolded the map of Lyons that Holmes had put into my bag and located the address, then that of the hotel, and finally the tourist landmarks thoughtfully noted by the mapmaker. Would she believe the two priests intended to be on the next day’s train? Or would she go straight to a safe place? I decided she would go home first. Else why go to Lyons at all, if outright disappearance was the goal? I did not think she was suspicious enough to panic, merely not to be at home when the two priests rang her bell. She would, no doubt, count on the ungentlemanly Tony to follow the scoundrels to their own lair and put the fear of a vengeful God into them. My mind’s eye was taken up for a moment by the scene of Holmes in soutane and clouded spectacles blithely picking his way across the bustling gare while the prosperous and swarthy Monsieur Tony tip-toed along behind the pillars to keep him in view, taking up a hard third-class bench and settling in behind a newspaper so as never to take his eye off the dubious priest.

The vision faded, and I bent over the cartography of Lyons.

At the gare in Lyons, my first-class status and relative lack of bags meant that I was shut into my taxi before my quarry had joined the queue. I had the driver pull up, half a block away, and I gave him some story about my mentally disturbed sister-in-law who couldn’t be trusted to find her way home but insisted on trying. He accepted this blague (men do, I’ve found, accept the most arrant nonsense from a well-dressed woman) and sat with the motor idling. Mme Hughenfort eventually got her taxi, and passed us, going towards the city centre.

We pulled in behind her and followed her through the narrow Presqu’île and into the quiet area north of the busy centre, where her taxi pulled up in front of a block of flats with shops on the street level. I had my driver continue on slowly; when I saw the two travellers go through a door, I told him to take me to the Carlton.

Despite the hour, they had a room for me “and my husband, who will be arriving tomorrow, or possibly Saturday.” I went up, washed the travel from my face and hands, turned my coat to present a bland cloth façade to the world, and went back down and through the dark streets to the Hughenforts’ front door.

I had seen a brasserie across the street and up a bit—not ideally placed for my purposes, but seated at the window, I thought I should be able to see if a taxi pulled up in front of her building. It took the maitre d’ twenty minutes to produce the requested window table, but I did not think it likely their stop at home would be that brief.

So it proved. I no sooner took my seat than a glance out at the street showed a familiar dark-haired boy with a laden shopping bag coming out of a grocer’s. The shopkeeper locked the door behind the boy and tugged down the shades; the boy walked up the steps and into the building.

The Hughenforts would, it seemed, be stopping the night at home. I ate my lamb cassoulet and drank two glasses of Moulin-à-Vent, then returned to my hotel, where I slept very well indeed.

In the morning I was back at my brasserie, its evening linen and herbs-and-garlic odours given way to scrubbed-bare tables and the aroma of coffee and croissants. I manoeuvred until I was at a window table, which I shared with several changes of patrons during my own extended breakfast. I drank more coffee than I had at any one time since the Palestine wanderings (with an unfortunate effect on my nerves) and ate the equivalent of a couple of large loaves of bread, presented in a variety of shapes and sizes, from brioche to baguette, all laden with butter and preserves. Feeling like a child at a birthday party, quivering with excitement and stuffed with sweet things, I paid my bill, abandoned my table, ducked in and out of an unfortunately maintained lavatory, and traded the restaurant for the now-open shops.

Two hours in the brasserie, two more examining each shop’s wares with minute attention and a few purchases, and soon the noon hour would be upon me and I would be thrown out onto the street, to reclaim my window seat and eat yet more food. (I had, at least, left a good tip, by way of apology for my lengthy occupation.)

However, as the shopkeeper wrapped my parcel, too polite as he did so to point out that every other door on the street was closed tight and that all civilised persons were already seated at their tables, I saw a taxi pull up in front of the Hughenfort door. The driver got out to ring the bell, and I hastened to pay and scramble to find a taxi of my own.

Taxi drivers, too, are civilised people. It took me ten tense minutes to find a man hungrier for cash than for déjeuner and to urge him back to my target. To his disgust, we then sat at the end of the road, the engine idling, while the other driver and the two Hughenforts pushed the last of their cases into the car and got in. Only when the other taxi was moving did I allow my driver to follow.

We travelled little more than a mile through the city, ending up not far from the railway station where we had begun on the previous day. The taxi turned into a quiet street and came to a halt before a run-down block of flats that were considerably less appealing, both aesthetically and in their local amenities, than the house we’d come from. Mme Hughenfort would not, I thought, wish to remain here for long, not with her young son in tow: The butcher’s looked flyblown, the nearest greengrocer’s was two streets away, and there wasn’t even a boulangerie in sight for their morning baguette.

“Hôtel Carlton,” I said to the driver. He swivelled around to stare at me, at this crowning instruction to the day’s fare, but for once I couldn’t be bothered coming up with a story.

He took me to the Carlton, accepted my money, and sped off to see what he could salvage of his lunch hour, shaking his head at the mad ways of foreigners.

Had I been in London, my next step would have been to discover who owned the building in which Mme Hughenfort had taken shelter. In this bastion of Gallic officialdom, however, it was a task I thought I would leave to Holmes, who was not only male but spoke better French than I. Instead, I thought I might go back to the woman’s neighborhood and show some photographs.

After the long lunch-time closure.

Besides which, I was growing quite fond of my brasserie’s fare.

Following lunch, with my coat still turned to show honest cloth and the dumpiest of hats on my head, I took out the envelope of family photographs Alistair had given me and began to work my way up one side of the street and down the other. My basic story was that I was a second cousin of Mme Hughenfort, but the embroidery I tacked on to that thin beginning varied with my audience. In the brasserie, where I started my community interrogation, there was an inheritance involved, a solid pile of francs for Mme Hughenfort if she could prove, well, “family concerns” (I let the precise nature of those concerns trail into speculation). To the good mistress of the flower stall there was a reference to a family madman, to the stout pair who ran the needlework shop a tinge of romance and scandal, and to the tobacconist a simple wager that had got complicated. And so it went, in the shops, among the neighbours. What I learnt, both through my deliberate efforts and through fortuitous accident, was most intriguing.

Her missing neighbours returned as darkness was setting in, and they contributed their own pieces to the puzzle.

Finally, as the rich odours of Lyonnais cooking crept into the evening air to mix with the damp from two rivers, I turned my steps back to the Carlton, where I was given, along with my key, the news that my husband had arrived. I held my breath as I inserted the key in the lock, knowing full well that with Holmes, arrival did not necessarily mean presence. But when I flung open the door, he was there, damp from the bath and working to get the cuff-links through his shirt. He looked up in surprise at my abrupt entrance, his thinning hair still tousled from the towel and giving him an absurdly boyish look. I laughed aloud in sheer pleasure: the perfect end to a satisfying day.