The Perfume Collector

Paris, Spring, 1955

Grace had luncheon on her own, sitting at an outdoor table in a café in the sun. Turning over in her mind what Monsieur Androski had told her, she thought about perfume and its connection to memory.

Monsieur Tissot had teased her about her sensitivity to taste and smell and he wasn’t the only one. Part of her seemed to have always known what Monsieur Androski had clarified; that certain smells were the custodians of memory. And once they were unleashed, their effect was instant aneous, like switching on a light – flooding the senses far too quickly and completely. They had the power to transport and overwhelm. For that reason, one needed to be wary of them.

There were blocks of time in her memory that simply didn’t exist. In fact, she had very little recollection of anything before the age of eight. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been unusual except that Grace’s memory in everything else was exceptional.

It was as if she were inwardly holding her breath, afraid to inhale life fully.

Around her the tables were filling with people, tourists planning their next stop over a coffee, businessmen meeting for luncheon, well-heeled women taking a break from their sprees, leaning in to gossip with one another, shopping bags piled at their feet.

It was such a simple yet satisfying pleasure to dine out of doors in the sunshine. Taking a sip of her citron pressé, Grace relished the refreshing contrast of sweet syrup and lemon juice. And she found herself thinking of Monsieur Tissot’s philosophy: come to your senses.

Yield to them.

Had she ever entirely yielded to anything? The word implied a suppleness of spirit; an inherently optimistic predisposition she’d never fully entertained.

After luncheon, Grace began to walk, aimlessly at first, with only the vaguest sense of direction. She had no agenda. But Paris was much easier to navigate than she had imagined. London had sprung up wildly, everything thrown on top of everything else. But Paris had been designed. Here, historical landmarks appeared graciously; evenly spaced for maximum aesthetic impact. One had only to follow from one to another to reach any destination, including the Left Bank.

And weather that in England would have been blustery and punctuated with freezing rain showers was refreshingly breezy and fresh. The wind pushed the clouds across the sky at enormous speed but the sun remained high and warm. Before long Grace found herself back on the narrow winding little side street near the embankment – Rue Christine.

In front of her, on the corner, was Andre Valmont’s abandoned shop.

It was as if she couldn’t keep away from it; her curiosity was too strong. And now that she’d spoken with Monsieur Androski, it was even stronger.

From across the street, she watched as a workman finished nailing new boards across the windows and door of the corner shop; repairing the damage she and Monsieur Tissot had done. Head down, Grace walked on, past the front door, around to the back, looking to see if there might be a private entrance. And she found one, a discreet, faded red door in an alleyway behind the building.

Grace looked up. There was a light on in the second-floor window.

Perhaps Monsieur Tissot was right; maybe the old woman did live in the flat above the shop.

Gathering her courage, Grace knocked on the red door. Sure enough, a dog sprang to life upstairs, yapping excitedly, its toenails clicking against the floorboards as it scurried between the feet of its owner down the steps.

‘Oui?’ a voice called through the locked door.

Grace took a deep breath. ‘Madame, I’d like to speak to you if I may. I’m Grace Munroe, the woman… the woman who was in your shop.’

She waited, listening.

Silence.

Minutes passed with no movement on either side.

Finally, Grace heard a bolt slide across and the door eased open a crack.

The old woman eyed her suspiciously. ‘I should phone the police. You have no right to be here.’

Grace proceeded delicately. ‘I’m truly sorry that we gave you a fright. It was wrong to break in like that. My lawyer and I believed that the shop was abandoned. We had no idea you were living above.’

‘Fine,’ she dismissed her, waving her away. ‘Consider yourself absolved.’

She was beginning to close the door when Grace took the card out of her coat pocket and offered it to her. ‘I found this on the floor of the shop. When you surprised us, I accidentally put it into my pocket. Does it by any chance belong to you?’

The old woman stared at it before taking it, turning it over slowly in her hand. ‘What do you and that lawyer have to do with Eva d’Orsey?’ she asked.

‘I’m her heir.’

‘Her heir?’ She looked surprised.

‘Yes.’

She opened her mouth to say something, then stopped. ‘Did you read this?’ she asked, after a moment, holding up the card.

Grace nodded. ‘Yes, I did.’

She handed it back to Grace. ‘I don’t care what happens to it now.’

Again, she began to shut the door but Grace held it open with her hand. ‘Pardon me, but are you by any chance Madame Zed? The famous perfumer, Madame Zed?’

‘How do you know that name?’

‘Are you she?’

‘What business is it of yours? Why do you want to know?’

‘Well, the thing is,’ Grace explained quickly, struck yet again by the absurdity of her situation, ‘I’d like to ask you some questions, if I may. You see, I never met Eva d’Orsey. She’s a complete stranger to me and I know nothing about her.’

Madame Zed paused, taking this in. ‘You’re English, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, madame.’

‘And when were you born?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘How old are you?’ she pressed.

‘I was born on 30 May 1928. Why?’

‘In London?’

‘No, in Oxfordshire. Or rather, just outside.’ The woman was looking at her as if she expected more. ‘My parents died when I was young. After that, I was brought up by my uncle who is Professor of Medieval Literature at Balliol.’

‘An English girl,’ Madame repeated.

‘Yes.’

‘And how did you find me? Who told you to come here?’

‘No one. I saw it a newspaper, in Eva d’Orsey’s apartment. She’d circled something, with this address.’

‘A notification… of repossession,’ Madame deduced. ‘I’m surprised she noticed. Well, then,’ she stepped back, opened the door wider. ‘Yes, I think perhaps you’d better come inside.’

Madame Zed’s apartment was in stark contrast to the decadent aesthetics of the shop downstairs. The high narrow windows were simply shuttered against walls of soft bluey-grey. The furniture was sparse, arranged on a bare wooden floor and in the angular geometric art deco style. A large collection of cubist paintings, interspersed with old master portraits and landscapes, crowded the walls. In one corner, an antique harpsichord dominated, its keys worn and yellowed. Piles of sheet music were stacked high underneath it.

It was an apartment of extremes – classic, modern – and undeniably sophisticated. Almost no concessions had been made to convention. It wasn’t a social setting but rather a sanctuary.

It was such a different world from the one Grace was familiar with. She’d lived her life in English heritage houses, with chintz fabric, Queen Anne furniture, paintings of long-dead family members – all with their noses and eyes in the right places. She was unused to a home that didn’t cheerfully sport a traditional public face. It seemed to her a luxurious disregard.

Madame Zed brought in a bottle of cognac and some glasses. ‘I’m afraid it’s not very ladylike, however I prefer this to tea.’

‘You have such a wonderful home,’ Grace admired.

‘I used to have a wonderful home,’ Madame corrected her, pouring out two drinks. ‘It’s outdated. But I’m old now. I have neither the strength nor the means to redo it.’

‘Outdated! On the contrary, I think it’s extremely modern.’

She handed her a drink. ‘All my life I’ve been a creature of fashion. Fashion, like life, is all about change. About embracing the new and the unknown. This look is old. I’m stuck.’

‘Where I come from, everything is stuck.’

‘And that,’ Madame raised her glass, ‘is why no one travels halfway across the world to buy a dress in London.’

Touché, Grace thought with a smile. ‘I understand that you’re a perfumer, is that right? That you created some very memorable scents.’

Madame Zed gave a little shrug. ‘I’ve enjoyed some success in my time.’

‘Do you still make perfume?’

‘No. Not in many years. A lifetime ago.’ She settled into a chair across from her. ‘But now, tell me how you came here?’

‘Well, actually, there’s very little to tell. I live in London. I’m married. I lead a perfectly average life,’ she admitted. ‘Then one day, I received a letter from Madame d’Orsey’s lawyer, Monsieur Tissot, informing me that I was the sole beneficiary of her will. I was certain there had been a mistake. But Monsieur Tissot insisted. So I arrived in Paris a few days ago to see for myself.’ She put her glass down. ‘As bizarre as it sounds, apparently I’ve received an inheritance from a woman I know nothing about. The entire situation is absurd!’

Madame raised a hand to stop her. ‘I’m sorry, but what precisely is your inheritance, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘According to the will, my inheritance is to be the proceeds of the sale of an apartment, in the Place des Vosges. Do you know it?’

‘Oh.’ Madame Zed frowned; shifted. ‘I see. Nothing else?’

‘Well, there are some stocks.’ Grace sat forward. ‘The lawyer – I’m sure he thinks that I should just take the money and leave. But I can’t. I’m looking for someone who knew Eva d’Orsey, for some clue to my connection to her.’

Grace waited, hoping that Madame Zed would willingly fill in the gaps, but instead she took a sip of her cognac, her features unreadable. She seemed hesitant, even reluctant to offer any information.

Still, Grace remembered the way the old woman had reacted when she’d heard of Eva’s death. She tried again. ‘You knew her, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. Yes, I knew her.’ However, instead of explaining, Madame fell silent, drifting into her own thoughts.

‘What was she like?’ Grace prompted.

‘Eva?’ Madame’s black eyes held the distance, as if she were looking inward, into her own memory. ‘Eva was the most genuinely original, singularly elegant woman I think I have ever known. She was also very troubled. Desperate even. I knew her a long time. The truth was we both had certain expectations of each other. In the end, I suppose they were too high.’

‘What kind of expectations? What do you mean, desperate?’

Madame looked across at Grace. ‘It’s a complicated history, Mrs Munroe. I’m not entirely certain even I understand it.’

Her evasiveness was frustrating.

‘I just want to know something about her.’ Grace felt as though she was begging; perhaps she was. ‘I know nothing!’

Madame considered a moment. ‘What if knowing more meant that your life would change?’

‘How?’

But Madame Zed didn’t elaborate. Instead she stared at Grace, as if trying to measure her resolve.

‘Hasn’t my life already changed?’ Grace pointed out. ‘The only difference is, right now I don’t understand why.’

‘Very well,’ Madame agreed finally.

Then, to Grace’s surprise, the old woman got up and left the room.

When she returned, she was holding three very different bottles of perfume, which she put down on the table between them. Two were in fine hand-blown glass flacons with crystal stoppers. The first was elegant, a slim, simple rectangular shape; the second was a multifaceted crystal creation that threw rainbows of light around the room. Each had a gold-embossed printed labels. One read La Première and the other said Auréole Noire.

The last one was nothing more than a plain, generic chemist’s vial, sealed with a cork stopper. A yellowed, peeling label read Choses Perdus.

Grace looked up. ‘What’s this?’

Madame sat down again in the chair opposite. ‘Once upon a time, I was a perfumer, Mrs Munroe. Now I’m reduced to a custodian, a collector of the past. I can’t write or paint or compose… my language is scent – the vocabulary of feeling and memory. So forgive me if the story I’m about to tell is illustrated in a slightly unconventional way.’ She gestured, indicating the perfumes. ‘Here is a history. A love letter, in fact.’

Grace stared at the three bottles again. ‘In perfume?’

She nodded. ‘Only these perfumes weren’t created by me. They were the work of my only apprentice, Andre Valmont, an extraordinarily talented young man.’

‘The shop below was his, wasn’t it?’

‘That’s right. His, mine… and to a certain extent, Eva’s. You see, Eva d’Orsey was his muse, his greatest source of inspiration. She gave him vision. And he gave her clarity, focus.’

Grace sat forward, eager to hear more. ‘A muse? So, was she beautiful?’

‘Not when I first met her. Then she was just a girl – awkward, unformed.’

‘Really?’

Madame smiled indulgently. ‘Most people assume that a muse is a creature of perfect beauty, poise and grace. Like the creatures from Greek mythology. They’re wrong. In fact, there should be a marked absence of perfection in a muse – a gaping hole between what she is and what she might be. The ideal muse is a woman whose rough edges and contradictions drive you to fill in the blanks of her character. She is the irritant to your creativity. A remarkable possibility, waiting to be formed.’

Madame picked up the bottle marked La Première. Very gently she eased the stopper off and held her nose above the bottle. Eyes closed, she inhaled.

She passed the bottle to Grace.

Gingerly, Grace smelled it too.

It was a heady, overwhelming veil of scent. At first it developed almost hypnotically into a floral, fruit bouquet; languid and sensual with a musky, almost dusty depth. But then a sharpness emerged, beautiful, icy, unexpected. There was something almost overwhelming about the lush complexity of the formulation, the sheer unbridled eroticism which came across in wave after wave of contrasting notes.

‘This is floral, earthy, and there’s the clean overlay of aldehydic waxiness and soft flowers,’ Madame explained. ‘And then, underneath, a whiff of more feral, impolite essences. Under the clean, innocent exterior there’s a carnal presence. It’s not without ulterior motive.’

Grace stared hopelessly. Here was a language she definitely didn’t understand. ‘I’m sorry?’

Madame Zed looked across at her. ‘This, Mrs Munroe, is the scent of intoxication and desire. The perfume of seduction.’