After taking a town car back to Paris from Versailles, Charlie and Violet wandered along the quiet Rue Véron, taking in the ramshackle lodging houses with their peeling paint and worn wooden doors, the run-down galleries, assortment of second-handstores and a handful of lean-to market stalls. A busker played the fiddle on a corner and a young man with a wiry beard and frayed beret sat at a small table, sipping espresso and frantically pouring lines of script into his notebook.
Crammed between the grander Rue des Abbesses, Rue Lepic and Rue Germain Pilon, Rue Véron was the cheap, quiet quarter of Paris. A zig-zagged cobblestone street for the bohemian dreamers, artists and shift workers. The setting for the last part of Murger’s—and later Puccini’s interpretation of—La Bohème. Zola’s scandalous Nana lived in cramped conditions in a fourth-floor apartment on Rue Véron. It was a case of art mimicking the best of real life.
As they passed a pale lemon–coloured lodging house with a blue door, Violet pointed. ‘I believe that’s where Aleksandr lived when he first came to Paris. See, there’s his boxing ring across the road and …’ She turned to survey the street. ‘Édith Piaf was discovered here in this very street.’ She scratched her chin, looking thoughtful.
They’d stopped outside a double-fronted Art Deco shopfront with brass window frames. ‘Isn’t she pretty?’ sighed Violet. It was empty, except for some painters touching up the walls.
‘You should go inside. Look at that place, imagine all the bibs and bobs you collect displayed here. Half of Paris would come.’
‘Half of Paris is already here.’ Violet laughed as she pushed on the front door and stepped in to speak to two gobsmacked painters.
‘Espagnole!’ shrieked one of the painters when Violet started to speak. She switched to Spanish. Within minutes, the other man was wiping his hands with a towel, pointing out the solid stone walls and the display windows and pressing an agent’s card into her hand.
‘Do you really think I should open my own store?’ Violet bit her lip with uncharacteristic uncertainty. ‘I’ve been thinking about your idea. I had such fun staging last night’s show. And the last season too at the club and the Louvre. There are so many designers in Paris. Artists. Antique dealers and interior designers like Lady Ashworth … Imagine if I could design things, add props to all of them?’
‘You could use the shop to store your props and also add pretty things you collect. Keep that money coming in the door. It’s genius!’
‘You’re the one who put the idea in my head in Tours. The only thing is my family would never let me stay in Paris and open my own business. Our deal was that I would be back in London by the end of the year for the season. And hopefully married the year after.’
‘But you love Paris. You love Aleksandr!’
‘I love Aleksandr,’ repeated Violet slowly as if she was hearing it for the first time. ‘You know’—she pressed a dimple—‘I believe I really do. Which is going to make it hard when I leave. Who would have thought this girl would come to Paris and find love?’ Violet looped her arm through Charlie’s and pressed a cool cheekto her face as she tucked the agent’s card into her purse. ‘I’ll never be able to afford the rent of that shop. Double-fronted in the heart of the Montmartre. It would take all my savings. My mother wouldkillme. Then wouldn’t you have a story?’ She tickled Charlie in the ribs and said, ‘C’mon, you’re working. Let’s go find this interview.’
Charlie looked to her left and right, observing the washing flapping on lines strung across the balconies of the higher floors and the occasional red pelargonium scrambling out of its terracotta pot to escape over a tiny wrought-iron balcony. The scent of a hundred different kitchens mingled in the street: pots of soup, Polish dumplings, stews made of offcut briskets and lentils, creamy cauliflower or pumpkin. She sighed as her tummy started to rumble. ‘I have no idea where to start looking for Herr Hugh Koch. Short of doorknocking every boarding house.’ She kicked a bit of rubbish across the cobblestones and into the gutter. ‘Also, how are you not exhausted after that extravaganza last night?’
‘I could ask the same thing of you,’ quipped Violet. ‘I was most surprised to see a certain handsome detective in a rumpled tuxedo and an undone bow tie climb into his vehicle in the early hours of the morning as I loaded the trolley full of samples onto the truck with Aleksandr.’
‘Oh,’ said Charlie, dipping her head as her cheeks burned.
‘I hope it was better than “Oh”,’ said Violet. ‘You’ve waited this long in Paris for a little nocturnal adventure of your own. I hope it was—’
‘It was …’ said Charlie, embarrassed at this turn in conversation. Violet was so open about her love life, but Charlie just had this one blissful night and for the moment, she wanted to keep it sacred. Nestled into the corners of her brain. Her limbs still tingled from being tangled in sheets and another body all night. To speak of it would make their lovemaking real. She wanted to linger in a delicious dream. A dream she could go back to again and again, even if it wasn’t possible in reality.
For surely, it wasn’t? Allard was a detective, she an investigative reporter. They would mostly be at odds, concealing more than they could share—how would that ever work? Her boss, George, had been at the party and while she was certain he didn’t see Charlie leave with Allard, what if he had? The credibility she’d spent months earning would be crushed.
Last night was not a mistake. She regretted nothing. But Charlie James was enough of a pragmatist to know that it would never happen again.
She shook all thoughts of the handsome detective from her mind and said to Violet, ‘Not now. We need to focus on finding Koch. You know this area—where do we start?’ She threw her hands up, exasperated.
Violet held up her finger. ‘I know exactly where to go. Chez Ammad. All the locals along Rue Véron would pass through there at some point. Édith Piaf used to sing there—we might catch the next chanteuse if we’re lucky. You can write about it. “Thenext Édith Piaf.”’ She punched each word out with her hands, as though it were up in lights.
‘I think that would be a hard act to follow. Even so, sometimes I think you should be on the stage.’
‘It’s the drama queen in me, I know. I hate to disappoint you,mon amie, but I cannot sing. Not a note.’ Violet grabbed Charlie’s hand and pulled her in a light jog towards the bar.
‘Violet Carthage has a flaw? I don’t believe it.’ Charlie laughed as she clip-clopped in her new kitten heels across the cobblestones, wondering why she sounded like a Clydesdale while her friend was stealthy as a cat. Charlie needed more time in Paris. Also, more time in heels.
They walked through the front door into chaos. A piano in the corner belted out classics accompanied by a fiddler and a sporadic singer. Cream mosaic tiles stretched across the floor and wild, hand-painted murals of cartoon characters were scattered across the walls.
‘Local artists come in here and paint over the walls from time to time. When an account can’t be settled, well’—Violet waved her arms—‘there’s always more wall to be painted!’
Charlie and Violet elbowed their way through the afternoon crowd to the zinc bar, where they found stools. Violet held two fingers up to the barman and pointed at the bottle of Belle Époque open on the bar. Two flutes were poured and placed in front of them, along with some thin, homemade breadsticks dusted with salt and rosemary.
Charlie held up the champagne. ‘I really should not be drinking on the clock, but since we’re in this bar to chase a lead, let’s toast to your magnificent success. I phoned in the piece about last night to George this morning—he loved it. And he agreed to the full pictorial spread.’ Charlie knew if it was any other fashion house, they’d be lucky to get a page, but tough as George was, even he was no match for Violet’s charms. His paternal soft spot for Violet Carthage ran deep.
‘It was kind of George to come last night. Who knows? Maybe he’ll say something positive about it to my parents.’
‘Did you invite your parents?’