My confidence in speaking a foreign tongue grew with my indignation until at the end I was gesturing with my free hand like a true Frenchwoman. She sighed. “Very well. I will take you to their rooms, if you insist. You’ll have to wait for the trunk. My husband will bring it up when he returns. Me, I do not intend to carry it up five flights of stairs.” She started for the staircase. “Follow me,” she said.
I hoisted Liam higher on my hip, and followed her up the stairs, then a second flight, then a third. Our footsteps echoed in the high stairwell. We passed closed doors on each landing, there was no sign of life except for the woman in black and myself. As we started the fourth flight my weakness overcame me and I began to feel dizzy again.
“I must stop and rest,” I said, leaning against the bannister. “I have been unwell. That was why I couldn’t travel on from Le Havre before this. I should have been here two days ago.”
She spun around, glaring at me. “I hope you don’t bring a sickness into this house. What was wrong with you?”
“Mal de mer,” I said. “The ship came through a bad storm.”
“Oh, mal de mer.” She shrugged again as if I was making a fuss over nothing. “You are not at sea now, are you?” And on she went again, up the next flight, leaving me to stagger after her with Liam in my arms.
I managed to keep going because I had to and I was terrified of fainting with Liam in my arms. At the top of the stairwell there was a skylight and rain drummed on it loudly. The concierge stopped outside one of the doors, now breathing heavily herself, and stood, hand on bosom, catching her breath, before she produced a bunch of keys from her belt. She examined them, selected a key, then turned it in the keyhole. “Voilà, madame,” she said, and motioned for me to go in. “As you can see. There is nobody here. I leave you to decide what action you wish to take.”
“I will stay and await my friends,” I said. “And I will need a key if I choose to go out. Do you perhaps have an extra one?”
“In my office, downstairs,” she said. “I will want a deposit of five francs.”
“Madame is kind,” I said, with sarcasm. “I am Madame Sullivan. May I know your name?”
“Hetreau,” she said. “Madame Hetreau.”
I nodded, not able to bring myself to say I was pleased to make her acquaintance.
“I’ll leave you then,” she said, and slammed the door shut behind her.
I stood alone in a large, light room; sparsely furnished and with a cold, damp feel to it. The smell of oil paints, linseed oil, and foreign cigarettes lingered in the air. The high ceiling was molded and an improbably grand chandelier hung in the center of it. On one side long windows opened onto a narrow, wrought-iron balcony. Rain was streaking those long windows.
“Hello?” I called hopefully. No reply.
A look around me revealed a faded velvet sofa and two high-backed armchairs on one side, a dining table on the other, and in the window an easel set up with a canvas on it, a sheet beneath to catch the spatters. A palette of paints rested on a table beside it and brushes stood in a glass jar of some kind of cleaning fluid—was it turpentine? I tried to remember.
As I walked over to examine the painting I spotted Gus’s favorite black fringed shawl thrown carelessly over the back of the sofa. A book lay open on a side table. Sid’s ebony-and-silver cigarette holder lay across an ashtray. There was a loaf of bread on the table, crumbs on plates, fruit in the fruit bowl, a cheese board with rind lying on it. Everything about the scene indicated that this was a room in which people had been living until very recently. More than that—as if people were in the process of living in it at this moment. I half expected them to come leaping out from that door on the left, laughing at my face. “Surprised you, didn’t we, Molly. How did you like our little trick?”