I felt my feet dragging as we went up the stairs. It had been another day of foot-slogging and frustration. And all I had to encourage me were two postcards. I realized I hadn’t studied the postmarks and how stupid this had been. If they had both been mailed from a community outside Paris then I’d know that my friends were there and trying to contact me. I couldn’t think why they’d need to contact me in this fashion, but it gave me enough hope to take the last two flights of stairs more quickly. Liam was a bit clingy this evening, finally resenting the fact that his mother wasn’t with him enough. He didn’t want to be put down, so I held him on my hip while I put the postcards down side by side on the table.
They were both posted in Paris. I let out a sigh of disappointment. And this latest one had been mailed the day I arrived. So that was one day before the postcard of the tea-drinking woman. Someone was sending me one postcard per day. Surely that was significant? Then I turned them over and examined the paintings. Both in the Impressionist style, most attractive. I wondered for a moment whether they had been painted by Reynold Bryce, since I knew he had specialized in painting children once upon a time. But his angelic child had been more idealized and sentimental than this—a true painting of the Victorian era. This painting of mother and child was real and alive. Were they both by the same person? I studied the signature but it was too small to read.
Tomorrow I would show the postcards to the artists I had met, both at the Nouvelle Athènes and across the Seine in Montparnasse. One of them must surely recognize the painter. And if they did, then what? I asked myself. What would that tell me? All I could say was that someone was sending me pretty pictures. They were nothing like Gus’s paintings, so I couldn’t take it as a sign that they were from her. And they were sent from someone who didn’t even know my name.
I played with Liam, trying to be the bright and cheerful mother he deserved, but it was hard when my head was so full of worry. I’d have to go to the police. To Inspector Henri. Then to the hospitals and morgues as planned. And if nothing turned up, I’d have to do the inevitable and write to Daniel asking him to book me a passage home before my money ran out even if that meant putting myself and my child back in danger. We ate, bathed, and fell asleep. I hoped for some kind of instructive dream, but I was so tired that I don’t remember dreaming at all. Next morning I awoke early, fed Liam, dressed, and waited impatiently to resume my quest. It wasn’t that I was looking forward to possible visits to a hospital or a morgue, or to the police, but I wasn’t good at sitting and doing nothing, and there was no point in visiting the cafés too early in the day. Artists did not seem to be early risers. And if I wanted to enlist the help of Miss Stein, then I knew she didn’t receive guests before luncheon.
Liam was in a particularly affectionate mood, wrapping his little arms around my neck when I picked him up and covering my cheek with sticky kisses. So I sat him on my knee and bounced him to his favorite song, “Horsey, horsey don’t you stop. Just let your feet go clippety clop.” Watching him laugh gleefully as he flew up and down made me forget my anxiety for a few moments and did us both good. But then, of course he was not as anxious to be left with Madeleine and I felt guilty when I crept away while he was engaged with his Noah’s ark. It wasn’t right to keep leaving my son like this. But then I reminded myself that rich children were raised entirely by nannies and only saw their mothers on special occasions. I knew he was safe and warm and well-fed and I simply couldn’t carry him around with me all day.
I set off down Rue des Martyrs and made first for the Nouvelle Athènes. I could see the usual group of young men around their table as I walked in. The enticing aroma of coffee enveloped me and I thought how lovely it would be to be free enough to spend every morning sitting with friends, with all the time in the world. Then I reminded myself that as well as having no set schedule and no responsibilities, these young men lived in a tumbledown shack without heat or running water and had to sell a painting in order to eat. Not such an enviable life after all!
Some of them looked up as I came in and I noticed that Maxim Noah was among them today.
“It’s the good lady from America,” he said. “You have had second thoughts? You come to buy a painting today?”
“As if she’d buy one from you when she could have one of mine at a good price,” the young Spaniard Picasso said. “One can see that the lady has good taste.”
I had to smile. “I’m afraid I can’t afford to buy from either of you, even at a good price,” I said. “I came back because I need your help. I am still looking for my missing friends—for your cousin, Maxim. I have heard nothing from them since I arrived here and I am very concerned. But in the past two days I have received two postcards and I wondered what you could tell me about the paintings on them.”
I placed the two postcards in front of them.
“Old style Impressionism of the last century,” one of them muttered. But Picasso said, “Surely, they are Cassatt? I recognize the brushstrokes.”
“Cassatt?” I tried to remember if this was a word I had heard before.
“Mary Cassatt,” Picasso said. “Not a bad painter for an Impressionist.”
“Do you know where I would find her? Does she live in Paris?”
“She used to live just around the corner but I hear she has moved away.”