Eve squinted, her eyes bloodshot in the early morning light. “Clearly, I missed. Let’s get the hell out of this city and on to bloody Roubaix.”
Finn was right in his prediction: Eve was haggard and gray, moving stiffly as an old woman when she climbed into the car, but she said nothing about last night’s episode with the Luger. Finn did some tinkering under the hood, murmuring in a Scots burr that got thicker and croonier the more obstinate the Lagonda’s innards got—“You cannie aud heap, quit your stalling”—and finally he climbed in, adjusting the various dials and timing for start-up. “We’ll be taking it slow,” he said as we pulled away from the hotel in a rumble of gears. I turned my head and stared out the window. Take it slow, that certainly wasn’t Charlie St. Clair’s way. Forget about slow, just slug the whiskey, climb on a thirty-year-old Scotsman, and ask for a screw.
I don’t care what he thinks of me, I told myself. I don’t care. But humiliation still choked my throat.
Whore, came the whisper from my nasty inner voice, and I flinched. Maybe I didn’t need Finn and Eve for the rest of this journey. Eve had someone in Roubaix who might be able to tell us about the restaurant where Rose had worked in Limoges—after that, would Eve even want to stay with me? She didn’t seem to like me. I could pay her what I owed and send her staggering home with her Luger and her ex-convict driver, and I could board a train like a civilized person and take myself to Limoges to look for Rose. Subtract one Scot and one armed-and-dangerous Englishwoman from this equation, and I could conduct my insane quest by my insane self, unhampered by my even more demonstrably insane traveling companions.
“Today,” I said aloud, and Finn looked at me over his shoulder. “We need to get to Roubaix today.” The sooner the better.
Of course, the day that I couldn’t stand the car or the company anymore had turned into a beautiful day for a drive: all bright May sunshine and scudding clouds. It was a short distance to Roubaix, and no one objected when Finn took the Lagonda’s top down—even the Little Problem had decided it didn’t mind the car’s motion so much, so for once I didn’t spend the drive vomiting. I rested my chin on my arms, watching fields go by and wondering why the landscape seemed familiar, until something clicked. Another motoring trip, Rose’s family and mine, a couple of years after the time we got left behind at the Proven?al café. We’d driven past Lille into the countryside, and after a solemn day of touring churches and old monuments, Rose had rolled back the rug in our hotel room and taught me the Lindy Hop. “Come on, Charlie, let your feet go—” Moving so fast her curls bounced; tall and bosomy at thirteen, confessing afterward that she’d already had her first kiss. “Georges, the gardener’s boy. It was horrible. Tongue, tongue, and more tongue!”
I must have smiled at the memory, because Eve said, “Glad s-someone likes this region.”
“You don’t?” I tilted my head back at the sun. “Who wouldn’t rather be out here than looking at the rubble in London or Le Havre?”
“‘I’d sooner while alive invite the crows to drain the blood from my filthy carcass,’” Eve said, and added at my blink, “It’s a quote, you ignorant Yank. Baudelaire. A poem called ‘Le M-Mort Joyeux.’”
“The Joyful Corpse?” I translated, wrinkling my nose. “Ugh.”
“Bit creepy,” Finn agreed from behind the wheel.
“Quite,” Eve agreed. “So of course it was one of his favorites.”
“Whose?” I asked, but naturally she didn’t answer me. Did she have to be cryptic when she wasn’t being profane? It was like traveling with a whiskey-drinking sphinx. Finn caught me rolling my eyes and smiled, and I looked out at the rolling fields again.
Soon enough, Roubaix appeared on the horizon. A smaller place than Lille, dustier, quieter. A fine city hall, the spires of a Gothic-looking church passing as we chugged through. Eve passed Finn a scribbled address, and eventually we pulled up on a narrow cobbled curb before what looked like an antiques shop.
“The woman you need to speak with is here?” I asked, mystified. “Who is she?”
Eve swung out of the car, flinging her cigarette into the gutter with an expert flick of her maimed fingers. “Just someone who loathes me.”
“Everyone loathes you,” I couldn’t help pointing out.
“This one more than usual. C-come or don’t, as you like.”
She set off into the shop without a backward glance. I piled out after her as Finn cocked an elbow out the rolled-down window and began flipping through The Autocar again. Heart thumping, I followed Eve into the dim coolness of the shop.
It was a cramped and cozy little place. Tall mahogany cabinets lined the walls, a long counter made a barrier across the back, and everywhere I saw the porcelain gleam of china. Meissen urns, Spode tea sets, Sevres shepherdesses, and who knew what else. Behind the counter a woman in black updated an account book with a pencil stub, looking up at the sound of our entrance.
She was a sturdy woman about Eve’s age, with perfectly round spectacles and dark hair rolled into a neat bun. Like Eve, she had the graven lines of someone who’d lived hard. “May I help you, mesdames?”
“That depends,” said Eve. “You look well, Violette Lameron.”
That was a new name to me. I looked at the woman behind the counter, and her expression never changed. She tilted her head slowly until the lenses of her round glasses flared back the light.
Eve gave a one-note bark of laughter. “That old trick of yours, hiding your eyes! Christ, I’d forgotten that.”
Violette or whoever she was spoke evenly. “I haven’t heard that name in a long time. Who are you?”
“I’m a graying wreck and time hasn’t been kind, but think back.” Eve made a circling gesture over her own face. “Doe-eyed little thing? You never liked me, but then again, you never liked anyone except her.”
“Who?” I whispered, more mystified by the minute—but this time, I saw the other woman’s face ripple. She leaned forward over the counter despite herself, peering not into Eve’s face but through it, as though the lines of time were just a mask. I saw the blood drain out of the other woman’s face, leaving her skin starkly pale against her high black collar.
“Get out,” she said. “Get out of my shop.”
Jesus, I thought. What had we gotten ourselves into now?
“Collecting teacups, Violette?” Eve looked around the shelves of porcelain. “Seems a bit tame for you. Collecting the heads of your enemies, maybe . . . but then you’d have come after me.”
“You’re here now, so you must want me to kill you.” Violette’s lips barely moved. “You cowardly weak-kneed bitch.”
I recoiled as if I’d been slapped. But those two battle-axes just stood there with the counter between them, calm as if they were discussing china spoons. Such different women, one tall and gaunt and wrecked, the other sturdy and neat and respectable. But they faced each other erect and granite hard as pillars, and hatred boiled off them in black waves like smoke. I stood dry-mouthed and poisoned in its presence.