Belle - Lesley Pearse [135]
She was looking at the money, not him, and Noah thought she might be thinking it was enough for her to leave Paris and go back to her village for good.
‘Change your life,’ he urged her. ‘Leave this work for good. God will smile on you if Belle can be saved.’
Her conflicting emotions showed in her face. She wanted the money, perhaps even wanted to do the right thing for other young girls, but she was very afraid.
‘There is nothing to fear. No one will know you gave me any information. Be brave and bold, Cosette, for little Belle and others like her.’
She sighed deeply, then looked into his eyes. ‘La Celle St-Cloud,’ she said. ‘There is a big house at far end of village, it has a big stone bird by gate. Ask for Lisette, she is a good woman, she is a nurse. She will be cautious in telling you anything too for she has a little boy. You promise you will not say my name?’
‘I promise, Cosette,’ he said, and pressed the money into her hand and kissed her lips. ‘Get out of this work now,’ he urged her. ‘Go home and nurse your mother, marry a farmer and have many children. Find happiness!’
She put her hands on his shoulders and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on both cheeks.
‘I will pray you find Belle, and that she too can learn to be happy again. For most of us there is no way back.’ Her eyes filled with tears and spilled over. Noah was reminded of Millie and a lump came up in his throat. Millie had said something similar once; he hadn’t understood what she meant at the time, but he did now.
Early the next morning Noah set off to the south-west of Paris, to La Celle St-Cloud. From what he could gather it was around fourteen miles out of the city, not far from Versailles, and fortunately he could reach it by train. He had looked up the area in a guidebook, just to get a bit of background information, but apart from farming its only other claim to fame appeared to be the Château de Beauregard, a huge old mansion.
There was a brisk wind and a decidedly autumnal nip in the air, and Noah wished he’d thought to bring an overcoat with him. As he waited for the train, being jostled and shoved on the crowded platform, he shivered and thought that it was twenty months now since Belle had disappeared. ‘If you don’t learn anything new today, you must give up on her,’ he said to himself. ‘You cannot keep up this crusade.’
Noah walked all around La Celle St-Cloud, and was charmed by its attractive central square where old men sat smoking pipes and women bustled about buying their bread, meat and vegetables. After the frantic pace of Paris it was good to be somewhere quiet and calm.
He finally discovered the house Cosette meant after following two different roads to the edge of the village and finding only small houses. But on the third road he saw a big house ahead of him, and sensed it was the one he was looking for, just by the way it stood alone, the last house in the village.
There was a stone eagle on one gate post, and just a piece of broken stone on the other to show there had once been a matching pair. The house was at least a hundred yards from its nearest neighbour and surrounded by open countryside. A man was ploughing in the distance, a few birds were circling above him, and although it was a lovely view, it struck Noah that to anyone held in the house it might look frighteningly remote.
He looked up at the house appraisingly. It was big. There were four floors with eight windows just on the front, and a rather grand, albeit crumbling, portico around the front door. But then, the whole house and what he could see of the garden from the gate was somewhat neglected.
As he stood there, considering what reason he could offer for knocking at the front door, a young woman suddenly appeared round the side of the house. She was slender, with dark hair, and he guessed she was in her early thirties. She was wearing a grey shawl over her head and a dark blue dress, and held a shopping basket on her arm.
He took a deep breath, and as she reached the gate, he swept off his hat, flashed what he hoped was his