Belle - Lesley Pearse [178]
She had of course arrived here in evening clothes, though she had been wearing a warm coat over her dress. She had never said where she came from that day, but as the Mirabeau was so close to the station, it was fairly obvious she’d run away from a man and caught a train to Paris.
Gabrielle didn’t normally take the slightest interest in her guests. As long as they were quiet, clean, respectful of her hotel and her other guests and paid what they owed, that was enough for her. Like any hotel owner, she’d had her share of difficult, unpleasant and troublesome guests in the five years she’d been here. She’d had gendarmes call to make an arrest, she’d had one woman commit suicide upstairs, irate husbands turn up looking for runaway wives; she’d even had a woman staying here who it transpired was in fact a man. There had been dozens of prostitutes asking for a room too. Usually she’d recognized what they were and refused them, but of those she hadn’t, as soon as they tried to bring in a man, she showed them the door.
Belle was a special case, however. She had arrived dishevelled, clearly distressed, with no luggage, and Gabrielle had expected trouble to follow her, but it hadn’t.
She realized what Belle was up to after the second time she arrived back early in the morning. Gabrielle was daunted then, experience, including some of her own mistakes in the same line of work, telling her that before long Belle would take liberties. But she did not, and was in fact the ideal guest, undemanding, appreciative of any little kindness, and extraordinarily discreet.
What had endeared Belle most to Gabrielle was her sparkle, good manners and warm smile. Gabrielle liked the way she learned some French and had grown to love Paris, and it was always a pleasure to see her so well turned out, stylish, pretty and ladylike.
Now it looked as if the anxiety Gabrielle had felt for her in the last week or two was not misplaced. She knew to her own cost that Paris was full of danger for girls like Belle. Not only were there thugs who would stop at nothing to get a cut of her earnings, but there were also madmen who developed fixations about girls as lovely as her.
At ten that evening Belle still had not returned and Gabrielle’s anxiety was becoming ever more acute. In desperation she went up to the girl’s room, turned on the light and looked around, hoping to find something which might give her a clue to where she had gone the previous evening.
As always, the room was neat and tidy, dresses hanging in the wardrobe, shoes beneath in a row, underclothes neatly folded in the drawers. There were a couple of English books beside the bed, a bottle of cologne on the dressing table, a hairbrush, a comb and a variety of hair clips and pins in a shallow tray.
A sketchbook by the bed was something of a surprise, for it just contained sketches of hats. While Gabrielle could speak quite good English she couldn’t read it very well, but she assumed the notes beneath each hat were of materials and ideas for how to make each one. She found it odd that Belle had aspirations to be a milliner, but judging by her lovely designs and the copious notes, she was serious about it.
All the clothes, toiletries and oddments in the room had been acquired since Belle had come here to live. She received no letters, and there was no pocketbook or diary to give a pointer to who she was and where she’d come from, or even addresses of friends and family back in England. The only communication she ever got was when an errand boy called with a note for her. Gabrielle assumed it was the most recent one lying on the dressing table.
She picked it up to read it. There was no address or name to say who or where it came from.
‘Monsieur Le Brun would like to see you tonight in Montmartre. A cab will come for you at seven,’ she read, and beneath this were just the initials E.P.
Le Brun was a common enough name, the kind that could even be a false one, so that was no help, and Montmartre had many restaurants, cafés and bars Belle could have been taken to. The boy who brought