Belle - Lesley Pearse [181]
Gabrielle understood exactly what she meant, and she took the other woman’s hand between her own in reassurance. ‘I haven’t forgotten anything. But anything you can tell me will just be between us.’
Lisette told her everything she knew then: how Belle came to need nursing, how much she had liked her, and then about Noah Bayliss coming to see her.
‘I liked him a great deal too,’ she admitted. ‘I almost weakened to take up his offer of help to get me away from here. But I was too afraid.’
Gabrielle nodded. The people behind bringing young girls to France were ruthless, and it would be hard for Lisette to trust any man enough to keep her and her little boy safe.
‘But surely if this man Etienne was the one who took Belle to America he’s as bad as all the others? Why would she say she trusted him?’
Lisette shrugged. ‘Most of us caught up in this business have been forced into doing things we know are wrong, usually because they have a hold over us. That doesn’t mean we are all bad. I would say Belle must have touched Etienne’s good side, just as she did me, and you. She would’ve been with him for a long sea voyage, and they must have become friends. The Englishman Noah wanted me to try and contact him, to find out where he’d taken her. I tried at the time, but failed.’
Gabrielle sighed. ‘I don’t suppose he’d be any help with this now anyway.’
‘Probably not,’ Lisette said. ‘Especially as I heard he’d left the business. A story went round that his wife and two children were killed in a fire and he is a broken man. Of course, that might not be true. I’ve heard stories like that before, it could just be to keep all of us fearful.’
‘You mean someone could have done it purposely?’ Gabrielle said in horror.
‘Such things have been known, if someone steps out of line,’ Lisette said, looking around her furtively as if afraid she might be overheard.
Both women fell silent for a few minutes. Lisette finished her coffee and said she had to go. ‘I do have an address for Noah though,’ she said as she signalled to the waiter for the bill.
‘Really?’ Gabrielle gasped. ‘Will you let me have it?’
Lisette nodded. The waiter came over and Gabrielle paid him. The two women got up and began to walk away from the café. ‘I’ll slip in and get it for you,’ Lisette said. ‘I imagine your news will only make things worse for her family, but if Noah comes to Paris to see you, which I’m sure he will, please make him understand I can’t be involved.’
As the two women were talking together in La Celle St-Cloud, Belle was lying on the bed in the small locked room, trying very hard not to give in to complete panic.
She could only guess at the time by looking at the one tiny hole in the board over the window. It wasn’t even large enough to put her little finger through it. When she put her eye to it she could see nothing but a spot of sky. She didn’t know the hole was there until daybreak when a pin-prick of light came through it. She had searched the room for something sharp to make the hole larger, but without success. She had removed the thin mattress from the bed only to find there were no springs, just rope criss-crossing the wooden frame, and she had felt all over the floor with her fingertips hoping to find a nail or screw, but there was nothing.
The tiny beam of light was brighter now, so she had to assume it was afternoon and the sun was shining on it. But time didn’t have much meaning anyway, not as the rumbles of hunger increased steadily in her belly. There was water in the jug on the washstand, and she had drunk some of it earlier, but as she didn’t know when Pascal would come back, she had resolved only to take a few sips now and then.
She fervently hoped he would come back tonight. But what was he going to do with her then? She doubted he would let her go, he’d be afraid she would go to the police or the manager of the Ritz. But he couldn’t keep her here indefinitely. Was he planning to take her