Belle - Lesley Pearse [187]
Hunger was making her weak and dizzy. She was no longer sure whether it was two or three days she’d been here. Was that Pascal’s plan? To make her so weak she wouldn’t be able to fight him when he came back? Or was he intending to leave her here to die?
From time to time she could smell food cooking, it wafted in to tantalize her. If there was a restaurant that close, why couldn’t anyone hear her shouting and banging? She’d been doing it mostly when there was no light coming through the small hole, with the idea that someone was more likely to hear when there was less noise on the streets. But she couldn’t distinguish between evening and night, or how long she’d slept at one time.
Twice she had heard an accordion playing. It was a common sound in Paris, one she’d found enchanting when she had been free. If that sound could reach her ears, why oh why couldn’t anyone hear her?
She shuffled back to the bed, feeling the bent and broken hairpins beneath her feet which she’d tried and failed to fashion into tools to pick the lock on the door. She had nothing more to use now; she’d taken out the whalebone stiffeners in the bodice of her dress and removed her suspenders, and broken every last one of them. She was defeated. And there was less than two inches of water left in the jug to drink.
She might as well just lie down and wait to die. It was hopeless.
Chapter Thirty-one
Gabrielle was sitting at her desk in the hall when a man walked in. She noticed his pale grey suit first, for it was sharply cut, and it was rare for any of her male guests to be that expensively dressed or to have the presence this man had. Then, as he spoke, the combination of his deep voice and his cold blue eyes stunned her for a moment. ‘I’m Etienne Carrera,’ he said. ‘I believe you are expecting me.’
She could only gasp foolishly. ‘I was hoping you’d come, but I didn’t dare to expect it,’ she managed to get out, feeling like a silly sixteen-year-old. After a moment’s hesitation she got up and held out her hand to shake his. ‘I am Gabrielle Herrison. And I’m so very pleased to see you. Can I get you some coffee and something to eat? You’ve had a long journey.’
‘A coffee would be good while we talk,’ he said.
She rang a little bell, and an older woman wearing a white apron came out of the dining room. ‘Ah, Jeanne! Would you bring some coffee for us up to my sitting room?’
She led the way up to a half-landing and showed Etienne into a small room which overlooked the back yard. It was bright with the late afternoon sun, and simply furnished with a couch, a couple of armchairs and a table and chairs by the window. She removed some schoolbooks of Henri’s from one of the armchairs. ‘My son’s,’ she said. ‘He should be up here doing his homework but he’s slipped out. Do sit down.
‘I can hardly believe you could get here so quickly,’ she went on once she was sitting opposite him. ‘You must have left Marseille as soon as Marcel’s brother spoke to you?’
He nodded. ‘I sensed the urgency. Now tell me, how long has Belle been staying here, and where had she come from?’
‘She arrived just after Christmas. I suspect she’d come from the south as Gare de Lyon serves that part of France. She didn’t tell me anything about herself, just asked for a room in English. But I guessed she’d run from someone as she was wearing an evening dress under her coat, with no hat, scarf, gloves or luggage. Later she asked me if I knew a good second-hand clothes shop as she’d had her luggage stolen.’
Jeanne rapped on the door and came in with a pot of coffee and cups on a tray. Gabrielle waited until she’d left the room, then quickly launched into how she’d guessed what Belle was doing for a living.
‘Normally when I realize this, I ask them to leave,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you will understand that trouble often follows such women. You let one in and her friends