The Paris Winter

by Imogen Robertson

Genres: Historical Mysteries; Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Paris, 1909: a city of contrasts and of ambition, of beauty and of treachery

Maud Heighton came to Lafond's famous Académie to paint, and to flee the constraints of her small English town. It took all her courage to escape, but Paris eats money. While her fellow students enjoy the dazzling joys of the Belle Époque, Maud slips into poverty. Quietly starving, and dreading another cold Paris winter, Maud takes a job as companion to young, beautiful Sylvie Morel. But Sylvie has a secret: an addiction to opium. As Maud is drawn into the Morels' world of elegant luxury, their secrets become hers. Before the New Year arrives, a greater deception will plunge her into the darkness that waits beneath this glittering city of light.

Release date: November 18, 2014

Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Print pages: 368

Sample

CHAPTER 1

THE NEWS OF THE SUICIDE OF ROSE CHAMPION reached
her fellow students at the Acadmie Lafond on a pale wintry morning a
little before ten o'clock. The heat from the black and clanking stove had
not yet reached the far corners of the studio, and the women on the outer
reaches of the group had to blow on their fingers to make them warm
enough to work. Maud Heighton was always one of the first to arrive each
day and set up her easel, which meant she could have taken her pick of places
on each Monday when the model for the week was chosen, but the Englishwoman
liked to sit on the far eastern side of the room. The challenge of the narrow angle
she had on the model throne and whatever man, woman or child happened to occupy
it seemed to please her – and she returned to the spot week after week when
warmer ones, or those with an easier angle of view were available.
She was there that morning, silent and studious as ever, when
the news of Rose's death came tumbling up the stairs, so she was
among the first to hear it. It was unfortunate – shocking even –
that the news reached the female students so raw and sudden, but
even in the best-run establishments, such things do occur.
It was by chance the women painting in Passage des Panoramas
heard so quickly and so brutally of the tragedy. One of Lafond's male students, a young romantic Englishman called John Edwards,
lived in the room beside Rose Champion's in a shabby tenement
hunkered off the Boulevard Clichy. It was an unpleasant building
without gas or electricity, and with only one tap which all the
inhabitants had to share. He knew his neighbour was a student in
one of the all-female ateliers, but she was not pretty enough to
attract his attention, not while the streets were full of French girls
who made it their business to charm the male gaze; what's more,
he assumed that as a woman she would have little of interest to say
about art. When he took up his residence, though, he noticed that
Rose kept herself and her threadbare wardrobe clean and approved
of that, then thought no more about her. In the month they had
been neighbours they had had one short conversation on the stairs
about the teaching at Acad.mie Lafond. It ended when he asked
to see her work and Rose told him he wouldn't understand it. He
had wished only to be polite and was offended by her refusal. They
did not speak again.
The walls that divided their rooms were thin and he happened
to be awake and waiting that morning for the matt-grey light of
the Paris dawn to filter into the sky. It was the hour and the season
when the city looked unsure of itself. In the full darkness, the clubs
and cabarets shone like the jewels. The city then was a woman in
evening dress certain of her beauty and endlessly fascinating. The
air smelled of roasting chestnuts, and music spilled out of every
caf., humble or luxurious, into the streets. In the full light of day
Paris was chic and confident. The polished shops were filled
with colour and temptation and on every corner was a scene worth
painting.
It was modern without being vulgar, tasteful without
being rigid or dull. A parade of elegant originality. Only in this
hour, just before dawn on a winter's morning, did the city seem a
little haggard, a little stale. The shutters were up and the caf.s all closed or closing. The streets were almost empty – only the
occasional man, purple in the face and stale with smoke and drink,
hailing a cab in Place Pigalle, or the old women washing out the
gutters with stiff-brushed brooms.
Sitting in the window with a blanket round his shoulders and
his pipe clamped between his teeth, John Edwards was thinking
about Matisse, his solid blocks of colour that at times seemed ugly,
but with an ugliness more honest than beauty. He pictured himself
making this argument to the poets and painters who gathered at Le
Lapin Agile in Montmartre; he imagined them nodding seriously
then telling their friends they had found an Englishman of talent
and wisdom. They would introduce him to the most interesting art
dealers in the city, the most advanced collectors and critics. He
would write a manifesto . . .
He was enjoying the opening night of his first sensational solo
show when he heard the sound of a chair overturning and the creak
of a rope. There was no doubt where it came from. He dropped
the blanket from his shoulders, ran into the corridor and started
hammering at the door, calling her name, then rattling the handle.
It was locked. By the time he put his shoulder to the door, the
other residents of the house had emerged from their rooms and
were watching, peering over the banister rails, their eyes dull with
the new day. Finally the lock splintered and he tumbled into the
room. She had hung a rope from one of the central beams. Her
body still swung a little from side to side like a pendulum just
before it stops completely. John had to scream in the face of the
waiter who lived in the other room on this floor before he would
help him get her down. It was too late. She was most likely dead
even before he had begun shouting her name.
They laid her on the bed and one of the women went to phone
the police from Le Rat Mort on Place Pigalle. He waited with the body until they arrived. The misery in the room pressed on him, as
if Rose Champion had left a desperate ghost behind her to whisper
in his ear about the hopeless vanity of his ambitions.
By the time the police arrived, John Edwards was not young
or romantic any more. Once the gendarmes had been and the
morgue van had taken away the body, he packed his trunk and
left the building for good. He called at Acad.mie Lafond to
inform his professor what had happened and of his decision to
leave Paris, but his master was not there and the rather off-hand
way Mrs Lafond spoke to him irritated his already over-strung
nerves. Rather than leave a note he simply told her what had
happened, perhaps rather more graphically than necessary and
without regard to the fact there was a servant in the room. The
latter's shocked face haunted him as he prepared to return to his
mother's comfortable house in Clapham and resume his career as a
clerk at Howarth's Insurance Company in the City. There can be
too much truth.
The servant in the room was the maid who tended to the ladies
in the Passage des Panoramas atelier. She left the offices in Rue
Vivienne before Mme Lafond could tell her to keep the news to
herself and so it escaped, awkward and disturbing and stinking
of misery.

Even though the women who studied at Acad.mie Lafond paid
twice the fees the men did, their studio accommodation was no
more than adequate. The only light came from the glassed ceiling
and the room was narrow and high, so that it seemed sometimes as
if their models were posing at the bottom of a well. The stove was
unpredictable and bad-tempered. Nevertheless it was worth paying the money to be able to study art. The rough manners of the male
students meant that no middle-class woman could work in a mixed
class – and sharing life models with male students caused ugliness.
At the women-only studios a female could prepare for a career as
an artist without sacrificing her dignity or reputation, and even if
the professional artists who visited them did not spend as much
time guiding their female students, at least they did come, so the
modest women could make modest progress and their families
could trust that although they were artists, their daughters were
still reasonably sheltered. The suicide of a student put a dangerous
question-mark over this respectability, and news of it would
probably have been suppressed if it had been given privately. As it
was, it spilled out of Lafond's office and made its way up the stairs
and into the room where Maud Heighton and her fellow students
were at work.
Maud, perched on a high stool with her palette hooked on her
thumb, heard their teaching assistant exclaim and turned her head.
Mademoiselle Claudette was making the sign of the cross over her
thin chest. That done, she squeezed her almond-shaped eyes closed
for a second, then helped the maid set down the kettle on the top
of the stove. When it was safe, she placed a hand on the servant's
shoulder.
Maud frowned, her attention snagged by that initial gasp. There
was some memory attached to the sound. Then it came to her. It
was just the noise her sister-in-law, Ida, had made on the morning
of the fire. Her brother, James, had driven the car right up to Maud
where she stood at the front of the fascinated crowd, her hair down
and her face marked with soot. Ida had got out of the car without
waiting for James to open the door for her, looked at the smoking
ruins of the auctioneer's place of business and the house Maud and
James had grown up in, and given just that same gasp.
Maud turned towards Mademoiselle Claudette the moment the
older woman rested her hand on the maid's shoulder. The assistant
was normally a woman of sharp, nervous movements, but this
gesture was softly intimate. Maud wanted to click her fingers to
stop the world, like a shutter in a camera, and fix what she saw: the
neatly coiffed heads of the other young women turned away from
their easels, the model ignored, all those eyes leading towards
the two women standing close together by the stove. The finished
painting formed in Maud's mind – a conversation piece entitled
News Arrives. The shaft of light reaching them from above fell
across Mademoiselle Claudette's back, while the maid's anxious
face was in shadow. Was it possible to capture shock in paint,
Maud wondered – that moment of realisation that today was not
going to be as other days?
Mademoiselle Claudette ushered the maid out into the hallway
then closed the door to the studio behind them. The semi-sacred
atmosphere of concentration still hung over the women, keeping
them silent, but no one put brush to canvas again. They paused
like mermaids just below the water, waiting for one of their number
to be the first to break the surface, into the uncertain air.
‘Rose Champion is dead!' Francesca blurted out. It was done. A
flurry of exclamations ran around the room. The high walls echoed
with taps and clicks as palettes were put aside, brushes set down
and the women looked at the plump Prussian girl who had spoken.
Her eyes were damp and her full bottom lip shook. The high collar
on her blouse made her look like a champagne bottle about to
burst. ‘The maid said she killed herself. She was found hanged in
her room this morning. Oh Lord, have mercy on us! Poor Rose!'
She looked about her. ‘When did we see her last?'
‘Not since summer, I think,' a blonde, narrow-hipped girl
answered, one of the Americans whose French accent remained unapologetically Yankee. ‘She didn't come back this year, did she?'
There was general agreement. ‘Did anyone see her about since
then?'
‘I saw her,' Maud said at last, remembering even as she spoke.
She felt the eyes of the women swing towards her, she who spoke
so rarely. ‘She was in the Tuileries Gardens sketching Monsieur
Pol with his sparrows.' The other women nodded. Pol was one of
the sights of Paris, ready to be admired just outside the Louvre in
his straw boater, whistling to the birds, and calling to them by
name. ‘It was a month ago perhaps. She was thinner, but . . . just
as she always was.'
One of the students had begun to make the tea and the boiling
water splashed a little. The girl cursed in her own language, then
with a sigh put down the kettle and produced a coin from her
pocket to pay her fine. Claudette used the money to buy the little
cakes and pastries the women ate during their morning breaks.
When funds were low they fined each other for inelegant phrasing.
In the Paris art world, Lafond's girls were said to paint like
Academicians and speak like duchesses.
‘Poor Rose,' Francesca said more softly. The women sighed and
shook their heads.
The room was filling with cigarette smoke and murmured
conversation. ‘La pauvre, la pauvre . . .' echoed round the studio
like a communal prayer.
Maud looked to see if any painting of Miss Champion's
remained on the walls. Perhaps once a month during his twiceweekly
visits to his students, M. Lafond would nod at one of the
women's paintings and say, ‘Pop it up, dear.' It was a great honour.
Francesca had cried when Lafond had selected one of her pictures.
He had not yet selected any work of Maud's. She had submitted
successfully to the official Paris Salon early this year – the head and shoulders oil portrait of a fellow student – but even if the
Academicians approved of her worked, careful style and thought it
worthy of exhibition in the Grand Palais, Lafond did not think
she had produced anything fresh enough for his draughty attic
classroom.
Maud had written to her brother and sister-in-law about having
the painting in the exhibition. Even in the north-east of England
they had heard of the Paris Salon, but the reaction had not been
what she had hoped for. If James had sounded proud or impressed,
she might have asked him for a loan and used the money to spend
the summer in Fontainebleau and recover her health out of the
heat and dust of the capital. All the other women she worked with
seemed to have funds to do so. Instead he had asked if a sale were
likely, reminding her that she still owed him ten pounds. Her little
half-brother Albert though had sent her a cartoon of a great crowd
of men in hats grouped round a painting and shouting Hurrah!
There had been no sale. Her portrait hung high on the walls, and
surrounded by so many similar works, it went unnoticed.
There was a canvas from Rose Champion. It showed the Place
Pigalle in early-morning light. The human figures were sketchy
and indistinct, blurred by movement. One of the new doubledecker
motor-buses, identifiable only by its colours and bulk,
rattled along the Boulevard Clichy. By the fountain a few rough
female figures lounged – the models, mostly Italian, some French,
who gathered there every morning waiting for work from the artists
of Montmartre and Pigalle. They were scattered like leaves under
the bare, late-autumn trees. Rose had lavished her attention on the
light; the way it warmed the great pale stone buildings of Paris into
honey tones; the regular power and mass of the hotels and
apartment blocks, the purple and green shadows, the glint on the
pitch-black metalwork around the balconies. The American was right, Rose had not returned to the studio after the summer, but
the picture remained. M. Lafond must have bought it for himself.
Maud felt as if someone were pressing her heart between their
palms. The girl was dead and she was still jealous.
‘She was ill,' the American said to Francesca. ‘I called on her
before I left for Brittany this summer. She said everything she had
done was a failure and that there was . . .' she rubbed her fingertips
together ‘. . . no money. I've never seen a woman so proud and so
poor. Most girls are one or the other, don't you agree?'
‘I saw her a week ago,' said an older woman, sitting near the
model. Her shoulders were slumped forward. ‘She was outside
Kahnweiler's gallery. She seemed upset, but she wouldn't talk to
me.'
Maud wondered if Rose had seen something in the wild angular
pictures sold by Kahnweiler which she herself was trying to achieve
but could not – whether that would have been enough to make her
hang herself. Or was it hunger? More likely. Hunger squeezed the
hope out of you. Maud held her hand out in front of her. It shook.
I hate being poor, she thought. I hate being hungry. But I will
survive. Another year and I shall be able to paint as I like and
people will buy my work and I shall eat what I want and be warm.
If I can just manage another winter.
She looked up, possessed by that strange feeling that someone
was eavesdropping on her thoughts. Yvette, the model for the lifeclass
that week, was watching her, her dressing-gown drawn
carelessly up over her shoulders as she sat on the dais, tapping her
cigarette ash out on the floor. She was a favourite in the studio,
cheerfully complying when asked for a difficult pose, still and controlled
while they worked but lively and happy to talk to them
about other studios and artists in her breaks. Yvette was a little
older than some of the girls, and occasionally Maud wondered what she thought of them all as she looked out from the dais with
those wide blue eyes, what she observed while they tried to mimic
the play of light across her naked shoulders, her high cheekbones.
Now the model nodded slightly to Maud, then looked away. Her
face, the angle of it, suggested deep and private thought.
Mademoiselle Claudette returned and soon realised that the
news she had to give was already known. The facts she had to offer
were simply a repeat of what Francesca had already overheard.
‘Is there anyone here who knows anything of Miss Champion's
people in England?'
‘I believe she had an aunt in Sussex she lived with as a child,'
Maud said into the silence that followed. ‘But I have no idea of her
address. Were there no letters?'
‘We shall discover something, I hope. Very well.' The woman
looked at her watch. ‘It is ten to the hour. Let us return to work at
ten minutes past. Monsieur Lafond asks me to tell you that in light
of this unhappy event he will reserve the pleasure of seeing you
until tomorrow.' There was a collective groan around the room.
Mademoiselle Claudette ignored it, but frowned as she clicked the
cover back onto her watch and turned to the tea-table.
‘Does he fear a plague of suicides if he tells us we are miserable
oafs today?' Francesca said, a little too loudly. The students began
to stand, stretch, make their way to the pile of teacups and little
plates of cakes.
‘My darlings, good day! How are you all on this dismal morning?
Why is everyone looking so terribly grim?' Tatiana Sergeyevna
Koltsova made her entrance in a cloud of furs and fragrance. Maud
smiled. It was a pleasure to look at her. For all that she was Russian, it seemed to Maud that Tanya was the real spirit of Paris, the place
Maud had failed to become part of: bright, beautiful, modern,
light. She would chat to Yvette or tease Lafond himself and they
all seemed to think her charming. Not all the other women students
liked her, no one with looks, talent and money will be short of
enemies, but Tanya seemed blissfully ignorant of any animosity
directed towards her.
Francesca straightened up from the tea-table where she had
been leaning. ‘Be gentle with us today, my sweet. There's been a
death in the family.'
The Russian's kid glove flew up to cover her pretty little mouth.
At the same moment she let her furs drop from her shoulders and
her square old maid bundled forward to gather them in her arms
before they could pool onto the paint-stained floor. Maud watched
as Francesca lowered her voice and explained. The Russian was
blinking away tears. That was the thing about Tanya. She could be
genuinely moved by the sufferings of others even as she threw off
her cape for her maid to catch. She arrived late every day and one
could still smell on her the comfort of silk sheets, chocolate on her
breath. Then she would paint, utterly absorbed, for two hours until
the clock struck and the women began to pack away. She would
shake herself and look about her smiling, her canvas glowing and
alive with pure colour.
Yvette tied her dressing-gown round her then clambered down
from the model throne on the dais and passed the table, dropping
the stub of her cigarette on the floor and grabbing up a spiced cake
in the same moment. As she chewed she put her hand on the
Russian's elbow and led her away into a far corner of the room.
The movement seemed to wake Maud. She stood and went over to
the food and helped herself, trying not to move too urgently nor
take too much. She ate as slowly as she could.
The Russian materialised at her side like a spirit while she was
still licking her lips. ‘Miss Heighton?' Maud was startled, but
managed a ‘Good morning'. She had never had any conversation
with Tanya, only watched her from a distance as if she were on the
other side of a glass panel. ‘I know it is not the most pleasant day
for walking, but will you take a little stroll with me after we pack
away today? I have something particular to ask you.'
Maud said she would be pleased to do so. Tanya smiled at her,
showing her sharp white teeth, then turned to find her place amidst
the tight-packed forest of easels. Maud steered her own way back
to her place on the other side of the room and stared at the canvas
in front of her, wondering what the Russian could want with her.
The model was once again taking her place on the raised platform.
She glanced at Maud and winked. Maud smiled a little uncertainly
and picked up her brush.
An atmosphere of quiet concentration began to fill the room
once more – Rose Champion already, to some degree, forgotten.
The food seemed to have woken Maud's hunger rather than
suppressed it. She closed her eyes for a moment, waiting for the
sting of it to pass, then set to work.