Chapter Two

Fred Abberline had sat for a good while after Lily had departed, letting his body sink back down and the day’s events find their order—a missing Fabergé egg, a missing dancer, and a comte and comtesse, neither of whom was going to win an acting award and that was guaranteed, except maybe in the music hall with their faces painted with grotesque and over-exaggerated emotion. He had not been introduced to the other men who lounged in chairs in the parlour of the Richelieu mansion. Clearly the comte viewed the whole affair as clear cut as his God-given right to more wealth than any one in the whole of Montmartre could comprehend; he had reported the crime, informed the gendarme of the culprit, and that surely was that. The Inspector smiled a bit as his hands ran through his hair and he stepped out into the hall. Sometimes the disregard the upper class had for their inferiors made them assume you were stupid as well as poor.

He had studied alcohol very intimately, maybe with a little more enthusiasm and detail than was strictly necessary, and he would know Russian vodka on someone’s breath even from across a Louis XIV carpet. “Just find the strumpet and the egg, Inspector, and your career will be…how shall I put it?...restored,” the comte had hardly even given him the respect of looking into his eyes. As far as Abberline knew, the French nobility rarely kept track of the pension plans of lowly English coppers, so he had nodded with the required subservience and renewed his sensual interrogation of the surroundings. More curiously, he thought as he paused at the door that opened out onto the dark twinkling Paris night and slipped his arms into his soft brown jacket, a case that was of “national importance” according to the Commissioner, had somehow landed on his lap. Something was very definitely not right.

Then there was Lily DuBois, who, if nothing else, spoke with directness that every sense he had said was right. She also made his blood flow faster and stronger than he could remember. Fred Abberline rolled a thin brown cigarette between his fingers and leaned back against the wall. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been chased by the wives of colleagues. Christ, even the Commissioner’s wife had felt it necessary to run her foot up his leg while he tried to concentrate on the duck à l’orange at some banquet. He’d found it relatively hard to give his full attention to the asparagus tips in butter after that, hard but not impossible. Oh, and there had been all those women his well-meaning associates had introduced him to, thus necessitating endless trips to the opera and theatre that left his mouth aching from the dual efforts of smiling and chatting about the sorts of subjects he had no desire to know any more about.

Lily, on the other hand, he thought as he touched the match to the soft brown end of his rollup, thudded through his veins in some way he had only a distant memory of. Jesus, he needed to stop thinking about her like this; it was really not doing anything for his concentration or his appearance. She was still at work, he shook his head while he buttoned up his jacket and looked up at the stage door, but she should be leaving soon.

* * *

With grim thoughts still in her mind, Lily bid adieu to Gabrielle after the curtain finally fell and stepped out in the street alone. A shudder of damp air and shock gripped her bare shoulders as Lily looked up to see the man waiting for her by the grandly named Stage Door. Anxious to cover her fright, she smiled a little, “It’s cold, Monsieur Inspector,” and waited for his explanation as to why he would be still here. If he was honest with himself, he wasn’t quite sure.

They were so close she could see that the bristles on his chin and the creases of his shirt, some that were meant to be there and others that plainly were not. Lily took another look at this man just as his lips parted in introduction, “Abberline...Inspector Frederick Abberline.” There was a softness to his voice that maybe he nor she expected, and they both took a step back. “Let me lend you my cape. I would like to talk with you some more, Lily. I need to know more about the Comte de Richelieu.” Alright so that might have been true, but all the same, Fred Abberline didn’t quite dare look down as he wrapped his cape around her shoulders. Lily smiled a bit. She was going to enjoy figuring him out if only for the amount of time it took for the warmth of his body still deep in this cloth to take the chill from hers.

The climb up the uneven cobbled streets was not an easy one, but Lily had dancer’s legs, strong and powerful. Abberline, from what she could see, was fit too. A light drizzle that was threatening to turn to rain had dampened his clothes, and without the cape, his wet jacket hugged  the curves of his arms. But all the same, he was breathing too heavily. A doorway offered shelter and a place to catch his breath.

“You are ill, Inspector?” Lily couldn’t help herself from worrying, consumption crept under the doors and in through the windows of too many houses in this city.

Abberline held his hand out for her to join him under the stone and at once pulled tobacco from a pouch in his pocket, a wry smile on his mouth, “Only from my own doing.”

Lily withdrew her hand and flashed at him, “I wish that all the citizens of the Montmartre had such a choice, Monsieur Inspector. Now ask me your questions, unless of course you have little interest in the truth.”

Frederick Abberline lowered his eyes in contrition, “A fair point.” Lily watched smoke curl lazily through his lips and caught herself leaning a little. “You are entirely right, we need to proceed without delay,” his voice just breaking her thought. The Inspector tossed his cigarette into a puddle where it fizzled for just a second and strode out into the rain leaving Lily to catch up. He was still thinking as they walked in the Paris night, but the elements had their own ideas. It was pouring now, absolutely pouring with rain, and in the seconds that they half ran to the next doorway they were already soaked, the curls of Lily's hair dripping all down her skin.

“Just one drink then, until it dies down?” Lily almost shouted over the clatter of rain on the lead roofs, pointing to a yellow light that flickered down the hill. Abberline, well in an instant he had justified the thought of “more information” before his body took over again and he felt a quite unfamiliar throb.

The dash to the bar had Lily and Abberline holding the cape above their heads, but for the good it did, they may as well have laid down in the road and let themselves be washed there. Bursting through the door into what was possibly one of the roughest bars in Montmartre they were laughing and gasping both, he really did look rather sweet with rain drops on his eyelashes. Lily shook her head, sending a cascade of drips over his waistcoat, “I suppose I was wet anyway,” just a quick smile and they stepped up to the bar.

“What will you drink, Lily?” His voice fell like a full bottle of gin between them, in fact you might just have been able to hear the sound of it rolling over the floor in the silence. Inspector Abberline screwed up his eyes. It was so easy to feel comfortable with this woman, so easy to assume they were something else because of the heat he could feel, too easy to forget he was a copper and she, well...she was a dancer…a singer...a wild thing...a possible witness in a case...and she was fucking beautiful, even when she looked at him, as she had done already an alarming number of times in the few short hours since he had met her, like she was about to hit him hard. His hands came up in a gesture of compliance, “Sorry, you can buy me one instead if that feels better. I meant nothing by it.”

Lily was damned if she was going to buy him a drink. What did he think she was? Desperate for his company? Christ, he was lucky she would sit at the table with him. Lily Dubois drinking with a copper! What if someone saw her? She had a quick look round the room anyhow. But that left her with a problem and her cheeks coloured; she had no purse, no money, and now she really wanted a drink.

“As long as it is established, Inspector, that the drink is neither payment for information nor anything else.”

“Most assuredly, my solemn promise I will not hold you to any bargain.”

“Then I will have a dark ale."

“And some of that cassoulet, I should think...just to soak it up,” Abberline added.

Lily looked over at the pot, it had been a long time since she had eaten, and she nodded her thanks. Sitting at a small wooden table, Inspector Abberline watched her ladle spoon after spoon of beans and ham, well what passed for ham, into her mouth while he leant back in his chair rolling thin brown cigarettes in his fingers. A flash of a ring caught her eye and between mouthfuls she managed, “You are married, Abberline? Back where you came from?”

“And here was I thinking it was customary for the copper to do the questioning, Lily,” all twinkle in his eyes until he remembered what the answer was. “But since you ask, no...I mean I was, yes, back in London, but no more.” His brow furrowed for a second whilst he dug in his pocket for a notebook and the stub of a pencil. “Now tell me about the Comte de Richelieu…”

The end of his question was drowned by the clamour of a huge bell, almost instantaneously setting off more distant ones stretching out over the side of the city. The whole of the bar stood up in one motion, “Fire!” In a city this fond of fostering close neighbours, fire was a deadly enemy. Grabbing her last piece of bread, Lily felt the tug on her arm as he pulled her out into the street.

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