“No, he wouldn’t.”
Legrand turned to the satchel and opened it. “You can sit down, if you like. I’ll just be a moment.”
“I’ll stand.”
Legrand was as good as his word. As Daisy leaned against the desk and curled her damp, nervous fingers around the edge, he moved with swift efficiency. From the satchel he removed a small device that looked like a bell, which he placed against the door of the safe, next to the combination dial. He leaned his ear against this device and turned the dial. His eyes were closed. Daisy stared at his fingers, agile and patient, exquisitely sensitive, faint purple stains at the tips. They eased the dial one way and then the other, slowing to an almost imperceptible movement as they reached each point of friction. Daisy realized she was holding her breath and exhaled. Legrand’s eyes opened. He lifted his head away from the door of the safe and opened it.
You could say this about Pierre Villon: he was a man of meticulous organization. Each stack of papers had been laid in its own cardboard portfolio and bound with string, like a Christmas gift; each portfolio was labeled in precise block letters, except the words themselves were some kind of code or shorthand known only to Pierre himself. From his messenger bag, Legrand retrieved a small camera. He positioned the papers under the desk lamp and photographed them—not all of them, but the ones he thought were significant. Most significant were the lists of names and addresses inside a portfolio marked JULXX. Daisy counted thirty on each page, and there were twenty-four pages.
“But this surely can’t be all of them,” she whispered, positioning each paper so that Legrand could photograph it. “There are only hundreds here, and your intelligence speaks of thousands.”
“Possibly these are only the ones that your husband is responsible for.”
“Then it won’t make much difference, will it?”
Legrand snapped another photo. “To them it will. If we can act fast enough to get them out of Paris.”
Daisy lifted away the sheet and arranged another one in its place, and as she did so, her gaze snagged on something written there. “Wait a moment,” she whispered.
She drew the paper closer to the lamp and ran her finger down the list of names, trying to find whatever it was that had caught her unconscious attention. About two-thirds of the way down, there was a name through which a thick black line had been drawn. Daisy peered close, trying to make out the typewritten letters. Her fingers were cold and shaky. She handed the page to Legrand. “Can you read this for me? The name that’s been crossed out.”
Legrand took the page and held it directly under the lamp. His eyes squinted, his lips pursed. He looked back up at Daisy, bemused.
“Wilhelmina de Courcelles, H?tel Ritz,” he said. “Isn’t that your grandmother?”
He filled three rolls of film while Daisy carefully arranged each stack of papers in its proper order, in its proper portfolio, bound with string in the exact same fashion, stacked back in the safe according to its original position there. Possibly no more than half an hour had passed, and now the thing was done.
Her grandmother’s name, there on the list. What did it mean? Why was it crossed out? Had Pierre seen it there and drawn that black line? Had he put it there himself, and then thought better of it? And if he had, whom was he trying to protect? Grandmère? Daisy and the children? Or just himself?
And here she stood, betraying him. Not just with the papers in the safe, but with her heart. Her head, her body that craved someone else. This man, who stood with her, warm and clever and daring, taut and golden and everything her husband was not.
Legrand closed the door of the safe and spun the dial to the exact number on which Pierre had left it. He picked up the satchel and slung it back over his head and across his chest.
“Well, that’s that,” he said.
“Yes, it’s done,” she replied.
“I can make my own way out.”
“No, I’ll show you out. Would you—would you like a glass of water first? Wine?”
Daisy’s heart thumped. She stood next to the desk, and Legrand stood in front of the safe, and several yards of open air existed between them, there in Pierre’s study. They stared not quite at each other—at each other’s ears, or cheekbones—and Daisy realized that Legrand was as desperate as she was. That his pulse also pounded, that his lungs were short of breath, and these physical symptoms had nothing to do with the practical acts of sabotage they had just committed together.
“I should return to the bookshop,” he said at last. “So much work to do and so little time.”