I nodded, feeling my heart squeeze a bit, but not wanting to tell him that as a girl who played with her older brothers and their friends I knew how to throw a punch and where to land a kick. I did as he requested and followed him through the peeling-paint door and into an entryway that smelled of boiled cabbage and Robin’s room after he returned from a football match. Mail slots to the right listed the last names of tenants next to their flat numbers.
“There,” I said, pointing to the top right. “Villon—number 310.”
He nodded. “Come on. Doesn’t look like there’s an elevator so we’ll take the stairs. Stay close to me, all right?”
I nodded, my heart doing that odd squeezing thing again. We climbed to the third floor, listening to the lives of those behind the doors as we passed. A baby crying, a woman shouting. A man singing in Italian. It was all somehow sad, that the demoiselle’s husband should live here in this dismal, foul-smelling place.
When we reached number 310, we stopped and stared at the door where the word collaborateur had been painted in thick red letters in scarlet accusation. It appeared that someone had once tried to scrub it out, but the outline of the word remained like a ghostly reminder. We looked at each other for a moment and then Drew knocked on the door, beckoning for me to stand back. It took three knocks before we heard an epithet coming from behind the door, and then slow footsteps approaching.
“Who is it?” The French words were slurred.
Before Drew could speak, I stepped forward. “My name is Mrs. Barbara Langford and I’m with Mr. Andrew Bowdoin. Are you Pierre Villon? We’d like to talk to you about your wife, Marguerite Villon, and her connection to the de Courcelles family.”
“Daisy?” The door flew open, revealing an unkempt man with greasy hair that was more salt than pepper and a paunch that tested the integrity of the buttons on his dirty shirt. He was quickly trying to button the remaining buttons, the gaping holes displaying corpulent white skin and graying chest hair. The scent of cheap wine on his breath washed over us, making me almost choke. “I am Pierre. Come in, come in,” he said, beckoning us into the squalor of a one-room flat that reeked of spilled spirits. Which was a blessing, really, as underneath it all the stench of unwashed skin clung to the walls and moth-eaten rug like spilled milk.
“Who is Daisy?” Drew asked.
The little man looked up at Drew, the difference in their heights almost comical. Except the expression on the man’s face was anything but. The man responded in passable English. “Marguerite was her real name, but everyone always called her Daisy.” His eyes welled up with tears and I couldn’t help myself from touching his arm and leading him to a sofa. I sat down with him, ignoring the dark stains that could have been food or perhaps not. I preferred not to think of it.
“And what happened to Daisy?” I asked gently, holding on to his hand. I heard Drew take a deep intake of breath.
He shrugged his shoulders then returned to slumped defeat. “I don’t know. She disappeared during the war, along with Madeleine and Olivier.”
“Your children?”
“Yes. A boy and a girl.” He shook his head sadly. “I never saw them again, either.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I started to ask him to tell me more about them, but Drew interrupted me.
“Did you ever hear from Daisy or the children? To let you know that they’re alive?”
Pierre perked up for the first time. “Not a letter, but a photograph. It was sent to me anonymously when I was in prison.” He stood and slowly shuffled to a bedside table with a single drawer, its knob missing. With the stubby end of a finger he pried it open and then removed a single photo. He looked down at it for a long moment, letting out a sigh of despair sounding as if it had come from his every pore.
“They are older in this photograph than they were when I last saw them, which means they survived the war, yes?”
“Yes, it would,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster. There was no need to crush the last hope this man had managed to cling to. I took the photograph as Drew moved to stand next to me while we examined it. They were beautiful children, the daughter with two long dark braids, a few years older and slightly taller than her brother. They appeared to be in the awkward early teen years, the evidence of childhood fading from the boy’s rounded cheeks and the girl’s wide eyes, their legs long and spindly like a colt’s.
“They’re lovely,” I said, handing the photo back to Pierre.