In her own defense, Daisy reminded herself that this shortened distance allowed her more hours to do her work, to deliver more forged papers to more hidden airmen, more intelligence agents, more Jewish families facing deportation to Germany. Still, as they reached the steps and the open door, the mothers and children streaming inside, she had to swallow back her own shame, as always, and concentrate her attention on Madeleine and Olivier. She knelt to kiss them and remind them about the presents for their teachers.
“Of course, Maman,” said Madeleine.
“Good morning, Madame Villon!” It was the headmistress, Madame Duchamps, who had developed a habit in the past few weeks of addressing Daisy personally, each morning and afternoon, in a manner you might call obsequious. “And how are my sweet children this morning, eh?”
Olivier said, “Wonderful, madame! It’s the last day of school!”
Madame laughed. “Well, well. Very sensible! And you, Mademoiselle Villon?”
Madeleine, it must be said, hadn’t trusted this recent mood of Madame Duchamps’s from the beginning. She looked up and said coldly, “Not quite so well as my brother, thank you.”
Madame didn’t know what to make of this. She moved her jaws like she was chewing on an especially tough cut of meat.
“Ah yes. Well,” she said at last. “Clever child.”
“Madame Duchamps,” Daisy said, as the children hurried through the door and into the courtyard, “I’ve been meaning to ask you something. I need to speak to Madame Levin about the mothers’ committee next year, but I haven’t seen her at all this week. Perhaps you can give me her telephone number?”
The doughy, pleasing face of Madame Duchamps turned to stone. “I’m sorry, madame. I’m afraid the Levins are no longer enrolled at this school.”
By the time Daisy turned the corner of rue Volney and saw the familiar signboard—Le Mouton Noir in dignified Roman letters, set around a faceless black sheep—the July air had already grown oppressively warm. The heat brought out all the smells of the bookshop, leather and wood and binder’s glue, and especially the scent of pipe tobacco. Daisy paused in the doorway and gathered these flavors at the back of her throat. Her dress stuck to her skin. Her heart hammered in her chest, but of course that was just because of the long, brisk walk from école Rousseau. Wasn’t it?
“Hello?” she called out.
A dusty silence answered her. She stepped forward and closed the door behind her. Her gaze went to the shelf of English novels, where the brown-and-red spine of The Scarlet Pimpernel sat in perfect alphabetical order on the shelf of English-language books, between the O. Henry and the Ovid. Daisy let out a long breath and brushed back her damp hair with her fingers. A small object hurtled across the room and struck her middle.
“Philippe!” she gasped.
“There you are, madame! I have been waiting all morning!”
Daisy laughed and unwrapped the little boy’s arms from her waist. “I am not so late, am I? Where is your grandfather?”
Philippe shrugged. “Out. I am minding the shop.” He said this proudly, straightening himself to his full hundred and fifty centimeters.
“Very good.” She took her pocketbook from her shoulder and opened it. “Do you know what I have for you?”
“Sweets?”
“Not today, I’m afraid. Something else.”
Daisy put her hand inside the pocketbook and drew out a small stuffed rabbit. Philippe shrieked.
“For me?”
“Yes, for you! What other little boy is named Lapin? You must take very good care of him, do you hear me? There are not so many such rabbits to be found these days.”
Philippe drew the furry toy reverently from her hands and stroked its back with his finger. “He is just like Mademoiselle Madeleine’s rabbit.”
Daisy smiled and knelt down, so her head was on the same plane as Philippe’s dark head, all peaks and angles, eyes like the glossy chocolates they served on tiny, exquisite plates at the Ritz. “Not quite. Hers is spotted, and yours is brown all over. Like you, my little lapin.” She rose and kissed his hair. “Now, tell me what . . .”
Her words trailed away, because there on the other side of the room, where there had been nothing but shelves, Monsieur Legrand now stood in his shirtsleeves, damp with heat, a pen dangling from one hand and a book from the other. Staring at her.
Daisy went again to brush her hair from her forehead, but of course she had already done this, and there was nothing to brush. She tucked a few strands behind her ear instead. “Good morning, monsieur.”