Christmas in Paris Read online

  Dedication

  To Eve and Lisa and Kate with love and gratitude,

  and to Bernie and Jackie too,

  the Irish family followers of Miss Lily

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Mrs Goodenough’s Christmas Trifle Recipe

  Author’s Note

  An extract from Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies

  An extract from The Lily and the Rose

  An extract from The Lily in the Snow

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  CHRISTMAS, 1932

  The alley smelled of sewers, rats and garlic, like a hundred other alleyways in Paris, the windows above it dark except for one, high up, where a single lamp shone in a curtainless window.

  Violette was about to pass by when something moved between the rubbish bins: two figures, struggling, a large man and a small woman, her scream muffled as the man forced her down onto the cobblestones.

  Violette felt for the knife in her garter belt, the knife Maman and Papa did not know she kept with her always. The woman she had called Grandmère had given it to her for her fifth birthday and, by her tenth, she knew how to use it well, especially on men like this.

  And yet . . .

  A knife left mess. Questions might be asked and, now that she was seventeen, Papa had taught her most excellent and neater ways to stop a man. She ran lightly down the alley, lifted the lid of a garbage bin and brought it down swiftly, at exactly the right angle, on the man’s head.

  He slumped soundlessly to the cobbles, eyes and mouth still open.

  ‘Mademoiselle, are you hurt?’ Violette asked anxiously in the French she had always spoken until, finally, she had been reunited with her parents three and a half years before.

  The young woman struggled to her feet. Her stockings were torn and bloody at the knees, her coat hung from one shoulder, exposing a silk evening dress, torn at the front. ‘Gee, sister, am I glad to see you,’ she panted, then with obvious effort she switched to French. ‘Uh, merci, mademoiselle . . .’

  ‘You are English?’ asked Violette, in English too, then shook her head. ‘No, you are Américaine.’

  ‘The accent, huh?’ The young woman surveyed the body at their feet and suddenly began to tremble. ‘A few more seconds and . . .’

  ‘And nothing happened,’ Violette assured her gently. ‘Come, I will take you home and soon it will be Christmas and you can forget.’

  She stopped and looked again at the body at their feet. A big man in red trousers and a red jacket trimmed with white and a white beard too.

  ‘Mon Dieu,’ she said quietly.

  She had just killed Santa Claus.

  ‘Is he dead?’ The young woman’s voice shook. But she had not fainted, nor had she screamed. Violette approved.

  ‘Probably. We must go.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we call the gendarmes? The police?’

  ‘Les flics? Mademoiselle, in France they have the Code Napoleon. You must prove your innocence. Until then you are guilty. Me, I do not want to spend Christmas in a cell. This is your cape?’ Violette picked up a heap of silk and feathers and the young woman nodded. ‘Hurry!’

  ‘The back entrance to my apartment building is just here . . .’ The young woman made a move towards a door among the rubbish bins.

  ‘Then we must certainly be elsewhere.’ This was no time to argue. Violette took the young woman’s hand and walked — most definitely did not run because people noticed a running girl — towards the well-lit boulevard beyond.

  She glanced at her companion. Twenty-five, perhaps, tall, blonde, her hair in short Marcel waves, like Violette’s own. The torn dress was an evening gown in pale green, the neck draped low front and back, the hem reaching to her ankles, covering the torn stockings. Her shivering was as much from cold, perhaps, as fear and shock.

  Violette handed her the cape. ‘Put this on.’

  Her companion obeyed automatically. Apart from her pallor she was now most respectable. The cape floated about her heels, thick white swan’s down with a pale green silk lining that showed only at the collar. And it was from Schiaparelli’s latest collection, too, which Violette and her maman had seen only a few days before.

  Violette sighed. Her own tweed coat over a wool skirt and blouse were expensive and fashionable and flattering to one who would always look like an elf — she had never had the chance to grow as big boned and tall as her parents — for meals with Grandmère before she had been reunited with her parents had too often been onion soup, made only with water and onion, or the meals she earned singing on street corners.

  But they were the clothes of a seventeen-year-old. She longed for . . .

  Her dreams of fashion were interrupted as her companion automatically turned right. Violette pulled her to the left.

  ‘But my apartment is this way . . .’

  ‘We do not go to your apartment, not for two hours at least.’ By which time, hopefully, the deceased Santa Claus would have been discovered by a servant putting out the day’s rubbish and there would be no reason to connect him with this young woman, or with Violette.

  ‘You must take me to a café where you are known, but where your friends will not be. For they might ask questions. We will dine there so if any questions are asked,’ though she hoped there would not be questions, ‘we were both far away from here all evening.’

  The young woman looked at her for a moment, surprisingly steadily, then nodded. ‘I’ll hail a taxi . . .’

  ‘No! We walk for half an hour perhaps, then hail a taxi. Or were you going to dinner, perhaps?’

  ‘Cocktails. I . . . I had just come back . . .’

  ‘You will tell me later,’ said Violette firmly. The story of how a young American came to be in a French back alley with Santa Claus would be interesting. But now they must get away.

  Chapter 2

  The Café bon Pierre was small and fragrant with the scent of Tripe Bordelaise. The customers were all French — the instinctive French elegance shown even by the poorest femme de chamber was unmistakable, for even they could twist a rag into a scarf that made the drabbest dress most elegant. The waiter recognised Violette’s companion at once, leaving his other customers to greet her at the door.

  ‘It is Mademoiselle Adele K Vandendorn! Mais oui, a table certainly, but we have only one left . . .’ The waiter looked speculatively at the other patrons, as if wondering if he could ask them to move, then shrugged. He led Violette and Miss Adele K Vandendorn to a table around a corner.

  It was the worst table in the café, for one went to cafés to meet as well as eat and here one would not be seen. Excellent, thought Violette. For her, the worst table was the best, for they should also not be overheard. And the waiter, who knew Miss Adele K Vandendorn and would be tipped extremely well, would remember only that she was there tonight, not when she had arrived.

  Champagne appeared — the waiters of this café undoubtedly knew what this Miss Adele K Vandendorn liked to drink — with bread and a crock of butter.

  Violette looked at the champagne and sighed. ‘Un citron pressé,’ she ordered. She must keep her head clear tonight, and Maman and Papa, being English, did not approve of girls drinking champagne or any wine at all until they were twenty-one. Incredible, but so were many things English. The waiter bowed again and left.

  Violette glanced at the menu board, then at her companion. ‘You came here from your cocktail party,’ she instructed. ‘And, because you are kind and had met
me in the park this morning, you met me at the Ritz where I am staying with my parents and you have taken me to dine with you while they are out.’

  Her parents were at an affair they had deemed not suitable for their daughter — the Folies Bergère, perhaps, or even some work as spies for the Englishman James Lorrimer. Either way, they had not included her.

  Miss Adele K Vandendorn laughed. ‘But I don’t even know your name!’

  Violette briefly considered giving a false one, in case the police did question Miss Adele K Vandendorn. But a girl who could not be traced might raise suspicion. The girl who lived with the young Earl of Shillings and his mother, the Dowager Countess, was entirely respectable. At least to a Parisian policeman. ‘I am Violette Jones.’

  ‘Not French? But you sound French.’

  Violette shrugged. ‘I was born in Belgium, Miss Vandendorn.’ No need to say that her mother had been an English spy during the Great War, working as a liaison with the women of the Belgian resistance organisation La Dame Blanche and had left Belgium thinking her baby was dead; nor that Violette had been brought up by a member most formidable of La Dame Blanche, who had taught her ‘granddaughter’ exactly how to deal with the hated Boche, as well as those men so damaged by war that they might be as great a threat to a woman as any enemy.

  Her companion reached over an elegant hand, the nails perfectly manicured in a fashionable shade of pale pink. ‘Please call me Adele.’

  ‘Good. Then I am Violette. My parents are English, but we live in Australia now where my Aunt Sophie, the Countess of Shillings, has much property and factories.’

  ‘A real live countess? Gee!’

  ‘My Aunt Sophie is most real. My maman is her friend, but also advises her wardrobe.’ No need to use the words ‘personal maid’ for, after all, personal maids did not stay at the Paris Ritz. Her maman was far more ‘friend’ and ‘colleague’ than maid, even if that was how she might appear to be to strangers.

  ‘Maman and I are here for the shopping, of course, to see the new collections for Aunt Sophie and Aunt Lily and Maman. In two days’ time we go to Shillings — that is the estate in England of the earl, and where Maman’s relatives in England live — for Christmas.’

  Adele looked at her wide-eyed. ‘A castle? A real earl?’

  Violette nodded. No need to add that Shillings was mellow comfort, not a tall dank castle — Violette had been in castles now and did not like them — and that the present earl was only six years old.

  ‘Mademoiselles?’ The waiter delivered Violette’s citron pressé and hovered next to them.

  Violette gave her fourth most charming smile. ‘Deux escargots, monsieur, s’il vous plaît.’

  The waiter glanced at Miss Vandendorn, startled. ‘Oui, mademoiselle,’ he said.

  Violette found Adele staring at her, too. ‘Snails?’

  ‘They are most delicious. First you must feed them lettuce and bran, then purge them, then make your broth of good white wine and herbs . . .’

  ‘But snails! I usually order steak and pommes frites.’

  Violette smiled again. ‘As I thought. The waiter was most startled, for he had never heard an American ordering snails. He will certainly remember you were here tonight.’

  ‘Do I have to eat them?’

  Violette laughed. ‘No. But try them, at least.’ She glanced around, to make sure they could not be heard, but their corner was still their own. ‘And now, if you do not mind . . .’

  ‘How did a nice girl like me get mixed up with a Santa Claus like that?’

  ‘It would be interesting,’ said Violette politely, helping herself to bread and buttering it thickly. The bread of Australia was good, but too soft. She had not realised how much she had missed the firm bread of Belgium and France, with its crisp flaking crust, nor the butter that had the flavour of French grass.

  Adele K Vandendorn stared at her plate, as if remembering, then looked back up at Violette. ‘Well, you see, I came over from the States three years ago when Mom and Pop died of the flu. Mom had never been strong after my brothers died, and when Mom passed I think Pop just couldn’t bear to hang on too. I . . . I missed them. We’d had such great times there, all of us. Fourth of July and Halloween, birthdays and Christmases — Mom never missed a chance for celebration. The house was so empty. I just couldn’t stay there by myself.’

  ‘You have no other relatives?’ asked Violette sympathetically.

  ‘A million of them. Aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins . . . And every one of them thought I should get married. But there was no guy I liked enough and I was twenty-one and I mean everyone comes to Paris now, don’t they? Alice and Gertrude and Hemingway — though you need to watch out for him when he’s had a skinful — and George Gershwin . . . don’t you love his music? And Josephine Baker, oh, to hear her sing! All the artists and writers.’ Adele grinned suddenly, the memory of grief gone. ‘These are the crazy years, sister!’

  ‘You paint, mademoiselle?’

  Adele flushed. ‘I model, a little.’

  Without your clothes, perhaps, although not for the money, thought Violette, but for the opportunity to know the artists in their studios. Schiaparelli’s clothes were only for the richest of the rich. ‘Mom and Pop’ must have left their daughter well provided for.

  ‘And Santa Claus?’

  Adele’s laughter vanished. ‘Do you think he’s been found yet?’

  The white beard and trim on the red suit would be noticeable even in the dim alley. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What will happen to him?’

  Violette blinked in surprise at the question. ‘He will be given a funeral, if any relatives will pay for it or they can be found.’

  ‘But won’t people look for . . . for . . .’

  ‘For whoever killed him? I do not think so. People will think he slipped in the muck in the alley and hit his head. But they may wonder why he was dressed as Santa Claus.’ Violette wondered about that too.

  ‘I hired him,’ said Adele shortly.

  Violette looked at her in alarm. ‘You knew each other! But that is terrible!’

  It had not occurred to her that there might be an obvious link between this woman and her attacker. She had assumed that he had simply taken advantage of Miss Vandendorn and dragged her into the alley. If he was her employee, Violette must rethink their entire alibi . . .

  ‘I’d never met him before,’ said Adele.

  ‘But you said . . .’

  Adele shook her head. ‘It was a secret. Having a Santa Claus, I mean. Everyone has been so nice to me over here, not just fellow Yanks but real Parisians. Every Christmas I’ve been invited to a dinner on réveillon de Noël with someone’s family and Christmas Mass at midnight at Notre Dame. It’s real quaint, but real beautiful too! All the church bells ringing and the candle light . . .’

  Violette nodded. She too loved Notre Dame, a place where even a penniless orphan could find beauty.

  ‘But this year so many people in Paris have lost their jobs,’ Adele continued. ‘The franc buys hardly anything these days, and the dollar so much. So this Christmas I decided to give an American Christmas party, a treat for the kids as well as the grown-ups. The kids have already had their shoes filled by Saint Nicholas on December sixth, of course, but I wanted them to have Santa Claus as well. So I advertised.’

  ‘For Santa Claus?’

  ‘For an actor. The replies were sent to the newspaper and they forwarded the letters to me. I chose the one who said he had worked in England for three years, because he’d be able to speak English to the American kids. I wrote to him . . .’

  ‘And you used your own stationery, with your name and address printed at the top?’ suggested Violette.

  Adele nodded miserably. ‘I told him what the job was, and that it was just for tomorrow morning and that I already had the costume sent over from the States, and where the party would be. I said I’d already bought all the gifts for each child.’

  ‘How many children?’


  ‘A hundred, perhaps, or maybe more. All he had to do was arrive two hours before the party and change into his costume then, when the orchestra played “Jingle Bells”, he was to come in, say “Ho, ho, ho,” sit on this throne and give each child their gift when he called out their names.’

  Violette bit into her bread and butter. Adele had thus told a strange man not just her name and address, but that she was rich and alone in Paris — for if she had not been alone, her husband or father or man of business would have arranged this employment for her.

  ‘He was waiting for me on the doorstep when I arrived home. He said he wanted to try on the costume, to see if it fitted.’ Adele’s voice trembled. ‘He . . . he seemed nice. So I let him in.’

  ‘And then what, mademoiselle?’ asked Violette quietly.

  ‘I went to my closet — the room where I keep my clothes — to get the costume. I gave it to him and he said he’d put it on in the bathroom. I went to get us both a drink and . . . and suddenly he grabbed me from behind. He tied me to a chair, wrapping the rope around my body and the back of the chair. I screamed but he just laughed. He said the porter and the concierge were both out tonight and the people in the apartment next door too. And then I saw he had my jewellery box — he must have gone into my bedroom too. He bent down behind me to undo my pearls, and then . . .’ Adele bit her lip.

  ‘Yes?’ prompted Violette gently.

  ‘I kicked the chair back and fell on top of him, then pulled my arms and the rope over the top of the chair, but by then he was heading for the door, and he had my pearls.’

  Violette stared. This was not the story she’d been expecting.

  ‘So I followed him,’ said Adele K Vandendorn angrily. ‘I mean, those were my mom’s pearls. He ran down the back staircase. He had to stop to open the door. I caught up with him and grabbed the pearls from his pocket and he tried to grab them back and somehow we were in the alley. I’d got my hatpin out by then, but could only reach his side when I stabbed it in . . .’

  Violette hoped no one would notice a hatpin in Santa’s costume.