“At first,” grumbled Fabrice.
“What happened later?” Cady asked. As soon as she spoke, she remembered the rumor that Josephine had been unfaithful.
The men exchanged a quick glance, but neither spoke.
“Where’d you get these pictures, anyway?” Fabrice asked.
“My mother had them.”
“Stole them, more like.”
Jean-Paul’s jaw tightened. “After Yves’s death, when Marc-Antoine remained in Paris rather than returning to claim the château, it was left to ruin. Some family members came in and took things, yes. Mostly mementos.”
Fabrice stared into the fire.
“I’ve told you before, Fabrice. I would be happy to arrange for some of the items to be brought back, if you like, or at least arrange some visits so you could see them.” Jean-Paul seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “But if family hadn’t come in, it all would have been lost. You know the place was thoroughly ransacked during—and after—the war.”
“I came here then. I know exactly the condition it was left in. WhatI’m unclear on is the extent to which my so-called family took part in the destruction.”
“Anyway,” Cady said after a long, uncomfortable pause, “these photographs are great, right? Not just in subject matter—Yves was a talented photographer. Look at his use of shadows. They’re so... evocative.”
“I’ve always thought so,” said Jean-Paul, digging through the tall stack. “And these will be of particular interest to you—they’re of the carousel.”
Cady accepted the photos with reverence and starting flipping through them. Most showed the actual construction of the carousel, men fitting together the different parts of the mechanism. Carousels were driven by steam engine back then, and Bayol was famous for using bellows in some of his animals to create sounds. Unfortunately, there weren’t many close-ups, and the faces of the workers were hard to make out: The shots were mostly of groups of people laboring at their tasks. The photographs most interesting to Cady were those of workers doing touch-up painting and applying protective varnish, since these showed the fanciful animal figures: horses, chickens, cats, dogs, pigs, and rabbits—as well as one rocking carriage and a spinning tub.
The photographs were all black-and-white images, so the typically garish, whimsical colors were lost. But the images did give a sense of the carousel.
“As I understand it,” said Jean-Paul, “the carousel didn’t come alone, but with a kind of decorative salon that housed it. It wasn’t strong enough to stand up against the elements, however—especially our Provençal winds—so it was brought in pieces and assembled within an outer building. Right, Fabrice?”
Fabrice grunted and took a drink, then nodded.
“And it’s still there?” Cady asked.
“What remains of it,” said Fabrice.
“As I told you, I have a carousel rabbit figure that might have been part of the set. A photo that was hidden within the figure bears theChâteau Clement stamp. Also,” Cady said, hardly able to contain her excitement as she flipped to a photograph of a woman working alongside the men, “I think I have a photograph ofthiswoman. I’ll be right back.”
Cady literally ran up the stairs, down the grand hall, through the book-lined room, up the steps to the red hallway, and into her room to grab the box that had been hidden in Gus’s belly, along with her photos of Gus, and the love note she had been using as a bookmark. Then she ran back.
Fabrice looked amused and annoyed at the same time. “What’s got into you?”
“Look at this,” Cady said, panting. She placed the box in front of Fabrice.
“Go on, open it up.”
Fabrice lifted the lid and peered inside. He picked up the photograph first, gazed at it a long time, and let out a “Huh.” Then he stroked the braid of hair and read the little love note. He put everything back in and shut the lid.
“Where’d you find this?”
“It was hidden in the belly of my rabbit.” As she spoke, she slid a couple of her eight-by-ten prints in front of him. “This is Gus.”
Fabrice let out a breathless exclamation and sat up slightly. He gazed at the photos as though enthralled. She handed him more.
He nodded. “You see thesemuguetflowers here? I remember those.”
Cady had looked up the wordmuguetafter Madame Martin used it in Paris. In English, it meant “lily of the valley.” Little white bell flowers along a slender stalk.
“So it made its way to America,” Fabrice said, his voice filled with a kind of wonder.
