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Antoine shrugged, took a sip of his tea. ‘Not really. I mean, people aren’t made of just dark or light, we’re all shades. Look, there’s no guarantee you will ever truly know why she did what she did or got the full measure of her, but at least you’ll get more of a real glimpse of who she was.’
Sabine nodded, looking off into the distance as she remembered meeting the bookseller. ‘What’s surprised me the most, though, was finding out that she had given her baby up for adoption after she opened the restaurant.’
‘What?’
Sabine nodded. ‘Well, that’s what Monsieur Géroux surmised. He said she didn’t have a child when he knew her, though he couldn’t be sure if she was pregnant when she killed those people. That happened near the middle of the war, I think, 1943.’
Antoine frowned. ‘When did she die?’
‘I’m not sure, the lawyer said she was executed afterwards, but he didn’t know how long afterwards.’
Antoine’s eyes widened. ‘If she fell pregnant, before she killed those people, if it was a Nazi officer, it might count as motive… she might have gone on the run afterwards, had the baby and given it up.’
Sabine sat back; it took a moment for her to register what he was suggesting. She couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to her. This was what Monsieur Géroux had been speculating too, wasn’t it?
‘You think one of them got her pregnant?’
‘Or possibly rape – it could explain the poison. Perhaps it was revenge?’
Sabine blinked. ‘Perhaps, the lawyer said she’d killed several Nazis, but two of them were locals, Parisians. So I don’t know…’
He shrugged. ‘It’s just a theory – I mean, there’s an easy way to see if it’s a possibility or not.’
‘There is?’ she asked in horrified awe.
He nodded. ‘Check Marguerite’s birth certificate – the year she was born. If it was before the incident, it’s likely that your grandfather wasn’t a Nazi.’
Sabine blew her cheeks out. ‘Oh God, Antoine.’
She hadn’t considered that her history could get any worse.
Sabine walked home the long way. It was market day, but she wasn’t in the mood for fresh honey melons or her favourite cheese from Boulogne-sur-Mer in the north – officially the smelliest in France, and the reason they had their own tiny cheese fridge, despite the impish size of their flat.
She avoided going home. Not because she didn’t want to see Antoine, but because she knew that in a box in her wardrobe were her important documents, and one of those was her mother’s birth certificate, which the lawyer George Constable had given her when she’d asked.
It was the first thing Antoine would have done. But Sabine was known for putting thing off. Sometimes for weeks and months.
She blew out her cheeks, considered going for a drink to delay the inevitable, then decided to just get on with it.
When she got home, she poured herself a glass of wine, and then sat on the living-room floor with the box where her mother’s documents had been put.
She took a big, fortifying sip, before opening the box and searching until she found the birth certificate. She took a deep breath then turned to look at the date of her mother’s birth.
Marguerite Blanchet, born in the Abbey de Saint-Michel, Lamarin, Provence, 15 June 1939
Mother Marianne Blanchet, father Jacques Blanchet.
‘Oh,’ she breathed aloud, in relief. Sabine had always been good at history, but most people in Paris would have known that date. Her mother was born at the start of the war, one day after the Germans occupied the city. Her grandfather was French.
But soon her relief that her grandmother had perhaps not been a victim of rape and her mother’s life born out of something so dark, was replaced with confusion once more. When Antoine had theorised that her mother was born in 1943, shortly after Marianne had killed that restaurant full of people, including the Nazi officers, it had seemed to offer an answer. To provide a motive of sorts – although one that wasn’t perfect as it hadn’t explained why she’d killed two local Parisians, but there could have been a reason for that… perhaps they’d seen or hadn’t helped her or some other explanation.
Sabine was right back at the start. She stared at Marianne’s name and frowned. ‘Why did you kill all those people?’
