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SABINE
PARIS, 1987
At four in the morning, Sabine was starting to second-guess her decision – one she’d made in the early hours of the morning – to come and see the restaurant for herself. But she was here now. At the corner of Rue Cardinet and Lumercier.
She didn’t think she was really going do it until half an hour before when she’d taken the metro. Paris was hushed. The only sounds that could be heard were from the bakery down the end of the lane, and the droning call of insects.
She took out the old brass key from her pocket that George Constable had handed her reluctantly before he’d told her what her grandmother had done.
Now she was here, and was beginning to understand his reservations. In the sunshine, when the street was a riot of bloom and colour from wisteria and the bright flower boxes, pretty pastel buildings and cobbled streets filled with people, it was hard to imagine such a horrific incident taking place, but now, in the dark and cold, hours before dawn, her imagination didn’t have to stretch very far.
She put the key in the lock. The door was jammed shut, the wood swollen from years of neglect. She gave it a push with her shoulder, and it began to inch open only to suddenly give way and for her to go tumbling inside.
Inside it was like spilled ink and deathly cold. No light or warmth had touched it for years, thanks to the boards on the windows. There was also a faint smell of damp. She held a finger under her nose, then took out a torch from the bag at her shoulder and shone it around.
There wasn’t any furniture left behind, save for a fallen chair and a table that was full of empty wine bottles. She shone her light on them, and then walked over to investigate, picking up one of the bottles and removing a layer of dust from the label with her fingers. The bottle was green. A Bordeaux from 1932. She shook her head in awe.
As she walked away, wiping her fingers on her jeans, she stepped on something that crunched. She frowned, then shone the flashlight down. It was a framed poster. An old-fashioned illustration of a woman from the Twenties lounging on a chair with an affronted-looking cat looking toward the viewer. It was sweet and a little funny. She could imagine that perhaps posters like this had adorned the walls at some stage.
She walked around, beaming the light across the faded walls, and she could see the remnants of faded pastel green paint along with decorative wainscoting. The torchlight revealed that once, long ago, it had been brushed with gold paint. She edged closer. Pretty, she thought. At the bottom of the skirting board, something unexpected caught her eye. It was a small row of crayon daisies like a flash of spring. She inched closer with a frown.
A child had sat here, long ago, and drawn these, she realised.
It was a sobering thought. The idea of a child, here, made everything feel more real and more horrifying, somehow.
Her torchlight revealed the outlines of where tables had once stood, and she could get a sense of how the restaurant might have been laid out, with seating for around six to eight tables, she thought, at a guess.
An open hatch in the wall let you glimpse inside the kitchen at the back. Sabine made her way there, being careful with her footing. The lawyer had said it wasn’t derelict but that didn’t mean it was safe. Who knew if some of the floors would need to be replaced?
The kitchen was smaller than she would have expected. The stainless-steel counters languished under several generations of dust. On the wall was another framed poster, this one of a fat Persian cat wearing a chef’s hat, with a curly moustache and looking rather smug. It was kitsch and cute, and not quite something she expected from a woman who had ended up killing all those people. It did, however, fit a little with the image Monsieur Géroux had created of Marianne in her mind. It was hard to meld the two.
She shone the light around the rest of the kitchen. She began to open up the cabinets, seeing nothing there but old pots and pans. She lifted one out, it was stainless steel and huge, then turned it around to see the label, but it was badly scratched. She put it back and moved on to the drawers, which had a few leftover utensils, including a big soup ladle and a wooden spoon, but were mostly empty, apart from the occasional mouse dropping. She wiped her hands on her shirt in distaste, pulling a face at how filthy she’d become. Then, sitting on her haunches, she began to rifle through the rest of the bottom cabinets. Like the drawers above, they were mostly empty. There was a wad of old newspapers, which she took out curiously. They were water damaged, though, and unreadable, which was a pity. But at the back, behind the space that she had cleared of newspapers, she saw a slip of paper sticking out.
She tried to pull it free but couldn’t get a grip. From where it was wedged it looked like it was stuck in the drawer above. She stood up, then opened the drawer, but couldn’t see the paper. She frowned, then pulled the drawer out. It was wedged in the casters. She gently pulled until she finally prised it out. It looked like an order slip used by restaurants. She recognised it from her years of waitressing at a small bistro to help pay for her studies at university.
She looked up and saw that on this side of the open hatch there were several hooks – most likely this was where orders were placed for the attention of the kitchen staff.
The paper was faded and dirty. But she could see that instead of an order there was a small note, though a scuff mark appeared to obscure the first line. It might have been a name or a letter or just a splodge from a bubbling pot.
The days are short, but hours can seem long, H. She needs to spend these last ones with her boys. That’s an order.
M.
Sabine looked at the note and frowned. Was this from Marianne?
She put it in her coat pocket, then carried on her search through the kitchen. But apart from a mouldy box in the corner that contained yet more empty wine bottles, there was nothing.
Sabine made to leave the kitchen, only to pause as she looked at the silly cat poster. She drummed her fingers against the dusty counters, thinking about whether she should take it or not. It was cute and would look fun in her own kitchen. But a part of her wondered if that was macabre somehow? Taking something from here…
Marianne had been a person too, a grandmother, even if she never lived to see it. It was also the only thing Sabine would have of hers, besides the little order slip.
She stood on her tiptoes and took it down. It was full of dust, and she would need to give it a good wash. If it ended up being too morbid to keep, she’d just dump it in a bin somewhere later, she decided.
At least now, though, she’d seen the place for herself, and assuaged her curiosity – although, as usual it had led to more questions than answers. It looked like an ordinary restaurant. Despite the years that had passed, she could see that it had once been a charming space – it didn’t look like a site where people had been poisoned. If there had been any ghosts here, they had moved on. There certainly weren’t any phantom scents from the kitchen, either, apart from rat droppings, that is.
She could return the key to George Constable and be satisfied that despite the rumours and myths… it was just an ordinary, sad place. There was nothing here to suggest why Marianne Blanchet had done what she did.
When she got back to her flat, she found Antoine waiting for her. As soon as she let herself in he was there, like a puffed-out brown chicken, circling around her.
