The Paris Time Capsule (4 page)

“
One step at a time.”

“
Presumably, you weren’t ever supposed to find out about me.”

“
Glitch in the law.”

“
So it seems.”

“
Yes.” He sat back. “Talk to me.”

“
Well, I don’t know any more about your grandmother’s will than you do. All I know, and I only found this out recently myself, was that your grandmother Isabelle formed a close … friendship with my grandmother Virginia Brooke, when they were both young. So close, in fact, that Isabelle left her apartment in Paris to Virginia. In 1940, apparently. Virginia was … on tour. Stayed in Paris with your Isabelle so I understand. My grandmother was sort of … wild if you could use that word for her era.”

“
Isabelle was clearly insane too.”

“
So what now?”

Loic
finished his wine. “I’ll walk you back to your hotel. But I’ll be in the lobby at eight a.m. tomorrow, and we’ll go and look at this apartment together. I need to absorb this tonight, before I go and see it. Before we go and see it, Cat.”

“
Perhaps it would be better if I went alone.”

“
Cat … I need to be there. It was my grandmother’s apartment.”

Cat sighed.
The idea of Loic Archer in the apartment, and all the complications and time this was going to take was more than off putting. She should be sorting things out fast, getting home to New York.

But it seeme
d she had no choice. “I’ll talk to Monsieur Lapointe,” she said.

The walk back to the hotel seemed swift.
Loic came into the lobby, nodded at Cat, and left.

Cat slipped on the pair of tiny diamond earrings that Christian had bought her the previous summer in the Hamptons. The morning sky outside was pink through the old panes of the hotel window. Bare leaved trees were silhouetted in the street.

Cat surveyed her outfits. They were all
laid out on the bed. She had bustled around earlier, dashed out in an old pair of jeans out to buy a croissant and tried Monsieur Lapointe’s office on the off chance, but there was no answer of course.

W
hy was it so hard to choose what to wear? Cat busied herself placing shirts with skirts, taking them away, lining jumpers up with pants, fake pearls, and a hat.

Nothing seemed to work. Clearly, she could not stand about in her camisole and knickers for too much longer.
Loic Archer would be in the lobby in a few minutes. Cat wiped a hand over her tired eyes. She had lain awake half the night. In the end, the most sensible decision was surely to give the inheritance straight back to Loic if he was indeed who he claimed to be. After all, the whole thing had seemed unreal from the start.

The phone in the room started to ring. Quickly, Cat reached across to pick it up. The receptionist announced that Madame’s guests were waiting for her in the lobby.
Guests? What guests?

Cat grabbed an op-shop silk blouse. It was in perfect condition, and
it teamed up well with her flared nineteen forties trousers. That would do. She grabbed her coat, slapped on some lip-gloss, brushed her hair again, and almost ran out to the corridor.

There was a small
party waiting in the lobby. Cat paused at the foot of the stairs and frowned. Monsieur Lapointe was in the thick of it, immaculate in a grey three-piece suit with a pink handkerchief today.

His assistant appeared to be attempting to flirt with
Loic.

Loic
stood a head above them both. It was hard to read the look on his face, but he caught Cat’s eye as soon as she came into the room.

“
Ah, Madame Jordan!” Monsieur Lapointe bustled across to meet Cat. He kissed her on both cheeks.

Loic
, who was close behind, leaned down and kissed her too.

Cat became a little bustled herself.

Monsieur Archer has filled me in with progress,” Monsieur Lapointe said. “It is all very irregular.”

Cat smiled.

“Although,” Monsieur Lapointe said, “This is France.”

“
Yes,” Loic raised a brow. “This is France.”

“
I try to call you, Madame Jordan, several times, yesterday in the afternoon!” Monsieur threw his hands in the air.

“
Oh, I’m sorry. My phone was flat. I tried to call you this morning too.”

Monsieur Lapointe looked like a balloon that was deflating fast.
“This is a very odd situation. I would never normally, you understand, appear like this in your hotel, Madame. But Monsieur Archer, he ring me again and ... we need to come to some sort of arrangement.”

“
Thank you,” Loic said. He put a hand on Monsieur Lapointe’s back and started to move towards the hotel door. When Loic got there, he held the door open for everyone.

The
legal assistant slipped out first, throwing a charming smile up at Loic.

“
Sorry about this,” Loic muttered to Cat.

“
Look,” Cat said to Monsieur Lapointe on the pavement. “It’s no-one’s fault, Monsieur Lapointe. We’ll try and sort things out. But at the end of the day I think that the right thing to do is - ” She glanced at Loic.

He shook his head.

Cat shot him a look back, but he turned away.

“
Yes, yes, is a confusing business. I can help you sort it. We will do that,” Monsieur Lapointe said. Then he appeared to gather himself together. “If you have any claims on Madame Jordan’s inheritance, Monsieur Archer, you need to address them to me. You will come with me now, Monsieur?”

Loic
reached out and shook Monsieur Lapointe’s hand. “If Cat and I need you, we will be in touch. I think we’ll try to work things out ourselves first, don’t you, Cat?”

Monsieur Lapointe was almost bowing as he retreated down the footpath.

“Well,” Loic said. “Now we go and find out what the hell my grandmother has been playing at.”

In spite of herself, Cat let out a smile.
Loic Archer did have an exquisite jawline, not that she was looking.

Cat’s heels clacked on the pink marble floors in the entrance to Isabelle’s building. There was a stairway off to the right of the tall main lobby decorated with a gilt bannister. In front of them there was a lift with brass buttons.

Cat stood beside
Loic and waited for the lift to descend. The apartment, Monsieur Lapointe had told her, was number five on the second floor.

The lift, like so many old lifts
all over Europe was not in any hurry to convey them anywhere. It stopped for no reason on the first floor. Cat held the old doors open for a moment and peered out onto the landing. There was a marble floor, with four solid looking doors off it.

Loic
pressed the button again. The doors closed, and … nothing. The lift was not going to move. It was hard to know what to say to Loic at this point. Anything, Cat felt, could be insensitive right now. How he must be feeling was hard to fathom.

Loic
pressed firmly on the button that opened the doors.

“
Okay, Cat,” he said. “We’ll use the stairs.”

The top floor was a mirror image of the one below. There were four
identical doors, two facing the rear of the building, two facing the front. Apartment 5 faced the front of the building looking over the street. Cat pulled the key out of her handbag and turned to face Loic.

“
Are you sure?”

The pause was too long.

“Just coming to terms with it, Cat.”

“
There must be another will. You might just have to look through your grandmother’s things.”

“
No. It’s not that. Cat, if you had watched someone struggle financially all her life and yet, she had this … you know what? I need to take a walk.”

“
Loic …” Cat said. But he was halfway down the stairs.

Cat stood and waited until it seemed certain that
Loic was not coming back.

She
held the key up to the apartment’s front door. Her phone began to ring. She stopped, key poised. Perhaps it was Loic. He had changed his mind, decided that he should be there after all when Cat opened the door to what should be part of his family’s legacy.

But it was Christian. Christian. Just the thought of him was more
comforting than anything else.

“
Honey.”

“
Yes?”

“
You’ll never guess where I am!”

“
I probably won’t.”

“
London.”

Cat almost dropped the key.
“London?”

“
Yes.”

“
Christian …”

“
Thought I may as well come over for some meetings the bank wanted me to attend. I’ll be in Paris tomorrow night. Spend the weekend with you.”

“
Oh! Oh, that’s fantastic.” Cat walked back up and down the corridor. He was coming to Paris too. Excellent. Well, that was a good thing, wasn’t it? “Right, excellent.”

“
I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“
Christian, I didn’t get a chance to tell you in New York. It was your parents’ anniversary, and everything. It was sudden, and I … I just … I’m actually in Paris because of a family thing. It’s complicated. Do you really want … I mean, it’s a bit confusing, not really your sort of thing …”

“
So, you’re doing that as well as your work, honey?”

“
Well, theoretically, I suppose I am.” Cat made a face. She had taken hundreds of photographs yesterday. She could show them to her boss. Not that he would care, but, still, technically …

“
I’ll talk to you soon.”

“
Oh, Christian, that’s so great.”

He hung up. Cat
took a deep breath, and then put her key in the lock.

“
Madame!” Cat jumped at the sound of a woman’s voice. She turned, to see a woman who was hardly half Cat’s own height standing across the hallway. The woman was eyeing Cat up and down very fast. “Vous entrez la?” Was she going in there?

“
Oh! Oui, oui. Pardon, my French is not good …”

“
Non, non, non, non, non!” The woman, who wore a maroon skirt and coordinated blouse, eyed Cat again. In a quick second, she seemed to change her mind. Now, there appeared to be something approaching approval passing across her face. “Americaine?”

“
Er, oui.”

“
Vell.” With great care, the woman shut the apartment door across the wide hallway and came out into the corridor. “You ’ave a key for this one, non?”

“
Yes!”

The woman folded her arms.
“Zer has been no-one in zis apartment since I live here.”

“
The woman who owned it was very old. She was possibly ill, so …”

“
But no-one, in ze building, know who own this apartment.”

“
No-one knew Madame de Florian? How long have you lived here, Madame?”

“
I’ve been here these twelve years,” the woman announced. “Never, have I seen a person enter zis apartment.”

Maybe Isabelle
de Florian had been unwell for that period of time. It had hardly been appropriate to ask Loic about the state of his grandmother’s health. After all, she had been ninety-one when she died. So if she hadn’t visited for twelve years then that was hardly unreasonable. The question was why hadn’t Isabelle changed her will, and why hadn’t she told her grandson about the apartment? Why hadn’t it been left to her family? None of it made sense.

The woman in front of her folded her
arms. “I see now. You Americaine, so you never come to Paris. Keep it locked.” She shook her head. “So, ze apartment is yours?”

Cat chewed on her lip.
“For now.”

The woman looked beady.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Cat Jordan.” Cat held out a hand.

The woman didn’t move an inch.

“Sandrine.” No last name.

“
So …”

“
Your apartment will be full of mice!”

“
Oh!”

“
Oui.”

Cat tu
rned around.

Loic
stepped out of the lift.

Sandrine clapped her eyes on him and didn’t take them off.
“Zis is your 'usband? Chic alors!”

“
No.”

But to Cat’s
complete surprise, Loic threw an arm around her shoulders.

“
You know, this is a special time for us. We’ll catch up with you, Madame. Soon. Thanks for dropping by.” He put on a perfect American accent.

Sandrine seemed to consider this.
“You vill knock on my door if you need me.” She was simpering up at Loic.

“
We will.” Loic was firm.

“
Thank you!” Cat trilled. Her voice sounded tinny and high.

Loic
took his arm away from Cat’s shoulder. Sandrine melted back through her own front door.

“
Ready?” Loic asked.

Cat looked up at him.
“I understand if you aren’t.”

“
It just got to me. That’s all.”

“
Yes …”

“
So.”

She put the key in the lock, but it would not turn
an inch.

“
Let me have a try.”

“
Sandrine says it’s a long time since it’s been used. Twelve years apparently.”

“
I can turn the key, Cat, but the door is jammed shut.” Loic leaned his entire body weight into the door but it was stuck fast. After several attempts he stopped and leaned against the wall.

Cat pushed at it again.
“Makes you wonder whether it’s been even longer than twelve years.”

“
I’m hoping it’s not since 1940.”

Cat
looked at him for a moment, but he was studying the door. Suddenly she threw her own body weight against it. Her shoulder seared. The door did not budge.

“
Martial Arts, Cat?”