“No,” Eve said in her low, graveled voice. “Jesus wasn’t anywhere near that green-walled study. Only Judas.” She reached for her packet of cigarettes but it was long empty. “It’s the s-s-study I dream about. Not René’s face, not the sound of my fingers breaking. The study. Those breathing walls, and the Tiffany peacock, and that bust of B-Baudelaire . . .”
She trailed off, her averted profile harsh. Somewhere in the distance I heard a church bell chime, and we all listened to the doleful sound: Finn with his shoulder jammed against the wall, arms folded across his chest; me curled up on the window seat; Eve across from me motionless as a statue, hands folded in her lap.
Those hands. From the beginning I’d wanted to know what had happened to her hands, and now I knew. They were the price she’d paid for serving her country, the war wounds that reminded her every day of how she’d broken. An uncompromising heart like hers wouldn’t accept that she wasn’t to blame for succumbing. She just saw cowardice, and it shamed her enough to make her refuse the medals she’d earned. I looked at my own unmarked hands, imagining a marble bust smashing down over and over until my fingers looked like Eve’s, and a bone-deep shudder went through me. “Eve,” I heard myself say low-voiced. “You are the bravest soul I have ever met.”
She brushed that aside. “I broke. A little opium in a brandy glass, and I spilled my guts.”
Something about that bothered me. It didn’t entirely add up, and I opened my mouth to say why, but Finn was already speaking, his voice soft and angry.
“Don’t be a dobber, Gardiner. Everybody breaks. Hit people in the right place, find the thing they care for, hurt them long enough—we all crack. There’s no shame in that.”
“Yes, there is, you soft-headed Scot. Lili was condemned at trial because of it, and so were Violette and I.”
“So blame René Bordelon for torturing it out of you. Blame the Germans for handing down the sentence—”
“Oh, there’s enough blame in this withered heart for all of us.” Her voice was ruthless in its condemnation, and she still didn’t look at us. “René and the Germans played their part, but so did I. Violette never forgave me, and I don’t blame her.”
“What happened to Lili?” I asked. “Was—was it the firing squad after all?” I could see her standing up against a wall, small and gallant under her blindfold, and my gorge rose. Eve had made Lili every bit as real and precious to me as Rose.
“No,” said Eve. “It was too soon after Cavell’s execution. Too much outcry for the Germans to shoot another woman p-point blank. It was quite another fate for the three of us.” Eve shivered as if a rat had run across her nerves.
“But you survived,” I said, dry-mouthed. “Violette survived. Did Lili—”
“Enough about the trial and the rest of it. It’s not a tale for dark nights, and anyway, it’s not important at the moment.” Eve pushed it away almost visibly, whatever it was, and fixed her eyes on mine. “What’s important now is René Bordelon. You know now what he did to me, what kind of man he was. When the war ended and I came home, I had every intention of returning to Lille and blowing his foul head off. I’d been dreaming about it for years. Captain Cameron scuttled that—lied to my face the day I arrived in England, saying René was dead.” Her voice was sliding back from hoarse emotion into her usual crispness the further she got from the recitation of her own torture. “Cameron probably thought I’d have peace that way. That man was too damned noble to understand vengeance. How it keeps you up night after night shaking with hatred, dreaming that if you can only taste blood in your mouth, you’ll sleep without d-d-d-dreams.”
Finn gave a single fierce nod. He understood. So did I. I thought of the German soldiers who had shot Rose and her daughter, and my hatred was violent and instant.
“Well, I may be nearly thirty years l-l-l”—Eve’s gnarled fist struck hard against her own knee, and she jerked the halted word free—“thirty years late, but I am going to settle accounts. René owes me.” Eve’s eyes never left mine. “He owes you too.”
I blinked. “Me?”
“You say you want a reason to stay on this search, Yank, and I’ll give it to you, but you