forestalled her. “Two rooms,” I said, looking up at Finn. “One for Grandmaman and one for us, don’t you think, dear?”
I said it without a hitch, laying a casual hand on his arm so the clerk would see my wedding ring. As Eve had said, selling a story is done by reciting the little details without any flubs.
“Two rooms,” Finn confirmed, slightly strangled. The clerk didn’t bat an eye. Later I put in a telephone call to Violette in Roubaix, letting her know where to reach me. We were in Grasse, and the hunt was on.
Finn’s new cards were embossed and expensive looking. “Pass them over with a patronizing air,” Eve instructed. “And for God’s sake, will you two quit giggling?”
But Finn and I went on howling with laughter. The cards, in their impressive-looking script, read:
Donald McGowan, Solicitor
“My Donald!” I managed to say at last. “Well, my mother always did want me to catch a lawyer.”
“Solicitor,” Eve corrected. “Limeys have solicitors, and very supercilious they are too. You’ll have to work up a good frown, Finn.” He had an impressive frown indeed as he handed his card across the maître d’s desk about four days later. By then he’d had some practice. “I am making inquiries on behalf of a lady,” he murmured. “A matter of some delicacy.”
The maître d’ appraised him in a glance. Finn Kilgore in his rumpled shirt and tousled hair wouldn’t have gotten the time of day in Les Trois Cloches, one of Grasse’s finest restaurants—but Donald McGowan in his charcoal gray suit and narrow striped tie rated a subtle straightening in posture. “How may I be of assistance, monsieur?”
It was the slow hour between lunch and dinner when diners were few; Eve always timed our arrival carefully so the staff had time to gossip. Or answer questions.
“My client, Mrs. Knight.” Finn glanced back to where Eve stood in a black silk dress and broad-brimmed hat, her hands hidden by kid gloves, leaning on my arm, looking frail as she dabbed her eyes with a black-bordered handkerchief. “She emigrated to New York years ago, but much of her family remained in France,” Finn explained. “And with so many dead in the war . . .”
The maître d’ crossed himself. “So many.”
“I have found death records for her father, her aunt, two uncles. But a cousin is still missing.”
If you can traipse all over France looking for your missing cousin, then so can I, Eve had said when she told us where she got the idea. Who in Europe doesn’t have a missing cousin or two these days?
“We discovered he fled Limoges for Grasse in ’44, just ahead of the Gestapo . . .” Finn lowered his voice, dropping a few vague hints about Resistance activity and enemies in Vichy. Painting a vision of Eve’s childhood companion (brave patriot narrowly escaping arrest), now yearned for by Eve (lonely survivor of a massacred family).
“Will anyone fall for that?” I’d asked back in the hyacinth field. “It’s very Hollywood.”
“They’ll fall for it because it’s Hollywood. After a war like this one, everyone w-wants a happy ending, even if it’s not their own.”
Sure enough, this maître d’, like the ones before him, was nodding, clearly sympathetic.
“René du Malassis,” Finn said, winding up. “But he may have taken a different name. The Milice were looking for him”—a trade of grimaces; even two years after the war, everybody bristled at the mention of the Milice—“and this has made Mrs. Knight’s inquiries very difficult. But we do have a photograph . . .”
The photograph of René, folded and clipped so all his swastika-wearing dinner partners would not show, was pushed discreetly across the table. The maître d’ studied it. Eve allowed her shoulders to shake, and I patted her back, looking worried. “Grandmaman, don’t upset yourself.” My role here: to ramp up the sympathy factor. I chafed Eve’s gloved hand between my own, heart thudding as the maître d’ hesitated.
“No,” he said, shaking his head, and my heart thudded again more leadenly. “No, I’m afraid I don’t recognize the gentleman.”
I crossed Les Trois Cloches off the list as Finn slid a discreet banknote across the table with a murmured, If you see the gentleman, do contact me . . . Only a few hundred more places to go.
“Don’t look dejected,” Eve said once we were outside. “I said this would take legwork and luck, d-didn’t I? This is the part that isn’t Hollywood. You don’t just go looking for someone and have him