The Paris Apartment, page 1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Kelly Bowen
Reading group guide copyright © 2021 by Kelly Bowen and Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Cover design by Daniela Medina. Cover photography © Trevillion; Shutterstock. Cover copyright © 2021 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bowen, Kelly (Romance fiction writer), author.
Title: The Paris apartment / Kelly Bowen.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Forever, 2021.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020053579 | ISBN 9781538718155 (trade paperback) | ISBN
9781538718148 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1939-1945--Underground
movements--France--Fiction. | GSAFD: Historical fiction.
Classification: LCC PR9199.4.B68523 P37 2021 | DDC 813/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020053579
ISBNs: 978-1-5387-1815-5 (trade paperback), 978-1-5387-1814-8 (ebook)
E3-20210317-DA-NF-NG
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Discover More
Author’s Note
Questions for Readers
Further Reading
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Acclaim for Kelly Bowen and The Paris Apartment
To the unsung heroes who fought hatred and persecution with uncommon courage and strength.
Your sacrifice and efforts will not be forgotten.
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Chapter
1
Aurelia
Paris, France
10 June 2017
The woman was nude.
Painted in a swirl of angry scarlets and oranges, the woman’s arms were flung over her head, her hands outstretched, her hair a cloud of midnight floating behind her. Caught in the shaft of light that fell through the open apartment door, she gazed out with dark eyes from her canvas, angry and accusing, as if she resented the intrusion into her space and privacy. Lia froze in the open doorway, one hand clutching the heavy key and the other gripping the packet of neatly organized legal papers that said she had every right to be here.
And that this unknown apartment, along with all its contents, now belonged to her.
It is an incredibly valuable property, the lawyers had assured her. Your grandmother must have adored you, the administrative assistant had said enviously as she had examined the printed address. And Lia hadn’t replied to any of them because Grandmère’s motives in death were as murky as they had been in life, and Lia couldn’t be sure that adoration had figured in either.
“Utilities should be on,” the building’s concierge said from the top of the stairs behind Lia. The property caretaker was a surprisingly young woman with a close-cropped pink bob and a quick smile who had introduced herself simply as Celeste. Lia had liked her immediately. “I’m not often in the office but I’m always around if you need anything else. Just ring me.”
“Thank you,” Lia replied faintly, slipping the key into her pocket.
“You said on the phone this place was your grandmother’s?” Celeste leaned casually on the stair railing.
“Yes. She left it to me when she passed.” Or at least that was what the lawyers had said when they had summoned her to their offices and laid a steady stream of documents before her. And while the flat had been paid for and maintained from an account with Grandmère’s name on it, as far as Lia knew, Estelle Allard had never lived anywhere other than Marseille.
“Ah.” The woman’s expression softened. “My condolences on her passing.”
“Thank you. It wasn’t unexpected. Though this apartment was a…shock.”
“Not a bad one as shocks go, I think?” Celeste remarked. “We should all be so lucky.”
“True,” Lia acknowledged, playing with the enameled pendant at her throat. Until this morning, the antique necklace had been the only gift Grandmère had ever given her, presented without fuss on her eighteenth birthday. She considered the concierge. “How long have you worked here?”
“Six years.”
“I don’t suppose you know anything about this apartment? Or my grandmother? Estelle Allard?”
Celeste shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t. While I’m familiar with most of the tenants in the building, in truth, I had no idea who owned this apartment, only that it’s been unoccupied since I started.”
On impulse, Lia jammed the packet of paper under her arm and unzipped her portfolio bag. From inside, she withdrew a small painting, about the size of a legal document. It was a vivid, if somewhat clumsy, painting of a manor house surrounded by clumps of emerald trees and silhouetted against a cobalt sky. Along with the key to this apartment, the painting had been the only other thing her grandmother had specifically left her.
“What about the name Seymour? William Seymour? Does that sound familiar?” Lia asked, holding the painting toward Celeste.
Celeste shook her head again. “No. May I ask who he was?”
“No clue. Other than the artist who signed this painting.”
“Oh.” Celeste looked intrigued. “Were you thinking that he was once a tenant here?”
“I have no idea.” Lia sighed, sliding the little painting back into her bag. She hadn’t really expected an answer but she had nothing to lose by asking.
“I can check the building’s records for you if you like,” Celeste offered. “We have archives going back a lot of years. If a William Seymour lived here at one point in time, I might be able to find out.”
Lia was touched by the kindness of the offer. “No, that’s all right.” She didn’t want to waste this woman’s time. At least until she had done a little research of her own.
“Sure. But if you reconsider, just let me know.”
“Thank you. I will.”
Celeste seemed to hesitate. “Are you planning to live here?” she finally asked.
Lia opened her mouth to answer and then closed it. The simple answer was yes, at least temporarily. But beyond temporarily? Lia had no simple answer for that.
“None of my business.” The woman ducked her head. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Lia smiled. “I haven’t made a decision yet.”
“I hope you stay,” Celeste said sincerely. “It would be nice to have—”
The sound of a lock being released, accompanied by a brief torrent of hysterical barking, made Lia turn. An elderly woman emerged from the apartment across the landing and shuffled toward her. A small bundle of writhing white fur was clamped under one arm, a pointy cane clutched in her other hand. She was dressed like a model from a midcentury American advert peddling soap or vacuums, in a wide-skirted floral dress with a pinched waist and a string of heavy pearls at her throat. Her white hair was curled around a liberally powdered face, her lipstick an angry crimson. Color had bled into the deep lines that tracked outward from her lips, and the whole effect was rather macabre. Unbidden, Aurelia could almost hear Grandmère tsk in disapproval.
One should never notice your cosmetics, Lia. Unless, of course, you only wish to be noticed but not seen.
At the time, an adolescent, lip-gloss-loving Lia remembered being annoyed by the cryptic, critical comment. Now, Lia couldn’t say Grandmère had been wrong.
The woman scowled and craned her neck, trying to peer past.
“Good afternoon,” Lia said politely, her ingrained boarding-school manners demanding that she make some sort of greeting.
In response, the dog resumed its frantic tirade, the shrill noise bouncing mercilessly off the marble floor and plaster walls. The woman’s face soured further, and she produced a piece of sausage from somewhere in the folds of her dress. That silenced the barking, two beady eyes now fixed not on Lia but on the prize held in clawlike fingers.
“You own this apartment?” the woman asked into the ensuing quiet with a voice like sandpaper.
“Yes.” A fact that was still so new and novel that it was hard to answer with conviction.
“I’ve lived here my entire life. Since 1943,” the woman said, her eyes narrowing.
Lia’s smile was slipping. “Um. That’s a long time—”
“I know everything that goes on in this building. And in all that time, no one has ever gone in or come out of that apartment. Until now.”
“Mmm.” Lia made some noncommittal sound. She wasn’t sure if that was a question, a statement, or an accusation. She adjusted her grip on the legal envelope, pressing it against her chest.
“You living here by yourself?” Her gaze shifted to Lia’s left hand.
“I beg your pardon?” Lia resisted the urge to shove her hand in her pocket.
“You seem old to not have a husband. Too late now, I suppose. Unfortunate.”
Lia blinked, uncertain she had heard right. “I’m sorry?”
“I know your type,” Lia’s neighbour sniffed, her eyes lingering first on Lia’s heavy backpack and the portfolio bag, and finally on her bare shoulders and the straps of her red sundress tied around her neck.
“My type?” Lia’s patience was wearing thin, and irritation was starting to creep in.
“I don’t want to hear your music. No drugs or booze or parties. No strange men prowling around my door at all hours of the night looking for you.”
“I’ll try to keep the men confined to daylight hours,” Lia replied pleasantly, unable to help herself.
Celeste, who had remained silent through the entire exchange, snorted in laughter before trying to cover it up with a fit of coughing.
The woman’s head snapped around.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Hoffmann.” Celeste composed herself. “How are you doing today?”
Madame Hoffmann gave the woman’s pink hair a hard look, scarlet lips twisting into a sneer. “Degenerate,” she muttered.
Celeste’s phone chimed, and she glanced down at the screen. “Duty calls,” she said, shooting Lia an apologetic glance. “Let me know if you need anything. And welcome to the building.” She pushed herself off the railing and vanished down the stairs, triggering another hysterical tirade of barking.
Lia used the distraction to retreat into her apartment and close the door behind her, abruptly enveloping herself in a stuffy darkness but saving herself from further conversation.
“No wonder you’re angry,” she muttered in the direction of the nude canvas that rested somewhere in front of her. “I’d be angry, too, if I’d lived across from a neighbour like that since 1943.”
She didn’t get an answer.
The air in the apartment was thick with the scent of age and dust, suggesting that the apartment had been unoccupied far longer than the six years Celeste knew about. Lia set her belongings down and let her eyes adjust to the gloom. Deeper in the apartment, on the side that would face the wide, sunny street, faint lines of light were seeping around what Lia surmised must be heavy curtains covering the windows. Enough light to give the suggestion of shapes but not enough for her to see anything clearly.
Carefully, Lia inched forward out of the foyer, past the dim outline of the canvas, and made her way toward the windows. The floor beneath her creaked with each step as if it, too, resented her intrusion. She reached the curtained wall and extended her hand, the tips of her fingers colliding with a heavy fabric that felt like damask. So far, so good. Nothing had jumped out or fallen on her head or run over her toes. She found the edge of the curtain, rings rattling on their rod somewhere above. Without hesitating, she pulled the curtain back.
And regretted it immediately.
As blinding sunlight spilled through the antique panes, thick, choking clouds of dust billowed around her. Lia gagged and coughed, her eyes instantly watering. She fumbled frantically with the latch on the window, relieved beyond measure when it reluctantly gave way. She pushed one of the leaded-glass panels open a crack, ignoring the groan of protest from the hinges, and pressed her face out into the fresh air.
She stayed that way for a good minute, her head stuck out the window, gasping and hacking and trying not to imagine how ridiculous she must look to people passing by down below. Perhaps she should have just left the apartment door wide open. Perhaps she should have sent the charming Madame Hoffmann in first.
Her coughing finally subsiding, Lia took a deep, fortifying breath and straightened, bracing herself for what she might find. She turned slowly away from the window. And discovered that, upon her death, Grandmère had not left Lia an apartment after all.
She’d left Lia a museum.
Dust still swirled but the brilliant light illuminated walls covered in patterned wallpaper the grey-blue of a stormy sky. Dozens of painted landscapes and seascapes in gilded frames were hung on the wall opposite the windows, some capturing images of bucolic country scenes, others freezing ships forever in their quest across the horizon, and each one bursting with saturated color.
In the center of the room, upholstered Louis XV sofas in dust-covered turquoise faced off against each other across a wide Persian rug. A long writing desk bridged the ends of the sofas closest to Lia, and it was against the desk that the tall, nude canvas had been propped, facing the door to greet anyone who entered.
On the back wall adjacent to the windows, an elaborate marble mantelpiece swept over an empty hearth. A bracket had been mounted to the wall high above the fireplace, suggesting that a piece of art had once hung in the tall space, although whatever was once there wasn’t now. And above her head, a chandelier hung in the center of the room, its dripping, dazzling crystals muted only partially by dust.
On unfeeling legs, Lia headed deeper into the apartment. She stopped at a dainty side table at the far end of a sofa and examined a collection of framed photos. With care, she picked up the first and wiped the glass. A young woman had been captured leaning against a light post in front of a jazz club, wearing a silky, beaded dress that clung to each and every curve like a second skin, a fur stole draped carelessly over her shoulders. She held a cigarette holder in one hand, eyes meeting the camera’s lens with smoky, sensual indifference. Lia turned it over. Estelle Allard, Montmartre, 1938 was written in pencil across the back.
Lia swallowed hard.
Though she had been told repeatedly by the estate lawyers that this apartment was the domain of Estelle Allard, Lia realized that she hadn’t truly believed it until right now. She hadn’t truly believed that her grandmother, who had not once in her life mentioned that she had ever travelled to Paris, much less lived here, had kept a secret of this magnitude for this long.
And Lia couldn’t even begin to imagine why she would have done so.
She set the photo back down and examined the second. In this one, the beautiful Estelle was behind the wheel of a low-slung Mercedes, leaning out the window and laughing at the photographer. Her hair was loose over her shoulders, a jaunty hat cocked over one eye. Lia blinked, trying to reconcile these sultry, fearless images with the rigid, reserved woman Lia had known. She failed miserably.
She turned her attention to the last of the photos and frowned. A German officer stared back at her, unsmiling and severe. From his uniform, it was clear that it was an image from the First World War. Lia frowned and turned it over but there was nothing written on the back. She set the photo down and glanced at a pile of magazines stacked beside it.
