The Perfume Collector(48)

He had work to do.





Paris, Spring, 1955

Two days later, Grace found herself standing in the foyer of the offices of Lancelot et Delp, located in a strikingly modern concrete building near Les Halles. They had a sparse, marble lobby with floor-to-ceiling windows, manned by a desk of young women wearing telephone operator headphones. Monsieur Tissot confirmed their appointment and soon afterwards a young man bolted from one of the ten lifts at the centre of the lobby to greet them.

He was wearing a modern narrow-cut suit with a thin, bright yellow tie and thick-framed black glasses. His hair, a mass of dark curls, stuck straight up in the air. As he bounded over to them, hand already outstretched, it struck Grace that he reminded her of a human exclamation mark, with the same emphatic energy.

‘Good afternoon! Welcome! I’m Albert Dubois.’ He pumped both their hands hard. ‘Pleasure to meet you! Would you like coffee? Tea? Have you been here before?’ All the while he was speaking, he ushered them to the lifts, heedless of any answers.

‘How lovely that you speak English,’ Grace commented, as they stepped inside and the doors closed.

‘Oh, I also speak German, Spanish, Portuguese and a bit of Japanese. The one that always trips me up is American!’ he laughed, pushing his glasses further back on his nose.

‘Japanese!’ Monsieur Tissot looked at him as if he were mad. ‘Whatever for?’

‘I’m telling you, they’re picking themselves up – they’re going to be a force to be reckoned with soon.’

‘I seriously doubt it,’ Monsieur Tissot disagreed.

The lift opened again and they stepped out, pushing through a pair of glass double doors.

The din hit Grace first; the sound of a hundred voices all speaking at once. Row after row of desks stretched to the end of the huge office, each desk with at least two phones; young men in shirtsleeves were shouting across to one another and there was a large board mounted on the far wall, where more young men ran from one end to another, making constant adjustments to the numbers.

‘Sorry about this,’ Monsieur Dubois filtered them off to a private side office and offered them a seat. ‘New York has just opened so things are heating up. So.’ He sat down across from them at his desk and took out a file. ‘You’re here about the d’Orsey stocks, is that right? Oh, so sorry for your loss,’ he added, looking at Grace.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured, trying not to catch Monsieur Tissot’s eye.

‘Well, I have to say,’ he smiled as he opened the file, ‘one of my all-time favourite clients, Eva d’Orsey. What a nose she had for this game!’

‘What do you mean?’ Monsieur Tissot sat forward, interested.

Monsieur Dubois sifted through the papers in front of him. ‘She came to me about five or six years ago with a handful of Hiver stocks. A gift, she said. She knew nothing about the stock market and wanted someone to advise her. Fine. I made a few conservative recommendations – commodities, gold, bonds, things like that. But before I knew it, she was calling me with suggestions. Did I know that Citroën was building a new suspension braking device? Was I aware that Goodyear were expanding in Mexico? What did I think of the new American rock ‘n’ roll dance craze?’

‘Really?’ Monsieur Tissot laughed incredulously.

‘She was quite extraordinary. She understood the numbers, did research.’ He passed Grace a report from the top of the file. ‘She took that handful of cosmetics stocks and finessed it into a valuable long-term investment portfolio.’

Grace looked down the long list of company names – United States Steel, EMI, Standard Oil, Firestone, Citroën, Le Monde, Amoco . . . somewhere near the bottom she noticed Hiver. And next to each entry, there was a monetary value in francs. Her mind was swimming; drowning in information. ‘I’m sorry, but what does this all mean, Monsieur Dubois?’

He nodded to the file. ‘This portfolio was Madame d’Orsey’s sole means of income. And she was very savvy – with every excess profit, she bought more stocks. What this means,’ he explained with a gleam in his eye, ‘is that you’re quite a wealthy woman, Mrs Munroe.’



Grace turned to Monsieur Tissot as they left the offices of Lancelot et Delp. ‘This is mad! Some sort of bizarre mistake.’ She felt giddy, slightly light-headed from the news. ‘I’ll wake up any minute now – the real Grace Munroe will suddenly appear, probably from Australia or something, and I’ll be sent packing back to London.’

‘You are the real Grace Munroe. You’re just in shock.’ He offered her his arm as they crossed to where the car was parked on the other side of the street. ‘You need to eat something.’