The Perfume Collector(96)

He considered asking her about it but recoiled from phrasing the questions out loud. Part of him suspected she wouldn’t answer him truthfully; that in all probability she would claim complete ignorance. And he couldn’t bear to have her lie to him.

Shortly afterwards, he heard through the Parisian gossip that the actress Kay Waverley no longer presided at the pink villa hidden in the hills of Monte Carlo.

Apparently there had been a minor motorcar accident in the early hours on one of the steep winding roads. The driver had emerged unscathed but Kay had been thrown forwards into the windscreen, suffering damage to the right side of her face. Some said that the scars left behind from the accident never fully disappeared, despite the expertise of some of Europe’s finest surgeons.

She never resurfaced in the world of films.

In fact, she ended her days, some say prematurely, in a remote house on a dairy farm in Minnesota.





Paris, Spring, 1955

Madame Zed lifted the stopper off the second bottle, marked Auréole Noire, and passed it to Grace.

‘This is Andre’s second great tribute to Eva. Black Halo,’ she translated.

Grace held it up. The scent rose like an other-worldly incense, full of light and fire, with hypnotic lush white top notes and then a searing drop to intense woody depths. It had a volatile yet enveloping quality; unsettling and overwhelming.

‘It’s extraordinary,’ she murmured.

‘But . . .?’

‘But unsteady,’ Grace decided, surprised by her own assessment. ‘It’s not a comfortable beauty.’

‘No,’ Madame Zed admitted, looking at her sharply. ‘You’re really quite perceptive.’

Grace passed it back to her.

‘You don’t like it,’ Madame guessed.

‘I don’t know why, but it makes me sad. And a little frightened.’ Grace sat back in her chair. ‘It has no net.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Most things,’ Grace searched for the right words, ‘most things that are meant to be beautiful have a familiar structure – a beginning, middle and end – that acts like a net. You can only fall so far. This perfume doesn’t have that.’

Again, Madame nodded. ‘Yes. You don’t know quite where you’re going to end up. Personally, I admire that.’

‘Do you still have the other perfume? The one that he made for her that smelled like a storm?’

‘Oh, that?’ She thought a moment. ‘No, I’ve never seen it. Perhaps it developed into one of his larger accords, I’m not sure.’

Of all the scents Madame had described, that had been the most intriguing.

‘Eva had an excellent eye,’ Madame continued. ‘She transformed his little shop. The mirrored ceiling, the silk walls . . . that was all her. The wealthy are fascinated by their reflections. “Give them something new to look at,” she used to say, “even if it’s the tops of their heads, and they will stare at it for hours!”’

‘Was Valmont in love with her?’

‘In his own way, perhaps.’

‘Why didn’t they marry?’

‘The situation was more complex than that. Andre’s real passion was always his work.’

‘So,’ Grace frowned, ‘he wasn’t in love with her?’

Madame Zed thought a moment. ‘He was in love with aspects of her. Andre wasn’t capable of expressing himself like other people. He dreamt in smells, he heard music in colours. In many ways I believe he was a true genius. But he was extremely protective of his way of seeing the world. The smallest thing could distract him and throw him off for days. He wanted Eva’s approval but resented his dependence on her. And they argued over the direction the business should take.’

‘Why?’

‘Eva wanted him to create mass-produced scents as well as personal commissions. But Andre didn’t believe in it. They had bitter disagreements about it.’

‘Yes,’ Grace conceded, ‘but how can a perfumer not believe in selling perfume?’

Madame stiffened. ‘He didn’t believe in selling everyone the same perfume. She got her way in the end, though.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She sold one of his formulations to Hiver during the war. She betrayed everything Andre believed in.’

Grace thought back to what the shop assistant had told them in the Galeries Lafayette: the Hiver perfume created by a small outside house during the war, a formula that couldn’t be reproduced . . . ‘Are you talking about Ce Soir?’

She nodded. ‘Even the name is common.’

Grace sat forward. ‘But why would she do such a thing?’

Madame Zed shook her head, her face suddenly drained of colour. ‘During the occupation, Andre was arrested, taken to Drancy concentration camp. Eva got it into her head that she could persuade Hiver to use his influence with the Third Reich to have Andre released. But she needed to make it worth his while, to prove that Andre could be indispensable to Hiver’s business. Only Hiver was a stupid, shallow man. He took the formula but Andre died in Dachau.’