“I see.”
Bastien took two long steps past me toward the fireplace. “Hmm, what is this?”
I spun around to look at where he was now pointing. “Oh, isn’t it incredible?! It’s the Adélaïse family crest. Elliott uncovered it from beneath like a dozen layers of paint.”
“Oui, I saw the crest already. I meant this,” he said, pointing to a clock sitting on the mantel.
I was so enamored by the coat of arms earlier, I completely overlooked it sitting right there in front of me. I carefully lifted the base up off the shelf. “Wow, it’s the clock that we . . . me and Elliott . . . came across at the market this morning. It reminded me so much of the one I saw in that original photograph we found at Saint Orens. I even joked with Elliott that it just might be the very same clock. I wanted to get it, but it was a little too expensive. I guess he must’ve gone back to the booth to buy it after we split up.”
“Well, it fits perfectly, non? Like it was made for this exact spot?”
“Oui, it really does.”
He put his arm around me. “C’mon, you must be hungry. Can I interest you in that life-changing croque Monsieur now?”
“Can I take a rain check? I’m tired and sweaty and could use a cold shower and a full night’s rest. Besides, I have a tutoring session with Pascal tonight.”
“Pascal? Should I be jealous?” he teased.
“I don’t know, should I be jealous of Kate?” I said before I could stop the words from tumbling out of my mouth.
His eyes went round. “Kate? Don’t be ridicule. She is only my colleague, the same way Elliott is your colleague, non?”
At the mention of Elliott’s name, I felt my body stiffen, remembering the feel of his soft lips on mine and the jolt of electricity that almost knocked me off my espadrilles. “Yes. Of course, you’re right, I am being ridicule.”
He gently stroked the side of my face. “Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.”
My brain tried to catch what it could of his French, running through my limited vocab with Pascal. I came up woefully short. “The only thing I got was cœur . . . heart, right? So what does the rest mean?”
“The heart has reasons for which reason knows nothing.”
“Tell me, why does the expression ‘you’re being ridiculous’ sound so much better when it’s said in French? It’s almost infuriating.”
The corners of his mouth turned up to a flirty grin. “I don’t know, why don’t you ask Pascal?”
Mon dieu, he was charming. And seemed to be very into me. Maybe I was jumping to the entirely wrong conclusion about him and Kate. Maybe I was just still in my head after the whole Rhys encounter? I didn’t have anything to worry about . . . Colleagues talked, right? Colleagues even occasionally touched. Sure. Colleagues sometimes even kissed on romantic antique carousels, and that didn’t mean there was necessarily anything more to the story.
But there was just something about the look in Kate’s eyes and the way she and Bastien were overly familiar with one another. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t shake the sinking feeling that in this case, there really did seem to be more to their story.
Chapter Thirty
With filming shut down on Heart Restoration Project for one more day because of the mold issue, Elliott and I decided it was the perfect opportunity to visit Aix-en-Provence and the Camp des Milles Memorial. I was relieved when he knocked on my door late last night suggesting the trip, not even the slightest trace of awkwardness still lingering from our kiss and his subsequent quick exodus from the carousel.
The camp was about an hour south of Maubec, so we set out early, wanting to take full advantage of our day off. Unfortunately, Jack and Claudine didn’t seem any keener on our pursuit of the true story behind Château Mirabelle as a facet for the show, but it no longer mattered to either one of us. Elliott and I were on a mission to unveil the reasons behind the town’s collective silence about what had truly transpired there.
Gervais parked the van in front of a dark-red, run-down brick building resembling an old factory, and we stepped out onto an empty dirt road. Elliott lifted his backpack and camera onto his shoulder and said, “I called ahead and arranged for a tour guide to meet us at the entrance at eight thirty.”
It was probably around eighty-five degrees, yet goose bumps trailed up and down my arms. There was something wholly unsettling about this place. If Provence was impressionist art with its color and light, this landscape was the complete opposite—dull, monochrome, and lifeless. I didn’t need a tour guide to tell me this was somewhere you didn’t want to stay for very long.
A few minutes later, an older woman with a nameplate that read Hélène approached us. “Bonjour, you must be Elliott?” she said, glancing down at her clipboard and then back up at us.
“I’m Elliott Schaffer, and this is Plum Everly,” he answered.
“Pleased to meet you both. I have your tickets right here,” she said, patting her right breast pocket. “But they know me so well, they won’t be necessary. Come, we can go inside this way.” She motioned for us to follow her around the side of the building to a small gatehouse. The security guard glanced at Hélène’s credentials and waved her inside while we followed closely behind.
“So,” Hélène asked us over her shoulder as she led the way, “what is your interest in Camp des Milles? Perhaps that will help to better structure our day?”
“We are working on the restoration of a château in Maubec for a television show, and we understand the former owners played a role in the French Resistance. We’re trying to learn a bit more about what may have happened to them,” I answered. “I was wondering if it would be okay if we film a bit of our tour and conversations here for the project?”
“Actually, that would be wonderful. Very few people know France even had internment camps during World War II. What a great platform to be able to educate them. Please, film away, but perhaps we should start at the beginning then, non?”
Over the next several hours, Hélène walked us through Camp des Milles, from the main building, once a fully operational tile factory before it was converted to a prison, to the guards’ dining room, now known as the Room of Murals.
Hélène motioned to the wall. “This mural is called ‘The Last Supper,’ one prisoner’s very dark take on the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece,” she explained. “Camp des Milles imprisoned many artists believed to be political dissidents. You will see that they left their mark all over the grounds.”
“That’s just incredible. Elliott, can you bring the camera up close to it, get tight shots of each and every painted face? Be sure to give special attention to the detail work when you zoom in. If we can show the actual brushstrokes on the wall, it would be a way to subtly acknowledge the people who made them,” I directed.
Elliott, not missing a beat, took my cue and moved about the space filming the sequence as I requested. “This looks great. Nice touch, Plum.” He stroked my arm affirmingly and moved to follow after Hélène, who continued her guided tour of the room.
“Camp des Milles was used to house various ‘undesirables’—emigrants awaiting exit visas, political enemies, escapees from Germany and Austria, and, as I said, an exceptionally high proportion of artists. The painters, sculptors, writers, actors, and musicians had to be endlessly inventive in devising ways to ward off boredom and lift their spirits,” Hélène explained. “Over three hundred paintings and drawings are thought to have originated here.”
I thought back to the exhibit at the French Resistance Museum in Paris and the black-and-white photographs of the cattle cars standing outside Camp des Milles’s front gates. “When did things change? When did it become more of a deportation camp?”
“Between 1941 and 1942, Camp des Milles became one of the centres de rassemblement before deportation. About two thousand of the inmates were shipped off to the Drancy internment camp, and then, for many, eventually they were brought to Auschwitz,” Hélène answered solemnly, not needing to fill in the rest.
“Are there records on-site? Lists of prisoners? The former owners of Château Mirabelle, the Adélaïses, we believe that they may have been brought here. They were arrested sometime in 1942, so the timelines sync up,” I said.
“Yes, there is an archive in the main building we can check. I think they should be amenable to letting you both visit given the nature of your project.” Hélène glanced down at her watch and tsked. “Oof, but we should go now. The archive is only open a few hours every day, and that’s assuming Madame Razat even came in at all.” Hélène turned to me. “She watches her grandson every other Tuesday, and I cannot remember if she worked last week?”
