Red Rainbow by G Johanson (top books of all time TXT) 📗

determined. If Hilaire and Florence were willing to protect César’s factory from marauding Nazis, Marcella was willing to solicit information. Patience worried about her more than them. Partly because she was her friend now but also due to how much more vulnerable she was than those two titans. Assuming the information Patience’s hand had revealed was correct (a huge assumption), the arsonists were doomed to failure and doomed in general, whereas anything could happen to Marcella. She was doggedly determined still, Patience convinced she’d do as well as anyone could in ferreting out this information.

Marcella made it home before dark and the curfew, bearing gifts in the form of hot food. She kept her cream overcoat on in the cold house, calling Patience out from the sitting room to join her at the kitchen table where she’d divide out the food for the three of them.

“Old Jacques thinks you’re a whore!” Scrambler said animatedly as Marcella set out plates for them. She hesitated for a second before resuming to lay the table, asking him who that was as she laid out the cutlery. “My neighbour.”

“I thought your neighbours all moved out.” He’d told them stories of the revolving door of neighbours next door, the rent going lower and lower for subsequent tenants due to nothing working in the house. One resident even conducted an exorcism without success.

“Opposite!” Obviously! Marcella and Patience exchanged a glance at this.

Marcella moved on from this. “I have good news and bad news about Maurice. He’s alive and he will be okay.”

“Thank you,” Patience said, patting her hand in gratitude. Whatever the bad news was, she was pleased that Marcella had given her this reassurance first.

“Don’t thank me, I’ve done nothing,” she replied modestly. “We should have known with him attending Deveral’s funeral what followed. He was arrested too. He stayed true to his gimmick. He didn’t talk. Literally didn’t say a word.”

Maurice had told Patience the reason for his silence upon the stage. Nerves, pure and simple, yet he turned this weakness into an asset, made the muteness part of his routine. She’d been questioned by them, she knew how hard that must have been with the likes of Dead Eyes, an abyss staring into you. It had made her want to say anything to avoid them taking things to the next level to extract the information they required.

“They wouldn’t let him go because he didn’t comply. He’s in prison now.”

“He got off quite lightly,” Scrambler said. Marcella gave him a fractional shake of the head at this that Patience wasn’t supposed to see. But she’d seen it and had to ask.

“Is there more to the bad news than him being in prison?”

“They broke his hand and his ribs and put cigarettes out on him. That’s it,” Marcella said. It was bad enough but could have been worse.

“And he still didn’t talk. That’s so brave of him,” Patience said. It was dreadful that this had happened to him but placing him in prison was ‘positive’ in a way. It suggested they were done with him. She liked to think that the staff and inmates would be sympathetic, that his incarceration would end as soon as Paris was free.

“It’s not for long,” Scrambler said, saying what she was thinking. He reported back anything he heard off the street, the word there better than the Propaganda Press. They were making inroads. “César’ll get a job for him he can do with a bust paw. It’ll be fun when we all work together at the end of this. Where do you want to work?” he asked Patience.

Marcella explained, “César has promised us all work if we want it.”

“Imagine me on the production line. ‘Another cockup, Mr Vadeboncoeur!’” Scrambler laughed, imagining the calamity of errors.

“I sort of had a job lined up, an opportunity for a job if I impressed,” Patience said. She’d figured out that the ad hoc sewing work was a trial run for the busier times ahead after the war when they’d need more staff. Nobody said that to her, it just seemed to make sense. “Working for a designer label. Just on a sewing machine.”

“I’d run off some novel creations before the machine exploded. What do you think Plague can do? Best keep her away from the pop!”

“Are you going to work with him?” Patience asked Marcella.

She shrugged as though disinterested. “Who knows?”

“Old Jacques is going to be my first customer here at this rate. Did he...”

Patience cut Scrambler off quickly before he said anything that might antagonise Florence. Hilaire was much more level and less combustible. The two ladies knocked before entering just before midnight, an apt time for them. All three of the residents were up, none having ventured to bed yet. Patience felt anxiety in her stomach. They’d staked out the bottling factory upon her unknown informant’s text (Marcella’s interpretation would be less to blame than her providing the information). If she’d got the place wrong, if there was nothing in it... she bore responsibility for this, setting wolves off on a potential path of destruction. The aim was to save people, good intentions often not bearing good fruit. The most likely reason they visited now was to report that nothing happened. It was safe to leave their post at night, the attack needing to happen during the day to maximise the body count.

“You were spot on, what you said,” Hilaire said chiefly to Patience but with the odd glance towards Marcella too.

“And they were definitely there to burn the place?” Patience asked.

“They had canisters of petrol and pointed a weapon at the doors to force them to stay inside,” Hilaire said, removing any ambiguity about their intentions.

“They failed!” Florence said theatrically, adding a small bow. “You’re welcome.”

“Team effort,” Hilaire said. “All of us, I mean.”

“Hey, I did nothing. I wish I had, though,” Scrambler said.

“You’ve been out every day, slowing them down. You’ve kept us safe and sheltered,” Patience said.

“You make a good point. I’m great too. You’ve got to tell