city of darkness and light by rhys bowen

Then to the hospitals and morgues as planned. I played with Liam, trying to be the bright and cheerful mother he deserved, but it was hard when my head was so full of worry. And they were sent from someone who didn’t even know my name. They were nothing like Gus’s paintings, so I couldn’t take it as a sign that they were from her. What would that tell me? All I could say was that someone was sending me pretty pictures. And if they did, then what? I asked myself. One of them must surely recognize the painter. Tomorrow I would show the postcards to the artists I had met, both at the Nouvelle Athènes and across the Seine in Montparnasse. Were they both by the same person? I studied the signature but it was too small to read.

This painting of mother and child was real and alive. But his angelic child had been more idealized and sentimental than this-a true painting of the Victorian era. I wondered for a moment whether they had been painted by Reynold Bryce, since I knew he had specialized in painting children once upon a time. Both in the Impressionist style, most attractive. Surely that was significant? Then I turned them over and examined the paintings. Someone was sending me one postcard per day. So that was one day before the postcard of the tea-drinking woman. And this latest one had been mailed the day I arrived. He didn’t want to be put down, so I held him on my hip while I put the postcards down side by side on the table. Liam was a bit clingy this evening, finally resenting the fact that his mother wasn’t with him enough. I couldn’t think why they’d need to contact me in this fashion, but it gave me enough hope to take the last two flights of stairs more quickly. If they had both been mailed from a community outside Paris then I’d know that my friends were there and trying to contact me. I realized I hadn’t studied the postmarks and how stupid this had been. And all I had to encourage me were two postcards. It had been another day of foot-slogging and frustration. I felt my feet dragging as we went up the stairs.

City of darkness and light by rhys bowen