With any other person, Lucie would have plunged into conversation. Instead, she entered the children’s section.
Hobnailed footsteps followed.“Ach! Die Brüder Grimm.”Wattenberg pulled a volume of Grimms’ Fairy Tales off the shelf. “I know these stories. They will help me learn. I will buy it.”
Lucie fought off a grimace. To refuse a sale was unwise, so she led the man to the cash register. Over the pale green bookplate that read “Borrowed from the subscription library of Green Leaf Books, Paris,” she glued a new one that read “From the Library of...” with space for the owner to inscribe his or her name, and “Purchased at Green Leaf Books, Paris” at the bottom. A dark green vine edged the bookplate.
Lucie took Wattenberg’s money, and he took his leave.
“You have an admirer, Lucie,” Charles called in a teasing lilt.
Jerzy made an exaggerated frown. “The poor boy must be lonely so far from home.”
“Good,” Lucie said. “The lonelier they get, the sooner they’ll go home.”
The men laughed, but Bernadette met Lucie’s eye and shook her head.
Bernadette was right. Although many of the French chafed under German rule, many welcomed the stability the Germans brought after the tumultuous 1930s. Even Lucie had to admit the soldiers were polite, with only a handful of ugly episodes, so polite they’d earned the tongue-in-cheek nickname of the “corrects.”
The door opened. Monsieur Quinault shook out his umbrella and stepped inside.
“Bonjour, Monsieur Quinault.” Lucie hurried forward to meet the printer. How unusual for him to visit the store. “Did you bring more bookplates?”
Monsieur Quinault did not return her smile. “Not until you pay for the previous order as well as this one. Since you no longer pay your bills, payment is now due upon order.”
“Oh.” Lucie eased back. “I’m sorry. Let me find out what happened. Madame Martel?”
After a pause, Bernadette raised dark eyes. “Oui?”
“Monsieur Quinault says he hasn’t been paid.”
Bernadette tipped her head toward the office. “The bill is on the desk.”
The desk. Lucie shuddered and headed to the office. Erma had kept the desk clear with a tiny, neat stack of papers quickly whisked into the file cabinet. But Bernadette worked in a freer environment.
Lucie thumbed through the hill of papers on the desk, but she didn’t know what she was looking for. She’d never had a head for such things. Bernadette did, but she preferred reading to paperwork, and the store did need her deep literary knowledge.
A bunch of papers cascaded off the desk, and Lucie knelt to pick them up.
“How much longer, mademoiselle?” Quinault’s cigarette-roughened voice tightened. “I would like to be paid.”
Lucie plopped the papers on the desk. “How much do I owe you?”
Quinault’s craggy face froze. His eye twitched. “Two hundred francs.”
He wasn’t telling the truth, but without the bill, Lucie couldn’t verify the amount. She’d write it down and ask Bernadette to reconcile it.
Besides, Monsieur Quinault was a widower, and the Germans held his only son as a prisoner of war, along with two million other French soldiers. Quinault might be having a difficult time making ends meet, and he deserved kindness. And having his bills paid.
Lucie opened the cash box and counted out the francs. The cash looked low, but it was the first of the month, right after the rent had been paid.
She wrote out a receipt. “I thank you for your patience and for your beautiful printing.”
Quinault pointed the bills at her. “Next time, you will pay first.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Monsieur Greenblatt never should have left his store to a woman.”
Somehow Lucie managed not to roll her eyes.MadameGreenblatt had been the one who paid the bills.
