“Okay,” he said, handing back the note after reading it. “He can’t spell Desmoulins and he wants his coat. So?”
“Maggie, Jean-Paul will need a clean shirt,” Émile said. “The old one has a bit of gore.”
“There’s one in the backpack,” I said as I handed Jean-Paul the two letters, and gave him the kid’s note again.
“Merde,” he muttered, looking between the signature on the letters and the name on the note. The return address on the letters was InterCentro, the Russian company that paid the agency that hired Bord and Qosja. The signatory, the man who wanted permission to study the library’s collection, was Boris Barkov, an expert, he said, on Russian Orthodox iconography and literature. The spelling of the surname was a little different from the boy’s, but the pronunciation would be too similar for this to be a coincidence.
According to the list Luca gave us, Boris Barkov sat on the InterCentro board of directors. When we Googled him earlier, we had learned that he was to deliver a lecture next week on holy ikons and manuscripts of Russian Orthodox churches. And that he sat on a parents’ advisory council for a rugby club at a boarding school in England.
“Philippe goes to a boarding school in England, doesn’t he?” Jean-Paul asked.
“Yes, but I don’t know which. I’ll have to ask Freddy.” I handed him the volume of Psalms. “The script is very ornate, and it’s difficult to read. When I first saw it, I thought it was Greek, because the illuminated capital is pi, the Greek equivalent of the Latinate P. But I was wrong. It isn’t Greek, Jean-Paul. The text is written in the Cyrillic alphabet of Russia.”
“Merde,” he said again. “It’s probably one of the books that showed up here during the Russian Revolution.”
“What the hell is going on?” Karine demanded to know.
“We’re going to the clinic,” Émile said. “Karine, if you don’t mind, I understand your brother has a clean shirt in the backpack in the vestibule. Please get it for him, because we are going right now.”
6
“That was a first for me,” I said, fluffing my pillow before lying back on it.
“What was?” Jean-Paul draped a leg over mine.
“Sex with a one-armed man.”
“Oh yes? Something you might consider again?”
“I might.” I kissed the side of his face. “I very well might.”
He laughed and pulled me against him. “What else is on the agenda for the day?”
“A shower, coffee, whatever Madame Gonsalves left in the kitchen for us to eat, and then down to the library. I am dying of curiosity.”
“I pray you aren’t dying of anything,” he said, disentangling himself from me and the sheets. “Don’t forget, someone is coming to install a security system this morning.”
I groaned, got to my feet, and found something clean to wear in the suitcase I had left open on the floor of Isabelle’s room the night before. “How does your shoulder feel this morning?”
“Better, much better.”
“I am very happy you didn’t re-break the bone when you hurled yourself into Bord.”
“I’ll be happy when this damn brace comes off,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Back to the agenda: I would very much like to go by my house today. I need to get some clothes and pick up a laptop. But I also want you to look around the place and decide if it feels haunted or if it’s just too hideous for you to ever consider as a place to live.”
“I doubt it’s hideous,” I said, turning around to look at him. “Why did you say that?”
“One day, soon I hope, we need to decide on a place, or places, to land together. I assume we will always have two homes, but what will they be? Will you keep your house in California or find a pied-à-terre? We’ll be there often, of course, but how often will depend on where either of us is working. The same for France. Do we keep my house, this apartment, or do we start over and find something of our own? So much to consider. I have only one requirement, and that is, whatever we decide, we will end up in the same place most of the time.”
Jobs, families on two continents, friends, finances, houses full of stuff: so much to sort out. My head was spinning a bit, so I sat down on the bed beside him. He put his arm around me and none of that seemed to matter anymore. I looked up at his handsome, scarred face, and changed the subject. “How long will the workman be here?”
A little shrug: “Not very long. Once he has the cameras installed outside, all he has to do inside is connect the wires to a control panel he’ll put on the wall near the front door.”
“Where will the cameras be?”
“He’ll tie you into the existing street camera, and put up new cameras over this building’s outer door and your apartment door. You’ll be able to monitor all three from inside. The street-cam works through a Wi-Fi connection, but the cameras on this building will be hard-wired and connected to nothing except your control panel.”
“No one can hack them.”
“Exactly. You can come and go without putting on TV makeup because you won’t be on camera.”
“Good.” I took a deep breath. “Shower, food, camera guy, your house, library—in that order. Does that sound all right?”
“Perfect. I’ll take you to lunch at my favorite local.”
“It’s a date.” I gave him a last kiss and headed for the bathroom.
We just sat down to eat when the security camera installer arrived. As Jean-Paul had said, it didn’t take very long to drill a hole to connect a wall panel to the cameras the man had already installed outside. He was showing me how to toggle between cameras when our first test of the system knocked on my door. A tall, distinguished, angry-looking man stood on my doormat. With Jean-Paul and the installer as backup, I risked opening the door.
The man standing there seemed about to launch into a verbal fusillade, but stopped abruptly when he actually looked down and saw me. Scowling, he said, “Who—?”
“I believe that’s my question to you. Who are you?”
“I happen to live in the apartment downstairs. The formerly very quiet apartment downstairs. Whoever you are, I want you to know that I have no intention of putting up with any more racket from you people. I got my fill over the holidays, thank you very much. And now you’re at it again. I came in from the bakery to a cacophony of machinery shaking the very walls.”
I put out my hand. “You must be Barry Griffith, my new neighbor. Lovely to meet you. I am Maggie MacGowen, Isabelle’s daughter. This is my fiancé and your other landlord, Jean-Paul Bernard, and this is the workman who has installed new security cameras over the doors. I am profoundly sorry about the noise; we should have warned you. He’s just finished. Won’t you come in for some coffee? There are croissants, as well, but I’m afraid they’re yesterday’s.”
He took in a deep breath, thought for a moment, and then he smiled. “I am delighted that at last we meet, Madame MacGowen. And Bernard, my apology, sir. I didn’t see you there.”
Jean-Paul bobbed his head, accepting the apology. “Monsieur Griffith.”
Griffith held up a net shopping bag that smelled deliciously of fresh bread. “Thank you, yes, I would love coffee. It’s damn cold out and I am numb to the core. Keep yesterday’s croissants, I bear fresh brioche, still warm from the oven.”
I found cups and plates, spoons and knives in the sorts of places where they are usually stowed in a kitchen, and butter, jam and milk in the refrigerator, thanks to Madame Gonsalves. The men helped carry things out to the big dining table in the salon. I was becoming adept with the French coffee press, the cafetière, and showed off a bit with the plunger before pouring the coffee. Barry Griffith, a francophone Canadian from Montreal, turned out to be interesting, smart, and very funny. I had some questions for him about building etiquette, trash days, recycling, and things I needed to know to get along with our neighbors.
Each wing of the résidence functioned as a separate building. Jean-Paul told us that this was a matter of safety and effic
iency, to prevent people, water, and fire from wandering where they shouldn’t. The only area accessible from all three wings was the basement, because utilities and storage were below. However, residents only had keys to the basement door that led into their own central hallway, and not for the doors up to the other two wings.
Mention of the basement brought up the issue of Philippe and his noisy friends over the holidays. According to Griffith, the boys had engaged in some sort of electronic tag or war game that they played in the basement and up and down the stairs that led past his doorway up to Isabelle’s, and even the two floors above. Griffith, on the ground floor, heard them below him, in the basement, at all hours of the day and night, slamming heavy doors, yelling, running, and generally making an unholy noise. He said that Philippe, who had always been such a nice youngster, seemed powerless to stop his friends, even though he could be heard pleading with them to quiet down. The last straw was on their last day there, when they could be heard arguing. Doors banged, feet pounded down the stairs, and then silence, blessed silence, reigned once more. Until the installer showed up with his drill that morning. Again, I apologized for not warning him.
When Jean-Paul went out to speak with the workman, I moved the conversation with Griffith to the topic of the library. He told me that Isabelle had invited him down several times. Turns out, he taught history at the Sorbonne, and though his area of expertise was twentieth-century Asia, he thoroughly appreciated the collection and cherished those invitations.
“Knowing what’s below my feet, I feel sometimes as if I’m living above a secret pirate cache, a treasure worth more than its weight in gold.”
“How much do you think it’s worth?” I asked.
He drew back, appalled. “You aren’t considering selling, are you?”
“Of course not,” I said. “But treasure inspires lust in the hearts of some men. After the gauntlet we’ve had to run during the last few days, I am wondering if maybe there isn’t a pirate with a shovel out there, just waiting to dig up this particular treasure.”
“A gauntlet, you say?”
“I don’t know how else to describe it,” I said, pouring him the last of the coffee. “But what do you think the collection downstairs might be worth on the open market?”
He shook his head. “There are all sorts of documents down there, some are priceless, some are little more than interesting relics. Value can only be set by the marketplace. If I were a wealthy man, and I am not, I would certainly make a bid on some of the ornate government records deposited here during the Russian Revolution, if only to save them from some oligarch buying them to frame and hang over his sofa.”
“Why did you say oligarch?” I asked.
“Did I?” He furrowed his brow and thought for a moment. “I suppose that came to me because some weeks ago, when I had a few colleagues in for drinks, a friend in medieval studies told me that a Russian man came into the department asking for information on how to gain access to the rue Jacob library. She knew he wasn’t an academic because he wore a custom-made suit and was followed by a complement of burly bodyguards. But she was intrigued enough by the story that she shared it with me, knowing that when she was in my apartment she was standing nearly on top of the library.”
“Did she get a name?”
“It wasn’t she who spoke with the man, but I’ll ask,” Griffith said. “Is it important?”
“Possibly.” I put the lid on the jam pot and covered the butter. “Mr. Griffith, do you know what happened to the convent that was here?”
He shrugged, a very French shrug. “Changing mores, probably. You know Saint Jérôme Émilian was originally a haven for bastard daughters? With better birth control, more opportunities for women no matter their origins, the extraordinary cost of keeping an official mistress; over time the convent lost its raison d’être. The stream of young illegitimae and the endowments attached to them dried up. From what Isabelle told me, by the end of the Second World War, the convent was only surviving on fumes and the random sale of furnishings.”
Jean-Paul closed the door behind the workman and asked Griffith and me to come and check out the new system. We fooled around with it, toggling between cameras, seeing cars spray slush as they passed by on rue Jacob. A cat ventured out onto the snow-covered courtyard. No one stood in the hallway outside Isabelle’s apartment.
“Could I be connected to this?” Griffith asked. Jean-Paul handed him the workman’s card and told him he would need to install a separate system, but it could be done.
“Maggie,” Jean-Paul said after a last look at the weather on the street outside the gates. “If we’re to get to Vaucresson for lunch, we should go soon.”
“Ah, Vaucresson. Such a lovely area,” Griffith said, clearly in no hurry to leave, though he did get back to his feet. “There’s a wonderful public garden. But of course, how silly of me; it must be covered in snow.”
Jean-Paul opened the door, we thanked Griffith for the brioche and the conversation, told him we would love to come down for drinks sometime very soon, good to meet you, nice to see you, and good-bye.
Griffith was nearly out the door, when he turned. “I haven’t seen a car in your space. How are you getting to Vaucresson?”
“Train,” Jean-Paul said.
“The weather is filthy. Let me drive you to the station. Don’t say no; I’m heading off to Amboise for lunch with friends, so I can drop you on the way.”
We were very happy to accept the offer. After we bundled up, we checked the street again on the new monitor to make sure that anyone we didn’t want to see wasn’t lurking outside the gate, and went downstairs to wait for Griffith.
Jean-Paul told me earlier that his home was an easy commute, as long as the trains were running. On that snowy Saturday morning, we sped west through the outer neighborhoods of Paris, to the white-shrouded suburbs. One village or town looked very much like the others: shops, houses, open space, followed by houses, shops, open space; like a string of beads along the rail line. Through a curtain of snow, I saw some men on a golf course, well bundled up, hitting bright orange balls across a pure white green.
“Dedicated golfers,” I said.
“Idiots,” he answered, with a fond smile.
The Vaucresson station looked like any suburban commuter station; we might as well have been in Connecticut. I don’t know what I expected, but I was a bit disappointed that it was so ordinary. Jean-Paul took my arm and we walked along the platform to the parking lot, where his black Mercedes waited, with motor running.
“How did you arrange that?” I asked when I saw it.
“I called Ari and asked him to meet us.”
“Ari?”
“My factotum,” he said. “He is caretaker, gardener, house cleaner, repairman, horse groom, and sometimes driver.”
“Where did you find such a person?”
“In a refugee camp. Ari was a medical doctor in Syria before the civil war. Lost everything. He’s a good man. But I have to warn you, he suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, so avoid making loud noises or sudden moves around him.”
Ari, a tall, slender man with close-cropped hair and a perpetual-looking five-o’clock shadow, climbed out to open the car’s back door for us. The two men greeted each other with an embrace and les bises. I was introduced, and offered a perfunctory, rather shy, handshake; he did not meet my eyes.
We drove through streets lined with naked trees. The houses I could see were large, usually set back from the road, shielded behind landscaping. Did I say big? Ari turned into a long graveled drive that ended at a stark, ultra-modern confection. Except for garage doors and narrow window slits, the two outer walls I could see were featureless slabs of sandstone that was disconcertingly very nearly the same color as my winter-white flesh. I had the feeling that if I stood nude against those walls I might disappear altogether, except that my curves and bumps might give me away against that flat surface. And in that weather, I’d turn blue and freeze my naked ass off,
so this wasn’t something I actually contemplated doing.
Ari pushed a button, a garage door opened, and we drove into a comforting clutter of garden tools, a collection of bikes and ski gear, broken lamps, and drippy paint cans. After the stark exterior, the house’s warm interior was a surprise: rustic wooden floors, stair rails, and beams; comfortable-looking, practical furnishings. Essentially, the house was a giant triangle. Garages, offices, utility room, kitchen, and upstairs bedrooms were built along the right-angled back wall. The rest of the house was a single, vast open space with soaring ceilings. The hypotenuse of the triangle was a long glass wall, two stories tall, that opened out onto a large terraced garden with a swimming pool and a small guest house, where, Jean-Paul told me, Ari lived.
“Not what you expected?” Jean-Paul asked, wrapping his good arm around my waist as I stood at the edge of the space between the kitchen and the massive salon, taking it all in. The interior, if not cozy, was accessible, friendly, stunning. That much I expected. The scope of the wealth that made these casual comforts possible was the surprise.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” I said. “Except maybe stables.”
He pointed across the garden. “Go through that gate. The stables are at the riding club next door.”
Looking up at the beamed ceiling, I said, “We’ve never talked about money.”
“What’s to say?” he said, nuzzling his chin against my temple as he followed my gaze upward.
“Quite a lot, I expect.”
He shrugged, making light of what could be a very touchy subject. “We’ll need to sit down with a pencil before we take the next step, of course. But after I show you mine and you show me yours, what’s left to discuss? The tax and exchange issues involved in moving money back and forth between France and America can be difficult and costly. I believe that the ideal situation would be to use any American income and assets as much as possible when we are there, and French income and assets when we are here. What do you think?”
Number 7, Rue Jacob Page 17
