“Sorry,” Tim said to the stranger, who was brushing the gravel from his palms, Delia joyfully clinging to his arm.
“Stitches,” Tim said, helping Anne-Sophie to her feet. She was already resuming her look of insouciance, the gallant sportiveness of someone who has fallen off a horse. She had a charming, brave smile for Gabriel. “The monsieur in my attic!” she said. “We know each other. I did not expect to meet again like this!”
They made her come into the house. Cray at second thought refused to believe it could have been Freddy who had done this savage thing. Anne-Sophie, assuring him it was so, was disposed to forgive the creature, who slunk behind them, abjectly cringing for forgiveness for the rest of the afternoon.
“I think he was trying to express his manhood—his doghood—he is jealous of all these fierce professional dogs,” said Anne-Sophie, striving to smile gaily. The worse the things that happen to them—French people—the more admirably resolute their smiles, thought Tim.
Senhora Alvares had come with a clean towel for the arm. Clara hovered in distress, saying over and over, “He’s never done anything like this before!” The man Gabriel had come to the kitchen with the rest of them, but stood diffidently in the doorway. Anne-Sophie included him in her smiles, and it emerged that they recognized each other from the flea market. Gabriel smiled too, in seeming appreciation of the amazing surprises the world contained. “The same little bitch who busted me!” he said, shaking his head as the pieces of further coincidence fell into place. The blonde with the cigarettes who had handed him over to the flics.
He stepped inside the Crays’ kitchen. Delia had picked up his knapsack (did it contain the Driad Apocalypse?) and clutched it as. if it were her firstborn, her eyes never leaving his handsome, unshaven, rather wild-eyed face. So they had Gabriel at last.
Some sentiment was for calling paramedics, but Cray insisted on driving Anne-Sophie to the emergency room. The nearest was in Marne-Garches-la-Tour, fifteen minutes away. Anne-Sophie was put in the rear seat of Cray’s Land Rover, with Tim beside her, and Estelle rode in front next to Cray, chattering conspiratorially to him, as if they were both parents of the wounded one. At the hospital, the wound was cleaned and bandaged, the médecin accepted Cray’s assurances about Freddy’s rabies shots, gave a tetanus shot to be sure, and the party was dismissed.
Anne-Sophie insisted on returning to Etang-la-Reine. Even though this was a group of mostly Americans, because they were in France they continued with the lunch plans, knowing that meals are never skipped, even in the face of dogbite or the arrival of criminal fugitives. But Anne-Sophie was shaken and ate little. Tears occasionally sprang to her wide blue eyes, they assumed from pain, yet did not dare to touch her to comfort her, for fear of making the arm hurt more.
A place had been made at the table for Gabriel. A good-looking man about thirty, with a slight eastern European accent, but only slight, and plenty of American mannerisms, so that if you didn’t know he hadn’t been born in the U.S. you might not spot the faintly thickened th, the hardened s.
Over a rather haphazard entree of sardines and the fibrous, pallid tomatoes of autumn, doubtless an attempt by Senhora Alvares at some Iberian specialty, Gabriel recounted his adventures. He’d been afraid of being caught up in the murder investigation, and he had had clients to see, things to do, so he couldn’t afford being detained. It was that possibility that had prompted him to skip the hotel. “I was scared at first,” he said. “The guy’s throat was cut. I was more shook up about that than Delia, because she’d never seen anything like that in Lake Oswego, Oregon. For her it was just sort of television. But I grew up in Rangoon.”
“Rangoon?”
“It’s a long story,” he said, but he didn’t tell it.
“It wasn’t television, it was horrible,” Delia protested.
“Horrible,” Anne-Sophie agreed. “I nearly stepped in his blood.”
Now he was relaxed and voluble, and seemed to regard the others as sympathetic compatriots, the way the runaway slaves, sure of a sympathetic audience, must have talked at way stations of the underground railroad.
There had followed two weeks of being on the lam in France. Evicted from the haven of the flea market attic, he had taken to sleeping rough or depending on the kindness of strangers—some sexual adventures were hinted at, but he did not elaborate—or in cheap hotels, with a dwindling supply of francs. There were the couple of hours of being in police custody after he was rousted by Anne-Sophie in the flea market. That had been about his passport, he said, and they had let him go when he had convinced them the passport was at his hotel, and that he had not fled, and was observing their instructions to stay around. It was the police who had told him his female companion had left the Hotel Le Mistral, so he had imagined Delia had got her passport and gone back to Oregon.
“How I get my stuff from the hotel is something else,” he said. “I guess I just go get it.”
Tim told him where they had locked it up, behind the desk, and what the bill came to. It came to Tim that the Driad Apocalypse could be at the Hotel Le Mistral too, a document worth half a million dollars languishing in the firetrap luggage room.
Gabriel didn’t explain how he happened to phone the Crays’ private number and find Delia. Nor did he explain how he had the Crays’ phone number in the first place—perhaps he got it from Delia? The number of Clara Holly, formerly of Lake Oswego, call her if ever you get to Paris. He was animated, convincing; Delia never took her eyes off him. Nor did Clara and Anne-Sophie, Tim could not help but notice. No doubt he was a mesmerizing character, with deep-set gypsylike eyes, the longish hair, the poetic darkness.
When Delia told Gabriel about what had happened to her, she included the visit from the FBI, the two Franks like a comedy team. Hearing about them seemed to affect Gabriel. A skin of worry filmed his eyes for a second.
“I knew I had to stay away,” he said.
“But why?”
“Well shit, the FBI is who I’m trying to avoid,” he said.
“But why? You must have a reason.”
He hesitated. “Well, I think they think I’m someone else. I don’t want to be involved, whatever they think. I saw what happened to the guy in the flea market.”
“That was done by Monsieur Savard,” said Anne-Sophie. “He is in prison awaiting trial. A terrible thing. No one knows why he did it.”
“Yeah, sure,” said Gabriel glumly.
Tim would discuss all this with Cees when he could, to find out what he made of it. One detail especially:
“Well, we can put you up till you get all this straightened out,” Clara said, “there’s plenty of room here.”
“Delia is staying here for a week or two, for work on a script,” said Cray, studying Gabriel.
“Delia?” said Gabriel, as if surprised to hear about an unexpected literary side to Delia. “Great.” And then, with a sudden afterthought, “Does the FBI know where to find Delia now?”
“No,” Clara said. “Unless Tim told the hotel.”
“I concealed your address from the hotel,” Tim said. “But I gave them my phone number.”
“The dress has fitted sleeves, my arm comme ça, how horrible,” Anne-Sophie suddenly said, looking at the enormous bandage now doubling the diameter of her slender arm. As so often when she came up with references to the wedding, there was on Tim’s part a second of incomprehension, of having no idea what she was talking about. Oh, her wedding dress.
Concerned that Anne-Sophie not overdo, Tim insisted they go home shortly after lunch. Gabriel was saying he’d like to take a shower, and it appeared he was going to make himself at home. Tim caught Cray giving him a significant look as they parted. Did it mean, Call me? Talk to you later? The thickness of his glasses in the slanting late afternoon sun obscured his expression. It was probable Cray would call Interpol and/or the FBI himself. Tim would call Cees, of course.
When they were alone in the car, Anne-Sophie said, “Why are we even buying the apar
tment if you hate it so much? It will be a curse.”
33
The Shadow of the Altar
The Crays were already in defiance of the laws of France, both regarding hunting and for defacing national monuments, and now they were harboring an American fugitive, or so they assumed, though it wasn’t clear which law enforcement officials were after Gabriel, if any, or for what. The French police had let him go after taking him in charge briefly in the flea market—they had let him go twice, in fact, since they had not arrested him after the murder of Monsieur Boudherbe, either. Nor did Cees think there was much reason to imagine that Gabriel was connected to the manuscript. Gabriel himself did not now emanate the acrid unwashed panicked smell of the hunted but the aftershave sweetness of the newly showered and inwardly serene. He apparently had used Cray’s cologne.
Things settled into a strange impasse. There was still no way of knowing if the Gabriel they had was the caller with the stolen manuscript to sell. That was their assumption, for how else had he, like the manuscript seller, known the liste rouge phone number taken out in Clara’s name? Cray didn’t show Gabriel his manuscript collection. And Gabriel did not mention having a manuscript to sell. He stuck to some story about having been going to look at a consignment of books in cases from the poor man who was found dead. Cray got him to tell the story several times, but it was always the same.
Meantime Tim was deep in the task of finding out what had happened to the ancient boiseries and other features of the château. As it happened, this was a simple matter of examining the records of the salesrooms at Drouot. The boiseries of the salon and dining room had been sold anonymously just before the Crays moved in, and it should be easy enough to prove that they had not been involved. There were some strings that had to be pulled to learn the identity of the anonymous seller, but Tim was sure he could do that. So he now spent a large part of every day at Drouot or cultivating dealers and commissaires-priseurs who might remember the transaction, hoping to find the agent who had taken the panels on consignment. Cray demanded new developments every day.
Tim wasn’t sure if it was marriage that was beginning to weigh on Anne-Sophie or the wedding, two things differing as a lifelong commitment to the theater would differ from stage fright. Or it could be her painful arm. She was becoming ever more testy. She snapped at little things and picked fights.
“You are absolutely uninterested in the wedding, you don’t lift a finger! ”
Or: “Of course it falls to me to write the thank-you letters, I don’t know where that custom started, that it’s always the woman.”
Tim would protest, “Most of the things are for you, dishes and such.”
“And why are those my dishes? Merde. I suppose you do not eat off dishes?” And she would eventually bring his nationality into it: “No American man could let himself show an interest in dishes, isn’t it sad?”
“I think you are almost a feminist,” he would say, teasing her, having heard that for Frenchwomen, for some reason, this was the utmost insult. She would protest noisily.
“Of course I am not a feminist! Now you are telling me I am no good at making love? You don’t really want to get married, you are getting regrets. Well, maybe I am too!” She would scare herself talking like that, then kiss him with her most adorable, angelic smile.
But from these exchanges he would occasionally glimpse an inner complexity of her nature that she usually strove to conceal. In his limited experience of American women, she was the opposite of them in that respect; they were always wanting to tell you about their natures, their dark anxieties, their troubled pasts. Did a wish to talk about these things also lurk in Anne-Sophie? Was she hiding dark anxieties and a troubled past?
Anne-Sophie had been reading Mariée magazine, a magazine for brides which, when he leafed through it, he found was full of articles beginning “The most beautiful day of your life” or “Let us dream again of the fairy-tale day we will never forget.” When she saw him reading it, she smiled, he assumed a little embarrassed at her enthusiasm, for Estelle’s cynicism had tempered any uncomplicated joy she might have been feeling about the wedding with the knowledge that it might be silly, the day would pass, the bills remain, starving children could be fed with the cost of the ceremony and reception, et cetera. A wedding was just a party, made no promises, did not imply a future of felicity—that would happen or not. It was a social concession to the demands of the community that one be wed and briefly feted, then take one’s place among the simple-minded breeders and wage slaves of the world.
“I was wondering if we shouldn’t have garçons d‘honneur, little pages and flower girls to carry the offering,” she said. “Probably not. No. But they are sweet.”
Many of her married friends by now had produced tots of four or five. “Little kids are cute in a wedding, if it isn’t too late to organize,” Tim said supportively.
“I’ll think about it. I’ll ask Madame Aix. It’s probably too late.” She sighed.
That the wedding weighed more heavily on her than on him was evident, for Tim would forget it for days at a time. He did think things would be easier for her if Estelle were more helpful. Many of the increasing pressures came because of Estelle. He was sure it was her popularity as an author that made Mademoiselle Decor ask to photograph the flowers and table decorations, and the charming young couple coming out of the church and people boozing their brains out at the reception and the like. (“Une bouteille de champagne pour deux personnes—c‘est pas possible!” Anne-Sophie had objected, reading the recommended amounts.) Tim saw that Anne-Sophie and Estelle were both pleased at being featured in a national magazine, whether because of Estelle’s eminence or their social standing, though both denied it. Both believed it would be good for their respective careers. The marriage advisor, Madame Aix, was thrilled. Her private inquiries later elicited from an American friend the probability that Tim Nolinger was the scion of an American fortune in hotels, which meant this wedding would interest a wide readership.
34
The Hunting World
Tim understood Clara Holly’s attitude to hunting. Hers was a standard female American attitude—Green, tender-hearted, urban. But, though not a hunter himself, he had had no quarrel with it in the past. It just wasn’t an issue he had taken much interest in. Now, when he came to consider it, he leaned toward the position of the Crays in opposing hunting, the more so since the mayor had begun playing hardball, with surveys and legal persecutions. And Tim agreed positively with Cray about the private property issues. It shocked him that the hobbies of hunters could prevail over something as basic as your right to keep people off your own land if you didn’t want them there, even conceding the principles of easements and public walkways and beaches and the like. He had begun an article for Reliance on this subject, carefully avoiding any comment on gun issues, for Reliance would be convinced that Frenchmen almost as much as Americans had the right to be armed, though it might not say so in their constitution. Reliance believed that guns were an issue God himself had taken a side on.
“How come you write for a magazine like Reliance, it’s for nuts,” Delia said. “And then Concern too.”
“None of your concern, ha ha,” said Tim. “I can write for them both because I can see both sides.”
“Both sides about gun control? Abortion?”
“Sure.”
“That’s disgusting,” Delia said.
On hunting, Anne-Sophie was more of a Reliance person. Though she had stopped wearing ivory bracelets, she still saw nothing wrong with the age-old practice of shooting pheasants, which were hardly endangered. She had nothing personal against deer and rabbits, it was just that for her hunting and shooting were all about the horses and guns, the being in the woods, the camaraderie and hunt breakfasts. It was a social and even a business thing. Luckily for her business, every hunter had to have somewhere a set of hunting prints, and a decorative rack to hold his guns. This difference in their views was not something Anne-Sophie and
Tim discussed, but it was there. He hoped he was not one of those men who believed their wives must agree with them in every detail.
The couple was somewhat frayed by exasperations developing out of their travaux, the work they were having done on their apartment. For separate reasons, they were both anxious to rid it of any traces of the previous owners, the Flieus, Tim because of the bookcases and Anne-Sophie because to obliterate the past, apparently, was the French way. So they were repainting, and redoing a bathroom. Anne-Sophie was dedicating her midweeks to supervising the work, neglecting her stand, as she recognized.
Clara was aware of her own growing detachment from the other household members, now numbering three: Serge, Delia, and Gabriel, not counting Senhora Alvares or the maître-chien, Patrick, or Serge’s assistants Fred Connolly and Marc Duvall, who came and went, or a number of new people appended to film, who came and went at the direction of the mysteriously energized Serge. All these people seemed strangers, even her husband, and insensitive strangers, with cares of their own that rendered them incapable of seeing the great tumult she was going through. Part of her anger at Serge arose from his seeming to have forgotten her jeopardy. Even now, the Judge of Instruction was assembling a dossier about the things missing from their house, and about the sale at Drouot Tim had found, where the boiseries were sold some months before they moved in. The judges were trying to establish Clara’s whereabouts at that time.
Unfortunately, no one knew who it was who had sold the boiseries. Tim had reached several dead ends. Whoever had sold them had done it anonymously, through an agent who himself did not know, or professed not to know, the identity of the seller. The trail had stopped with the Drouot records. Whether the French legal system would wring out more information remained to be seen, but Tim had done as much as he could do. Presumably it would emerge that the Crays could not have been involved, but it was possible that by some mysterious assignment of blame in French law, the Crays, in buying an already despoiled monument, made themselves legally responsible for its lack of fireplaces and denuded walls. The Cray lawyers were researching this fine point.
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