Paris Ransom

by Charles Rosenberg

  “And you called the police?”

  “Yes.”

  The man was obviously lying about something. There was also the odd coincidence that the room used by the accused was only two doors down from the room of Monsieur Quesana.

  “Monsieur, how many rooms are in your hotel?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “How did you happen to assign the professor to a room only two doors down from the room she wanted to enter?”

  “It was happenstance. When the hotel doesn’t have a large census, which it didn’t that night, I try to concentrate guests on one or two floors. It makes it easier for the maids.”

  “I see. Are you sure you still do not recall who was staying in room 405?”

  “No.”

  I decided to take a shot in the dark, based on my growing suspicions. “Monsieur, is it possible that General Follet was staying in that room?”

  “I don’t recall that.”

  He had, in effect, denied it, but his eyes had widened when I asked the question. Before I became a judge, I would have doubted that eye-widening could be used as an indicator of unwelcome surprise, but over the years I had learned that it is an involuntary reaction for some people.

  “Let me turn my attention now to Monsieur Oscar Quesana. When did he check in?”

  “Several days before Christmas. I’d have to check the log to be sure of the exact date.”

  “Was he there the day his room was broken into?”

  “No. He had not been there in several days.”

  “Were you worried about a hotel guest who had not been there in several days?”

  “No, he had paid in advance. Through today, actually.”

  I had to suppress a laugh. “Monsieur Crépin, putting aside whether the bill was paid, did you have any worry about the safety of your guest? That something might have happened to him?”

  “No. People are free to come and go as they please. I do not concern myself with their personal business unless they ask me to.”

  “Is it unusual for a hotel guest to be gone for several days?”

  “No.”

  “Can you remember the last time that happened?”

  “Not immediately, just that it happens from time to time. And frankly, Monsieur le juge, I think you misunderstand the role of a hotelier in this day and age. If I worried about the personal behavior of my guests—of the man with a wedding ring who welcomes a woman to his room late at night or the salesman from another country who claims not to speak French but sits in the lobby and reads Le Monde from cover to cover—I would not have time to run my hotel. Not at all.”

  Monsieur Crépin had at that point entered into what I often referred to as the “be truculent and try to change the subject” mode. Some witnesses did that when, sensing that their testimony was not going well, they hoped to divert me from my line of questioning. The truth was, though, that I was mostly done with that topic. I had saved the best part for last.

  “Monsieur, you were there yesterday, were you not, when we opened the trapdoor in the floor of room 406?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are there trapdoors like that in other rooms in the hotel?”

  “No. It is the only one.”

  “Did Monsieur Quesana request a room with some kind of hiding place?”

  “No.”

  “Did you at any point tell him about the hiding place?”

  “No.”

  “Assuming for the moment that he put the books we saw yesterday in the hiding place, do you know how he found out the trapdoor was there?”

  “No.”

  “He just happened to discover and pry up the floorboards himself?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Just another happenstance?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it not the case that, after the professor was arrested, that you went in there, found the books and hid them under the trapdoor, planning to get them out later, when things calmed down?”

  “That is not true.”

  “I remind you, Monsieur, that you are under oath.”

  “I am telling the truth.”

  “You were planning to sell them, right?”

  “No.”

  “But you would have had a means of doing that through the antiquarian bookstore in which you are a part owner, wouldn’t you?”

  “Perhaps, but I did not do this.”

  “Are you an expert on antiquarian books?”

  “I know something about them, but I am hardly an expert.”

  “Did you get a look at the books we removed from the secret compartment yesterday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think they are valuable?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It was time to make him sweat a bit.

  “Monsieur Crépin, I have another witness I want to interview. But I want to return to you. Could you please go out and sit on the bench outside? I will come and get you when I need you. I don’t expect it will be too long. Oh, and could you ask the witness who is there to come in?”

  “Of course, Monsieur le juge.”

  I knew, of course, that he would come upon the professor and be startled. And then he would sit out there while I questioned her and wonder which of his lies she was exposing. Or so I hoped, since I didn’t really know which things he had said were lies or half-truths, just that some of them had to be.

  The professor, her lawyer and the translator came in. I offered them coffee, but they declined. I then took a moment to look something up on my computer about which I’d become curious. When I had finished, we got started.

  “Professor, you recall you are still under oath?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you recall you should wait for the translator to translate your answers into French before you add anything to your statement?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let us get started. Tell me, please, if you know, how did the police know you had broken into the hotel room?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You have no idea?”

  “No.”

  “Did you notice anyone in the hallway before you picked the lock?”

  She stopped and thought a moment. “At one point, I thought I detected some motion at one end of the hall, but I figured it was just headlights reflecting on the window at the end of the hall.”

  “Do you now think it was not headlights?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Monsieur Crépin has testified that he was watching you.”

  “That could be, but I just have no knowledge of it one way or the other.”

  “Thank you. When you went into the room, what did you see?”

  “Almost nothing. It was very dark and all I had was the light from a tiny flashlight. I started searching the closet, but the police came very soon after I began, so I didn’t see much of anything beyond the closet.”

  “Did the police turn on the lights in the room?”

  She thought a moment. “Yes. That’s what alerted me that they were there. The lights went on.”

  “When that happened, did you see anything unusual in the room?”

  She paused again. “No, or not that I noticed. I was too focused on being arrested.”

  “Did you notice an antique pen in either your room or Monsieur Quesana’s room?”

  “No. Well, I couldn’t see anything in his room. My room was very plain. It didn’t even have a desk, let alone a pen.”

  “Okay. Now I am going to bring Monsieur Crépin back in and I am going to question you together, in what we call a face-to-face.”

  “We don’t do that in our system.”

  “You should perhaps try it. It can be very effective to help a judge get at the truth.”

  “I would
have to move a thousand years of history.”

  “Yes, I have heard that the Anglo-Saxons are resistant to change. In any case, we need to get started.”

  CHAPTER 35

  My greffier, having heard me say we needed to get started, went to the door and invited Monsieur Crépin to come in. I noticed that when he saw the professor sitting in the witness chair, he stiffened slightly. I guess he thought that since he was coming back, she would be leaving.

  “Have a seat, Monsieur,” I said, as my greffier produced an extra chair for him. After he took his seat, he and the professor were seated side by side, facing me across the desk. Which was exactly the way I wanted it.

  “Monsieur Crépin, I remind you that you are still under oath.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “And please wait for the translation to finish before responding to my questions. We need to give Professor James the opportunity to understand the question before you answer.”

  “I’ll try to do that.”

  “Monsieur, you contend that Professor James, who is seated next to you, stole an antique pen from room 406 of your hotel, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where was the pen located in the room?”

  “On top of the bureau that is in the room.”

  “Professor, did you see such a pen when you entered room 406 the night you picked the lock?”

  “It was very dark, so not only did I not see it, but I could not have seen it even if it was there.”

  “What about after the police turned the lights on?”

  “I was not looking at the decorations in the room at that point, so I didn’t see it then, either. If it was there.”

  “Did you take it or anything else from the room?”

  “No.”

  “Monsieur Crépin, do you have any pictures of this supposedly purloined pen that we might show the professor?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “When you say it was an antique, what do you mean by that?”

  “I mean it was over one hundred years old.”

  “Where did you buy it?”

  “At the flea market near Clignancourt.”

  “That is to say, at the Marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why were you buying things for the hotel there?”

  “When I inherited the hotel, the rooms were bare of decoration, and so I went to the flea market and bought many decorative items for the rooms.”

  “How much did you pay for the pen?”

  “I don’t recall exactly. Maybe two hundred euros.”

  “That’s a lot at a flea market.”

  “The prices there run the gamut.”

  “Isn’t it a little odd to pay that much for a decorative item for a hotel room, especially for the kind of thing a guest might walk off with?”

  “At the time I didn’t know a lot about running a hotel.”

  “Do you have a receipt for it?”

  “I don’t recall. I’d have to look, but maybe not.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t taken by an earlier guest, or even someone who works at the hotel?”

  “I’m sure it was there when Monsieur Quesana moved in.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I just am.”

  “How do you know Monsieur Quesana didn’t borrow it and not return it?”

  “It is eighteen inches long with feathers on the end. Too awkward for someone to carry around.”

  “Do you recall doing an inventory of the room before he moved in?”

  “I don’t recall whether I did or not. I’m just sure that, had it been missing, I would have noticed that.”

  “Did you survey all of the rooms every day?”

  “No.”

  “Do you recall surveying room 406 in the days before Monsieur Quesana moved into it?”

  “I don’t really recall. I might have.”

  “Do you have any additional evidence, other than your own testimony, that the pen was stolen by the professor?”

  He thought for a moment. “No.”

  “Could any of your hotel employees testify that it was there one day and gone the next?”

  “I don’t think they pay much attention to that kind of thing.”

  “Has anyone, to your knowledge, seen the professor with this antique pen in her possession?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Alright, let’s talk then about the supposedly damaged lock. How was it damaged, Monsieur Crépin?”

  “It didn’t work properly after she picked it. It sticks when you turn the knob, but it didn’t before.”

  I noticed that he didn’t look at the professor as he made his allegation. Usually, in my experience with face-offs, when one person accused the other, they looked at them or pointed at them. Here, Monsieur Crépin was entirely avoiding eye contact.

  “Monsieur, I couldn’t help noticing when we entered the room yesterday that I had no problem with the lock. The key turned smoothly when I put it in the lock, and the doorknob turned without a problem.”

  “It only sticks sometimes.”

  “Have you made any effort to have it repaired?”

  “No, because I thought it should be left as evidence. If I’d had it repaired, the damage to it would no longer be evident.”

  He had a point, although it was, so far, the only point he’d made that helped his case.

  “Professor,” I said, “do you believe that you damaged the lock in picking it?”

  “No. It’s a very simple lock, and all I did was push the tumblers back, one at a time, with a bobby pin so that the cylinder would turn smoothly when something was inserted into the keyhole—in this case I used a nail file—even though I didn’t have a key.”

  “I don’t have any experience with picking locks,” I said. “How did you get the bobby pin between the lock cylinder and the outside of the lock? Couldn’t that have damaged the lock?”

  “It was easy because there is a large gap between the cylinder and the outside of the lock. Probably because the lock is very, very old, or perhaps because it was poorly made in the first place. And so the bobby pin did no damage. In fact, it slipped into the lock without making a scratching sound, which meant that it was hardly touching the lock cylinder.”

  “Did you have trouble opening it?”

  “More than I anticipated because my hands were shaking and I was sweating, but not technically.”

  I put my hands behind my head—an old and possibly not very judicial habit that I engage in when I am about to make a decision—and said, “Monsieur Crépin, the principal reason that we permit the civil party to continue a criminal case when the public prosecutor has decided not to pursue it is to allow the civil party to recover money damages for harm allegedly done in the course of the crime. The civil party has no real interest in pursuing a criminal penalty. That is the business of the State.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I understand. But I was damaged.”

  I nodded at him as if to acknowledge his point and continued. “Based on the evidence adduced here, I find you have not proved your damages with a sufficient amount of evidence. You do not have any proof that the pen was in the room at the time the professor entered, and you do not have any proof that she currently has it or that anyone has seen her with it. And even if you had those pieces of evidence, you have no proof of its value, since you have no receipt or photo. We have only your word for it as evidence and, beyond that, only the black abyss.”

  “Can I appeal?”

  “Yes. But wait, because you will have more to appeal. I am also likely to find that you have no evidence to show that the lock was damaged. I suppose I could permit you to hire an expert to examine it, but my own opening of the lock yesterday is persuasive eviden
ce that there is nothing wrong with it.”

  “Are you saying that I’m going to lose?”

  “I’m saying that you are very likely to lose, and in that case I will issue a non-lieu and that will be the end of it.”

  The translator spoke up. “Monsieur le juge, I am not sure of the exact translation into English of non-lieu.”

  “Just say that I am probably going to dismiss the entire case.”

  “Can I appeal?” Monsieur Crépin asked again.

  “As I said before, Monsieur, certainly. Our system is replete with appeals and do-overs. So if you want to pay the lawyers, you may appeal.”

  “What about the fact that she picked the lock? Isn’t that at least a délit in which the State is interested?”

  “Not very interested. The public prosecutor chose not to pursue it, and although I might pursue it and pass it on to the criminal trial court, I will probably not do so, because it seems to me a minor crime given the professor’s reason for doing it. She was trying to find a friend who has been kidnapped.”

  “That is outrageous.”

  “I think not. But in any case, this matter is not over, because, until some higher authority tells me that I must step aside, I am going to continue to investigate this kidnapping, which is an offense against the State far more serious than the picking of an old lock.”

  I looked at the professor and saw, as the translation was completed, that she was beaming.

  “Are we done then, Monsieur le juge?” Monsieur Crépin asked. He started to get up.

  “Not quite. Please sit back down. I also want to investigate whether you have committed perjury in the course of these proceedings, although ultimately I may need to pass that inquiry to another judge.”

  He turned pale. “What perjury?”

  There was no reason to tell him, of course, what every lawyer knew about our peculiar legal system: in a preliminary inquiry, unless you lied about facts related to a crime and were later convicted of that very crime, you would not normally be prosecuted for perjury.

  “The possible perjury I refer to, Monsieur Crépin, is that you told me that you were suspicious of Professor James because on her UCLA page it said, under Fun Facts, that she knows how to pick locks.”

  “It does.”

  “Well, I looked myself and could not find it. Professor, is there any such mention of that on your Fun Facts page?”