Bones of Paris (9780345531773)

by King, Laurie R.

  The cop was outraged. “You acquired evidence illegally, then you sent it to a friend to guess if it was genuine? Evidence that I might otherwise have found and used in a trial?”

  Stuyvesant raised his voice, too. “There’s no ‘guessing’ involved. And do I need to point out that this ‘evidence’ would have disappeared, too, if it was up to you?”

  “Monsieur Stuyvesant, you cannot expect me to—”

  “Try him,” the American snapped.

  “Pardon?”

  “Test him. You’ll see. What this man can do is astonishing.”

  Doucet looked ready to walk out—either that or get out the handcuffs.

  Bennett Grey spoke. “Shall I explain?”

  “Monsieur, I—”

  “It’s not as simple as Harris puts it. And it’s not a parlor trick. I wish it were. It started when I was blown up, in the trenches.”

  Respect for a fellow soldier, and Grey’s even voice, cooled Doucet’s anger.

  “Literally blown up. An artillery shell went off under my feet. It should have killed me. It did kill me. And when my heart started beating again, I was newly born, with absolutely none of the mental defenses adults have spent their lives building.

  “Have you ever wondered why a newborn shrieks? It’s the overwhelming assault on all his senses. That shell made me into an infant again, with everything around me vast and new and absolutely shattering. As if all my senses were going full blast, pouring in the world, every tiny detail of sight and touch and smell screaming at me simultaneously, with no way to protect myself.

  “To some extent, I grew skin—it’s still growing, in fact. Not long ago, I’d have jumped off the ferry into the Channel rather than continue the trip I made yesterday. But even now, the thing that brings the most … trouble is discord. A man who feels one way and acts another is like fingernails down a chalkboard. If he’s lying to me, it’s uncomfortable. If he’s lying to himself, it is an agony.

  “And despite what Harris tells you, there are times when I am blind. He knows this all too well. Religious fanatics, the quietly mad, the honestly deluded: if the belief goes all the way down, if a man truly believes his own lies, there is no discord, and I am as without defenses as any other man.”

  Doucet studied the small man, hesitating to brand his potential brother-in-law a liar. Or a lunatic.

  “Try him,” Stuyvesant urged, then to Grey added, “Sorry, but I think you’ll need to.”

  “I understand.”

  Doucet looked bewildered. “You want me to …?”

  “Try and lie to him,” Stuyvesant finished. “Tell us, are you engaged to Sarah Grey?”

  “Yes,” Doucet replied.

  “No,” Bennett said.

  Stuyvesant smiled.

  “Well, not formally,” Doucet admitted. “But we have an understanding. And if we’re asking pointed questions, what about you? M. Stuyvesant, are you in love with Sarah?”

  The smile faded.

  “Yes,” Bennett said. “And no. He’s not sure.”

  “Maybe we should do this with something more … impersonal,” Stuyvesant suggested.

  “Do you have those photographs?” Doucet asked Grey.

  “I burned them.”

  “You what?”

  “I needed them gone. In any event, can you imagine what your customs officers would have done with me if they’d found them?”

  “Nom de Dieu! Those were evidence—perhaps the only evidence out of that room, and—”

  “Not the only.”

  Grey’s placid phrase cut Doucet short; he followed the small man’s gaze towards Stuyvesant.

  “He’s right,” the American said. “Those were copies. I kept the originals.”

  “Where are they?”

  Grey spoke up again. “I imagine they’re under the carpet.”

  “Tell him why you know that,” Stuyvesant prompted.

  “A line in the carpet shows where it has been folded back several times recently.”

  Stuyvesant raised his eyebrows at Doucet, who shook his head, but nonetheless walked over to where Grey was sitting. He knelt, bending down inches from the floor before sitting back on his heels. “Perhaps. But this is something M. Grey may know.”

  “He hasn’t been to my room before.”

  “So you say.” The flic tossed the carpet back against the purported line, revealing dusty floorboards.

  Stuyvesant pulled out his folding knife and dropped to one knee across from Doucet. “Remember, you’re not going to arrest me.”

  “Not until this is over, you said.”

  “Yeah.”

  When the loose board came up, Doucet made a sound of disapproval at the weapons, but he allowed Stuyvesant to pick up two of the three oversized envelopes in the cache, then to put the board back in place.

  “I had three sets made. And before you start shouting, I stayed with the photographer while he worked—I didn’t want him calling the police when he saw those torn-up faces, so I told him it was for a Surrealist art project. I had him keep his hands off the originals as much as possible. There’s also a typed letter. The paper’s too rough for prints, but you might be able to match the machine. Moreau’s fingerprints will be on the photographs, I expect. Along with mine.”

  Doucet opened the top to glance at the originals, then pulled out the reproductions from the other envelope.

  “Hmm,” he said. “Yes. They’re almost too realistic.”

  Grey had been staring out the window since the envelopes appeared, but the photographs might have been stuck up on the glass. “Look at their lips, their coated tongues. Look at the reflection off the eyeballs—particularly the gray-haired woman and the young brunette.”

  “I don’t see a lot of reflection,” Doucet replied.

  “There is none. Even in reproduction, it is clear. These two women are so badly dehydrated, their eyes are drying up. That is not a thing you can fake.”

  Doucet studied Grey, still desperately focused on the rooftops.

  “So,” Doucet asked him, “what else do you see here?”

  “Fear. Fear and exhaustion. The English woman is also in pain.”

  “Which one is English?”

  “The older brunette. See the teeth? French women may have bad teeth—like the oldest woman, who is clearly working-class—but they’re not tea-stained.”

  Stuyvesant and Doucet compared the faces for the nuances of horror.

  “How can you tell she’s in pain?” Doucet asked.

  Grey turned away from the window at last. “How? I don’t know. It’s …” He paused. “Pain drags. Fear makes one pull away. That woman’s face is doing both.”

  Like yours, Stuyvesant thought.

  Doucet asked Stuyvesant, “Did you choose four that had had their heads turned the same way?”

  “From what I could see, they were all like that.”

  Grey said, “I think you’d find that he tied them by their left wrist. They could move around, but not far.”

  “Anything else?” Doucet’s question held considerably less skepticism.

  With reluctance, Grey approached the desk. “May I see the originals?”

  “Just don’t touch them.”

  The flic eased the four pieced-together photographs from their envelope. Grey squinted at their edges, adjusting the desk lamp to throw light on the surfaces, then lowered his face to nearly touch the gray-haired woman. He drew in a deep breath through his nostrils.

  When he straightened, his face was a study in indecision. “There’s nothing I can pin down, but I get the impression that these are a few years old. Certainly the chemical smell has all but faded. And although I’m no expert in French hair-styles, this one”—he pointed to the young brunette—“looks like a cut that was fashionable in London two or three years ago.”

  “Great,” Doucet muttered as he edged the originals back inside their envelope. “Now I’ll have to extend the search back.”

  “You might begin wit
h the summer—see how brown she is?—and with upper-class girls.”

  “Well, that would narrow—” Doucet stopped, then held the photo of the young brunette to the light.

  “You recognize her?” Stuyvesant asked.

  “It’s hard to tell with that piece missing, but she looks a bit like a young Sorbonne student who disappeared in 1926, June it must have been. She wrote her parents in Lausanne to say that she was going to Bretagne with friends for a week. She never came home. Her heavy trunks were found in the baggage office at the Gare de l’Est. We arrested her boyfriend, but there was no evidence, so we let him go. Jacqueline-Celeste Delaurier, that was her name. She was nineteen.”

  The three men stared at the sweat-streaked, terrified young face, but as one, their eyes slid over to the blonde woman with dark roots and plucked eyebrows.

  She looked nothing like Sarah. Nothing at all …

  FIFTY-FIVE

  “IF A STUDENT at the Sorbonne went missing,” Stuyvesant said, “we really have to talk with Le Comte, no matter what your orders were.”

  Doucet gave a shake of impatience. “You will go nowhere near Le Comte.”

  “You can’t be serious! I know the man’s had half the ruling class of France drinking his champagne, but surely you can see—”

  “M. Stuyvesant, I will see him, I will question him. But I will not take with me a man who has already attacked Le Comte once—yes, Sarah told me about that—and who has already made it clear that he is suspected of terrible crimes.”

  “Then take Bennett.”

  “This is a police matter, I cannot take along a civilian.”

  “It’s not like you’re questioning the man about Pip Crosby. You’re just looking for your … your fiancée. Who was last seen at his party. What would be more natural than to take her brother? Hell, it would raise more suspicions if you didn’t go talk to him. But please, I beg you, take Bennett. He’ll know if your Count is lying.”

  It was a sign of Doucet’s apprehension that he did not argue further, merely pulled a well-thumbed notebook from his breast pocket as he went out the door.

  Grey put a hand on Stuyvesant’s arm. “Who is Pip Crosby?”

  “Pip’s the reason I’m here. She’s an American girl I was hired to find. That job led me to … all this.”

  “But she’s more than a job. What was she to you?”

  “Christ, don’t you get tired of—Sorry, stupid question. Yes, Pip and I had a casual … thing, back in February. When she stopped writing to her mother a few weeks later, the girlfriend she’d been traveling with recommended me to Pip’s uncle.”

  “More than casual.”

  “Five days is casual. It certainly was to her.”

  “And you think she’s dead.”

  “As her roommate put it, she walked away from her life pretty thoroughly.”

  “Do you—”

  “Look, maybe you and I could talk about this later?”

  Doucet was in the room off the lobby with Mme. Benoit’s telephone at his ear. When the ringing was answered, the flic identified himself and asked for M. Charmentier. He listened. “When will he return?” More listening. “No, that is not good enough. It is urgent that I see him today. Very well, then tonight. What time? Yes, let me give you a telephone number.” He recited the Préfecture’s number. “If I am not there, leave a message with my Sergeant. If I have not heard from you by midnight, I shall bring gendarmes to the door.” He hung up.

  “A threat,” Stuyvesant noted.

  “Butlers are too fond of their beds.”

  “You’ll take Grey?”

  “Do you wish to come?” the cop asked the small blond man.

  “Now?”

  “No. I’ll be at the Préfecture until I hear from Le Comte’s man. Shall I telephone you at your sister’s house?”

  “Fine.”

  “And M. Stuyvesant: I’ll take those photographs, if you please.”

  “I’m keeping a set.”

  Doucet hesitated, but could think of no reason to object.

  “Are you going to start an official search?” Stuyvesant asked as they descended the stairs for a second time. “For Sarah?”

  “After I speak with Le Comte.”

  “What? Jesus, she’s been gone since one yesterday morning and you don’t—”

  “Have you any idea, the consequences of calling off an official search? If it turns out I was premature and her employer knew where she was all the time? She would become … notorious.”

  The relationship made both public, and a laughingstock Stuyvesant nodded and let him leave. Without him, the lobby seemed considerably less crowded.

  “So,” Stuyvesant told Grey. “It’s great to see you. In spite of …” His hand waved away the unspeakable.

  “Yes. You’ve lost some weight.”

  “And you look about to drop.” The small man looked as demon-haunted as the day Stuyvesant had met him. No need to ask if he had one of his headaches.

  “It does seem a long time since your letter arrived,” Grey agreed.

  “Go back to Sarah’s and get some sleep.”

  “I’m not sure I could.”

  “It won’t help Sarah if you’re dead on your feet.”

  “True. And I don’t know what I can do anyway, short of knocking on doors. Why don’t you come for dinner? Sarah’s housekeeper always cooks for a platoon.”

  Harris Stuyvesant could hear a cry for companionship when it bit him on the nose.

  “What’s the address?”

  Tucking the scrap of paper into his billfold, Stuyvesant said abruptly, “I don’t suppose you have a photo? Of Sarah, I mean?”

  Grey was silent. When Stuyvesant raised his eyes, the compassion on the small man’s face looked like tears.

  “Never mind,” the American said, “I just thought that while I’m asking around—”

  “Yes,” Grey said. “I do have one.”

  It was not the photograph Sarah had given Stuyvesant three years earlier: this one showed the scars on her face. She was kneeling at a flower bed with a trowel in her hand, squinting into the brightness. She looked so damned content, the impulse to joke—Sarah as Hausfrau—nearly pushed past the desperate awareness of her absence.

  He thrust the picture into his notebook. “Let’s get you in a taxi before you collapse.”

  As they walked towards rue Vavin, Grey said, “I was sorry, that you and Sarah … That she wouldn’t see you.”

  “Well, if I’d taken more jobs in Paris, I’d have come across her myself.”

  “It was wrong of me, not to let you know.”

  “I’m not sure it was.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Who is who?”

  “Who is the reason you’re wearing yesterday’s shirt and you didn’t shave this morning?”

  “I don’t always shave,” Stuyvesant protested.

  “Harris, I can smell her perfume.”

  “That could’ve been—Oh, hell. Why do I bother? Pip Crosby’s roommate. A sweetheart of a girl named Nancy Berger.”

  “Miss Crosby was not one of the women in those pictures.”

  “No, thank God. She’s—Look, it’ll wait. Go sleep.”

  A taxi was perched impatiently at their toes. The two friends shook hands, green eyes holding blue. “Do you think something has happened to Sarah?”

  “No. I don’t know. But we’ll find her. Doucet is good. Very good.”

  Grey listened to the truth in Stuyvesant’s voice before turning to the taxi door. Stuyvesant let his hand rest briefly on the small man’s shoulder, then the gears clashed and Grey was away.

  FIFTY-SIX

  A SHIRT, A SHOWER, and a shave. With the photographs in his pocket, Stuyvesant went to lean on a few of Sarah’s acquaintances.

  He began with Cole Porter, the man Sarah had taken care to be standing beside at the strike of the full-moon bell. Porter lived with his wealthy wife in a garden mansion near Des Invalides—a marriage of convenience,
since Porter’s interests lay elsewhere. He was unlikely to be Sarah’s lover, but he was certainly a friend.

  Unfortunately, he was also an absent friend. The doorman who answered Stuyvesant’s ring professed himself désolé but M. Porter was not at home, he was in the country writing songs, and would not return until the first of the week. Oh yes, certainly, with friends, but alas, it was impossible to say just who had gone with M. and Mme. Porter. Mais oui, there was a blonde Englishwoman—there had been, in fact, several English ladies with blonde hair here after Le Comte’s party, but following breakfast, there had been a general dispersal and alas, he could not say which of the jeunes filles had gone in which direction: into Paris, or with M. Porter.

  Stuyvesant figured a butler like this would have to know who went where, but he also figured that the only way to get more information out of the guy would be by fist. And there were too many footmen around for that.

  So he tried Bricktop. Whose house-maid refused to wake her, although the woman did look at Sarah’s picture and tell him that there was no one in the house who looked like that.

  The routine at Josephine Baker’s was remarkably similar.

  He looked at the next name on his list, and decided that it required a dose of liquid courage. Down the boulevard Raspail, François-call-me-Frank was behind his zinc bar dispensing booze and wisdom. Both would be somewhat watered-down, but what was it they said about beggars and choosers?

  Stuyvesant took his glass and laid out six of his seven photographs: Sarah in the garden, Man Ray’s photo of Pip, and the four pieced-together faces from Didi Moreau’s hidden room. “Know any of these girls?”

  Frank dried his hands on his apron and picked them up. “She was in,” he said at the top one: Sarah.

  “When?” Stuyvesant said sharply.

  “A month ago, maybe two,” he replied. Stuyvesant’s heart slowed. “She was looking for some artist with an interest in Africa. Matisse? No: Brancusi. Something to do with set design for a stage play.”

  “That’s the only time?”

  “So far as I remember. These others—Whoa.” He had reached the third photograph, and stared at the woman’s expression.

  This might be a bad idea. “Looks realistic, doesn’t it? It’s an art project, for that same theater—the Grand-Guignol?”