The Books of the Dead

by Emilia Bernhard

  “All right. But give me a couple of hours to refresh my memory.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The Hotel Etoiles was firmly a two-star hotel. It expressed its rating not in its furniture—the lobby had a very comfortable-looking faux-leather sofa—nor in its amenities—a sign behind the reception desk confirmed that every room had a private bathroom and that the continental breakfast offered yogurt, fruit, and cheese as well as croissants and rolls and butter—but in its general air. The hotel gave off the sense of having once aimed for three stars, perhaps even four, but then found all the effort too wearying. Now the carpeting at reception was just a little too worn, the framed reproductions on the walls just a little too ordinary. Without being in any way inadequate, the hotel nonetheless breathed its two-star-ness.

  Fortunately, its two-star status also meant that Rachel needn’t have worried: the receptionist wasn’t particularly curious about the two women who appeared at his counter. When she and Magda explained that they were going to visit a friend who was staying there, he just smiled and turned back to his computer screen.

  A brief elevator ride and they were on the second floor. Room 209 was the first door on the right. “Oh, no,” Magda said.

  Rachel followed her gaze: the door had a key card lock. Her throat tightened. “Shit,” Magda said. “I was really hoping—”

  Rachel tried to sound nonchalant. “Don’t worry.” “I checked this out while I was on YouTube. Apparently there’s nothing to it.” She looked left, then right; a housekeeping cart stood midway down the hallway, but its housekeeper was nowhere in sight. She dug into her bag and brought out her wallet. Opening it, she slipped her Monoprix supermarket loyalty card from its slot.

  She saw that her hands were trembling. She’d prepared, but that didn’t mean she had any confidence. She gave herself a silent pep talk.

  Focus. Pay attention to the lock. Respect the lock, and the lock will respect you.

  She had no idea what that meant, but it calmed her.

  She slid the card between the door and the frame, next to the key plate. She wiggled it. She couldn’t feel anything. She tried again, higher, still with no success. She remembered all the things the man in the video had said: This only works with a slanted latch. If you shove too hard, the card will just bend. It had worked for him after forty-seven seconds, but he had said he was a former thief.

  “How many seconds has it been?” she whispered to Magda. Then her card knocked against something solid. The bolt! She wiggled the card, felt it angle against the side of the metal—it was a slanted latch!—then felt it slide between the bolt and the frame. She pushed it farther in, then farther, then turned the handle. The door swung open.

  “Holy crap.” Magda’s eyes were wide.

  Rachel said, “The police should really shut down YouTube.” But there was no time for bravado, or even for relief. Dropping the battered card back into her bag, she stepped over the threshold.

  The room was a square box with off-white walls. A writing surface had been suspended from the wall that faced them, jutting out about a foot and a half, with two small drawers attached to its underside and a chair in front of it. There was a double bed, unmade, in the middle of the right-hand wall, a sconce on each side of it to act as bedside lamps. The bedsheets were white; the carpet and the bedspread were a shade that Rachel thought decorators might call “Juiced Tangerine” or “Bold Persimmon” but that she suspected was just orange. Sleeping in that bed must be like sleeping inside a Creamsicle.

  “Close the door.” Magda’s voice broke into her thoughts. “I’ll take the desk.”

  This left the bed and, Rachel saw once she’d closed the door, a wardrobe. She checked the bed first, running her hands under the disarranged sheets to see if anything was hidden there, then shoving her arms as far in as she could under each side of the mattress until they touched the center. Nothing.

  “Anything?” she asked. Magda shook her head. “Let’s try the wardrobe.”

  They opened the right-hand door to a row of five hanging shirts and a single jacket, mauve linen. Magda quickly slipped the jacket off its hanger and began to examine its lining, while Rachel riffled through the shirts. They all had monogrammed cuffs, she noticed. She finished with them and reached up to the shelf where the trousers lay: three pairs of folded chinos that she unfolded and searched, then refolded and put back. She turned to Magda, who was placing the jacket back on its hanger. They looked at each other and shook their heads.

  “You do the bathroom.” Magda put the jacket back in the wardrobe. “I’ll finish here.” She opened the left-hand door and started searching the shelves that held Cavill’s socks and underwear.

  The bathroom was as minimalist as the bedroom, if not as colorful. The tiled counter next to the sink held Cavill’s toothbrush and toothpaste, an electric razor, aerosol deodorant, a bottle of aftershave, and a jar of face cream. Unable to resist, she opened the aftershave. A wave of sandalwood and spices rushed out, and she inhaled deeply before recapping it; she loved the smell of men’s colognes. She checked behind the toilet tank and then, in what she considered an inspired move, knocked on the bathtub panel to see if it was loose. But it wasn’t, and since there was no cabinet under the sink, there was nowhere else to search.

  She came out to find Magda hopping down off the chair after having checked the top of the wardrobe. “Anything?” Her friend made a face. “Me neither. Which I guess just leaves under the bed.”

  Each of them took a side of the rickety bed frame and flattened herself onto the carpet to look under it. There was dust, there was an old Band-Aid wrapper, but there was no page from an illuminated psalter. They stood. Just as Rachel raised her hands to brush herself down, there was a knock on the door and a slightly muffled voice said, “Femme de chambre.”

  Housekeeping. “Get under,” she said to Magda, grabbing her bag.

  “What?”

  “Get under the bed.”

  Magda was horrified. “I’m not getting under there. You saw it. It’s filthy.”

  “Then get in the wardrobe.”

  “The wardrobe is eighteen inches deep!” Magda looked down at her breasts. “I’ll never fit.”

  The housekeeper’s key card hissed in the lock. “Listen, Raquel Welch,” Rachel snapped, “if you don’t want to get caught in here, it’s either the bed or the wardrobe, and you better make up your mind fast.” She dropped to her knees and wriggled under the bed. After a second, Magda joined her.

  A foot propped open the door with a rolled towel; then it and its mate walked toward the bathroom. The carpet under the bed was stiff, and the mattress above gave off the oily smell of countless sleeping bodies. As the sound of a spray bottle followed by faucets turned on full blast reached Rachel’s ears, she focused minutely on the shag before her eyes. Maybe Cavill had left some tiny clue after all. But there was nothing.

  The feet left the bathroom and a vacuum cleaner started up. She saw its wand and brush pass over the carpet, followed by the feet. They all moved around the bed and back. Then the wand was repositioned and the brush came under the bed. It prodded Rachel’s side. It retreated, then prodded it again.

  There was no escape; she couldn’t move with Magda on the other side of her. The brush prodded her a third time, harder—not so much a prod as a jab, really, she reflected. The vacuum cleaner shut off, and Magda and Rachel just had time to exchange a dismayed glance before first some knees and then a face appeared next to them.

  “Bonjour,” Rachel said, with all the dignity that a woman lying prone under a cheap hotel bed could muster.

  The face opened its mouth and let out a yelp, then disappeared. Not a scream, but a yelp, Rachel noted. Somehow that seemed more hopeful. She wriggled out from under the bed. When she clambered to her feet, she found the woman who owned the face across from her, brandishing the wand and brush like a sword.

  “Non, non.” Rachel held out a hand. “Ça va.” On the opposite side of the bed, Magda had e
merged. “It’s okay. We are—we are hotel inspectors.” When the woman looked understandably dubious, she added, “Secret hotel inspectors. Checking up on hotel cleaners secretly. You did very well.” When the woman still didn’t lower the brush, she once more groped in her bag for her wallet, where her Bibliothèque ID card rested in the plastic compartment on the front. She flashed it at the woman fast, so she might only notice that it was official and not where it was officially from. “See?”

  The brush wavered, but the woman didn’t put it down. Despite seeming more unsure, she still looked determined. Rachel opened the wallet’s bill compartment and took out all the cash. She had no idea how much was there, but she glimpsed a couple of twenties amid the other bills. She held it all out. The woman hesitated, then lowered the wand and took it.

  “Thank you for your understanding.” Rachel backed toward the door. “I know the situation is unusual, but we like to be thorough.” She reached the doorway, Magda next to her. “And we might be back for further inspections, so we appreciate your silence.”

  * * *

  Once they were halfway down the block, she took a huge breath. It was only three in the afternoon, yet she felt as if she were at the end of a week of hard labor. How did detectives deal with the tension? You never saw Sam Spade take a spa day. “Let’s not do that again. Ever.”

  “But it worked,” Magda pointed out.

  Rachel wasn’t so sure. She doubted that forty-odd euros was enough to buy anyone’s silence for long. Nonetheless, they were walking freely down the street, they hadn’t found the page from the psalter, and she wasn’t going to argue with that. “Let’s go through the Jardin du Luxembourg on the way to my place,” she said as they stepped into their Mètro car. “I could use it.”

  “You’ve earned it.”

  She really had, Rachel reflected. In the space of the last hour she’d successfully hacked a key card lock, completed an exonerating search, and talked and paid her way out of a tough situation. Her best friend might have flash, and her husband might have logic, but at least at this moment she wasn’t doing too badly, either.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  They had come up the escalator at the Luxembourg stop and were waiting to cross the Boulevard Saint-Michel when Rachel clutched Magda’s arm. “Look!”

  “What?”

  “It’s Aurora Dale!”

  “Where? Which one?”

  Rachel remembered that Magda had never seen Professor Dale. “Over there. By the entrance to the Jardin. The tall one with the gray hair. Wearing linen.” She stretched her neck and gestured forward with her chin, trying to point without using her finger. “Red cross-body bag.”

  “Got her.”

  As the two of them watched, Dale walked around the perimeter of the Jardin du Luxembourg and crossed at the corner of the Rue de Médicis. She walked past Café Le Rostand on the corner and the café next to that, then stopped to peer in the window of the café next to that.

  “What is she doing here?” Magda muttered.

  “She lives at the Auberge des Jeunesses, remember? This is her neighborhood.”

  “No.” Magda charged across the Boulevard as the light finally changed. “I meant right now. As in, what is she doing, in this moment?”

  Rachel had no time to guess, because Dale had peeled away from the café window and continued on. She stopped at the blue front of the Libraries des Editeurs for a moment, then moved next door to the gray-green front of Editions du Boccard before walking briskly past the residential doors that followed.

  “She’s looking for a store,” Rachel said. “She’s trying to find a particular store.” It was like playing charades with real life, she thought. Dale paused for a second in front of the shuttered Librairie Fata Libelli, then hurried past the garden store next to it. “She’s looking for a bookstore!”

  They continued to follow from the opposite side of the street. Rachel consulted her mental map of the Rue de Médicis. It took her only a few seconds to make the connection: “She’s going to Bonnefoi!” She had been in Bonnefoi Librairie many times, yearning after the beautiful antiquarian books and drawings they sold.

  Sure enough, at that moment Professor Dale paused in front of the storefront that said LIVRES ANCIENS: BONNEFOI. She stood for a moment, then pulled open the door and went in. They could just see her walk slowly around the interior, looking at the shelves, before disappearing into the store’s shuttered second room where, Rachel knew, they kept the rarest volumes protected from the sun. Both women groaned as they lost sight of her.

  Rachel poked Magda with her elbow. “You’ll have to go in.”

  “Me?” Magda stared at her. “You’re the one that knows about old books.”

  “Yes, but she knows who I am. She’s never seen you.”

  This was inarguable. Anyway, Rachel thought, Magda didn’t really want to argue; that was clear from the way she darted across the street. Just like Professor Dale, she paused in front of Bonnefoi’s door for a moment—gathering her strength, Rachel guessed—then went in. Again just like Dale, she browsed for a few moments before turning and crossing into the other room.

  Sixty seconds later she came out. She ran across the street and started walking, gesturing at Rachel to follow.

  “What’s going on?” Rachel speed-walked behind her. “What happened?”

  Magda didn’t pause, but she half turned her head and spoke over her shoulder. “When I went into the room with the shutters, the man behind the counter was telling her that the buyer had stepped out, but she would be back in five minutes. And she said, ‘I’ll wait. I have some items I think she’d find very interesting.’ ”

  Rachel gave a squeak.

  “I know!” Magda gulped a breath. “And then he asked about the condition of the bindings—I didn’t really understand that—and she said well, some were just individual engravings …”

  Rachel squeaked again.

  “Wait, wait. Because then I heard something unzipping and she said, ‘I’ve brought a list’!” Magda ended the sentence on an excited yelp.

  But Rachel had stopped walking. “And so you left?”

  “Well, I couldn’t read the list, could I? Also—” She pulled Rachel to the crossing at the Boulevard Saint-Michel, then stood there, gasping, while they waited for the light to change. “It came to me that if she was in a bookstore discussing a list, she wasn’t going to be in her room at the Auberge des Jeunesses, which is right up the street.” The light changed, and she and her wave of enthusiasm carried Rachel across the boulevard. “While she’s talking to the book buyer, we could be scoping out where she lives.”

  “We can’t get into the Auberge des Jeunesses,” Rachel said.

  “We got into Robert Cavill’s hotel.”

  “Because it was a two-star hotel with a lazy receptionist! But the Auberge is a hostel for large groups of college students. They’re going to be a lot more careful about allowing random people to wander their halls.”

  Magda put a finger to her lips. “I have a plan.”

  Behind the reception desk at the Auberge des Jeunesses was a young woman resplendent in a kente cloth head wrap tied in a huge bow. She looked up from her book as they entered the foyer, then put it down as they came to stand in front of her. Rachel caught a glimpse of its cover, on which a man with a broad naked chest gripped a young woman whose blonde hair streamed down her back.

  “Bonjour.” Although Magda was speaking French, Rachel noticed she had broadened her American accent. “I apologize for interrupting you. But I’m visiting Paris for the first time in years, and I stayed here when I came last time. I was on a summer program, and I was only twenty, but this is where I met my husband. If you can believe it!” She gave a little laugh, as if marveling at this extraordinary occurrence. The young woman looked interested. “Now we’ve been married for twenty-three years, and there’s never a day that we don’t talk about how we first met in the City of Love.”

  Rachel realized that Magda had seen t
he book cover, too.

  “This is our first trip back,” Magda continued, “and I’ve spent twenty years telling my friend here about this place, and about how Jack and I met. I’d love to show her the hall I lived on. Would that be all right?”

  The young woman said, “We’re not allowed—”

  “Oh, no, I understand! But we’ll be quick, I promise. Only five minutes. Just to show her my hallway and the terrace where Jack first told me he loved me.”

  “We’ve been told not to let strangers—” The woman looked down at her book and back up. She was clearly torn. “Your husband really told you he loved you on our terrace?”

  “Oh, yes. I remember because there was a full moon, and we could just see the Eiffel Tower.” Rachel worried that Magda might be laying it on a bit too thick, and as if she’d come to the same conclusion, Magda’s hand went to her bag. “I could leave you my wallet. It has ID in it. Would that help?”

  The woman started to reach out her hand, then changed her mind and touched the edge of her headdress, frowning again. Finally she said, “Five minutes. Any more and I could get in trouble.” She picked up a pen. “And what is your name?”

  “Bernard.” Magda took her hand out of her bag. “Jeannie Bernard. Thank you so much. You have no idea what this means to me!” She pressed the elevator call button.

  When the doors had shut completely, she turned to Rachel. “What floor?”

  “Five. Room five-twelve.”

  They stood in silence as the elevator rose. After a few seconds Rachel said, “You have no shame.” Magda opened her mouth, but she held up a hand. “Don’t worry. I’m not condemning you. Far from it. I thought I did well with the hotel housekeeper, but you …” She shook her head in wonder. “You’re at a whole different level.”