Actually, “settled down” is inaccurate. If I’d had trouble getting myself together before, now I was hopeless. My earlier indecision about what to wear deteriorated into near-immobility. I had to get dressed. Suppose the caller wanted me to rush out somewhere and do something? Yet none of my clothes seemed remotely right for ransoming Nostradamus’s mirror. I stood in front of my towering armoire in my underwear, my breath coming in constricted wheezes. I had just, at long last, selected and put on a red turtleneck and gray pants when the phone rang, fifteen minutes early.
I threw myself across the bed, fumbled the receiver from the hook, and squawked, “Hello? Hello?”
“Hi, Georgia Lee, it’s Kitty.”
“Kitty.”
“I was wondering why you hadn’t come in today. Is everything O.K.?”
“Oh, God.”
“Georgia Lee! What’s—”
I told her everything was fine, fine, fine, but that I’d have to get in touch with her later. I hung up and waited for every hair on my body to subside. Then I did settle down, sort of, to wait for the call.
A buffeting breeze rattled the doors to the balcony. Twinkie snoozed on one of the dining chairs. The phone did not ring. I’ve never been much of a one for pacing up and down, but I tried it just to pass the time. The appointed hour for the call came and went. Maybe I’d broken the phone, somehow, when I’d answered it before. I checked again to make sure it was on the hook, picked it up very fast to see if there was a dial tone, put it down and checked to make sure it was on the hook.
The phone rang only half an hour after it was supposed to. By this time, I was so short-circuited that I picked up the receiver slowly and delicately and answered with complete calm. It was Lucien Claude.
I could have screamed. He said, “I’m terribly sorry. This is embarrassing, but… he just called me back.”
What was embarrassing? “What did he say?”
He cleared his throat. “He refuses to call you. He says he will deal only through me.”
He was trying to sound distressed, but I could hear the satisfaction oozing through. “I see.”
“I tried to convince him, but he’s jumpy, you know?”
“So what’s the situation now?”
“I told him I had to check with my contact. He will call me back in fifteen minutes.”
I thought it quite possible that Madeleine Bellefroide and I were being jerked around by the dashing Monsieur Claude. For the moment, I’d go along with him. “Tell him this. We will pay one hundred fifty thousand francs for the safe return of the mirror. As a first step, we must have proof that he actually has the mirror and that it is intact.” I was rather proud of this speech. Lucien said he’d call me back when he heard from the man again.
My determined stance had made me feel better. I wasn’t a complete rube, and Lucien Claude wasn’t going to prance off with the ransom money without delivering the mirror.
He called back in twenty-two minutes, sounding credibly excited. “He agreed to the terms. I’ll have the proof tonight.”
“Tonight? How will you get it?”
“Oh”— he laughed awkwardly— “I had to promise him not to tell anyone about the arrangements.”
Naturally. “Before any agreement is made, we have to see and accept the proof.”
“Of course, of course. I’ll be back in touch with you.”
I drummed my fingers on the table next to the phone. I didn’t trust Lucien Claude. I thought he was treating me like a patsy, and I hate that feeling.
All I could do, though, was wait for the next development. I combed my hair, put on my coat, and left for the office.
Lucien
I spent the afternoon abstractedly going over my notes, stopping occasionally to try calling Clive Overton again. I seemed to have nothing but more questions to add to my original questions: Where is Clive Overton? What is Overton’s relationship to Bruno Blanc? Did Lucien Claude really get a phone call or is he pulling a scam? I stared blankly at my stack of papers, half-listening as Kitty discussed slipcovers in numerous telephone calls.
At one point Jack wandered in. “There you are,” he said to me. “Just wanted to tell you the result of my guy’s foray into Pierre Legrand’s background.”
“What did he find out?”
He took his usual perch on the windowsill and lit his usual cigarette. “Nothing earthshaking. My hunch about Pierre having some money was right. The family owned a piece of property in Normandy, and his mother eventually sold it for a decent amount. We’re not talking vast sums, you understand.”
“But that apartment was nothing fancy. And the man worked as a museum guard, for heaven’s sake.”
“I guess he believed in being thrifty. And maybe he liked the work— quiet, pleasant surroundings, not too taxing…”
“Unless you’re getting shot in the head.”
“Unless you’re getting shot in the head. Right.”
I thought about Pierre working as a guard, refusing to alter his mother’s apartment, all the while sitting on a respectable nest egg. “This is interesting. Thanks for telling me.”
“Anything to please.” He leaned over to glance at my notes, a maddening habit he had. After a minute he said, “Who’s Lucien Claude?”
Despite my best intentions, I felt my territorial hackles rising. “Somebody I uncovered who has a peripheral connection to the case.”
“Ah ha. Playing your cards close to your pretty little chest, eh?”
“Jack, considering the source, I’ll let you get away with ‘pretty.’ But ‘little’—”
“O.K., don’t tell me who he is. It was just idle curiosity. We won’t be back on it seriously until they arrest somebody.”
“Since you put it that way, I won’t.”
“Sure. Let Uncle Jack find out about Pierre and mom, but when it comes to giving him anything—”
“Jack—”
I told him who Lucien Claude was, omitting any mention of the ransom. Just for spite, I ended up with, “And he’s absolutely the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen.”
“Probably gay,” he said and left the room.
It was early evening, and we were winding up at the office, when the phone rang. Kitty answered, thinking it was a slipcover call-back, but it was for me. When she said, with her hand over the receiver, “It’s a Frenchman. He sounds like he’s under pressure,” I jumped to the correct conclusion that it was Lucien Claude.
He skipped the amenities and got right to the point. “I’m very sorry, Madame Maxwell, but I cannot do what you want.”
A bubble of anger popped in my head, but I kept my voice calm. “What do you mean?”
“The ransom. The proof. I can’t help you.” He sounded shaky.
“Why not? What happened?”
“I just… something else has come up.”
I wondered if he was trying to shake me down, panic me into offering him money by threatening to pull out. “All right. Tell me where to get the proof, and I’ll handle it myself.”
“I can’t do that. I don’t yet know myself.”
I was mad by now. My tone was icy as I said, “Look, Monsieur Claude. You insisted on being involved, and I was counting on you.”
“I know. I’m terribly sorry.”
“If it’s money you want, that can be arranged.”
“Madame! I never thought of that.”
Like hell. “Of course you should be recompensed. It’s only fair.”
The conversation lapsed while he thought this over. In the background, I could hear the hubbub of the flea market. I pictured him standing in his stall, licking his gorgeous chops. I said, to turn the screws a little, “My contact is anxious to have the mirror. I’m sure any reasonable figure you named would be acceptable.”
He said, “You’re very persuasive.”
“We’re relying on you.”
More hesitation— window dressing, I assumed— and then, not at all to my surprise, he came around. “All right,
then.”
“I’m deeply grateful.”
If he caught my sarcasm he didn’t let on. In fact, he sounded apprehensive as he said, “In that case, I must say good-bye immediately. I should be at home, waiting for a telephone call.”
“At home?”
“Yes. I live in Montparnasse. It will take me half an hour or more to get there.”
So Lucien and I were neighbors. He said, “I will be in touch with you,” and hung up.
I got up and put on my coat, thinking hard. Lucien wanted the money, obviously. I was grateful that he’d consented to go ahead without haggling over the amount. But I thought he had sounded genuinely frightened, too. I unearthed the Paris phone book and skimmed the listings for “Claude.” The only Lucien was on the Rue Vavin, which was ten minutes’ walk, at most, from my place on the Rue Delacôte.
I hadn’t really formulated a plan, but when I climbed out of the Montparnasse Metro station twenty minutes later, I didn’t walk toward the Rue de Rennes and home but went in the opposite direction— down the Boulevard Montparnasse in the direction of the Rue Vavin.
It was about six-thirty, almost completely dark, a blustery evening. The Boulevard, glowing with neon and choked with traffic, was bright and gaudy. I passed the movie theater, the Notre-Dame-des-Champs church, the travel agency. Now I was on the section of the boulevard where the famous cafe hangouts of the twenties were located. La Coupole, still a fashionable place to go, was across the street, and a little farther on was Le Dome. La Rotonde, which I was approaching, was on the corner of the Rue Vavin. As I turned left I glimpsed people inside having aperitifs, chatting, reading. What would Parisians do with themselves, I wondered, if all the cafes closed? The streets would be clogged with lost souls longing for an espresso or a glass of beer to linger over for hours, and a little round table to rest their elbows on.
I hadn’t written down Lucien Claude’s address, but it stuck in my mind. I continued along the Rue Vavin, which was narrower and darker than the boulevard. After crossing the Boulevard Raspail I discovered that Lucien Claude lived in a striking, multi-balconied structure of white ceramic brick I had often passed and admired. It was on my route to the Luxembourg Gardens, one of my favorite places to stroll and, in my opinion, the most wonderful park in Paris. I didn’t think Lucien had had time to get here from the Porte de Clignancourt, and I wasn’t sure what I planned to do anyway, so I went into the grocery store across the street and bought half a kilo of green beans and a small goat cheese. At a newsstand, I got a copy of Le Monde. Then I window-shopped, quaking in the biting wind, which seemed to get colder every minute.
I had learned from my experience following Jane (and being followed in turn by Inspector Perret) that surveillance wasn’t among my talents. Even so, I was there, and watching, when Lucien rushed down the Rue Vavin and entered the front door of his building.
So now what? Just as he’d said, he’d come home to wait for a phone call. That call might come in five minutes or five hours. I contemplated staying where I was and gazing in a window at handmade infant garments for five hours, but my interest in bibs embroidered with “Bébé” wasn’t that keen. The obvious thing to do was give up.
I gave up. At least, I told myself I was giving up. Yet in this case, giving up didn’t mean going home, but going to a cafe on a corner half a block from Lucien’s building, settling myself by the window, opening Le Monde, and ordering a glass of wine. It was perfectly normal Parisian behavior and had nothing to do with hanging around to see if anything developed.
My sporadic attempts to read Le Monde, a dense and serious newspaper, were an effort to improve my French. I puzzled my way through a seven-column analysis of foreign policy, then decided I’d missed something and had better start again at the beginning. By the time I was halfway through the second try it was time for another glass of red. My eyes stung from smoke, or foreign policy. I was getting hungry, and slightly dizzy. I had folded Le Monde, and was searching for the money to pay the check, when Lucien Claude strode past the café window and down the Rue Vavin in the direction of the Luxembourg Gardens.
I caught only a momentary glimpse of his face, but I could see he looked tense. This must be it. He was going to get the proof. I didn’t have change, so I overpaid outrageously and plunged out into the street after him.
He was approaching the Luxembourg, but the garden closed at sundown, so he couldn’t be going in. This stretch of the Rue Vavin was gloomy, lined with apartment buildings and shuttered shops. Lucien and I were the only pedestrians, but he didn’t look back. Remembering Inspector Perret, I looked back, but nobody was there.
Lucien had reached the point where the Rue Vavin dead-ended into the closed gate of the Luxembourg. He crossed the street to the garden side and turned left, walking up the Rue Guynemer, along the high fence, black iron bars tipped with gold spikes, that enclosed the Luxembourg. I stayed on the opposite side of the street, well back, watching Lucien’s head move under the street lamps, from one pool of light to another.
About halfway up to the next gate, he stopped. He seemed to be looking intently at the fence. Then he moved toward the fence, out of the light, and I lost sight of him as he bent down.
I didn’t even have time to think of moving closer before a dark figure materialized, rising up between two parked cars on Lucien’s side of the street. Its head had no definition, and I knew instantly it was wearing a ski mask. It moved a couple of steps toward Lucien, and then I heard the shots— two of them, just as there had been at the museum. I saw the figure move back, heard a car door slam, and in an instant a car with no lights pulled out of its parking place on the Rue Guynemer and drove away.
I heard a dog barking furiously, and a huge black poodle and the elderly man who’d been walking him reached Lucien at the same time I did. He’d fallen in a crouch, with one hand outstretched toward the fence. His eyes and mouth were open. Blood from the back of his head looked black in the yellow half-light of the street lamp.
“My God, it’s like the war,” the man whispered. The dog barked and plunged at the end of its leash. I looked next to the fence, both on the sidewalk and in the bushes on the other side. There was nothing there, nothing anywhere around. Whatever Lucien had been reaching for, he hadn’t been able to grasp it. Wind lifted the hair from Lucien’s forehead, and the man with the poodle said, “I’ve seen it before. He’s dead.”
Quai des Orfèvres
I was sitting in an office at the Criminal Brigade headquarters on the Quai des Orfèvres. My dapper inspector, whose name I continued to repress, sat behind his desk, talking on the phone. It was midnight, or thereabouts, and he looked crisp and fresh in a blue pin-striped shirt with stark white collar and cuffs. On the floor beside my chair was my plastic shopping bag containing half a kilo of green beans, a goat cheese, a slightly used copy of Le Monde. When I looked down and saw it, the reminder of normal life made me want to cry, which was something I’d been trying hard not to do ever since I crouched next to the dead body of Lucien Claude on the Rue Guynemer.
I had told the police everything, including the whole story of Madeleine Bellefroide’s ransom offer and our negotiations. I had seen a number of members of the Criminal Brigade, including the relatively sympathetic Inspector Perret. When I talked with him about what had happened, he made a clucking sound and shook his head, his blue eyes grave. “This is terrible. The boss will be furious,” he had said, and I thought he was right on both counts.
Most of the policemen I saw had one thing in common: they were highly irritated with me. They didn’t trust me, either, and who could blame them? I was the one person they knew of who was closely connected to both murders. From the innocent bystander at the Musée Bellefroide, I had metamorphosed into a suspect.
I was wretched. When I closed my eyes, even to blink, I saw Lucien’s dead face. I apologized over and over to the policemen, because I would never be able to apologize to Lucien Claude.
The dapper inspector put down the phone. W
ithout looking at me, he picked up some papers from his desk and started to read. They were, I surmised, a transcription of my account of the evening’s events. When he finally finished reading them and looked up, I could see I was about to get my tail kicked.
“This is astonishing,” he said.
“I know. I know. I’m sorry.”
“Do you realize what you’ve done with this ransom business?”
“Yes—” I had to stop and clear my throat.
He drew a box on a piece of paper and wrote something in it. “Madame Maxwell, have you ever heard of garde á vue?”
“No, I—”
“If we choose, we are legally entitled to put you under garde á vue. That means, we can hold you for twenty-four hours without charge while we continue our investigation.”
“Look—”
“I am half inclined to exercise that option now.”
Until you’ve been faced with a serious threat of being locked up, you can’t imagine the panic it engenders. The thought of not being able to walk out of there, not being able to go home, sleep in my own bed, feed Twinkie, made me woozy. I pulled at my collar. I needed air.
Then I tried to imagine the reaction in Luna Beach when word got out I’d spent time in the Paris pokey, even if it was only twenty-four hours. Or, Lord help us, what Loretta and the people at Good Look would think. None of them would understand about garde á vue. “Please don’t. I’ve told you everything, honestly. I didn’t kill Lucien Claude, and I don’t know who did…” I continued in this vein while he drew another couple of boxes and wrote in them.
When I shut up, he said, “Naturally, we have called Madeleine Bellefroide.”
Shame washed over me. On top of everything else, I’d let her down. “What did she say?”
“She corroborated your story.” He acted as if this point in my favor were totally insignificant.
In the end, he let me go. It hardly needed to be said that he wanted me to stop meddling in the case, but he said it anyway. He also told me that garde á vue remained an imminent possibility. Chastened and miserable, carrying my shopping bag, I tottered out of his office.
The Complete Mystery Collection Page 11
