“Do I have to stay home or can I go to the office? There’s a phone at the office, too.”
His expression, I thought, was just a bit smug. “By tomorrow morning, one of these devices will have been placed on that phone, as well.”
I imagined the police listening to reel after reel of Kitty’s phone interviews about celebrity slipcovers. “Can I tell my office-mate the phone is bugged?”
He got serious to the point of grim. “No. Don’t tell anyone. Not about the photograph, or the plan, or anything at all.”
I promised. He left, and I locked the door behind him.
Within five minutes, I began to have that “What have I done?” feeling. Buyer’s remorse. I’d bought Inspector Perret’s proposition, and now I wondered if the price was too high. It wasn’t much use to tell myself that I was the link to the money, and more valuable to the killers alive than dead. What if there was an angle I wasn’t seeing, one that would make me more valuable dead?
“Go about your business,” Perret had said, but I was afraid to leave the apartment, and I hadn’t bought food for dinner. Checking my half-sized refrigerator, I found the beans and goat cheese I’d bought the night before These could make an adequate, if meager, repast.
Humming to keep my courage up, I started to set the table. I realized I was humming “All Alone by the Telephone.” I bit my lip and continued in silence.
At the Café de la Paix
The phone didn’t ring that night. As time went on, I began to think about my junior year at Luna Beach High, when I’d been told on good authority that Junior Ellsworth was going to call and ask me to the prom. The phone didn’t ring then, either. I finally went to the prom with Lonnie Boyette, which led to our romance and ill-fated marriage. The associations weren’t good.
Anyway, here I was primed— terrified, but primed— for perilous, clandestine goings-on, and nothing went on. The phone was so silent I began to be embarrassed, imagining my police monitors making sarcastic cracks to one another about the deadness of my social life.
I went to the office the next morning and was glad to find that Kitty was out for the day, so I didn’t have to feel guilty for not telling her we were bugged. By midafternoon, the edge was wearing off. I started to assume that the person who had sent the photo had changed his mind about dealing with me after seeing the papers. I felt let down but relieved and began to turn to other matters.
Before the murder of Lucien Claude, I had been making unanswered telephone calls to the London residence of Clive Overton. I picked that up where I had left off, with exactly the same results. I wondered if the police knew Overton had checked out of the Christine and called Perret to ask, but he wasn’t there and the person who answered claimed to be prohibited from giving out information of that nature. I called Overton’s office at Art Services, Ltd. and was told blandly that he was in Paris at the Relais Christine. I started to contradict, then thought twice. If Overton was hiding out, it might be better not to let him know someone was searching for him. I thanked the secretary and got off the phone. I was stymied.
Being stymied, to a reporter, is like catnip to a cat. Nothing could have made me more determined to track Clive Overton than having the obvious ways of finding him cut off.
I mulled it over. My only two connections with Overton were Bernard Mallet and, possibly, Bruno Blanc. Since I’d discovered the possible connection with Bruno by going through Bruno’s desk, I decided to try Mallet. My probing could be done in the guise of getting additional background for my story. I called the Bellefroide.
I didn’t expect a friendly reception from Mallet and was therefore amazed to be put through immediately and greeted with unprecedented bonhomie. He still sounded jittery, but the hostility that had always been so noticeable was absent. He said he was tied up for most of the afternoon but that we could meet later, and we set an appointment for drinks at the Cafe de la Paix, not far from my office.
I was engaged in killing the afternoon and jumping at every jingle of the phone (mostly calls for Kitty) when Jack showed up. I hadn’t seen him since he dropped me off the night of Lucien’s murder, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t given him some thought. “The police just let loose a piece of info,” he said.
“Yeah? What?”
“They’ve finished the ballistics tests. Pierre Legrand and Lucien Claude were killed with the same gun. Surprised?”
I felt as breathless as if it had been a shock. There went the faint possibility that the two killings were unconnected. Somehow, it made my own entanglement in the situation more frightening. “No. Not surprised,” I said.
“You got pale. Do you need—”
I shook my head. “I’m off balance, that’s all.”
He looked at me keenly but made no comforting moves, for which I was grateful. I felt a trace awkward with Jack now, although I realized that whatever had happened the other night had happened only in my overwrought psyche. Additionally, I had the burden of keeping my cooperation with the police a secret, and the upshot was that I felt tongue-tied. “How’s the story coming?” he asked.
“Lurching along, I guess.”
“Any new developments?”
“Nope, nope.”
I’m not the world’s greatest prevaricator. I can tell a good lie when I have to, but I need time to work up to it. I could feel my face reddening. Jack was leaning in the doorway, watching me. I managed to raise my eyes to his, and I saw he could tell that something was up. “So. Not a thing new,” he said.
“Not a thing.”
His smile told me I wasn’t getting away with it. He left, saying, “If you need any help don’t hesitate, Georgia Lee.”
“Thanks.” God knows what he thought I was hiding. I wanted to be straight with him, and everybody else, again. If the criminals were going to call me about the mirror, I wished they’d get on with it.
They didn’t. The afternoon crept along until it was time to meet Bernard Mallet. I walked the couple of blocks to the Place de l’Opéra. He was waiting for me in a glass-enclosed section of the Cafe de la Paix that borders on the sidewalk.
He stood, light flashing off his glasses, when he saw me approach through the crowd of late-afternoon drinkers, tethered dogs, tray-toting waiters, and chairs draped with fur coats. He was wearing a nice three-piece suit of brown wide-wale corduroy, very French, but he looked worn out. I saw a tic at the corner of his eye, and his fingernails, always ragged, were now practically nonexistent. He was drinking whisky. I ordered a white wine and we occupied ourselves with getting my coat off until it came. When the waiter left, Mallet said, “So the tragedy continues. Poor Monsieur Claude.”
“Yes.” I remembered the contempt with which Lucien had spoken of Bernard Mallet. “Did you know him?”
He shook his head. “We never met.”
“And did you know he was the descendant of Josef Claude, of J. Claude et Fils, who sold the mirror to the Bellefroides?”
His lips firmed into a line. “I know it now, of course.”
He leaned toward me confidingly. I wondered if the whisky he was drinking was his first of the day. “I want to say something to you,” he said.
What was coming? “Yes?”
“It will be too bad if the mirror is recovered now. Do you know why?”
“Uh… why?”
“Because if it is recovered, people will come to the museum only to see the magic mirror and will look at nothing else.”
I couldn’t believe it. “At least they’d come.”
“But for the wrong reasons. Cheap, sensationalistic reasons.”
If Bernard Mallet knew what was good for him, I thought, he wouldn’t talk like this to other members of the press, who might not understand the strain he was under.
He continued, “So you see, even though I appreciate your efforts in our behalf, I would prefer that you not continue with the ransom attempt.”
I stared at him. Efforts in our behalf? Did the man really believe I had tried to ransom the mir
ror for the benefit of the Musée Bellefroide? The police had kept Madeleine Bellefroide’s role under wraps, and she hadn’t been mentioned in the newspaper accounts. I didn’t suppose Mallet knew who had put up the ransom money, but he seemed less interested in finding out than in scotching the whole thing. “I don’t think there’s any possibility of going ahead now,” I said, lying in my teeth for the second time that afternoon.
Mallet leaned back. “Good,” he said.
He seemed more relaxed now, and I got out my notebook. “If you don’t mind, I have a couple of additional questions,” I said, and when he nodded the go-ahead I continued, “I was wondering how well you know Clive Overton.”
Mallet looked surprised. “Monsieur Overton is quite prominent in the field of art restoration.”
“I mean personally.”
He shoved out his lower lip, considering. Then he said, “Personally, I don’t know him at all. You see, not long ago we had an accident at the museum— a leak in the roof. The only work seriously affected was a fifteenth-century Flemish altarpiece.”
I could hear Overton’s laconic, “Altarpiece. Water damage,” in my head. “So you called in Clive Overton?”
Mallet frowned. “Actually, no. As I recall, Monsieur Overton contacted us. He had heard about our misfortune somehow, and he wrote to tell me that he planned to come to Paris in the near future, and that he would be happy to be of service to us.”
I was surprised to hear of these ambulance-chasing tactics. “Is that customary? For a restorer to be in touch with you and ask for your business like that?”
“I suppose not, although I thought very little of it.”
“Normally, would you have called him in? Or called somebody in?”
“Normally, I would probably have left the matter to our staff, at least in the preliminary stages. But when I heard from Monsieur Overton, whose reputation I knew well, I was eager to have his advice.”
Mallet looked bemused, but so far was too polite to ask why I needed to know all this. I went on, “What would have been the procedure, if Overton had continued with the job?”
“The first visit, on the day you accompanied him, would have been diagnostic. Then, providing we agreed on a course of action, he would have gone to work.”
“At the museum?”
“Possibly. Probably. It would be more convenient and would reduce the possibility of the altarpiece being further damaged in transit.”
Mallet’s glass was empty, and mine had only a swallow left. He said, “Are you asking these questions because you believe Clive Overton was involved in the theft of the mirror?”
I shook my head vigorously. “No, no. I’m filling in blanks, that’s all.”
Which made three lies in one day. If I kept up this pace, I might even get good at it.
A Broken Elevator
Mallet and I finished our drinks, and I left him and started down the Boulevard des Capucines toward the Madeleine Church. If I got the Metro at the Madeleine station, I wouldn’t have to change trains before getting home. A stiff breeze riffled newspapers and magazines at the newsstands. A government scandal had knocked “The Bellefroide Affair,” as the press had christened it, off page one. The walk was colder than I’d anticipated. My winter coat, a camel wraparound that had been perfectly adequate last year in Bay City, might as well have been tissue paper. I turned up the collar. It was only October. I could barely afford a muffler, much less a coat that had actual buttons and maybe a heavy lining.
I thought over my conversation with Mallet. I was most struck by the fact that Overton had approached Mallet, apparently unusually eager to work at the Musée Bellefroide. A man of his reputation surely wasn’t hard up for assignments. Could it have been a plot to get into the Bellefroide?
Suppose there was an elaborate scheme to steal the mirror, and Overton was in on it. Why, at the last minute, invite me along? Whatever the plan, the presence of an additional witness, a journalist to boot, hardly seemed an advantage. Yet it had been Overton who suggested freely that I come to the Bellefroide with him. And Mallet, I now recalled vividly, who demurred so strenuously at the door.
Shivering, I descended into the blessedly warm Metro. One of the souvenir shops in the station had, along with its Eiffel Tower key chains, plastic coasters with views of Montmartre, and Paris T-shirts, a display of cheap wool scarves. I bought a royal blue one and wound it around my neck, and was almost thawed by the time we reached Montparnasse. I was vaulting up the stairs to my apartment, glad for once to have the opportunity to get some circulation going, when I heard the familiar sound of rattling metal that meant somebody was stuck in the elevator.
The elevator had several levels of disrepair. The worst was the hopeless case when the situation had to be dealt with by elevator professionals. Sometimes, though, if a person outside pushed one of the call buttons, the mechanism spontaneously repaired itself and worked perfectly until an unforeseen time when problems began again.
I reached my floor and pushed the button to rescue the caged person, who continued monotonously shaking the door. I heard grinding clanks that meant the strategy had worked this time, and the elevator slowly ascended to my floor. As it did, an American female voice cried, “Oh, thank God! Thank God!” and the wrought-iron cage came into view with its captive occupant, Bruno Blanc’s white-haired girlfriend, Jane.
I didn’t much like this development. Jane hadn’t seemed smart enough to be sinister, but I wasn’t ready to trust her. What was she doing here? And had the police, supposedly watching my every move, seen her come in?
If I could’ve slipped into my front door undetected I would’ve done it, but she was already fumbling her way out saying, “Oh, God! Let me out of here!” She emerged and fell into my arms.
I had once been stuck in the elevator, which is why I always took the stairs. It wasn’t great, but I thought Jane was laying it on a bit thick. “I have claustrophobia. My therapist says it’s birth trauma,” she half-sobbed against my shoulder.
I was in a quandary. The obvious move was to take her into my apartment and settle her down with a brandy, both for her own good and in the interest of whatever she might let slip, in her upset condition, about Bruno and the Speculatori. Yet maybe she was trying to get me to do just that. Her breathing was slowing down and I was going to have to say something. I was halfheartedly patting the back of her black leather jacket when I heard rapid footsteps coming up the stairs. The wild notion occurred to me that she had me immobilized, and now her confederate was arriving to do me in. I was considering shoving her downstairs and running for it when the climber came into view. It was Inspector Perret, wearing his plainclothes outfit of yesterday.
Jane was standing upright now, hand against her brow. Her white hair hung limply under the black beret and spread on her shoulders like moulted feathers. “I was coming to see you about your story,” she said.
Perret had almost reached us. I couldn’t introduce him as an inspector in the Criminal Brigade without possibly blowing everything. At least he knew who Jane was, since he’d followed both of us from the Rue Jacob to the Porte de Clignancourt. I was staring dumbly at him when he reached the top step, took me by the shoulders, and kissed me on each cheek in the French manner of greeting between friends. Then he repeated the performance for two more kisses, which meant we were special friends indeed.
If I hadn’t been immobilized already that would’ve stopped me, but then he proceeded to smile dotingly and say, “Bonjour, chérie” which pretty much means “Hello, darling.”
I can take a hint, especially if I’m bludgeoned with it. I gave him the kind of look I might give a hulking blond boyfriend five or six years my junior and said “Bonjour” back. I turned to Jane, who had recovered and was looking at Perret with noticeable interest and said to her, “This is my friend—”
Well, I didn’t remember his first name, but before I had to make one up he jumped in, offering his hand and saying, “Gilles Perret.”
It no l
onger seemed risky to invite Jane in, and soon I had poured medicinal brandy for all of us. Jane eyed Perret and said to me, “I kind of wanted to talk with you privately.”
He was standing by the window, arms folded, watching the street. “It’s O.K. to talk,” I said, in a moment of inspiration. “Gilles doesn’t speak much English.”
“He doesn’t?” She gazed at him. Then she leaned toward me and said, “Geez, he looks like a pistol. Is he as good as he looks?”
Perret didn’t quiver, and it was too far away to see if he was blushing. “Fantastic. The best,” I said.
“Lucky you.” Jane sat in my armchair and rolled her head back. “God. That elevator. Can’t you sue or have a rent strike or something?”
I didn’t want to discuss my elevator or her birth trauma. “What did you want to talk with me about?”
She sat up straighter. “Listen. Are you still working on that story? About the mirror?”
“Yes.”
“And you were dealing with Lucien Claude, the antiques dealer who got killed, weren’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“I was with him that afternoon, before it happened. If I tell you, will I get my name in the paper? Can I get paid?”
There was a whispered “Zut!” from the window. Inspector Perret had dropped a lighted cigarette and was bending to pick it up. He got it, stuck it in his mouth, and gave me a piercing look before he turned away.
“What do you mean, you were with him?” I asked.
“I mean I was with him. Something strange was going on, believe me. Wouldn’t you like to know about it for your story?”
I had to carry the ball here, and it seemed important that I not start gibbering. I said, “Have you told the police?”
She looked at me disdainfully. “The pigs? I don’t want anything to do with them. But are you interested?”
There was only one possible answer. “Sure. Sure I am.”
“I’ve heard you can get paid for an exclusive story. Can you work out something?”
Magic Mirror (The Georgia Lee Maxwell Series, Book 1) Page 13
