by Aaron Elkins
Something hit me hard between the shoulder blades. The breath burst from my lungs. The book flew from my hands. I shot headfirst through the open windows, tumbling wildly into the night and down toward the old cobblestone courtyard two stories below.
Chapter 8
A word about French windows. French windows are built on the order of French doors; that is, they come in pairs, opening on hinges at the sides. However, not being doors, there is no need for them to go all the way down to the floor, and in seventeenth-century buildings they commonly end a little below knee height, at a wide sill that is often used today to hide desirable but unsightly modern improvements such as radiators. On the outside, this sill often extends to make a decorative little balcony, too narrow to stand on, that is surrounded by a low stone or wrought-iron balustrade, also strictly for cosmetic purposes.
Now here's what happened. When the unexpected shove came, I had one foot up on the inner sill, with the book on my knee. This was bad for me, because I was already halfway up and out. It couldn't have taken much to propel me all the way, and out I went. If it's all the same to you, I think I won't dwell on the next half-second or so, when I found myself airborne, with nothing but twenty-plus feet of thin night air between my nose, with which I was leading at the time, and the rough cobblestones, angled cars, and rusty iron gratings below. Suffice it to say that the assertion that the ground seems to leap up at you is discouragingly accurate.
I'm not trying to keep you in suspense, I'm just trying to explain what happened.
Out went my head into the night, yes, and my upper body along with it. Everything, in fact, right down to my ankles, which is where that low balustrade came into play. My feet, you see—the insteps, that is– hooked on the iron railing as I shot over it. So instead of continuing on that long and ill-fated parabola, I pivoted sharply around the railing, swinging back toward the building, head down, with my feet still hung up in the railing above me. Somehow, I was able to ward off the oncoming wall with my left arm while at the same time reaching up with my other hand to grab a wrought-iron curlicue of the balustrade beside my right ankle. For someone who is not ordinarily the world's most coordinated person, it was a hell of a performance—reflex all the way, I assure you. When it got through to me that I was splattered neither on the cobblestones nor against the wall, I reached upward—that is, toward my feet—with a shaky left hand and got a firm grip on some more wrought-iron filigree next to my left ankle. And there I hung, dazed and giddy.
"Hey!" I said.
Don't ask me what I had in mind. I could hardly expect whoever had shoved me out the window to pull me back in, but I had to do something. The blood was pounding in my head, the pressure on my insteps was excruciating, and I didn't think I could hold on to the rough, narrow iron very long.
As expected, there was no response from the study, but at least the guy didn't lean out and start hacking at my grip. I shifted my weight a little and groaned. By some complicated twisting that very nearly dropped me straight on my head onto the stones I was able to rearrange one foot at a time to get the worst of the pressure off them, but my shoulders were starting to burn. I made a try at pulling myself back onto the balcony, but my first movement tipped me so much off balance that I almost toppled off altogether. I yelped, gulped, hung on for dear life, and decided not to try it again. I had never felt more helpless. I couldn't even see; the twin spotlights above the window were blinding.
I shouted again for help, more loudly, but let me tell you, the mind under stress is a peculiar thing. I dreaded being found almost as much as I did letting go. I felt like a complete idiot. I mean, there I was, in my tuxedo, hanging by my hands and feet outside Vachey's window like some bizarre, blind tree sloth, yelling "Au secours! Au secours!" It was going to take some considerable explaining.
As it was, the need didn't arise. No one came. I could hear the continuing babble in the gallery, but they couldn't hear me. I was going to fall, then, and I didn't want to do it on my head. While I still had some strength in my fingers I twisted some more and managed to extricate both feet from the balustrade, my arms shaking with the strain. Now I was dangling by my hands, feet down. I thought about trying to swing up and over the balustrade, but I knew I didn't have the strength left. All I could do was hang there, and I couldn't do very much more of that. When I let go it might mean a couple of broken legs, maybe a broken pelvis, but not a broken head. An improvement, but nothing to look forward to.
I tried to remember everything I'd heard about jumping from a height: Keep the muscles loose, bend the knees when you hit the ground . . .
There were footsteps, several sets of them, in the study, and excited voices.
"But there's no one here," someone said in French. "I thought—"
"I'm out here!" I croaked. "I'm—"
"It's coming from outside," another voice said. "Downstairs, the courtyard."
"Let's go," somebody said.
"No, wait!" I tried to call, but they were already running for the stairs, and I couldn't suck in enough air to do it anyway. I knew that I wasn't going to last until they got outside. I couldn't breathe, my arms felt as if they were being dragged out of their sockets, muscles were jumping everywhere, and I couldn't feel my fingers at all. Still, I managed to hang on for another few seconds, or rather my fingers did it on their own, and then, just as I heard my would-be rescuers burst through the doorway below, my grip came undone, and down I plummeted.
No, I didn't land on anyone, although I suppose I might have aimed for them if they'd been within reach. I don't know whether I remembered to stay relaxed (between you and me, I rather doubt it) or to flex my knees. What I do remember is a totally unexpected whump as my feet hit, followed by a ponderous, elastic bounce, along the lines of what a 747 does when it hits the runway. My knees flexed—without any instructions from me, thank you—my feet shot out from under me, and I wound up, with another, lesser whump, on my behind, there to rock gradually to a stop.
At this stage my mind was far from its most acute, but I was pretty sure that, whatever else might happen when you fell out of a second-story window, you weren't supposed to bounce. Under my thighs I could feel a smooth, cold surface—definitely not cobblestones, but what? I opened my eyes (when had I shut them?), and although still a little dazzled from the spotlights, I saw well enough to realize what had happened.
Those cars. Those two glossy, gray, beautiful Renaults parked in a corner of the courtyard. I'd actually landed on the hood of one—an admirable, wonderful automobile with lovely, well-maintained shock absorbers. No broken legs, no broken pelvis, nothing but a couple of still-quivering arms that felt like tapioca pudding. I started to laugh, not without a shrill tinge of hysterical relief, but pulled myself up short when I remembered the people who had run down to the courtyard to rescue me.
I gathered myself together and turned to look at them. They stood frozen, half-a-dozen of them, arranged along the steps as if in a tableau, all of them staring mutely at me. In the strong, shadowed light of the courtyard, their expressions were easy enough to read: Incredulity. Amazement. Stupefaction. Perplexity.
"Good evening," I said. I slid gingerly off the hood and onto my feet. More distingué, don't you know.
Several people blinked. "What the hell is going on here?" one of them asked gruffly, but for the most part they continued to regard me with bewilderment.
And no wonder. They had heard shouts for help from the courtyard. They had rushed downstairs and arrived just in time to hear a couple of resounding whumps and to find me sitting on the hood of a car, tittering away to myself while the vehicle rocked slowly to a halt.
I didn't think any of them could have seen the fall itself, because the two side wings of Vachey's house—his study was in the right one—were recessed, some ten feet behind the central part, where the entrance was. I would have been behind them when they burst out, and they would have had to get a few feet out onto the stoop, or even down one or two of the steps, before th
ey could see around the corner and into the recess.
"I thought I heard someone shout for help," I told them. "I came downstairs, but no one was here."
You can imagine how believable that was, but it was all I could think of.
Fortunately, no one asked me why I was bouncing on the Renault. "Maybe it was someone on the street?" a woman suggested doubtfully after a moment. Someone went to the gatehouse, unlatched the wide door, and went out into the Rue de la Préfecture . He came back shaking his head, looking at me oddly. "No, nothing."
They milled around a while, then drifted back inside, muttering to each other and looking at me out of the corners of their eyes. Calvin had arrived with the last of them, and stayed behind, coming up to me when the others had gone in.
"Christ, what happened, Chris?"
"You didn't find my explanation convincing?"
He reached toward my shoulder and tugged on a loose suspender strap. I glanced down. Both clasps had come loose, and the straps were up around my neck. My jacket had popped its buttons, my shirttails hung loose, and my new patent leather shoes looked as if they'd been run over by a tractor. My bow tie was hanging from a shirt stud about halfway down my chest.
"Not real convincing, no," Calvin said. "What the hell happened to you?"
I gave him a brief account.
His eyes, always a bit protuberant, bugged out a little more. "Who pushed you, Vachey?"
"I wish I knew, Calvin."
He looked up at the balcony. "Out of that window?"
I looked up too, and cringed.
"Jeez, Chris, are you sure you're okay?"
"I think so. Sort of."
Gently, I tried out my moving parts. Everything worked, even my fingers, although they felt more like claws. I was far from tiptop; my arms were still trembling and flaccid, my shoulders ached and burned, my insteps felt as if they'd been flayed, and my palms had deep, painful, red grooves in them. There was a taste of blood in my mouth from when I'd bitten my cheek as I hit the Renault. Minor, all of it, considering the way it could have turned out, but I felt like hell.
"That book could still be up there," I said. "I'm—"
"You just stay there," Calvin said masterfully. "I'll go."
I didn't argue. "Big blue looseleaf, like a scrapbook," I called after him. "Old."
While he was gone I leaned against the car hood again. There weren't even any dents in it. I patted the metal affectionately. Nice cars, Renaults. Dependable. Trustworthy.
Calvin was back in a minute, shaking his head as he came down the stairs.
"Not there?" I said.
"Nothing. What now?"
"I guess the first thing is to talk to Vachey. Whether he pushed me or not, he knows what's in the book."
"Well, he's still up in the gallery."
I shook my head. "Not tonight. All I want to do right now is crawl into bed. Tomorrow morning I'll tackle Vachey first thing." Cautiously I rotated a shoulder, trying to work out the kinks. "Ow. Assuming I can get out of bed."
"What about the cops?"
"What about them?"
"Well, somebody just tried to murder you. I always thought you were supposed to mention it to the police when that happened."
"Murder me?" Strangely enough, I hadn't thought about it that way. Somebody had wanted either to keep me from seeing what was in that binder or to get it for himself. To do it, he— I didn't think it was a woman; I'd been pushed with a lot of force—had found it necessary to shove me through an open window. That was as far as I'd thought it out.
"You're right," I said after a moment, "but I don't think I will."
"No cops?" he said incredulously.
"Well, not until I have a chance to talk to Vachey first."
"You're crazy."
"Look, Calvin, how do I explain what I was doing in Vachey's study? Would they even believe me?" I tapped my curling shirt front. "I look like a joke version of a lush, and I must smell like a winery. Can you see me telling them about being shoved out the window by someone I didn't see, and hanging off the balcony by my feet, and then landing on the car?" "Well, it does sound a little—"
"You know what they'd say: 'Hmm, you 'ave 'ad per'aps a leetle wine to drink zis evening, monsieur?' Accompanied by a friendly wink."
"You got a point. And think about what the papers would do with it if they got hold of it: 'Seattle museum official mysteriously flung from window while rifling art collector's office.' " The prospect clearly amused him.
"I'm going back to the hotel," I told him wearily, pushing away from the car.
"I'll walk you," Calvin said. "You look a little shaky."
"You don't have to walk me. I'm not shaky."
But I was. We had only gone a few yards down the Rue de la Préfecture when I realized seven blocks was going to be too much for me. Luckily, there was a taxi stand at the first corner.
"Hey, I just realized," Calvin said as we settled into the back seat. "It wasn't Vachey,"
"What do you mean?"
"Vachey didn't push you out any window. When I came down, he was still standing in front of the Léger, trying to calm down the crazy lady."
"Good," I said.
"What do you mean, good?"
"I don't know what I mean. I guess I'm glad it wasn't him, that's all."
"Yeah, he's a likable old coot. But there's something about him . . ."
"I know. Well, I still want to start with him tomorrow. I think the first thing is to find out what's in that scrapbook."
"I'll go with you."
"Calvin, you don't have to go with me."
"I know, but what else do I have to do? What time, eight o'clock?"
I shuddered. "God, no. I'll call you when I get up. Maybe ten."
The cab pulled up in front of the Hôtel du Nord. I got out somewhat creakily; I'd begun to stiffen up.
"Don't forget to call me," Calvin said.
I leaned on the doorframe. "Look, Calvin, nobody's going to try to kill me tomorrow morning, if that's what you're worried about. There's no reason to. And I think I'd do better talking to Vachey alone."
Calvin heard me out. "Just call me, okay? Better yet, I'll call you. Ten o'clock."
"Okay, all right." I straightened up. "Tell me something, will you? Did Tony ask you to watch out for me or something? To make sure I didn't do anything dumb?"
Calvin tilted his head to one side and gave me his most rabbity grin. "You got it," he said.
* * *
Ordinarily, I kept clear of the hotel elevator, a rickety birdcage high on charm but low on everything else. Tonight, however, I was grateful to clank falteringly up to the fourth floor in it. Once in my room, I took a couple of aspirin, checked myself over for cuts (none) and abrasions (some), and got into a hot bath in which I soaked dreamily for three-quarters of an hour, drifting in and out of a doze.
It was after 1:00 a.m. when I climbed out, soothed but utterly washed out. I left a wake-up call for 9:30, and sank into the pillows.
At 7:50 the telephone rang. I got one eye open and glowered at it. On the fourth ring I got my muscles working and reached for it, growling something into the mouthpiece.
"Hiya, Chris." It was Calvin. "Did I wake you up?"
"It's not ten o'clock," I said.
"Listen," he said, "there's something in the paper I want to show you."
"Show me at ten."
"I'll be there in fifteen minutes, okay?" I gave up.
"Okay, but bring some—"
" 'Bye."
The telephone clicked. "—coffee," I finished lamely.
I took another couple of aspirin from the bottle on the nightstand, got into a hot shower to loosen up my creaky joints, and shaved and dressed. Physically, I was feeling better than expected; aside from the predictable stiffness, the only parts of me that were still really sore were my insteps, just in front of the ankles, where, pressed and scraped against the wrought-iron grillwork, they'd borne most of my weight. It felt as if the bones thems
elves were bruised, and no wonder. I was sitting on the sofa, babying them by slipping my feet into a pair of disreputable but roomy jogging shoes, when Calvin came in.
"Well, nobody's going to have any trouble telling you're an American," he said, eyeing the shoes. "As far as I know, Velcro straps have yet to make it to the French fashion scene."
"Nobody has any trouble anyway," I said sourly. "What's up? What am I doing awake at 8:15?"
"Here," Calvin said brightly. "I figured you'd need a fix." He handed me a huge cardboard cup, milk shake-sized, of café au lait. "Picked it up on the way." He'd brought a smaller one for himself.
I brightened immediately. "Calvin, I apologize for what I was thinking about you."
"No problem," he said, and sat in the single wooden side chair with his cup while I got the lid off mine, inhaled the aroma, and had a long, milky, rehabilitative swallow.
"Now," I said, restored to my usual good humor, "what did you want me to see in the paper?"
He handed me a copy of Echos Quotidiens—The Daily Gossip—one of the livelier French tabloids. "Page one, bottom right. You're going to love it."
From his tone, I had my doubts. I turned to the article.
"PEINTURE DE MON PÈRE VOLÉE PAR COLLECTIONNEUR!" the headline blared. My Father's Painting Stolen by Collector! Underneath, the subheading was: René Vachey a Tool of the Nazis, Saint-Denis Man Claims.
"Christ," I muttered. "What a hell of a time for this to happen."
"It gets better," Calvin assured me. "More pertinent, you might say."
My misgivings increased. I read on.
In an exclusive interview with Les Echos Quotidiens, Mr. Julien Mann, a Paris Metro worker, has made a series of sensational charges against controversial Dijon art dealer and philanthropist René Vachey. Chief among them is the allegation that a Rembrandt painting recently donated by Mr. Vachey to the Seattle Art Museum is in reality a painting by Govert Flinck, which Mr. Vachey appropriated from Mr. Mann's father under conditions of extreme duress, during the German Occupation of World War II.
