Mme Reynard was making coffee for the policemen. She had been the one to find Frances early that morning. Her reaction was surprising: she was perfectly composed and single-minded about it. She telephoned the authorities and waited silently with Frances. She looked at the corpse from time to time but said nothing to it and understood it was no longer her friend. When the police arrived, she brought them to the body, then moved alone to Malcolm’s bedroom, waking him and Susan. “Your mother has killed herself in the night,” she said. “The police are here to take care of her. You are going to be all right, Malcolm. You just are.”

“Where,” asked Malcolm, standing.

“She’s in the bath but I wish you wouldn’t go and I’m asking you please not to.”

He did go, and the sight of his mother sitting upright in the still, red water folded his legs for him, and he sat down roughly on the tile floor. A policeman assisted him in standing and led him to the sofa in the living room. A cup of coffee was placed in his hand but he didn’t drink it. Susan sat beside him, saying nothing, holding his arm. Joan was crying in the bedroom; Julius and Mme Reynard were in the kitchen giving statements to the lead detective, a calm, attentive man named Alphonse. Three policemen stood in a group by the living room window, talking in low tones about something other than what had occurred, was occurring in the apartment.

Detective Alphonse asked Malcolm to come to the station headquarters with him. Malcolm agreed and they left together, walking without speaking. Malcolm was wearing the houndstooth trench coat Frances had bought him when they’d arrived.

Detective Alphonse’s office was not the dingy chamber of television drama but a tidy, airy space with skylights and a number of thriving plants hanging from the ceiling. He asked Malcolm if he wanted a coffee and Malcolm said he did and Detective Alphonse called for two, which were delivered by a uniformed policeman who did not address Malcolm or even look at him. After he left, the detective and Malcolm sat in further silence, taking sips of their coffee at intervals.

Detective Alphonse began speaking about his history, his youth. As an adolescent, he said, he’d been a fan of crime. He followed criminal news as his friends did the football scores. “I came to learn this is common in my profession,” he said. “The interest is simply there in certain of us, and from an early age. A very specific social deformity.” The detective had known a glint of recognition when he came on shift that morning and heard the name Frances Price. He looked into it and realized he had followed the case of Franklin Price in his early twenties. It had been a sort of sensation in France, possessing all the noirish American elements a crime-hungry heart could hope for—the deceased millionaire, the chic widow, and at the center loomed the great mystery of: Why had she left him like that? And to go skiing, no less? Had she gone mad? Or had he deserved such an end?

Detective Alphonse didn’t ask Malcolm any of these questions, naturally; he only referenced a familiarity with Malcolm’s family history. Malcolm seemed hardly to hear him. He sat staring at his feet; realizing his shoes were untied, he tied them. When he finished this, Detective Alphonse told him, “Mr. Price, a mystery has occurred in Paris, France. I am paid a wage that I should illuminate the mystery so much as I can. Of course, you’re under no obligation to answer any of my questions. But it would be helpful to me if you would.”

Malcolm said, “You can ask me whatever you want.”

Detective Alphonse took up a pen and flipped open his notebook. “What is your age?”

“Thirty-two.”

“And your mother’s age?”

“Sixty-five.”

“What is your place of residence?”

“We’ve been living at Joan’s apartment, here in Paris. Before that we were in Manhattan.”

Detective Alphonse asked for their respective US addresses and Malcolm named the Upper East Side address. “You and your mother lived together?”

“Yes.”

“Was she unwell?”

“No. We lived together because we wanted to.”

“Had you lived apart in the past?”

“They kept me at boarding school until my father died. Since then I’ve been with her.”

Detective Alphonse asked, “Did you anticipate this from your mother?”

“I’m unsurprised that she’s done it. But I wasn’t prepared for the sight.”

“Had she been despondent recently?”

“I don’t know if I’d use the word despondent. She’s been acting weird since the money ran out.”

“Did your money run out?”

“It did.”

Detective Alphonse wrote out a long sentence, nodding to himself. “And she’s been emotional?”

“Not in the way you mean. Actually she’s been abnormally friendly. She always avoided strangers and hangers-on, but in the last weeks she became sort of a joiner.”

“Interesting,” Detective Alphonse said.

“Is it?”

“Is it not?” The detective took a breath. “Something delicate.”

“What’s that?”

“Did your mother ever discuss the details of the death of your father?”

“Here and there she did.”

“Do you have any idea why she behaved that way?”

“Which way?”

“Why she didn’t, for example, call the authorities?”

Malcolm said, “What I know is that she felt strongly apart from him, then.”

“Strongly apart.” Detective Alphonse wrote down these words and underlined them. He said, “I’d think that would be a burdensome thing to carry about for the rest of one’s life? Her having done that, I mean.”

“I don’t know if it was.”

“No?”

“Anyway I never noticed it as a burden.”

“So you don’t believe there’s a connection between your father’s death and your mother’s suicide?”

“No.”

“Why did she do it, do you think?”

Malcolm thought for a while. “Aesthetic preference,” he said finally. He frowned. “What will they do with her body? I’d like her removed from the bath as quickly as possible.”

“I imagine they’ve already removed her, Mr. Price. They’ll take her to the morgue. It’s not far from here. You can see her whenever you wish.”

“I don’t want to see her, I just want them to take her out of the bath.”

“They’ll clean her and dress her injuries.”

Malcolm shook his head. “Fine,” he said.

Detective Alphonse studied his notes. He had no other questions, and really, there were none that had needed answering in the first place. In the case of a suicide, the collection of data surrounding the event was often interesting but not requisite, from a legal standpoint. He put the cap on his pen and looked up. Malcolm was opening his mouth to speak: “My mother was overfine for this world, Detective Alphonse. That’s what damaged her. She belonged to another time and it was her ugly luck to be born among us.”

Detective Alphonse shut his notebook and stood. “Thank you for speaking with me,” he said. “You have my card, and I hope you’ll tell me if there’s anything I can help you with. Please let me know if you decide to leave Paris.”

“Thank you, I will. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

Malcolm left the police station and walked toward Joan’s apartment. The sidewalks were overrun with people hurrying to work; Malcolm stepped off the curb and walked in the street to avoid them. He had always, since the first time he visited Paris, felt he was invisible there. It was a feeling he loved very much.

He was aware of being in an intermediate period: he hadn’t yet recognized Frances’s death but sensed the recognition’s even approach. He sat on a bench across from the square at Saint-Sulpice. He couldn’t latch on to any particular thought or emotion for a while; then he began thinking of the morning Frances came for him at the academy.

Malcolm was summoned from his classroom and arrived at the headmaster’s office to find her bantering with the man about the protocol of removing Malcolm from school. She had a sheaf of papers in front of her, which she regarded with distaste. Looking up, she greeted Malcolm and explained her wish to take him away. Her eyes were glassy and she smelled of cigarettes.

“Is there anything you want from your room?” she asked.

“Clothes,” he said.

“I’ll buy you new clothes. Is there anything else?”

“No.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

“But the forms, Mrs. Price,” said the headmaster.

“Why don’t you be a champion and fill them out for me?”

“No, it’s not for me to do.”

“Well, I don’t want to, and I’m not going to, and I’m afraid that concludes the tune. Good morning.”

Malcolm stood gawking at the headmaster. How novel it was to see this fearsome man on the defensive. Frances gave Malcolm a friendly shove and they exited the office, walking down the hall and toward the entrance. They crossed the courtyard to the waiting Rolls.

“Where’s the driver?” asked Malcolm.

“Driver quit.” Frances stopped to light a cigarette: click! “I’m the driver.”

“I thought you didn’t know how to drive.”

“It’s pretty self-explanatory. Sit up front and keep me company.”

She drove down the gravel road. Pebbles were pinging off the Rolls’s undercarriage and the leaden car fishtailed around corners. They came to a paved two-lane highway; Frances accelerated and the sedan crouched nearer the ground.

She asked Malcolm, “So, how was it?”

“How was what?”

She jerked her thumb back. “Your educational experience.”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Don’t say ‘I don’t know.’ Of course you know. What was it like?”

“Not really very much fun,” said Malcolm.

“Didn’t you have any friends?”

“Some.”

“But you found the relationships unfulfilling?”

Malcolm was going to say he didn’t know but caught himself. He looked at his mother and shrugged.

“What was the food like?” she asked.

“The food was awful.”

She held her palm out flat. “Give me your tie.”

“Why?”

She continued holding out her hand. Malcolm undid his tie and gave it to her and she threw it out the window. Malcolm turned to watch it whipping in the wake of the Rolls. Soon they entered into a dense forest. There were no other cars on the darkened road. “Your father’s dead,” Frances said.

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“The other kids showed it to me in the paper.”

“What did it say about him?”

“That he died a few days ago.”

“That’s true. What else did it say?”

Malcolm folded his hands together and rested them on his lap.

“What did it say about me?” she asked.

The question made Malcolm shy.

“It’s okay, go ahead,” Frances said.

Malcolm said, “You were arrested, it said. Because you didn’t do what you were supposed to do.”

Frances muttered to herself, lighting a cigarette off another and tossing the short butt out the window. “Look,” she said. “They didn’t know your father, and they certainly don’t know me, and it’s boorish, typically boorish of them to state the terms of what should have been done in an episode they could never guess at. What was and was not done was done or not done for a very good, a very real reason, all right?”

“All right.”

“What you need to understand is that I wasn’t wrong,” she said. “If this is going to work—you and me, I mean—you’re going to have to take my word for that. Okay?”

Malcolm nodded. “Okay,” he said. In a little while he asked, “What was jail like?”

Frances was tapping the steering wheel. “Not really very much fun.”

“How was the food?”

Frances nodded approvingly. “You’re getting it.”

They exited the forest and emerged into sunshine. To the side of them lay undulating fields of grass. Frances flicked the cigarette out the window and rolled it up tight, smoke floating in the Rolls. “Are you going to have to go back to jail?” Malcolm asked.

Frances considered the question. “I don’t think so,” she said. The road banked south and they followed the line, moving toward Manhattan.

Malcolm was pulled from this reverie by the faint scent of flowers. The smell was similar to a perfume Frances had worn; he suddenly had the feeling she was there with him now—that she was visiting him. The scent of flowers became stronger, and now Malcolm sensed she was standing behind him. He was frightened by the thought; he turned slowly around to face her. But Frances was not there. Malcolm found himself looking at a florist’s storefront. For no good reason, and just to do something, he stood and entered.

The shop was dim, the air dense with moisture. The displays were soothing in a small and wanted way. When the clerk moved to stand beside Malcolm, he pointed. “I’ll take those ones.”

“How many?”

“A big armful.”

Malcolm made his purchase and exited the florist’s. He was a young man without socks on walking in the golden, late-morning Parisian sun with a bouquet of pink ranunculus in his arms. He looked down at them, admiring them, and wondering who they were for. They were for Susan, he decided. He imagined her face when he passed them over. She would be confused by the gesture, but later, in remembering the moment, wouldn’t she be pleased? Malcolm wanted to be kind to Susan.

He felt nimble as he navigated the sidewalk, moving around the bodies, men and women alone in their minds, freighted with their intimate informations. Crossing the square at Saint-Sulpice, he split through a stream of nuns, who, as insects interrupted, lost the scent of their paths and spun away in eddies.