TWENTY-NINE

When I went to visit him the next day, Inspector Guillaume seemed less interested in the thefts. “Non, there have been no more thefts. Not since the young M. Potter was taken into custody. Of course, now he is released, so we shall see.” Inspector Guillaume shrugged. It had taken a lot of persistence before I was finally allowed to see him in his office, with the miniature guillotine on the corner of his desk. But I was stubborn. I wouldn’t go away, so, finally, one of the young police officers had thrown up his hands and led me to the man.

“And the death of Miss Stuart, what have you determined about that?”

Another shrug and a raised eyebrow. “Apparently, from the testimony of the lovely Mlle Sonya, M. Honoré Palmer could not have been responsible, so the only conclusion we can come to is that the woman threw herself from the balcony.”

“Suicide. But you don’t believe that?”

“I think the daughter of the countess will soon be engaged to the son of the American millionaire. Presumably it is young love, and they will live happily ever after, as you say. Unfortunately, the Mlle Stuart will not live happily, or unhappily, anymore.” He frowned at me. “But for the young M. Palmer now the debts are all cleared, you understand? We have investigated and it would seem all of his obligations have been paid off.”

“But his mother may have done that, you know.”

“Perhaps.”

“You can’t think he sold the stolen jewelry to pay them off? I can find out from Mrs. Palmer if she gave him the money.”

“But, of course, what will the loving mother of the son say in that instance? Non. We will not know. M. Palmer, he is very lucky in his marital arrangements. The poor Mlle Stuart and the little milliner, Denise Laporte, they are not so lucky.”

He was very cynical. Considering me closely across the desk, he apparently decided to test my mettle. “But you have worked with the police in your city of Chicago, no? What would your policeman there think? There is a young woman, a milliner. She sees the life of the wealthy women for whom she makes the hats. She wishes to also have nice things, so she becomes a model for artists, lives the bohemian life, and she meets men who admire her. She becomes infatuated with a foreigner. Moving out of her uncle’s house, she lives with the man. But something happens—perhaps the man’s relatives come to town and he must get rid of his mistress—and she must return to her uncle’s house. She finds she is going to have a child. The man, he has paid her off but now he has run up the debts, which he also must hide from his parents, lest they cut off his funds completely.”

I knew he was speaking of Honoré. I thought the young man was keeping a secret from his parents but I could not believe this story was the explanation. He would never have acted in that manner. I knew that, and his mother knew that, but the French police had their own way of looking at things. Guillaume continued relentlessly.

“He must correct his problems, quickly, to keep them from his parents. Either he hears of the jewel thefts from the earlier exposition, or he is recruited by the Pied Piper of that time. It could be either. We do not know because the earlier crimes were never entirely solved. We may have arrested members of the gang, but we never found the mastermind behind it all. So, this man, he uses the little milliner and he convinces others to help him. Then he begins to pay off his debts by stealing the jewels. But, for Denise Laporte, it is not enough, she wants him to acknowledge her and marry her and claim the child. This he cannot do. His own mother’s pearls are stolen.

“When the Pied Piper worked in the last exposition, we found that he arranged for stolen jewels to be passed to the fence by placing them in plain sight in one of the exhibits. Once again this method is to be used to pass the jewels on for sale. M. Palmer gets the young Laporte girl to let him into the exhibit. She is working on the hats, you understand. But Denise has heard of his mother’s plans to marry him to the daughter of the countess. She sees him, she waits till they are alone, she argues with him, but he cannot have her destroy all of his plans, so he strangles her, and leaves her and the pearls there for his fence.” He looked across at me. “If not for your curiosity, it might have been some days before the body was found. We believe the pearls would have been gone by then, that very evening no doubt.”

“I assure you, Mr. Palmer would never behave in this manner. He would never have treated Miss Laporte that way and he is wealthy. He has no need to steal jewelry.”

He shrugged at my protests.

“And what about Miss Stuart?” I asked.

“Ah, another young person with debts. Miss Stuart, either she saw something, or she was a part of the robberies. The pattern of the Pied Piper was to recruit young people like Miss Stuart. She was becoming desperate about money. When M. Palmer was found with the stolen necklace in his pocket we assumed perhaps she had discovered him in the midst of the theft, threatened him, and he had pushed her over. But, of course, Mlle Sonya now says he was with her and the necklace was on the railing. He picked it up, they looked over the side together, and saw the body. So we are to believe the young woman was so distraught that she threw herself from the balcony. But, if so, we ask where did the necklace come from? And the other jewelry in the hand of the dead woman, how did it get there? If she stole it, as the countess would have us believe, it must solve her financial difficulties, is it not so? So why jump? If she did not steal it, then who was there with her, and did they push her or did she jump? These are the riddles we deal with. But M. Palmer, he has been removed from the calculations by Mlle Sonya. He is a lucky man, is he not?”

I could see that the police thought all of the pieces of this puzzle fit together if they had Honoré as their chief suspect. They wanted to cast him as the Pied Piper who had recruited Edith Stuart to steal for him. But, to me, it was like trying to fit a round puzzle piece into a space that was jagged. I could not imagine the young man I knew—the son of Bertha and Potter Palmer—engineering the thefts of jewels and undertaking the cold-blooded murders of two young women. But I also didn’t believe the story Sonya told so conveniently after a few days, either. I had seen the reaction on Honoré’s face with my own eyes. I didn’t believe he’d been with the young Russian aristocrat and that they’d come upon the scene together, as she now claimed. He knew, or thought he knew, the woman on the pavement below, and her death had pierced him to the core.

But this was not something I wanted to share with the inspector, so I bid him goodbye. I left with a conviction that the police would never look beyond Honoré Palmer for a suspect, unless I was able to provide evidence that pointed clearly to another culprit. If things remained as they were—unresolved—it would leave a deep shadow on my friends the Palmers. Whatever secret Honoré was keeping, however painful it was, until it was revealed I feared for the welfare and safety of the family that had been so generous to my own. And, besides that, I could not remain in this state of suspense. I wanted to know what had really happened. To do that, I needed to know the truth about Edith Stuart, a young woman who had been so alive, even if unhappy and strained, in the afternoon, and so very dead by the end of the night. Although, what I would do with the knowledge, once I had it, was a different question.

To unravel this entire ball of misery was beyond my ability at the moment. But I felt more confident that I could at least identify the person, or persons, responsible for the jewel thefts. Surely I ought to be able to do that.