“I’m so sorry,” Alan said.
They were gathered in Bistrot Vivienne for their usual end-of-investigation debriefing. This time, though, they weren’t celebrating. Rachel had ordered a cup of watery French tea for herself as a penance, and now she sat taking tasteless sips as she waited for what her husband would say next.
“Maybe you could find some comfort in the knowledge that this isn’t a unique occurrence? I mean, if news reports and cold cases are anything to go by, there are a lot more murders than there are murderers captured.”
He looked over at Capitaine Boussicault, who had invited himself along when Rachel telephoned to tell him what had happened. The capitaine nodded reluctant confirmation. “Although this particular instance is unusual. We don’t normally have them confessing and still getting away with it.”
“Was it really a confession? What exactly did she tell you?”
Alan was looking for a way to make her feel better, Rachel knew. If there hadn’t been a real confession, perhaps she could pretend that Antoinette hadn’t really triumphed.
But there was no way around it.
“It was a confession,” Magda said. “She started with Ochs’s first letter and told us everything Rachel just told you.”
“But why not just pay Ochs reparations?” Alan took a sip of his whiskey. “Just speaking purely practically, Sauveterre is very successful. They could afford to quietly give him the money he was owed.”
“Guipure wouldn’t do it,” Rachel said. “He felt this was a wrong that the steps of his recovery program required him to right. His label literally couldn’t have existed without the money his grandfather made from reselling those paintings, and therefore he felt that he was complicit. He was going to make his amends by going to the press.”
“But she chose an incredibly risky way to circumvent that.” Alan frowned. “Injecting him at a party, in public …”
“No,” Rachel shook her head. “She needed it to be that way. It was part of her plan. The party meant he wouldn’t be paying as much attention as he would be if they were alone. And it meant there were two hundred witnesses to say they hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary, just a man being hugged by his sister. And the very boldness of the way she did it made it so unbelievable that no one would even think of it as a possibility. It made her safe.” She smiled at him. “You told me she had a brilliant financial mind, and this has all the hallmarks of brilliance. It was risky, and it was audacious, but its risks and audacity were carefully calculated.”
“But it didn’t pay off,” Alan pointed out.
“No, but that was because of something she didn’t factor in. She thought that because Guipure was a former addict, the police would dismiss it as an accidental overdose. She didn’t expect them to investigate further.”
“Don’t underestimate the Paris police,” Boussicault said with satisfaction.
But Alan was still unsatisfied. “And did she say how she managed to persuade Gabrielle to buy the heroin?”
“Gabrielle didn’t buy the heroin.”
“But the security video showed her passing it to Thieriot!”
“No.” Rachel gritted her teeth. “The security video showed her bumping into Thieriot. We were the ones who assumed it must be a handoff. We saw what we wanted to see, just like we assumed that a woman in a white dress with red hair buying heroin must have been Gabrielle. We forgot that anyone can fake someone’s most memorable characteristics. It’s easy to buy a red wig and wear a white dress.”
“Or sneak into an office,” Magda added.
“No, that was my fault.” Rachel bit her lip. “You realized that anyone could have used Lellouch’s phone without his knowledge.”
Magda patted her arm. “But we were both so determined to make Gabrielle guilty that we decided it must have been her.”
“And did she kill Thieriot using some audacious plan too?” Alan took another drink of whiskey.
“No, that was very straightforward, just as the police report said. But I think after she did it, she must have started to worry that someone might put it all together. Otherwise, why remove the rest of the receipts from the archive? And then,” Rachel said, grinding her teeth, “burn them in her fireplace, leaving us with no evidence admissible in court.”
“And she just told you all this?” Alan’s tone was incredulous. “About impersonating Gabrielle, and her grandfather’s Nazi pistol? She just told you right out?”
“She couldn’t wait to tell us. She had nothing to worry about.” Magda shook her head. “She could just sit back and enjoy the big reveal, leaving us to live our lives knowing that there’s a triple murderer running around free and that one of France’s secular saints is actually just the opposite.”
They all looked at Boussicault, the representative of law and order. He took a sip of wine, taking a long time to drink it before he delivered his verdict. At last he said, “Certainly you could accuse her of what you say she admitted to doing. There’s nothing to stop you. But equally certainly a juge d’instruction would decide you had insufficient evidence to support a case. And if she followed through on her threat, she would respond by demanding of that same juge that you be prosecuted for breaking and entering. And for that charge there is evidence.” He looked at Rachel, then at Magda, then back again. “I’m sorry to say this, but I think in the future it might be wise for you to pick fewer locks and make more calls to the police.”
“The future! What future?” Rachel pushed her cup and saucer away petulantly. “If this is private detection, you can keep it.”
“I wouldn’t be so quick to reach that conclusion.” Boussicault scraped a thumb across his jaw. “If I remember your excellent dossier correctly, you have a contact at Quelles Nouvelles—well, you have the contact at Quelles Nouvelles. And some people—not the police of course, but some people—might argue that in today’s world the real punishments are handed out by the court of public opinion, not a court of law.”
The two women looked at each other. “Foucher did make us promise to bring him any interesting revelations,” Rachel said.
“And it’s not just the internet that loves to believe the worst of others.” Magda tapped her fingertips on the tabletop. “We could send copies of the receipt to Vogue, and WWD, and even some newspapers, along with the details of what we know. We wouldn’t even have to put our names on it.”
There’s more than one way into the square. Hadn’t a fashion designer said that? Rachel couldn’t remember which one, but that didn’t change the value of the observation. Justice was justice, no matter how it came and no matter how long it took. Smiling across the table at her best friend who smiled back, she pushed her cup of cold tea away and turned to Alan.
“Let’s order some champagne. Maybe this investigation won’t end so badly after all.”