Chapter Two

The outer arrondissements of Paris are crowded with funérariums, French funeral homes. They are all small, formal places, nondescript outside, stuffed with oppressively comfortable furniture inside. Edgar Bowen’s funeral took place at one in the fourteenth arrondissement, in a room that Rachel was willing to bet the promotional pamphlets described as soigné—dignified—but which was, in fact, soulless. She supposed this was appropriate, considering its function. Spaced along its taupe walls were dark urns holding arrangements of inoffensive flowers; cushioned taupe chairs stood in rows on taupe carpet. The whole effect was that of a particularly sober conference center—but again, that wasn’t altogether inappropriate.

She craned her neck to see better from her seat beside Magda in the back of the room. Edgar’s son, David, sat in the front row, his mother on the chair next to his. Rachel hadn’t seen either of them for twenty years, and she was surprised to find that the sight of Mathilde instantly called up a memory: a sunny morning early in her relationship with Edgar, when, eating a croissant in the kitchen in her hot-weather uniform of cutoff shorts and a man’s sleeveless undershirt, she had been surprised by an as-yet-unknown Mathilde, cool in a linen sheath and high-heeled sandals. She remembered the way Mathilde had looked at her as she leaned on the countertop, the croissant flakes falling on the tiles beneath, the way she had passed through to the séjour and said to Edgar in English just loud enough to be overheard, “Your new cleaner is very young, isn’t she?” Watching Mathilde now in her navy suit and topaz scarf, her nose tilted to indicate her superiority, Rachel knew that although David might have, astoundingly, evolved from a chubby four-year-old into a skinny young man, his mother hadn’t changed one bit.

The funeral was decorous, with discreetly regretful eulogies delivered by the head of the bank at which Edgar had worked and by his oldest colleague at the same place. Everyone stood while the glossy coffin slid between the curtains that hid the crematory. When David walked up the aisle and out the door afterward, his eyes and nose were very red, but he had not been crying. Edgar Bowen hadn’t been a man for lavish displays of feeling, and his funeral and son seemed determined to reflect that.

After the service there was a reception. Edgar had known many people—in fact, Magda commented to Rachel later, if you spoke just in terms of the haute bourgeoisie of Paris, Edgar had known everyone. The room was crowded with men in expensive sober suits and women in equally expensive sober dresses, the French distinguishable from the other nationalities only by the fact that their clothes were better cut. Rachel couldn’t bring herself to go offer condolences to David, imagining the awkwardness of reintroducing herself to him and making stilted small talk. And she certainly didn’t want to deal with Mathilde. Instead, she moved from group to group, her head down and a camouflaging glass of wine in her hand, trying to hover discreetly. Since she and Magda knew none of the other attendees (Alan had been right about their lack of connection to Edgar’s world), there wasn’t much else to do. It wasn’t that she wanted to eavesdrop; she just felt acutely her distance from Edgar and his life after her, and she thought that discreet listening was the easiest way to bring her closer.

Currently, though, discreet listening was only bringing her closer to people exclaiming in French or English, “In his soup?” She completed her circuit of the room, knowing nothing more about Edgar than that those who attended his funeral found his way of dying as ridiculous as her husband did. Pausing for a second, she stood beside a cluster of impeccably dressed women. Their hair was the curious shade of streaky ash blonde so loved by middle-aged French women, and each wore a muted scarf carefully draped over a black or navy sheath.

“Dans sa soupe?” one with a gray scarf asked, in French this time.

“Yes.” Her companion, wearing a pale pink scarf and navy dress, looked grave. There was a pause to show proper respect; then a woman with a pastel, patterned scarf spoke up.

“What sort of soup?”

“A vichyssoise.” The woman in the navy dress leaned forward slightly. “Made that afternoon.”

The others clucked, shaking their heads. A good soup spoiled by a bad death.

One asked, “Is it true he fell face forward into it?” She smoothed her neutral-color chignon as if protecting it from imagined splashing.

“Mais oui!” The second woman nodded. In every group, Rachel had noticed before, there was always one member more in the know than the others, mysteriously granted extra knowledge to dole out with a lowered voice and significant glances. Navy Dress was clearly that member here. “They say he had a heart attack and fainted. It was his maître d’hôtel’s night off, so there was no one to revive him. Still, they say if it hadn’t been for the soup, he might still be alive. I was told he was found facedown in the bowl.” She shook her head. “His hand was only a centimeter or two from knocking over his bottle of rosé.”

Rachel gasped involuntarily, then covered her mouth and looked studiedly away, hoping the women hadn’t noticed. She searched the room for Magda. Spotting her at last, standing in a corner talking to a dark-haired man in a navy suit, she wove her way through the throng and grabbed her elbow. “We have to go.”

“What?” Magda turned away from the man.

“We have to go,” Rachel hissed. “We have to go now.” She smiled apologetically at the man.

“Excusez-moi.” Magda also smiled at him, but awkwardly. “My friend feels sick, and we need to leave. Pardon.”

The man raised his eyebrows slightly over his sharp nose. Still, he gave an obliging half bow as Rachel hustled Magda toward the door.

“God, what are you doing? What are you doing?” Magda struggled to free her arm. “Ow! What’s the hurry?”

“I heard something.”

“What do you mean, you heard something?”

“Wait.” Rachel handed their tokens to the coat-check girl. She didn’t speak again until they were out on the sidewalk, a few yards from the funérarium. Then she stopped and faced Magda. “I’m sorry. But I didn’t want to say anything until we were a safe distance away.”

“Away from what? What is it?”

“It’s just … well, I was listening to some people on the other side of the room from you, and a woman said Edgar had been drinking rosé with the vichyssoise he drowned in.”

“Rosé with vichyssoise?” Magda’s tone made it plain that she had no idea what was going on. “Well, it wouldn’t be my choice, but I don’t see why it’s alarming.”

“No!” Rachel spoke through gritted teeth. “You don’t understand. Edgar never drank rosé.”

“Oh come on. Never?”

Rachel shook her head.

“He wouldn’t even have settled for it if there was nothing better in the house?”

“He always had something better in the house.” Rachel’s tone was explanatory. “He hated rosé. He said it was a good white spoiled.”

Magda snorted. “Not bad. It’s a play on Mark Twain, you know. He said golf was a good walk spoiled.”

“I know what it is. That’s irrelevant. The point is, something is wrong here.”

“Where?” Magda was lost.

“Here. With Edgar’s death.”

“Okay.” Magda held up a hand. “Calm down. What’s wrong?”

Rachel thought for a long minute. “I don’t know.” She thought again. “I don’t know.” Then her voice firmed. “But something is. Something feels strange.”

Magda sighed. “ ‘Something feels strange’? That’s like saying a thing is off. It’s not much to go on.”

“But I don’t have much to go on! And a thing is off.”

Magda looked at her. Rachel was usually the calmer of the two, but now her face was a picture of confusion and disquiet. “I’ll tell you what.” Magda settled her coat around herself. “Why don’t we try having coffee and talking about it? Let’s see what happens if we sit down and focus.”

In Paris you are never more than ten yards from a café—good, bad, or simply open. They turned into the nearest one, grateful for its warmth, and slid into a table next to the plate glass front windows. In the summer, Rachel knew, these would be pulled back so that customers could sit on a terrasse, chattering and smoking in the warm air, but in January the glass offered the best of both worlds: a full view of the outside with the warm climate control of inside.

When a waiter deigned to come and take their order, Rachel asked for her usual hot chocolate and a coffee for Magda. As he headed off, she sighed with pleasure, looking around at the gleaming wood and pushing her feet against the springy carpet. What country besides France so understood the necessity of comfort when taking leisure? Indeed, what country besides France so understood the necessity of leisure itself?

“All right.” Magda too gave a small settling sigh. “Tell me what you think is going on with Edgar. More than just ‘something strange.’ ”

Rachel bit her thumbnail. What she’d experienced was a lightning bolt, a sudden knowledge that what people believed had happened not only wasn’t what had happened but couldn’t be. It was hard to unlock the unconscious logic behind such instant certainty, but Magda was right: if she wanted her feeling to be anything more than an interesting intuition, she needed to be able to explain how she could be so certain.

“Well,” she started carefully, “first there’s the rosé. Edgar didn’t just have a mild dislike of it; he had a real, determined antipathy. He wouldn’t allow it on his table.”

“Okay, that does make its presence weird,” Magda said. “But it doesn’t obviously suggest anything more.”

“Then there’s also the fact that …” Rachel scowled in concentration. “I know the way he died is amusing, but it’s only amusing because it’s so freakish. This has been bothering me since I read his obituary. How often do people have heart attacks and drown in soup? The fact that it’s so bizarre indicates that it’s out of the ordinary, not the norm. But what if it’s not the norm because it’s not normal? What if something abnormal happened to cause his death? Do you see what I mean?”

Magda nodded and frowned at the same time. “Yes, I see it. But again, it’s not obvious. Do you have anything else? Anything more concrete?”

Rachel began groping for a train of reasoning. “Edgar was in very good shape when I knew him.”

Magda smirked.

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean, he ate well, but he ate carefully. And he went to the gym—and that was before there were any gyms here.”

For a moment the two women reflected on the Paris of twenty years before, gymless and untouched by fat-free food.

“Yes,” Rachel went on, “he’d gotten a bit thicker with age. Who hasn’t?” She glanced down at her just-arrived hot chocolate. “But I did see him at parties every now and again over the years, and he never looked heavy or out of shape. And the obituary didn’t say he’d had any previous health problems. And I know, I do know that people have freak heart attacks”—she took a continuing breath—“but like I said, they’re rare. And the heart attack from nowhere, the soup, the rosé—the details just don’t fit.”

For a long time Magda said nothing. Rachel looked out the window, watching the street. People walked past, their chins buried in their collars and scarves as they tried to avoid the cold, but one woman clicked by in a mini-skirt and three-inch Christian Louboutins—Rachel could just see the red soles. The woman wasn’t wearing any pantyhose. How could she bear it? The winter winds of Paris were cuttingly cold, and even when the air was still, it could still be icy. Yet women like these were all over the city, exposing their perfect knees (Parisian women had wonderful knees) to the frost. She felt her own thick black tights insulating her shins and once more gave thanks for good old American level-headedness.

At last Magda took a breath. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She exhaled fully. “You know, F. Scott Fitzgerald died of a heart attack.”

“F. Scott Fitzgerald was a drunk.” Rachel stopped looking outside. “Edgar wasn’t a drunk. That’s my point: a drunk is the sort of person you’d expect to have a heart attack.”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying.”

“Then what are you saying?” Rachel snapped. She was in no mood for literary discussion.

Magda filled her voice with patience. “I’m saying that everyone thinks Fitzgerald died from being a drunk, but he actually died of a heart attack. Given his habits, alcoholism was the logical conclusion, but they did tests and determined it was a heart attack. A myocardial infarction.” She lingered pleasurably over the words, then drew another breath. “I’m saying they didn’t stop at the obvious conclusion.”

Whatever line of reasoning Magda was following, it was lost on Rachel. “So what?”

“So, it’s only been two days since Edgar died. There hasn’t been time for an investigation, which suggests the police did stop at the obvious conclusion. But you’re not stopping there. And your points might seem irrelevant, but they’re valid. If he was in good shape, how did he have a heart attack? If he hated rosé, why was it on his table? I’m saying that when you look at it your way, it does sound like something more than a farcical freak accident. I’m saying …” She drummed her fingers on the table. “I’m saying something feels strange.”

Rachel relaxed. She knew from long and sometimes painful experience that Magda wasn’t one to soothe out of politeness: if she said Rachel’s reasoning seemed plausible, it seemed plausible. “Well what should we do?” She leaned in, pitched her voice low. “Should we go to the police?”

Magda shook her head. “No.”

“No? Why not? This is the kind of thing they’re meant for.”

Magda sighed. “Yes, but just picture it. You go in, and you say, ‘Excuse me, Mister Policeman—’ ”

“Monsieur Policeman.”

“ ‘Excuse me, Monsieur Policeman. My former friend supposedly drowned in his soup near a bottle of rosé after a freak heart attack, but when I knew him twenty years ago, he hated rosé and was in excellent health. I haven’t really spent any time with him since then, and I know people’s tastes can change, and, no, I don’t have any actual evidence, and the body has been cremated so we can’t check, but—well, a thing is off.’ ” She looked at Rachel again, eyebrows raised.

Rachel pursed her lips. “I see your point.”

They both sat thinking. Then Magda said, “But you know what we could do?” She held a breath, bit her lower lip. “We could investigate it ourselves. Oh my God!” A flush suffused her pale brown skin and her curls practically vibrated with excitement. “That would be so much fun! It would be like Holmes and Watson, or Commissario Brunetti and Vianello, or—or those other two—”

“Nick and Nora Charles,” Rachel said.

“Nick and Nora, yes!”

“No.” Rachel’s voice was flat. Magda always became alarmingly eager when her interest was sparked, and after twenty-two years of friendship, Rachel knew it was best to defuse her as quickly as possible.

“No?” Magda looked crestfallen. “Why not?”

“Because Brunetti and Vianello are actual policemen, and Sherlock Holmes was a private detective, and Nick and Nora Charles were connected with the police. We fit none of those categories: we have no training or protection.”

“But it would be fun!”

“Only until one of us was shot.” Rachel took in her friend’s disappointed face. “Seriously, I don’t have any relationship here. As you pointed out, I’m just a former friend of the dead man. Even Nick and Nora Charles had some connection to the crimes they ended up detecting. Without any link, we have no way in and no way to investigate. And we don’t even really know what we’d be investigating! So, no.” She tried to mollify her: “Besides, as you said, there’s probably nothing to investigate. Maybe he’s just a man who’d come to like rosé and had a heart attack. Coincidence.”

“Yes, okay.” Magda sighed. “You’re right. I just liked the vision of us detecting. Going around the city, looking for clues.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what.” Rachel patted Magda’s arm and spoke as if to a child, trying to get her to smile. “The very first suspected murder that one of us has a real, tangible connection to—we’re on it. I promise.”

“Well, if you promise.” Magda’s lips twitched, and Rachel wasn’t sure who was patronizing whom. They slipped on their coats and headed out into the chill air.

“You know, I always thought F. Scott Fitzgerald died as a result of being an alcoholic,” Rachel said as the door closed behind them.

“No.” Magda shook her head. “Though that’s what everyone thought in the moment too. The night before he died, he had some kind of precursor attack inside a movie theater and said to his girlfriend, ‘They think I’m drunk, don’t they?’ ”

“His girlfriend?”

Magda nodded. “Sheilah Graham. She wrote a book about it.”

“How do you know these things?”

She shrugged. “I listened to a podcast.”

They went down the steps into the Métro.