Chapter Twenty-Four

“Oh, you never told me everyone looked so good!”

Unlike Rachel, Magda was finding Le Bal Rouge hugely enjoyable, even from up close. Rachel quashed her vague sense of testiness; Magda’s positivity had long been one of her more irritating qualities. No doubt she’d love the performances and find one dessert sufficient, and Rachel would have to sit through it all with a false smile of shared enjoyment on her face.

On the other hand, she had to admit that everybody did look good. The only thing better on a man than a sharp suit was a tuxedo, and here the room was crowded with a hundred James Bonds. The women were equally elegant, the brilliant colors of their gowns catching the light and throwing it back. A murmur like the buzzing of contented bees rose from the room.

She considered her own quartet. Alan was always handsome, but set off by a white shirtfront and studs, his blue eyes shone, while Benoît’s smooth elegance was burnished by formality. Magda gleamed in maroon taffeta that complemented her warm skin. Even Rachel had managed to find a perfectly acceptable navy velvet dress, although its boned bodice left very little room for dinner.

“Not bad for a group of people who eat reheated croissants for breakfast,” Alan remarked. Benoît looked taken aback at this revelation, but he beamed nonetheless. Benoît, Rachel thought, was one of life’s suns; his pleasure warmed everyone around him with its rays. Beneath his smile, she once more felt the desire to giggle. She turned her face so Alan wouldn’t see. No matter what he said, she knew he was jealous.

The dinner, alas, was just as she remembered: perfectly good but nothing special. The dessert was poached pear tart with a cardamom coulis, more unusual than delicious (although she still ate it, and Alan’s). The entertainment was grueling. As an apprentice with the Paris Opéra began Brünhilde’s third-act aria from Götterdämmerung, she distracted herself by thinking about Elisabeth. Could she be perfectly safe somewhere, as the capitaine had suggested? If that was so, why did Rachel have such a bad feeling? Had the eeriness of Elisabeth’s hallway infected her instincts, making her unnecessarily suspicious? But even if that were true, Elisabeth still hadn’t been seen for more than a week, and twenty-one-year-olds were nearly attached to their phones. Rachel bit her thumbnail, wishing the singer would just be quiet and let her think. To distract herself from both the noise and her own aimless worries, she watched Magda, whose delight shone on her face.

But even with Magda’s evident enjoyment, she couldn’t sit through the next offering, a well-known mime’s routine of building a house that turned out not to have a door. Claiming a need to use the bathroom, she excused herself. She would wait in the mezzanine until she heard the applause that signaled that the mime had finished.

This year the bal was held in one of those immense former residences that the French do so well, a hôtel particulier converted to a party venue, all marble and gilding and thick carpet in the public spaces. The mezzanine had a circle of small balconies, each one embraced by two rose marble columns rising out of an equally rosy balustrade, and each offering a view up to a ceiling mural of cherubs in filmy draperies and down to a floor mosaic of elaborately intertwining vines. She stood on one of these balconies, thoughts about Elisabeth beginning to bubble up into her mind once again. She gently eased the boning of her bodice away from where it dug into her waist. Maybe one dessert was enough after all. Realizing that as soon as the mime finished, the ladies’ room would have a line out the door, she decided to make good on her excuse and go now.

Turning around, she nearly slammed into Mathilde.

“Rachel! I thought that was you.” The older woman stood still, her posture ramrod straight as always. She wore a long black gown that Rachel recognized as Chanel, utterly without accessories except for a leather belt, her smooth silver hair parted in the center and pulled back into a low bun. She smiled frostily.

“Bonsoir, Mathilde.” Rachel tried to appear as cool as the woman in front of her. “I didn’t expect to find you here.”

“Of course not.” Mathilde shrugged, making it plain that the very idea of her attending such an event was ridiculous. “But an old friend asked me to accompany him, and I didn’t like to say no. And it isn’t the worst evening I’ve spent. Although,” she jerked her head toward the doors behind them, “that woman! I never understand the attraction of this make-believe nonsense.”

Rachel relaxed a little. “I know what you mean. Building nothing from nothing … Now, if she actually built a house onstage, that would be something to stay for.”

Mathilde snorted appreciatively. “Yes. Perhaps bringing all the bricks and mortar hidden in her unitard.”

“Of course.” Rachel raised an eyebrow and dipped her chin. “In France the real trick would be to find workmen who would build it without going on strike.”

This time Mathilde gave a real laugh. She looked Rachel up and down speculatively, something new in her gaze, then came to stand next to her, close enough to speak low and still be heard. Rachel could feel her breath on her cheek. “Tell me,” she said softly, “you know that girl, Elisabeth, Edgar’s little aide?”

Rachel was taken aback at this abrupt switch into confidence. Apparently shared contempt was the way to Mathilde’s heart. She swallowed hard, nodded. “Yes. Yes, I remember her.”

Mathilde’s voice remained low. “It seems she has disappeared.” She paused to gauge her effect; Rachel tried to look both shocked and unlikely to say anything. This was no easy task, but her expression must have satisfied Mathilde, for she pursed her lips and continued. “My son told me a policeman called the house to ask Fulke about it.” She shook her head. “First that Catherine”—was there the ghost of a pause?—“killing herself, and now this one goes. It’s like one of those old films, hein? The Lady Vanishes.” She gave a wintry smile of amusement. “Or in this case, the young lady vanishes.”

Rachel swallowed again. What was the correct response to this unsolicited disclosure, to its motiveless and only thinly veiled malice? What would Nora Charles do? Rachel tried for an excited but humble tone, an acolyte inquiring of the keeper of knowledge. “Do they know where she is?”

It seemed to work. “The policeman only asked, my son said, didn’t answer.” Mathilde shrugged. “This girl does not seem to me like someone who would be missed at all, never mind by the police.” Suddenly changing tack, she said, “She was at the same université as my son, you know.” Rachel, who had not known that David attended the Sorbonne, was fascinated by the way Mathilde lingered over the words “my son,” obviously sweet as honey in her mouth. “Only in a much easier course.” She unfurled a long-fingered hand dismissively. “That CELSA, where they study le culture pop. And—of course! You were there when she kept me from collecting some objets Edgar would have wanted me to have.”

Rachel said nothing. What could she say? That even she knew CELSA was France’s best school of media studies? That she knew Edgar hadn’t left Mathilde any objets in his will, and that therefore the hypothetical “what he would have wanted” was irrelevant? That over a box of candy Kiki Villeneuve had revealed Mathilde’s vanity and sense of entitlement, and now Rachel viewed her with a weather eye? Since she could think of nothing else to offer, she concentrated on maintaining a neutral expression.

Mathilde’s eyes rested on the elaborate design of vines and flowers below. She said idly, “I never liked the idea of my husband’s money going away from his family. So désagréable. And to waste it on an improvident woman and an employee.” She shook her head. “I don’t speak of receiving it myself, you understand, but better left to his son, n’est-ce pas? And now …” She tapped her nails on the marble balustrade. “First the death of that woman, and now the girl has vanished.” For the first time in Rachel’s acquaintance with her, she gave a genuinely delighted smile. “It almost seems as if the money my husband gave away is cursed! Of course we won’t get it back, but it’s pleasant to know no one else will be using it either.”

Suddenly she blinked and held up a hand. “Ah! There we are.”

Rachel could hear the sound of applause from inside the ballroom.

Mathilde gave another of her taut smiles. “I must hurry if I want to use les cabinets.” The skirt of her dress wrapped around her as she turned, but it made no difference to her progress. She would easily beat all other contenders in the race to relief.

*   *   *

“Holy shit,” Magda said. She was seated on a toilet lid in one of the cubicles of the now-empty ladies’ room, Rachel standing over her. “Holy shit.”

“I know.” Rachel crossed her arms under her breasts, squeezing her shoulders forward.

“That’s what she actually said?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what she said. She stood there dressed like some Anna-Wintour-The-Devil-Wears-Prada devil doll and told me she found her husband’s leaving money to Elisabeth untidy.”

“You said ‘devil’ twice.”

“Once as a noun, once as an adjective. Anyway, she’s worth it! Trust me, she was terrifying enough for two devils.”

“But,” Magda said, smoothing her taffeta skirt, “come on! You don’t think she was telling you anything? I mean, you don’t really think she was telling you she’d done something to Elisabeth?”

Rachel took a deep breath, calming herself. “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “At first I couldn’t understand why she was even talking to me. And then what she said was so allusive.” She swallowed. “But the tone! She sounded, well, ‘gloating’ is the only word that springs to mind. Allusive, but gloating.”

“Could we get out of this stall?” Magda tried to rise, but she couldn’t with Rachel standing where she was. “I can’t think when we’re squashed in here.”

“I don’t want to go outside. I don’t want anyone to surprise us.”

“We’ll be the ones doing the surprising if they find us in here together. Come on.” Magda struggled again. “If we go out we’ll be able to hear anyone coming in. And see them, for that matter.”

Rachel reluctantly slid the bolt back and, with some shifting, managed to step out into the sink area. She and Magda crept to the anteroom, sitting down on one of those curious round couches that live nowhere except in the anterooms of plush women’s restrooms. The shape meant that one of them needed to sit sideways if they wanted to see each other, but Rachel had to concede that it was better than being squeezed into a stall.

“Now then,” Magda said. She took a deep breath. “How did she seem?”

Rachel thought. “Pleased.”

Magda rolled her eyes, “Could you be more specific, Monsieur Poirot?”

“Pleased with herself.”

Magda didn’t laugh.

“Well …” How had Mathilde seemed? “Almost eager. It was strange. She scarcely knows me, but it was as if she was just longing to unburden herself.”

“About what, exactly?”

Good question. “Well, she mentioned both Catherine and Elisabeth. She said she didn’t like the idea of money leaving the family—”

“Yes, yes!” Magda waggled her hand impatiently. “We know that. Skip to what she said specifically about Elisabeth and Catherine.”

“All right. She said she couldn’t see why Edgar would leave so much to anyone outside the family. Especially not to … she called Catherine ‘an improvident woman’ and Elisabeth ‘an employee.’ And she said it was true that she and David couldn’t have the money back, but it was pleasant to know that”—she made her voice precise and ominous—“ ‘no one else will be using it either.’ ”

“Did she sound like Inspector Clouseau when she said that?”

“No.” Rachel was confused. Should Mathilde have sounded like Inspector Clouseau? Would that mean something?

“I only ask because you made her sound like Inspector Clouseau. ‘No one ailss will be using it ayzair …’ ”

“I did not sound—” Rachel stopped herself. “Do you really think this is the time for that?”

“Well, you just made a joke. I thought it might lighten the mood.”

Rachel fixed Magda with a deadening gaze and said slowly, “Edgar. Possibly Catherine. And now Elisabeth.”

Magda stopped smiling.

Rachel continued, “Edgar for the money she needed. Catherine over blackmail about Edgar. Then Elisabeth because she found something in the bureau that linked Mathilde to Edgar’s death. It all fits together. And if you think about it, it explains everything.”

Magda thought about it. She put a hand to her mouth. “Wow. I know she’s cold, but that cold?”

“Trust me: she’s that cold. I think if she knew Edgar had made a will reducing her bequest, and in favor of Elisabeth …” Rachel shook her head. “Or even if she still thought she had fifty thousand coming, and she needed it to cover her investment losses. I said it at the start: I wouldn’t put murder past her. And now she’s gloating about the disappearance of the girl who got her money, and whom her husband valued, and who tried to keep her from something incriminating in the back of the appartement? And we can guess how she feels about employees!” In case Magda couldn’t guess, she added, “They’re expendable!”

Magda went very quiet. At last she said, “Should we telephone the capitaine?”

Rachel considered. “No. You’re right; we still don’t have any evidence that the police would be willing to act on.” She frowned. “Besides, he was mean.”

Magda nodded: he was mean. They sat disconsolately on the tufted pink velvet until at last Magda sighed, slapped her hands softly on her thighs, and rose.

“Well,” she said, “we can’t change anything tonight. We have to get through this evening and tomorrow before we can do anything, so we might as well go back in. Kristin Scott Thomas is going to perform a monologue from Phèdre before the head of BNP Paribas speaks.”

Normally, Magda’s ability to compartmentalize would have grated, but even Rachel loved Kristin Scott Thomas. She hurried out behind her friend.