Chapter Twenty-Six

“Here we go.” Standing in the freezing hall outside the door to Elisabeth’s room the next morning, Rachel took a card of bobby pins out of her bag. She held it up for Magda to see. “Les pinces à cheveux. I never knew they were called that in French.”

“Why can’t we just use a credit card?” asked Magda.

“Because credit cards only work with cheap slide locks. I spent the whole morning reading up on this. I’m an expert on lock picking.”

“Well, in theory.” Magda’s voice was a raised eyebrow.

Rachel ignored her. She unfolded a bobby pin and bit the rubber bulb off one tip. “Make a slight bend in the end,” she whispered to herself, quoting the instructions from the internet. She curved the naked metal about forty-five degrees and held it between her teeth. “Bend another pin at a right angle to make a lever,” she muttered. “Now insert lever into keyhole and put rotational tension on it.” Sliding the bent bobby pin into the bottom of the lock, she twisted it slightly to one side. “Okay. Insert the pick into the lock and feel for seized pins.” She gently poked the unbent bobby pin in on top of the first until it came to a halt. “Yes, yes!” she whispered excitedly. “Now I just have to open the pins. There should be an audible click.”

She wiggled the unfolded bobby pin up and down. There was no click. But it had worked in the video!

“Why didn’t it work?” Magda hissed.

“Just wait a sec. Go in my purse and get my notes.”

Magda rummaged, withdrew a sheet of paper.

“What does it say about opening the pins?”

“Uh …” Magda moved her eyes over the sheet, then read out loud, “ ‘Open pins by wiggling pick gently. There should be an audible click.’ ”

“ ‘Gently.’ Okay, gently.” She relaxed the arm that held the second pin and breathed in deeply through her nose. “Be the bobby pin. You are the bobby pin.” She delicately wiggled the unfolded pin up and down. There was an audible click. “Holy crap!”

“It worked!” Magda whisper-screamed.

“Wait.” Rachel kept wiggling the unfolded pin until there were two more clicks. “Turn the handle! Turn the handle!”

Magda turned the handle, Rachel let go of the bobby pins, and the door swung open.

“Oh. My. God.” Magda’s voice was filled with wonder. “You’re awesome! You’re like Pierce Brosnan in Remington Steele.”

Rachel smiled sheepishly. “I owe it all to the internet.” She shut the door behind them. A quick glance showed that the room was empty, and a breath of its stale air made it clear that it had been for some time. “She hasn’t been back yet. Let’s get to work.”

“All right.” Magda started to turn around. Then she swung back to face Rachel. “Can I just say, first we picked a lock, and now we’re casing a joint! I feel as if I should be wearing a trench coat.”

Rachel, who felt much the same, nonetheless also felt it was up to her, the housebreaker, to keep them focused. “Later, later. C’mon.”

In any sane housing area, the room would have been a prison cell or a large storage closet. In Paris, it had been made into a studio apartment. A window glinted on the far wall, a single bed under it. Against the wall at a right angle to the bed was a small desk, three book-filled shelves above it, and facing the foot was a narrow closet. Next to the closet a counter acted as a room divider. In the space beyond it was a sink with a draining board, two electric burners set into the counter next to that; beneath the counter a small fridge; and above it a row of cupboards. Disbelievingly, Rachel saw that the far corner held a shower cubicle. It was as if someone had won a contest to fit a complete apartment into the smallest possible area. The counters were white Formica; the bed had white sheets; and someone had painted the walls white. On the dark floorboards was a blue-and-white rag rug, and facedown on the rug was a cell phone.

“The portable,” Magda breathed, stepping forward.

“Don’t touch it!” Rachel whispered.

Magda stopped.

“We should leave things as they are.”

“Right. Okay.” Magda moved to the kitchen area and opened a cupboard. Rachel went to the desk.

It held only a blank writing pad. Opening the center drawer, she found pens and pencils, a ruler, and other miscellany of student life. In the top left drawer lay a series of notebooks filled with neat notes that she didn’t bother to read—work from college courses, clearly. The second drawer down held a jumble of loose sheets of paper and file folders; under them was a small hardbound notebook. Rachel flipped it open and riffled the pages. The writing in this one started on the back page, a list of numbers and notations that told her Alan had been correct in his conclusion. Elisabeth was not so simple, after all, she thought, if she had the sense to keep accounts, and to write them in a notebook in such a way that anyone opening it wouldn’t immediately notice them.

“There’s nothing here.” Magda was opening the cupboard over the sink in the kitchen area. “But she does have nice dishes. In fact,” she turned around, “the whole place is quite nice. Sort of a Swedish feel. To give it more room, I suppose.”

“Yeah.” Rachel was digging through the bottom drawer. “I thought that too.”

Magda came and stood next to her. “What did you find?”

“Nothing in here.” She shut the drawer. “In the drawer above, just a notebook where she wrote down how much she received from Edgar and how much she gave back.” She sighed.

“Well, since there’s nothing else, can we …?” Magda nodded toward the cell phone.

“Yes, fine.” She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her gloves, realizing too late that she should have worn them all along. “Do you mind if I do it?” she asked.

“Hell, no. You’re detective of the day!”

Rachel picked up the phone by its edges. It was off. She pressed the power button, felt it vibrate to life, and swiped her finger across the screen. Nothing happened. She took off a glove, swiped again. Nothing. She tapped twice; suddenly the screen bloomed into color. 10 messages, it announced. Then the tiny battery icon blazed red and the phone died. Of course, Rachel thought. Even French phones aimed for maximum drama.

Her voice was irritated. “It’s run out of power. From two weeks on the floor, I suppose.”

“Never mind.” Magda’s voice was flat.

“What never mind? It’s the only concrete clue we have! Should we try to find a charger?” She looked up and saw Magda staring fixedly at the rug. She followed her line of vision. In the place where the phone had rested, revealed by its removal, was a round rusty circle of dried blood.

Their eyes met.

“It’s nothing,” Rachel said. “How long has that rug been there? It could be an old stain.” But she peered at the fabric more closely.

“Look.” Magda bent almost double, pointing to the floorboards. There, nearly blending in with the color of the wood, was a line of similar stains leading from the rug toward the door.

Rachel became aware of how cold the room was: she could see her breath. But it wasn’t just the air, she knew. She had gone cold inside. She suddenly understood that up until that second everything about the case—Elisabeth’s absence, Catherine’s death, even Edgar’s murder—had all been in the realm of the abstract, words and theories with no reality attached. That, she now saw, was another meaning of “no concrete evidence.” But these blood drops were concrete evidence, and they were concrete evidence of violence.

“We need to go,” she said. Magda didn’t argue. Rachel wiped the phone’s screen and put it back over the first bloodstain. Their footsteps magnified by the floorboards, they hustled out of the room, closing the door behind them. They didn’t care that the lock, having been picked so successfully, could not be relocked. They had other things on their minds.

*   *   *

They went to another café. This time the situation seemed to call for stronger stuff: Rachel ordered a pastis, Magda a cognac, and they didn’t speak until the drinks came.

“Blood.” Magda took a mouthful of cognac.

“Yes.” Rachel took a long drink of her pastis.

They stared at the street outside the plateglass window.

“I know we were serious before,” Magda finally said, “but that blood made me realize that I hadn’t really seen all this as real. I was treating it like a book or a suspense film.”

“Me too.” Rachel took another swallow. “I thought the same thing.”

Another silence. Then, “Is she dead?” Magda’s voice was a whisper.

Rachel shook her head. “We can’t know. Maybe … maybe she cut herself when she was packing in a hurry. Maybe she got a nosebleed.” She knew she was clutching at straws. Shaking her head again, she inadvertently quoted Magda’s words back to her. “It doesn’t look good.” Then she tried to sound hopeful. “But that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad.”

Magda finished her cognac, and when the glass was empty, she put it down very carefully, looking at it for a second. Then she said, “We should go back to the police.”

“Yes.” Rachel started gathering her coat. “We should.”

The ping of an arriving text rang out. She fished the phone from her bag, squinted at it. “Speak of the devil. It’s from the capitaine.” She moved her chair so they could share the screen.

The text was barely two lines long:

Re. Mlle. des Troyes—carte bancaire was used at a distributeur in Bayonne two days ago.

“He’s not very forthcoming, is he?” Magda said.

“She used her card!” Warm relief flooded Rachel. They’d worried for nothing! Elisabeth was fine! But wait. Elisabeth’s card had been used, but it wasn’t clear by whom. She went cold again. “Or at least, her card had been used.” But the user would need to know Elisabeth’s PIN, and who would know that besides Elisabeth. But there were all sorts of stories about people being threatened—or worse—into revealing PINs. Elisabeth could be not fine at all; she could be the very opposite of fine.

She turned to look at Magda. “Is this good news or bad news?”

Magda frowned. “I mean, it seems good. After all, presumably she’s the only person who could use her card.”

Presumably. “But Bayonne? What would she be doing there?”

“She could be on vacation,” Magda said. “It’s near the beach.”

That didn’t sound plausible to Rachel. Who went on vacation to the beach in February? And only now, after two weeks, Elisabeth was using the card? But she wanted to believe. “Okay.”

“Well,” Magda’s voice was determinedly reassuring, “look at it this way: at least this puts Mathilde out of the equation. We know she’s not in Bayonne.”

That was some relief. “True. The only connection she has to the South is Perpignan. She was born there.”

“Perpignan?” Magda grabbed her wrist. “Mathilde is from Perpignan?”

“Yes.” Rachel shook free. “So what?”

“Perpignan is near Bayonne!”

“It’s on the other side of the country!”

“But they’re both in the Pyrenees.” Magda spoke as if this sealed some important deal.

“Yes, except one is east and one is west. And separated by two hundred miles.” Magda looked unconvinced. “You think Mathilde was paying a visit to her hometown and decided to run over to the other side of France to pick up some shopping, using a carte bancaire she’d stolen from her murder victim?”

Rachel thought this picture made it plain how ridiculous the idea was. Apparently Magda disagreed, because after a moment’s pause she said, “Except …”

“Except what?”

“Except Mathilde wouldn’t have had to kill Elisabeth herself. She could have sent someone to do it. In fact,” she paused, “she’d be more likely to do that. It’s smarter.” Her voice sped up. “It’s not hard to imagine. Mathilde’s father’s free-spending ways put him in the company of some shady people. Mathilde goes home to Perpignan and contacts one. A crony. She says, ‘I need you to take care of someone for me.’ He’s always admired her steel, so for a fee he says yes. She drives back to Paris and has the perfect alibi. And the hit man laid low until he thought enough time had passed and it was safe to use the card. Biding his time. Oh God!” She clutched Rachel’s wrist again. “That could have been the man at Catherine’s! He could have done them both!”

Once upon a time, Rachel would have tried to bring Magda back to reality by pointing out all the flaws in this scenario. But after their experience at Elisabeth’s, it was harder to dismiss.

“Whatever the actual story,” she said now, “we found blood. So we can’t automatically assume Elisabeth is safe. And we can’t automatically assume she’s the one using the card. We should talk to the capitaine.”

*   *   *

They scarcely spoke again until they reached the commissariat. “Capitaine Boussicault,” Rachel said to a different gardien at reception. “S’il vous plait.”

He lifted the handset of the desk phone, pressed a few buttons, and engaged in a brief conversation before putting it back. “The capitaine is at lunch. If you would like to wait?”

Lunch? How was that possible? Looking at her watch, Rachel discovered it was one thirty. “Yes, we’ll wait.” She and Magda returned to their familiar seats, the same disconsolate magazines staring up at them.

After a few long minutes, Magda suddenly mumbled, “We broke in.”

“What?”

Not raising her voice, she repeated, “We broke in.”

“So what?” Rachel whispered back.

“You picked the lock. And we’re not police. So that’s breaking and entering.”

“But in a good cause!”

“I don’t think the cause matters. I’m pretty sure we’re criminals, and I’m also pretty sure that what we found can’t be used.”

Rachel stared at Kim Kardashian’s falsely eyelashed eyes on one of the magazine covers. The phrase “illegal search and seizure” swam up from her memory. “Great. So what do we do now?”

Magda thought. In fact, she thought for such a long time that Rachel was about to prod her. Then at last she spoke, but so quietly that her lips nearly didn’t move. “We can phone in a tip.”

“You must be kidding me.” For a second Rachel’s voice was loud. The gardien looked at them, then went back to his work.

“No. One of us will phone anonymously and say we think the police should go look at Elisabeth’s room. We’ll do it from a pay phone. You can do it on your way home tonight.”

“Me?” Rachel was horrified.

Magda shrugged. “I’ve got a date.” She grabbed her bag and stood up. “We’re sorry,” she said to the gardien, “but we have to go. We’ll contact the capitaine again tomorrow.”

*   *   *

As soon as Rachel closed Edgar’s library door behind her that afternoon, she sat down heavily on the ottoman. She knew it was useless to try to do anything without regrouping first.

It seemed to her that the fact that Elisabeth’s card had been used was a hopeful sign. But then the blood seemed just the opposite. Was Elisabeth dead? She tried compromising with herself. The drops weren’t very big; maybe she had just been injured. But it had been almost three weeks since the stains had been made. She wouldn’t be just injured anymore. She trembled, feeling her throat close up. She tried to breathe in and out regularly. In an effort to distract herself, she focused on the titles of the books in front of her: Le Giaour, En Attendant Godot, Considérations Philosophique de la Gradation Naturelles des Formes de l’Être, the Guten—

But the Gutenberg facsimile wasn’t there. Instead, its niche was filled by nineteenth-century editions of Vanity Fair and Pendennis. Rachel stood up and peered more closely. She hadn’t made a mistake; the bible wasn’t where it should be. She moved to the start of the shelves, refocusing her eyes in that way that makes everything else fade into the background but allows the item one wants to leap out. Nothing. She focused and searched again, this time methodically. Still nothing. Nor—she checked carefully, twice—was the bible in any of the piles that currently lay on the floor.

She opened the library door and Fulke appeared. “Is David here?” she asked. Then, remembering his recent habits: “Is he awake?”

Fulke nodded, presumably in answer to both questions, and led her down the hall. He opened the door to the bureau for her. David sat at the desk, his eyes closed.

“David?” He jerked his head up, obviously woken from a secret doze.

“Rachel! How are you?” He smiled.

“I’m fine, thank you. Have you seen the facsimile bible I showed you the other day?”

He blinked, trying to shake off the fog of sleep. “Facsimile bible?”

“Yes, the Gutenberg facsimile. The Paris Edition? I showed it to you when we were looking at the books in the library?”

She could see him slowly waking up. “Yes, of course. No, I haven’t seen it.”

“Well, it’s missing from the library.”

Light dawned in his eyes. “Oh, wait. The bible in the slipcase?” She nodded. “Yes, I was looking at it. I think I put it back, but now I can’t remember.” His face creased slightly. “I’m sorry. But I’m sure it’s around.” He reached in his pocket, drew out a tissue, blew his nose.

Rachel frowned. “It has to be somewhere. Thanks. I’ll keep looking.” Fulke followed her out, closing the door behind them.

One of the useful discoveries of a life lived in mess is that vanished objects have a way of turning up as soon as you stop looking for them. Rachel didn’t stop looking for a long time—she checked the shelves and stacks once more, groped under the chairs and ottoman—but eventually she admitted defeat and placed her hope in this hard-learned knowledge.

Still, troubled by her earlier discoveries, now confused by the vanishing bible, and rattled by the fruitless search, she had to admit that she was in no state to do any useful work. She didn’t alert Fulke or David that she was leaving, just found her coat and slipped out the door. She treated herself to lunch at Bistrot Vivienne and a distracting walk around the Marais. It wasn’t until she was telling Alan about the missing bible over dinner that she realized she’d forgotten to stop on her way home and phone in the tip to Capitaine Boussicault.