Chapter Thirty-Two

Alan took the morning off work, and he and Rachel stayed in bed. She didn’t want to talk, or sleep, or even have sex. Instead, she lay with her head on his chest and her arms tight around him, her hands clasped together on his other side. She squeezed him closer and closer, feeling his soft skin and the rough poke of his chest hair, smelling his familiar scent of citrus, faint sweat, and deep darkness. At some point the squeezing must have become uncomfortable, even painful, but Alan kept his arms around her, his face in her hair, not moving.

“Tell me how we met,” she said to him at last.

“How we met?” Alan was surprised. But he understood why she wanted the story, so he began. “Well, it was July of two thousand and three, and I’d just been sent here. I didn’t know anyone, and my French wasn’t that great, so of course I decided to go to a talk by Bernard-Henri Lévy.”

Rachel laughed against his chest.

“I knew his name, and I’d read something of his in translation, and I wanted to feel … French.”

She felt his ribs rise as he breathed.

“So I went to the Pompidou Center, and I listened, and I understood maybe one sentence out of every five, but I watched him toss his hair and wear his shirt with too many buttons undone and generally make it plain that his real goal was to show us that he was even greater than sliced bread.” He paused. “And afterward there was a wine reception, where you could have a plastic glass of Chardonnay and buy the great man’s books. And I was looking at some impossibly French treatise he had written when this beautiful woman came over and stood next to me.”

Rachel poked him.

“Hey! I’m just telling it like it was. You came over, and you stood next to me, and you said, ‘Bernard-Henri Lévy is an ass.’ ” He paused, just as she had then, and when he spoke again she joined him. “ ‘But he has great hair.’ ” He took a breath. “And that was the start of us.”

Rachel squeezed him tighter.

*   *   *

By mid-afternoon Rachel was feeling much better. It wasn’t so bad, she decided, seeing a dead body. Doubtless it was the sort of thing detectives did all the time; they learned to look on death with a steely eye. She felt she could do that. She tried making a steely-eyed face.

A knock at the door announced Magda. She stood on the mat, brandishing a roll of Oreos. “I thought you might want a taste of home.” She grinned. “Fresh from the stash in my kitchen cupboard!” She kissed Rachel on the cheek, followed her into the kitchen to put the packet down, then kissed her again, this time enveloping her in a hug. “Golly,” she said. “What a life you lead.”

“I know!” Rachel pursed her lips and rolled her eyes, playing along. She could feel Magda’s watchful eyes on her as she filled the bouilloire.

They sat on the couch, each holding a mug and neither speaking. At last, abandoning joviality, Magda asked, “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” she said lightly. Magda’s face demanded honesty. “No, really. I’m pretty much recovered, I think.”

Magda leaned forward and opened the Oreos. Rachel stared at her tea. She saw the liquid jiggle back and forth, its surface quivering, then rippling, then cleaving into miniature waves. She made an effort to still her hands.

“Have a cookie,” Magda said.

As the first bite of Oreo crumbled in her mouth, Rachel made a noise somewhere between a sob and a laugh—a kind of ragged hiccup. The cookie tasted of a thousand rainy afternoons with nothing more important to do than watch Brady Bunch reruns and dream about Duran Duran. She took a second bite, closing her eyes for a moment. When she opened them she said, “I’ve never seen a dead person before.” Her voice shook.

Magda didn’t speak.

Rachel remembered the emphatic un-aliveness of David’s corpse. It hadn’t looked dead the way her first pet, Wilfred the hamster, had looked the day she came home from school and found him cold in his cage. Wilfred had looked like Wilfred, only unmoving, but David’s body seemed to have no connection to the living David. In some atavistic, instinctive way, it had been definitively not alive. For the first time she had understood the difference between sleep and death, between unconsciousness and death—between passivity and emptiness. And her confusion at being faced with this utterly new experience meant that for two or three long seconds she hadn’t processed what she was seeing; she’d observed it but hadn’t grasped it. When those seconds passed, the horror came, with enormous force, but even now she could remember the scene with objective clarity. And that memory, of slaughter as tableau, somehow made it worse. Maybe looking on death with a steely eye wasn’t such a good idea after all.

“It was awful,” she said, because there were no better words.

“I’m so sorry.” Magda sighed. She waited a long time before she spoke again. “How—well—I mean—how did you come to be there?”

Rachel shook her head. “I went to Elisabeth’s, and she told me—” She caught herself; she wasn’t sure she could handle Magda’s glee right now. “—some things that I put together with other things. Suddenly I thought he’d murdered Edgar. So I went to confront him.”

“What things?” Magda tried to keep her voice even, but Rachel could hear the hint of excitement. Well, she thought, I’ll have to tell her everything at some point; might as well get it over with.

“Um, you know.” She shifted uncomfortably. “She mentioned some facts, some issues he’d been having …” She gave up. “He was a coke addict.”

“I knew it!” Magda drew in her breath sharply, smacked a couch cushion in satisfaction. “I knew it all along!” She snapped her head down in a satisfied nod. “Didn’t I say it was drugs all along? I said it was drugs all along.”

“You did say it was drugs all along,” Rachel said. Then she added, “However, you said drugs made David kill Edgar, not that drugs would make someone kill David.”

“Whatever.” Magda waved a hand. “The two possibilities aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Thankfully, the doorbell rang. Rachel held up a finger, slipped her feet from the blanket, and went to answer it. The visitor was the capitaine.

“Madame Levis? I’m sorry to surprise you. I wanted to stop by to see how you were.” The corners of Boussicault’s eyes crinkled as he smiled, but he watched her closely. “I persuaded someone to let me in at the main door.”

“I’m feeling better, thank you.” She tried to sound as if seeing a corpse were all in a day’s work. Eat your heart out, V. I. Warshawski!

He smiled again. “And also I wanted to tell you how our inquiries are progressing.”

Where Magda’s enthusiasm hadn’t touched her, this announcement did. She was getting a police update. She was on the case! V. I. Warshawski indeed. She stood back to let him in.

“Ah!” He said when he reached the séjour. “And here is your partner in crimes. Madame.” He nodded and Magda nodded back, moving her legs off the couch to a normal sitting position.

“Would you like coffee, or tea?” Rachel turned toward the kitchen.

“No, no, thank you.” He dipped his head. “But a seat, perhaps?”

“Of course!” She gestured at a chair, then sat down on the couch again herself.

The capitaine waited until she had settled before he spoke. “First, I have a little follow-up information. A mixture of good and bad. The good is that my colleagues were able to learn the names and addresses of Monsieur Bowen’s two little friends.”

What little friends? Edgar didn’t have any little friends, Rachel thought. Then she realized that his Monsieur Bowen was David, and that the little friends were the two men she’d met at the elevator.

“That is good,” she said. “Are you allowed to tell me?”

He smiled. “Their names, certainly. One is Matthieu Mediouri. He models himself on Al Pacino in Scarface, apparently.”

Well, Rachel thought, that explains the references.

The capitaine continued, “The other is called Laurent Brabinet. Although it seems he prefers to be known as”—here he said in a very nasal American accent—“L-Brah.” He returned to his normal voice. “They’re known to the police. Mid-level drug dealers. I’m sorry to have to tell you that Monsieur Bowen made frequent use of their services.”

“That’s all right,” Magda cut in. “We already knew.”

The capitaine looked nonplussed. “Ah bon? Yet again you surprise me.” He clicked his tongue. “Well, it seems that Monsieur Bowen had somewhat overextended himself, and they felt he had imposed on their good natures for too long. They sought to remind him of their relative positions.”

My God, thought Rachel, Stendhal has come back as a policeman.

“We spoke to Monsieur Bowen’s mother. An indomitable woman. She absolutely rejected the idea that her son was involved with drugs or that he would even have known Mediouri and Brabinet. She assured me that both things were impossible.” He shook his head. “But I have dealt with many mothers, and all their sons have been beyond reproach. So at your suggestion, Madame Levis, we spoke to someone at Pierre Brunet Livres.” He consulted his notebook. “Camille Murat, a book valuer and buyer. We showed her a photo of Monsieur Bowen, and she confirmed that he was the man who came to the store a few days ago and offered her a very good copy of the Paris Edition of the Gutenberg Bible. She bought it for three thousand euro.”

“Three thousand!” Rachel was irate. “That’s less than half what it’s worth!”

“And of what she’s selling it for. Nonetheless, Monsieur Bowen accepted without haggling, she tells us. And Pierre Brunet’s bank tells us that a man matching Monsieur Bowen’s description cashed the check on the account the same day.” Here he paused to draw breath, then continued, “This three thousand euro is nowhere in the appartement. We have searched thoroughly. And Monsieur Bowen’s maître d’hôtel told us that Monsieur Bowen had received a visit from Mediouri and Brabinet last night. As I told you, Monsieur Bowen said he would see them out. So, unfortunately, the man doesn’t know when they left. Or,” he added delicately, “what Monsieur Bowen’s condition was when they did.”

Rachel was impressed by the police. It wasn’t even twenty-four hours since they had arrived on the scene, and already they’d managed to gather more evidence than she and Magda had in three weeks. Well, she supposed it was their area of expertise. Then she remembered that they had closed Edgar’s case without so much as a cursory investigation, and she felt newly unforgiving.

“What’s the bad news?”

“Yes, well, the bad news … There are two pieces of bad news. For your purposes, the first piece is that I was unable to find any connection or encounter between these men and Madame Nadeau. In fact, I was unable to find any indication that Madame Nadeau was anything but a suicide.” He looked at Rachel. “And I made thorough inquiries.” She knew this was his way of apologizing, and she nodded her thanks as he went on. “The further bad news is that we haven’t yet been able to track these men down.” He looked disappointed. “We’ve talked to our mouchards, but so far nothing.”

“Well,” Magda said, “from what Rachel said they’re pretty easy to spot, so it probably won’t be long.”

“Yes, maybe.” But Boussicault didn’t look as if he meant that. After all, “easy to spot” was relative. “Still,” he brightened, “we do have something else to check out, just to be sure. We found no fingerprints on the candelabrum, which means the case against Mediouri and Brabinet is so far circumstantial. In such cases we like to follow other leads, even if only to rule them out. And there is one that is very interesting. The maître d’hôtel tells us that shortly before he was murdered, Monsieur David Bowen made a will. The man had put it in the post to Monsieur’s Bowen’s avocat that very evening. We may find more worthwhile information in it.”

“Ah.” Rachel kept her voice level and steady. “Another will.”

“Yes.” Boussicault shrugged. “I suspect his lawyer suggested it right after the reading of Monsieur Bowen’s will. Where large sums are concerned, they like to have all eventualities covered as soon as possible. So tomorrow we visit”—he checked his notebook again—“Cabinet Martin Frères, the Bowen family’s lawyers. After which,” he said, beginning to rise, “I will report to you ladies again. And in the meantime, if you think of anything you feel might be helpful, Madame Levis, please telephone me. Any time.” He fished a card out of his pocket and presented it to her.

His rising prompted Magda to glance at her watch. “I need to go too. I promised I’d call my mother at eleven her time, and it’s nearly that now.” She looked carefully at Rachel as she stood up. “But I can stay, if you want me to. She’ll understand.”

“No, no.” Rachel shook her head and smiled at both of them. The capitaine’s report had reenergized her. Her mind was full of unarticulated possibilities and near-conclusions, and she wanted some time to grasp them. “I feel just fine. We’ll talk later—I’ll check in, I promise. Go on.”

At the door, the capitaine helped Magda with her coat, then smiled at Rachel again. “I’ll call the ascenseur. Madame Levis, as I said …”

Rachel nodded. “Thank you.”

As the capitaine loped down the hall, Magda put her arms around her and searched her face once more. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Well …” She looked uncertain. “Call me later, all right?”

“I promise.” They kissed. Rachel closed the door behind her, checking that both locks were tight. Tonight she would ask Alan to buy a chain.