Chapter Thirty-Four

They waited on the curb, Rachel alternatively squinting up at Edgar’s windows and checking her watch. Five minutes. There was a limit to how long they could stand there. Fulke could look out of those windows at any moment—he could be looking out of them right now—and if he saw them, he’d know something was going on. Eight minutes. Was this case a matter of priority for the police or wasn’t it? And it was freezing. Were she and Magda going to freeze in the street and a murderer be allowed to escape while the police moseyed their way over? Would this investigation never end? She stamped her feet. “I’m going up.”

“But—”

She gripped her coat more tightly around her. “I know I said I’d wait. But I’m cold. And I’ll be careful. And it’s Fulke: we’ve known each other for years, and I’m no danger to him as far as he knows. You can stay here if you want.”

Magda only hesitated for a moment before following her into the building. Neither spoke as they waited for the elevator, but once they were inside it, Rachel turned to her. “Listen. All we’re going to do is talk to him until the police get here. We’re just going to keep him from leaving.”

“Okay.” Magda’s voice was small, but it was steady. The bell dinged and the doors opened; they crossed the landing in a few swift paces, stopping in front of Edgar’s door.

“Shit,” Rachel said. Then, hoping against hope, she grasped the knob and turned it softly, putting her weight against the door. It was locked. “Shit,” she said again. “I can’t believe I forgot.” She pressed her knuckles against her mouth.

“Are we locked out?”

Rachel nodded.

“Did you bring your bobby pins?” Magda wasn’t joking.

Rachel shook her head. “Wait.” She looked at the motionless Magda and held up a forefinger. “Wait, wait.” She slid her hand around the inside of the doorframe, then over the top of the lintel, then over the outside of the frame. “Ah!” she said suddenly, a mingled sound of surprise and satisfaction. She pressed her fingers down lightly on the wood, there was a small click, and she held up a front door key.

“Wow!” Magda’s face was a mask of astonishment.

“He had one in the doorframe of his old place too.” Rachel smiled. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” She slid the key into the lock and, braced for the door’s weight, opened it. Despite her earlier evaluation, it made surprisingly little noise.

Inside the appartement it was so quiet that they could hear their own breathing. Rachel reached out and took Magda’s hand, gripping it as they crossed the cream-colored carpet. Magda squeezed back. “What are you going to do?”

If Rachel’s heart hadn’t been pounding and her adrenaline hadn’t been pumping, she might have reflected on how odd it was that, even after more than twenty years of friendship, she still didn’t want to lose face in front of her best friend. What would Magda think if she turned and fled?

“I’m going to see if Fulke’s here. You should wait for me.”

“No!” Magda gripped her hand even more tightly. “I’m not staying by myself. If you’re going, I’m going.”

Rachel tried to reassure herself. After all, it could be that Fulke wasn’t even in the appartement; he could be out doing the shopping, at a café having a small coffee and planning his next move, or upstairs packing for his escape. Yes, any of those could be true. She led the way down the hall. Once they were through the back door, she would call the capitaine again.

They walked through the dining room to the door to the butler’s pantry door and pushed it open. There at the sink stood Fulke, cloth in hand, apron around his waist. On the counter to his right lay a collection of silver: forks, knives, a carving set, even the one remaining candelabrum. He turned around when he heard the door thump against the wall.

“Madame Levis!” He put the cloth down. “This is a surprise.”

“Is it, Fulke?” Rachel had the sense that she was in a play; her voice sounded melodramatic even to her own ears.

“Indeed.” He smoothed his apron. “Are you here to work in the library? May I offer you and—I believe it’s Madame Stevens?—something to drink?” His face was blank of every expression except vague inquiry.

Rachel didn’t have the courage for a standoff; she broke. “Oh, Fulke.” She shook her head. “I know. I know you did it.” Behind her, Magda gasped. Rachel took a step into the room in some kind of instinctive attempt to claim the space, and she followed.

Fulke’s tone remained level. “I assure you, Madame Levis, I’ve done nothing. I don’t even know what you could mean.” Indeed, as he stood with the cloth next to him, one hand resting on the counter where it had ceased its polishing, he looked the picture of innocent confusion.

Rachel stayed still. She could feel Magda beside her, blocking the door to the dining room. “Fulke,” she said. She tried to remain calm, but it was hard to accuse someone of murder in a level tone. “You killed Edgar and David.” She decided to leave Catherine Nadeau out of it for the moment. “You knew they hadn’t named you in their wills, so you murdered them.”

Fulke raised an eyebrow. “That seems implausible, madame. Surely the time to kill someone is when one knows one is in their will?”

Rachel’s experience of golden-age detective fiction had led her to believe that when faced with the truth of their crimes, murderers instantly gave up. How to deal with one who not only continued to deny his guilt but also raised an excellent point against it? She really should have waited for the police. She tried desperately to ignore these thoughts. Again she had the sense that she was in a drama, and this meta-commentary was a running review of the action.

“You did it,” she said again, as if repetition would force him into an admission. “They used you as a witness to their wills, so you knew neither had left you anything. Did that make you angry? Did you think you’d earned something and were being cheated?” Fulke’s face remained blank. “I can understand. You worked hard for years, and you were going to get nothing.”

“I would never kill over money.” Fulke tone placed “money” on the same level as a poorly folded napkin or black tights with a pale skirt: a distasteful detail to be ignored and risen above.

“But you did kill Edgar and David.” She felt like murder’s bulldozer, forging ahead no matter what obstacles were put in her way. “I know you did. And I understand.”

Fulke gave a little laugh. “You understand? You could never understand, madame.”

Rachel blinked. Had he just confessed? She desperately wanted to look at Magda for confirmation, but she didn’t want to break eye contact with Fulke.

“You keep talking about money,” he said. “About my job. It’s true, I am good at my job. It seems I’m so good at it that you all forget there’s a person doing it. For example, madame, you never realized I was watching you. Yes,” he said, nodding at Rachel’s start of surprise, “I heard you talking to Mademoiselle des Troyes and Monsieur David; I knew you were trying to be a little detective. And it was easy to make you believe my stories of arguments between Madame Bowen and Monsieur Bowen. Just as I had done for twenty years with Monsieur Bowen and Monsieur David, I gave you what you wanted. And none of you ever gave me a second thought. To you, my loyalty is the loyalty of a robot: programmed, automatic. This is why you will never understand why I killed them.”

Rachel jumped at this unexpected clear admission. She felt a cold shiver branch through her and nausea rise in her throat: she was suddenly very afraid. She had brought herself and her best friend, unarmed and unprepared, face-to-face with a murderer because she was cold and didn’t want to wait for the police to arrive. And now they were alone with him in a space he knew better than they did, and there was still no sound of sirens outside. She clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering.

With great control she suppressed her panic and forced herself to think. Perhaps, though, they could still get out of it. Perhaps she could soothe Fulke, reason with him, even talk him into surrendering. Television detectives always began with empathy; she could start there too. “Well, Fulke, why don’t you explain? I want to understand, Fulke.” On television they also repeated the criminal’s name to soothe him; she’d always found it creepy, but now she was willing to give it a try. “Let me help you, Fulke. We’ve always been friends.”

She took a step toward him, her hand outstretched, but she misjudged her position and her hip struck the corner of the counter. For a second she was distracted by pain, and in that instant Fulke moved like a flash—or like a man intimately familiar with the space around him. He snatched Magda with one hand; with the other he grabbed the carving fork and pressed it to her neck. Magda gave a yelp of surprise, then froze, clutching at his arm, too scared to move or speak.

“We’ve never been friends, madame.” He was breathing hard, but he spoke just as coolly as he had before. “As I have recently learned more than once, there is no friendship between servant and served.”

“Fulke.” She tried to think. How did you talk down a homicidal butler? “I’ve always admired …” the way you arrange muffins? your artistry with the duster? Shut up, shut up, she told her brain. “I’ve always admired you. I was just singing your praises to Magda yesterday.” She pointed at her as she stressed her name—naming the victim humanized him or her to the criminal, wasn’t that right? God, why was law enforcement so obsessed with names? “I was saying to Magda how good you are at your job, and how loyal.”

The fork’s sharp tines pressed into Magda’s neck; Rachel could see blood pulsing beneath them. Where were the police?

“But Fulke,” she said, holding up both hands in a gesture of submission, “please don’t hurt Magda. The police are on their way. They’ll understand what you did to Edgar and David. You were treated badly by your employers! This is France—everyone will be on your side! But if you kill an innocent woman? They won’t be sympathetic to that.”

Fulke smiled again. “Except that you assume the police will stop me. But this”—he pressed the tines more deeply into Magda’s neck, and her breathing quickened—“this ensures that they won’t, and you won’t either. You’ll let me leave this place, or I will spit your friend like roasted meat.” Even on the last sentence, his tone stayed level. Rachel marveled at his self-control. No wonder she’d never suspected him.

Her eyes darted around the pantry. She had no weapon. Even if she had, she couldn’t have surprised Fulke with an unexpected attack in such a small area, and with him and Magda taking up so much of it. She would have to let him go. “The police are on their way,” she said again, pointlessly. She looked at Magda.

“Please,” Magda said. Her pupils were huge. “Please.”

“Okay.” Rachel lifted her hands even further, into a position of surrender. She stepped closer to the counter, leaving space for Fulke and Magda’s bulk to pass. Fulke, his butler-dom perhaps too ingrained ever to leave him, nodded his thanks. He turned slightly toward the dining room, moving awkwardly to hustle Magda through the door in front of him.

In the split-second that his back was turned, Rachel hit him over the head with the candelabrum she snatched from the counter.

Fulke jerked forward and grabbed the back of his skull. But although he dropped the carving fork to do this, his other arm kept its grip on Magda. Shaking his head as if to clear it, he swung both himself and Magda around to face Rachel again. For a moment she stood frozen, unsure what to do now that her villain had not been felled by a single blow in appropriate mystery fashion.

In fact, Fulke seemed entirely unfazed by her attack. “No,” he said in the tone an adult might use with a naughty child. “No.” He backed himself and his terrified guarantee of safety into the dining room, his right arm stretched out behind him. Rachel understood: he was looking for another weapon. And because he was familiar with the dining room and its contents, it probably wouldn’t take him long to find one. Yet she could see his hand twitching slightly, and she bet he was distracted by an instinct to rub the back of his skull again. If she could build on that distraction, manage to keep him off-balance, she might be able to gain some advantage, however slight.

“Fulke!” She advanced but stayed just out of his reach, the candelabrum forgotten in her hand. “Don’t do this. Don’t do it, Fulke. Don’t do it. Fulke, don’t do it.” She kept up this irritating repetition as she moved around him, trying to throw him off. “Don’t do this, Fulke. Fulke, don’t.”

But Fulke was not thrown off. Quite the reverse. When his outstretched hand met the short edge of the dining table, he gripped it and steadied himself, and when he spoke, his voice was firm. “Madame Levis, you should try not to upset me. I don’t need a weapon to kill your friend.” As if to prove his point, he tightened his arm across Magda’s throat, bearing down on her windpipe.

Rachel focused on that hard forearm and the face above it, on Magda’s pale mouth gasping for air. If Fulke couldn’t be shaken, her only option was to try to overpower him again. With a force born of fear and desperation, she took a long step toward him and swung her right arm wide. With one arm around Magda and the other holding the table behind him, Fulke couldn’t move swiftly enough to block the blow. The candelabrum hit him in the temple, and this time he crumpled to the floor, unconscious.

Released, Magda took a great gasp of air, then let it out in a sob. She took one step forward before her legs gave out and she slumped onto the dining room rug. “Oh my God,” she said, repeating it like a litany, or a charm, “OhmyGod, ohmyGod, ohmyGod. He was going to kill me. He was really going to kill me. You saved my life.” She gave a little laugh, tight with hysteria. “You said you would, and you actually did.” She stared up at Rachel with grateful amazement.

This was it, Rachel thought. She would never be more selfless or seem more noble in her life. She had felled a killer; she had saved a human being from certain death. Still feeling as if she were in a play, she was determined to perform the moment with panache. Keeping her hands steady, she put the candelabrum carefully on the table, then turned to look at Magda. Abruptly, the sense that they were onstage vanished. She had just solved a crime the police had dismissed as fantasy, knocked out a triple murderer, saved her dearest friend from someone who wouldn’t have hesitated to kill her.

She wanted her mother.

She sat down hard beside Magda and hugged her, feeling her warm living weight in her arms. Staying there for a few seconds, she listened to her breathe. Then she stood up, smoothed the front of her shirt, took a deep breath, and said, “Where the hell are the police?”