Chapter Five

Edgar had moved to a larger appartement since their time together, Rachel discovered, but he hadn’t changed résidence. Why would he? The first was Paris’s most gracious and luxurious arrondissement, and the Quai d’Orfèvres one of its loveliest surprises. She was no more than twenty yards from the statue of Henry IV on the Pont Neuf and the streams of traffic and tourists that endlessly passed it, but this narrow street was quiet as a country village save for the occasional bus driving down it, and even they seemed to muffle their engines obligingly. The five stories of the building that stretched up in front of her had been there, white and unperturbed, since the mid-nineteenth century, and she suspected that through his front windows Edgar had been able to look out onto the Seine. Rachel wouldn’t have moved to a different résidence either.

The first arrondissement was home to many such spaces, she knew. She thought of Galignani, the bookstore that stood at the end of the Rue de Rivoli, untouched by tourist foot and happily selling English books for more than a century; of the courtyard of the Louvre at night, empty of visitors but with the glass pyramid, lit from inside, shining like an oversized jewel box. If you couldn’t live in the sixth, she supposed, the first made a good second. Grinning at her accidental joke, she punched the old door code into the security pad. To her surprise, it worked. She listened to the tap of her shoes on the marble floor as she crossed the foyer to the elevator.

In the ride from first to third floor, she became nervous again. Everything about the situation was unfamiliar to her. She hadn’t even known what to wear. Only after consultation with Magda had she settled on a plain black dress and plain black shoes.

“It’s a solemn event,” Magda said sensibly. “It’s death related, at least. You can’t go wrong with black.”

Rachel had hoped that the outfit would give her at least some confidence, but in the moment it just made her feel like a nervous woman in a black dress. She gripped her coat more tightly around her as she rang Edgar’s doorbell.

The door swung open, revealing an upright, suited butler.

“Fulke?” Rachel was astonished.

The butler was not. “Madame Levis.” He stood back to let her in. “Always good to see you, madame.” He spoke as if she were a frequent visitor.

Fulke had been Edgar’s butler—well, more household manager at that stage—when Edgar and Rachel had started seeing each other. Although she was taken aback to find him still in residence, after a few seconds’ reflection she had to admit she wasn’t exactly surprised. Fulke had appeared indomitable even twenty years before, and time had altered neither his height nor his impressive bulk. He gave off the sense that he was eternal, a family treasure made human, so it seemed somehow right that, having served Edgar for all his life in France, he should also be there to usher him out of it.

“A sad time, Fulke,” she said. She saw the shadow of an emotion flicker across his face, but he was too much the stereotype of a loyal retainer to reveal anything. Instead, he only inclined his head, holding out his hands for her coat. After hanging it up, he gestured toward the recesses of the appartement. “Madame.” He ushered her down the hall to the appropriate room.

Rachel and Alan were far from poor, but the apartment she walked through now made it plain that Edgar had been truly rich. She passed a long dining room with a walnut table flanked by what seemed like endless chairs. Through double doors on the other side of the hall, she glimpsed a salon carefully decorated in biscuit and gold, pale oils and vigorous etchings on the walls, the doors to a veranda just visible as she walked past. And this was no casual, inherited bounty. Nowhere was there the fraying fabric, the sense of tattered overstuffing that Rachel had seen in the (very few) homes of French vieilles fortunes she visited through Alan’s work. Edgar had too much taste and sense of self to fit under the label of nouveau riche, but he also hadn’t had time to accumulate the casual sense of comfort and assumption that came with established wealth; he couldn’t rest on the knowledge that his chairs were frayed by three hundred years of use. Still, she thought as Fulke opened a door on her right, how lovely it all was! How ordered and how elegant. She stepped inside the room and stood appreciating its luxury, hearing the door click shut behind her.

Behind a desk at the back of the room was a neat man in a gray suit, who half-rose at Rachel’s entrance, then sat back down. “Enfin, Madame Levis,” he said. Like all the French, he pronounced it “Leveess,” with the stress on the final syllable. Rachel had long since stopped explaining that it was actually “Leviss,” so she just smiled and nodded. He nodded back. “I am Maître Bernard, a notaire in Monsieur Bowen’s law firm.”

Five chairs had been pulled up in front of the desk. Four of them were occupied, and as Rachel slid into the one remaining, she surreptitiously took in what she supposed were her fellow beneficiaries. It turned out you could go wrong with black, for she was the only person in the room wearing it—except David, who wore the black velvet jacket over jeans that was the winter uniform of the Parisian male. The three other people seated in front of the desk were all women, and none looked funereal. The first was Mathilde, her posture as ramrod perfect as it had been twenty years before. She wore a long-sleeved sheath of pale caramel, and looped over her shoulders was a perfectly folded crimson scarf. What was was it about certain middle-aged French women, Rachel wondered, that they could use their clothes as a reproach? Not that Mathilde needed to use clothing to make anyone feel inferior; recognizing Rachel, she now inclined her head a fraction, a queen acknowledging a humble underling. Rachel was twenty-four all over again, shabby and embarrassed in her cutoffs.

The woman in the chair next to Mathilde’s was about Rachel’s own age, maybe a few years younger, with dark hair cut into a boy crop. She wore slim navy trousers and a navy blazer belted at the waist, covering a cream wool turtleneck; her only apparent makeup was dark red lipstick. Rachel recognized this too as a very specific French look: competent urban woman on the go, comfortable enough to be casual, but Gallic enough to care about style.

Looking at the third woman, Rachel reflected that the group might have been designed as a triptych—say, three of the Four Ages of Woman. No more than in her early twenties, this girl had the cloud of long hair worn by so many young French women. In her case, it was honey-blonde. Her fresh face was slightly round, with a flush of pink across her unmade-up cheeks, and this plus the matching roundness of her eyes gave her the look of a sweet-faced doll. She wore jeans, boots, and a sweater; she’d pulled the sweater sleeves down over her hands.

Wearing a look to match his black blazer, David sat apart from the women. His legs were crossed, but he had moved down in the chair so that they stretched in front of him. He stared at his fingernails, and as Rachel settled herself in the remaining chair, he gave a sniffle.

At almost exactly the same moment, the man in the gray suit cleared his throat. “Now that we are all here, we may begin.”

Rachel, who had two living parents and two living parents-in-law, had never attended a will reading. Drawing her ideas from a confusion of sources, she’d always imagined that they would be a cross between mystery clichés and the scene in Middlemarch where Mr. Featherstone’s will is read. Without a young widow in black gloves and heavily veiled pinwheel hat or a row of vulgar, overeager relatives, she felt let down and somewhat at sea. Did testamentary revelations really take place in well-lit bureaus in front of five quite ordinary people? How disappointing. Then she noticed the gleam in the notaire’s eye. He, at least, felt there was drama in the situation. He opened the folder on the desk in front of him, drew a pair of narrow glasses from his breast pocket, and settled them on the bridge of his slender nose.

“Alors.” He paused. “This is Monsieur Edgar Bowen’s last will, executed three months ago, witnessed by the required two witnesses, in this case Monsieur Bowen’s butler and his cleaner. It is thus fully legal, and it supersedes all other wills made by Monsieur Bowen.” The formalities over, he relaxed a fraction and went on. “First, excepting bequests to follow, Monsieur Bowen leaves his entire estate to Monsieur David Bowen.” He gestured toward David as if he needed identifying. “This includes this appartement, which has no mortgage; Monsieur Bowen’s savings and his life insurance; and his company and private retirement savings. Monsieur Bowen père has made very careful arrangements on both sides of the Atlantic, and we are ready to assist with the tax.” Maître Bernard allowed himself a small professional smile in David’s direction. “You need not worry, Monsieur Bowen.”

David’s eyes were still red-rimmed, and the announcement of his new wealth produced no alteration in his expression. Maybe that was just his resting face, or maybe it was a mask he’d assumed to hide his feelings. Or maybe, Rachel thought, he was still stunned by Edgar’s death. After all, he was what—twenty-five now? At that age the death of a parent still seems improbable, or at least an occurrence for the distant future, and its early arrival would stun. He sniffed again, just an ordinary sniff, but it reminded Rachel of similar sniffs when he was a small boy, determined not to cry as she washed dirt off his skinned elbow or a put a Band-Aid on his bloodied knee. Her heart softened.

“And now, the smaller bequests.” Maître Bernard cleared his throat, leaving an impeccably executed pause. “First, Monsieur Bowen leaves five thousand euro to the Montmartre Home for Cats.”

Cats? God, thought Rachel. It really is true that you never know someone. But then why would you know someone you hadn’t actually known for twenty years? She had to admit, she was in no position to pronounce on the norms of Edgar’s inner life. Still, cats in Montmartre? Good on you, Edgar, she thought. She was a pet lover.

“Madame Levis.” The notaire peered at her over his glasses. Rachel straightened like an obedient schoolchild. “Monsieur Bowen makes a request of you.” He paused again. “He asks that you take charge of organizing and cataloguing his library so that Monsieur David may decide its fate. For performing this task, he bequeaths you the book of your choice.”

Rachel smiled. Not only a secret cat lover but a secret sentimentalist! How fortunate that Edgar’s hidden depths turned out to be so endearing. He’d remembered those afternoons they spent together in bookstores, had continued to take pleasure in her pleasure. For just a second, her throat tightened. Then she felt the lawyer’s sharp gaze upon her, and that second passed.

The notaire cleared his throat once again and took a breath. “To Catherine Nadeau.” The red-lipped woman leaned forward. “He leaves seven thousand five hundred euro,” he read from the page in front of him, “ ‘in thanks for your love, and for our time together.’ ”

Rachel had already guessed that the woman was Edgar’s current girlfriend, and she was pleased to be proved right. Her pleasure didn’t distract her from watching the woman’s reaction, though. Catherine Nadeau grinned broadly for a second; then the smile vanished, the face fell, and she began to cry. She picked up her bag from where it sat on the floor and began to rummage through it for something she could use to wipe her eyes. Before she could find anything, in one smooth gesture Maître Bernard extracted a handkerchief from a pocket, leaned over the desk, and handed it to her. Of course he had a handkerchief ready, Rachel thought as she watched Catherine Nadeau dab her cheeks; in his business he must need one all the time. Immediately, she felt shabby for thinking such a thought.

Catherine Nadeau had collected herself, and the notaire allowed the air to settle before he continued. “Now, Madame Bowen. To you he leaves ten thousand euro.”

Mathilde’s expression did not change, but even she couldn’t control everything: for a bare microsecond—so fast that Rachel almost wasn’t sure she’d seen it—she flinched. Then she nodded again, another tiny movement of the head.

Maître Bernard inhaled, then let his breath out. “And now, Mademoiselle des Troyes.”

The blonde girl straightened, widening her eyes. She caught her lower lip in her top teeth. You could, Rachel thought, actually have heard a pin drop.

“Monsieur Bowen leaves for you …” He peered intently at the document inside the folder, as if for the first time. “Ah, yes, ‘in affection and gratitude …’ ”

Just get on with it! Rachel yelled internally.

“He leaves you twenty thousand euro.”

In her first year in college, Rachel had been much given to using the word “extraordinary” in her papers: books were “extraordinary”; philosophers had “extraordinary” ideas. Then one of her professors had written in an essay margin “What word will you use when something truly is extraordinary?” and that had been the end of that. Now Rachel was glad she had retired the word for all the intervening years, because at the news of her bequest Elisabeth’s face became, in the truest sense of the word, extraordinary. There passed over it in rapid succession the look of someone who has expected a treat; the look of someone who knows it’s poor manners to show that she has expected a treat; and the look of someone who, having felt both of these, suddenly finds she has received a bigger treat than she could ever have expected. Not that Rachel articulated these changes to herself with such precision. She felt them, recognized them wordlessly, but if asked at that moment what she’d seen, she could only have said that the girl turned pale.

Mathilde spoke. “For what reason?” Her eyebrows rose a fraction. Her voice was absolutely level.

The notaire flicked his eyes toward her. “As I said, ‘in affection and gratitude.’ ”

What does that mean? Rachel wanted to ask. What precisely does that mean? She couldn’t be the only person longing to know, but they all sat silent: Mathilde so contained she might have been a statue; David jiggling a knee up and down; Catherine Nadeau watching Elisabeth des Troyes’s white, and now confused, face; and she, Rachel, too much a stranger in the room to speak everyone’s mind. As for the notaire, he closed his lips and kept his client’s secrets.