53

Evidence of Intruders

I couldn’t find my tame Norman anywhere and had to skip a lecture to pick up papers I’d left at home. The stress of recent days had made me forgetful, but that was no excuse for him. I knew as soon as I opened the door that something was wrong, even the smell, although I couldn’t identify the odor. And the four books on the coffee table were piled in the wrong order. The top one should have been the one I was reading.

With the hair on my arms prickling in alarm, I hurried to the kitchen and fished the gun from beneath the flatware container in the drawer. At least it was in its place. Holding it in my right hand, I moved silently from room to room, but found no one. What did I have here that I wouldn’t want an intruder to see? I’d brought things from Lyon but found it hard to remember what—ah, the items supposedly stolen from my apartment. I had to put the pistol down, which made me uneasy under the circumstances, in order to pull the boxes from the closet shelf.

The spoons and candlesticks were in the proper box, wrapped in silverware cloths. I couldn’t be sure that they hadn’t been disturbed, but they looked as they had when I arrived and put them away. The jewelry box was still locked and showed no signs of having been pried open. Nonetheless, I checked for the cross and the jewelry set that had belonged to the first Catherine of Avignon, the one who had married a wealthy moneylender of the papal city and moved here from her family home in Lyon.

After putting the boxes back on the shelf, I checked the drawers of my plain wooden dresser. How the aunt who left me this place would have hated the décor, but I found it soothing. It did not remind me of happier times. My medieval prayer book was swaddled carefully in its carved walnut box, much to my relief—until I remembered that it should have been beneath the nunlike underwear, which had replaced the silken lingerie I once wore to please my love. Now the box lay beneath heavy cotton nightgowns. In the wrong place!

Why would a thief enter my apartment and steal nothing? If the intruder were a pervert, ransacking my underwear drawer, why not take a sample with him? I hurried to the laundry container in the bathroom but found everything that I had worn and discarded since coming to Avignon piled within, perhaps not in a particular order, but I could be responsible for that. Not even I fold unwashed laundry and put it away in any order, although Maurice used to laugh about my compulsive neatness.

The desk. My books! I had first editions of early scientific treatises that had belonged to—I ran into the other bedroom, heart pounding, but they too were in their places in the glass-fronted cabinets that protected them. Nor could I find anything amiss in my desk, yet I knew that someone had been here. Could Martin have been nosing through my things? I’d have his head if he’d done anything here but what he was sent to do—fetch papers for me from specified files.

The intruder had come today. If someone, Martin, for instance, had visited my apartment while I was at the palais, Marie-Solange might have seen him. Our concierge is a nosy woman, always looking out her window. I had had to bring my treasures in by the back stairs to avoid questions. Whipping my cell phone from my handbag, I called her. She had indeed seen strangers entering the compound a bit after nine, two women, a large black dog, and a tall, redheaded man, whom she had seen here before.

I might have been unsure about the women had it not been for the dog and Martin. Had I failed to retrieve my key from him yesterday? The women must have been Carolyn and Albertine, searching for something in my apartment. What did they know? What did they suspect? And what had they found? The prayer book, but if Albertine or Martin found it, it would have meant nothing to them. The inspector in Lyon, however, might have told Carolyn what was reported stolen from my apartment. Or had I told her? I was losing track of my actions—due to the stress of my failures.

“My goodness,” said Marie-Solange. “A police car just pulled into the courtyard. Fools! It’s not for cars. I must go and send them away.”

She hung up, and I rushed to the window, where I saw four men pile out of the car and Marie-Solange, waving her arms and berating them. Mon Dieu. Were they here for me? I had things yet to accomplish. Perhaps I could still kill the woman if she was at her hotel. The man no, he was at the palais. I could not embarrass my colleagues by killing him in front of everyone. And there were things I would need to take with me. No time for everything, even things that might incriminate me if the police came here, but things I’d need. Even as I thought this, I began to collect, in my haste to escape down the back stairs, the things that would suit my purposes.