April in Paris

by John J. Healey

  “I know the defendant by sight. I have seen him pass by in the neighborhood. I saw him in the Bronx court. I saw him on the night I was searching for my child about eight o’clock. He was sitting on the curbstone, near the real estate office. I think he was alone. He did not say anything to me.”

  – 9 –

  That was enough for one day. I left my building and took in the fading twilight on the river. It was at Dirk and Consuelo’s that evening that I met Carmen. Perhaps the strength of my reaction to her had something to do with the aforementioned period of abstinence, that and the bracing fresh air she represented after a strange and unsettling day. She was slight and had a shock of blonde hair. If I’d been pressed, I would have pegged her as some sort of aristocrat from Northern Italy.

  “This is a setup,” she said to me not long after Dirk made the introductions.

  “I see that.”

  “You’d no idea.”

  “None.”

  “They’ve not done this sort of thing to you before?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s an area of my life I normally pursue on my own.”

  “So it will probably be a disaster,” she said, making a face.

  Like me, she was nervous and uncomfortable with the “setup,” as she called it. Her voice was low and had a slight British lilt. She wore a chic black cocktail dress and a pair of silvery sandals.

  “What can I get you to drink?” Dirk barked at me. He was in a navy blazer that had fleur-de-lis enameled buttons, a striped shirt, faded jeans, and red espadrilles. He had a handsome, narrow, well-defined face and short graying hair.

  “Do you have any good wine?” I asked. “Dirk has this theory,” I explained to Carmen, “trumped up to disguise chronic cheapness, that inexpensive wines are just as good as reserve cuvées, and that if you pay more than ten bucks for a bottle . . .”

  “You’re an idiot,” he said, finishing my sentence. “Believe me,” he said, shaking his head at us, “it’s all marketing bullshit.”

  “What are you drinking?” I asked Carmen.

  “Vodka on the rocks,” she said, raising a tumbler for my inspection.

  “Smart,” I said. “I’ll take the driest white wine you’ve got Dirk, with an aspirin chaser.”

  “Oh, she’s smart all right,” Dirk said, unscrewing the top from a scarily generic Sauvignon Blanc I recognized from the Moroccan mini-mart up the street. “She’s much smarter than you or me. I predict a Nobel Prize in this señorita’s future.”

  “I think Dirk believes that if you teach anything in the sciences, you’re automatically a genius,” she said.

  “Neither he nor I are especially fluent in that area,” I said. “But what his comment is mostly alluding to is his opinion that art history—my field—is for slackers.”

  He grinned and handed me the bad wine poured into a beautiful glass. He was nursing a scotch. I suspected he’d gotten a head start in the drinking department.

  “After seeing him around the neighborhood for a while I was formally presented to Dirk by a mutual friend who also has a place on the Ile,” I said to Carmen.

  “Another American?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are there any French left on the island?” she asked.

  “A few,” I said.

  “Most,” Dirk chimed in. It was a topic he was touchy about.

  “Anyway,” I said, “this fellow, this mutual friend, comes from a family of famous publishers, newspapers and magazines mainly, including the inexplicably still surviving Town & Country. Do you know it?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “The last time the three of us had a meal together—two years ago, Dirk?—Dirk says to him, ‘I’ve canceled my subscription.’ Our friend, who could not have cared less, asks, ‘Why?’ and Dirk says, ‘Since the day I got an issue with a couple on the cover who were from Atlanta.’”

  She laughed, the smallest bit, which relieved me. Dirk of course was pleased by the homage to his advanced snobbery. But I felt uncomfortable for having told the anecdote, too like one of the prosperous gauche Americans she’d referred to.

  Consuelo appeared with Lucia, who was blonde and eleven years old, like Ingrid Anderson, but very much alive. Consuelo wore black suede heels, orange raw silk trousers, and a white blouse. Mother and daughter had their hair cut short. Kisses were exchanged.

  “What do you think of my amiga?” Consuelo asked.

  “Your amiga is a most pleasant sorpresa,” I said.

  “We’ve known each other since we were Lucia’s age.”

  “I wish you’d warned me,” I said. “I would have dressed better.”

  “We were afraid you might not come at all.”

  “Well, I’m glad I did,” I said, still feeling somewhat like a fuddy-duddy.

  “What would you have worn different?” Carmen asked.

  “A burgundy velvet smoking jacket perhaps, and a pair of matching slippers.”

  “I’ve just the thing in my closet,” Dirk piped up.

  “I bet you do,” I said.

  As the evening went on, I learned that Carmen was from an old Catalan family, that she had gone to some progressive school in Madrid with Consuelo, who was also Catalan, when they were little. Years later they’d found themselves living in New York at the same time and resumed their friendship. They shared an overlapping social life in Manhattan, even though their professional worlds were very different. Consuelo worked for a film producer in Tribeca back then, which was how she met Dirk. Carmen was getting a PhD in microbiology at Columbia. Later she transferred to MIT, where she had tenure and a titled professorship.

  After Lucia played us a rendition of “Clair de lune” on the piano, followed by a vigorous Scott Joplin rag, we sat down to dinner.

  “I’m grateful for a home-cooked meal,” Carmen said. “After staying with my mother in Madrid I’ve been in hotels the past few days.”

  “It’s just pasta and a salad,” Consuelo said.

  “With shaved truffles,” Dirk added.

  “And red wine that actually comes in a bottle,” I said, “though perhaps you’ve transferred it from a carton in the kitchen.”

  “You’ll never know,” he said, then added, “Shaun is due for a home-cooked meal too, I imagine.”

  “You don’t cook?” Carmen said to me.

  “I go out a lot,” I said.

  “And when he doesn’t,” added Dirk, eager to reach his anecdote, “he orders take-out from the Tour d’Argent. The waiters walk it over, serve him, and clean up afterward.”

  “Sounds very civilized,” Carmen said.

  “Thank you,” I said, glad of a chance to look at her again.

  “Vulgar would be more the word,” Dirk said.

  “You’re just jealous,” said Consuelo.

  “I don’t do it that often,” I said. “It’s just that I’m a terrible cook.”

  I continued to fear I was coming off wrong. I hoped that whatever Consuelo had reported in my favor beforehand might still be shoring me up. Then Lucia told us about some of her schoolmates. Dirk talked about a new film, a costume drama he would be shooting in Ireland that summer. Consuelo and Carmen reminisced about their early school years in Madrid, what had become of this and that person, who had married whom, and then went on to tell war stories from their days in New York. I was content to drink my wine and listen.

  “Shaun has a huge apartment on Fifth Avenue,” Dirk suddenly blurted out, “that he doesn’t even use when he goes there.”

  “Why is that?” Carmen asked, genuinely intrigued.

  “It came with my marriage,” I said, unprepared for this topic. “I associate it more with my wife’s former life and family. So it just sits there. I mean it’s kept clean.”

  “How extraordinary,” she said.

  “I don’t go to New York that often anyway,” I said. “It doesn’t feel like my city anymore. I prefer a hotel.”

  “Carmen’s divorced,” Dirk said, apropos of nothing. “And has no chil
dren and no boyfriend at the moment that we know of.”

  “I don’t tell you everything,” Carmen said, and she blushed.

  “Oh-oh,” Dirk replied.

  “Shaun’s wife died,” Lucia said.

  Everyone looked down.

  “Lucia,” her mother said in a tone of gentle admonishment.

  “That’s all right,” I said. “It’s been a while now.”

  “I’m sorry,” Carmen said.

  “Thank you,” I said. “But surely they’ve told you all about that.”

  “Some,” she said.

  “What else have you told her?” I asked my hosts, with what I hoped was a convincing smile.

  “Very little you’ll be pleased to know,” said Dirk. “Very little from me. I can’t speak for Consuelo. I’ve only reported the basics. Your repulsive wealth, of course, and that you’re overdue for a real relationship. Oh, and that you ‘work’ at the Clark Museum and teach the occasional boring art history class at Williams College, only a three-and-a-half-hour drive from MIT.”

  “Both of you are only children and neither of you have any presence on social media,” Consuelo added. “I found that intriguing and told her that. But I also told her we really don’t know you that well.”

  “You’re at the Clark,” Carmen said.

  “Yes. Do you know it?”

  “I’ve been up in the area and visited it once. The grounds are so beautiful.”

  “This after many years teaching at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts and a turn at the Met, he should add,” said Dirk, pointing at me with his fork.

  “Not that many years,” I said.

  “I hear Williams has a good science department,” said Carmen.

  “Yes, I’ve heard the same thing. I’m sure it’s true,” I said.

  “You don’t know?” She was surprised.

  “I keep to myself. I mostly live in Lenox and commute. But tell me about your field. What is it you teach or do research on?”

  “Bof, ” she said, dismissing my query in a Parisian manner. “I’d rather hear about Géricault. You’re writing something on him, no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Full disclosure,” she said. “I read your profile on the Clark website.”

  “Ah,” I said, pleased but worried. The staff photograph had been taken ten years earlier and I had a lot more gray in my hair the evening the picture was taken.

  “There’s no point in her trying to tell us what she does,” Dirk said, “because we won’t understand it. Not a word. I’ve already tried.”

  “I mostly study proteins,” she said, “and how they fold.”

  “I read something about that,” I said. “The folding determines their shape and the shape determines their function.”

  “That’s right,” she said.

  Dirk’s mouth fell open in an exaggerated fashion.

  After we thanked them and said goodnight, we walked along the river. We passed the door to my place, but I was too embarrassed to point it out, seeing how close it was to Dirk and Consuelo’s.

  “Where are you staying?” I asked her.

  “On the Rue Jacob,” she said. “At the Angleterre.”

  “Let me walk you there.”

  “That’s very gentlemanly of you.”

  We continued toward the prow of the Ile, past the ever-present crowd in a line for Bertillon ice cream, and crossed over the Pont Saint-Louis, skirting what remained of the gardens behind the burned-out ruins of Notre Dame.

  “So far so good, no?” I said at one point.

  “With regard to . . .”

  “The setup,” I said.

  She just smiled. We passed a young couple making out. Rather than please or inspire me, or to take it as a good omen, it deepened my case of nerves.

  “Ah, Paris,” was all I could think to say. She did not respond.

  We crossed the Pont de l’Archevêché, where all of the lovers’ locks had been removed, and made our way up to Shakespeare & Co. Traversing the Rue Saint-Jacques, we ducked into the Rue de la Huchette, making our way past cheesy, raucous kabob restaurants filled with tourists, and headed for the Rue Saint-André des Arts. I mentally saluted what was left of the Grand Hotel Mont-Blanc. It was the first place I stayed on my own in Paris when I was nineteen. It had been converted from a bordello and all the rooms were decorated differently. Mine was basically pink with cherubs, a canopied bed and a mirror you stared up at, a bad carpet, and a fake Louis XV desk. A minuscule sink in the corner had been the only recourse for ablution. It wasn’t especially clean, but that too was part of its charm. A large black-and-white photo of Pablo Neruda had hung behind the reception desk. The glow from the two weeks that I stayed there, my initiation into Left Bank Parisian life, had never really left me.

  We took the Rue de Buci to the Rue de Seine and swung up to the Rue Jacob. She stopped to admire some clothing on display in the window of the Isabel Marant boutique and as she did, I stepped back to admire her. I was excited to be with her, talking about inconsequential things. Further on we both looked at framed letters for sale written by famous dead people in the windows of a store called something like Autographes et Documents Historiques. One of them was signed by Proust, another by Charles Dickens, a third by Josephine Bonaparte. In each case the handwriting was even and legible in a way that no one achieved anymore. We reached the entrance to her hotel.

  “This is where I get off,” she said.

  The Angleterre had been the British Embassy during the American Revolution. Hemingway had stayed there. Charles Lindbergh stayed there the night he completed his flight across the Atlantic. It too had been renovated a number of times, with a concurrent erosion of charm on each occasion. But it was still better than most. We’d been talking about almost anything except what each of us was thinking and feeling during the walk. I screwed up my courage for one personal question.

  “I can’t help it,” I said. “Are you seeing anyone?”

  She smiled and looked into my eyes.

  “There’s someone I care about. It’s a complicated story. But, no, I’m not seeing him in the way you mean.”

  “Then when can I see you again?”

  This seemed to please her.

  “Time-wise things are a mess right now,” she said. “I’m giving a lecture at a conference in the morning till lunch—that’s why I’m here—then I return to Madrid on the night train to be with my mother for a few more days before flying back to Boston. I went through hell getting MIT to give me time off in the middle of classes so soon after spring break.”

  “So, you’ve no time at all?”

  “I’ll have a few hours before my train leaves. I was going to see Consuelo again, but I can change that.”

  “Would you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Could I come to the lecture?”

  She laughed.

  “You’ll find it very dull, I fear—difficult, but not in an interesting way for you.”

  I expected she was correct. At dinner I’d exhausted the extent of my knowledge about her proteins and I had little doubt that the papers to be read, including hers, would be way beyond my capacity to interpret. What she didn’t know, what she was not prepared to recognize aloud that first night four hours after meeting me, was that my desire to attend her talk derived from the fact that I was falling for her.

  “Even so,” I said.

  “I’ll email you the details tonight.”

  I wanted to kiss her, but I was too nervous to ask. So I just gave her a short bow, bid her goodnight, and watched her enter the hotel.

  – 10 –

  By the time I got back to the apartment Carmen had sent me the information about her lecture and thanked me for walking with her. The note was a bit formal, but I was glad to have it. I looked her up online and read as much as I could about her. She’d been teaching and doing research at MIT for many years, garnering numerous grants and prizes. After taking a bath I sent her a goodnight message that wasn’t returned and t
hen got into bed with a glass of Muscat de Beaumes de Venise, opened my laptop, and read more of the trial.

  John Cupperman, MD: “I saw the body again at St. Michael’s Cemetery on the twelfth day of June. At that time, I made a further examination of it. At the original autopsy I had not opened the head. We had the body exhumed and I removed the scalp and opened the head and examined the brain and found conditions negative. There was no fracture of the skull. I did not find any condition of the brain varying in any degree from the normal. At both examinations I made of this child I found no evidence at all of death caused by any fall or blow on the head such as could have been caused by a fall on a hard floor.”

  What was the deal with these ghoulish in situ autopsies? Why, on both occasions, were the autopsies not performed at a hospital? Why was it so difficult to transport her body to a city morgue or health center? Was it a financial thing? Was it a class thing? Would the autopsy of a rich person’s child have been performed on the floor of the little girl’s bedroom and then later next to her grave at a cemetery?

  “I am James Kelly. I am a policeman. In June 1916 I was attached to Precinct 66. I got the clothes of the child from her father. I did not see him wrap them up. I got a bundle. It was wrapped in wrapping paper. It was tied with a cord. I took it to the station house and delivered it unopened to Lieutenant McCormick.”

  John Carroll: “I am a policeman. I received a bundle from Lt. McCormick about five days after the death of the child. I took it to the Clerk of the District Attorney’s office. Between the time I received it and delivered it I did not make any change in it. I did not take it to the DA that night. I put it in the basement, in the corner. There was nothing else kept there. Just coal. Nothing else. The following morning, I took the bundle from my home to the station house. I delivered them to William Masterson, the man sitting over there.”

  William H. Masterson: “I am a process server in the DA’s office of this county. I received the bundle from Mr. Carroll. I did not open the bundle while it was on file or make any change in it. The exhibits are under lock and key. Mr. Barry took the bundle from the property clerk’s room.”