Florence stepped over her and walked back to the window in the bedroom, keeping her eye, and the gun, trained on Helen. She quickly glanced out. Still no Idrissi.
Florence turned back to Helen. “I thought it was an act,” she said. “The callousness. The whole I-don’t-owe-anyone-anything schtick.”
“I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not,” Helen said hoarsely. “Unlike you.”
“I’m not pretending,” Florence said defensively.
Helen snorted. “Of course you are. You started pantomiming me the day you arrived. Don’t you think I noticed? Your newfound interest in opera and wine and cooking? ‘It’s hot as blue blazes?’ I mean, Florence, you’re literally wearing my clothes.”
Florence looked down at the dress she was wearing. “Well, so what?” she exclaimed. “I hated my life! I wanted something better; is that so terrible!?”
“So then you make a better life,” Helen said. “You don’t steal it.”
Florence said nothing, but she could feel her face burning brightly. That was bullshit. Everyone steals, including Helen. She’d stolen from Jenny. She’d stolen from whoever had introduced her to Verdi and Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
No, Florence wasn’t going to apologize for how she’d gotten here. She was done apologizing. She could be whoever she wanted to be and she would get there however she had to. She had dropped the gun to her side, but now she lifted it again and pointed it at Helen. A cruel smile parted her lips.
“Listen,” Helen said with more apprehension in her tone than before, “we’ll split the money.” Blood was dripping from her right earlobe.
Florence shook her head, still smiling.
“You can have all of it, then. You can even have Maud Dixon. I’ll start over.”
Florence shook her head again.
Helen paused. Then one of her familiar toothless smiles appeared on her bloodstained face, and her eyes shone brightly. She laughed mirthlessly. “You won’t do it, Florence. I know you. You don’t have the nerve.”
Helen stood up shakily, leaning against the doorframe for support.
“Stop,” Florence said. “Sit back down.”
Helen started walking unsteadily through the bedroom, toward the hallway. “Didn’t you learn anything from my story, Florence?” she asked over her shoulder. “You can’t shoot someone in the back and then claim self-defense.”
Florence watched helplessly as the distance between Helen and herself widened. “Stop,” she said again.
Helen paused just beyond the doorway, still facing away from Florence so that a bullet could only enter her body from behind. “What a waste,” she said quietly. “I would have made Florence Darrow great. But you? You’re no one. No one.”
Florence took a deep breath.
No more half measures.
She strode across the room in three long, quick paces. Helen stood just a foot from the railing above the drop down to the courtyard. Florence put her hands on Helen’s back and pushed. Hard.
Helen teetered, windmilling her arms wildly, trying to regain her balance. Then her whole body tumbled over the railing.
A dull thud sounded from below. Florence peered over the edge. Helen lay face-up on the tiled floor, her eyes open and unseeing.
Suddenly, Helen let out a low moan.
Florence hurried downstairs. A circle of blood was growing around Helen’s head like a halo. Her eyes caught Florence’s. There was real fear in them.
“Help,” she said wetly, licking her lips. “Help me.”
Florence stepped briefly into the living room. When she returned, she told Helen, “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“Doctor?”
“No. Sorry. I meant everything’s going to be okay for me.”
Florence lifted the pillow she’d taken from the living room couch and held it over Helen’s face. Helen tried to struggle, but she was too broken. She was like a beetle trying to get off its back. Florence stayed in that position for what felt like a long time, growing nervous and stiff. This would be an inopportune moment for Idrissi to arrive. Finally, Helen’s spasmic clutching quieted and she was still.
Florence pulled back the cushion. Helen’s eyes were open and glassy.
Just then she heard car tires crunching on the gravel outside.
46.
Ramzi’s broad silhouette appeared in the doorway, and Florence threw herself into his arms. The policeman accepted her embrace with obvious discomfort.
“Thank god you’re here,” she cried.
Florence felt his muscles tense as his eyes fell on Helen’s inert form on the ground behind her. He gently but firmly pushed Florence away from him and approached the body. Kneeling, he put two fingers on her neck. He stayed like that for a full minute, occasionally moving his hand a millimeter or two. Then he slowly looked back over his shoulder at Florence. She saw sadness, and horror, in his eyes.
Idrissi stood up and made a short phone call. Putting his phone back in his pocket, he said to Florence, “This is your friend. The one who went back to Marrakesh.” She couldn’t tell whether he was asserting this fact or asking her.
“This is Helen Wilcox,” she responded.
He looked again at the body, then back at Florence.
“And who does that make you?”
“Florence Darrow,” she said in a whisper. And then louder: “I’m Florence Darrow.”
* * *
Half a dozen officials traipsed in and out of Villa des Grenades that afternoon. Dan Massey arrived from the embassy a couple hours after Idrissi. He’d brought Helen Wilcox’s passport with him, the one he’d confiscated from Florence two days earlier.
His knee cracked loudly as he knelt down to compare the photograph to the dead woman. From the way he snapped it shut and clenched his jaw, Florence could tell that he realized he’d been wrong about Florence. She wasn’t Helen Wilcox after all.
Florence sat with Massey and Idrissi in the living room for close to an hour, explaining what had happened. Helen had tried to kill her to steal her identity, because she knew the body on her property in New York would be discovered. First she’d staged a car crash, then she’d come back to finish the job. And nearly succeeded.
They made her go through the story several times, but Florence knew her facts stayed consistent because she was, incredibly, telling the truth. She made only one omission and one alteration. She never mentioned the name Maud Dixon, and she said Helen had fallen over the railing as they grappled for the gun.
“So you thought your boss had died in that car accident, but you said nothing?” Idrissi asked at one point. “To anyone?”
Florence shrugged.
“What if she had survived? What if she could have been saved?”
“But she wasn’t even in the car,” Florence responded, allowing herself a small, serene smile.
Idrissi just stared at her.
“Tell me again what happened in the corridor upstairs, during the argument,” he demanded.
She went through it all again. “She was pointing the gun at me. I lunged at her. We struggled. In the process, Helen fell over.” Her voice cracked. She rubbed her eyes until they were red and raw.
Idrissi continued to glare at her.
“Listen,” Florence said more forcefully. “She’d already tried to kill me once, in the car accident. She’d already killed her best friend. I wasn’t about to underestimate her again.”
Massey cut in. “We were all pawns in her game,” he murmured.
Idrissi and Florence both turned toward him in surprise.
He’d been mostly silent as he listened to Florence’s story, asking few questions and nodding his head often. The case was an embarrassment for him, Florence knew. He hadn’t believed her. He’d fallen for Helen’s invented narrative.
And that was when Florence told them about the body in the pool.
This set off a new flurry of activity as Nick’s body was found, dredged, photographed and—finally—removed. Florence
averted her eyes through all of it.
Instead, she watched Massey’s face register the realization that if he’d just believed Florence, Nick would still be alive. It was then she knew that he wanted the case closed as badly as she did.
Idrissi was the only one left sputtering in anger and disbelief. But what could he do? He had suspicions that her story was off, but no proof that she’d actually done anything illegal.
Finally, they gave her permission to return to Marrakesh in the morning. After all, there could be no trial. The murderer was dead.
47.
Twenty-four hours later, Florence arrived at a dramatically arched entrance on Avenue Hommane Al Fatouaki in Marrakesh. The name of the hotel was spelled out grandly across the top: La Mamounia. She stepped through it and entered a courtyard lush with olive and palm trees. At the far end, a building with an intricately carved facade emerged from the foliage.
The walk from her hotel, a few blocks from the one she’d stayed in with Helen, had taken only ten minutes. This time, she’d navigated the warren of narrow streets with surprising ease and turned onto the bustling avenue feeling invigorated by the chaos rather than overwhelmed.
She wore sunglasses and a wide-brimmed straw hat she’d bought in the souk that afternoon, even though dusk had just started to fall.
Two men in red capes and white fezzes heaved open a pair of wooden doors as she approached. A brightly lit lantern swung dizzily above.
The lobby had the air of a high-end mall, with an Yves Saint Laurent boutique and a famous Parisian macaron shop. It was just another marble-clad temple of luxury commerce. Helen was right, she thought: Solitude and freedom were far more precious forms of opulence.
Florence had called Greta the night before, after Idrissi and Massey had finally left Villa des Grenades, to push back their meeting until the following day, but she hadn’t explained why. Now Florence found her tucked away in a dark corner of the Churchill bar behind the lobby. Her face was lit by the unearthly glow of her phone, and a pair of reading glasses balanced on the tip of her nose.
She jumped when Florence said hello.
“Florence, you surprised me.” She took off her glasses and snapped them shut. “Please, sit.”
Florence settled into the plush velvet chair opposite Greta’s.
“Here’s the man,” Greta said, beckoning a server in a burgundy vest. “Tell him what you’d like.”
“Whatever you’re having,” Florence said, gesturing at the nearly empty wineglass on the table.
“Two more of the same,” Greta told him. “The Pinot Noir.” The man nodded and retreated as unobtrusively as he’d arrived.
“What happened to you?” Greta asked Florence, frowning at her injuries.
“Well that’s one chapter in the story I have to tell you. And I should warn you: It doesn’t have a happy ending.”
Greta raised her eyebrows. “Okay, you have my attention.”
The waiter arrived with their drinks, and they both sat in silence as he carefully arranged the glasses on white doilies. When he left, Florence took a sip of her wine and began.
“What would you say if I told you that Mississippi Foxtrot was a work of nonfiction? That the murder was real, and Helen Wilcox is the one who committed it.”
Florence watched Greta’s face carefully. She saw both concern and disbelief flash across Greta’s features, as if she couldn’t quite decide whether to take Florence seriously. But there was no doubt in Florence’s mind that she was taken aback. Florence had half-wondered whether Greta might have known Helen’s secret this whole time.
“Let me start at the beginning,” Florence said.
She then proceeded to explain what had happened between Jenny and Helen when they were teenagers, how Helen had killed a man and let her friend go to prison for it. How Jenny had gone to visit Helen after she was paroled in February; how Helen had killed her.
Greta listened mostly in silence, but when Florence got to the part about the compost pile, she interrupted: “Florence, these are incredibly serious allegations. How sure are you about all this?”
“Look it up,” Florence said. “Google ‘Helen Wilcox Cairo New York.’” Some of the local papers had already picked up the story; the discovery of a dead body in a compost pile was big news in a small town like Cairo.
Greta hesitated, then started typing into her phone. Florence watched as the blood slowly drained from her face.
“Good god,” Greta whispered.
Florence went on. She explained why Helen had hired her: so that she could fake her own death and assume Florence’s identity, even changing her will so she could keep her money.
Greta shook her head. “I knew something was off when she told me she wanted an assistant. It made no sense. Privacy had always been her principal concern.”
Florence described the car accident. “That’s how I got this,” she said, holding up her cast. As she recounted Helen’s return to Villa des Grenades to complete the job she’d botched, tears welled up in her eyes.
“She had a gun, Greta. I didn’t know what to do.”
“Where would Helen even get a gun?” Greta asked in wonderment.
“Rabat, I think. Where she got the passport. The police are looking into it.”
She doubted this last part was true. Massey certainly wasn’t; perhaps Idrissi would. Either way, Florence wasn’t too concerned. Anything the police found in Rabat would corroborate Florence’s story. Helen was the criminal. She was the victim.
“The police…” Greta said. “So Helen is in custody?”
Florence shook her head and a tear dripped down her cheek. “I’ve never had a gun pointed at me before,” she whispered.
Greta’s voice dropped an octave. “Florence, what’s happened?”
“It was pure instinct. I lunged at her before she could pull the trigger. And in the struggle, Helen went over the railing. She fell down into the courtyard. According to the police, she was killed instantly.”
Greta’s eyes grew wide. “Helen’s dead?”
Florence nodded.
“My god.”
Florence sat silently while Greta absorbed the news.
“My god,” she said again, shaking her head.
“I’m so sorry.”
After a moment, Greta placed her hand on top of Florence’s cast. “I’m sorry too. It must have been a terrible experience, watching Helen die like that.”
“It was awful. I keep asking myself what I could have done differently.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t blame yourself. If she was pointing a gun at you, what choice did you have?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I should have tried harder to reason with her.”
“Reason with Helen Wilcox? That’s a tall order in the best of circumstances.”
Florence smiled sadly. “True.”
Greta shook her head again. “I just can’t believe it.”
“I know. I’m still in shock.” Florence paused. “And I don’t even have as much of a stake in all this as you do.”
Greta glanced up sharply at Florence. “What do you mean?”
“Well, Maud Dixon is dead too, of course.”
“Florence, I assure you, that’s not my primary concern right now,” Greta said, but her tone lacked its usual confidence.
“Of course not. It’s awful that Helen is dead, I just meant that it’s also a tragedy that the world will never get another book by Maud Dixon. She was so talented.”
Greta nodded, rotating her wineglass in one hand. “She was.”
They both sat quietly for a minute. Florence looked around the room, which was filling up quickly, and took another sip of the wine. She quite liked it. It wasn’t as heavy and oppressive as the Châteauneuf-du-Pape that Helen had favored.
Greta had gone back to staring blankly at the tabletop. Florence wondered what she was thinking; her expression was inscrutable.
After a beat or two more, Florence cleared her throat. “Unless…”
Greta looked up. “Unless what?”
“No, you’re right, this isn’t the time to be thinking of things like this.”
“Unless what?” Greta said impatiently.
“I just thought I should mention that I have Helen’s manuscript—for her second novel. It wasn’t what I was typing up in Cairo at all; she was working on something entirely different. The Morocco Exchange. The story was based on the plan she was carrying out while she wrote it; the plan to kill me and steal my identity.”
Greta put down her glass. “Helen finished her second book?”
“It’s not finished. I mean, it’s certainly too early to be calling it a book. But I can already tell that it’s the same caliber as Mississippi Foxtrot.”
The color started to come back to Greta’s cheeks. “You have it here? With you?” She glanced at Florence’s bag on the floor.
“No, I didn’t think that was prudent. It’s in the safe in my hotel room.”
“Florence. I need to see that manuscript.”
“Well, like I said, it still needs a lot of work.”
“That’s okay. We can find someone to help with that. Fitzgerald died before he finished The Last Tycoon.” She let out a small laugh. “Come to think of it, that was a roman à clef too.”
Florence smiled with her. “Actually, Greta, I was thinking I could do it.”
Greta frowned. “Do what?”
“Finish it. I’ve worked with Helen more closely than anyone else, other than you of course. I know her voice. I know how she thinks. Besides, you said I had talent. You even said I reminded you of her.”
Greta nodded slowly. “I did. I did say that.” She took a sip of her drink and glanced at the table next to them, where two young women were staging a photo of their cocktails. “And I stand by it; you do have a lot of potential. But this would be a delicate undertaking, Florence. I think for a project like this, given…everything.… Well, why don’t we just see what we have before we make any decisions about how to move forward.”
Florence stared back at Greta without speaking. The camera at the table next to them flashed. Greta flinched. Florence did not.
Who is Maud Dixon? Page 26