by Adrian Speed
“Ah my dear, I barely need to prompt you at all,” Sir Reginald smiled.
“I’m not a child running through a script,” I said, my blood running hot. “I’m a detective.”
“As is self-evident my dear, I am expressing my admiration as your colleague, not approval as your superior,” Sir Reginald said, lowering the tablet. “Before now I had not witnessed you at work first hand. It is pleasing to see you follow the same reasoning, and take steps all of your own.”
Sir Reginald’s unique lexicon had an irritating way of making his speech sound condescending, even to me, but I know he meant it in earnest. I tried to force myself to relax and accept his words at face value. We were colleagues, he was my senior, and he was pleased I had progressed far enough to take the lead.
My hand unballed itself from a fist. I hadn’t even notice how on edge he had made me.
“Thank you,” I said. “And thank you for letting me take the lead on this case. Feel free to jump in more often, if you want.”
“I’m afraid I’m a little preoccupied my dear corn rose,” Sir Reginald let his gaze fall to the tablet where it stayed.
That was the only bit that stung. Sir Reginald was pleased with my progress, and noticed things that passed me by, all the while filtering hundreds of years of history through his brain. The thought of how quickly he might solve this mystery if he wasn’t reading made his praise ring hollow in my mind, whether he meant it or not.
I opened the door to the examination room softly, so I wouldn’t immediately be noticed. Sylvain and Etienne were crowded over the percolator with a box of tools and some diagnostic instruments, and the others had scattered themselves around the room.
“The cable is definitely drawing power, and the contacts seem clean for something this old,” Sylvain was muttering while he looked the percolator over.
“Perhaps the element itself is faulty?” Etienne suggested.
“Hannah said it cut out, that suggests a short circuit...”
Who’s watching this scene? I thought. Who’s ignoring it? Who is itching to get away? Leopold was still chewing on his pipe, staring down the corridor where his archival materials lay. Adélie was staring at the ceiling, fingers still twitching, looking bored out of her mind. Walter Beauregard was building his house of cards, and yet, he was facing the men fixing the percolator. His hands were building the card castle, but his eyes were watching the electronics.
Interesting habit, for a historian.
“Etienne, could I talk to you?”
Chapter VII
Etienne had an easy expression, still full of youthful optimism despite the wrinkles crawling in around the eyes and along his forehead. He reminded me of the academics I met at Imperial College. They worried about grant money, not personal money, they lived meagrely but did what they loved. The most harrowing experience in their lives was their thesis defence.
But beyond that, Etienne still had a pleasant charm that made him easy to talk to and easy to like. Whether it was his natural smile, or his inviting eyes, or just his relaxed personality I don’t know.
“May I practice my English with you?” Etienne asked as he sat down, in the aforesaid language.
“After we’ve caught the thief, certainly,” I replied in kind and watched the gears tick behind Etienne’s eyes as the English translated itself behind his eyes.
“It’s best, I suppose,” Etienne slipped back to French and looked away sheepishly. “So how can I help?”
“I think it would be best, first, if I understood what you and Adélie are doing here, in detail,” I said.
“We’re photographing the archive for conversion to microfilm,” Etienne repeated. “There’s a machine down in the basement. The process is dull, but in essence we feed it documents and it spits out microfilm copies.” Etienne rolled his hands over themselves in mimicry of some part of the device. “It requires a great deal of skill to operate correctly without damaging the documents we are imaging. With some of the older documents you can disturb the ink simply by breathing too strongly.”
“Which is why you and Adélie were chosen to do it?”
“Exactly, you need someone with document handling experience to take care of them,” Etienne clapped his hands. “Someone who knows how often to change their cotton gloves and when to wash them, the difference between parchment and vellum, understanding the damage that can be done by a single stray skin flake.”
There was a slight pause before my next question because I was waiting for ‘vellum’ to translate on my phone. Even the best of us need help at times.
“How many documents do you scan each day?” I asked when the translation popped up.
“Usually one in a half-hour,” Etienne said. “So we manage fifteen or sixteen a day. It will depend on how much protection is needed for the documents and recalibration the machine requires. We started doing it in chronological order, which was foolish as we have to keep changing the settings on the machinery. When I realised this I wanted to change the order so we grouped them by type instead, but Adélie suggested we keep going as we started so we do not get confused and miss a document. At least for the current archival room.”
“Seems like slow going,” I said, noting Adélie’s reluctance.
“It would be faster with more of us,” Etienne said. “But the archive did not feel like paying for more.” Etienne sucked in air between his teeth. “I can’t blame them really. Even if de Gaulle gave them all the money they wanted they would still struggle to think faster than centuries. They guard the history of France since Charlemagne himself. For Adélie and me to spend three or four years photographing a fraction of the archive is nothing compared to that.”
“You weren’t tempted to go home then, when the riots started?”
“Are you kidding? It made it so much easier to transport the documents when there were just the two of us in the building,” Etienne reflected on the others in the room beyond. “Well, it felt like there were only two of us in the building.”
“You weren’t tempted to join the riots then, either?”
Etienne shot me a contemptuous look, as if I had just suggested he could practice kissing with his sister.
“If Cohn-Bendit went down on one knee before me and begged to kiss my feet I wouldn’t join his rebellion,” Etienne growled. “Oh, he’s doing better than most revolutionaries. For now. He hasn’t burnt down many buildings. There are no dictators worming their way out of the woodwork. For now. Cohn-Bendit and his followers firmly believe in their communist principles but how long will that last? How long did it last for the Bolsheviks? How long did it last for the Cubans? How long was it from the fall of the Bastille to the crowning of Napoleon? If the government doesn’t crush them before long a dictator will rise among them.” Etienne cast his eyes to the ground and tried to hide the inferno building in them. “With their workers councils and student councils and great discussion sessions they want to believe they are instilling true democracy, but we already live in a democracy. The one thing they utterly cannot stand is the idea that the majority of France stands opposed to them. Not because we are unenlightened, but the opposite. We’ve travelled down this road before.”
Etienne’s natural smile had faded into a frown and he aged a year with every degree the smile had fallen. He didn’t just have thin hair, he was going bald. He didn’t just have wrinkles, the worries of the last twenty years had stamped themselves into his face.
Thirty years before 1968 was 1938, the thought suddenly woke up and started hammering on my brain. As an absolute minimum, Etienne’s childhood was spent under Nazi occupation. Depending on his age, he might remember it with much more clarity.
“That’s why I’m not there, anyway,” Etienne rubbed his eyes to get rid of fatigue. “Even if they succeed and I’ll be forced to salute Commandant Cohn-Bendit next year at least I’ll know I didn’t feed their rebellion. I stayed here and did my job. Which is more than most of the country can claim.”
“I understand,” I
nodded, almost wishing I hadn’t brought it up. I never thought I’d see such a mild demeanour turn so bitter. “Does Adélie feel the same?”
“I think Adélie would have been throwing cobblestones at the gendarmes weeks ago if it wasn’t for me,” Etienne’s smile started to return. “Adélie is like a sea storm. A thundercloud boils out of the horizon in minutes, throws the little ship around the bay, and then disappears in an instant. I just make sure she is too busy to get angry. At least, I could do that until the treaty theft.”
“You were the first to discover the theft; could you take me through what happened?” I asked.
“Adélie was the first to discover it, truly,” Etienne said. “The process had become so machine-like to me that I simply picked up the next document in the archive. It was Adélie who realised we’d skipped over the treaty. When we searched, we couldn’t find it, and that was when we discovered the lock had been burnt out.”
“You didn’t notice when you tried to unlock it to enter the room?”
“How often do you look at locks, Mademoiselle Delaronde?” Etienne put his head on one side. “I put my key in the lock, turned it, and the door opened. I had no reason to think anything had changed from the last time I’d done it.”
“What happened after you discovered the lock had been melted?”
“Well I ran up to tell Director Michel.”
“And Adélie?”
“She followed me.”
“At the same time?”
“No, slower. I didn’t tell her where I was going, I bolted for the director without a word.”
“What happened after you told the director?”
“He followed me back down to the archive room and took a look at the lock. He didn’t believe it at first, because the building was locked up so tightly.”
“Just the two of you?”
“Adélie and that archivist... Madeleine? They followed.”
“And after that?”
“The director cursed for a while, and eventually settled on writing to you rather than alerting the police,” Etienne said. “I just hope the overnight delay in your arrival wasn’t too long.”
“Did you see anyone suspicious during the day?”
“I didn’t see anyone except those outside this door. If you consider them suspicious.”
“No-one took an interest in your work? Or the room? Or seemed to spend an unusual amount of time nearby?”
“No, no, and no,” Etienne shrugged. “The archives are very large. There are only seven of us here including the director. I’d see Madeleine sometimes near the director’s office, and I’d see Leopold chewing on his pipe staring at some old proclamation, but that was it.”
“There are eight, including the cleaner,” Sir Reginald’s voice rung out from the shadows.
“Well, yes,” Etienne made a face like someone who had walked into a cobweb. “But the point remains.”
“Alright, thank you Etienne I think we understand enough now,” I said. “I’ll let you get back to the others.”
“Thank you.” Etienne stood, nodded to both of us and left.
When we were left alone I felt the texture of the air change around us. Sir Reginald knew something. I could feel it trying to draw out a question from me.
“How close are you?” Sir Reginald broke the silence.
“I have... ideas.” I didn’t want to admit how far the answer seemed. “And you?”
“Still waiting on one or two pieces...” Sir Reginald said. “But as far as I am concerned it can only be one of two people.” How could he be that far ahead? How much had Etienne’s interview told him that it hadn’t told me? “Barring their outside accomplice, of course.”
“Their outside accomplice?” I tried to say but my brain caught it before I spoke. Of course, if the thief was still in the building then they’d need an accomplice to smuggle the treaty away. Otherwise the treaty would still be here. Any of the academics who disappeared with the treaty would be instantly suspicious, but to pass it off to an outside accomplice would make for the perfect alibi. All they’d have had to do is unlock the door, pass the treaty out, and go back to their work.
There were only two plausible exits. The employees entrance that only the director, Madeleine, Etienne and Adélie could use, and the archive entrance, barred and alarmed from the inside while all the staff were away. If someone bypassed the alarm the same way they had for the archive room, perhaps they could have used the main entrance. There had been make-up on the door...
“Where do you think the control system for the alarm is?” I asked.
“Let’s ask the director,” Sir Reginald said with a smile. “I think that’s going to be one of the final pieces.”
I wasn’t as sure, but I tried to maintain the same positive attitude.
“Onward then,” I imitated Sir Reginald when he was hot on the trail. “To the control system, and to the final answers of this puzzle!” I swung open the door to the examination room. Sylvain was screwing the casing closed on the percolator with an air of satisfaction.
“You got it working then?” I asked as brightly as I could.
“I acted as a mere tool,” Sylvain said as he finished tightening the screws. “Walter was the one who realised there was a short in the power switch.”
“What can I say?” Walter Beauregard sat behind his completed house of cards with his arms folded. He still managed to shrug. “You and Etienne had tried just about everything else.”
So that made three, I thought. Three people skilled enough with electronics to bypass the alarm. I tried to hide a smile.
“Director Michel, could you please take us to the alarm control panel?”
*****
The director led us up several floors to the main offices in the upper floors of the original Hotel de Soubise. There was quite a view of Paris from up here. Not the best, but you could see just high enough over the roofs for their slate to run all the way to the horizon.
“There is a master control switch by the entrance,” the director explained as he led us between desks in the office until he came to the security officer’s room. “That is used to set the alarms at the end of an evening. The museum alarms are on a separate line as well, set by a master control near the till.” The director unlocked the security officer’s door and led us inside. “But this is the control board.”
It was set against the wall behind the security officer’s desk. It was grey and covered with locks and large plastic light up buttons. Right now all the lights were lit up, showing all the alarms were set. If someone opened a door without a key, or broke a pane of glass anywhere in the building, the alarm would go. Everything was as it should be.
“Who has keys to this room?” I asked.
“Myself, the chief of security, but he’s at home, and I gave a set to Madeleine so that she could reset the alarms if they went off,” the director said.
“Just you three?”
“Just us three,” the director nodded. “I do know a little about security, Mademoiselle Delaronde. We trust as few key holders as possible. I wouldn’t even have given a set to Madeleine if I could help it, but the fear of a false alarm attracting the rioters was too high.”
“Do you think I could see Madeleine’s desk?”
The director froze for a moment. For a few horrible moments I thought he might say no. “... Yes, I think so.” The director turned and started to walking towards a desk, and then jerked towards another one as memory kicked in. “This is her desk, here.” He announced and tapped a firm old piece of wood that had been piled down with box files.
I looked around it carefully. There was a dip pen and ink in one corner, along with some Bic rollerballs. Paperwork was strewn across the desk but arranged into ragged piles, as if the sorting process had been suddenly brought to a halt. There were few clues to the owner initially but the longer I looked the more I saw. A silk cleaning cloth buried under a pile suggested the owner of the desk wore glasses, like Madeleine, and
a long red hair had curled its way between the pens. I ignored the desk top and crouched down to get at the drawers hanging underneath.
Piles of stationery sat in one, the normal stuff: scissors, paperclips, elastic bands, a hole punch, a stapler and a ball of string. The next drawer down had some more personal effects. There was a novel inside, the very small French style with thin paper and thinner borders. I didn’t recognise the title, but flipping open the cover revealed a note. M, from T, 19th April 1968, in a flowing cursive script. Madeleine hadn’t seemed the sort to use a nickname, or a cipher. But that modern date made it unlikely it was a second-hand dedication. A bottle of rosewater sat next to the novel, along with some handkerchiefs.
The final drawer didn’t seem to contain anything interesting. They were conservation periodicals, sharing journal articles about the care and study of historic collections. They were all the same issue suggested they had been simply slid in the drawer to get them off the desk rather than collected over time. However, as I rifled through the magazines my hand brushed against rigid plastic.
Carefully removing the magazines I revealed a clamshell make-up case. It was cheap, heavy, greasy stuff of a very pale colour. Looking further I managed to dig out a stick of eyeliner and a mascara brush from in amongst the periodicals no-one would ever want to read. A perfect little hiding place.
I thought about the ‘friend’ Madeleine had been staying with for the last several nights, and brought out the sample bag of make-up I had scraped from the bars of the main entrance. With such a tiny sample it was hard to make a perfect match by eye, but they did look the same.
So Madeleine had caked herself in make-up she never normally wore, turned off the alarms and unlocked the main door. What for? To pass out the treaty? She could come and go as she pleased through the employee entrance. Why wear make-up to pass a treaty out? It didn’t make any sense.
Sir Reginald had been watching me from a distance, but took an interest in a vase of roses sitting on the desk. They were fresh, and Sir Reginald took one to his nose.
“More beautiful than fragrant, sadly,” Sir Reginald said.