The Little Burgundy: A Jeanne Dark Adventure

by Bill Jones Jr.

  His answer was clear. “If you have a girlfriend, you might want to either get engaged or go ahead and break it off now. You two won’t be seeing each other for a while.”

  After much internal debate, I picked option A and bought a ring. My girlfriend chose option B and broke off the relationship. It was precipitated by the fact that at their single meeting, Dark began referring to her as that “femme Américaine stupide jaune” and complaining that “even her name is yellow.” For the record, her name was Iris. I never saw two people dislike each other so quickly and completely.

  Iris, who spoke fluent French, exacerbated things by screaming, “I’m not yellow! You’re yellow!” despite having no idea what that meant. In any event, Jeanne’s behavior was enough to convince Iris that I’d slept with my new partner, and she threw my engagement ring back at me and stopped taking my calls. My now-ex-girlfriend out of the picture, I was doomed to spend every waking hour with Jeanne Dark, with no prospect of a love life, since the following week, Dark announced our relationship we would remain solely business partners. The woman seemed not to even notice the damage she’d done.

  I didn’t know what London would bring, but I was getting the feeling that the universe was positioning us for something major—no other ties, no other distractions. I hoped Dark’s confidence in her abilities was justified. Something told me we were going to need them.

  3 - London, Underground

  Eight hours after an early-morning call from Hardesty, Dark and I were on a British Airways flight to London’s Heathrow airport. We still hadn’t been briefed on the case we had been assigned, but that was normal protocol. There was no reason to read us into the classified material before we reached our destination. All we’d been given is our contact’s name and an address. An uncomfortable seven-and-a-half hours after departing Baltimore’s Thurgood Marshall BWI airport, we were nearing touchdown in chilly, overcast England. I never could get much sleep on planes and the evening-to-morning flight had my brain scattershot. You would think people who travel a lot would become impervious to jet lag. The exact opposite seems to be the case. It didn’t help that the Captain announced our impending approach into Heathrow as soon as I’d drifted off, and I awoke to find Dark stretched out across my seat and hers. True, the confines of the plane and hours of sitting caused her a good deal of pain in her lower extremities, but I think she was just punishing me. She was as alert as ever, jotting hand-scribbled notes in French in a leather notebook she always had with her. She was using her legs as a table and me as her pillow.

  She was shielding her eyes from the glare of the cabin’s lights with a felt cloche hat—a black, bell-shaped contraption wrapped in a silk band the color of new gold. She looked as if she’d stepped out of a 1920s fashion magazine, complete with long skirt and shoes to match. The only thing that gave away that she was a citizen of the 21st century was that she was reclining against a chocolate-colored black guy. I reasoned that outside of Josephine Baker, that was pretty risqué for the early 20th century, even for the French.

  “Whatcha working on?”

  She jumped at my question, as if she had forgotten I was even there. “Bonjour,” she said. Wincing from the movement, she slid her legs back to the floor and sat up straight. “Sorry, I just needed a little more room. I didn’t think you would mind.”

  “It’s okay. I’m just sorry you moved away.”

  “Foss …” she started, frowning. I waved off the discussion and she relaxed. It was resolved as far I was concerned. Strictly business. She glanced at me and I could just catch a glint of reflected sunlight from under the deep shadow of her hat. Dark blinked and pulled on her shades. “I was just making some assessments of what Monsieur Hardesty has us chasing in London.”

  That aroused my interest and I sat even straighter than the upright and locked position the flight attendants were demanding. “He spoke to you about it?”

  “Briefly, but it is what he did not say that has me wondering.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Your specialty is deception detection and behavior modeling. Mine is varied, but focused for M. Hardesty on tracking undesirables.”

  I started to offer that I had varied talents as well, but instead, said, “Okay, and?”

  “He never mentioned whom our contact is tracking.”

  I leaned in to soften my voice. She’d smartly started the discussion when the Captain’s announcements began, but you can’t be too cautious in our line of work. “I figured that’s the classified portion of the mission. Our contact will probably give us a whole dossier on whoever it is.”

  I looked over at her. She was sitting erect, looking at the seat ahead of her with the stubborn set of jaw I’d begun to recognize meant my words were bouncing off of her deaf ears. She closed one eye—her thinking face—and shook her head. “I do not think so.”

  I sighed, already exasperated at her self-assuredness. “Well, what are you thinking, then?”

  “I am wondering who was murdered.”

  “Murdered?” I said it too loudly and she hushed me. “Murdered?” I repeated, softer. “How’d you get to that?”

  “M. Hardesty has a habit of telling us what he cannot tell us, oui?” I thought about that and nodded my agreement. She added, “He would have said, ‘You two are headed to London. I can’t tell you whom you’re tracking, so just get your butts on the next flight out.’” I laughed, because her imitation of Hardesty’s gravel pit of a voice was spot on, except Hardesty would never have used the word whom correctly. She continued, “Since he did not, I toyed with different possibilities and came up with two I like. One, we are tracking someone so high profile that even he was scared into following proper protocols. Or two, he did not mention we are to track someone because there is no one to track.”

  “And you eliminated the first, and by the way, more logical possibility, why?” I asked just as the plane touched down and jostled my addled brain even more.

  “Because, if you were tracking one of the most dangerous people in the world, would you outsource it to an ex-soldier scribe and a crippled French woman?”

  “I would if the French woman was you.”

  Dark puckered a kiss at me. “That’s why we are partners. However, your government is not so easily swayed. If it were, I could afford to buy my own place in which to play my jazz instead of invading yours.”

  “Yeah, and you probably could have afforded pants to wear around the house too.”

  Dark pulled her cane from under the seat and stood. “Just for that, no pants in the hotel room either.”

  “Hotel room? As in singular?” I asked.

  “Good hotels in London are three to five hundred dollars a night. I told you, I am a poor French woman, one who cannot even afford pants.”

  “The government is paying our expenses,” I said.

  She wasn’t listening and left me talking to myself as she filed out of the plane.

  “You two make such a nice couple,” said an older British woman, grinning through sallow teeth. I smiled a polite thank you and hurried after Dark. The old busybody couldn’t have been more wrong.

  ***

  Jeanne and I were staying in a hotel in London’s west end, very near the Marble Arch tube station and directly across from Hyde Park. It was lovely, but I was beat by the time we checked in, and I headed straight for bed. We had an Executive Double Room, which was a polite way of saying nice hotel room for two people who will not be having sex. It was fine, but nowhere near what you could get in an American hotel for that kind of money. I’m not certain what the damage would have been for a suite, but we knew Uncle Sam wasn’t going to spring for it. I could have stayed at the Travelodge for a lot less, but like I said, it was Uncle Sam’s dime. Dark sat on her bed and worked on the computer while I tried to sleep. It took me a while to stop thinking about inviting her over to mine for a tumble, but reminding myself of the complications that would arise if I did soothed me into a fitful slumber. I suppose that indicates that
Iris was right about my feelings regarding Dark, even if I’d not attempted to act on them until after I’d been dumped.

  When I awoke, Jeanne was sitting in a chair that she’d pulled to a window, speaking softly in French into what looked like an iPod. I tiptoed past, so as not to interrupt, and heard her say, clear as a bell, “I already told you he was black.” My French is barely passable, but I understood that much. Needless to say, it got my attention. Figuring the living situation was awkward enough, I let it go and went to the bathroom to freshen up. I reemerged suited, invigorated, and ready for my morning. Unfortunately, we were in England, and it was almost three in the afternoon.

  “We have a meeting with the Metropolitan Police in an hour,” Dark said. “I spoke to M. Hardesty while you were beauty napping.”

  “Hardesty speaks French?”

  “No, silly, earlier. Just now, I was speaking with my sister on the video camera. She thinks you are handsome. However, she is very near-sighted.”

  I was still too grumpy from jet lag for humor. “What did Hardesty tell you?”

  “He told me we have a meeting with the Police at 4:00.” She tilted her sunglasses lower on her face. “Weren’t you listening to me?”

  “No, I mean didn’t he give you any other details?”

  “Non. We are to meet a Detective Inspector Arnold and a colleague of Hardesty’s, a Monica Samuels.”

  “Well, that’s something. What do we know about them?”

  She shrugged. “Not so much. Very well-balanced names. Miss Samuels is American. I believe she has worked in the London bureau for a number of years, but likely less than five. Inspector Arnold is more of a babysitter than an actual source of information.” She stood, grimacing a bit from the effort and rubbed her hip.

  “Wait, well-balanced names?”

  “Oui. The colors mix well. Nothing alarming or disruptive.” She was speaking synesthesia again. I wasn’t about to have her launch into another diatribe on good versus bad color combinations. “Hardesty gave you a briefing on them over the phone?”

  “Non. Only their names.”

  “Then how do you know Samuels is a long-term expatriate and this Arnold guy isn’t a real player?”

  “Well, first of all, he is a cop.”

  “And you don’t like cops?”

  “Non.”

  I spent a lot of time working with and behind cops. In my experience, even cops don’t like cops, so I couldn’t frame much of an argument. Dark walked to the small closet where our coats hung and stood there. After four beats, I realized she was waiting for me to help her with hers. I did. “Hardesty forwarded me an encrypted email that said Samuels was, ‘looking forward to strategizing’ with us and that she would meet us at four.” She showed it to me. It was to Hardesty, from the woman, which he forwarded to Jeanne and me. No one else was on copy.

  “That it?”

  Dark scrolled the email. “No, she also said, ‘Ta, Monica.’”

  She opened the door, stepped out and let it close behind her. That was my signal to get a move on. I hurried on my coat and followed her to the elevator. “I give up,” I said. “How does a ‘looking forward to meeting you’ email give you anything at all except their names?”

  She frowned at me, giving me the Are you an idiot? look I’d come to know well in the past six weeks. Of course, the answer generally turned out to be the affirmative. “She used the word ‘strategizing,’ spelling it the American fashion, with a Z. Had she been here a very long time, it is likely she would have adapted to the British fashion by now.”

  I felt stupid. That should have been obvious. I wasn’t giving up, however. “Well, how do you know she’s not fresh off the boat, so to speak?”

  The door opened to the lobby and Dark stepped out. Without turning, she asked, “How many Americans do you know who say ‘Ta’ instead of ‘Thanks?’ She’s been here awhile. Changing one’s spelling, however, takes longer than simple greetings and niceties. It took me four years of living in the U.S. to stop using the UK spelling.”

  I caught up to her and to the point she was making. I was being told to pay attention to every detail coming up, because we had no idea what would be important. I figured it was time to signal I’d be ready. “And you decided Arnold is a babysitter because he wasn’t copied on the email, or even mentioned.”

  She nodded, stepping into the taxi she’d arranged to meet us. “Exactly. Clearly, she did not consider him to be important.”

  I looked at the firm set of her jaw and then gave the cabbie the address. “But I’m guessing you don’t share her opinion,” I said.

  She looked at me and gave a half smile. “I do not dismiss the police as readily as some do.”

  “Especially those too rude to copy their chief liaison at the police on an email that confirms a meeting he needs to attend.”

  “You are going to be a good partner,” she said, glancing at me.

  I felt stupidly proud of that compliment.

  ***

  The meeting turned out to be in the basement of an old stone building near the city’s outskirts that looked as if the grime of a thousand years was baked into its façade. Dark and I waited in the lobby, which was dimly lit and furnished, by all appearances, with my grandmother’s old attic furniture. I knew the musty stench wasn’t my imagination when Dark began muttering about the fetor of wet, gray boots. I would have added the words fungus-infused, but she made her point. We were greeted by the Detective Inspector, a silver-haired cop with a weather-beaten face that made me think he’d spent most of his life as a bobby on the beat, hanging out in smoky pubs after work. He’d earned the prefix of detective, meaning he’d been trained in criminal investigations, so I judged he was likely sharper than his droopy-eyed expression bespoke. He was tall, at least a couple of inches more than me, though he had a stooped aspect that made me think he was avoiding low-hanging objects none of the rest of us could see.

  “Welcome to the Institute,” he said, swallowing Dark’s small hand with his catcher’s mitt.

  “Institute for what?” Dark asked.

  “If you find out, do let me know,” he answered, smiling at her. He took to Dark right away, chatting her up in the lift on the way to the basement. The lift’s buttons weren’t lit once we passed the first level below ground. Arnold kept the car going by use of a key that he held while nodding and talking. I could just catch a glimpse of lights through the door crack as we descended and counted five levels down. I marveled that the old building could have such an extensive underground structure with London’s ubiquitous subway system all about.

  The door opened, ushering in a gush of stale, antiseptic air that reminded me of prison hospitals. Arnold removed his key and extended an overlong arm to guide Dark out. In contrast to the ground floor, this level was brightly lit, with blaring, blue-white fluorescent lighting that buzzed so loudly I thought it might give Dark seizures. She held one hand before her eyes, reentered the elevator, and reached in her purse for a pair of nearly opaque sunglasses that looked as if she’d mated John Lennon’s wire frames to Ray Charles’s 1960s shades. With the slim, mid-calf slacks and the tight, high-collared jacket she wore, plus that sleeked back pixie cut, she looked more like a movie star emerging from that elevator than a detective.

  “Terribly sorry, Dr. Dark,” Arnold said. “I should have remembered to have them turn down the bloody lights a few hundred thousand watts. It’s so bright in here I should wonder any of the staff is still fertile.”

  “It’s okay, Detective Inspector.” She leaned in close and he met her gesture halfway. “Frankly, it’s a good excuse to change glasses. I have so many, I never get a chance to show them all off.”

  Arnold gave a laugh and started down the corridor with Dark holding her cane with her right hand and tucking her free arm around his. I followed closely behind, and to show me she was still on the case, she flashed me five fingers with her left hand, letting me know she thought it unusual to be so deep underground herself. We roun
ded the corridor, passing a number of unmarked, windowless doors on either side. It was similar to many of the secure facilities I’d been in, with each door wired with its own access codes. The hallway was claustrophobic and depressing, which I guessed was the reason for having an array of lighting brighter than the sun. Nothing cheerier than being able to see your prison in vivid detail.

  Arnold stopped at a room marked only with the number “218” and waved a card in front of a proximity reader that almost blended in with the wall. The technology was standard, but still seemed anachronistic in the old building. Somehow, the ancient dungeon had been upgraded into a 21st century hospital. I found the tight security to be worrisome.

  As if reading my thoughts, which I’d begun to expect, Dark spoke up. “How did they manage to dig out the lower two levels below the old asylum to make this space? I assume they must have rerouted some old tube tunnels, perhaps.” She looked around, her forehead creased and jaw fixed. “It reeks of misery and madness in here.”

  Arnold stopped, just as the door clicked, and wiped his brow dramatically. “They told me you were sort of a whiz at detective work, but I must say, until now I assumed they’d been exaggerating.” Dark smiled. “You are right, of course. This used to be an old mental hospital. In fact, she’s even older than she looks. The main buildings and these underground floors were already here when they started digging the tunnels for the trains in the nineteenth century. Time was there was a tube station under that little bit of park across the street. Must have made the citizenry nervous to have easy access to the trains so close to the asylum.” He ushered us in the room and the door slammed shut behind us.

  Dark jumped at the sound, wincing as if in pain. “That was a very bright noise,” she said. “Very apropos for a mental hospital.”

  “Indeed,” said Arnold, “but necessary. It’s imperative that the integrity of this room is maintained.” He opened a door to what I’d assumed was an office or meeting room, but which instead contained rolling racks on which hung white environmental suits. I gave Arnold a hard look, but Dark seemed unsurprised.