With that settled, the last of the ice cream eaten, and Monsieur Franceschi’s urgings about coffee fended off, I left Mon Petit Cafe and walked the half-block home. I buzzed myself into the building and crossed the lobby, past the deserted apartment of the concierge, who was a member of the laissez-faire school of caretaking. In the months I had lived there I’d barely seen her and wasn’t even sure of her name. Since the elevator had been known to stop between floors for long and nerve-racking intervals, I had gotten into the habit of climbing the three flights to my apartment. I arrived puffing, as always, and was so involved in greeting and feeding Twinkie that it was probably ten minutes before I noticed the envelope, which had apparently been slipped under the door with enough force to sail it beneath the coat stand.
I wasn’t especially curious. “Georgia Lee Maxwell” was typed on the outside. I thought it was a notice about the rent, or a hand-delivered invitation. But the typed note inside was in English:
Georgia Lee Maxwell—
The mirror of Nostradamus destroyed Pierre Legrand. Stay away from the mirror of Nostradamus.
You are warned.
I picked up Twinkie, and the two of us sat at my dining table, with the note on the table in front of us. Twinkie eventually got tired of looking at it and purred herself to sleep. I knew I would have to go down and see if the concierge had returned, although surely she hadn’t, and even if I did find her she wouldn’t have seen anybody coming up to shove threatening notes under my door. I knew I would have to tell the police, too, although no doubt this was nothing but the work of some nut who, like Madeleine Bellefroide, Monsieur Franceschi, and countless other people, was impressed because I had said a few words on television.
So I’d been warned. What was I supposed to do? Fold? The more I thought about it, the more ticked off I got. I thought about Daddy. Daddy was not the sort of father who gave out a lot of sage advice, since he always had better things to do with his time. He did give me one maxim to live by, though: Don’t come back without the story.
To me, that meant if you go out after a story, get the story. Don’t come back whining that the car broke down, or the person wouldn’t talk to you, or they moved it up an hour and you missed it, or somebody sent you a note warning you off.
What counted was getting the story. And that’s what I was going to do.
Long Distance
The same dapper Criminal Brigade inspector who had interrogated me at the Bellefroide appeared soon after I’d called to report the letter. He was exactly as he’d been at our first encounter— just as well dressed, and not a bit chummier. When his eyes scanned the room, I was as uncomfortable as if I’d hidden the mirror in a kitchen cupboard. He looked at the letter and said, “English,” making me wonder whether its being written in my native tongue was damning evidence against me.
Reluctantly, I invited him to sit down. He settled on my mustard brocade sofa. “Do you have a typewriter?”
“A… yes, I do. But it’s at my office.” Kitty and I were talking word processor, but neither of us had the money.
“I see. But might you have something here that was typed on it?”
Really! Annoyed at this blatant suggestion that I’d written the damn letter to myself, I unearthed half a page of an abandoned “Paris Patter” piece on the Sunday afternoon organ concerts at Notre Dame.
He glanced at it, then at the letter, and said, “We took your fingerprints yesterday, at the museum, didn’t we?”
“What— Yes. Yes, you did.”
“Good. We have them on file, then, to compare with any we find on the letter.”
“Look. I didn’t write the letter, and I resent—”
He cut me off, his expression bland. “Please understand, Madame. We must consider all possibilities. If the letter had been typed on your machine— and after my superficial comparison I would guess it was not— that doesn’t mean you typed it yourself. And as for the fingerprints, surely you touched the letter when you opened it. We must know your prints to distinguish them from others that may be on it.”
“I see,” I muttered. I was blushing like a chastised schoolgirl.
He leaned back, hands folded on the vest of his perfect blue suit. Although it was late in the day, the knot of his tie snuggled in the V of his collar as if it were sewn there. I kept wanting to blurt out a confession, even though I wasn’t guilty of anything. Or at least, not guilty of much. I was guilty of not mentioning Madeleine Bellefroide and her offer to ransom the mirror, and that’s what was throwing me off.
He asked a few more questions— the circumstances of finding the letter, whether I had any suspicions of my own— and left. I tottered into the kitchen, hunted up a bottle of calvados I’d been thinking I might give somebody for Christmas, and opened it. Fortunately, I’d had several sips by the time the phone rang.
I was tempted to let it go. I didn’t want any more anonymous information or advice. I eyed it warily through a couple of rings before picking up the receiver and answering.
“Georgia?”
Only one person calls me Georgia instead of Georgia Lee. It sounded like he was across the street, and I prayed that was owing to a good connection and not actual proximity. “Hi, Ray.” I sat down on the bed, glad I’d brought my glass with me.
“What’s happening over there, girl? Today’s paper says you were someplace where somebody got killed.”
So the Sun had picked up my name from the wire service stories about the incident at the Bellefroide. They’d probably been trying to reach me. “Yes, that’s right. It was just— bad luck.”
“I called your Mama to get your phone number. She’s having a fit.”
“I talked to her last night.” She was having a fit. Hearing from Ray, who she’d spent years hoping would be her second son-in-law, wouldn’t have helped, either.
“So listen, Georgia. Are you all right?”
Ray owns a Bay City drugstore chain. He does his own Ray’s Drugs television commercials. When he wants to sound sincere and concerned, he knows how to do it, and it’s amazing how he can make you believe him. “I’m fine. There’s really nothing to worry about.” I sounded so quavery it was embarrassing.
“Aw, honey. I hope you don’t mind that I called. You don’t, do you?”
Of course I did, and he knew it, but I wasn’t going to writhe for his edification this time. “No. Not at all.”
“And you’re O.K.?”
“Fine.”
“Fine as frog hair?”
“Fine as frog hair.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear that.” When I didn’t reply, he went on, “Do you mind if I ask you something?”
“Ask.” I knew what was coming. I could’ve written it out before he said a word.
“Why don’t you come on back, now? You’ve made your point. You could’ve gotten hurt bad over there.”
“Ray—”
“The beach house is on the market, Georgia. There won’t be any more of that.”
“That” being the women— once it was actually a high school cheerleader, and he’s lucky he wasn’t arrested— he used to take out there when I was otherwise engaged. Thinking about it got me mad, in spite of myself. “What difference does the beach house make? A tomcat can do it in one backyard as well as another.”
He laughed. “That’s why I miss you. You could always see right through me.”
Always. So why had I wasted the crucial years between thirty and thirty-five letting him twist me, turn me, string me along, and string me out? Was it for his sun-streaked chestnut hair, green eyes, and the best tan north of Key West? For his five shopping mall drugstores? Or just— and this was the explanation I hated the most— that I was so desperate to have a presentable man around that I didn’t care how shabbily he treated me? Tears started to my eyes. I blotted them with the back of my hand and said, “I live in Paris now, Ray.”
“But look what happened to you there. It’s dangerous.”
“What happened was unfor
tunate. But I live here now.”
“Becky misses you, too.”
This was dirty pool. Becky was Ray’s teenage daughter, a gawky, withdrawn girl who had liked me a lot.
I steeled myself. “Give Becky my best. Tell her I’m doing fine. But—”
“I mean it, Georgia.”
“So do I.”
Silence. Then he said, “Hey. It’s almost two-thirty in the afternoon here. What time is it over there?”
“Almost eight-thirty at night.”
“I’ll call you again sometime. O.K.?”
“I don’t think—”
“Your old friends have a right to know what’s going on, if you’re going to mess around and get yourself in trouble.”
“All right, then.” I was too exhausted to argue.
“You take care of yourself. I mean that.”
“I will.”
His “Bye, honey,” was almost a whisper, and then the connection was broken. I hung up and swallowed the rest of my calvados in one burning gulp.
He had managed, in his customary style, to wipe me out completely. The thing about Ray was, he couldn’t stand to have anything he could actually get. When he could have me, which in the past years had been pretty much whenever he crooked his finger, I was lower than dirt. But let me pick up and go to Paris, and I was worth a transatlantic phone call and a lot of sweet talk. This time he may have wiped me out, but he hadn’t fooled me, and I wasn’t fooling myself, either. Let him go exercise his charm on somebody with fewer troubles than I had. I indulged in an explosive little crying jag, but it didn’t last too long. Yes, let’s face it, part of the reason I came to Paris was to get away from Ray, although I’d broken up with him— for the umpteenth time— before the Cecilia Driscoll crisis arose. What I’d told him was true, though. I lived here now. And God knows I had enough to think about without brooding about him. I blew my nose. Tomorrow I would tackle the Speculatori.
On the Rue Jacob
The next morning I felt better than I’d expected, with neither an emotional hangover from the phone call nor a brandy hangover from the calvados. The weather was crisp and beautiful for the third day in a row, a circumstance unprecedented in my Paris experience. I set out fairly early after breakfast, taking the Metro to St. Germain des Prés and emerging next to the Place St. Germain. Sun spilled into the square. Across from the ancient church, the Deux Magots cafe had set up outside tables and was doing a brisk midmorning coffee trade. I marched righteously past the lolling customers. I had better things to do than stretch my legs out, smoke, drink cappuccino, and read the latest political scandal in the newspapers. I crossed the Place and plunged down the traffic-choked Rue Bonaparte to the Rue Jacob.
This was a fashionable, albeit semi-bohemian, part of town. The Rue Jacob was a street of bookstores, galleries, antique shops, and boutiques of various sorts. The address Mallet’s secretary had given me turned out to be a quaint-looking bookstore called Le Jardin Métaphysique. Several decks of tarot cards were fanned out in the front window, which also contained a crystal ball, a poster showing acupuncture points, and a few books, including a treatise on alchemy and, I was interested to see, a volume titled Centuries: The Prophecies of Nostradamus. Above this display, prisms hung from strings. All of it looked as if it had been there a while. The cards and poster were fading, the covers of the books were curling, and I could see dust on the crystal ball.
I was searching for someone named Bruno Blanc, but I didn’t know if he owned the shop, or worked here, or just used it as a mail drop. As I strained to see into the interior, I suddenly got jumpy. Feeling vulnerable and conspicuous, I glanced around, but the street was placid in the sun. A couple of elderly women carrying string bags went by, chatting; a blond man leaned in a doorway across the street, eating french fries out of a cardboard tub; a young woman pushed a stroller carrying a tiny boy and an enormous white teddy bear.
Still, I wasn’t ready to go in. I had a feeling that my visit to Le Jardin Métaphysique would be significant, and I wanted to be sure I was prepared. I turned away.
Nearby I found a small cafe. Its two sidewalk tables were decorated with black-eyed Susans in blue bottles. I took a seat and had a cappuccino after all.
As I sipped, I told myself to stop wasting time. I would go into the store, browse around, get the lay of the land. Then I’d ask for Bruno Blanc. Totally straightforward. I paid the check and started off again.
The blond man who’d been eating the fries was now, I noticed, studying the postcards on a rack outside a papeterie. It occurred to me that he must be waiting for somebody, and then I pushed open the door of Le Jardin Métaphysique and forgot all about him.
A bell above the door jangled as I entered, scaring the wits out of me. It summoned a willowy girl who asked, without particular enthusiasm, if she could help me. When I said I wanted to look around, she didn’t press the issue but subsided behind a counter. I took off my coat and wandered through the cramped, musty-smelling aisles, inspecting volumes on witchcraft, astrology, and ESP. It was so quiet that every time I leafed through a book the sound of the pages turning seemed deafening. None of this lowered my tension level.
If I continued this course of action I might unearth tips on how to read tarot cards, but I was unlikely to find Bruno Blanc. I kicked the next phase of the plan into gear by asking the clerk where I might find him. Indicating a vague direction with her head she said, “Upstairs. Second floor.”
The stairs were behind a curtain at the rear of the shop. I climbed to the second-floor landing, where I found a door of dark wood. There was no name on the bell, no brass plaque saying Speculatori National Headquarters. I rang. When that didn’t raise anybody I leaned on the bell, and a few seconds later the door opened.
The woman who stood there had pure white hair that trailed over her shoulders in wispy split ends that made me long to wield a pair of scissors. Her eyes were wide and blue, her face pale and devoid of makeup. It was hard to guess her age. She was no ingenue, although I didn’t think she was as old as her hair color might suggest. She wore a white floor-length shift with wide sleeves, so if she happened to be Mrs. Blanc, the French word for “white,” she was dressed appropriately. Behind her, I could see a book-lined room, a desk with a green-shaded lamp, a threadbare rug.
I said, “Is Bruno Blanc here?”
She shook her head, the split ends brushing her shoulders.
I tried to see if anyone else was in the room. “Is this the headquarters of the Speculatori?”
She shook her head again. She looked agitated, the blue eyes getting even wider.
God, maybe she was a deaf mute. I spoke louder. “Bernard Mallet at the Musée Bellefroide gave me Monsieur Blanc’s name, and this address. He said Monsieur Blanc was the head of an organization called the Speculatori, and—”
By now, she seemed truly anguished. She broke in and said, in stumbling French, “I don’t speak French. I’m an American.”
I stared at her. I switched to English and said, “Are you really?”
Her face lit up. “You speak English?”
“I’m American.”
I thought she was going to hug me. “Oh, that’s great. I thought you were French.”
I have to tell you that being mistaken for a French person after all my struggles with the language, even if it was by a strange-looking American woman who spoke no French at all, did me a lot of good. I said, “I’m looking for Bruno Blanc. My name is Georgia Lee Maxwell.”
Her stunned face told me that the favorable impression I’d made by speaking English had just been enhanced. “Wow” she said. “You’re Georgia Lee Maxwell? You wrote that story in the Herald Tribune yesterday?”
I do love a person who notices bylines. “Yes,” I said.
“Far out. Great to meet you.” She stuck out her hand and gave mine a good pumping while I tried to cope with “Far out.” “Come in, come in,” she said, standing back.
There was no furniture aside from the desk
and its chair and the bookcases. Two partially burned candles in brass candlesticks stood on the floor, which was also piled with pillows in Indian prints. She plopped down cross-legged on a pillow and said, “Bruno’s not here right now. Would you like some herb tea while you wait?”
I was having trouble getting a grip. I had come expecting a den of mystics and seers and instead I had stumbled on Berkeley in the sixties. I declined the tea. I hadn’t really liked sitting on the floor on Indian-print pillows even when it was in style, but I folded myself down in the interest of camaraderie.
My companion beamed at me. “It is so great to run into somebody who speaks English.”
“Bruno Blanc—”
“Sure, Bruno does. But all his friends are French, and that’s all they speak.”
I hadn’t gotten a fix on this woman at all. “You haven’t told me your name.”
She clasped her hands. “I’ve had so many. Let’s see. There was Janie Rainbow and Jane Marysdaughter. Then when I went to India I was Padma. The Ouija board gave me Marana. Sometimes Bruno calls me Janine.”
I figured that speech was a set piece. I wasn’t going to press the issue. “Well, never mind,” I said.
She laughed, a sound that could have etched glass. “You can call me Jane,” she bubbled as if it were the best joke in the world.
I was beginning to wish I’d waited for Bruno downstairs and left Jane up here to burn her incense, which is what it smelled like she’d been doing when I arrived. I doubted I could get any pertinent information out of her.
She cocked her head and looked at me. “I guess you want to talk to Bruno about the mirror,” she said.
Hm. No need to condemn Jane prematurely. “I understand he— or the Speculatori— wanted it.”
She looked thoughtful. “I don’t think he’d put it that way. According to Bruno, the mirror can’t be possessed. On the contrary, it possesses. What he wanted to do was free it, let it fulfill its purpose in the world, instead of being kept prisoner by the uninitiated.”
The Grand Tour: Four International Mysteries Page 7