Cancans, Croissants, and Caskets

by Mary McHugh

  “Do you think Suzette knows anything about the murders of Monsieur and Madame Fouchet?” Gini asked. “I get the feeling that she’d do anything to get to New York.”

  “I don’t see how she could possibly not know something about them,” Gini said. “It seems way too convenient that the two people keeping her from leaving the bateau and going to New York with Anderson are now dead.”

  “She sure lit into Geneviève this afternoon,” Mary Louise said. “I don’t understand French, but it was clear that she objected violently to the captain’s order to keep her here in Paris.”

  “Speaking of not understanding French,” Gini said, “do you guys want a quick French lesson in useful phrases?”

  “Yes, yes, and yes again,” I said, and the rest of my hoofing friends chimed in with their own yeses. “Start off with that ‘n’est-ce pas’ thing they’re always sticking in at the end of a sentence. What is that?”

  “It just means ‘isn’t that so?’ ” Gini said. “Sort of like our ‘right?’ ”

  “Does ‘quoi?’ just mean ‘what?’ ” Tina asked.

  “Exactly,” Gini said. “But let me tell you some really useful things to say. Even if you don’t get the accent exactly right, the French will give you credit for trying. They’re proud that their accent is so difficult—especially their r’s, which you have to pronounce as if you’re going to hawk something out of your throat but then change your mind. Don’t worry about it.”

  “So how do you say, ‘What is your name?’ ” Mary Louise asked. “I always like to know a person’s name.”

  “You say, ‘Comment vous appelez vous?’ ” Gini said, “Which literally means, ‘How do you call yourself?’ And if someone asks you what your name is, you say, ‘Je m’appelle Mary Louise,’ which you can probably figure out means ‘I call myself Mary Louise.’ ”

  “I have one for you,” Tina said. “I know ‘au revoir’ is ‘good-bye,’ but I’ve heard you say ‘à bientôt’ sometimes when you’re leaving. What does that mean?”

  “It’s just ‘see you soon,’ ” Gini said. “It’s more informal, a little friendlier than ‘au revoir,’ which means literally ‘until the next time I see you.’ ”

  “Suppose you want to thank somebody more than just ‘merci,’ ” I asked. “I mean, you really, really want to say thanks.”

  “Then you say ‘merci mille fois,’ which is ‘thank you a thousand times,” Gini said.

  “I have another one for you,” I said. “How do I say, ‘Where is the nearest place to get my hair cut?’ I don’t want to go home without a French haircut.”

  “You say, ‘Ou est le salon de beauté le plus proche?’ ” Gini said, “which means, ‘Where is the closest beauty salon?’ Why don’t you practice by asking our friend Jacques that question. He probably knows where everything is around here.”

  “Great idea,” I said, and put down my chèvre and bread to go to the door and open it.

  No Jacques in sight. Uh-oh, I thought. This is not good.

  I quickly closed the door and said, “He’s not there. I’m scared.”

  “Don’t panic,” Pat said. “I’ll call Geneviève. He probably just went to get something to eat at the Select across the street. He can watch everyone coming into the building from there.”

  “Please call her, Pat,” I said.

  Pat dialed a number on her cell phone. She waited. “Got her voice mail,” she said to us and then, “Geneviève, it’s Pat. Please call me as soon as possible.”

  “We’re not going anywhere until one of them turns up, Jan,” Tina said. “Don’t worry.” She looked at her watch. “In the meantime, we’d better get dressed. It’s five-thirty. Who’s first in the shower?”

  “I’ll go,” Gini said. “I’m the fastest.” She headed for the shower.

  Mary Louise gathered up the remaining cheese, bread, and wine and put them back in the fridge, then sponged off the table until it was shiny clean.

  “Next,” Gini said, running past us in a towel. “What are we wearing, Tina?”

  “Our slutty red-and-white cancan dresses,” she said. “The ones with almost no tops and ruffled skirts we can flip up. Black net stockings. Our sexiest high heels.”

  Mary Louise disappeared into the shower room. I opened the apartment door again to see if my friend Jacques had reappeared.

  No one was outside our door. I couldn’t believe Jacques would desert us like that. Just disappear without telling us where he was going. I felt so safe when he was there. I stepped out into the hallway to see if he was on his way up in the elevator. The door closed behind me, and a hand covered my mouth. A dark-skinned hand. To my right I could see a body lying on the floor. A body in a police uniform. Jacques. I felt something pressing into my back.

  “Do not make a sound or you’re dead,” he said. He had an Indian accent. I knew it was Ahmet.

  “Walk very carefully down the staircase,” he said. “Try to get away and I’ll shoot you. I mean it. Do exactly as I say and you’ll be all right. Do you understand?”

  I nodded. I had no intention of arguing with a gun. I held tightly to the railing next to the stairs. I felt like I could fall at any minute.

  When we got to the ground floor, he opened a door into a hallway I had not seen before. At the end of the long hallway was another door, which he opened, shoving me inside a small room with a couple of chairs, a table, and a bed.

  “Remember, not a sound,” he said, pushing me into a chair and pointing the gun at me.

  “Where are we?” I asked

  “No one knows about this room,” he said. “A long time ago, there was a concierge who lived here, but they haven’t had a concierge for years. No one will think of looking for you here. Not even the police.”

  The concierge? I thought. No one knows about this room? There’s one person who does.

  “How did you know about it?” I asked.

  “I made it my business to look through every part of this building before I grabbed you,” he said. “I knew I couldn’t take you outside because they would be searching for me when you turned up missing. I stumbled upon this room by accident and knew no one would think of looking here.”

  There has to be a way, I thought. Think, Jan, think.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked.

  “It’s simple,” he said. “I will call the police captain—what’s her name—Chantal. I will tell her that I am holding you prisoner and that she must allow Monsieur Anderson and Mademoiselle Suzette to get on a plane to New York today or I will kill you. To prove that I am telling the truth, I will hand you the phone. You must tell her that I am not lying and she must do as I ask. That’s all you will say. If you try to tell her anything else, those will be the last words you speak.” He brought the gun closer to me.

  “I’ll do whatever you say,” I said. “Call her.”

  Ahmet dialed her direct line. When she picked up, he said, “Captain Chantal? Please listen carefully to what I have to say. I am holding Madame Janice Rogers, one of the dancers, hostage. If you want to see her alive again, you will see that Monsieur Anderson and Mademoiselle Suzette are on the next plane to New York. I will release her when I hear from him in New York, that he has not been arrested. Do not be mistaken, ma capitaine, I will kill Madame Rogers without any hesitation if you do not do as I say.”

  He listened to her for a moment and then handed his phone to me. “She wants to hear your voice. Just tell her I’m telling the truth.” He put the gun to my head. “Remember—nothing else.”

  “Hello, Genève,” I said. I emphasized the name. “He is telling you the truth. Believe me, Genève. Do as he says.”

  There was a brief pause. “Understood,” she said. I handed the phone back to Ahmet. He hung up.

  “Stay where you are,” he said. “We’ll be in this room until I hear from Monsieur Anderson that he is safely off the plane in New York. That could be a long time. Don’t try anything funny.”

  “How did you get invol
ved in this whole thing?” I asked him. I wanted to get him talking without the gun in his hand.

  “Very simple. Monsieur Anderson paid me a great deal of money to kill Monsieur and Madame Fouchet. I can go back to India and live in luxury for the rest of my life. I’d be there now if you hadn’t mentioned that stupid earring.”

  “Did you put something in my drink to make me pass out at the club?” I asked.

  “Not in your drink. In the shrimp bisque. I put some knock-out drops in the soup. I knew you wouldn’t taste them because the bisque has such a strong flavor. My idea.” He actually looked proud of his ingenuity. He put the gun on the table beside his chair. It was not near enough for me to grab.

  “How did you get the chlorine gas into that room?”

  “That was easy. Through the air-conditioning vents. We attached hoses to the gas and pulled them through the vents into your room.”

  “How come you have chlorine gas lying around like that?”

  “We use chlorine as a pesticide and as a water purifier. There are lots of uses for it. We turned it into a gas and piped it into your room.”

  “What did you seal the door and windows with?”

  “It’s just an ordinary sealant people use in their homes when they don’t have storm windows. These are old doors and windows that are very drafty, so we always have a supply of the sealant to use. It only took a couple of minutes to do it, and we thought you wouldn’t wake up until the gas had killed you. The only thing we forgot was the door going into the bathroom. We thought we could leave that because we had sealed the bathroom window. Big mistake.”

  “How did you get everything cleaned up so quickly before the police got there?”

  “I went outside to put some food in the Dumpster and noticed the broken glass under your window. It was obvious that you had landed in the Dumpster and gotten away. We tried to find you, but you must have already reached your apartment. We ripped off the sealant from the door and windows, used an industrial fan to get rid of the chlorine smell, and replaced the glass in less than an hour. We got rid of the Dumpster. Everything was back the way it was before the police arrived.”

  “Amazing,” I said. I closed my eyes. “Do you mind if I sleep a little? I’m exhausted.”

  “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll check my phone to see if anyone is trying to reach me.”

  I pretended to go to sleep, but sneaked a look every now and then to make sure he didn’t have the gun in his hand. Just the phone. My heart was in my mouth. Did Captain Chantal understand my message? She was very smart, but was that small clue of Catherine’s special name for her enough to tell her where I was?

  The police burst into the room so suddenly and quickly, Ahmet didn’t have a chance to go for his gun. I dove for the floor, but they had him handcuffed and out the door before he could react.

  Captain Chantal ran to help me up, and I collapsed into her arms. I was sobbing with relief.

  “Oh, thank God, thank God,” I said. “You got it. You knew. Oh, thank God.”

  “That was very clever of you, my dear Janice,” she said, patting my back. “When you called me Genève, I knew exactly where you were. It’s the only place in the world where anyone ever called me by that name. You were brilliant to remember that.”

  “Funny how brilliant you can be with a gun pressed to your head,” I said. “But you were a genius to pick up on that name and come to get me.”

  Geneviève looked around this room that held so many memories for her. “It still feels the same in here,” she said. “Small and cozy and private.” For a moment she was fifteen again, alone with Catherine. She came back to the present and said to me, “Okay. Let me take you back to the apartment, where your friends are going out of their minds worrying about you.”

  “I’m supposed to dance on the bateau tonight,” I said. “I’m not sure I can walk, let alone dance.”

  “No, no, there won’t be a performance tonight,” the captain said. “I canceled that after I sent my men to arrest Anderson and Suzette. They’re safely in jail. Don’t worry. Jean gave everybody their money back. That lady will just have to celebrate her birthday somewhere else.”

  “Officer Paulhe,” I said. “Jacques. That nice man. Is he all right? He looked like he was dead. I saw him on the floor outside our apartment.”

  “He was unconscious. He’s all right now, except that he feels like it was all his fault that you were captured. He’ll be so glad to see you.”

  “It certainly wasn’t his fault,” I said. “I’ll tell him. Thank goodness he’s all right. We really like him. Did Suzette know about all this?”

  “She’s up to her ears in this whole thing,” Geneviève said. “She wanted to go to New York so much that she went along with anything that had to be done to get there, including killing both Monsieur and Madame Fouchet.”

  “Did she know they tried to kill me?”

  “I’m pretty sure she did. Anderson told her everything he was doing so she couldn’t turn on him at any time. Even if she didn’t actually help him kill them, she knew about it and can testify against him in court.”

  “Let’s go back to the apartment,” I said. “I need my friends.”

  Geneviève put her arm around me and helped me to the police car.

  Janice’s Fashion Tip: Take your Paris chic home with you!

  Chapter 18

  Marlon Brando Ate Here

  With a great rush of hugs and “Are you all right?” and “We were so worried,” and lots of tears, my friends scooped me up and welcomed me back to the apartment. Geneviève made sure I was safe, told my sister Hoofers that we would not be dancing that night, and said she had to return to headquarters. Officer Paulhe was hovering nearby, a worried look on his face.

  “Oh, Janeese,” he said. “I will never forgive myself. I am so sorry.”

  I had to give him a hug. The poor man. “It wasn’t your fault, Jacques. Are you all right? I thought you were dead when I saw you lying there.”

  “Do not worry, chérie,” he said. “Just a bump on the head.”

  “I’ll never forget you, my brave Jacques,” I said to him.

  He kissed me on the forehead and left the apartment. Geneviève started to follow him. I shook hands with her.

  “À bientôt, Genève,” I said. “Merci mille fois.” Thanks to Gini I was practically fluent in French.

  “I wish I could tell Catherine that her special name for me saved your life,” the captain said.

  “If it’s all right with you, it will always be my special name for you too.”

  Geneviève smiled at me. “I think you earned the right to call me that,” she said. “À bientôt, Janeese.”

  “À bientôt, Genève,” I said, tears in my eyes.

  She reached over to Pat and touched her hair. It was a tender gesture. “Perhaps we will meet again someday,” she said. “You’re a very special person.”

  Pat put her hand over Geneviève’s. “You have to come to New York,” she said. “I’ll show you my city. Thank you for everything.”

  They shook hands and Geneviève left.

  After she was gone, my friends made me tell them the whole story of Ahmet, the concierge’s room, and my coded message to the captain.

  “Incredible,” Pat said. “If someone were pointing a gun at me, I wouldn’t remember my own name, much less someone’s secret name from long ago.”

  “Believe me, you’d remember,” I said. “You’d remember everything anyone said to you from the time you were born. The instinct to survive, to stay alive, must be the strongest instinct we have.”

  Pat laughed. “You’ll never believe this,” she said, “but I wrote my doctoral thesis on the part that instincts play in our decisions and reactions. Wish I’d had this example to prove my point that we ignore our instincts at our peril.”

  “My instincts tell me that I’m starving and that we should go to one of the most famous restaurants of all times to celebrate Jan’s rescue and our last night i
n Paris,” Gini said.

  “Ohhh, Gini,” I said. “I can’t move. I’m still in shock. Let’s just stay here and eat some more bread and cheese. And a bunch of wine.”

  “Listen, Jan,” she said. “We’re only a couple of blocks away from La Coupole, Hemingway’s restaurant. Great food, great atmosphere. We can’t leave Paris without going there.”

  “I always thought that was just a touristy place,” Pat said.

  “Who cares?” Gini said. “It’s still one of the best places to eat in the whole world. Come on, guys, we’ve got to have a blast our last night here.”

  They all looked at me. “It’s up to you, Jan,” Tina said. “If you aren’t up to it, we’ll stay here with you and eat some brie and bread.”

  The look on all their faces made me smile. How could I disappoint these women who would stay indoors on a warm summer’s night in Paris to eat cheese and stale bread instead of going to one of the world’s great restaurants just because they loved me?

  “La Coupole it is,” I said. “Let me get out of these sweaty clothes and I’ll be right with you.”

  I changed into one of my favorite dresses—a blue-and-white silky number with a pleated, swirly skirt and my stiletto heels, which the police had returned to me.

  “To La Coupole,” I said. “How do you say, ‘Let’s go’ in French, Gini?

  “Allons-y,” she said.

  We crowded into the elevator and went down to the ground floor.

  I had a moment’s shiver of horror when I saw the door leading to the hallway to the hidden concierge’s room, but my friends swooped me out into the Paris night, and I was almost all right again.

  There it was. The legendary La Coupole. The brasserie where Hemingway drank after writing all day. Where Josephine Baker could come in for dinner, accompanied by her leopard Chiquita, without being told the restaurant was for whites only. The place where you could see Picasso regaling his friends after a day of changing art forever. You might have been there the night Marlon Brando took off his shoes and ate barefoot. If you were really old, you might have dined at La Coupole when there was still a basin of water in the center of the restaurant where Kiki, the famous model, bathed naked.