The Books of the Dead

by Emilia Bernhard

  “Any plausible suspects in that category?” Rachel draped her arm over the back of her chair, trying to seem hard-bitten and worldly-wise. She still had no idea why she was here, but she had no objection to being a sounding board for the investigation.

  “Nothing we could find. Monsieur Laurent lived out in Pont de Sèvres, so rather far for a neighbor to travel to kill him, and in any case his neighbors hardly seem to have known him. He kept to himself, apparently—his portable had only his mother and his job as contacts.”

  At this revelation of a limited life, Rachel felt another stab of pity for Guy Laurent. Nonetheless, “Maybe a resentful colleague?” she offered.

  “Yes, our conclusion, too. So we questioned his colleagues. And it appears that among them Monsieur Laurent has not kept to himself. Their feelings toward him were quite strong. Very strong, in fact. His colleagues, well …” He said abruptly, “They all hated him.”

  Rachel frowned. “But surely that just makes your job easier. It’s just a matter of finding out who hated him enough to kill him.”

  He sighed. “Under normal circumstances, perhaps it would be that way, yes. But Monsieur Laurent seems to have inspired equal loathing in all those he worked with.”

  “All of them?”

  The capitaine opened the folder again and began to lay out a series of photographs, turning them so they faced Rachel. They were enlarged identity card photos, and as was the way with such pictures, each made its subject look not only as if they could commit a murder but as if they just had.

  “Giles Morel.” A man in his late twenties, with a thick blond beard and black-rimmed glasses. “He called Laurent”—Boussicault consulted a sheet of typed notes—“ ‘a brainless pig whose remains he wouldn’t wipe off his shoe.’ He then refused to explain why he felt that way. Louise Fournier.” A second photo, a pale young woman whose dark hair straggled into her eyes. “She first asked to be questioned by a female officer, but finally told us that in her opinion Laurent was”—another glance down—“ ‘a better-dressed street mugger.’ Then she wouldn’t say any more.” The next photo. “Docteure Alphonsine Dwamena.” A dark-skinned woman in late middle age, silver hair cut close to her head. “Head of Laurent’s department. She told me that Laurent was a troublemaker and that she found him”—again he consulted his notes—“ ‘repellent as a person.’ She also declined to elaborate.” He looked up. “We can’t determine which of these people hated him most, or whose hatred might push them into murder, for the very simple reason that they won’t open up to us. They are like a little club—they won’t say anything to outsiders—and without further evidence we can’t make them.”

  He put down a final photo. “Laurent.” Rachel bent over it. At last, the face she’d been trying to imagine for nearly two weeks. She couldn’t find anything in it that would obviously inspire loathing. She knew people tended to find in photographs what they sought, so on being told that a man had saved a kitten from a tree, one group would see benevolence and decency, while on being told that the same man was a thief, another group would find thuggish shiftiness. But the person looking out at her was entirely unremarkable. She felt another twinge of pity. She reached out with her thumb as if to stroke the photo’s hair, but pulled back. When she looked up, Boussicault was watching her. He said, “Rachel, I need your help.”

  He wanted her to help him identify the murderer. That’s why he’d brought her in! Her heart leapt, then fell as she cast her mind back to the moments in the bathroom. “I’m sorry, but I really can’t remember anything else. The door was open, and I went in. No one was coming out, and I didn’t see anyone when I was inside except for him. I’m really sorry.”

  He shook his head. “Not that kind of help. You see, in summer crime goes up.” He sighed. “It’s the tourists.”

  Rachel nodded. All Parisians dreaded the arrival of the tourists in July and August. They blocked the sidewalks as they stood in groups trying to read their maps; they clogged the less defined sites like the Pont Neuf or Notre Dame by lingering in uncertain clumps. Somehow the temperature seemed to increase merely at the sight of them standing doggedly in line outside the Palais de Justice or the Eiffel Tower. And every year with their arrival came newspapers reports of a rise in pickpockets, in assaults, in public drunkenness and criminal damage. Most Parisians fled the city for vacations during this period, but of course the police had to stay to deal with the extra work as well as the usual Paris crime.

  As if reading her mind, the capitaine said, “And in addition to the usual increase, we are dealing with a sudden influx of very good, very pure, heroin into the city. Many of my undercover people have been pulled into that investigation. And to add to that, two of my best women … maternity leave! It must have been a very cold winter, hein?” He tried for a grin but could only manage a weary smile. Then he collected himself. “And just when all I could think of to move forward on Laurent’s murder was maybe to put someone on the inside … a new colleague in their department, one who needs things explained but who also might become part of their club—and maybe especially a woman, who is less threatening …”

  Rachel caught her breath. She was a woman! She saw where he was heading: she was going to be part of a plan! She focused again on Boussicault’s voice. “… only meant to listen and observe,” he was saying. “I checked with my superiors, and as long as this remains a passive and time-limited undercover action, one in which I can guarantee there will be no danger, they will sign off. I remember that you were very good at blending into Monsieur Bowen’s household, and your previous experience in libraries, and so I have brought you here to ask—”

  A business card flashed before Rachel’s eyes: RACHEL LEVIS, POLICE CONSULTANT. Or maybe RACHEL LEVIS, P.C.; initials were always better. She couldn’t control herself any longer. “Yes! I will. Yes!”

  Chapter Three

  Later that afternoon Magda and Rachel sat on a bench in the Jardin du Luxembourg eating ice cream. Rachel had just arrived at the point in her story where Capitaine Boussicault completed his description of Guy Laurent’s colleagues, and Magda took a luxurious lick of her pistachio gelato as she contemplated the situation. “So the most obvious suspects are also the least helpful. It seems pretty simple to me. Why doesn’t he just put each of them in a room and sweat them?”

  Rachel cocked her head. “From what he told me, they tried some version of that, he and his brigadier, and the people closed up. And also closed ranks, it seems.”

  “His brigadier? That blond boy we saw when we first went to see him? That guy couldn’t sweat an onion!”

  Rachel knew that Magda only started talking like a hard-boiled detective novel when she was excited at the prospect of investigation, but she still found it irritating. After all, she was the one who had been invited to help the police. If anyone had the right to talk like a Dashiell Hammett character, it was she. Then she remembered that Magda didn’t know that. Then she remembered that she would have to tell her.

  Magda took another lick from her cone. “So what does he want us to do?”

  Rachel tried not to flinch at that us. Of course Magda assumed it would be us. It had been us all the way through their previous investigation, when they’d worked together against everyone else’s disbelief. In fact, it had been us for pretty much all of their two decades of friendship. She bit her lip and delayed telling her friend the truth for just one more second. “Well … he needs some help.”

  “I got that. Otherwise he wouldn’t want us to do anything.”

  Another inward wince. Rachel slowly licked around the outside of her cone. Finally she couldn’t delay any longer. “Not us. Me. He wants me to go to work in the reading room where Laurent worked. He’s fixed it with the Bibliothèque’s head of security so that everyone in Laurent’s department will think I’ve been brought in as a temporary replacement until they can hire someone qualified to replace him. He wants me to get to know them from the inside, to see what I can dig up that might point to one of
them as Laurent’s killer.”

  “Okay.” Magda shrugged. “And what am I doing while you’re doing that?”

  Oh, dear. Rachel licked her gelato again, then again, then forced herself not to take a third lick but to speak. “No, it’s just me. He just wants me to help.”

  Magda didn’t say anything. Her gelato dripped down onto her fingers, and Rachel could tell she was working to keep her face blank. Rachel gabbled to fill the air. “He wants someone to go in, to blend in and see what they can find out. And he remembered that I did that on our last case. Remember how I did that? Then there’s Edgar’s library.” A year and a half earlier, Rachel had worked to organize the library of her former lover, Edgar Bowen, after his death. In fact, that was how she and Magda had met Boussicault in the first place—and how they had solved their first murder. She went on. “He knew I worked there on that case, so I have experience.”

  “Well, I guess it depends on what you think of as ‘experience.’ ” Magda’s voice was tight. “Did you remind him which of us had her life threatened in the last case? Did you refresh his memory as to who was taken hostage by the killer and attacked with a deadly weapon?”

  Rachel thought these seemed like reasons not to hire someone to spy on potential murderers rather than arguments in favor, but she didn’t say anything.

  Meanwhile, Magda fingered her neck, as if she could still feel the tines of the carving fork that had been pressed into her jugular. “You always do this. This is just like that time when—”

  “Please don’t bring that up.” Rachel held out a hand. “That was more than fifteen years ago! And I have no control over Boussicault’s reasoning. Plus, you said yourself that this is your busiest time, so I thought you’d be too swamped to do outside work. Anyway, I’m only supposed to be there for a month at the most, and I have to report to Boussicault every week. I’m not allowed to do anything but observe and report, and both the Bibliothèque’s head of security and Boussicault’s higher-ups were absolutely clear that if there’s even the slightest hint of even the mildest danger, he has to pull me out right away.” She made her voice slightly wheedling. “It’s not like I’m going to be wearing a wire and infiltrating the Mafia. I’m just standing around watching.”

  Magda’s face relaxed. “Well, you are good at blending in.”

  Ouch. But she was calming down, so Rachel let the comment go.

  “And this is a busy time for me. And you are a better fit for an archive. You did organize Edgar’s library.” She thought for a moment. “Although I’m not sure that gives you the kind of knowledge someone needs to navigate a national library.”

  Ouch again. Rachel was surprised at this second jab. She could understand that Magda might be jealous, but weren’t friends also supposed to celebrate your successes with you? Where was Magda’s pleasure that her best friend had been invited to work with the police? Before she could control herself, she said, “Strictly speaking, navigate is only for bodies of water. And I’m supposed to be a volunteer, so I won’t need to know much.”

  “Yet he thought of you because of Edgar’s library,” Magda said softly.

  Neither of them spoke for a long time. Then Magda said, “Well, if anyone asks you a question you don’t know the answer to, just sneeze. The other person will say santé, you say merci, and you can use the break to move the conversation onto another track.”

  Rachel recognized an apology when she heard one. She responded in kind. “That’s a very clever idea. I’ll bear it in mind.”

  Magda crunched another bite. “I learned it from that cute guy on that program with James Spader.”

  “What, the one with the glasses?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Oh, yeah, he is cute.”

  Magda nodded. In the long light of the late summer afternoon, each woman crunched her cone contentedly.

  Chapter Four

  The first thing Rachel learned at the Bibliothèque Nationale was that it was full of corridors. When she arrived at the building on Monday morning, she was met in the marble foyer by a woman who introduced herself as Raida Dounôt, head of security. She handed Rachel an employee pass on a lanyard, led her up a spiral staircase discreetly placed in an out-of-the-way nook, then began to walk through a maze of hallways, all the while keeping up a brisk pace and addressing Rachel over her shoulder.

  “I’ve explained to the head of the department, Docteure Alphonsine Dwamena, that you are a temporary replacement for Guy Laurent, drafted in while we go through the process of hiring someone permanent. Don’t worry”—she looked back, and Rachel caught half of a reassuring smile—“she won’t expect you to know how to do anything. I told her that you applied to be a volunteer and we asked you to help out in her department after … the tragedy.”

  Rachel would have thanked her for this reassurance, but she had neither the breath nor the focus. As she had entered the site that morning, she’d seen that the Bibliothèque was shaped like a rectangle around a central courtyard, but as she raced down unwindowed corridors, her impression was that she was working her way into huge maze. Just as panic began to overcome her, however, she and her leader arrived at a heavy metal door with a sensor on the wall next to it. Dounôt fished out her pass from her pocket and swiped it over the panel, then at last turned to face Rachel. Her expression was grave.

  “This plan would not have been my choice. I agreed to it because I trust Denis from our time together on the force.”

  Who is Denis? Rachel thought. Then she realized the woman meant Capitaine Boussicault.

  “But remember that all these people are suspects. If you see anything or hear anything that seems odd, do not engage with them. Come directly to me.” There was a click, and Madame Dounôt gave a single sharp nod of her head. “Bon. Alors. We proceed.” She pushed the door open.

  * * *

  The second thing Rachel learned at the Bibliothèque Nationale was not to touch Giles Morel’s locker. Dounôt introduced her to Docteure Dwamena, who in turn introduced her to the other two employees, who were sipping coffee in the small room that served as a lounge. Having seen their faces only in the photographs, Rachel found it somehow disconcerting to see those faces attached to people. Louise Fournier turned out to be surprisingly tall and dressed from head to foot in rusty black. She offered Rachel a sinewy, long-fingered hand before retreating into a corner. Giles Morel, broad-chested and wearing a long-sleeved checked shirt that just revealed the end of a tattoo at his wrist, squeezed her fingers in a crushing grip. He smiled at her through his beard. But when Docteure Dwamena excused herself to answer a telephone that rang somewhere in the background, he dropped both the smile and her hand and said, “Don’t touch my locker.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t touch my locker. You have a locker, so you don’t need to touch mine. So stay away from my locker.”

  Rachel hadn’t known that she had a locker, and she had no idea what it was supposed to hold or why she might want to touch anyone else’s, but before she could say any of these things, Morel took a last gulp of his coffee and strode out. Should she record this exchange? Was it significant? She imagined writing VERY PROTECTIVE OF LOCKER in the notebook in her bag, but it didn’t seem worth it. Then again, she reflected, past experience had shown her that you never knew what might be worth it. Maybe Morel had the rest of a ball of string stashed in his locker …

  “He keeps his novel in there.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Louise Fournier took a step out of the corner. “He’s writing a novel, and he keeps it in his locker. He doesn’t want people to read it.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Louise.”

  Louise nodded, then gave a tight smile. “And call me LouLou. No one calls me Louise.” She turned and hurried out.

  Rachel stood in the faded room, looking at its mini-fridge and its little coffee machine. As a poet she’d met plenty of eccentrics, but she hadn’t expected to find an antagonistic hipster and an icy goth working at the Bibliothèque Na
tionale. She’d imagined the employees of a national institution would be more staid. Clearly she was in for a steep learning curve.

  * * *

  The third thing Rachel learned at the Bibliothèque Nationale was that she was going to need a cover story. On this first day she worked only two hours, but she was still asked enough questions to make her very jumpy. Trying to make small talk as she showed Rachel the stacks and explained how the book pick-up-and-drop-off system worked, Docteure Dwamena asked her why she’d decided to volunteer at the Bibliothèque, whether it was close to her home, and what kept her in Paris in late summer. Unsure of whether she should give true answers, Rachel sneezed after every question—and although the stacks were dusty, after the fourth time she felt the other woman looking at her strangely. Was she going to be removed from her post before she’d even started because of a fantasy dust allergy?

  “You need a legend,” Magda said as she, Rachel, and Alan ate dinner in Rachel’s kitchen that night.

  “A what?”

  “A fictional back story,” Alan chimed in. “Spies have them.” Both women looked at him, and he shrugged at their surprise. “What? Didn’t you notice me sitting next to you while you watched all those suspense shows?”

  “Okay.” Rachel bit her lip. “A legend.” She shook her head with irritation. “Too bad it’s too late to call myself Susan Vandeventer. It’s hard to be a different person with the same old name.”

  “Susan Vandeventer!” Alan said dismissively. He’d always disliked Rachel’s in-case-of-emergency pseudonym, although she’d never known why. “Anyway, you don’t want to be a totally different person. You just want to be a version of you.”

  “Oh, how fun!” Magda’s eyes lit up. “You could be … a recently divorced socialite, volunteering as a way to give something back to the community. Or an unexpected widow, seeking to fill the gap left in her life by abrupt bereavement.”