Rachel saw his point, but she was surprised by what he said next.
“And here I hope you will be willing to help again. You know the reading room and the area behind it, and you are the only person I can be sure didn’t kill Monsieur Morel. I think it might be useful if you were to sit in on my interviews. You could spot any logistical inconsistencies in the stories I’m told. And at the same time you could assist with any translation difficulties I might have.”
First a consultant and now a participant! She could hardly wait to tell Magda. Then she remembered they were in a fight. Well, Alan would be interested, too.
She opened her mouth to say yes to Boussicault’s offer, but he again held up a hand. “Tiens. You need to be aware that this would mean abandoning your current role. Docteure Dwamena and all the patrons of the reading room would learn that you are working with the police, and this means you won’t be able to act the part of a library volunteer anymore.” He smiled. “Your cover will be blown.” He said this in flawless and unaccented English. Rachel suspected that he didn’t really want her translation skills. Perhaps he was just hesitant to admit he wanted a second mind on the case. He continued in French, “But in any case, I think we are beyond using subtle means to gather clues. We seem to have left the realm of subtlety.”
Alan appeared behind the capitaine. “How are you feeling?” He sat down and put his arm around her.
“Better. Much better.” Still, she rested her head on his shoulder.
“This is the second time in a month that the police have telephoned to call me away from the office. I think I’m starting to get quite a reputation.”
She smiled feebly. If they had been at home, she would have asked to sit on his lap, then burrowed her face in his shirt to smell its clean, familiar scent, but here there was no place for such calming rituals. If she was going to persevere with Boussicault’s interviews after this conversation, she suspected, she’d need all the adrenaline she could get. She firmed her smile and straightened up. “The capitaine was just asking if I’d be willing to sit in when he interviews the people who were using the reading room. He thinks I might be able to help spot if anyone’s lying about aspects related to the library, and I could help with any translation problems.”
“Surely n—” Then Alan stopped; he knew his wife. He sighed. “How long might this take?”
The capitaine gave one of his Gallic shrugs: it’s in the lap of the gods. “A few hours, perhaps?”
Alan looked searchingly in her face. He was trying to decide if he was satisfied with her condition, she knew; he’d done it before when she’d been ill or hurt. At last he said, “I’ll wait for you to finish. I couldn’t get any more work done at the office anyway. So I’ll be right here when you’re done, and we can go straight home.”
Rachel nodded. “It’s a deal.” She knew she should probably just go home right then, but she couldn’t bring herself to miss the opportunity Boussicault was offering. She stood up and rolled her shoulders back. “Just let me get another tea, and then we can start.”
Alan was still looking at her. Now his face was expectant.
“What?”
“Don’t you want to—” He stopped and shook his head. “Nothing, never mind. Get your tea.”
Rachel knew he meant, Do you want to call Magda? But again she steeled herself against it. Instead, she focused on gathering her mental strength. Shelving books and eavesdropping were one thing, but with the interviews she was getting to the meat of the matter. She was moving toward the center of the investigation, and she would need to pay attention.
Chapter Fifteen
Twenty minutes later, Rachel and Capitaine Boussicault sat in a small room that opened off one of the Bibliotheque’s corridors. In front of them was a white Formica table, behind it was a single chair, and a window high up in the left-hand wall showed a rectangle of blue sky. Rachel was surprised to find a space so bare and utilitarian in a national library, but then she remembered that it was a bureaucratic entity as much as an ancient house of knowledge.
Boussicault cleared his throat. “Before we begin, let me explain what I have planned. The witness will come in, and I will explain that you are a translator, here to assist. You can greet them, but then just listen unless I ask you to help.” He frowned, obviously realizing how hard this might be for a civilian with no training in remaining focused. “It might help you if you took notes.” She dug her notebook and pen out from her bag and put them on the table in front of her. He nodded. “Okay. We start with the reading room patrons.”
He rose and opened the door. In answer to his murmur, a tall woman, about sixty years old, entered. She crossed to sit behind the table, placing her navy shoulder bag in her lap. She was very slender, her hair was cut in a straight gray bob, and her rather hooked nose gave her the appearance of an intelligent flamingo. She craned her head to look around, lively, interested, and not at all scared.
“Bonjour, Madame.” The capitaine gave her a small smile, gracious rather than warm. “May I ask your name?”
“I’m Professor Aurora Dale.” Her voice was clear, although she spoke French with a noticeable English accent.
“Would you prefer to speak English? Madame Levis is here to act as a translator in case I have difficulties.” Confession of inadequacy, Rachel thought. Reassures the suspect.
Aurora Dale nodded. “Yes, I would prefer that. Merci.”
“What brings you here, Madame Dale?”
“Professor Dale. And I’m looking at accounts of early modern French midwifery for an article I’m working on.”
“I see. And what is your home university?”
“I’m at Oxford. Shrewsbury College, Oxford. Here for three or four weeks, depending on what I find.”
“When did you arrive?”
“Two weeks ago tomorrow.”
“And this morning you were in the reading room as soon as it opened?”
She nodded, raking a hand through her gray hair. “Yes, but I’m not really sure I can be of any help. I barely made it in the door before …”
Boussicault gave his little smile once again. “Please, Professeure, let me be the judge of whether you can help. Now tell me, what time did you arrive at the library this morning?”
“Um, well …” Professor Dale looked upward, trying to remember. “I walked from home …”
The capitaine raised a finger. “Forgive an interruption, madame. Where is home for you in Paris?”
Dale recited in the voice of an obedient student, “Room five-twelve of the Auberge des Jeunesses, on the Boulevard Saint- Michel, across from the Jardin du Luxembourg.”
It seemed to Rachel that writing down this address would make her look very much like one of the team. To her surprise, it also made her feel like one. She decided she would write down every witness’s address.
Boussicault had moved on. “So, back to this morning. What time did you arrive, and which way did you come?”
“Well, there’s really only one way to get into the library—unless I’m going to use the doors in front.” She laughed a surprisingly—and delightfully, Rachel thought—hearty laugh at the thought of anyone coming through the blackened oak doors that faced the Rue des Petits Champs, the library’s original entrance. “I left home at about quarter past eight, and it’s around a half hour’s walk, so that would make it … let’s say eight fifty? Just before the library doors opened, anyway. And I stood in the courtyard with the others who were waiting—well, a bit off to one side. I was having a ciggy.” She looked abashed. “My little vice, I’m afraid. I kicked them years ago, but I just can’t fully kick them, if you know what I mean. One before work and one after, to round out the day on either end. That’s the limit, though.”
The capitaine’s smile said he empathized, although he did not go so far as to name his own vice. “And when you were off to one side,” he responded, “did you see anything or anyone unusual?”
Professor Dale leaned forward. “I’ve been goi
ng over that. At first I didn’t think I did. But then, working through everything carefully, I realized I had. Or at least I might have. Because I remember that just when I was finishing my cigarette, I saw someone go round the corner toward the back of the library. They were at a distance, and I only saw their back, but I do remember they were wearing something dark. Their clothing was dark, I mean. But then the doors opened and I switched my attention.” She looked apologetic. “I’m sorry.”
“Not at all.” The capitaine steepled his hands in front of him for a moment, pressing the tips of his forefingers to his bottom lip. “You say you couldn’t see their features, but did you perhaps get an impression of their gender? Perhaps something about their gait, or their body shape, made you think they were either male or female?”
She gazed into space, obviously casting her mind back. “Not really. As I say, they were quite far away. I am sorry.”
Boussicault dipped his head. “It’s fine. What you remembered is very helpful in its own right. Thank you for your time, Professeure Dale.”
That was it? Professor Dale seemed to share Rachel’s surprise at the brevity of the interview, because she stayed seated. After a second’s pause she leaned forward and said, “Would I be right in thinking that someone has been murdered?”
“What makes you say that?”
Answering a question with a question: a police move Rachel recognized from The Closer.
“Well.” Professor Dale’s eyes were bright. “First, I saw an ambulance from the window of the room where they’re keeping us. Second, there are a number of police officers here, many more than could be justified by the theft your sergeant mentioned when he rang me last night. Third, I doubt very much that you’d be questioning me about this morning if you were interested in something that you discovered yesterday. And finally, I also doubt you’d be asking me if I’d seen anything unusual if the dead person had died in some natural way. Although”—her voice grew reflective—“all deaths are natural, really, given that it’s only natural to die when someone stabs you in the heart or pushes you downstairs so you break your neck.”
Rachel decided she liked Aurora Dale. Capitaine Boussicault, however, only raised his eyebrows. “You’re good at making connections, madame la professeure.”
“Am I? Perhaps it’s because literary criticism is quite a lot like detective work. At least I think so. You observe a text—more than once—look for the oddities and evidence, and try to see what they all might mean. Besides”—her tone now held a smile—“I’m an elderly English widow. We’re obliged to be interested in mysteries. It’s in the handbook.”
Rachel couldn’t suppress a smile, but Boussicault just stood. “You’re free to go, but please don’t leave Paris until you hear from us.”
“Good heavens, I’m not going to leave! I still have research to do.”
After the door shut behind her, Boussicault turned to Rachel. “An interesting woman. And her memory of seeing someone … Only employees can enter the Bibliothèque via the back.” He thought for a moment. “Well, let’s see if the others saw something similar. We will let them mention it themselves.” He stood to open the door for the next witness.
Chapter Sixteen
The second interviewee was a young woman with pink hair gathered into shoulder-length pigtails. She seemed to have roses growing out of her upper arms, until Rachel realized these were remarkably realistic tattoos revealed by her sleeveless shirt. The flowers blossomed and rippled as she sat down in the chair and crossed her legs.
“Bonjour.” She was French.
Katja Bonsergent was a maître des conferences in the art history department at the Panthéon-Sorbonne, on the other side of the Seine in the sixth arrondissement. She was only at the Bibliothèque for the day. She was using the reading room to access two articles on Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, of whom she was writing a book-length feminist reassessment. No, she hadn’t seen anyone or anything that seemed suspicious—not that, she said, she would know what was suspicious, given that this was the first time she’d used the Bibliothèque in at least a year. But in any case, she had walked from her apartment near the Panthéon and had only arrived just as the library was opening its doors.
The capitaine stopped her. “How long is the walk?”
“Perhaps half an hour.”
“And can anyone confirm what time you left your apartment? Or arrived here?”
“Both.” Bonsergent’s firm nod made the pigtails bounce. “My girlfriend had breakfast with me before I left, and I showed my reader’s card to the guard as I entered. He commented on my hair, so I know he’ll remember me.” She rolled her eyes at the small minds of the less cool.
“Bien.” The capitaine nodded his thanks. “We will be in touch if we need to. Don’t go anywhere.”
“Where would I go?” She shrugged. “I’m at the beginning of my academic career. I’m always working.”
“I’ll get Didier to contact her roommate to check her story,” the capitaine said to Rachel once the door closed behind Docteure Bonsergent.
He scarcely had time to finish this sentence before there was a knock and a florid man put his head around the door. “All right to enter?” Not waiting for a response, he crossed and sat in the chair, brushing his hair off his face with a plump hand. He reminded Rachel slightly of Oscar Wilde—not in his coloring, which was an almost perfect example of Saxon blondness, but in his height and the fleshiness that lingered in his face and body.
“Robert Cavill. Saw the French girl leave and thought I’d just make myself known. Never can wait my turn, my wife would say.” He gave almost a parody of a well-heeled English laugh—“haw-haw”—then took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his forehead. “Sorry. Always have been given to perspiration. And in this heat …”
“Yes, Paris in July can be miserable.” The capitaine waited until Cavill put his handkerchief away, then gestured for him to sit. “So, Mr. Cavill, let me start by asking you what I asked my other two interviewees: what are you are studying here at the Bibliothèque?”
Cavill took a breath. “Hand-tinted engravings from books of the French Renaissance.” Rachel was impressed by the brevity of this response, but it turned out he wasn’t finished.
“I’m an art historian at Cambridge. Cambridge University. The Renaissance is my area of expertise. Well, I say expertise.” He brayed again. “At the moment, I’m interested in the ways in which hand tinting on engravings from the French Renaissance encodes messages about rank and power. What the colors and styles telegraph to their viewers and readers.”
“Mmm.” Rachel realized that Boussicault didn’t actually care what each person was working on. The question was just designed to check their plausibility and relax them a little before he moved on to what he considered the really important queries. Now he asked, “How long have you been working in the reading room?”
“A week tomorrow,” Cavill replied. “I’m here for another week, and then my wife is bringing the children over and we’re spending a fortnight in Provence.”
“I see. And this morning? What time did you arrive?”
He thought for a moment. “I’d guess about ten minutes before the doors opened, maybe a little later. Professor Dale was just finishing her cigarette.” He inhaled deeply, as if still smelling the smoke. “Made me wish I could join her. I wish it every morning, in fact. Quit ten years ago and never quite got over it.”
Boussicault made no response to that, simply saying with mild interest, “And did you see anything unusual while you were waiting?”
“I don’t know about unusual.” Again Cavill used his handkerchief to wipe his brow. “I saw a couple of other faces one normally sees on mornings here, but aside from that … well, I remember seeing someone going round the back of the building, but I wouldn’t call that unusual. People do it every morning. I assume they work here.”
Boussicault gave no indication that the statement might be any more significant than any other. “And what did
this person look like?”
“Gad! Now there you’ve got me.” Like Professor Dale, Cavill thought for a few moments. Unlike her, he then said, “No, can’t remember. I’m sorry.”
“Could you say whether they were male or female?”
“No. They were quite far away. I’m sorry.”
“Then perhaps what they were wearing? Or even just a color you remember?”
Cavill crinkled his brow for a long moment. Then, “No. I’m sorry.”
The capitaine nodded. “As you say, it’s understandable. Thank you. You’ve been very helpful. Now, where are you staying while you’re in Paris?”
“The Hotel Etoiles.” He recited from memory, “Room two-oh-nine, Hotel Etoiles, thirty-six Rue de Cléry.”
“Good. We may well be in touch. Please don’t leave the city until we tell you it’s all right.”
“But I’ve already given the deposit for Provence!”
“Well, it may comfort you to know that the police are also hoping this situation wraps up swiftly.”
Going by Cavill’s face, this did not comfort him at all.
Once the door closed, Boussicault stood up, gave a long backward stretch, and began pacing the little room.
“Why do you ask how long they’ve lived in Paris?” Rachel asked.
“Pardon?” He took a few more steps.
“You’ve asked every one of them except Docteure Bonsergent how long they’ve been in Paris. But the murder was committed this morning, so that seems irrelevant.”
“I ask them, first, as a way of relaxing them. But I also ask because at this time I’m not completely sure that Monsieur Morel’s death is unrelated to the theft we discovered yesterday. By asking them how long they’ve been here, I get an idea of who might have been here when the page was stolen.” He gave a grin. “Which so far is everyone except Docteure Bonsergent.”
The Books of the Dead Page 9