The Books of the Dead

by Emilia Bernhard

  Damn the French and their love of drama. “What was it?”

  “It was an illustrated book of medieval psalms.”

  “A psalter.” Rachel couldn’t help herself; irritation brought out her inner pedant. “It’s called an illuminated psalter. And he did die in the medieval religion section. It probably fell off a shelf.”

  “I don’t think this fell off a shelf. For one thing, it was under a shelving unit. And for another, it’s missing a page.”

  It was Rachel’s turn to be silent. She almost dropped the phone, then gripped it more tightly. “No way.”

  “Indeed.” He paused again, but this time more like a man standing back to watch his effect. “Obviously this is a significant development.”

  “Obviously. Should I come to the commissariat?”

  “No need. I just thought you’d like to know. Au ’voir.”

  Rachel put the phone down on the counter and stood processing the news. A book, a missing page, the body. She tried to see a connection.

  All of a sudden one burst into her brain. What if Giles was the book thief? She remembered his response when Boussicault told him a book had been mutilated. I know, he’d said. I already know. And he’d looked anxious even when he first came into Docteure Dwamena’s office, before Boussicault had said anything. What if he’d already known because he was the one who’d stolen the engraving from the Supplementum Chronicarum? What if his voice had been heavy because he’d thought he was about to be found out?

  “What if it’s the books?” she said aloud to her silent apartment. “What if the murder isn’t about rage but about the books?”

  All the details fell into place at once. Giles had been stealing book illustrations! Laurent had caught him at it and was blackmailing him! Giles had killed him for it! Then he had been killed himself by a disgruntled customer—a disgruntled tall customer he’d let in the back door!

  She heard Magda’s voice in her head. First it asked, Why did he kill him with a piece of string? Then it asked, Why aren’t Giles’s initials on the notebook page if the blackmail is all about him?

  “Oh, shut up,” she said aloud. But fine. Those were fair objections. So maybe Giles wasn’t the thief. Maybe he’d found out who the thief was, like Laurent, and he was also trying to blackmail them. After all, both Laurent and Giles were librarians. If one discovered theft, so could the other.

  Rachel listened, but she heard nothing inside her head or out. She smiled. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so hard on her own, after all.

  The next question, she thought, was obviously, who was the thief? Well, someone who knew a lot about books, who knew their value—and who needed money. And who would know how to turn book illustrations into money. She had another epiphany: who needed money more than academics? Probably all the reading room visitors she and Boussicault had interviewed needed money. And who would know how to turn antiquarian illustrations into money better than academics who studied antiquarian books? Probably all the reading room patrons they’d interviewed could do that easily, too.

  If only the interviews had been more informative! If only she’d known in advance that she’d want to ask about finances. Now she had no way of finding out; Alan had made it very clear on her last case that to help her would put his job in jeopardy, and there was no one else.

  But there was. There was someone who had used computer skills to access private information on their last case, and the results had been very useful. Someone free, someone accessible, someone only a phone call away.

  No. She crossed her arms and whirled around to look at the refrigerator, the cabinets, anywhere but at the solution in front of her. No, no, no, no. But she couldn’t avoid it. The only other way to get help was to hire someone. Did she want to reveal her purpose to someone else? Someone she didn’t know and didn’t know if she could trust? Did she have the time to waste locating someone and explaining herself? The answer to those questions was also no, no, no, no. Since that was the case, she really had no other choice.

  It wouldn’t be a climbdown, she said to herself, lifting her chin a little. It would be a sacrifice in the name of the higher calling that was detection.

  * * *

  “That’s ridiculous,” Magda said.

  “You’re free to say no to my request.” Rachel’s voice was stiff.

  “No, not that, the other. Your goal was to find an alternative theory, and you devised a line of thinking that led directly to that goal. You’re avoiding considering LouLou at all costs, even at the cost of clear reasoning. What evidence do you have that Giles was blackmailing anyone?”

  “As I said, you’re welcome to decline.”

  “I’m not going to decline.” Magda sounded impatient. “I will help. But I want it understood that I’m still upset. I’m only helping you out of duty to the higher calling of detection.” She paused. “And because I’ve finished my ordering and organizing for next season, so space has opened up.”

  “Fine.” Rachel lifted her chin again.

  “Fine. The next time your phone rings, it will be me with the information you requested. Because Magda Stevens does not let the personal interfere with the professional.” She hung up in Rachel’s ear.

  Rachel stood staring at her portable. She had wanted to hang up first. Just for good measure, she stabbed her finger at the red receiver that lingered on the screen.

  Chapter Twenty

  But when Rachel’s cell phone rang at nine o’clock the next morning, the person on the other end was not Magda but Docteure Dwamena.

  “I wanted to call you right away.” Her voice was as calm as always, but somehow it sounded more urgent. “Personnel gave me your number, and I wanted to reach you before you were too busy. I have found something that might be important to your investigation.”

  Rachel sat up in bed, pulling the sheet around her. “Really?” Then good sense prevailed. “But if it’s important, you should get in touch with the police.”

  There was a pause. “I thought you were the police.”

  Rachel understood: Boussicault had said, “Rachel is working with me,” and Docteure Dwamena had drawn the perfectly sensible conclusion that Rachel was part of his team. A natural mistake, and easily fixed.

  Yet if she fixed it, she would miss hearing what the doctor had found. And she was almost a member of the police. Almost, said a voice in her head, but not fully. Yes, but she was fully a member of the investigating team, which meant she was working to gather information on the case, and this was a moment when information was being offered.

  She considered these truths, trying to reconcile them. At last she said, “Yes, of course I am. Tell me what you found, and I’ll let you know if it’s worth alerting my superiors.”

  “Well, as you know, the reading room has been closed for the past two days. I thought it might take my mind off our losses if I used the time to catch up on work. I decided to go through and file the backlog of reader request slips. And while I was doing that, I found a slip from two weeks ago requesting the Supplementum Chronicarum.”

  Rachel gasped. “Have you saved it?”

  “Yes. But that’s not the reason I decided to telephone. After I put it to one side, I kept working, and I came across some slips from Tuesday and Wednesday. There weren’t very many, but there were a few. And one of them had the same name on it as the Supplementum slip.”

  It took Rachel a few seconds to figure out what this meant. When she did, she didn’t quite believe it. “You mean you have a slip with the name of the last person known to have requested a damaged book, and another slip from yesterday morning with the same name?”

  “Yes.”

  Miss Marple, Rachel reminded herself, did not scream with amazement; Sam Spade did not let out bellows of joy. She inhaled and said calmly, “And what is the name?”

  “Jean Bernard.”

  “Jean Bernard?”

  “Yes, Jean Bernard.”

  A good French name. But not the name of any of Rachel’s French
friends, or of any French lawyer, banker, or even handyman she had ever dealt with. Why, then, did it sound so familiar? Where had she heard it before? Had she heard it before? She tried to remember. Never mind that. Focus on the detection at hand. She shook herself.

  “Whom else have you told about this?”

  “No one. I thought I should call the police first.”

  “Good thinking.” Then Rachel remembered the second half of her compromise. She sighed. “Now, I’m going to give you the number for Capitaine Boussicault. He’s the man who was with me on Wednesday. Just tell him exactly the same thing you told me.”

  When she hung up, she hit speed dial without thinking.

  “No, it’s not too early.” Magda was too excited to remember to be haughty. “Because I’ve found something. Listen to this.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Robert Cavill,” Magda said to Capitaine Boussicault as she and Rachel sat across the desk from him, “does not work at Churchill College. In fact, he doesn’t work at Cambridge University at all.” She tossed a printout on his desk triumphantly. “He works at Anglia Ruskin University.”

  Boussicault looked puzzled. “But we already know this.” He picked up the piece of paper and moved it to one side.

  Magda was surprised. “You already know that Robert Cavill lied about working at Cambridge?”

  “Mais oui.”

  “And did you know that his salary at Anglia Ruskin is much lower than at Cambridge?” Again her tone was triumphant.

  “Well, we know that Cambridge offers many benefits that Anglia Ruskin University does not—mortgage assistance, free lunches, that kind of thing. So although the salaries are almost the same, the Cambridge salary covers more, as it were.” If Boussicault noticed Magda’s crestfallen face, he gave no indication of it. He continued, “And we know that even though he is not at Cambridge, he is very well regarded in his field, and his field is specifically medieval religious iconography. His most recent publication, in fact, was a book called From the Dragon to the Law: Uses and Meanings of Scales in Medieval Religious Illustration.”

  “I knew that,” Magda said.

  “I see. And you knew that in addition to the twin sons he mentioned in his interview, he also has a daughter?”

  “Yes, I knew that.”

  “Then no doubt you also knew that all three attend the Perse School, in Cambridge, where the fees for each are roughly fifteen thousand pounds a year.”

  It was stiflingly hot in the office, Rachel realized. The air conditioning was broken. She listened to the second hand of the wall clock moving for a long, muggy ten seconds before Magda said, “I didn’t know that.”

  “And did you know that Professeure Dale, so interested in determining if we thought Monsieur Morel’s death was murder, has for the last five years run a very large overdraft with her bank, an overdraft partially paid off in the past year by a number of payments she received from”—he checked a sheet of paper in front of him—“Peter Harrington Rare Books, London?”

  “No.” Magda’s lips thinned. “I didn’t know that either.”

  “Or that Professeur Stibb is up to his ears in debt? Student loans, credit card debt, a mortgage …”

  Why is he being so unpleasant? Rachel wondered. There was no need for him to be belligerent when all they wanted to do was help.

  “Forgive me,” Boussicault said, as if he had heard her. “It’s this heat; it’s made me short-tempered. They were supposed to come and fix the air conditioning this morning, but no one arrived.” He sighed, “But, mesdames, information gathering is what the police do. You might say it is our métier. We have databases; we have computer networks—one of which I used yesterday to examine Madame Fournier’s bank account to see if she might have been connected with the books thefts and somehow killed Monsieur Morel because of that.” Rachel waited for him to tell them the outcome of that examination, but he just continued on. “And we can call upon Europol, as I did to learn what I just told you. Pan-European agencies are very helpful when national treasures like irreplaceable books are at stake.” Rachel looked at her lap. She hadn’t known that. “And we are able to move quickly,” Boussicault continued. “At this moment my team is using all these connections and resources to find the Jean Bernard Rachel instructed Docteure Dwamena to tell me about.”

  Magda cast her a look.

  “Our job is made harder by the fact that the Bibliothèque is having difficulty finding an address that matches his reader ID number,” Boussicault went on, “but I have sent someone there to collect the slips to take them to our lab, where the technicians can try to find fingerprints. If he’s the thief, matching fingerprints may already be in our system. These same technicians will soon be handing in detailed reports that will tell us about Laurent’s murder, Morel’s murder, and their scenes. We are also waiting for full coroner’s reports on Laurent and Morel. In short, the investigation now proceeds along lines we know very well and in which we are trained experts.”

  “How soon is soon?” Magda asked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You said”—Rachel recognized Magda’s quoting voice—“ ‘these same technicians will soon be handing in detailed reports.’ How soon is soon?”

  Boussicault considered. “For the coroner’s report, perhaps next Wednesday; the forensics, perhaps the week after next.”

  “The week after next!”

  The capitaine sighed once more. “Madame Stevens. Real police work is not like television police work. On television everything goes quickly, but here.… For example, it is very hot. In hot weather there are many more suicides. Each suicide must be signed off by a coroner. More bodies to sign off means more autopsies, which means a backlog of bodies. As for the forensic reports, even normally these take time, but again, hot weather increases the rate of violent crime. More violent crime equals more evidence; more evidence equals more lab work. More lab work equals more delay. In fact, the end of next week is refreshingly soon, given the circumstances.”

  Magda crossed her arms, her face a thundercloud. She made one more attempt. “What about the tall person?”

  “The tall person.” For a moment Boussicault looked confused, but then his face cleared. “Ah, the tall person possibly wearing black! As it happens, employees of the Bibliothèque must fill out a medical form when they start, listing, among other things, their height and weight. Of course, Madame Fournier is tall and wears almost entirely black, but I nonetheless have a man currently working his way through these forms to see if any other employees are notably tall. But Madame Stevens”—here he leaned toward her—“can you imagine circulating a notice in Paris that says, ‘Be on the lookout for a tall person wearing a black jacket’? Three-quarters of the men in Paris would be arrested!”

  Magda had to concede that point. She uncrossed her arms.

  Rachel tried to steer the conversation in a more hopeful direction. “Well, what about LouLou? When will that interview happen?” The rest of them might not have been much use, but surely her interview would be revealing.

  Boussicault checked his watch. “In fact, Madame Fournier is being interviewed right now. I sent a female officer in my place, since I thought it might help produce more information.”

  “You sent another—” Rachel clutched at her composure. “You should have sent me.” She felt her nails digging into her palms. “I could have used our friendship to get better results.”

  “Y—” The capitaine stopped, puzzled. Then his face cleared. “I think I may have given you a wrong impression, Rachel.” His voice became gently polite. “I asked for your assistance at the Bibliothèque because I admired your talent for observation in connection with Monsieur Bowen’s murder. I asked you to sit in on the preliminary interviews because I knew you would be interested, and it seemed a good way to thank you for your work. And also”—he looked abashed—“I liked the idea of fostering a budding interest in investigation. But I didn’t mean to give you the impression that you were a part of
this one. I see now that I seem to have done so. My apologies.”

  They all sat still for a moment. Budding talent for investigation? Rachel thought. Talent for observation “in connection with” Edgar’s murder? She and Magda had solved that murder! Hell, she and Magda had recognized that there was a murder to solve in the first place!

  Unaware of her blossoming anger, Boussicault drew a breath. “Now, ecoutez-moi.” His tone was weary. “We are moving forward at a good pace, and I anticipate developments very soon. Madame Fournier, the other readers as witnesses or suspects, Jean Bernard: we are exploring all possibilities. I will keep you informed. And Rachel, to apologize for the earlier confusion, I invite you to sit in on the next round of interviews.” Rachel noticed his stress on sit in—in case she hadn’t grasped his point about her outsider status, she supposed. “But the police are doing our job to the best of our ability, which is very high indeed. You must trust us.”

  * * *

  Outside, it was Paris at two thirty in the afternoon in late July. They sought shelter. Even here, next to the brutalist concrete of the commissariat, they could see two bistros a few steps away. It was pointless to try to make a considered choice, so they simply turned into the one that said CLIMATISÉ in the window. A cold blast hit them as Rachel opened the door.

  They chose a table far back in the room’s and settled in. Rachel felt the backs of her thighs slip moistly against the padded vinyl seat.

  “Well,” Magda said.

  “Yes.” Rachel wiped her forehead.

  “He dismissed us.”

  “Yes.” Rachel was grateful to Magda for not saying dismissed you. She would have been within her rights.

  “Politely, but dismissed us.”

  “Yes.” She was too distracted by her own thoughts to say anything else. She had imagined that Boussicault thought of her as an equal, or at least an apprentice he was mentoring into equality: a capable professional who might bring a more maverick eye to his investigation. Now she had to accept that she had never been a Police Consultant. She hadn’t even been consulted by the police. Instead, she had been drafted in to do a job for which her qualification was precisely that she wasn’t police. She had been an ordinary member of the public when they needed someone to look like an ordinary member of the public. She hadn’t been necessary; she had been used. And she had misunderstood, which was in a way even worse.