The Books of the Dead

by Emilia Bernhard

  Fortunately, Dale responded. “Yes, taxes. Our house was in my husband’s name—the legacy of nonsensical prefeminist British laws—and that pushed the value of his estate up. I had to use some of my savings to pay tax on the estate, and of course also the expenses of the funeral. And we had promised to help with the school fees, and I wanted to keep that promise. So my savings went.”

  “And your current account, too,” Boussicault observed genially. “I saw that until relatively recently you were running a very large overdraft—one that grew larger every year, in fact.”

  “Well, if you have very little money and you take not-very-little sums away from it repeatedly, you’ll find that it grows into a very large overdraft.”

  Rachel felt great respect. Obviously taken off guard, plainly angry, clearly discomfited, Professor Dale nonetheless managed to retain both her wits and her power over words. Rachel didn’t think she could’ve managed as well.

  Boussicault, however, seemed untroubled by admiration. Unrelentingly affable and unrelentingly calm, he was nonetheless unrelenting. “And then, about a year ago your financial situation began to improve?” He made it a question, but it required no answer. “You started to receive generous payments into the account.” He stared at his bloc-notes as he threw his last card on the table. “From a London antiquarian bookstore. Peter Harrington.”

  Professor Dale stayed silent for a very long time. She thinned her lips, then sucked the left side of her lower one between her teeth. At last she said, “Yes.”

  “Yes, you acknowledge that you received these payments?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you tell me, please, what they were for?”

  Again she thought. Then, “No.” The word came out of her thinned mouth like a flat package through a mail slot.

  “No?” Boussicault repeated. “No, you won’t tell me why you are receiving money from this antiquarian bookseller?”

  “No.”

  “Did you sell him books? Engravings? Illustrations?”

  Still Professor Dale said nothing. Rachel wasn’t quite sure what was going through her mind. Perhaps fear had made her careful—or perhaps, a voice in Rachel’s head murmured, knowledge of her guilt had done it. But certainly she had changed. Now she opened her lips a little wider and said with controlled calm, “I have no desire to discuss my private money matters with you, nor with anyone else. And I have no intention of doing so, either. If you want this conversation to go any further, I demand to be allowed to call the British embassy for assistance.”

  The room was silent. Then Boussicault raised his eyebrows. “Innocent people don’t usually need consular assistance.”

  “Nonsense!” For a moment Rachel saw how Professor Dale dealt with flawed reasoning, and she was glad she wasn’t one of her students. “That’s the oldest line in the police book: innocent people don’t need lawyers. I should think innocent people need lawyers more than anybody else. I’d have to be mad to sit here blithely answering questions in a foreign country, whose legal system I don’t understand, without legal assistance.” As if to underline this observation, she picked up her bag from the floor and planted it firmly in her lap.

  Boussicault smiled. “I’m not going to steal your portefeuille, Professeure. In fact, now that you have asked for embassy help, I’m not going to do anything except provide you with a telephone number and request that you wait in the commissariat until that help arrives.” He rose and opened the door. “If you step outside, my brigadier will show you to a telephone.”

  With dignity worthy of a wronged Edith Sitwell, Professor Dale did just that.

  As Didier shut the door behind them, Boussicault exhaled a long rush of exasperated air. Rachel marveled at the range of meaning the French could achieve with breath alone. “Probably her consulate representative will advise her to say nothing, and so that will be that for us. But in the meantime”—he raised his voice—“Professeur Stibb, s’il vous plait.”

  * * *

  Like Professor Dale, Homer Stibb looked slightly worried at being called in for a second interview. Unlike her, as soon as he sat at the table he began to complain. “When is all this going to be over? It isn’t cheap living in Paris, and my research money will only go so far. I’m already carrying significant debt, and I’d like to get home before I incur more. How soon can I leave?”

  If Boussicault was taken aback by this deluge, he didn’t show it. He did, however, skip the opening questions he’d used to put Professor Dale at ease, instead moving right to the point. “We already know that you have significant debt, Professeur Stibb. It’s exactly this I wish to ask you about.”

  Stibb crossed his arms and slouched lower in his chair. “Sure, go ahead.” But his jaw made its nervous back-and-forth motion.

  Boussicault removed some printed sheets he had tucked into his bloc-notes. “You have thirty thousand dollars in education loans.”

  Professor Stibb nodded.

  “You have an outstanding mortgage of ninety-two thousand dollars.”

  He nodded again, and Rachel saw his arms tense across his chest.

  “You have three credit cards, with a total balance of ten thousand dollars.”

  Homer Stibb’s lips rolled and his cheeks moved in and out, as if he were sucking a gobstopper, but his voice was calm. “Did you bring me in here to tell me about a bunch of debts I already know I have? Yes, I owe a lot of money. That’s not news to me. Thanks to the American government’s decision to keep its future and current academics financially strapped, I had to take out student loans, and it took me years to save up for a down payment on a house. So now I have a high mortgage, and if I want to make any big purchases I have to put them on a credit card.”

  “And I see these credit cards are also how you pay the fees on your mother’s retirement home.”

  “Community,” Stibb corrected. “They’re called communities now. Yes, I use the cards to pay the fees.”

  “Used.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said use, but I notice that you haven’t paid any fee on a card for the last … three months. So it should be used, really. And in any case, none of them has enough credit left to pay any large fees.” He appeared to consult the pages and do some quick mental arithmetic. “Even if you split it between them.”

  Stibb reddened. “What business of yours are my credit cards? Where did you get that information?”

  Exercising his policeman’s prerogative once again, Boussicault ignored the second question. “Your credit cards are very much my business, Monsieur Stibb, when I’m dealing with a murder that seems to be linked to theft and blackmail.”

  “What? What do you mean?” Stibb’s face now paled, and his lips tightened. “What theft? My God, I’ve never blackmailed anyone in my life!”

  “Your financial records back you up,” Boussicault observed drily.

  Stibb winced. “It’s been a hard couple of months. I’ve had to use the credit cards for other things. But I’m managing.”

  “Ah, you are.” Boussicault put down the sheets of paper. “I’m relieved to hear that, because I see from your credit card records that you haven’t been managing to pay these retirement community fees.” Stibb gave a little jerk, and the capitaine gave a little sigh, as if it pained him to admit what he knew.

  “Okay.” Despite his reaction, Stibb’s voice was level, even reasonable. “Look, you know how it is. You have rough patches. I had a rough patch. And my university doesn’t pay for travel up front. They reimburse us. So I nearly maxed out my credit cards to pay for this trip, but by the end of the summer I’ll get it all back. So I told my mother’s place I’d give them a large payment in September. I thought it might get them off my back, and it worked. They agreed to wait, provided I’d make payment in full then, and I promised I would. Then when I pay down the cards I’ll hold some back, and I’ll pay the community that. It won’t be what I promised, but it’ll be enough for them to be willing to wait for a little more the next mo
nth, and a little more the month after that. I say big, but I pay little; that’s how I do it.” He leaned forward. “Look, this isn’t The Name of the Rose. I don’t steal medieval manuscripts, and I don’t murder people. I’m an overextended academic who teaches French to bored twenty-year-olds and has to connive a little to make ends meet. Who doesn’t?”

  Where she’d felt respect for Dale’s steely reserve, Rachel now admired Homer Stibb’s frankness. In might be humiliating to own up to your terrible financial habits, but his willingness to do so looked like it might save him from being a viable suspect in a murder.

  But again Boussicault obviously didn’t share her admiration. Rachel saw a muscle on the left side of his mouth give a small jump, then another, before he spoke. “What makes you think I suspect you of those things?”

  “Oh, come on!” Stibb ran his hand through his curls. “I was contacted Tuesday night and told the police wanted to interview me about a library theft, and when I arrived on Wednesday morning, someone who worked in the reading room was dead. It isn’t too hard to put those together. Especially given that literary analysis uses some of the same skills as detection.”

  “Yes, Professeure Dale made a similar observation at her first interview.”

  “Did she now.” Stibb looked mildly surprised. “Well, I may have made the point to her while we were waiting to talk to you.”

  Rachel saw the muscle in Boussicault’s cheek twitch once again. Finally he stood up. “You may go, Professeur Stibb. But don’t leave Paris until we tell you it’s all right to do so.” He waited a moment, then added, “The prefecture of police can cover your expenditures, if that becomes necessary.”

  As the door closed behind Stibb and the brigadier, the capitaine sat back down. For a moment he rested his fingers lightly on the spot where his muscle had jumped. Then he said, “These people have seen too many films. Or watched too much television. This was all easier when the police were more mysterious.”

  Rachel wasn’t sure if by this he meant investigating, interviewing suspects, or simply having the upper hand in any scenario, but she thought she understood how he felt. They had been in this room for—she checked her watch—over an hour, and all they had to show for it was the obduracy of one academic and the rudeness of another.

  “This man,” Boussicault went on. “One step further and he would be un escroc. He tells us how he has managed in the past as if that’s an indication of how he is managing now, but that is a false equivalency. And la bonne professeure, she saves her ticket stub as if going to the cinema proves she isn’t a murderer, while she refuses to explain the behavior that makes her look good for the crime!”

  “But doesn’t that suggest that they’re innocent? I mean, wouldn’t a murderer try harder not to suggest any reason for suspicion?”

  The capitaine frowned and stared at the floor for a minute. Then he shook his head hard and looked up.

  “Well, there is still Monsieur Cavill. Let us see what he has to say for himself.” Once again he spoke to the air: “Please send in Docteur Cavill.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  There were some words and phrases, Rachel knew, that were impossible to understand until you saw them in action: wuss out, chillax, the true meaning of that sucks. When Robert Cavill entered the interview room, she realized that until that moment she’d never really grasped the meaning of flop sweat. Cavill’s face gleamed with a clammy perspiration, and Rachel could smell the fear coming off him. As he sat down, he tried for a smile, but it was a poor half-born thing.

  “Bonjour, Docteur.” The capitaine waited until Cavill settled himself in the chair. “How have you been enjoying Paris since we last saw you?”

  “How do you think?” Cavill spoke sulkily. Like many men, he made his fear take refuge in belligerence. “A man was killed meters away from where I work, I saw the murderer entering the murder site, and I’ve been told not to leave town. It hardly makes for an enjoyable stay.”

  “But you’ve still been using the reading room.”

  “Yes, well, work is the best distraction, my father always said.”

  “An interesting expression.” The capitaine made a note. “What do you need distraction from in this case?”

  Cavill’s face flooded with red. “Oh, I don’t know. A violent death that I might be accused of causing? In a country where I don’t speak the language fluently and where I don’t know anyone? Which of those do you think might preoccupy me?”

  “If you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear,” Boussicault said.

  Cavill snorted—apparently Professor Dale wasn’t the only one too smart to fall for that, Rachel thought—but the capitaine continued as if he hadn’t heard.

  “Now, I wonder if you could once more lead me through your memories of the morning of Monsieur Morel’s death.”

  For the next five minutes, Cavill repeated the story he had told them the week before. Rachel could see him begin to breathe evenly, and when he wiped his face with his handkerchief in the middle of his recitation, no more sweat appeared.

  “Thank you.” Boussicault turned a leaf of his bloc-notes and gave Cavill a small smile. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you some questions about yourself.”

  Cavill looked surprised but said, “All right.”

  “You have three children, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they go to the …” Boussicault pretended to look at his notes. “The Perse School, yes?”

  Cavill nodded.

  “And this is a fee-paying school.”

  He nodded again.

  “And you also have a mortgage.”

  “Yes.”

  Having let Cavill calm himself by retelling his story and regain his confidence by answering some factual questions, Boussicault now made his move. “Churchill College must help you with these expenses, yes? Even here in France we hear how rich Cambridge University is, how it pays its lecturers’ mortgages …”

  Cavill stared at the tabletop. He took several huffing breaths, clenched his jaw, then loosened it. He looked up. “I want to confess.”

  Rachel couldn’t believe it. Just like that? She ground her teeth, cursing Magda’s absence: she was missing the best bit!

  “Ah,” said Boussicault. “Well.”

  “Yes.” Robert Cavill nodded his head a few times. “Yes. I lied to you. I’m not who you think I am. I don’t work at Cambridge. I work at a university called Anglia Ruskin—it is in Cambridge.”

  What? All that lead-up and his “confession” was just to something they already knew? Rachel was outraged.

  “Yes.” Boussicault sounded reflective. “We knew that. We already discovered that Anglia Ruskin University is your actual employer.”

  Rachel looked at his smooth face. He had known Cavill wasn’t confessing to the murder; he’d just let him go on because relief would lower his defenses.

  Now Boussicault said, “But if you don’t work at Cambridge, all your expenses must leave you in a great deal of debt.”

  “Presumably you know they do.” Cavill was sullen.

  “I do.” Boussicault was almost apologetic. “And I also know that you are a world expert on medieval illustration and iconography.”

  “Yes.” They were back to monosyllables.

  “Which would mean that you know the values of many medieval woodcuts.”

  “Ye—” Cavill caught himself. “I mean no. I mean yes, I would know the value, but I would never take one. Never. Illustrations are an integral textual element. And aside from anything else, it’s very difficult to separate medieval paper. It has a very high rag content. You’d need a very sharp blade.”

  “You’ve given it some thought.” Rachel couldn’t help feeling that, robbed of Professor Dale and Professor Stibb, Capitaine Boussicault was lingering over Dr. Cavill.

  “I haven’t—or rather, yes, I have, but only now, here.”

  “I called the Cambridge University Library,” Boussicault sai
d suddenly.

  Rachel started.

  “They told me that a number of items have gone missing over the last two years or so. When I gave them your name and asked if you had used their special collections in that time, they very kindly checked for me. And it turns out you had.”

  He steepled his fingers, resting his lips against them as he watched Cavill’s face. Rachel marveled. Was Boussicault telling the truth? Docteure Dwamena had said libraries didn’t like to admit to theft. Would Cambridge really give such information to an unknown foreign policeman?

  Apparently Robert Cavill believed they would, because, after being shocked into silence for a moment, he became almost hysterical. “No! I am not a thief! I would never harm a book! I admit it, I live beyond my means.” His voice was high and thin. “I want to have the life I deserve, and I want my children to have the right sort of education. I confess all that, and that I’m swimming in debt to get it. But I don’t confess … I don’t confess …” He took a gasping breath, and as he let it out, he suddenly burst into tears. “I didn’t steal from any library, and I didn’t kill that man! I’m not a murderer, and I’m not a thief!” He buried his face in his hands.

  Boussicault waited. If there was one thing Rachel had learned from this afternoon, it was that a good detective cultivated an almost zenlike calm. She’d have to start yoga again.

  After a few moments, Cavill stopped crying, wiped his face, and smoothed his hair, breathing deeply. At last he said, “I know my rights. I’m leaving, and I’m going to contact my embassy. You can deal with them.” He stood and took his sport coat from the back of the chair. It was tweed, Rachel saw, a ridiculous English weave much too heavy for the current weather. It sagged open as he shrugged it on, revealing its lining, and she noticed a small shape pressing against the brown satin. As she watched, the shape fell forward a little.

  “What’s that?” She hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but she spoke without thinking.

  “What’s what?” Cavill was settling the jacket on his shoulders; Boussicault was looking at her.

  “What’s that in the lining of your jacket?”