The Books of the Dead

by Emilia Bernhard

  This was not an easy conversation. “Not exactly.” But before Magda could deflate once more, she said, “While you were working, I did some research on Cavill’s jacket.” She explained about the prices. “I don’t think he would slash the lining of his own four hundred–pound sport coat.”

  “I don’t know …” Magda frowned. “The prices on Laurent’s list were pretty high. And Cavill wasn’t exactly careful about money. He doesn’t seem like he’d balk at cutting up a four hundred–pound jacket if he was stealing something he could sell for twenty thousand euros.”

  “No.” Rachel shook her head. “Cavill spent money to look a certain way to other people, and to provide a certain kind of life for his family. That might seem foolish to us, but it wasn’t wasting money as far as he was concerned. But ruining a four hundred–pound coat by slashing the lining is a waste.”

  “Not if you’re going to be able to buy fifty more as a result.”

  Magda looked mulish. Rachel decided to try using logic rather than psychology. “Okay, I can see your point. But why would he cut open his coat lining in the reading room? He could have cut it in his hotel room, or even in the men’s room at the Bibliothèque, if he wanted to dispose of the knife blade somewhere where it couldn’t be traced back to him. Why would he wait until he was in the place where it was most important that he not be caught? Or let’s say he did slit it somewhere else. Why would he keep carrying the blade after that, so he could lose it in the reading room?”

  This seemed to work. Magda didn’t concede, but she did say, “Do you have a better scenario?”

  Her voice was sulky. Rachel understood: first her big moment had fallen flat, and now it was being undermined. Still, she knew she had to go on. “I think so.”

  “Fine. Let’s hear it.”

  “I think someone else slashed Cavill’s lining. And I think that someone also planted the woodcut on him.”

  She waited. Magda’s arms were crossed, but she didn’t say anything dismissive, so Rachel continued. “I think they must have done that, then either deliberately dropped this thing next to the table leg, where they thought it wouldn’t be noticed, or just lost track of it because it wasn’t important anymore.”

  Magda considered. “Okay, it’s a hypothesis. But in that scenario both Cavill and the slasher are in the reading room. How could the slasher cut the coat without Cavill seeing him?”

  Rachel had been puzzling over this very question for the half hour before their meeting, with no luck. “I don’t know.”

  “They’d have to be quick about it.”

  “They would.”

  “And they’d have to be unobtrusive. You’d need to bring out the blade, get access to the jacket, then to the lining, then make the cut, then slide the folded page in, all without anybody noticing. Who could do that?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the part I haven’t been able to figure out yet.”

  “It’s a pretty big part.”

  “It is.”

  They sat in mutual silence until Magda said, “I have an idea, but you won’t like it.”

  “I can take it. Tell me.”

  “It’s LouLou.”

  Rachel didn’t like it. She made a face.

  “No, think about it. Who could linger by an empty reading room table for any length of time without creating suspicion? A member of the staff. She pretends to drop off some materials while Cavill’s at the computer or in the bathroom, knocks his jacket off a chair, and while she’s picking it up she makes the slash and slips the page in. No one would pay much attention. Who would know where to dispose of the blade quickly and with the least notice? A member of the staff. She drops a book in the right place, kneels down, shoots the blade under the table, stands up with the book in her hand. Perfectly normal.”

  Rachel still didn’t like it, but she had to acknowledge that it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility. She turned the scenarios over in her mind. “But we didn’t find the woodcut in Cavill’s jacket until a week and a half after Giles’s death, and LouLou hadn’t been in the reading room since the day before Giles died. Would Cavill have wandered around for eleven days with a cut in his lining and a piece of paper inside it and not noticed? And, anyway, why would LouLou have put the woodcut in his jacket before she killed Giles? She had nothing to worry about then.”

  “Those are very good questions, Watson.” Magda raised an index finger. “But I can answer them. First, Cavill apparently didn’t notice his lining was cut until you pointed it out. Maybe he’s not much of a noticer. Or even if he is, maybe he wore the jacket on the relevant day, hung it up in his tiny hotel wardrobe, and then didn’t wear it again until the day of his interview. It is tweed, and the other one was linen—a much better hot-weather fabric.” Her voice became thoughtful. “If you think about it, time and timing have always been a problem in this case.” Rachel could tell she loved saying case in a casual way. Which was fine, because she loved hearing it.

  “We don’t know when the page was taken out of the Supplementum,” Magda went on. “We have no idea when Laurent did his blackmailing, or when the page was removed from the book of psalms.”

  “Psalter.”

  “Psalter. Thank you. And you yourself pointed out that Giles’s reaction to the missing page suggested he’d known about some earlier theft from a book. It’s perfectly possible that LouLou is an advance planner. Lots of murderers are.” Magda said this as if she’d interviewed thousands of murderers on just that topic. “What if we got the timing wrong? What if Giles already knew that she’d stolen a page from the psalter before he found out about the Supplementum? What if he’d already started to blackmail her, and she’d already planned to kill him over it? She put the page in the jacket in advance because she figured it was worth it to sacrifice one illustration to get rid of suspicion and be free to sell the other, more valuable one.”

  Magda stopped, waiting for a response. Rachel felt that perhaps she did deserve to be a secondary character that day after all. Maybe Woman Who Found Out Some Mildly Interesting Stuff, but Nothing as Good as This. Magda’s suggestions were plausible, and in their plausibility they made it impossible to dismiss LouLou as a suspect.

  “Okay, those aren’t entirely unlikely hypotheses. But neither is the hypothesis that someone else was able to slash the lining and throw away the blade, too. So we have a number of hypotheses that are equally likely to be wrong.”

  Magda cleared her throat. “Or equally likely to be right.”

  Rachel sighed, looked at the baggy, then sighed again. “I’ll tell you what else we have. We have what could be a major piece of evidence, which we found as a result of investigating. And we have to hand it over to a police captain who explicitly told us to stop investigating.”

  They mulled the grim prospect. At last Magda said, “Do we, though?”

  “Do we what?”

  “Do we have to give it to him? Couldn’t we just … not?”

  “I’m pretty sure your lawyer boyfriend would tell you that withholding evidence is even worse than compromising the chain of evidence—probably even worse than breaking and entering and finding nothing but leaving your fingerprints everywhere. Ask him if you don’t believe me. We have to give it back.”

  “I will ask him.” Magda gave a determined bob of her head. “In fact, I’ll ask him tonight.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Later that evening Benoît and Alan sat with them around a table at Fauchon on the Place de la Madeleine. In front of them was one of the patisserie’s most decadent pastries, a cake in the shape of a pillowy mouth airbrushed bright raspberry red. Magda sighed mournfully as she cut off a bite.

  “I am sorry”—Benoît shook his head—“but the law is very clear. Impeding an investigation is a serious offense. You must hand it over.”

  Magda swallowed. “But we’re not impeding an investigation. The police have Cavill, but we also gave them the piece of string that suggests someone else could be the murderer. So the
y have all the evidence they need to continue to investigate from both angles. The knife is just extra.”

  Benoît turned to face Magda, a lock of his hair falling over his forehead and the light glinting off his glasses. He gave her a sad smile. “Amour, the police will not share your reasoning. You may be correct in your thinking—certainly you are scrupulously logical—but the police will argue that any piece of evidence, at any stage, is important. And”—he tilted his head to one side—“we must admit that a piece of string found in a rubbish bin and a homemade weapon found near the scene of a crime are very different sorts of evidence.”

  “Also,” Alan pointed out, “not handing in the eraser keeps Robert Cavill in police custody when he might not deserve it. And of course”—he flashed a smile of his own in Rachel’s direction—“it keeps Boussicault from knowing about the excellent detective work you did all on your own.”

  Benoît frowned. “I think Docteure Cavill may have been released in any case.” He added hastily, “Although you should still hand in the evidence.”

  “How do you mean, he may have been released?”

  “Well, criminal law is not my area, but I do know that the police can only detain a suspect for forty-eight hours before they must bring him before a magistrate to request an extension. And no magistrate would agree to an extension based on the evidence you have described. Nothing shows clearly that Monsieur Cavill murdered anyone, and the theft of the page with the woodcut is a délit—what you would call a misdemeanor.” He said the last two words in English with an impeccable American accent. “He would probably be required to remain in the country and to check in at a police station regularly, but he wouldn’t be detained in custody.” He frowned again. “Excuse me a moment.”

  After he left, Alan leaned in. “I know I sound like a broken record, but I think you have to turn this in, too. Even if Cavill has been released, that thing raises all sorts of questions. Who could smuggle it into the reading room? How could it have stayed where it was without being noticed and for how long? And you don’t have the ability to test it for fingerprints, which the police do.” He put his hand over Rachel’s. “I know Boussicault treated you badly, but he is the law, and he really will know how to use this most effectively.”

  Rachel though of how angry Boussicault would be—how angry he would be again. She winced. But then she thought of Giles, whom she’d grown to like despite herself, and who had probably loved LouLou, and who had had hopes and dreams that were ended prematurely by a knife in the chest. And then, because she prided herself on not falling for sentimental clichés, she thought of her belief that solving a crime was a way of ordering the world. And then, because she couldn’t help it, she thought of Giles again.

  Benoît reappeared. “Monsieur Cavill has indeed been released.” He sat down.

  “How did you find out?” Alan asked.

  Benoît gave another, smaller shrug. “I called the commissariat and explained that I was a lawyer recently retained by the British embassy to represent Monsieur Cavill. I asked when I might come to see him. The gardien told me that he had been released and could be reached at his hotel. He even very kindly gave me the address.”

  Alan exhaled a sharp cry. “Am I the only law-abiding citizen at this table?”

  Benoît waved his hand. “I did nothing illegal.” He turned to look at the women. “And neither will you, I believe. Please promise me that tomorrow morning you will go to the commissariat and hand over this knife to the police. Without this evidence the police may devote themselves to building a case that unintentionally convicts an innocent man—and one that allows the real murderer to walk around free.”

  Rachel looked at Magda across the sponge-cake lips. Magda had found the blade, so the decision about what to do with it belonged to her. Rachel tried very hard not to let her face show that she wanted her to take it to Boussicault. Instead, she let it show another fact: that she would stand by her whatever she decided.

  Magda chewed thoughtfully for a moment. She put her fork down, swallowed her bite of cake, then wiped her lips. She looked at Alan and Benoît. “How about a compromise?”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Early afternoon the next day found Rachel sitting with Magda by the side of the boccie court in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Elderly Frenchmen as short and broad as fireplugs measured their shots, cackled at their friends’ misses, and gossiped about each other as they waited their turns at the game. The sun still blazed out overhead, but Rachel spotted a few brown leaves on the path in front of them. Autumn was coming, even it if it seemed as if it never could.

  “How long did you say you were going to wait?” she asked.

  “Until two this afternoon. I just wanted a bit more time to think.” Magda sighed. “I am going to turn it in. I promised Benoît, so I will. But it feels so significant … if only we could figure out what it signifies! And I don’t see why we have to rush to help Boussicault. You said yourself that he patronized us.”

  She had said that.

  “And we’re good. We’re good detectives. We’re doing well. I don’t see the police successfully planting an observer in the reading room.”

  Well, if he were a successful plant, you wouldn’t see him, Rachel pointed out silently. But she was too wise to say it aloud. Besides, they were good detectives. Instead she said, “So we have two hours.”

  “Two hours is more than enough time to have a revelation.”

  Normally Rachel would have rolled her eyes at Magda’s optimism, but just this once she almost agreed with her. Three hours was a valuable commodity when it came to detection. She closed her eyes and moved her mind backward, pulling at the clues and possible clues. She thought about Aurora Dale, always keeping her handbag close. Was it because there was a stolen page in it, a page she meant to sell at Bonnefoi? She was the least likely suspect, and by the law of mystery novels that meant she was the killer. But what about Homer Stibb? He was American, which in the eyes of any European mystery novel made him guilty of something. And LouLou? She could have killed out of rage and fear, or out of economic ruthlessness. In a fiendishly plotted noir novel, it would be out of both.

  The trouble, she thought, was that she didn’t know what kind of mystery novel this real-life mystery was in. If she were Hercule Poirot (had she remembered to bleach her upper lip?), Cavill would be guilty, having engineered the situation with Mrs. Cavill to free them from all debt and suspicion simultaneously. If she were one of Wilkie Collins’s characters, Dale would be guilty, conniving behind an exterior of charming eccentricity. If she were in a Raymond Chandler book, the doer would be Stibb, playing fast and loose with his money and his promises. But then again, if she were in a Raymond Chandler book, she would be the moll or the faithful secretary and never get anywhere near investigating. This was the problem with real life: you got to do more, but there was less clarity. At least, that was one of the problems with real life.

  “Madame Levis?”

  Rachel opened her eyes and looked up. Aurora Dale stood in front of her.

  “It is Madame Levis, isn’t it?”

  “Professor Dale!”

  “Oh, please do call me Aurora.” She gestured at the bench on which they sat. “I thought I recognized you from the interviews! May I join you?”

  Rachel nodded. “And please call me Rachel.”

  Aurora settled herself so that she was facing them, her knees pressed against the front edge of the bench. She held her bag firmly on her lap, Rachel noticed. “How fortuitous for me! I was just debating whether to contact the police. I don’t know if you’re someone I could talk to …”

  Magda leaned out from behind Rachel. “Hello, I’m Magda Stevens.” She held out her hand. Aurora looked somewhat confused, but she shook it. “Rachel’s friend and colleague. Yes, we’re the right people. You can absolutely talk to us.”

  “Oh, how do you do. I’m so sorry to break into your afternoon. I wouldn’t do it under normal circumstances, but I’ve been thinking about th
ose interviews.” She took a deep breath, then sighed it back out. “I think I’ve behaved poorly.”

  “I can’t imagine how.” Rachel tried to think back.

  “Well, foolishly, then. Certainly foolishly.” She paused, seeming to gather herself together for some sort of launch. “You see, when I was growing up, and even now really, in Britain anyway, money just … wasn’t talked about. Money is a private matter. And I fear I rather took this attitude when talking to the police captain.”

  She looked away for a moment. “If it hadn’t been for certain, well, inhibitions, I could have explained those payments into my current account quite easily. I put the personal above the common good, which is always a mistake.”

  She snapped back to attention. “You see, as it happens, over the years I’ve managed to pile up a collection of relatively unusual books.”

  Rachel’s ears pricked. Unusual was the word the girl from Peter Harrington had used.

  “A number of which have since become very valuable. They are, ah, items of”—she looked slightly bashful—“well … erotica. Nineteenth-century erotica.”

  Realization came to Rachel in a rush. “Very unusual”; “very interesting”; the amusement in the girl’s voice. Professor Dale had been selling dirty books. And, judging by the prices the girl had quoted, she’d been making some tidy sums from it.

  Aurora must have seen Rachel’s startled expression, because she said quickly, “It’s a very profitable area these days. The bookseller tells me it’s terribly trendy to own rare pornography. It’s a, well, a seller’s market. And, well, once the savings ran out and the overdraft started growing, I became, well, a seller. I just couldn’t bear having debt like that, and so over the past year I’ve been, well, selling my rarest items. To Peter Harrington.” She smiled bashfully. “I’ve been managing some, ah, good prices, actually. But I didn’t want to mention it in the interviews because, well, money is awkward. And a woman with a sexual appetite, or even an interest in sex, is … you know.”