The Books of the Dead

by Emilia Bernhard

  Magda and Rachel nodded: they did know.

  “But now I’ve come to feel that if I’d told the captain about this in our interview, he could have written me off as a suspect. And he might have been able to put more energy into finding the real culprit.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about that.” Rachel put a hand on her arm. “They’ve arrested Dr. Cavill, you know. There was material evidence against him.” She felt a twinge of conscience, but at that moment it was more important to her to allay Aurora’s fears than to voice her doubts about Cavill’s guilt.

  “Yes, I heard that. And also that he had to be released. They’re terrible gossipy in the reading room—just like an English faculty.” But instead of looking amused or even relieved, she seemed even more troubled. “And I’ve been thinking about his arrest and release as well. I presume if they’ve released him, they must be looking for someone else.” She sighed, then pursed her lips. “Do you remember that I said in my first interview that detective work is like literary criticism? That in both cases you look a text over repeatedly to see what you might’ve missed during the previous examinations?”

  Rachel nodded.

  “Well, I’ve been reexamining my text. I’ve been running over and over in my mind what I saw before the library opened that morning, trying to see if I could remember anything more. Only the opposite happened. I remembered less. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so unclear!” She shook her head once, hard, as if trying to dislodge something inside it. “What I’m trying to say is, I think I made a mistake. I think what I told you in my interview was wrong. I remembered something wrong.”

  What should a person do in this situation? Rachel asked herself. She knew that Benoît and Alan would say that she should tell Aurora to take any concerns or reconsiderations to the police. But would that really be the right thing? After all, she had appeared in front of them just as they were trying to come up with possible leads, and she might be handing them a lead. Was this a sign? Rachel didn’t believe in signs, but was this a sign?

  “This is fate,” Magda muttered.

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing.” Magda smiled at Aurora. “Doesn’t matter. You think you made a mistake about what?”

  “About what I saw. Or rather, about what I didn’t see.” Another sigh. “Rachel, when you and the captain asked if I’d seen anything that seemed strange, I told you that I thought I remembered seeing someone go round the corner into the back of the library. I did see them in my memory, a tall person going round the corner. But I’ve been running the morning through my mind over and over these past few days, and it’s come to me that I didn’t remember seeing that person until after we’d all been talking in the waiting room together—Dr. Cavill, Professor Stibb, and I. That is, I only remember remembering the person once we started talking about what we remembered.”

  Rachel checked to be certain she’d understood this rather confusing explanation. “You mean all the witnesses waited together in the same room?” Aurora nodded. “And you talked about what you’d seen?”

  “Of course they did,” Magda said. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Well, we didn’t at first. At first we wondered about what was going on. Then I said I thought it must be a murder because—as I said to you—there were all those police. And after I said that, everyone started trying to remember what they remembered that might be significant. I mean, we really were cudgeling our brains.”

  Rachel smiled at this old-fashioned expression.

  “And when I ran all that through my mind over the past week, it began to seem to me that I couldn’t remember remembering I’d seen this person, if you see what I mean, until after we’d all talked about what we remembered. And this morning when I was thinking about it again, I realized that in fact I must have remembered wrong.

  “You see, I was having my usual cigarette, and this morning I suddenly remembered that when I had my cigarette that morning, I stood right over by the entrance to the Bibliothèque, in the corner farthest from the courtyard gates. And from there you can’t see if anyone is going round the back of the library.” She said confidentially, “I checked again before I left just now, to be sure. And I’m quite sure I was standing there at the time I said I’d seen the tall person, because I remember I had time to walk over to the bin by the gate and back to throw the butt out—you know, before they unlocked the library doors.” Her revelation over, she rushed to finish the story. “Then I made a beeline for the ladies’ to wash my hands, as I always do. And I bumped into that terribly gloomy girl from the reading room on the way in, so you can check my story with her.”

  She sighed luxuriously, relieved, and smiled at Rachel and Magda. “This kind of false memory isn’t unheard of, apparently. I looked it up on the Internet. Studies have shown that it’s fairly common for people to manufacture memories, especially if they’re eager to help someone, and especially if a crowd of people are all trying to remember together.”

  “But someone must have started it,” Magda said reasonably. “Do you think you could try to remember who?”

  “I can try.” She sat to attention, gripping her bag even more tightly. “We were all in the room together, and I said I thought it must be a murder. Professor Stibb was on my right, and Dr. Cavill on my left. The Frenchwoman was standing up, looking out the window. And we all started talking about whether we’d seen any actual evidence that would suggest it was a murder, and then … well, you know how it is when you all speak the same language. You just speak that language naturally. And the Frenchwoman didn’t seem terribly interested anyway—standoffish, you know. So the two men and I were chatting in English, and then when I was called in for the interview, I remembered I’d seen this tall person.” She continued to stare into the distance for a few moments, frowning. “Sorry, that’s all I can remember. But as I said, I felt I ought to tell someone, so I left the library and was just on my way home to think about whom to contact.”

  She gave a pleased smile, and Rachel remembered her comment that she was interested in mysteries. She smiled back. “I wouldn’t beat yourself up over what you did or didn’t do. But I do think you should tell all this to Capitaine Boussicault.”

  “Yes.” Magda leaned forward once again. “And the commissariat is on the Rue de Vaugirard, just over there.” She pointed over her shoulder.

  “Yes, that’s all wise advice. I probably should have already gone. But I didn’t feel terribly confident in my own memory until now. You know how it is. I wonder if Dr. Cavill or Professor Stibb …” She trailed off—cudgeling her brains once again, Rachel thought—before giving a little shake and standing up. “In any case, yes, I shall go to the police. And I’m sorry to have bothered you while you were chatting. Makes the day a bit of a busman’s holiday for you. Sorry.” She said good-bye and strode off, heading for the Auberge des Jeunesses.

  Magda waited until she was out of earshot before she spoke. “So there was no tall person!”

  “Well, maybe.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She only said she wasn’t sure. And we have to remember that she could have just made it up. We only have her word for it that the idea didn’t originate with her. What better way to put us off her scent? And didn’t you notice that she just walked off in the opposite direction to the commissariat?”

  “Toward her home!”

  “But you told her the commissariat was close by. Why not set off right away, if she was really so eager to unburden herself to Boussicault?”

  Magda made a face. “I think you’re overly suspicious.”

  “We’re investigating two murders! Is it possible to be over suspicious?”

  “It is if it makes you second-guess somebody who hands you vital evidence on a platter.”

  “Putting it that way makes it sound even more suspect.” It wasn’t that she was untrusting, Rachel thought; it was that she didn’t know whom to trust. Another real-life problem.

  After a while she said, “How long do we ha
ve left?”

  “About an hour.” They sat silent for a bit longer. Then Magda said, “How about a gelato?”

  “If we can eat it on the way there.”

  So they ate gelato and walked slowly toward the commissariat, their tension keeping them quiet. Rachel thought about Aurora’s recovered memory. Only after she replayed the professor’s monologue in her head did she spot that she had mentioned seeing LouLou. There was an alibi for LouLou! Her spirits soared. She must let Boussicault know. Surely he couldn’t object to information she’d acquired via an accidental meeting?

  Then her spirits fell again. Who knew what Boussicault would object to when faced with evidence that they’d furthered disregarded his orders? He’d probably have them locked up, not sit down with her and listen to some story about memory gone bad.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  When they arrived at the commissariat, however, the young gardien behind the reception desk informed them that Capitaine Boussicault had been called away to help with an organized-crime shooting in Sentier. They sat, both disconsolate and relieved, in the strange scoop-shaped chairs of the lobby, whispering to each other.

  “What do we do? Do we just go home?” Magda’s voice was hopeful.

  Rachel shook her head. “We said we’d hand it in, so we’ll hand it in. We’ll give it to the gardien, and we’ll put a note on it that says Boussicault should call us as soon as he gets it.”

  “Be sure to tell him about Aurora, too.” Magda sat back in her chair. Rachel gave her a look. “What? You’re the writer.”

  Rachel might have been less reluctant than Magda to hand over the eraser-knife, but she wasn’t any more eager to explain herself to Boussicault. Taking out her pad and pen, she just wrote, FOUND ON FLOOR OF READING ROOM. EXPECT A CALL FROM AURORA DALE ON ANOTHER MATTER, signed it neatly, asked for a stapler, then handed the baggy, note stapled to its neck, to the gardien. “For Capitaine Boussicault.” He nodded; they left.

  When they were back on the street, Magda suddenly said, “What’s a busman’s holiday?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been wondering that myself.”

  “And why did she keep apologizing?”

  Rachel shook her head. “The English do that. A lot.”

  “The English are weird.”

  Rachel just shrugged and hugged her good-bye. Who wasn’t weird today? She herself had just left a carefully elliptical note to avoid a policeman’s wrath, listened to an elderly woman tell her about the advantages of collecting and selling pornography, and delayed turning in significant evidence in a murder case by eating a gelato. We’re not in Kansas anymore.

  Her portable rang with a number she didn’t recognize. “’Allo?”

  “Rachel? It’s LouLou.”

  Thus proving my point, she thought. She felt that she’d lost the ability to be surprised by anything. “LouLou, how are you? You’re still in Paris!”

  “Yes, just barely. And I’d like to see you. Would it be possible? I want to tell you something before I leave.”

  I want to tell you something, too, Rachel thought. Something that might actually make you happy. “Name the time and the place.”

  * * *

  The time turned out to be half an hour later and the place the Goguette café inside the Louvre. Since the Louvre air-conditioned itself to freezing to combat the heat of the summer sun that sizzled through its glass pyramid, Rachel stopped at the Starbucks next to Goguette and bought a tea. Sipping decent hot tea in Paris in August fit right in with the oddness of the day.

  Dressed in her usual head-to-foot black, LouLou was easy to pick out amid the bright tourists. She smiled a little when she saw Rachel, but she didn’t get up, so Rachel sat down, putting her cup on the tabletop.

  “Thank you for coming,” LouLou said. Then, with no further preamble, “I spoke to Alphonsine to say good-bye, and she said you’d telephoned and asked after me. I had wanted to say good-bye to you, too, but I didn’t know how to reach you. So when she gave me your number …”

  “I’m glad you called.” Rachel smiled across the table. “I have something to tell you.”

  But LouLou put out a hand. “No, I have something to tell you.” She peered at Rachel from under her bangs. “I felt so good after our drink that evening. I know from Docteure Dwamena that you were there for the police, but still, I felt like we really connected. You—you listened to me, and I felt like you really wanted to understand.” She took a breath, and in that tiny pause Rachel wondered if it was a detective’s fate always to feel torn, gathering information while pretending friendship. It seemed to be her fate, at any rate.

  But LouLou had started again. “So I want to share this with you. Don’t worry, I’ll be fast, because I’m not very brave.” She folded her hands on the table in front of her. “About two years ago, on the way home from work, I was … attacked. I wasn’t raped, but it was … bad. Very bad. And afterward was just as bad. I went to the hospital to report it, I made myself go, and the doctor who saw me asked me if I really thought it was a good idea to walk home alone in hot weather, especially past Les Halles. Then the policeman who came to take my statement looked at my bruises and said he was sure that I felt I’d been assaulted, but could it be that my boyfriend had just been a little rougher than I was used to?”

  Rachel closed her eyes. She wished she could be shocked, but she’d heard similar stories from other assault victims.

  LouLou continued. “After that, I started carrying a kitchen knife in my bag.” She swallowed. “It made me feel better. For a long time it was the only thing that made me feel better. But then my mother persuaded me to go see a counselor, and that helped. It helped a lot. I started to feel safe again. But I took chances I shouldn’t have. With Guy Laurent. He …” She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it again. All that matters is … My counselor once told me that fear is like a hibernating animal that feeds on trauma. She said that if an old fear smells new trauma, it will wake up again. Only it will be worse, because it wakes up hungry. After Laurent, it was worse. He made me worse, and I hated him so much. He took pleasure in doing cruel things; what kind of person does that? If anyone ever deserved to die, he did. After him I hated men, any man. Giles and I, we were friends once, if you can believe that. But after Laurent, just having Giles near me made me tense. Having any man near me.”

  She met Rachel’s eyes. “I’m telling you this because I want you to understand. I was traumatized by my attack. I was traumatized again by Laurent. And I know that the police arrested someone else for what happened, but Docteure Dwamena tells me that he has been released. And the police interviewer told me that the witnesses said they saw someone tall entering the back of the Bibliothèque before Giles died, so I have no doubt the police will want to question me again. And I just want to get away from this whole thing, away from Paris and its police.”

  Rachel looked into LouLou’s burning eyes and was glad to be able to bring her some relief. “Well, that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about. You don’t have to worry so much anymore. Aurora Dale—you know, from the reading room—doesn’t think she really did see a tall person. Apparently she’s been going over that morning in her mind, and she’s come to the conclusion that the supposed person was an implanted memory, or a shared delusion, something like that. Oh, and”—she moved forward in her seat—“you have even less to worry about, because part of what makes her think she got it wrong is that she remembers what time it was when she came into the library, and she brushed by you on her way into the bathroom.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, so you have your alibi. Someone saw you!”

  “Is that true?” LouLou’s eyes were wide, Rachel saw, and her face white with relief.

  “Yes.”

  “And Docteure Dale is still in France? Is she still using the reading room?”

  “Yes. And she’s going to the police”—Rachel remembered that Aurora Dale had set off in the opposite direction to the commissariat—“at
some point soon to set the record straight.”

  “But this is …” LouLou cleared her throat. “This is wonderful news! I must go call my mother. She will be so relieved!” She stood up and slung her bag strap across her body. She gave Rachel a final smile. “Sisterhood is powerful.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “Pick up your phone,” Alan’s voice said. “Pick up your phone!”

  Rachel swam up from sleep. Alan’s tie was dangling over her face and his hand was on her arm, but now he was speaking into her portable. Outside the sky was gray, and the room was cool enough for her to know that it was early morning.

  “Oui, oui,” Alan said. “Un moment.” He handed her the portable. “It’s Boussicault. Don’t let him grind you down. See you tonight.” He waved as he left the room.

  “C’est Boussicault,” the capitaine’s voice said in response to her greeting. Rachel steeled herself for his reaction to the eraser, but instead he said, “Please come to Salpêtrière immediately.”

  It is never a good thing to be woken from a sound sleep by a policeman, but it is an even worse thing to be woken by a policeman demanding you hurry to Paris’s best teaching hospital.

  “Why? Has something happened?” Ridiculous question, Rachel thought as she reached for her bra; of course something had happened. “Is it Magda?”

  “Why doesn’t matter.” She remembered that brusqueness was the capitaine’s business mode, so she was grateful that he had the empathy to add, “But Madame Stevens is fine. It has to do with our murders. Urgences générales, immédiatement, s’il vous plait.”

  * * *

  Rachel had always thought the screech of tires as a car stopped abruptly was an affectation of the movies, but when her taxi pulled up to the urgences entrance at the hospital, she realized it existed in reality, too. Through the plate glass windows of the lobby she could see Magda waiting, holding a cardboard cup in each hand. She paid the driver and hurried through the hospital’s doors.