Magic Mirror (The Georgia Lee Maxwell Series, Book 1)

by Michaela Thompson

  Finally, Perret came toward me. He was carrying a briefcase. “Let’s go,” he said.

  I waved to Kitty and followed him and a uniformed policeman through the gate to a car parked nearby. The policeman got behind the wheel and Perret and I got in the back seat. My eyes kept turning to the briefcase on Perret’s knees.

  “So there it is,” I said.

  He patted the briefcase. “Yes. At last.”

  “Did you …see it? Look in it?”

  He smiled. “To be honest, it isn’t impressive. Would you like to see?”

  Would I like to see? I wasn’t sure. And yet I thought, if I pass this up won’t I worry about it forever? So I said, “Yes. I would.”

  He opened the briefcase. The mirror was wrapped in layers of soft beige jeweler’s cloth. He unwrapped it and handed it to me.

  I was surprised. It was black, and the surface was glossy, and it was cold in my hands. But I got no impression of depth, of the limitless blackness those who had looked into it described. There seemed to be clouds below the surface. No matter how long I gazed, I knew I would never see a vision there.

  I kept it for a minute or two and then, with puzzlement and relief, handed it back to Perret. Whatever the mirror had shown to others, it had nothing to show me.

  As we passed the Military School Perret said, “I want to return this.” He reached in his jacket and pulled out a dog-eared paperback and handed it to me. It was my secondhand copy of Maigret et la Vieille Dame. “I hadn’t finished it, so I took it with me. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

  I chuckled. “Was it good?”

  “Very enjoyable.”

  I handed it back to him. “I’d like you to keep it. A souvenir.”

  He looked immoderately pleased and tucked it away again.

  By this time, we had reached the Avenue de Suffren. This was the bargain: I would tell Perret where the mirror was, and he would let me show it to Madeleine Bellefroide before we gave it back to the museum. We pulled into her street. The Eiffel Tower, beyond, was almost lost in early-morning gloom.

  Someone would have called by now, and we would be expected. In fact, Madeleine herself answered the door. She was dressed in white, a loose, long-sleeved dress. Her hair was brushed back, and she wore her pearls. Hawk-nosed and pale, she looked wonderful, as beautiful as she’d been the first day I met her. When we came in, she put her hands on my shoulders and kissed me on either cheek.

  I introduced Perret. Then I said, “We have it. We got it back this morning.”

  As my own eyes had, hers drifted to the briefcase. I said, “Inspector Perret consented to let you look at it.”

  “I ask you not to tell anyone we have done this,” Perret said. “I’m not sure Monsieur Mallet would approve.”

  Madeleine nodded. “I’m quite sure he wouldn’t. I have no intention of telling him or anyone.”

  Perret opened his briefcase and handed her the mirror, wrapped again in the cloth. She took it and said, “Do you mind— Could I look at it in private? In another room?”

  I saw Perret hesitate, and she said, “I certainly won’t steal it. I’m grateful enough to be given this opportunity.”

  “All right. But for a very short time,” Perret sounded wary.

  Holding the mirror against her bosom, she left the room. Perret paced nervously. Everything was very quiet. I wondered what she was seeing, whether it would bring her hope or despair.

  Ten minutes passed. Perret smoked and bit his knuckle. Even I started to wonder if Madeleine had gone down the fire escape with the mirror under her coat.

  “This is too long. I must interrupt her,” Perret said, but before he reached the door she entered the room, the cloth in one hand and the mirror in the other. She looked paler than before, but steady. “I’m sorry to have kept you,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I’ve spent this time trying to decide what to do, what to tell you.”

  Perret reached her, took the mirror. “What to tell us?”

  “That’s right.” She shook her head. “You see, this is not Nostradamus’s mirror. It isn’t the same mirror at all.”

  Magic Mirror

  Bernard Mallet sat at his desk in his elegant office at the Bellefroide, his face buried in his hands. Through the window behind him I could see branches tossing, the last leaves being stripped from the trees in the garden. On the desk in front of Mallet lay the mirror, in a nest of its beige wrapping.

  Perret, next to me, shifted in his chair. Since he told Mallet what Madeleine Bellefroide had said, Mallet had made no sound at all.

  Perret leaned forward. “I must ask you—” he began, but Mallet shook his head.

  In a moment or two, he lowered his hands. His pinched face looked like an unhappy child’s. “It’s over, anyway,” he said.

  “And this—” Perret gestured to the desk.

  “Madeleine Bellefroide is right. It isn’t the real one.”

  “This is a substitute? It was exchanged?”

  Mallet looked at the mirror wearily. “It’s a substitute, of polished black marble. A maker of grave markers created it for me. I didn’t tell him, of course, to what use I intended to put it.”

  “You yourself carried out the substitution?” Perret sounded appalled, but it was beginning to make sense to me. This explained, fully, Mallet’s seemingly paranoid reluctance to show the mirror to anyone, much less to put it on display.

  “What happened to the real mirror?” I asked.

  Mallet shook his head. “It’s— gone. I don’t think it will be found again.”

  “It was stolen, you mean? Before this?” Perret demanded.

  “No. It wasn’t stolen.”

  We waited. Mallet got up and turned to look out at the garden. His back was to us, his hands clenched behind him. “It happened some years ago, soon after I became director of the Bellefroide,” he said, his voice thin and lost-sounding.

  “I was very proud,” he said, turning toward us again. “I had been at a small museum in the provinces. To have been named to this post was a coup. I was determined to do the best possible job. Fairly soon after I arrived I made an inventory of our holdings, a survey of the works for which I was now responsible. In the course of it, naturally, I came across the mirror.”

  He sighed and shook his head. “My attitude toward the mirror was exactly the one I have expressed. I considered it an unimportant part of an interesting collection. I found out what I could about it, which was not much, and went on to other matters.

  “I wish I could tell you, now, what made me decide to look into it. At the time, it seemed a harmless impulse. I was here, working late. I felt stimulated by my new responsibilities. And the idea came to me that I should look in Nostradamus’s mirror. Once I had thought of it, I found myself leaving my office and going downstairs.

  “I was a bit ashamed of what I was doing, but I told myself no one would ever know. I took the mirror from the drawer and removed it from its case.”

  As Clive Overton had done years earlier, I thought.

  Mallet sat down again, as if his legs had given under him. “Somehow, the experience began to be more compelling than I anticipated,” he said. “The sight of the brilliant black surface made me feel breathless. I tried to tell myself it was the late hour, the extreme quiet, but it wasn’t only that. I felt myself drawn in as I bent over it.

  “The surface was completely dark. There was no reflection of my face or the light in the room. I found this frightening and was about to pull back when I saw movement in the blackness. Deep within the mirror there appeared the image of a man moving toward me. When he came closer, I saw he was holding something in his cupped hands. The object was shining with a soft, luminous glow. The man was bending over it, and from the illumination it gave off I saw that the man was myself. The expression on his— my— face was one of tremendous joy, of beatitude.

  “As I watched, the same joy filled my own heart. This was a man who had gained what he treasured, who held in his hands exactly what
he needed. I associated that glowing light with my recently acquired position, my move to Paris, my new life. What a wonderful omen it seemed!”

  Mallet’s eyes had reddened. “Forgive me,” he whispered, and stopped speaking. After a few moments he resumed. “I was so happy, watching my fortunate image. And then, to my horror, everything changed. The light in my hands seemed to pulse. Without warning, it flew up and away, a streak so quick and so bright I couldn’t see what it was. In the residual light, though, I saw my face. It was filled with unutterable grief. My image sank to its knees and stretched out on the ground in despair.

  “Do you wonder that I couldn’t bear it!” Mallet burst out. “In an instant, I had seen myself deprived of everything that mattered! You can see, can’t you, how I must have felt?”

  I was sick with Mallet’s loss and grateful, at the same time, that I hadn’t looked into the real mirror.

  “I was overcome with the most ungodly combination of fury and terror,” Mallet continued. “My first impulse was to smash the mirror, but even in that state of emotion I couldn’t do such a thing, destroy an object that was in my charge.” He gave a half-sob. “I put the mirror in my pocket and rushed out. I needed to move, to escape.

  “I walked through Paris, my new home, seeing nothing but the image of my despair and loss. The mirror seemed to drag on me, pulling me toward my knees, my defeat. After walking a long time, I found myself beside the Seine, near the Mirabeau Bridge.

  “I walked out on the bridge. The night was quiet, the street lamps and the city around me glowing, the river rushing beneath. I thought of throwing myself over the railing. It seemed worth it to be rid of the image that still haunted me. And yet, I thought: Perhaps I could forget if the mirror was gone. I took the mirror from my pocket and threw it as far as I could, downstream into the Seine.

  “I saw it strike the water, and I felt some ease. I turned away and went home. By the next morning, I was concerned only with concealing the fact that I had irresponsibly destroyed part of the Bellefroide collection. I arrived early and put the mirror case back in the drawer, and later that day I arranged to have the replacement made. When it was finished I put it in the case. I refused all inquiries about the mirror, even those from Madeleine Bellefroide. Over time, I became convinced that the light, after all, need not fly from my hands. But of course it has, as the mirror had shown me it would.”

  Mallet closed his eyes briefly. Then he said, “I was shocked and horrified when the mirror was stolen. I did everything in my power to discourage the efforts to find it. I was afraid Madame Maxwell, as a journalist, would investigate on her own, and I’m ashamed to say I wrote her an anonymous letter to try and dissuade her.” He looked at me. “I apologize if it frightened you.”

  I nodded, and he went on, “None of it did any good. And now, everything I fought to prevent has happened.”

  Mallet stared at the piece of marble on his desk, the pseudo-mirror that had served its purpose so long. The atmosphere in the room was so heavy with sorrow that I didn’t want to stay, to hear what punishment Perret might exact. I murmured, “I’ll call you,” to Perret, said good-bye, and left.

  The morning remained chilly and overcast. I wandered in the general direction of the Seine. Perhaps I was retracing, in some measure, Mallet’s steps that night. Storekeepers cranked down their awnings. Water sluiced through the gutters. Two men with squeegees were washing a phone booth. On a street corner, dead leaves spun in a tiny, momentary whirlwind.

  The walk to the river took a while, but at last I came to the Place de Barcelone. Across the way was the Mirabeau Bridge, with its green-painted wrought-iron railings, its huge statues of sea denizens jutting out over the Seine. Morning rush traffic roared across it.

  I crossed and walked out on the sidewalk on the downstream side. In the middle of the bridge, I leaned on the railing for a long time. The Seine was very broad at this point, muddy yellow-green. The ripples and pulls on its surface indicated strong currents beneath. The mirror could be rescued easily enough from the Medici Fountain, but never, surely, from here. It was ground to pieces, buried in silt, or rolling along the sea bottom, miles away. And yet, perhaps it would survive. Some day it might wash up, be fished out by an unsuspecting person who would gaze in it and see— what?

  In the meantime, I, too, had a new life, and no divining mirror to show me it wouldn’t be everything I hoped.

  I took the Metro at the Mirabeau station, and in half an hour was at the office. Kitty wasn’t there, but the window was open and the smell of Sphinx much abated. My typewriter had aired out, too. I flicked the switch and it came on. I wound a piece of paper into it. I started to write.

  The End

  Dedication

  To Doris Whealton

  Acknowledgments

  The Mirror and Man by Benjamin Goldberg (University Press of Virginia, 1985) provided me with both inspiration and information.

  I am grateful to Thea Lurie, for letting me borrow snippets of her life, and to Priscilla Watson, for help with my research.

  I offer profound thanks to my Paris informants: Sam Abt, Alain Audebert, Barbara Bell, Harry Dunphy, Judy Fayard, Mireille Huchon, Dmitri Kessel, Shirley Kessel, Paule La Feuille, Michelle Lapautre, Pierre Ottavioli, Patricia Palut, Adele Robert, Philippe Robert. They are not responsible for my mistakes or misapprehensions, or for liberties I may have taken with the information they so kindly gave me.

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  If You Enjoyed This Book…

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  Other Books by Michaela Thompson

  Hurricane Season

  The Fault Tree

  Venetian Mask

  Magic Mirror

  A Temporary Ghost

  Riptide

  Paper Phoenix

  A Respectful Request

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  About the Author

  MICHAELA THOMPSON is the author of seven mystery novels, all of them originally published under the name Mickey Friedman. She grew up on the Gulf Coast in the Northwest Florida Panhandle, the locale described in Hurricane Season, and still spends a significant amount of time there. She has worked as a newspaper reporter and a freelance journalist, and has contributed mystery short stories to a number of anthologies. She and her husband, Alan Friedman, live in New York City.