From behind his mother’s shoulder, Alan raised his eyebrows at Rachel. Such behavior was typical of French bureaucracy. Some functionary had probably been told to deal with a backlog and had done so by sending out an e-mail that shifted the burden onto the general public.
Alan’s voice broke into her thoughts. “My mother wondered if you’d be willing to pick up his stuff.”
“Of course I would.” Rachel began a comforting smile, but a new thought turned it into a frown. “But will I be allowed to? Don’t I need some sort of connection to the deceased? And some sort of document to prove it?” French bureaucracy was also very keen on documentation, in her experience the more complicated the better.
But Alan had looked into that, and the answer was surprisingly straightforward. He could e-mail Rachel a scanned copy of a letter signed by Mrs. Ochs, stating that she deputed Rachel Levis to pick up her husband’s belongings from the police commissariat in the eighth arrondissement. Rachel could take this and some identification to the relevant police commissariat, which would have received a scan of the same letter. The police would then allow her to make the collection.
“Theoretically,” Rachel said darkly. But she promised to go as soon as the e-mail arrived, and Jean promised Mrs. Ochs would send it that night.
Awake, fed, and sitting at her computer, she decided to end the evening doing what she’d meant to do at the beginning. The first internet hit for “Dolly Fauré” was an e-mail address at Sauveterre, but the message Rachel sent bounced back immediately. Fortunately, whitepages.fr showed only four Faurés in Paris, and only one D. Fauré. After five rings, a woman’s recorded voice explained to Rachel that she couldn’t make it to the phone, but she would respond to Rachel’s message as soon as she could.
Her name, phone number, and reason for calling clearly enunciated into Madame Fauré’s voice mail, Rachel closed the computer and picked up Vidocq once more. “The night before our intended departure, I met in the dusk of the evening a woman of Brussels, named Eliza, with whom I had been on intimate terms.” She settled back into the sofa.
* * *
On Monday morning she woke to an e-mail from Alan with the promised letter attached. As she was printing it and struggling to extract her passport from the back of a desk drawer to use as identification, the phone rang. It was Dolly Fauré.
Madame Fauré had seen that the police were treating her former boss’s death as murder, but she was confused about where Rachel fit in. Was she a reporter? “Because I have nothing to say to the press.” Not a reporter? Was she with the police? “I should tell you that one of your colleagues already called to arrange an appointment for later this week.” At last Rachel, reaching for an explanation and steeled by the memory of Matthieu Mediouri’s easy acceptance at the pressing, said, “I’m a private detective. I’m investigating the murder of Monsieur Guipure.”
Madame Fauré’s tone changed from forbidding to intrigued. She wasn’t sure how much help she could be, but she was willing to meet. There was an excellent café a few blocks from where she lived in the ninth arrondissement, Le Grand Comptoir d’Anvers. Could Rachel meet her there at two o’clock this afternoon?
That left Rachel with the rest of the morning to fulfill her promise to Jean. Folding the printout into an envelope and stuffing her passport into her bag along with it, she took the métro to the Commissariat Rue du Faubourg-St. Honoré.
The eighth was home to some of the city’s most beautiful buildings: the church of the Madeleine with its classical friezes above Corinthian columns, the domed extravagance of the Église Saint-Augustin, even the fantastical exterior of the Pagoda Paris on the Rue de Courcelles. Unfortunately, the Paris Prefecture de Police had decided to ignore all this and place the Commissariat Rue du Faubourg-St. Honoré inside a modernist box of stained beige concrete and exposed gray girders, an excrescence that emerged from the side of a bland nineteenth-century building made beautiful by contrast.
Inside it was better. The box proved to be merely the security entrance, and once Rachel put her bag through X-ray and explained her errand, she was pointed in the direction of an airy two-story foyer with what appeared to be a giant mobile made out of hundreds of paper cranes suspended from its ceiling. A staircase curved downward on the left side of the space, extending from a mezzanine of offices above. Crossing to the reception desk, she held out her letter. “I’m here to pick up the belongings of Monsieur Jack Ochs? Monsieur Ochs’s wife sent a letter here by e-mail earlier to say I would be acting as her proxy.”
The gardien behind the desk looked up from her computer. She took the envelope reluctantly, read the letter, and then said, “Your ID?”
Rachel handed over her passport. The gardien looked at the photo page, then at her, then at the letter, then back to the photo and from the photo to her. At last she said grudgingly, “I will need to consult my chef regarding our policy on this.” She disappeared into a back room.
That was the French bureaucracy Rachel had come to expect. The woman could be gone for hours. She picked up a pamphlet that promised to help her recognize telephone scammers and began to read.
“Rachel?”
She turned around. Capitaine Boussicault stood at the bottom of the stairs.
“I thought it was you!” He crossed the lobby and kissed her on both cheeks. “Ça va?”
She nodded. “Oui, ça va.”
“What are you doing here? Looking for clues in the case of Roland Guipure?”
Rachel felt herself grow cold, then hot. How did he know they had decided to investigate Guipoure’s death? Then she saw his smile and realized he was teasing.
She laughed in a way she hoped sounded amused, not relieved. “I might ask the same of you. You’re far off your patch! what brings you here?”
He shrugged. “Just a meeting. Some inter-arrondissement liaison. And, really, what brings you here?”
Rachel explained about her errand for Jean.
The captain started slightly. “Ochs? Jack Ochs? The tourist in the hotel room?”
“Yes.” Rachel didn’t see what was so surprising about a tourist dying in his hotel room. It must happen all the time.
“Let me take you for a drink,” the captain said. But just then the gardien reemerged, pulling a roller bag with one hand and holding a folder in the other. She stood the first beside the counter and held out the second. “You’ll need to fill these out before we can release the effects to you.”
“I’ll wait outside,” Boussicault said.
For the next twenty minutes Rachel filled in blanks and signed her name on one form after another, had a photocopy taken of her passport photo that she then signed, had it countersigned by the gardien, and finally received the salmon-colored copy of an elaborate receipt informing her that the Paris Prefecture of Police, as represented by the Commissariat at 210 Rue du Faubourg-St. Honoré, had consigned the effects of Monsieur Jack Ochs into her possession. When at last she emerged from the building clutching this in one hand and pulling the roller bag behind her, Boussicault stood waiting on the pavement, slightly out of breath.
“I found a good place a few streets away. May I?”
He took the handle of the roller bag and led her briskly down the fan-shaped cobbles to a side street, across a grand avenue, then finally around a corner, stopping outside a restaurant surrounded by tubs of tall bamboo trees. The interior was a landscape of starched tablecloths and deep velvet chairs, and as he led her to a table in the back, Rachel began to feel guilty that she hadn’t been frank with him about the fact that she was investigating the Guipure murder. He obviously thought well of her if he was bringing her here.
They made halting small talk until the waiter arrived with their pastis. Only once he had retreated out of earshot did Guipure lean forward, his ribs almost touching the table, and say, “Do you know that Monsieur Ochs was killed during a robbery?”
“What? No.” How had Alan neglected to tell her that?
“Sss, sss.” He put out h
is hand, palm down, and wiggled his fingers, indicating that she should lower her voice.
The restaurant was very dark, and as she leaned forward she felt like a character in a spy movie. She murmured, “Do they know what happened?”
“No. The room was ransacked and his wallet was taken, but there were no fingerprints, and the gun wasn’t left behind. He was staying at the Holiday Inn Elysées, and the thinking at the moment is that the thieves just walked in and tried random rooms until they got lucky. It’s a common method. Hotel staff think they’re guests; the thieves tell the real guests they’re maintenance or housekeeping so they let them in, and once they’re done, they walk right out again.”
“Well, if you’ve seen it before, you must have investigated it before too. Are there any suspects? Or informants who can help?” She thought of Mediouri.
He shook his head. “Normally I’d say yes, but—” He looked around the nearly empty café and lowered his voice even further. “The prefecture has just received a credible accusation of corruption against the commissaire here. That’s what my meeting was about. I’m part of a task force that deals with these accusations.”
“Oh.” Rachel didn’t see the connection. “What does that have to do with the investigation into Ochs’s death?”
“Theoretically nothing, but in fact it could make quite a difference.” He made a face. “The situation is messy. The commissaire has been very careful to make his officers like and trust him over the years, partly by letting them get away with not doing their jobs. Now he’s just been suspended and a replacement put in his place. So now the commissariat is filled with a bunch of lazy resentful men with even less motivation to work than usual.” He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled sharply. “We’re trying to have the most important cases transferred out, but a tourist shot in the course of a hotel robbery comes fairly low down on the list, I’m sorry to say. So do Mrs. Ochs a kindness and tell her that the investigation of her husband’s murder may proceed very slowly.” He took a sip from his glass. “But don’t tell her I told you that. In fact, don’t tell anyone.”
The waiter appeared at his elbow, and he straightened and smiled at him. “L’addition, s’il vous plait.” Once the man had slipped back into the shadows, he leaned in again. “This is not for public consumption.”
“No, no, of course not.” Rachel shook her head as if she understood why, and as Boussicault reached to take the bill from the waiter, he added, “Now you know why I brought you here. I didn’t want to be overheard, and no policeman can afford to drink in a place like this.”
* * *
“You don’t want us to investigate Ochs’s murder, do you?”
Rachel couldn’t tell if Magda was excited or alarmed by the idea, but she said into the phone, “God, no. I just thought it was interesting to have a glimpse into the inner workings of the police. Corruption, lying, currying favor … you get a whole different view of things from someone on the inside.”
“What are you going to tell Mrs. Ochs to explain why her husband’s investigation is taking so long?”
Rachel inhaled through her teeth and sighed the air back out. “I’m thinking I won’t tell her anything.” When Magda stayed silent, she said quickly, “After all, Jean didn’t tell me that Ochs had been murdered, which means that either she or Mrs. Ochs didn’t think I should know. So I’m just going to pretend I don’t. In fact, I think I’m just going to Skype Alan to let him know I picked up the suitcase.” She looked at her watch; it would be six AM in Miami. “Or rather, I’ll do that after I come back from meeting Madame Fauré.”
After she hung up, Rachel looked at Jack Ochs’s suitcase, where it stood in her foyer. What were the rules of etiquette regarding handling the belongings of a dead man you’d never met, which you’d collected on behalf of a wife you’d also never met? Should she open the suitcase so she could tell Alan what was inside and he could tell Ellen Ochs? She wasn’t sure she was up to that. She might have recently told two people that she was a private detective, but she wasn’t yet enough of one to feel that she could look coolly on the clothes of a dead man. And it felt shabby somehow, the idea of peering at someone’s clothes without their permission. She crossed the room and rolled the case under the hall table, where it fit neatly. She’d ask Jean later how to send it back to Mrs. Ochs.
Chapter Thirteen
Rachel wasn’t a fan of the northern part of the ninth arrondissement. She had no particular interest in sex shops or strip clubs, and although she knew the Moulin Rouge, the chief tourist attraction of the area, which had been a bohemian centerpiece in its time, on her one trip to see it she’d found its peeling red paint and unmoving neon windmill dispiriting rather than erotic.
But Paris has a way of being many things within a small space. Le Grand Comptoir d’Anvers, only one street over from the bleached pavements and shabby deep discount clothing stores of the ninth, looked out on one side to a lush green park, and on the other faced an upmarket children’s clothing boutique with nothing in its window priced under a hundred euros. It might have been in not just another city, but another world.
As if to make up for the previous day’s rain, the sky had been brightly sunny all day, and when Rachel turned into the restaurant at two o’clock, the abrupt change from the bright outdoors to the dim interior blinded her. As she stood blinking to adjust her eyes, the outline of a woman appeared.
“Madame Levis, I’m Dolly Fauré.”
Influenced by Naquet’s and Thieriot’s descriptions, Rachel had expected a stern matron in at least her late sixties, but the Madame Fauré who came gradually into focus was smiling warmly and only about ten years older than Rachel herself. Rachel recognized the brown silk shirt she wore as part of Sauveterre’s winter 2012 collection; she had paired it with faded jeans and burgundy ballerina flats the same color as her lipstick. With her brown hair pulled into a loose bun at the base of her neck and her face free of makeup, she looked relaxed and completely without guile. But her blue eyes flashed over Rachel from head to foot, assessing her in one quick glance.
“A pleasure to meet you.” Her voice was warm, her hand cool and firm.
“Madame Fauré. Good to meet you too.”
“I found us a table.” She nodded to her left, and Rachel saw a coat and burgundy leather bag resting on the top of a table tucked just behind the door. “And please, call me Dolly.”
Once Rachel had settled, they ordered two glasses of red wine.
“You have an unusual name,” she said when the waiter had gone.
Dolly looked rueful. “My parents were both music lovers, and they knew the composer Gabriel Fauré composed a piano duet called the Dolly Suite. When they had a daughter, the temptation was too much to resist. I comfort myself with the knowledge that at least I have it better than my brother. Him they named Giacomo Puccini Fauré.”
When Rachel finished laughing, Dolly sat back in her chair and folded her arms. The small talk was plainly over. “So. I made a recherche google, and I found only your poetry collections. I recognized you from your author photo. But your detective business doesn’t seem to have an online presence yet.” She raised her eyebrows.
Rachel began to see why Naquet and Thieriot, each a bluffer in his own way, had disliked her. Her tone said she that would take no nonsense and that she could spot nonsense a mile away. So Rachel told her the truth. She explained about the previous two cases she and Magda had worked on, the decision to try to become private investigators and the long road involved, her initial suspicions about Guipure’s death, the awkward visit to Sauveterre, and the interviews with Naquet and Thieriot. She didn’t know how she managed to reduce it to a short speech, but by the time their wine arrived, Dolly was all caught up.
“So, in a way, you’re racing the police,” she said after she’d taken her first sip. “Well, it sounds like you were ahead of them when you talked to Naquet and Cyrille, and now you’re ahead of them when it comes to talking to me. They’ve arranged to speak to me tomorr
ow.” She tapped her nails against the stem of her glass. “I always like to back a front runner. And I read some of your poems and liked them, which inclines me to like you too. Why don’t you ask your questions, and I’ll tell you what I can.”
No one had ever used literary taste as a reason to cooperate with Rachel before, but she wasn’t going to question it, especially since it was in her favor. “Well, to start with, what was it like working at Sauveterre? It would help to know who might have had a grudge against Guipure or a reason to hate him.”
The other woman looked amused. “In fashion, no one needs a reason to hate anyone. It’s a very small world full of people with very big egos, which is a recipe for resentment and cruelty.” She shook her head. “But I never saw any of that at Maison Sauveterre. In fact, I don’t think Monsieur Guipure had any ego at all outside the clothes.”
“How do you mean?”
Dolly took another sip, letting it rest in her mouth before she swallowed and spoke. “I’ve worked in design houses my whole career, and he was the most focused creative director I ever saw. When he was working on a collection, there was nothing else for him. Then, once that was done, he would rest for perhaps two weeks, and it was on to the next production. There are people, you know, who have determination like a laser. They must make what they see in their head a reality. He was one of those. I always thought that was the attraction of the heroin: it helped him not to focus.”
Rachel had been thinking something similar since she and Magda had heard Thieriot describe Roland’s addiction. Perfectionism could be as much a matter of habit as anything else, and she’d been wondering if heroin had been Guipure’s way of forcing himself to break that habit—only, of course, to find it replaced by a much more pernicious one.
Designs on the Dead Page 9