Bones of Paris (9780345531773) (39 page)

“I’m glad.”

Stuyvesant glanced up. “I thought you approved of me and Sarah? In a big-brother kind of way.”

“I did. At the time. But women have a way of making their own decisions.” And before Stuyvesant could divert him with a question about Cornwall’s weather or the health of his simpleton neighbor, Robbie, Grey walked right up to the conversational grizzly bear. “Whenever I see Sarah, it’s like a knife in me. Her prosthetic, her scars, the way she shies at any loud noise—and now this insistence on facing down her demons with a nightmare job involving men like Didi Moreau. I look at all what she’s going through and I think:
I did that
.

“You and I have both seen what men in the trenches can do. Incredible acts of courage. But I’ve never known anything like Sarah’s everyday, long-term, soul-grinding bravery. And I’m to blame. I—”

“Not you. It was me, Bennett. I was slow and stupid and—”

“Shut up!” Grey snarled. “Harris, just … shut up. Look. I
see
things. I see everything, at every moment, smack in front of my eyes. But once—just once—three years ago, I let myself be distracted, by hope and by love, and my sister paid the price. God, what a price. You never told her, did you?”

Tell Sarah that her beloved brother had kept Stuyvesant from averting a catastrophe? “No.”

“I’ve spent three years trying to convince myself that I couldn’t have predicted Sarah’s choice. But I know Sarah as well as I know my own body. I should have seen it coming.”

“Bennett, you said it yourself: you’re not a mind-reader. All you see is the tension. Even if Sarah planned what she was going to do—and I’ve always believed it was an impulse—would you have known? If she’d made a rational and, I don’t know,
serene
choice, would you have been able to see through it?”

“I might have guessed.”

“For Christ sake, man,
I
might have guessed. Quit killing yourself over it.”

Grey’s eyes rested on Stuyvesant’s glass. “I do so want to drink myself senseless right now.”

“But you won’t, because Doucet needs your eyes.”

Both men gazed down at their congealing food.

“Go see your Nancy,” Grey said.

“I’ll stay until Doucet phones.”

“Have you even talked with her today?”

“No.”

“You’re a fool.”

“I know.”

Grey reached for the plates.

“Go ahead, call her. If Doucet finds it busy, he’ll try again.”

“I’ll be quick.”

The new number rang twice before Nancy answered.

“Harris! I hoped you would call.”

“You mean you hoped I wasn’t one of those men who … gets what he wants and then runs like hell?”

“I had little fear of that,” she assured him.

If I were Bennett, I’d hear if that was a lie
. “Good to know.”

“Harris Stuyvesant, you’re such a gentleman, I had to fling myself at you before you’d so much as kiss me.”

“I—” He was suddenly aware of Bennett Grey, listening to every word of this coo-and-bill. “Honey, I can’t talk, the fellow I’m with is waiting for a call. I just wanted to tell you I was thinking of you.”

“Come and see me.”

“It’ll be late.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Really late.”

“Just ring the bell.”

“Persistent, aren’t you?”

“When it comes to what I want, yes.”

Now, that was a heart-warming response. “I can’t promise, but I’ll try. And if not, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Bye,” she said, and the line went dead.

Bennett Grey walked in to clear the last of the dishes.

“Don’t say anything,” Stuyvesant warned.

“Wouldn’t think of it,” Grey replied.

T
WO MEN IN
shirtsleeves, drinking coffee with the garden door standing ajar. As if waiting for a blonde-haired woman with emerald eyes to step inside, laughing at something she’d stumbled over in the dark.

“You think she’s dead, too, don’t you?” Stuyvesant said to the black rectangle. When there was no response, he glanced over and saw Grey’s expression of horror.

“
Harris
, what—”

“No! Not Sarah! I’m sure she’s—I mean, there’s no reason—sorry! No, Jesus. I was talking about Pip.”

Grey took a shaky breath and ran a hand over his face. “How the hell would I know?”

“Sure, I just—”

“Harris, don’t make me into a bloody fortune-teller. Look: I see in the girl’s face that she’s been wounded. I see in your face that you tried like hell to find her. And that’s all I see.”

“Yeah. Sorry. It was a fire. Pip’s injury. When she was ten she was badly burned. Broke her arm, too, but the scar was worse—big as my hand across. But she didn’t seem sensitive about it—if anything, the opposite.”
The most exquisite pleasure …

“A physical wound wouldn’t give her that look of mistrust.”

“No? Then what?”

“If she posed for artists, I’d guess that was a way to flaunt the scar. Maybe she slept with middle-aged men as a way of facing the kind of injuries that don’t show.”

Stuyvesant stared at him.

“What?” Grey asked.

“No! You really don’t need to know.”

“All right.”

Nancy, there in Luna Park:
The uncle. Maybe too close
. The night air was growing cool, but neither of them moved to shut the door.

“How is your Miss Crosby tied to Doucet’s investigation?”

“I don’t
know
that she is. But when I brought her name to him, he started looking at his other missing persons and came up with a list of those with connections to the art world. There’s thirty-one names, and he—”

“Thirty-one?”

“That’s the names he and his sergeant haven’t been able to clear, who didn’t turn up in a morgue or at home. They can’t all be related, but like I say, those are the ones who had something to do with art or music or acting. Whether that makes for a pattern, I don’t know. You want to see my notes—see what you think?”

Grey shook his head, though not as a refusal. “It isn’t the kind of seeing I’m good at, but I’ll look if you like.”

Stuyvesant tossed the notebook on the table. “These go back to the start of last year. Do you mind if I take a look at Sarah’s things?”

“We went through her diary and letters this morning.”

“Yes. Well …”

“Help yourself,” Grey said.

A bedroom was where a person dreamed, where she kept her secrets, where she gave herself up to …

For once, Stuyvesant was grateful not to have Bennett Grey’s skills: he really didn’t want to see the hairs on the pillow, to breathe in the odors of their relationship. How many strange bedrooms had he stepped
into, hoping for some clue to the person—the beloved, lively person who …

With a wrench, he forced his eyes to do their job.

Wide bed, tables on either side. English watercolors on the walls, English oak dresser on one side, English-looking dressing table on the other. Three hands stood on the dresser, painted tin with padded ends and complicated leather straps. Two were hardly worn, although the third was bent and chipped, with heavy marks of wear on the buckles.

One bed-side table held a small clock, tissues, a carafe and glass. Stuck into the lamp-shade was a small round lapel pin showing—he bent to see—an image of Bennett on a village street. On the other side of the bed, the table held an ash-tray, a pad with a pencil, and a brightly wrapped package the size of a small book. He pushed back its folded card:

Why hadn’t the
flic
opened it?

In an abrupt decision, Stuyvesant yanked the ends of the ribbon. Not a book: the framed photograph of a woman with pale, close-cropped hair, her right hand clasping together a luxurious fox-fur collar. Her hair and the fur’s highlights made sharp contrast against the dark background, as her unsmiling mouth was belied by the amusement pushing at her eyes.

Sarah had been photographed by Man Ray.

“Of course he saw the gift,” Grey told him. “He said he’d wait until she was here. Why are you angry?”

“Look, I have no concrete reason to suspect the photographer of anything but a brutal imagination and a habit of slapping around his women. But—”

“All women?” Grey broke in.

“No. There was just one, that I know of. But when a name keeps
cropping up during a mur—during an investigation, you pay attention. And his does.”

Grey let the slip pass. “Montparnasse is a village. Don’t the same names crop up all the time?”

“Of course.”

“Like Man Ray.”

“I
know
.”

“You might as well suspect Fitzgerald, or Hemingway.”

“Maybe not Scott. If he hasn’t throttled Zelda by now, he’s not the murdering kind.”

“But Man Ray is all over the Quarter. Even I’ve met him, and I was here exactly three weeks.”

“Where was that?”

“Sarah and I were feeding the ducks in Montsouris when we saw him and Kiki—you know Kiki?”

“Sure.”

“—coming out of the park café. As out of place as bats in daylight.”

“I can imagine. Do you know when he took this photograph?”

“Recently, judging by the hair. But Ray photographs everything from couture to perfume. One would expect him to be known all over Paris.”

“Precisely. So will you go with me, while I question him?”

“Now?”

“Yes. No—Doucet needs you. But if nothing comes of tonight—and if Sarah doesn’t return—then first thing tomorrow.”

“If you say so. I think you’ll find he’s just another artistic oddball.”

“Doucet thinks Ray is a flea in my ear.”

“One might as well suspect Doucet,” Grey commented.

Stuyvesant cocked an eyebrow. “Why do you say that?”

“He’s all over Paris, too. You know how he and Sarah met?”

“He was questioning people about one of his missing persons.”

“My point exactly. Even innocent people have all kinds of links, especially in Montparnasse.”

“Yeah, but criminals leave patterns, if only you can see them. Speaking of which, anything jump out of my notes at you?”

Grey shook his head. “It’s only facts.” Stuyvesant hadn’t really expected much—Grey’s talents were more about producing information than processing it—but the Englishman wasn’t finished. “I did wonder if Doucet shouldn’t expand his search outside of missing persons. He could look at unsolved murders and assaults. In case the man tried, and failed.”

He’s talking about the missing, about assaults and abductions—and every other word in that speech was Sarah’s name
. “He may be working on that now—the art connection only cropped up when I came to him with Pip, ten days ago.”

“What started him looking in that direction, do you know?”

“There were two women who went missing last—”

The telephone’s jangle startled both men to their feet. Grey dove to answer, but it was not Sarah. The brief conversation consisted of, “Yes? What time? You want to come here? Fine.” The telephone went back onto its cradle.

“Eleven-fifteen,” Grey said. “Le Comte is going to his country house for the weekend, but he agreed to meet us on his way out of town.”

Stuyvesant looked at the clock: 10:40.

“What about afterwards? Do you want me to wait here?”

“No, you go and spend some time with your young lady.”

(Sarah …)

“Not while Man Ray’s wandering the bars,” Stuyvesant said. “I don’t think I’ll wait for you. I want to know where he’s been, what he has to say about Sarah. It’s Friday night, he’s sure to be out there.”

“Go, then. I’ll ring you in the morning.”

Grey glanced at the clock on the wall and started rolling down his shirtsleeves. He was looking positively haggard.

“You have one of your headaches, don’t you?” Stuyvesant asked. “You should go to bed. Let Doucet meet the Count on his own.”

“Well,” Grey said, doing up his cuff buttons, “we may discover that
Sarah is being pampered in one of Le Comte’s fifteen guest suites, and I’ll be back for a blissful night’s sleep.”

“If so, have Doucet stick a note through Mme. Benoit’s door and you can sleep in. Oh, that reminds me.”

Stuyvesant found a piece of paper and wrote in capital letters:

He added the phone number of the Hotel Benoit, and was propping the card on the kitchen counter when the rattle of a car in the street heralded the
flic
’s arrival.

Stuyvesant looked down at Sarah’s present to her lover. “Do you mind if I borrow that picture?”

“Go ahead.”

The two men caught up their hats and stepped into the night. While Grey locked the door, Stuyvesant bent to rap on the taxi window. Doucet wound it down.

“Are you taking a gun?”

“M. Stuyvesant, please. American police may be in the habit of gunfire across a sitting room, but this is Paris.”

The window rose, Grey got in, and the car moved off down the damp paving stones.

“So I’ll take that for a ‘no,’ ” Stuyvesant muttered.

He returned to the Hotel Benoit for his evening wear, then threw back the carpet to pry up the floorboard. When he went back down the stairs with thirty-six ounces of steel under his arm, he felt a little more cheerful about matters. But when he returned at 3:00 a.m., the only thing he felt cheerful about was that he hadn’t actually used the revolver.

Although if pulling it had led to Man Ray, he wouldn’t have hesitated.

“M
ADAME
?” E
ARLY
S
ATURDAY
morning, Stuyvesant stood at Mme. Benoit’s door. His third knock brought her response, if not her person. A sleep-thick voice replied: No, there had been no telephone calls for him, no visitors, no messages. So he fished through his pockets for some ten-centimes coins to phone the Préfecture. Doucet’s sergeant answered.

The Milquetoast-Fortier was surprisingly brusque. “L’Inspecteur n’est pas ici.”

“Don’t hang up! Your boss said he’d phone me this morning with the results of a meeting. Have you heard from him at all?”

“No, but it is Saturday. His hours vary on Saturday.” Fortier’s English was good.