De Potter's Grand Tour (11 page)

They were gone for good? Aimée asked tensely. The police chief regretted to inform Madame that the two peddlers would be impossible to track down. And the American who had given the testimony had already sailed for home.

She thanked the man for his thorough work. She was emphatic in agreeing with him that her husband had been the victim of an accident. No better explanation was available than that Professor de Potter had suffered a dizzy spell.

After leaving the police station, she went to the office of the Romanian Steamship Company. The manager repeated what the police chief had told her, then invited her on board the
Regele Carol
, which had returned from its most recent voyage to Constantinople that morning. He introduced her to the captain, who was just finishing the lunch that had been delivered to him on the bridge. He untucked his napkin from his collar, dismissed the officers at his table, and invited Madame de Potter to take a seat across from him.

The captain, who spoke English with admirable fluency, launched into an account that was so similar in phrasing to the previous reports that Aimée began to wonder if all the officials of Piraeus had been given a script. But the captain could do better than the others and support his story with witnesses. Before Aimée could think to ask to meet with them, he called in the steward who had seen Armand standing at the rail, along with the stewardess who had been with the steward at the time. He invited Madame de Potter to interview them.

She addressed the stewardess first, asking her in English if she, too, had seen Professor de Potter on deck late at night. The stewardess looked toward the captain in bewilderment. The captain motioned to her to answer the question.

“Yes, madame.”

“Do you mean to say you saw him?”

“We see him on top the rail.”

Aimée was confused. “On top?”

“I mean I see nothing, madame…”

The captain came to the aid of the stewardess, declaring that she had been conversing with the steward and was turned away from the foredeck at the time that the professor was at the rail. And on the steward's behalf he explained in French that if the professor had been seen falling overboard, the alarm would have been sounded and a rescue attempted. It was unfortunate that no one discovered he was missing until the next morning.

The steward, a tall, thin Romanian with thick bottle glasses, burst into tears. He had done nothing wrong, he insisted. He'd seen Monsieur de Potter standing at the rail, looking out at the sea. Monsieur had tipped his hat to him in a friendly greeting. The steward naturally assumed that Monsieur would return to his stateroom after he'd finished smoking his pipe.

Aimée reassured the young man that he wasn't to blame. She explained that her husband had a silver plate in his head from an old injury and was prone to dizzy spells—he must have lost his balance and fallen over the rail. It was no one's fault, she said. She needed to emphasize the likelihood of an accident and prevent a lengthy investigation. She wouldn't be able to stand by if innocent men—either the peddlers with the bronze or the steward—were wrongly accused of causing her husband's death.

She asked if she could be shown the room Armand had occupied, Room 17, and then asked to be left alone. As she sat there, she tried to imagine how he had spent his last hours on the ship. It would have been preferable to believe, as the steward had suggested, that he'd gone outside to smoke his pipe. But she knew from his letters that after leaving Constantinople, he'd needed more than his pipe.

She sat on the bed until the captain came and gently urged her to leave. She didn't want to leave. This was the last place her husband had slept. The mattress was thin, with uneven creases. His comfortable new bed had been carried into Grand Bois just a few months earlier. He had slept in it for the last time in his own house on the night of May 7. He had kissed her goodbye on May 8 and gone off without telling her that they were on the brink of financial ruin. He had launched himself into the sea for the sake of an insurance indemnity. Now, when she reached out her hand, he wasn't there to hold it.

If only she had been there with him on the deck of the
Regele Carol
—she would have grabbed him by his shoulders and turned him away from the sea. She would have reminded him that they'd lived modestly in a rented one-bedroom apartment in Albany when they were young; they could do it again. She didn't care about money. Armand was mistaken in his belief that she needed luxury to be satisfied. Yet she was filled with regret at the recognition of her own mistake. She hadn't just been happy since they'd moved into Grand Bois—she'd been
too
happy, thus inviting a disaster to even the score.

*   *   *

Back at Mrs. McTaggert's Pension at the end of the day, she opened Armand's steamer trunk, which she had claimed from customs in Piraeus. Lying on top was his pocket watch, stopped at 12:23. She wound the stem and held it against her ear for a moment. Then she picked up the pouch belt, the same belt she had given him as a present last Christmas, which he was supposed to wear cinched over his shirt whenever he was traveling in foreign lands. This was the belt that had supposedly been stolen from his room in Constantinople. He must have decided to leave it on top of his clothes as his apology for his lie about the theft—concocted in desperation as an excuse to abandon his touring party.

She checked the pockets for contents, hoping there might be a letter to her. There was no letter, but the belt wasn't empty, as the police chief in Piraeus had said it was. It contained Armand's passport, now one of two copies, since she'd procured a duplicate for him in Budapest. Tucked in one of the side slots was his calling card with his name: Mr. P. L. Armand de Potter. And there was a card for Valentin's Parfumerie on the avenue de la Gare in Nice.

The card from Valentin's perplexed her the most. Why had he emptied the wallet of money but left the card? Had he forgotten it was there? Or had he left it behind for a reason? Could it be his final message to her? It was just a card for her favorite
parfumerie
. If he had enclosed the card in a letter to her, it would have been an invitation to buy the finest perfume Valentin's sold. Instead of sending the card to her directly, he left it in his trunk, for no other reason, she decided, than to encourage her to indulge herself. It was a small token offered as his last gift to his wife: he wanted to assure her that he had outmaneuvered his creditors and preserved the remnants of his fortune for his survivors.

She couldn't bear going through the rest of the trunk and prepared to lower the lid, though not before catching sight of her husband's notebook. She opened it and ran her finger over the title of the first lecture, “The Sea Kings of the Aegean.” She couldn't read the rest of it through the blur of her tears, but she could guess the stories it contained, the ones Armand loved to tell about monsters, labyrinths, jealous gods, and treasures buried for thousands of years.

This was a region where legends persisted and impossibilities became real. Why, then, couldn't she tell a new story herself, one about a husband who was pulled from the sea by fishermen, but because of his ordeal he was suffering from amnesia and couldn't remember his name? Or this: After throwing himself overboard, Armand de Potter swam for miles, reaching the shore of a distant island, where he was nursed back to health by a deaf, old woman who lived alone with her goats. Did the stories need to be credible? What about the
in
credible ones that offered miracles as facts? Wasn't anything possible in this land of ruined temples and broken statues?

She opened her diary and recorded the events of the day. She wrote that she had gone on board the “Regele Carlo,” muddling the name in her grief. She reported that she'd spoken with the captain and the stewardess and sat in the room where her husband had slept. She wrote, “There is no longer any doubt—he is dead, Room 17!”

She meant it as a definitive conclusion. But the ink blotted as she drew the exclamation mark, and the more she tried to sharpen the line, the more it looked like the curve of a question mark.

 

The Long Summer Tour

O
NCE HE OPENED HIS OFFICE
at 645 Broadway in Albany in the summer of 1879, everything seemed to fall easily into place. When he wasn't teaching the girls at the Albany Academy to say “Regardez cette jolie oiseau dans le ciel,” he was at his desk reading his Baedekers, designing itineraries, and composing advertisements. He listed all foreseeable expenses and rehearsed train and steamer schedules. Soon he was making notes for a practical tourist guide to offer by mail order, writing essays about tourist sights for local newspapers, and giving lectures to community organizations about the joys of travel.

The American Bureau of Foreign Travel—sole agency for De Potter's European Tours—was one of many similar businesses in the region, and it could easily have been one of the casualties of the growing competition. But he distinguished his enterprise in two ways: he put the emphasis on luxury travel, and he gave his tours a more pronounced educational component than his rivals did, even going so far as to include with his offerings a three-week program of courses in language and culture at De Potter's Language Institute in Paris, which he billed as a finishing school for American girls.

He identified himself as a doctor of letters, born and raised in Europe, with degrees from universities in France and Italy. By the age of twenty-six, he could claim fluency in nine languages. He had already traveled widely and knew how to flatter the managers of the world's finest hotels. He had extensive reference books on more subjects than he could count. Knowledge was his form of magic, and he aimed to awe his customers by putting his erudition on display.

As the agency grew, Aimée began helping Armand with arrangements. Soon she was planning menus, proofreading the itineraries Armand had drawn up, and writing flattering letters to prospective customers. She taught her own beginning-French classes at the institute in Paris in September and then again in January. She accompanied her husband whenever he went abroad.

The de Potters, bolstered by each other, presented a unified front. Arm in arm, they led their parties across Europe, wading fearlessly through mud when it was raining, oblivious to the dust coating their faces as they wandered through the Forum in Rome. When the restaurant owner in Dijon complained that the Americans weren't drinking enough wine, Aimée and Armand went off together to confer with him, and they agreed to pay an extra franc for each guest. On a hot day in Lausanne, they treated the entire party to ice cream. They were always the first at the breakfast table and the last to go to bed at night. They never complained about fatigue or stumbled as they walked along the broken cobbles of some narrow street, and if they ever got indigestion from the
choucroute
served in Alsace, they never admitted it. They were always in good spirits, glued to each other's side. They were praised as a single entity for their patience and consideration. When they were thanked, they were always thanked together.

The Language Institute turned out to be short-lived, but only because the American Bureau of Foreign Travel was so successful. The Long Summer Tour was followed by a second Long Summer Tour the next year. In winter, the de Potters led a tour through Greece and Italy. The Winter Tour was followed by an expanded version of the Long Summer Tour, with additional stops in Italy and Ireland. Soon the de Potters were spending more time in Europe than in America, and their tours were proving so popular that they had to turn applicants away.

*   *   *

One applicant they were happy to include on the Long Summer Tour of 1886 was Mrs. Bessie McLaughlin, a librarian and amateur journalist from Massachusetts. After sending in her deposit, she wrote to Armand requesting permission to write a chronicle of the tour, to be published serially in her hometown newspaper. It was welcome publicity, and Armand wrote back to say that he was at her service, ready to offer whatever help she might need in her efforts to document her travels through the months ahead.

Mrs. McLaughlin made it clear that she prided herself on her independence. She would be leaving her husband at home, and she didn't need Professor de Potter or anyone else to influence her opinions. She would decide on the pleasantries to list in her articles, as well as the shortcomings of the tour. If she was uncomfortable, she would let her readers know.

Luckily, the steamship surpassed her expectations, and in her first article she reported that the staterooms were large and light, with new patent toilets and electric pneumatic bells connecting to the steward's department. Two saloons and a smoking room were midship. Steamer chairs graced with woolen rugs and goose-down cushions were plentiful.

The ship hadn't yet passed Montauk Point when Mrs. McLaughlin began sizing up the other travelers. The tally in her first article included “the dignified but kindly Judge Griswold of Catskill, New York” and a doctor in attendance, with the unlucky name of Paine. There were elderly aunts who preferred the shelter of the cabins, along with their charges—college girls wearing “literary spectacles,” who stayed up half the night wandering about on deck. A Massachusetts schoolmistress was described by Mrs. McLaughlin as “ubiquitous, interrogative, and enthusiastic.” And there was Madame de Potter, who quickly distinguished herself for being “unassuming in her manners.” Before the end of the first day, she had delighted her companions with her “choice conversations” and had “already won their hearts by her gentle womanliness.”

But gentle womanliness was not enough to defend the inexperienced travelers against seasickness. On the second morning, the waves were high, the foghorns blowing, and a raw drizzle stung the faces of the passengers, who wondered what they'd gotten themselves into as they groaned and rushed to the rail and then stretched out in steamer chairs in a long row under the shelter of the midship overhang, “giving the once cheerful deck the appearance of a hospital ward,” wrote Mrs. McLaughlin, trying to steady her own shaking hand, sucking miserably on one of the sour balls Madame de Potter had given out.