Masquerade (2 page)

"Américaine,"
someone said softly, very softly, giving the word the French pronunciation.

Groggily she tried to locate the source of that voice and finally saw the balding man standing at the foot of the bed, dressed in a comfortable tweed coat and a turtleneck sweater. He looked like a kindly old professor.

"You are in an hospital, mam'selle," the first man replied.

"A hospital." She frowned at that, certain there was somewhere else she was supposed to be. "I have to go." Something told her it was important. "I have to leave." But the instant she tried to lift her head, pain knifed through her and the blackness rushed back, threatening to swirl her away again. Somehow she managed to hang on, clinging to the sound of the man's voice even though she couldn't actually hear the words; they came from too far away. Finally the black pain receded to the edges.

"—lie quietly." The voice was clearer now. "Do not try to move."

She opened her eyes again, focusing on his regular features, etched with tired lines. "Who are you?" She searched without finding anything familiar about this plain-looking, brown-haired, brown-eyed man.

"I am Dr. Jules St. Clair." A faint smile edged the corners of his mouth. "And what is your name, mam'selle?"

"My name. My name is—" She frowned, not understanding why she couldn't think of it. But when she tried, there was only a confusing blankness—and a throbbing pressure in her head that wouldn't go away. "I—I can't remember it." She saw the doctor's somewhat startled look, followed by the quick narrowing of his eyes. She felt a rising sense of panic and fought it back. "What's happened to me? This pain. I—I can't seem to think."

"You have suffered a head injury, mam'selle— a concussion. I will have the nurse give you something for the pain so you can rest."

"But my name—what is it?" Even as she made the weak demand, she was conscious of the welcome promise of his words. She was tired, so very tired of fighting to hold the pain at bay, tired of struggling to penetrate this thick, bewildering mist in her mind.

"Later, mam'selle. There will be time for all your questions later," he said.

Without the strength to argue with him, she closed her eyes. Distantly she heard the doctor murmur instructions to someone else in the room. She sensed that he was no longer standing beside her, but she didn't bother to open her eyes again to see where he'd gone. She drifted instead.

At the foot of the hospital bed, Dr. St. Clair picked up her chart and began making notations on it. Inspector Claude Armand watched him in silence for several seconds, then asked, "Is it possible she cannot truly recall her name?"

"Yes," the doctor replied, without looking up from the notes he was making. "Patients with head injuries such as hers are frequently confused and disoriented when they first regain consciousness. Some memory loss is not uncommon. In the majority of cases, it is a temporary condition."
 

"How temporary?"

"That is difficult to say, Inspector. A few hours, a few days, a few weeks." His shoulders lifted at the impreciseness of his answer as he finished the last of his notes and retracted the tip of his ballpoint pen with a sharp click. "Your question leads me to assume that no one has come forward to identify her."

"No one."

"Personally, Inspector Armand"—he paused to hand the chart to a waiting nurse—"I find nothing unusual in our mystery lady's inability to remember her name. But she was admitted—what? —nearly thirty hours ago. How could someone forget to remember such a beautiful woman? To me, that is strange."

"Oui."
But it wasn't the
how
that puzzled Inspector Armand as he left the hospital room. No, it wasn't the
how
so much as the
why.

 

 

 

 

3

 

 

Sunlight streamed through the hospital window, setting agleam the shiny satin fabric the young nurse held up for her inspection. "It is beautiful,
non
?" declared the short, stout woman, whose olive skin and dark hair revealed her Mediterranean origins.

She ran her hand over the gown's skirt, which lay draped across her lap. "It is very beautiful," she agreed, then sighed, fighting back a bitter discouragement to admit, "but I don't remember ever seeing it before, let alone wearing it."

The nurse glanced at the balding man by the window, dressed in a corduroy jacket of charcoal gray with a pearl-gray turtleneck under it. A pair of glasses framed with gold wire sat on the bridge of his nose. With a downward tilt of his head, he peered over the top of them and signaled to the nurse, with a slight flick of his hand, to take the gown and its matching stole away.

Only the jewelry remained—the antique brooch and the diamond-studded topaz earrings. She didn't recognize them either. She pressed her fingers to her temples and tried to lightly massage away the pressure. Earlier, a nurse had given her something that had reduced the throbbing pain to a dull ache—an ache that kept her on edge. But she wanted nothing stronger—not now, when she needed to think.

"Is that all I had when I was brought in to the hospital?" Each time she looked at the man by the window, she had to remind herself that he was an inspector. He didn't look like one. If she had guessed his occupation, she would have said he was a headmaster or a schoolteacher—someone of authority who could be stern and benevolent by turns.

"Oui,
you had nothing else." He removed his glasses and returned them to the breast pocket of his jacket. "No identification, no passport, no hotel key, no purse."

"Could my purse have been stolen? What happened? The nurses couldn't tell me. Do you know?"

"You were seen by two young men— Americans—struggling or arguing with a man at the Espace Masséna. They think he may have struck you—which would account for the bruise by your mouth. When they saw you fall to the ground, one of them shouted, and the man ran off. Bits of tree bark were found when the laceration to the back of your head was cleaned here in the hospital, and later, traces of blood and strands of hair the same color as yours were found at the site. From that we assume that when you fell, you struck your head on the tree, resulting in your injuries."

Those she knew about. The doctor had enumerated them for her when she'd seen him earlier—the bruise near her mouth, the laceration to her head, which had required twelve stitches to close, the hairline fracture to her skull, the concussion, and—a rare total loss of memory. Total in the sense that all details of her personal life had been lost, but not her store of knowledge.

"I know where the Espace Masséna is—and the flower market on Cours Saleya. And Nice is in France; the capital is Paris—" She broke off the spate of facts. "Why was I at the Espace Mas-séna?"

"I assume to participate in the Carnival festivities."

"Carnival. It comes from the Old Italian word
carnelevare
—which loosely translates as a 'farewell to the flesh,'" she murmured, remembering that and so much more. "It's pagan in origin, isn't it?—a spring rite of the Greeks to celebrate the miracle of propagation, an annual event that the Romans subsequently corrupted with lewdness and the followers of Christianity eventually absorbed into their religion, making it an acceptable feasting time before the Lenten season. The custom of masking came from the French—along with the name Mardi Gras."

The inspector smiled faintly. "Nothing is ever what it seems, is it, mam'selle?"

"What about me?" she asked, suddenly intense. "What do I seem like to you?" As he hesitated in answering, she suddenly realized she had no idea what she looked like. She was trapped in the body of a person she knew absolutely nothing about. "Is there a mirror somewhere so I can see myself?"

After taking a moment to consider her request, he nodded. "I will find one for you." He left the room and returned within minutes with a small hand mirror.

A tension threaded her nerves as she took it from him, then slowly raised it to look at the reflection her face made. Her eye was first caught by the swathe of gauze around her head and the purpling near her mouth, which swelled part of her lip. She touched a lock of her shoulder-length hair, the tawny color of cognac, then noticed the paleness of her face. She wondered whether it was caused by the absence of makeup, the harshness of the light, or the drabness of the hospital gown.

Not that it mattered, she decided, and instead directed her attention to the strong refinement in her features—the good cheekbones, smooth jaw-line, and solid angle to her forehead and chin. Her eyebrows were a sandy shade of brown, thick at the inner corners and arching naturally in a graceful sweep. Amber flecks shimmered in her hazel eyes, and her dark-brown lashes were long and thick, tipped with gold at the ends. Her lips were well shaped, with a full curve to the lower one and a bowing arch to the upper. With the slightest lift of their corners, attractive dimples appeared in her cheeks. Except for a faintly troubled darkness in her eyes, the image in the mirror looked dauntless and proud, a hint of daring about it that seemed to eagerly seek challenge.

Was that her? In frustration she lowered the mirror. It was no use. She didn't remember that face. She didn't remember anything.

"Who am I?" she said with impatience. "Where do I live? What do I do? Don't I have family, friends? I've been in this hospital for almost two days. Why hasn't anyone missed me? Could I have come to Nice alone? The gown—" She remembered the designer label it had carried. "It was by St. Laurent. Does that mean I'm wealthy?"

"It is possible," the inspector conceded. "Though it is also possible the gown and the jewelry were gifts from a generous lover. The Cote d'Azur attracts many with income in rarefied brackets. And they, in turn, attract beautiful women to the area."

"And you think I'm one of those women."

"Perhaps." He shrugged noncommitally. "However, most—even today—are poor Bardot imitations, with tumbling blond hair, voluptuous curves, and pink, pouting lips. Few have the appearance of class you possess."

"I think that's a compliment. Thank you," she murmured with a trace of dryness.

"It was." His mouth curved with the same droll amusement she had shown. "In any case, beautiful women may arrive in Nice alone, but they seldom remain alone very long."

"Then you think I knew the man I was seen struggling with?"

"The two of you could have been engaged in a lovers' quarrel. Or—he wished to make your acquaintance, and you rejected his advances."

"But why would I go to the Espace Masséna at night, during Carnival, without an escort, and without a purse?" she argued. "Or was the man a thief who stole my purse? That could have been the cause of the struggle—and it would explain why he ran."

"But why would he take your purse and not your jewelry?"

"I don't know." She sighed wearily, confused and frustrated by the constant blankness, the absence of any answers to the questions. "There has to be some way to find out who I am. Somewhere there has to be a room with my clothes in it, my makeup, my jewelry."

"Inquiries are being made at all the hotels and pensions in the city," he told her. "But you must remember, during Carnival people frequently stay out all night. Therefore, the absence of a guest from his or her room for one night normally would not be worthy of notice. Two nights in a row, that is another thing. If we are fortunate, I may know something tomorrow."

"I hope so. I
have
to find out who I am."

He arched an eyebrow at her curiously. "You say that with unusual urgency, mam'selle."

"I know." She heard the troubled note in her voice and tried to explain. "I have this feeling, Inspector—this vague yet very compelling feeling—that I'm supposed to be somewhere. It's important. It's more than important. It's as if something terrible will happen if I'm not there."

"Where?" It was asked quietly, almost indifferently, as if to gently jar loose a fragment of her memory.

But it didn't work. "I don't know." This time her voice was choked with the frustration and strain of trying to recall. But the more she struggled to remember, the harder her head pounded. Suddenly she didn't have the strength to fight them both. She sagged back against the hospital pillows and shut her eyes tight, hating the blankness.

"I have overtired you with my questions. I am sorry," the inspector said, his voice gentle with regret. "You rest. I will come back tomorrow."

Then he was gone and she was alone again— alone with the emptiness of her memory, an emptiness she seemed powerless to fill. With a turn of her head, she gazed out the window at the brilliant blue sky that had given the Côte d'Azur its name. If only there was something she could do, somewhere she could go—but where did a person go to find her memory?

 

 

 

 

4

 

 

From the hospital corridor came the murmur of typically hushed voices, the rustle of stiff polyester uniforms, and the whisper of white-stockinged legs brushing together in a striding walk. But no one approached her door, and no bouquets of flowers relieved the starkness of her room or sent their sweet fragrance into it to cover the sharp antiseptic smells.

Agitated, restless, and tired of staring at the walls that echoed the blankness of her mind, she threw back the covers and sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. A wave of dizziness hit her. She gripped the edge of the mattress and waited for the room to stop spinning, then slowly lowered her feet to the floor and stood up. Immediately she felt a coolness against her skin where the hospital gown gaped in back. But she had no robe to cover her—no clothes at all other than the evening gown. Turning, she pulled the blanket off the bed and draped it around her shoulders Indian-style.

She was halfway to the door before she realized she was obeying that faint inner voice that said she had to leave, that she was needed somewhere. But where? Why? And why the urgency? Was she in some kind of danger? The man she'd been struggling with—had he deliberately tried to hurt her, or had he been trying to make her go somewhere with him? But where? And what was the danger? From whom? And where were they now?