The Paris Librarian (32 page)

Hugo felt a pang of disappointment at being separated from her, and that surprised him. He gave her a strong hug and resisted the temptation to pat her behind, but watched as she climbed into the front seat of the other car.

Chapuis turned to her colleague. “Guillaume, wait here until the crime-scene unit arrives, keep the place secure. Then take her wherever she wants to go.”

“
D'accord
,” Guillaume said, then nodded at Hugo as Chapuis slid behind the wheel and they pulled away. Hugo waved at Claudia, but she was saying something to her new companion.
That's my Claudia
, he thought.
Friends with everyone.

They drove in silence along the coastal road, and Hugo lowered his window to enjoy the fresh, salty air. It'd been a while since he'd visited the coast, and he made up his mind that he'd have a proper vacation up here, soon and preferably with Claudia.

Ten minutes later, they came to the crash scene, and Hugo quickly saw what had happened. Harmuth had tried to drive on his flat tires, shredding them completely, the wheels themselves digging into the roadway and then, as he failed to steer around a corner, he'd run into an iron gate. The bottom half of the gate had broken from its post, tipping upward, and the hood of the car had lodged underneath. The top of the gate had shattered the windshield, breaking it inward over Harmuth. Another ambulance was here, and Harmuth sat as Hugo had done, in the back of it on a gurney, as he received treatment for his cuts. Four policemen hovered close by, making sure the patient didn't try any more escapes.

Officer Chapuis arranged the car so that her side faced the back of the ambulance. A nearby
flic
motioned for the paramedics to stop what they were doing and step aside for a moment. When they were clear of the ambulance, Chapuis turned on the spotlight by her window, and trained it on the rear of the vehicle, smothering Harmuth in light. He shielded his eyes but lowered his hands when an officer barked orders at him. He blinked into the brightness and Hugo was startled by how pale he was. Perhaps from the crash, surely to some degree, but it was more than that. He looked ten years older, his expression blank and his shoulders slumped. The red scratches and cuts on his face seemed all the brighter for the contrast with his blanched face, and as they watched a cut on his forehead trickled blood into his right eye. Harmuth reached up and wiped it away, then turned his face from the light.

“That's him,” Hugo said. “No doubt at all.”

“
Merci.
” She turned the spotlight off, then reached for the gear shift but stopped when her phone rang, answering it instead. She gave her name, then listened for a moment before handing the phone to Hugo. “It's Detective Georges Bazin.”

Hugo smiled as he took the phone. “Georges, I'm glad someone contacted you.”

“Is it him? Is it really Michel Rogers?”

“Yes, it is. And this time he's not getting away.”

A long sigh came down the phone. “I knew it. I always knew it. Are you headed to the station? We'll have to charge him with your kidnapping before we can dig up his past, just to make sure we hold him.”

“Can I do it in the morning?” Hugo asked. “I'm pretty beat and have a beautiful young lady waiting to buy me a drink.”

Bazin chuckled. “Of course. How could I get in the way of that?”

“
Merci bien.
You know, I'm not sure I'd have been afforded the same accommodation back home.”

“This is France; we know where our priorities lie. I'll see you tomorrow morning at the station.” He paused and Hugo heard the smile in his voice. “If you're a little late, I'll know why.”

They sat on the bed and ate pizza. Neither Hugo nor Claudia wanted the formality of a restaurant, and what they both needed most was comfort food, washed down with good wine that they drank out of the hotel's glass tumblers.

The television played in the background, a mix of news, weather, and commercials, but the sound was low and neither one paid any attention to it, focused more on reducing the size of their pizza, slice by slice.

“Did you call Camille?” Claudia asked, after a while.

“I did. They're going to hold off on the digging until tomorrow, no need to do it tonight after so long.”

“Digging? Hugo, you still haven't told me what this is all about.”

“No?” He smiled. “I guess I didn't yet, did I?”

“No.” She threw him a sharp look. “But if you've finished stuffing your face, I'm ready.”

“I'm not done stuffing my face, actually,” he said. “But I'll tell you anyway, if you promise not to make fun of me.”

“For figuring it out?”

“For being so slow.”

“You always say that,” she laughed. “But since you're always the first one to solve these crimes, I don't think anyone else is in a position to complain about you being slow.”

“Yeah, I know.” Hugo grimaced. “It always seems so obvious to me after the fact.”

“Tell me anyway. When did you first suspect him?”

“It's hard to say, honestly. I didn't have a moment of clarity when suddenly I knew it was him. It was more a case of seeing little clues pile up in my mind, hints and suggestions, and things that I couldn't quite make sense of. And, looking at the other players, I just couldn't see any reason for anyone else to be guilty of these crimes.”

“Especially when your main suspect was killed.”

“Benoît? Yeah, that was a gamble on Harmuth's part. I mean, if it'd worked and we'd fallen for the suicide angle, he was in the clear. Game over and he wins. If not, then it was obvious someone else was doing this.”

“Why do you think he took that gamble?” Claudia asked.

“The same reason most people make a bet. It looked like a good idea at the time, and he thought he'd win. I mean, he was right in some respects. Benoît was looming large to the police as the killer, and everyone knows cops love to close their cases. I can see how a dead Benoît works out perfectly for Harmuth.”

“And he didn't have much time to make that decision.”

“Right, I'm sure it occurred to him and he had only a little while, minutes, maybe an hour or two, to weigh the pros and cons. He probably thought that we'd eventually eliminate Benoît for some reason or another so, yeah, I can see why he did it.”

“But it narrowed the list of suspects.”

“Definitely.”

“So then, how did Harmuth even end up on it?”

“Like I said.” Hugo wiped his hands on a napkin. “A whole bunch of little things. Imagine a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors, and at some point they start to come together.”

“For example?”

“Well, some things struck me as odd or interesting at the time, but they didn't mean much until I thought about them later. Like his pronunciation of the French word
atelier
.”

“I don't understand.”

“He told me he didn't speak much French at all. And that's a simple-enough word when you see it written down, but it's actually quite hard to pronounce perfectly. Yet he was able to. It didn't click at the time, I was just impressed. But later, when I started to wonder if he was who he said he was, it seemed like maybe it meant something.”

“What else?”

“Well, he claimed to be big into security at the library. Remember, he was the one who had the security cameras installed. And yet, when Paul's keys were stolen not only was he unsure whether his library key had been returned, but he also didn't know who else had keys. Whether Michelle Juneau or even Nicole Anisse did. Again, a small thing that didn't resonate much at the time.”

“Wait, I'm not getting that. Why did he care about security?”

“He didn't. He cared about the cameras. He planned the murder carefully, laid the groundwork for his alibi by putting them exactly where he needed them.”

“OK, two big questions,” Claudia said. “How and why?”

“Short answer, because Paul and Michael, or Michel, were brothers.”

Claudia's eyes widened. “What? Are you serious?”

“Paul never knew, of course.”

“That story wasn't true? He survived the crash?”

“There was no crash. Well,” Hugo corrected himself, “there was a crash with an empty car.”

“But a part of her was found in it!”

“Yes, and one of the things I did up here was look at the original crime-scene photos. The leg had been severed cleanly at the knee. Not only that, but they had good pictures of where the car went into the ocean. It wasn't a cliff, nothing steep enough to cause that kind of injury. No, he staged the whole thing to look like an accident.”

“Why didn't the police figure that out back then?”

“It looked cut and dried, you can't blame them. The press was reporting it as this Romeo and Juliet story, as if it was some sort of romantic tragedy.”

“That's ridiculous.”

“Yes, but that's how it was reported, and that's what the police believed.” Hugo thought of Georges Bazin.
Most of them.

“So what do you think happened?”

“I'm pretty sure that Michael Harmuth, or Michel Rogers, killed his girlfriend at his mother's apartment. Together they buried her body in the backyard and engineered his escape.”

“Oh my God, that's awful.”

“Hence the digging tomorrow,” Hugo said. “They'll get a warrant and do it by daylight. It's a small space, it won't take long.”

“So, Harmuth killed Paul Rogers because he knew something?”

“No. He did it to protect his secret. Paul and Sarah were planning to build onto the apartment, and to do that they would have taken up part of the garden. The chances were better than good that they'd uncover the body, and that would be that. A few years ago, Harmuth might have gotten away with it, but with DNA they'd almost certainly figure out who she was, which would mean his story about an accident would crumble.”

“The police wouldn't just be looking for him, they'd have to arrest Claire Rogers.” Claudia shook her head sadly. “How did she live with a secret like that for so many years?”

“Because she had to. Michael, or Michel as he was, was her son, and most mothers will do pretty much anything to protect their children. She's most mothers.”

“But how did you know?”

Hugo smiled. “As a matter of fact, she actually said it at one point, I didn't even pay attention. When we were at her apartment, she almost called him her son, or so it seemed to me. I put it down to the dementia, and he played it very cool, I must say.”

“You told me she was protective of her garden. It wasn't the flowers at all, was it?”

“No, she was in on it, no question.”

“All those years, and they didn't try to move the body.”

“I can see why,” Hugo said. “Harmuth had to stay away as long as possible in case someone recognized him, and it's so much easier for Claire Rogers to just leave the body there. Why take the risk if you don't have to?”

“And then she started to get ill.”

“Which sped up the clock for Harmuth. He had to come back and figure a way to keep their secret buried. He probably thought he'd done it with his plan to move in to his mother's apartment, but at some point he realized that Claire and Paul had agreed to switch, move Paul and Sarah into the ground-floor apartment and give Harmuth the floor above.”

“And with the extension they were going to build . . .”

“Yeah, that sealed the deal, I'm sure.”

“So that's the why,” Claudia said. “What I don't understand is, how? Paul was in that room alone; he was fine when he went in, and he had no contact with anyone before he died. So how in the world did Harmuth manage to poison him? And how the hell did you figure it out?”

“As to how I figured it out.” Hugo smiled and pointed at their food. “This.”

“Pizza?”

“Yes,” Hugo said. “More specifically, the crust.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The following morning, Hugo went to the station early to give his statement. He didn't enjoy climbing out of bed, but he was eager to get back to Paris and wanted to get the formality over with. Georges Bazin was one of the detectives there in the interview room, and he shared Hugo's eagerness to complete the statement and see what would be found in Claire Rogers's flower garden.

They shook hands on the steps of the police station as Claudia pulled up in a rental car. She stayed in the driver's seat; Hugo had a phone call to return to Camille Lerens, who had many of the same questions that Claudia had the night before.

“I want to know why you suspected Harmuth,” Lerens said, echoing Claudia.

“A couple of days ago, Alain Benoît said something that I thought about a few times afterward. It was a throw-away remark, about how Michelle Juneau looked a little like Madame Rogers.”