“Oui, c’est vrai, but she’s … Madam, I was here too, in the other room talking to your daughter, and we did meet.”
They were four feet apart now and the professor could see the suspicion, the disbelief on the old woman’s face and the fear that lingered in her eyes.
“I don’t remember that, I don’t remember you.” She looked at the phone and pressed a button to bring it to life. “The police. When they come we can settle this.”
“No!” The professor stepped forward and reached for the phone, intending just to diffuse the immediate danger, take away the phone and talk, but the old woman let out a cry and stepped back. She stumbled and twisted her body to stop herself from falling.
“Don’t hurt me, please.” She fumbled with the phone, crabbing sideways between tables and over-stuffed chairs, legs weakened with fear taking her away, but too slowly, from the thief in her home. The intruder’s own fear kaleidoscoped, splintering into flashes of frustration, desperation, and anger, all coalescing in the time it took to grab hold of a thin vase in a teeth-gritting resolve to finish the job, to break away from the transfixing glow of the phone and the danger it represented. Reputation, honor, profession, all flickered within that rectangle of light, and all would disappear if this old woman called for help.
The vase swung down, aimed at the phone but catching the woman on the wrist and the room echoed with a loud crack that came from more than just the china breaking. The phone dropped to the floor and the old woman grabbed her arm and turned deathly pale. She began to wail, fear and pain combining into a high-pitched sound that wouldn’t stop, even when she sank to her knees.
“I’m sorry, please, be quiet, I’m sorry.” But the line had been crossed and no clever invention or story would undo this, and the horror of the future that was itself shattering elevated one emotion above all others, and the fear that burned through veins like acid suddenly froze into a cold and sharp drive for self-preservation.
The cushion was blue and rough, a rectangle half the size of a pillow, and it fit over the woman’s face as though it had been designed for this purpose. Thin arms flailed as Madam Bassin’s brain screamed for air and began to shut down, the professor’s weight more than a match for her struggles and the soft cushion that starved her of life also muffled the sounds of her killer’s voice, a whispered and mildly regretful chant of, “You weren’t supposed to be here, you weren’t supposed to be here …”
Ninety years old and weak, weak enough that it didn’t take long before she bucked twice and was still. So quick that, much later, the professor would find comfort in the idea that there was no premeditation, that it was a reflex action just to hush the old lady and that death came because of her age and frailty, not because of murder.
The small chest was where Collette Bassin had said it would be, a throwaway story told months ago, tucked into the back of a huge wardrobe in the old lady’s bedroom. Seeing it was like a charge of electricity and the professor pulled it out carefully, kneeling beside the strongbox to admire it. Made from walnut, it was square and no more than two feet every which way. Solid, though, made by a true craftsman and held together with hinges and handles made of brass, as were the inlaid strips and swirls that decorated it. The metal was dark with age and this chest had been harshly treated at some point, but an experienced eye could recognize it as a more ornate piece than the plain sailor’s chests of old.
Getting it down the stairs was a slow but simple task and it was halfway down that the professor stopped and swore.
“Merde, les gants.”
They were still tucked deep in a back pocket but, once they were back on, a dish towel grabbed from the kitchen sufficed to wipe down the wardrobe, and then the area around the body. The heavy boots took care of the vase, crushing it into pieces too small to render evidence.
A quick time check, and a pang of guilt; theft and death had taken longer than planned so the professor retreated back out through the mud room and, the chest weighing more with each step, a stumbling run down the gravel driveway to the car, pathetically camouflaged and suspicious-looking rather than hidden. Especially after what had just happened.
Five
Hugo drove and Senator Lake rode in the front seat beside him.
“I’m an egalitarian, don’t expect me to sit in the back.”
Hugo smiled. “You do that in taxis, too?”
“Tried it a few times, actually.” Lake shook his head and laughed. “Just scared the driver, turns out they’re not used to it. Plus, no offense, but a lot of cabbies smell a little funky, with their pots of weird food next to them.” He saw Hugo shoot him a look. “Oh, I get it, you think I’m a racist. God forbid I don’t like the smell of Indian food.”
“I didn’t say that, not at all.”
“Look, Hugo, I’m a regular Joe who happens to be a senator. That’s why I’m a senator, because people are sick of electing the same family name decade after decade. They want one of them, a blue-collar guy with no pretensions.” He laughed gently. “No pretensions, but I can get defensive, sorry. The lecture’s over.”
They headed west out of the city center, swaying in and out of the busy traffic with an identical black vehicle close behind them, two agents glad of a break, Hugo thought. They crossed over the Boulevard Périphérique, the road that marked the boundary between the city center and the suburbs, and one of the busiest thoroughfares in Europe. Hugo didn’t drive often in Paris, there was no need, but when he did he hated this road with its endless loop of fume-spitting traffic, the four lanes bordered by concrete rather than shoulders so that the inevitable accidents always tied up traffic for hours.
They stayed on it for less than two miles before peeling onto a quieter road toward their final destination a hundred kilometers away, Chateau Tourville. Lake was quiet, watching out of his window as villages rose out of the countryside and disappeared as fast, low stone houses connected by one or two winding streets that led out into the flat fields of northern France. Overhead, gray clouds gathered and filtered the sunlight into an eerie yellow.
After a while, Lake grunted. “Pretty countryside isn’t it?”
“Absolutely.”
“I do like these old stone buildings, amazing how long they’ve stood. Hundreds of years, I’d bet, through use, war, and the weather.” He sounded almost wistful and Hugo was surprised to hear him express such appreciation. It didn’t last long, as if Lake had surprised himself. “Be prettier if the weather wasn’t so bad. Rains pretty much all year, I’m told.”
“A slight exaggeration,” Hugo said. He felt Lake watching him now.
“Look. I know what people say about me, the whole isolationist thing. And I play that up to some degree because a lot of people in my district like it, they believe in that. And I do, too, but for slightly different reasons. I’m not a xenophobe, Hugo. I don’t hate the French or the Germans.”
“The English?”
“Nor them. The royalty thing disgusts me, but that’s another subject. The point I’m trying to make is this: I’m an American. I even have native blood, or so my grandmother told me, but it’s not just about that. I love America and I’m sick of policing the rest of the world, saving Europe from the Nazis, Iraq from a lunatic. What is it now, Iran? North Korea? I’m just saying, enough is enough. We do all that and what thanks do we get?”
“Not my bailiwick, so I wouldn’t know.”
“None, Hugo. Instead we get scorn. And we get fleeced because it’s our troops who get sent in first. So all I’m saying, let’s just make the most of being American and let the rest of the damn world fend for itself for once. Let them have inbred Royal families and eat snails. Go for it. Just keep it to themselves.”