Mrs. John Doe

Chapter 20

Later, if Nora were asked to return to the apartment house in Paris, she wouldn’t have been able to find it. They entered the city from the east at noon, and Craig drove down Boulevard Henry IV and across the Pont de Sully into the Latin Quarter. They passed the university and entered into an intricate grid of smaller streets crowded with summer-term students and lined with shops and cafés, all looking very much alike. Two or three turns down various streets and finally Craig pulled over and parked across from a medium-size limestone apartment house.

He took his cellphone from his pocket and punched the keypad. He held the instrument to his ear for a long moment, frowning. Then he broke the connection, looking over at the building across the street. He opened his door.

“She’s still not answering,” he said. “Wait here.”

“No,” Nora replied. “I’m coming with you.”

He turned to confront her. “Nora, if anyone recognizes you from that shot on the telly-”

“They won’t,” she said. “I’m wearing a scarf and sunglasses, and I’m not wearing the coat from the picture. Besides, there are two of us; everyone’s looking for a lone woman, not one half of a couple. Is there a doorman?”

“No.”

“Security cameras?”

“One in the lobby and one in the elevator, but our company apartment is on the first floor, so I always take the stairs.”

Nora began to question this before she remembered that he was European; he meant the second floor in American English. “Right-I’ll keep my head down in the lobby, but I’m coming with you. I’ll feel safer in there than here on the street.”

“She’s obviously not there,” Craig said, “but I’m hoping she’s left a message, some indication of where she is…”

“Let’s find out,” Nora said, and she got out of the car before he could change his mind and leave her there. They crossed the road and entered the main door to a tiny foyer lined with mailboxes and a row of buttons. He pressed the fourth one from the top and waited. Nora noted that the name beside the button was NOONE. “Is that her name? Noone?”

“No,” he said, pressing the buzzer again.

“So, who’s Noone?”

“No one,” he said.

Nora opened her mouth to ask another question and then shut it again. Noone: no one. The wonderful world of spies…

When it was clear there would be no response, he produced a key ring and opened the inner door to the lobby. This was a dingy space with brown walls and a brown tiled floor. A tiny lift was just ahead, and the staircase was on the right. She clung to Craig’s arm, keeping her head down, and allowed him to lead her up the stairs. The narrow, dimly lit hallway here had four doors, and they went to the second one on the right.

Before he unlocked the door, Craig turned to her and whispered, “Wait here. I’ll go in first.”

She nodded, noting the odd expression on his face. He was worried, and now she was worried too. It occurred to her that the girl had come here two nights ago, and she hadn’t answered her phone since then. The possible import of that fact finally got through to Nora. She waited while he unlocked the door and stepped inside, disabled the alarm, and switched on a light.

She could see from the hallway, so his sharp curse was superfluous. She took off her sunglasses and followed him inside, quickly shutting the door behind her. They stood in an attractive, carpeted living room, staring over at the figure that lay very still on the far side of it, beyond a couch and an armchair and an overturned coffee table, near the curtained windows. Nora saw a spill of blond hair, an outflung arm, a blouse and skirt, a beautiful leg in a high-heeled shoe. She smelled the faint stench of recent death. She smelled something else, also faint but unmistakable: Shalimar.

Dear God, she thought. That beautiful girl…

“Solange!” Craig said, and he hurried over to kneel beside the body.

Nora stared from the entryway. The shock of that word was almost greater than the shock of seeing death. She watched as he knelt there, looking down at the still form, remembering Vivian Howard’s words from the hotel two nights ago.

Solange-how’s that for a name? She works for him, a secretary or whatever. I understand she’s very pretty. He’s bought a big house in the country for them to live in. They’re getting married as soon as-as soon as…

“She was strangled,” Craig murmured. He stood up, looking around the room, his gaze locking on the closed curtains of the left window, which were moving slightly, billowing inward. He strode to that window and threw the curtains open. Bright sunlight poured into the apartment. Nora saw the perfectly round hole cut into the glass just above the window’s latch and the fire escape beyond it. She joined him at the window, looking down one story to the alley behind the building. Across the alley was a commercial structure of some kind with industrial windows; it would probably be empty at night. No one would see anyone on the fire escape. It would have been so easy.

“Why wasn’t there an alarm on the windows?” she asked.

Craig shook his head in disgust. “We requested it, but they haven’t complied yet. At least they installed the door alarm and the cameras- Wait a sec!” He ran into the bedroom, and Nora could hear him rummaging around in there. Then he returned to the main room, an angry scowl on his face.

“The video file is gone, the feed from those two cameras.” He pointed toward the front door, then to a bookcase in a corner. Nora squinted, but she couldn’t see a camera in either place. They must be very small, she thought, fiber-optic whatever. She knew nothing about cameras. Craig sank to his knees beside Solange’s body again.

“Damn it to hell!” he cried, staring down.

Nora looked at the ugly purple bruises that mottled the girl’s slender neck. Then she noticed something else. “What’s that, under her hand?”

Craig gently lifted the lifeless fingers and picked up a crumpled ball of white paper. He opened it, and Nora knew what it was even before she saw the handwriting. Craig read it before reaching up to give it to her. Nora stared.

Pal-

Sorry for cloak-and-dagger. Change of plan, had to get you out of GB ASAP. This is Solange; give her the envelope. Meet me CdeG, Air France, 3 p.m. Jacques will take you-he works for us. Trust no one else, and don’t use your phone. We’re going home. Always keep me close to your heart.

– Coop

“The real second message,” Craig muttered. He rose to his feet. “He was on his way to London to come here, to De Gaulle Airport. Solange was supposed to deliver this note to you at the museum. They took him, and they killed her. And if I ever get my hands on that Paki bastard, there won’t be enough left of him to bury!”

Nora looked down at the girl. “We have to call the police.”

“We can’t,” he said. “We were never here. Besides, they’d arrest us, and it could be days before Mr. Howard straightened it out. And De Gaulle is no good; they’ll be looking for you there. I’m getting you out of France and putting you on the next plane from Heathrow to New York, and then I’m-”

“No,” she said.

He stared at her. “What?”

“No,” she said again. “I’m not going back to New York. Not now, not while Jeff is-wherever he is. Besides, what makes you think I’d be any safer there than I am here? You and I are going back to London, to Bill Howard, and we’re going to find my husband. That’s what’s going to happen now.”

The authority in her voice surprised both of them. More than that, more than her conviction, Nora was surprised by the anger she felt. As in the hotel room this morning, she was furious, and now she gave herself over to it.

“Who are these people, these terrorists?” she cried. “By what right do they invade our lives? And who in their right mind would help them do it? Look at this girl; she’s not much older than my daughter. Jeff is trying to keep the world safe, he’s working to protect everyone, he and Bill Howard. And you, Craig. I’m not going home until we find him!”

They stood in the silent apartment, regarding each other over the body of the pretty young woman. A shaft of brilliant afternoon sunshine slanted in through a gap in the curtains, spotlighting the lifeless form. It was horrible, obscene, yet oddly beautiful, almost as though this were not a real victim but a young actress in a play or film, and some award-winning auteur had carefully positioned her and lit her body for full cinematic effect. This eerily lovely tableau belonged in the work of Spielberg or Hitchcock, not here on this dusty floor.

The hot tears stung Nora’s eyes, but she didn’t even try to wipe them away. She tore her gaze from the sight and watched Craig Elder, waiting for his decision. After a moment, he nodded.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”