The Book of Lost Fragrances

Fifteen

PARIS, FRANCE

TUESDAY, MAY 24, 10:15 A.M.

Breakfast at Chez Voltaire had become part of Griffin’s morning routine. At lunch and at dinner, the restaurant catered to a well-heeled crowd, but for its simple petit dejeuner, only the basics were offered and only locals stopped in.

Maybe it was because of the close call with the car the night before, but Griffin was hyperaware of everything that morning. How buttery the croissants tasted. How the homemade jam smelled of just-picked strawberries. And as he lingered over a second perfect café au crème, he tried not to relive what had happened. But he kept seeing the car nick the lamppost and skid. Hearing the sound of tires on wet pavement. The rain was in his eyes. Barely able to see, he jumped behind the stop sign. Tripped. Fell onto the cobblestones. Scraped the palms of his hands. Ripped his trousers.

He paid the bill. Walked outside. Breathed in the morning. Paris awoke with the same flair and elegance with which she did everything else, he thought. It was something that he wished he could take home with him.

There it was again-home. At the core of all his thoughts. The knowledge that this was only a respite. Waiting for him in New York were failures he had to face, sadnesses he had to own. What the possibility of divorce had already done to Therese-and what its reality would do to Elsie-made his heart ache. But why put it off? Eventually he disappointed people. He always had. Why should this be any different?

Strolling along the banks of the Seine, watching a tourist boat float by, he tried to convince himself that everything would be all right. By the time he reached the corner of Rue des Saints-Pères, he almost believed it. Then he saw the police cars.

What was going on?

“La rue ici est ferme,” the policeman said when Griffin reached the barricade.

“Mais j’ai un rendezvous avec Monsieur L’Etoile,” Griffin answered in his best high school French.

“With Monsieur L’Etoile?” the policeman asked, switching to English. “This morning?”

“Yes, this morning. Now.”

“You will wait, yes? I will find someone.”

The policeman returned, saying that the inspector wanted to speak with him, and ushered Griffin inside the store. Lucille was already there, seated at one of the antique tables. Her eyes were red, and she clutched a rumpled handkerchief so tightly in her hand her knuckles were bone white.

“What’s wrong?” Griffin asked. “What’s happened here?”

“The store wasn’t locked when I arrived.” She looked around the boutique. “But nothing seemed out of place.” As if reenacting what she’d gone through earlier, she turned and stared at the glass shelves lined with bottles of liquids. “I thought Monsieur L’Etoile had left the door open for me and then had been called to the workshop. It’s happened before. So I did all the things I normally do. With no idea. I don’t go back to the workshop. I never do. Monsieur L’Etoile always comes to say good morning at nine thirty when I order us both coffee. He doesn’t enter though the front.” She pointed to the street entrance. “He comes from the house to the workshop to here.”

As she spoke, officials and police officers came and went, silent and serious. Some murmured to one another or talked on the phone. Others took photographs, dusted for fingerprints, picked fibers out of the rug.

“When Monsieur L’Etoile didn’t arrive, I waited. I don’t like to disturb him even though he says he doesn’t mind. He’s so thoughtful-” She broke off and closed her eyes.

“A call came that he was expecting, and so I buzzed him on the intercom. When he didn’t answer, I went back and knocked on the door. I never go in if he doesn’t answer, but he’d told me the day before how important this call was. I knocked again… I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t have gone in… should have left it for the police… now I won’t ever forget. It will be in my eyes forever.”

“Please Lucille, tell me what happened to Robbie.”

Lucille shook her head. “I don’t know. He wasn’t there. And he’s not at home. And he doesn’t have his cell phone with him. It’s on his desk.”

“But surely all this”-he gestured to the police activity-“can’t be about him just not being here?”

“There was a man-on the floor.” She was talking in a staccato rhythm as if she could only get the words out a few at a time.

“I didn’t know what to do. He looked like he was sick. I touched him-” Again she broke off. Griffin saw her body shudder. “He was cold. The man was… he was… I didn’t even have to check… I knew… he was dead.” She was crying now, with full-out sobs. Griffin pulled his chair up so that he could put his arm around her and hold her, this woman he barely knew, who was scared and alone and reliving a nightmare that would surely plague her for the rest of her life.

“You called the police then?”

“Yes. And they came right away. But still Monsieur L’Etoile is nowhere.”

“He has to be somewhere, Lucille. Was it possible the front door wasn’t left open but forced? Was there a break-in? Was anything stolen?”

Before she could answer, a man interrupted. “Are you Monsieur North?” He was fairly short: five foot seven and slim. His navy suit fit him well, and his white shirt looked fresh. His black hair was slicked back, and he wore stylish wire-rimmed glasses. Where his right eyebrow should have been was a ragged white scar, like a crack in an otherwise fine piece of glazed pottery.

“I’m Inspector Pierre Marcher; I would like to ask you some questions.” When he spoke, the area around his right eye didn’t animate at all. His English was almost perfect.

“Of course.”

“If you wouldn’t mind leaving us, Mademoiselle Lucille?”

“Pas de probleme,” she said as she got up and the inspector took her seat. Pulling a miniature tape recorder out of his pocket, he placed it on the table between them. “It is all right to record our conversation? I find it easier than taking notes.”

Griffin nodded.

“Can you tell me why you are in Paris?”

After he explained the reason for his trip, Marcher asked where he was staying.

“At the Montalembert Hotel. A few blocks from here.”

“Very nice hotel. Can you tell me what you did yesterday?”

“I worked here all day on the pottery and left at about seven and returned to my hotel.”

“So you left in the middle of a blackout-in the storm?”

Griffin noted the incredulous tone. “The hotel is only a few blocks away,” he repeated. As he explained, he flashed on the image of the car coming around the corner too fast, seemingly out of nowhere.

“What is it, Monsieur North?”

Griffin told him.

“The car did not hit you?”

“Just missed me.”

“Do you remember anything about it?”

“It was a dark sedan.”

“Anything other than that it was a dark sedan? Anything from the license plate? The make of the car?”

Griffin shook his head. “No, it was raining too hard. The car was moving too fast.”

“Have there been any other incidents like that while you have been in Paris?”

“Accidents? Close calls?”

“Whatever you choose to call them.”

“No. Nothing. My stay has been uneventful until now.”

Marcher looked thoughtful for a moment, as if he needed to process that. “Last night when you left here, Monsieur L’Etoile didn’t leave with you? It was dark, was it not? There was no electricity.”

“No, there wasn’t, but he’d lit a bunch of candles.”

“Did he go back to the house when you left?”

“I don’t know. When I left, he was still in the workshop. Robbie said he had an appointment with a journalist.”

“Did the journalist arrive before you left?”

“No.”

“No one was with Monsieur L’Etoile when you left?”

“No one.”

“On his desk,” Marcher said, “we found a jeweler’s tray. Do you know anything about that?”

“Yes. That’s where Robbie keeps the pottery shards we were working on.”

“And they were in the tray the last time you saw them?”

“Yes, of course. They’re ancient. Fragile. I’m trying to fit them together so we can read the legend on the side of the pottery-but I don’t take them out of the tray.”

The inspector had not broken eye contact with Griffin once. His voice had been even-keeled and curious. Not accusatory. But Griffin knew he was being interrogated and that something was coming. He just didn’t know what.

“So you’d be surprised to know the tray is empty?”

Griffin was stunned. “Empty?”

“You are certain Monsieur L’Etoile would not have taken them out of the tray and put them away somewhere else at the end of the day?”

“No, he’s kept them in the tray the whole time I’ve been working on them. At night he locked the tray up in a wall safe. But I don’t know what he did last night. I left before he did.”

“So when you left, Monsieur L’Etoile was alone. When we arrived about fourteen hours later, we found a dead man on the floor, the tray on the desk, its contents missing, and your friend nowhere to be seen. Would you mind if we searched your hotel room?”

“You actually think that I had something to with this? Would I have come back here of my own volition if I had?”

“Not likely, no. Unless…” He paused as he thought it out. His left eye blinked, his right didn’t. “Unless that’s exactly why you have come back. Because it would make you an unlikely suspect.”