He was almost there. He crossed the avenue Marechal de Saxe to Place Quinet and placed the bag in the trash basket closest to the entrance to the playground. Then he slipped into the darkened doorway of the Lycee Edouard Herriot, on the opposite side of the square, and waited. It wasn't long before he saw a lone figure shuffle into sight and take the bag from the trash, adding it to others grasped in his hands. The clochard paused, reached into one of the bags, and took a long pull from a bottle he'd found there, then moved slowly off again.
Benoit's part was over. He ran down rue Bossuet toward the river as fast as he could, his heart pumping and every nerve stretched. It felt glorious. He continued to sprint toward the pedestrian bridge arching and swaying in the night breeze before him. He wanted to get home. He was starving.
Seven
The Cafe des Federations was as crowded as usual and the Fairchilds were obliged to share a table with a happy group of wine merchants from Beaune. The men were teasing Monsieur Fulchiron, the patron, about his Morgon, only a Beaujolais. He was retorting that all that mustard from Dijon had seared their palates. During the course of her meal, Faith learned more about the growing conditions in various parts of Burgundy and the relative merits of the resulting vintages than she'd ever thought possible. The Burgundians' criticisms did not impede their consumption, and Frangoise, the pretty blond waitress who had told Tom and Faith she had been there forever—in which case she must have started at age four—was kept busy replacing empty pots, the old, thick-bottomed wine bottles that were standard in Lyon's bouchons. The meal ended with a large slab of tarte aux pommes, thick slices of juicy apples piled onto a shortbread crust.
“It's heaven," Faith said to Tom with a sigh. "Literally. I'm sure this is what it will be—good bread, cheese, lots of happy people, and no frozen foods."
“At the moment, I agree with you," he responded, and called for the check. They said good-bye to their amis for life from Beaune as business cards and invitations to stay were pressed upon them, marveling once more at all those silly people who insist the French aren't friendly.
Back at the apartment, Tom had finished packing for the weekend quickly and was in bed reading. "But you're not packing for two," Faith pointed out. Although packing for Ben was easy. You took everything. The problem was finding space in the bag for one's own modest requirements.
She looked at Tom. He'd fallen asleep over the Miche-lin guide. She gently took the green bible from his hands, turned out the light, and kissed him. He mumbled something she interpreted as an endearment and was down for the count.
Faith, however, was wide awake. After she finished packing, she went into the kitchen and made herself a tisane—camomile. At home, she now drank Sleepy Tune tea, which was much the same but, with a bear in a night shirt on the box, lacked some of the eclat of the French brew.
She sat down at the dining room table and looked out the long windows across the narrow side street into the school opposite. It was completely dark. The windows were arranged in rows as tidily as the desks within. Tomorrow the scene would be filled with the children and teachers she had become used to watching every day except Sunday. It was like a play and she had their routines down pat. When they would stop for gouter—a snack—when they would go outside to the blacktop next to the car park by the river, which served as their playground, and when they would finally get to go home. If she looked out the front windows of the apartment, she saw different productions—weddings, funerals at the church, an occasional manifestation in the street, with marchers protesting the latest indignity toward the Algerian-French community or demanding a stop to the importation of foreign cabbages or some such things. She would like to be able to sit by the windows for an entire year and watch the events and changes each month brought. She took a sip of the hot tea. Of course, one change had already taken place. The dochard was gone.
She took another sip.
Who could have murdered him?
She had been assuming that it had to have been someone associated with le milieu, because of the way Marie had worded her warning, but the three women stood on the corner and observed everyone in the neighborhood. It could just as well have been locals. Faith sketched out a possible scenario. The clochard is lured into the vestibule by the promise of a drink or whatever, killed for some reason as yet unknown to her, and placed in the dumpster for safekeeping while whoever goes to get transport or waits until it's late enough to take the body out to the river undetected and throw it in. Clochards were pulled out of the Saone and Rhone with some frequency, and the police wouldn't bother with an autopsy. Which, it suddenly occurred to her, they may not have done with Marie, either. Knowing her profession, they probably assumed it a suicide and decided to save a few francs. The policemen, Martin and Pollet, had mentioned an autopsy, but she didn't put much stock in what they said. Just placate Madame Lunatique any way possible. She wished for the thousandth time that Ravier were back. She'd tried again when she'd returned from the tea party. And she could try again now.
Faith went to the phone and, after dialing, listened to ring after ring with a growing feeling of helplessness. But, she thought, she could write a letter and leave it at his apartment on the way to Carcassonne, after she got her hair cut. This way, if he came back before she did, he could start things moving. She especially had to tell him what she suspected in case an autopsy had not been performed.
She got some writing paper, an envelope, and a pen and sat down again. What to say? The most important things were her discovery that the man posing as the cloch-ard was a fake—her discovery of the corpse had apparently made it necessary—and that Marie had been killed. She started to write. The whole thing sounded incredible, but she kept going. After she mentioned finding the hair at the hotel de ville—she enclosed the strands—and wrote, "I'm very much concerned that an autopsy was not done, or perhaps just a cursory examination made. Even if they did do one and found water in her lungs, she could have been drugged before being pushed down the tunnel—to make it look like drowning." She was on her third sheet of paper.
What else? Her suspicion that the man playing the clochard was a relative of the d'Ambert's? No, best keep to the two main points and she'd tell him more when they could speak in person—not an unpleasant prospect. She gave him the name of the hotel where they would be staying in Carcassonne—the Hotel du Donjon, which the guidebook had praised for cassoulet and comfort, despite the suggestions to the contrary implied by the name—and signed the letter "Sincerely, Faith." The standard French closure for friends, embrassons, seemed a bit too—well, what? Intimate? Maybe honest? She smiled at herself, sealed the envelope, and put it in her purse.