“Allison Fletcher. I’m teaching at the Sorbonne for the semester. Normally at Duke.” She gestured at the man beside her, without taking her eyes off Hugo. “Professor Jeffrey Conroy. Otherwise known as my chaperone for the evening.”
The men nodded at each other, the professor’s shifting feet even more active at the arrival of another possible nectar-thief.
“What do you teach, Professor Conroy?” Hugo asked. Two questions and out, he was thinking. Plus, the discomfort being endured by Tom and this man interested him.
“Philosophy.” He put a hand toward Fletcher’s elbow, but didn’t dare touch. “Allison and I share an interest in the theory of justice.”
“There’s only one of them?” Hugo asked.
“Not my field of expertise,” Conroy said. “So I’m afraid I can’t lecture you on it just now.” He tried a smile but when no one joined him it faded. “My other primary interest is in the way people relate in social settings. ‘The Curing of Morality by Self-Medication’ is my latest paper.”
“The implication being,” Fletcher said, in a tone that told Hugo she’d heard this patter before, “that morality is a disease that should be addressed.”
“I’m with you there,” Tom said. He reached out and grabbed a glass of champagne from the waitress.
“Not all morality,” Conroy said. “Excessive morality. The point being that those who claim to hold the highest moral standards, usually for others, have both the ability and the tendency to dilute their perspective either intentionally or subconsciously.”
“It’s more interesting than it sounds,” Fletcher said.
“I’m more of a mind that getting drunk is a very positive form of morality,” Tom said, holding up his champagne glass. “For me, it’s intentional, not subconscious.”
“Appetitus rationi pareat,” Conroy said. “Let your desires be ruled by reason.”
“Precisely,” said Tom. “You just make that up?”
“Cicero,” Conroy said, his nose rising at least an inch. “Or, if one wishes to remain French, one might quote Molière: ‘Le plus grand faible des hommes, c’est l’amour qu’ils ont de la vie.’”
“Man’s greatest weakness is his love of life,” Hugo said. “Rather bland, don’t you think?” He looked at his watch, a signal to his companions.
“Oh, Jeffrey.” Allison Fletcher rolled her eyes. “You can be a gasbag.” Hugo noticed that Conroy reveled in her attention, even the insults. “And remember,” she continued, “‘généralement, les gens qui savant peu parlent beaucoup, et les gens qui savant beaucoup parlent peu.’”
“Right!” Conroy turned to Tom. “She said that ‘generally speaking, the people who know little speak a lot, and the people who know a lot speak little.’ Rousseau, and he was quite right.”
“Good for him, and I do speak French,” Tom said, looking directly at Allison Fletcher. “German too: Setzt Dich auf mein Gesicht und sag mir dass Du mich liebst.”
The man’s mouth fell open and his companion covered hers in horror, putting her drink down with a shaking hand. Tom smiled innocently, slid his glass onto a side table, and steered Hugo toward the exit.
“My German’s not so good,” Hugo said. “What did you just …?”
Tom looked over his shoulder as he started down the stairs. “You sure you want to know?”
“Pretty sure.”
“I said, ‘Sit on my face, and tell me that you love me.’”
Hugo closed his eyes, unsure whether to laugh or run back and apologize for his friend, make excuses about his mental health, and blame the booze. In the end, he just shook his head and followed Tom down the stairs and out to the Place de la Concorde.
Standing by the busy street, they waited for a taxi, both quiet as their minds turned to the task at hand. It was seven o’clock, and with traffic it might be an hour before they got to the cemetery, giving them little time to find the right grave and find somewhere safe to lie in wait and watch.
Tom fidgeted beside him and, when they spotted an empty taxi, they both waved it over, piling into the back seat, conveying their urgency to the driver with their body language as well as their words.
Hugo looked out the window as their cab joined the seemingly endless river of brake lights. He watched as the day began to yield, the horizon brimming with lava as the sky appeared and disappeared between the stone buildings as they drove. Eventually, he was forced to look away as the melting sun flowed into the street and flashed at him from the windows around them like a thousand eyes, scorched and angry.
Chapter Twenty-one
The cemetery was closed when they got there, but Hugo had called Garcia to arrange for the security guard to let them in. Hugo had tried, too, to get Garcia to post men throughout the cemetery, but the capitaine had turned him down flat, apologizing that he’d been reassigned to a drug operation and his senior officer would immediately know of, and quash, any order to redirect officers to Montmartre. Garcia was at that moment supervising a four-man stakeout in Montreuil.
“I’d offer to come myself, but you’d only get me shot,” Garcia said, and Hugo heard the regret in his voice. “But seriously, you have my cell. Call me if you need something.”
They asked the security guard to point them to the grave but the man shrugged. “I’m sorry, this is my first week. That’s why I’m the one who had to come meet you here. There are maps in the office but they didn’t give me that key.”
“I have a map,” said Hugo. “We can just use that.”
“Terrible,” Tom tutted. “You just can’t get good cemetery help these days.”
Hugo ignored the comment, busy studying the map. “She’s close, just the other side of the central monument.”
“Then let’s go stake her out.”
“I want you to do that. If we’re both sitting still watching, it might let him sneak up behind us. Remember, we have no clue where he’ll come into the cemetery. I figured I’d walk a wider circle, see if I can spot him coming. Keep your phone handy, but turn off the ringer.”
“Aye aye, cap’n.” Tom touched his forehead and slouched off along a narrow walkway that ran at the foot of the first row of graves. Hugo thought he saw his friend stumble, and, even though he put it down to the uneven path, Hugo didn’t like going into a dangerous situation with a man he couldn’t rely on. Not like he used to be able to, anyway.
He started his own patrol, turning right along the near wall, eyes peeled for movement. The cemetery was twenty-five acres in size, almost a rhomboid but not quite, its irregular shape not by design but by necessity because the entire cemetery fit neatly into an old quarry, a fact that had stood out to Hugo as he considered the killer’s method of travel. Not the biggest draw in this part of the city, the cemetery sat low in the crowded and hilly district of Montmartre, whose higgledy-piggledy streets drew tourists up to the Sacré Coeur a mile to the east, where sketch artists and crepe vendors waited to take their money.
Hugo felt a breeze on the back of his neck, the cool wind wrapping itself around the stone tombs that were still warm from the day’s sun. The trees took notice, rustling gently all around him, and Hugo realized that the darkness had taken over, seeping into the graveyard like liquid, obscuring the tombs that lay more than a few feet from him. He looked but couldn’t see Tom, then listened and heard no one.
He picked up the pace, trotting along the outside wall, but stopped when his phone rang. It was Tom.
“I found her. She’s near where we came in, her grave backs up to a brick wall, which will help us out.” It may have been the connection, but his words sounded slurred. “Where are you?”