Seen and Not Heard (Maggie Bennett 4)

CHAPTER 5

Thomas Jefferson Parkhurst didn’t go straight home from the old people’s park. He stopped first at a bistro and drank too much wine, comfortably anesthetizing himself before he made his way back up to his artist’s garret. The wine was smooth and dry and a hundred times better than the vinegary substance produced by his own bankrupt vineyard, but for the first time in twenty-two months he longed for something harder. The smooth bourbon of his younger years, of his native Kentucky, would have blurred the edges much more effectively. Wine soured his stomach and gave him diarrhea.

He ducked in out of the wind and started the lengthy climb to his sixth-floor apartment, stumbling just slightly. The question was, why did he need his edges blurred today? Granted, he was cold as hell, and his apartment wasn’t going to be much of an improvement from the icy streets below. But the sun was shining, the sky was dazzlingly blue, and Paris was magnificent as always.

He hated the fact that another old woman had died. He hadn’t wanted to learn the details, but he’d already bought the paper to accompany his croissant and coffee, and his alternatives were to stare at his fellow diners in the small café or stare at his large hands. He’d read the paper.

She’d been in the park yesterday afternoon. He might even have seen her when he’d been talking to … He might even have seen her, he amended to himself as he gained the fourth-floor landing, panting slightly. He might have seen her killer.

The next flight of stairs almost proved his undoing. He’d drunk more wine than he’d realized, the unaccustomed quality of the stuff blinding him to the quantity. He slipped, banging his shins against the iron railing, and sprawled full-length on the stairs.

He considered staying where he was. No one else lived on the top floor—unless he had unexpected visitors he wouldn’t be in anybody’s way. And if someone did have the temerity to visit him unannounced they could damn well help him up to his apartment.

Except that the stairs were a lot less comfortable than his bed with the sagging mattress. And even lying stretched out on the stairs he couldn’t avoid what was bothering him. Not the thought of another old lady being brutally murdered, depressing though that was. It was the memory of Claire.

He’d been cursing himself all night long that he hadn’t found out more about her. He knew all sorts of things—where she grew up, what she ate for breakfast, what writers she read, and what she used to do for a living. He knew she couldn’t understand a word of French and was miserable and embarrassed about her inability to do so. He knew she had a soft, vulnerable mouth, humorous eyes, and the most glorious red gold hair.

But he didn’t know her last name, or where she lived. Or whom she lived with, he added bitterly, pulling himself to his knees.

He’d stayed up late last night. The novel needed something new, a sympathetic female character. He’d worked feverishly, and if the woman with the red gold hair had sounded vaguely familiar, it only added to his inspiration.

He’d called her Elizabeth, a name that suited her. The Elizabeth in his novel had been perfect; warm, glowing, sexually insatiable, and exquisitely beautiful. She’d haunted the book, haunted his dreams, so that he raced over to the park as soon as he’d finished his coffee and the gruesome details of the latest murder, and stayed there, shivering in the cruel wind, waiting for her to show up.

He never doubted that she would. That pull he’d felt had been too strong to be one-way. She’d come back, looking for him, and he’d be there, waiting.

When he first spotted her, standing alone, too lightly dressed for such a cold day, his first reaction was disappointment. She wasn’t the vision he’d remembered. Her face was narrow, pinched with cold, her mouth thin and unhappy, her slender body graceless as she wrapped her arms around herself. The hair was still glorious, but the fantasy had faded.

He hadn’t moved for a long moment, watching her, trying to reconcile reality with the dream goddess of the night before, when he saw the man. Very handsome, very French, very much her lover, he came up to the woman and put his hands on her.

Tom had waited to see her face light up. It hadn’t happened. She’d smiled at the man, but it wasn’t the same, open smile she’d given Tom just the day before. She kissed the man, her arms around him, seemingly lost in the public embrace. But Tom didn’t believe it.

She saw him just before they left. She looked directly at him, her face blank. In less than twenty-four hours she’d forgotten him. And Tom headed out to get drunk.

He staggered the rest of the way to the top floor, slammed it shut behind him, and headed for the typewriter. Much as it went against the grain to revise before he was finished, this time it was too important. The saintly Elizabeth had to go.

Malgreave was walking, shoulders hunched forward, hat pulled down low on his head, hands shoved in his pockets. He ignored the cold, as he ignored everything when he was thinking. Possibilities and suspicions danced around in his head, and he had every intention of walking in the bitter cold until it all began to make some sense.

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; Josef was beside him, trotting at his heels like an overeager terrier tracking a bitch in heat. Malgreave didn’t mind—it gave him someone to talk to, to try his theories on.

When they’d finished up in the park he’d headed home, taking his assistant with him in a misguided hope that Josef’s presence might deflect Marie’s wrath at being abandoned one more Sunday. The effort had been wasted. The small, neat house in the suburbs was deserted, and there were frozen dinners awaiting him.

“Sorry, Josef. It looks as if Marie has gone to visit my daughter after all. We’ll have to make do with these things.” He gestured contemptuously at the brightly colored boxes lining the freezing compartment.

“I would consider it an honor, Chief Inspector,” Josef murmured.

“The tragedy of that, Josef, is that you mean it,” Malgreave said with a sigh. “No, I won’t subject you to that. We’ll find a café with something decent. God knows their food is probably from the freezer also. I don’t know what France has come to. It’s never failed to both enrage and amuse me, Josef, that the Americans have taken haute cuisine and in return given the poor French people frozen dinners with the taste and texture of cardboard.”

Josef nodded solemnly, drinking in Malgreave’s words, and once more the chief inspector sighed. Josef was a bright man, second only to himself in the department, and he combined a slavish adoration with a desperate ambition. The poor man was constantly being torn by those two conflicting emotions, hoping Malgreave would meet with disaster and be forced to resign, giving up his place to Josef, and hoping that Malgreave would once more triumph, bringing credit to the entire department. Malgreave had little doubt it was Josef’s harridan of a wife who was responsible for the ambition. Were it left up to Josef, he’d be perfectly content following in Malgreave’s footsteps, just as he was now.

Malgreave shook his head. “You’d best watch out if that pretty wife of yours starts buying these things, Josef. It’s been Marie’s only act of revenge for the long hours this job demands. You can tell her state of mind from the food she offers. If she’s feeling generous and forgiving she’ll leave tiny quiches, pastries, even a ragout to heat up. When we were young and just married she’d even wait up for me herself. Nowadays she’s more than likely to reveal her displeasure in frozen fried chicken and peas the size and taste of goat pellets. It’s a sad life, Josef.”

“I’m certain Madame Malgreave loves you very much.”

“Did I say she didn’t?” Louis snapped. “No, you’re right, Josef. But I’ll give you another piece of good advice. There are times when love isn’t enough.” He slammed the freezer door shut. “Back into the cold, my friend. I need to walk.”

And walk they did. Through the empty, windswept streets, they walked and walked until the nagging questions he had began to make sense.