The Paris Librarian (7 page)

Hugo picked his way through the crowds on the Champ de Mars as he made his way toward where Paul Rogers lived with Sarah Gregory, less than a mile from the library and on the other side of the busy public green space. He'd offered to deliver the news, bearing Juneau's warning in mind, and Camille Lerens had reluctantly agreed. It looked like natural causes, they agreed, so her superiors might wonder why she was making it a police matter by visiting with the surviving kin.

As he walked, Hugo instinctively patted his pockets when the packs of tourists passed him, wary not of them but of the lone vendors tracking them like prey, their hungry eyes roaming over the groups, looking for a score. Their selfie sticks and shiny trinkets made them seem like fishermen trying to lure in willing customers, but in Hugo's mind they were more like the predators you'd see circling the water holes of Africa, practiced at spotting the weak, those least wedded to their cash—the gullible and the gaudy-minded.

The apartment was in a building on Avenue de Suffren, an apt name for today, Hugo couldn't help thinking. He pressed the buzzer and after a moment a disembodied voice came out of the speaker.

“
Allô?
”

“Ms. Gregory, this is Hugo Marston. I work at the US Embassy and am a friend of Paul's.”

“Oh, yes, hi. He's not here right now, he's at work.”

That moment
, Hugo thought,
that brief moment on the cusp of despair, when someone's world has changed but they don't know it yet, have no sense of the pain and sadness they're about to suffer
.

“I just came from there. Can I come in for a moment?”

A moment's hesitation. “Yes, of course. Take the stairs up one flight, then first door on your right.”

A buzzer sounded and Hugo pushed open the door. He crossed the small marble foyer and trotted up the stairs to her apartment, and knocked. A moment later, the door was opened by a tall, slender woman with her blond hair in a ponytail.

“Hugo, nice to see you again.”

They exchanged
bises
awkwardly, Hugo still more accustomed to shaking hands with Americans than kissing them.

“You, too, Sarah.” He gestured toward her apartment. “May I?”

“Of course. Is everything OK?”

The first tinges of worry. The start of the landslide
.

Hugo didn't say anything, just stepped into the entryway as she moved back inside. He followed her through a doorway on the left, a large living space that opened into a modern kitchen.

A man rose from the sofa to Hugo's right. He was tall with coffee-colored skin and close-cropped hair, a good-looking man in his early thirties. He wore a white shirt tucked into blue jeans, an expensive watch on his wrist.

“I'm sorry, I didn't realize you had company,” Hugo said.

“This is Alain Benoît, a friend of mine and Paul's,” Sarah said. “He was just on his way out.”

The man moved toward them, his hand extended. “
Enchanté
,” Benoît said.

“Hugo Marston.” Hugo looked hard at the man as they shook hands, looking for signs of . . . 
anything
. It was odd that Sarah had emphasized that Benoît was a friend of them both, and given the age difference between Sarah Gregory and Paul Rogers . . . and this was Paris, the city of love. Or, perhaps, Hugo had been in law enforcement too long, suspicious of everything and everyone.

Sarah gave Benoît a gentle smile as he walked over and kissed her on each cheek. “See you tonight,” he said in French. Sarah nodded and they waited for Benoît to let himself out.

“I'm sorry to interrupt,” Hugo said.

“It's fine, like I said, he was leaving anyway and we'll see him this evening for dinner.”

The weight of Hugo's mission pressed on his chest at the word
we
. The moment shortened even more, Hugo already forming the words to snap another person's world in two, change it indelibly and forever. Whoever Alain Benoît was, Paul Rogers was not going to have dinner with him tonight, or any other night.

“Can we sit?” Hugo asked.

“Sure.” She gestured to an armchair as she sat delicately on the sofa, worry now clear in her eyes. “Is something wrong? Is it Paul?”

“Sarah, I'm so very sorry, but there's no easy way to say this. Paul appears to have had a heart attack at the library. I'm afraid he's dead.”

Sarah gasped and a hand flew to her mouth. Her eyes filled with tears and she shook her head slowly. “No, he can't be. He was just here. He was fine.”

“I'm sorry, Sarah, I know how much of a shock this must be.”

“Are you sure? I mean, could there be some kind of mistake?”

“I saw him myself. I was there when he was found, and with the doctor who came.”

“Oh my God.” She sat quietly for a moment, her eyes searching Hugo's face as if for signs of hope. Then she whispered, “He's really . . . gone?”

“Yes,” said Hugo. “I'm afraid so.”

She stared at him for a moment, then her eyes drifted away, tears leaking down her cheeks. “My Paulie. I don't . . . I can't believe it. How can he be gone, just like that?”

“Sarah, is there someone I can call to be with you?”

Her eyes swiveled back to him. “Oh, God. His mother. This will kill her.”

“Would you like me to tell her?”

“Yes.” Sarah nodded, then stared down at her hands. “Wait, no. I should be the one. She won't be able to cope with it, though.” A sudden sob wracked her chest. “I don't think I can cope with it. How is this happening?”

“Is there anyone else who can be with you right now?”

She raised her tear-filled eyes to him. “No. I don't have anyone else. It's just . . . it was just me and Paul. Just us.”

CHAPTER FIVE

The following morning, Hugo walked back to the library, the usually bright sights and sounds of Paris dulled by the heaviness in his heart. He wanted to return to Sarah Gregory's apartment to check on her but felt it wasn't his place. He was also irritated with himself for doubting her, and yet wanted to go back, just a little bit, to see if Alain Benoît had returned. There'd been something about the interaction between the two that hadn't seemed natural. None of his business, he knew that, but meddling was his job, had always been his job.

And then, so was suspicion. Hugo was fighting the idea that Paul had died of natural causes. In a career filled with senseless and premature deaths, Hugo had learned that at least when a man or woman was murdered there was a bad guy to catch, a direction for the loved ones to look and a path for the world's helpers, like Hugo, to take.

Not so when there was no bad guy, though, when nature or chance was to blame. The last time he'd felt this way had been worse, of course, when his wife was killed by an old man who'd not spotted a red light. A death unavengeable, a death as senseless and premature as any, and one that devastated Hugo's life for a long time, its cold tendrils reaching him still. He and Sarah Gregory had this in common now, a directionless grief to overcome, an empty space with no one to blame.

The death of Paul Rogers had cast over Hugo's life an all-too-familiar, and very unwelcome, shadow.

He was a block away from the library when his phone rang. It was Camille Lerens.

“
Bonjour
, Hugo,” she said. “Are you at work today?”

“Quiet day, I'm heading back to the library.”

“What for?”

“I thought I'd take a peek at those video tapes.”

“Again I ask: What for?”

“To pass the time,” Hugo said. “Like I said, a quiet day.”

“Hugo, what are you trying to do here?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Do you really think that Monsieur Rogers's death was suspicious?”

“No idea.”

“See,” Lerens said. “That's exactly my point.”

“You haven't made a point.”

“I have. There is no reason whatsoever to think he had anything other than a heart attack.”

“Maybe he was poisoned.”

“I think aliens did it.”

“Funny. When's the autopsy?”

“Right now, actually. I was expecting Doctor Sprengelmeyer to have finished by now.”

“Will he run a tox panel?”

“The same one he always does. But that's not even the issue. You have no reason to go poking around there, upsetting people.”

“Who have I upset, exactly?”

Lerens paused. “I spoke with Michelle Juneau this morning. She's concerned about the police activity yesterday, says it turned some people away from the book sale. The wrong kind of publicity, she said.”

“I thought there was no such thing.”

“Not my area of expertise. But I assured her that Monsieur Rogers died of natural causes, and that other than a routine autopsy there'd be no need for any kind of police investigation.”

“Great,” Hugo said. “And me showing up to look at a video in a private room won't be a police investigation.”

“Ah, you think she'll be happy to see you?”

“Well, I'm a good customer and I have a book to pick up. So sure, why not?”

“
Eh bien
,” Lerens chuckled. “And when you ask for the surveillance tapes, how will she feel about that?”

“I'll let you know.”

“Look, Hugo. I know he was a friend, and I know in this business we look at things differently. But sometimes that means we see things that aren't there. Not everything surrounding a dead body has to be a clue, not in the real world.”

“Just in ours?”

“Right. So do what you have to do to come to terms with his death, but remember that.”

“I think you have this backward, Camille.”

“How so?”

“I'm sick of death, and I'm sick that Paul's gone. But I'm not trying to prove this was murder, because I'm even sicker of that. I'm trying to prove to my suspicious self that this
wasn't
 . . . well, anything but natural. Simple as that.”

“I'd like to believe you,” she said, and Hugo could hear the smile in her voice.

“I'll call you in an hour or so and report back, yes?”

“You mean you'll call to bug me about the autopsy.”

“
Bonne idée
,” Hugo said.
Good idea.

Inside the library, Hugo saw Michelle Juneau walking from the circulation desk into the main stacks, toward the administration room and her office. He followed her and put a hand on her door as she was closing it. She turned and it was clear she'd been crying, but she stiffened her back and cleared her throat, a tissue still clutched in her hand.

“Oh, Monsieur . . .”

“Hugo. Call me Hugo.”

“
Je m'excuse
. Hugo, I'm sorry, you startled me a little.”

“Sorry, I didn't mean to sneak up on you. I was hoping I could look at the surveillance video from the hallway outside the
atelier
.”

Her eyes narrowed. “That lieutenant told me there would be no more police, no more disruption. Why do you need to look at surveillance video?”

“For my own peace of mind, I assure you.”

“That's not much of an answer.”

Hugo flashed his most disarming smile. “It's the best one I have.”

“
Bien
. As long as we don't have another horde of cops coming and going, we still have our sale going on.”

“It's just me, I promise.”

She gestured for him to follow her into her office. She sat in front of her computer and logged in. Hugo moved behind her and watched as the mouse moved in her hand and she brought up the library's surveillance software.

“I've only done this once or twice, so bear with me.” A few more clicks and the hallway outside the
atelier
popped onto the screen. “Let me select the date and time . . . yesterday, starting when?”

“Let's start at eight.” He waited while she used drop-down boxes to start the playback at the right time. “How long do you save these, do you know?”

“I think six months,” Juneau said, “but we can download onto an external drive if there's something specific we want to keep. Do you want to do that?”

“I brought one in case. It'll depend on what's on there. Hopefully nothing.”

She looked up at him with a frown. “Hopefully?”

“Presumably.” He flashed the smile again and moved aside as she stood.

“I'll leave you to it. How long do you think you'll be?”

Hugo peered at the screen. “I see there's a fast-forward button, if I use that, maybe an hour at the most.”

When Juneau had left, Hugo fished into his pocket for a small notebook and pen, then clicked the play button and watched for a few seconds. He checked the timer and clicked the fast-forward arrows, making the tape run at four times normal speed. He sat back to watch, eyes glued to the screen.

At 8:32, Paul Rogers walked under the camera and into the frame, and Hugo leaned forward to slow the action down. Rogers looked normal, healthy, and in his own world, slowly heading to the little room with a laptop under his arm and a water bottle in his other hand. Hugo thought back to the room as he'd seen it. He rewound the tape and let it play through Paul's appearance again, seeing nothing out of the ordinary.

He watched as Rogers unlocked the door, and made a mental note to find out who had access to a key to the little room. He hit fast-forward again, watching the screen, seeing nothing but the empty hallway. He was about to check his watch when movement caught his eye.

At the bottom of the screen, a head appeared, then a figure walked slowly down the narrow aisle toward the room where Rogers was working. Hugo sat forward, eager to see who it was, whether he'd recognize the person. He did. Right outside the
atelier
's door, Michael Harmuth, with something under his arm, stopped. He turned away and put the object down, leaning it against the wall next to the door.
The book about weapons
. The picture wasn't clear enough to read the title, but the cover colors and the size looked right.