The Stargazey (24 page)

“Fauchon's is very large, very festive, and very expensive. We were in the part that sells fruits and vegetables and I was buying apricots and peaches; I told Sophie to get potatoes and she was doing that, putting small potatoes into a sack. She did this very carefully, inspecting each one. A few minutes later, I looked around and Sophie was gone. Well, I didn't really panic at first; I thought she'd wandered next door or to the candy and pastry shop across the street—she wasn't supposed to, but it was narrow and crowded far more with shoppers than with street traffic. We'd been to Fauchon's so many times, she knew what was in each building.

“I went across and into the patisserie, but she wasn't there either. Then, afraid I might have simply missed seeing her in the vegetable and fruit department, I went back there. I waited for five or ten minutes, and it was then real panic began to set in. I started canvassing all the different sections. I found a policeman, finally, and told him, and he got another policeman and they searched the marketplace for half an hour. She was gone—just like that—vanished. They told me then to fill out a report for the police and to go to the British Embassy.

“When I finally got back to the rue Servandoni I think I still expected Sophie to appear. I thought surely she must be at home; she couldn't have disappeared without a trace.” Kate looked away. “But of course she wasn't there. It was the worst day of my life—the worst. For something like this to happen in a foreign country . . . ”

“When was this? When did it happen?”

“A little over a year ago. The police did all they could—well, I took that on faith; how was I to know? When I went back to Paris a few months ago to see if they'd found out anything in all that time, I was told there was no record of a report on what happened.”

“No record? Why not?”

“They said a lot of files had been destroyed in an office fire. I had the most dreadful feeling that Sophie had been expunged, obliterated.

“When it first happened, when she just disappeared, I tried to think why anyone would abduct her. I put out of my mind—I had to—that it was sexual, that it was some pedophile, but I couldn't come up with other possibilities. Had she been kidnapped? Would ransom be demanded? We were comfortably off; Michael's family had money. But we certainly weren't wealthy.

“I stayed in the flat all of the next two days, hoping the phone would ring. Then I went back to Fauchon's. It was a waste of time, but I expect one still holds out hope that the person is back where you lost them. That it has all been a dream.

“The police, I like to think, were doing their best. I didn't ask them what usually happens in the case of a lost child; I didn't want to know the answer. Or, rather, I knew what must be the most common scenario; I simply didn't want it confirmed. Though I expect police are very hesitant to speculate—Are you?” She rose and went to the window.

Her movement perhaps had stirred the air, for a breeze touched Jury's face. It could have had no other source, in this dreary room with its grimy windows.

“I was unable to settle on anything, unable to decide what course of action to take. But there really wasn't—was there?—an act of mine that could have changed things. It wasn't until two weeks later that I got the first letter.”

“Letter?”

“Typed on a computer, or I assume so. It's very hard to trace something done on a computer, I was told. It was short. It told me that if I wanted to see Sophie again, I'd have to do what they told me to. They were all posted in Paris. Different arrondissements, but all in Paris.”

“You mean there was more than one?”

She nodded. “The thought that Sophie was alive and well—the sudden shift from despair to hope—this so overshadowed the strangeness of the note that I didn't try to understand what in God's name the writer wanted. Or what
they
wanted. In subsequent messages it was always
we.

“I guessed they were ransom notes, or so I was supposed to think. There were three of them. This first one told me to go to Zurich, that I would find Sophie in Zurich after I had turned over five hundred
thousand francs. I had more than that; as I said, my husband's family had money and we were well off. So I wondered why the ransom was so modest. That's only a hundred thousand American dollars, isn't it? I was to go to a coffee house called Le Métro and sit outside with the money in a carrier bag from Fauchon's. That is, I had to take one of their bags with me. Well, I did that: sat at a little table outside Le Métro and had coffee. I sat there all afternoon, went back the next day, and the next, until it was obvious no one was ever going to turn up.

“I went back to Paris. Over the next eight months, two more letters arrived just like the first, written on a computer, or I assume so. The second was short, like the first, and said I was to go to St. Petersburg to a cafe on Nevsky Prospekt. It was called the Balkan.”

When she stopped again, Jury prompted, “And did you?”

“Of course. What else was I to do?”

Jury spread his hands. “And the same thing happened?”

“Not quite. As before, I sat and waited for nearly two hours. Then someone came, an ordinary-looking woman. She took the next table and opened a book. I stared at her. Finally, she raised her eyes and rose. Well, I thought she was going to approach me, but she merely walked away. . . . ” Her voice died out.

“So it could have been anybody.”

“It could have been anybody, yes.”

“The third one?”

“This time I was to go to Brussels. The directions were the same: to go to a cafe in the Grand' Place. I had never been to these places, Zurich, Brussels, Peter—St. Petersburg, I mean—so it was difficult. The note called for the same things: the Fauchon's bag, the money, the bag set down beside the table.

“I thought I must have an enemy, some very cruel person who was playing a game. But I discarded that notion. What was going on was too bizarre. What satisfaction could there be in doing this only once every three or four months? Each time, I returned to the flat in Paris because I was so afraid of missing the one letter that would bring back Sophie. For how could I afford not to do what they said, these letters? How could I take the chance?

“Anyway. Do you know Brussels? The Grand' Place is that beautifully lit square van Gogh painted. It's surrounded by lights, and the light simply melts toward the center. But light is deceptive, isn't it?” Then she said, “Well, I simply couldn't stand Paris and that flat any longer. So four months ago, I came here, came home. And there's the property: Michael's uncle left him some property, a big house in Wales.” Now she seemed slightly anxious. “I'm to see a solicitor about it next week. Thursday. I'll be out of here by then, won't I?”

“That's up to Detective Inspector Chilten.” It wasn't, of course. It was up to the law regarding detaining people without arresting them. “But I imagine you will.” She seemed more worried about the property than about her plight. Which simply could mean that she wasn't
aware
of her plight.

“It's in the Black Mountains, near Abergavenny, if you know Wales. I love the Beacons, love to climb there. They're deceptive, though; they seem an easy climb but suddenly they can be surrounded by mist.” She smiled at Jury. “A challenge.”

Jury leaned forward. “Did you ever consider someone wanted to keep you in Paris? Or away from England, at least, and so kept giving you false hope about your daughter?”

“Good lord, no.” Her voice caught in a laugh. But the laugh died, or snagged on something she appeared to have recalled. “Unless it's got something to do with the will. Michael's uncle's will. I have to take possession of this house by Christmas. And I have to meet with the solicitor on November twenty-seventh. That's Thanksgiving in America. But I'll be out of here by then.”

Then, as had happened the previous morning, sounds came from beyond the door. It opened, and the WPC entered. Jury rose and watched Kate McBride rise also and the constable take her arm—took it gently, Jury thought. She was a woman who merited the concern of others, he thought.

As she walked out, she turned and said, “Thanks for coming.” She turned away and then back. “Would you bring me some cigarettes when you come again?”

Jury nodded. He imagined he would come again. Certainly, she did.

M
elrose recognized her as soon as he saw her standing in the doorway: Mona Dresser might have stepped out of one of the huge posters that had decorated the facade of the film palace Melrose had gone to as a child. As far as he knew it was his first theater experience: at the end of Mona Dresser's career and the beginning of his. That theater! The gilded halls, the chandeliers, the red plush and velvet. A moviegoer familiar with only the little sterile box-shaped screening rooms of today could never picture it.

“Miss Dresser,” he said, smiling broadly. “I'm Melrose Plant.” When she looked merely puzzled, he wondered how Jury had identified him. “Superintendent Jury told you I was coming, didn't he? Lord Ardry, perhaps he said.”

“And which are you?”

“Both, actually. Though I prefer Melrose Plant.”

“Hm. Were you ever an actor?” They still stood in the dark doorway.

Melrose was enormously pleased by being thought an actor. “No, never. Why?”

“Because you have a sort of magnetism many actors have and that insinuating actor-y manner. Smooth talker, I'd bet. Also, you're good-looking.”

Melrose wasn't sure, now, that he wanted to be thought an actor; he didn't care for that “insinuating” stuff. But he broadened his smile to
one even more “magnetic” (he liked to think). “What I do ordinarily is nothing at all. I sit in my big house drinking port by the fireplace and watching my old dog sleep.”

“Sounds like we're two of a kind, then. Come on.” Her hand did a little pirouette as she motioned him into her parlor.

That's what she called it. To Melrose the word had always conjured up small gas fires, thriving cold, horsehair armchairs, and a cloth laid for tea, gaudy cups and plates inscribed with names of seaside resorts. This description most certainly did not fit the room in which they stood and which looked to him like a stage set. No, a film set, for he could imagine a camera panning over its walls, where the paintings hung so closely together (was that an original Matisse?) they virtually blotted out the plaster beneath; the flower-patterned slipcovers, shiny with firelight; the lamps spilling their dusty-gold light across the carpet; the dark velvet curtains enclosing in their folds an even greater darkness. The room was very long, furnished with chaises, sofas, armchairs, big ottomans, pillows on the floor—she could have held a slumber party.

It was a sumptuous and dazzling set that Mona Dresser did not fit, with her somewhat dumpy figure, her round, obliging face, her untamed gray hair, and her tan cardigan and dark blue pinafore with, yes, a bunny family stamped on its bib. Since she herself did not seem quite at home in this heady setting, her visitors, paradoxically, did and wanted her to be comfortable too.

“Well, Mr. Plant, do have a seat and tell me who you are. Or aren't. I like a bit of mystery. I think I have some port, but I don't have a dog. I could borrow the neighbor's, though.”

Melrose had chosen a cloud of an armchair covered in crushed velvet. He stopped her from rising to see to his comforts. “No, no. You can get the dog later. Miss Dresser, I just want to say you're the first actress I ever saw, and I still remember it. I think I know the secret of your appeal—”

“Because I was brilliant?” She waggled her eyebrows.

“Not that, it's because you made absolute strangers feel they'd known you all their lives. And that's acting genius.”

She blushed. She fidgeted with the sleeve of her tan cardigan. “Oh, this is so much nicer than talking to Fulham police.” She thought for a
moment. “Although that superintendent—our mutual acquaintance—did have a definite sort of charm.”

Melrose sniffed. This was the aunt who was
your
aunt—yours, not his. “Sort of, yes, for a policeman. He wanted me to come here to see if you might have thought of anything else. And also to talk with your niece.”

She looked a bit doubtful. “With Linda? Oh, I'm sorry, but I'm not absolutely sure where Linda went. That doesn't mean she won't be back; she could come racing in here any moment.”

Racing in.
Melrose did not like the sound of that. Adults don't generally “race.” Had Jury been completely honest with him?

“Are you a private detective, then? A gumshoe?”

“No. No, I'm not.”

“You're someone who's got nothing better to do?”

Melrose scratched his ear.

“Well, your friends, the real policemen, seem to think Linda might be wrong in what she saw.” She held up her hand as if to ward off any objection. “If Linda says it, it's so.”

Melrose smiled. “She's that dependable?”

“Oh, Linda's not at all dependable. What I mean is, if Linda reports something to you, if she describes a scene, something she saw, it's accurate down to the blades of grass around the burial site or the color of the handful of dirt tossed on the coffin.”

(She went in for grim metaphors.)

“Her powers of observation are quite spectacular, better than that Ful-ham policeman who came round.” She shrugged. “But I don't know what else there is to tell. You'd better go and ask the family about all this.”

“I had dinner with them last night.”

Mona was astonished. “You mean you
know
them? The Fabricants? That dreary Russian woman?”

Melrose burst out laughing. “Somehow I wouldn't refer to Madame Kuraukov as dreary. No, decidedly not.”