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“Because she was trying to help her,” I said.
“I’d rather hear this from the princess,” Fromme said.
“I’m sure,” Louis said, glancing at the princess, who was curled up fetal and sucking her thumb. “But from the looks of it, you might wait hours before she is in any condition to talk again.”
The magistrate fumed, but Hoskins said, “Out with it.”
Louis and I recounted the story we’d gotten out of the princess. On her way home from the nightclub Le Baron, she saw the light on in the workshop above Millie’s shop, knew she was going there with her mother in a few hours anyway, and, on impulse, wanted to take a sneak peek at her new dresses. She knew the location of the rear entrance from an earlier visit, hit the buzzer, and got no reply. She tried the door and found it unlocked.
“When she came into the workshop, she saw Millie hanging upside down, with her back to her,” Louis said. “She ran to Millie, and tried to lift her body, which explains the blood on her hands and blouse. Then she started screaming, which is when Jack and I heard her.”
Fromme squinted. “Why would she try to lift her?”
“Millie was special to the princess,” I said. “Her favorite designer. Drunk as she was, she was just trying to help a friend in need.”
“There,” Peaks said. “You have it, then. Now can we avoid an international incident here? I’m sure the princess’s father will be more than grateful if we can keep her name out of the press. Please: that would smear her reputation at home for years, and home is Riyadh, not Paris. She doesn’t deserve what would happen to her there.”
Hoskins and Fromme exchanged glances. The investigateur said, “I’ll need some kind of statement from her.”
Louis waved his iPhone. “You’ll have it. I videoed our conversation and her physical condition with her consent.”
“Wait. What?” Peaks protested. “She can’t consent. She’s a drunk minor. Whatever she told you is inadmissible.”
“What do you care?” I asked. “She’s on the record, but the record stays private because she’s a minor. Correct?”
Juge Fromme said, “I can live with that.”
“I can too,” Hoskins said, sighing. “Clean her up. Take her back to her mother.”
Peaks looked at Louis and me with an expression that said, I owe you both in a big way. We nodded, and he went to the princess’s side and tried to wake her. She groaned and threw an arm over her head.
There was a commotion downstairs, and I could hear Laurent Alexandre arguing with the police officers securing the crime scene.
“That’s Millie’s personal assistant,” Louis told Hoskins.
The investigateur leaned over the railing and called down to the officers, telling them to allow Alexandre to come up. He did a few moments later, dressed in a bespoke blue suit with high-water pants and yellow socks that matched his tie. The outfit was totally at odds with the expression on his face as he climbed up from the shop: he looked like a scared little kid being forced into a haunted house at a carnival.
“She’s dead?” he asked in a quavering voice full of disbelief.
Louis gestured in the direction of the designer’s corpse, which still hung from the rafter. Alexandre didn’t seem able to turn that way.
Instead, he said, “Noulan? Did he kill her?”
“Doesn’t look that way,” Hoskins said. “AB-16.”
“What?” he whined before pivoting to face the workshop.
His trembling right hand came arthritically to his mouth, which gaped in horror. “Oh, dear God, Millie,” he whispered. “What have they done to you?”
Then his knees buckled, and he fainted dead away.
Chapter 60
DAWN WAS COMING on while Randall Peaks cleaned Princess Mayameen with water and paper towels, and Hoskins revived Alexandre, who came around choking and weeping as he answered questions.
The designer’s assistant said he had left the workshop at around eight the previous evening. Millie had still been working feverishly on the princess’s dresses.
“She said she would sleep here on the daybed,” he said. “She did it all the time when she had clients coming, and wanted me here at six fifteen sharp to wake her. If the princess hadn’t…I would have…”
