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“The cancer would explain that. She already knew she was going to die. I expect she’d prepared herself for the inevitable, and having a stranger break into her apartment with a butcher knife was not what she’d accepted.”
“That was the other thing. I couldn’t pinpoint it last night—it wasn’t until just after dawn that I realized what it was. I don’t think it was a stranger, Josef. I think Madame Langlois knew her murderer.”
Josef shook his head in disbelief. “So you don’t think it’s part of the chain of murders? You think this was someone with a personal grudge, copying the others? I would think you’d be disappointed.”
“I’m not the slightest bit disappointed. I think this was someone with a personal grudge, someone the victim knew. But I think Madame Langlois’s murderer has killed many times over. This was his first mistake, to choose someone he knew.”
“His second mistake.” Josef slid a piece of paper across Malgreave’s cluttered desk. “I just got this from the lab. There were fingerprints in the old one’s apartment, lots and lots of them. We have a match with the one found at the convent and in the twelfth arrondissement.”
Malgreave felt positively buoyant with excitement. He stubbed out his cigarette. “Why didn’t you tell me this at once?”
“It may mean absolutely nothing. The matching fingerprint was quite old, half-covered over by new ones.”
“Even better. Don’t you see, if Madame Langlois knew her killer, he would have been in her apartment before. He would have no reason to wear gloves as he did last night. We’re getting somewhere, Josef. I can feel it in my bones.” The troubles with Marie vanished in his excitement, and he rubbed his chilly hands together.
“But what if it is a copycat killer?” Josef protested stubbornly.
“You’ve forgotten the feet.”
“The feet?”
“Madame Langlois’s feet were bare, j
ust as all the victims had bare feet. That’s the one piece of information we’ve kept from the papers. No, last night’s killer was one of the men we were looking for.”
“As you say.”
“We have our work cut out for us today, Josef. I need you to go down to Marie-le-Croix and see what you can discover about the orphanage and any of its inhabitants. I’m going back to the apartment and have a look around again. I particularly want to look at her photographs. Something, someone looked vaguely familiar, and it’s been teasing my brain.” Malgreave positively beamed at his assistant. “It won’t be long, Josef.”
“No, sir. It won’t be long.”
CHAPTER 16
It was cold in the apartment, bitterly cold. Claire sat at the well-scrubbed table, drinking inky black coffee, trying to warm her hands on the thin Limoges cup. Her mugs had disappeared, and she had to hold very tightly to the delicate china to still the trembling in her hands. The coffee still sloshed against the eggshell-thin sides of the cup.
It was late. After eight o’clock in the morning, and Claire hadn’t done all the myriad things required of her on a normal morning. She hadn’t gone to get Marc’s paper and croissants, she hadn’t picked up the laundry, she hadn’t dressed in a silk dress and applied the expensive makeup Marc had insisted she buy. She had crawled out of the bed like a wounded puppy, pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt, and gone to make herself coffee. Waiting, dreading the moment when Marc would wake up and join her.
Did he know about Harriette’s murder? He must, why else would he have returned from his so-called tour of the ? Did he have her and Nicole’s passports? Who else would have them? Did she have a chance in hell of escaping, of taking Nicole with her? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she had to try.
Her American Express card would be ready, and probably her passport. Tom would help her, Tom would hide both of them until she could figure out what to do about Nicole. Her suspicions, her fears, were confused, hazy, but unavoidable. All she knew was she had to get away, and had to take Nicole with her.
She couldn’t afford to wait much longer. Marc usually slept late, waking between ten and eleven in the morning. If they left right now, raced through the maze of blocks to Tom’s flat, they would be out of reach before Marc awakened. Nicole was exhausted—Claire’s glance in on her showed a pale, huddled figure curled up in a deep sleep. It would take long, frustrating minutes awakening her, making her pull on clothes and keep completely silent.
Would Nicole fight her? Claire doubted it. Nicole had always distrusted Marc, had always held herself aloof from the man Claire had assumed was her father. Perhaps Claire was crazy, full of paranoid fantasies with no basis in reality. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was escape, safety, breathing space so she could figure out what they could do, should do. Tom would help them find it.
Nicole’s bedroom was dark and chilly when Claire tiptoed back in, her sneakered feet silent on the parquet floor. She touched Nicole’s shoulder, that thin, bony shoulder that was hunched against some imagined terror. Nicole didn’t move.
Claire squatted down beside the bed, keeping her voice low, and shook Nicole harder. “Nicole, wake up.”
Nicole still didn’t move. Her breathing was loud and shallow, her color a sickly white. Claire shook her again, quite hard, rattling the bed in her sudden panic. Nicole rolled over on her back, still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, still caught in a deep, unbreakable sleep.
Calm, Claire ordered herself. Be very, very calm. She sat on the bed, pulling Nicole’s limp body into a sitting position, and slapped her. Her sunken eyes didn’t open, her head lolled to one side, and her mouth hung open slackly. Pressing her head against Nicole’s thin chest, Claire listened for a heartbeat. It was there, slow and strong, and her lungs sounded clear. Nicole wasn’t sick. She was drugged.
Claire let her drop back onto the bed. While Nicole’s frail body was birdlike in its delicacy, there was no way Claire could cart her limp form through the streets of Paris. The one time she’d gotten a taxi it had been a nightmare of misunderstanding. No, her only chance was to go for help, and go quickly, before Marc awakened.
If luck were on her side they could be back in time. If Marc were to wake up and find her gone he would assume Nicole was gone also. The child wasn’t going to awaken in the near future—Marc might even forget her existence.
Don’t be an idiot, she stopped herself. Marc wouldn’t forget Nicole’s existence, not if he drugged her in the first place. And if he hadn’t, who could have?
