Douglas Kennedy - Woman in the Fifth

‘Are you visiting someone, monsieur ?’

‘Madame L’Herbert.’

That reassured her. I excused myself and headed up the stairs. When I reached L’Herbert’s apartment, I rang the bell. No answer. I rang it again, holding it down a long time. From inside, I heard L’Herbert shouting, ‘All right, all right, I’m coming.’ After a minute, the door opened. She was in a long silk bathrobe. Her face was covered in some black substance — a makeup mask — which she was attempting to rub off with a handful of tissues.

‘Who are you?’ she asked.

‘My name is Harry Ricks and I was at your salon a couple of months ago.’

‘You were?’ she said, staring at my unkempt state.

‘I met somebody here — a woman named Margit Kadar …’

‘And you came by to get her phone number? Hon, we’re not a dating service. Now if you’ll excuse me …’

I put my foot in the door as she tried to close it.

‘I just need to ask you—’

‘How’d you get in here?’

I told her.

‘Well, the salon’s on Sunday night, and you know the rules: you have to call up and reserve your place. Coming by like this, unannounced …’

‘You have to help me. Please.’

She looked me over with care.

‘You’re American, right?’

‘You don’t remember me?’

‘We have fifty to one hundred people every week, so, no, I don’t remember everyone. Something wrong, hon? You look like you’ve been sleeping in the park.’

‘Margit Kadar. The name doesn’t ring a bell?’ She shook her head.

‘You sure?’ I asked, then described her. Again L’Herbert shook her head.

‘Why is this so important? You in love or something?’

‘I just need to verify that she was here the night I was here.’

‘Well, if you met her here, then she was here .’

‘Please, could you get your assistant to check your records?’

‘He’s out right now. If you phone him in about two hours—’

‘I don’t have two hours. Don’t you have a database or something where you could look her up?’

She stared down at my foot in her door.

‘You’re not going to go away until I do this, are you?’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘If you agree to let me shut the door, I’ll see if I can help you.’

‘You will come back?’

‘Fear not,’ she said with an ironic smile. ”Cause if I don’t, y’all are going stand here, beating on my door till I do come back. Am I right, hon?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Back in a jiffy.’

I removed my foot. She closed the door. I sat down on the stairs and rubbed my eyes, and tried to get that image of Margit’s apartment under dust out of my brain. I failed. No doubt the concierge had called the cops by now. No doubt they were probably searching for me. If they couldn’t pin two murders on me, they could still have me arrested for assault and general lunacy. By the end of the day I could be locked up in some madhouse, awaiting deportation back home. Imagine what will happen if word gets out that I was thrown out for insisting that I was romantically involved with a dead woman. Then again, compared with the scandal which had engulfed Robson …

But it wasn’t just Robson. It was also Omar — because I’d mentioned to her how I despised his toilet habits. And then there was Yanna’s husband: ‘… now you know why I hate any man who hits a woman in the face. ’

Then: ‘ You are going to have to kill Yanna’s husband .’

But surely she didn’t take it on herself to beat him with a baseball bat … any more than she ran over that desk clerk at Le Select. But again, I had told her of the harm these people had done — or were threatening to do — to me. And then …

‘ Brasseur was a deeply unpleasant man, ‘ I informed Inspector Coutard during my first interrogation.

To which he said, ‘ So we have learned from anyone who worked with him. Nonetheless, it is also intriguing to note that — just as you had a little war with Monsieur Omar and he was found dead on his beloved toilet — so you also had a little war with Monsieur Brasseur and he was struck down by a car … ’

There was a pattern. I talk about someone who has done me wrong, she responds with …

No, that’s so way off-beam …

But her being dead is just a little off-beam too.

I don’t get it …

There’s only one way of ‘getting’ it. Show up for your rendezvous with her today at five.

The apartment door opened. Lorraine came out. The remnants of her black makeup mask had gone. She was now holding a printout and a small card.

‘OK, hon. I checked our guest list for the night you were there, and as you’ll see …’

She handed me the page.

‘… you’re on the guest list, but Margit Kadar isn’t. I ran her name through our system — which only goes back ten years. Nothing. Then I checked our Rolodex, where we always kept the names of anyone who had ever come to the salons prior to 1995. And guess what I found … ?’

She handed me the Rolodex card. On it was written Zoltan and Margit Kadar , their address on the rue Linne and a date: May 4, 1980 … just a few weeks before the accident.

‘So she did come to the salon?’ I asked.

‘Once — with her husband … but I don’t remember much about them. Hell, how could I, considering the amount of human traffic that comes through here every week. She and her husband never came back. So they were filed away as “One-Offers”.’

‘And there’s absolutely no way she could have snuck in here on the night I came?’

‘None at all. We’re pretty strict on security for the salon. You don’t get past this door unless you’re on the list. And we certainly don’t like it when people show up unannounced. But let me ask you something, hon. If you think you met her here, and I have proof that you didn’t … well, what sort of conclusion do you expect me to draw from that?’

‘Thank you for your time,’ I said and headed quickly down the stairs.

Outside there were no taxis. Rain was falling. I ran down the boulevard Saint-Michel to the Line 4 metro . I hopped on, my clothes now sodden with the rain. I started to shiver — the same sort of feverish shakes that had hit me on my first day in Paris. As always, no one was speaking in the metro , and the passengers in my carriage were avoiding eye contact. But several of them stole glances at this derelict man with wet, grimy clothes and several days’ growth of beard and sunken eyes and chattering teeth.

At Chateau d’Eau I got off the metro and went back out into the rain. By the time I reached the Internet cafe, the febrile shakes had escalated into a sense of total depletion. Mr Beard looked me over with cold anger as I walked in. Without saying anything, he went to the front door and locked it.

‘You didn’t go to work last night.’

‘That’s because I was a guest of the police in one of their better cells.’

‘You told the cops …’

‘ Nothing .’

‘Why did they arrest you?’

‘I was under suspicion …’

‘For the murder of Omar … ?’

‘Yes,’ I said, deciding it was best not to mention anything about Yanna’s husband.

‘Did they also tell you about the man whose wife you fucked?’

‘They did.’

‘And did you tell them it was Monsieur Sezer and Mahmoud who did it?’

‘Of course not.’

‘They’ve arrested them … but they’ve let you go. Why?’

‘I’m not the cops, but the cops generally don’t arrest people unless they have evidence—’

‘You planted the evidence—’

‘You’re crazy.’