I wonder how my friends are faring. Their hotel on rue de Bernet sounds fancier than this little inn. But I doubt their access to information is anywhere near as robust. And I bet the view is less stirring.
I run my fingers through Mac’s gingery hair. He rustles the sheets and turns toward me. He offers a sly smile at first, then groans. “What a night. I’ve got a head full of wasps.”
“Mine is buzzing as well,” I say, licking my lips. “And my mouth is as dry as the desert I just dreamed about.”
“Good fun, though, eh?” His sky-blue eyes are hopeful.
“Good fun,” I reassure him with a smile and a gentle brush on his cheek with my fingers.
“I suppose I best rouse myself and head to Napoleon’s column for today’s briefing,” he says, then whispers, “although it’s cozy in here.”
I draw close to him and whisper, “Are you sure you can’t stay?”
“We could tuck ourselves away here and work on thatotherproject I mentioned,” he whispers back with a purrlike groan.
He means the project of children of our own, to which I haven’t yet committed. It is a topic filled with both possibility and trepidation for me, as Mac well knows, and much would need to be resolved beforehand. “Oh, my, would you look at the time?” I exclaim, as if I’d just seen the clock for the first time this morning.
Craning his head toward it, he groans again. It is a different sort of groan than before. “How I wish we could stay, but we missed the briefing yesterday, and I don’t want to miss the one today.”
“If you are going, then so am I.” I extricate myself from his arms and push myself to standing. After I drain a glass of water by the bedside, I rummage through my luggage for a dress and fresh undergarments. “It’s necessary for our article, and anyway, I like to observe you at work and play. A day in the life of a crime reporter and all that.”
“Like when you wroteThe Five Red Herrings?” he asks, raising one side of his copper mustache with his half smile.
I actually contrived the plot of my last Wimsey novel,The Five Red Herrings,to pivot around two of Mac’s passions, fishing and painting. That way, we’d have ample reason for weekends in his native Scotland, his favorite place to undertake both his hobbies.
“Exactly,” I answer.
As I wash my face in the basin, style my hair, powder my nose, and apply a bright swipe of red lipstick, I think about my plans to meet the women at midday. We’d agreed to meet for a spot of lunch at a little café off rue de Lille. Should I have difficulty making this assignation, I am to leave a note at their hotel. If I race to the briefing with Mac, gleaning as many tidbits as possible while I’m there, I’ll need to find an excuse to skedaddle when it’s over. I’m hoping Mac will be so preoccupied with his fellow journalists that I’ll be able to slink off practically unnoticed.
“Let’s have a spot of breakfast downstairs and then head out toNapoleon’s column,” he says as he finishes shaving and kisses me on the cheek.
“That would be the bee’s knees.”
We stroll hand in hand down the long tree-lined promenade leading away from the town. Mac and I are chatting about the differences between crime reporting and crime fiction when I spy Napoleon’s column. I’d read that the Column of the Grande Armée, as it is officially called, is modeled on Trajan’s Column and that building on the fifty-three-meter-high marble monument first started in 1804 to memorialize a French invasion of England that then never actually occurred. Repurposed to commemorate the first dispatch of Napoleon’s troops from Boulogne and situated on the town periphery, the column is topped by a statue of Napoleon.Odd,I think, for a monument to take pride of place and celebrate an event that did not transpire. What does it say about the people who live here? Fiction is stronger than fact?
I expect to find an expanse of green surrounding the monument; after all, the journalists last night kept referring to the area around the column as “the park.” Perhaps there is, in fact, grass underfoot, but it’s covered with dozens of journalists—all men, some familiar from last night, a few giving me odd looks. Every one of the reporters’ bodies is turned toward a small platform to the right of the column.
Weaving through the journalists, I follow in Mac’s wake. An electric current of anticipation buzzes through the men assembled here, and I feel it passing into me. Only then do I realize that I had never fully understood journalism, even after observing Mac over the years, because I hadn’t experienced the sheer thrill of it until this moment. Getting swept up in the mad quest for a scoop, I suppose, isn’t so different from what I imagine a detective feels when hunting down a criminal. Except that the objective is quite different—sensationalism instead of justice.
As we slow, we spot Frank Routledge, the man we bumped into yesterday after we disembarked from the ferry. “What in the devil is happening?” Mac asks him quietly. “I thought it was a routine briefing with a policeman, but from the crowds, you’d think the king was coming.”
“The gendarmes are supposedly making a big announcement.”
“Do we know what about?”
“Rumor has it that they’ve found some sort of evidence near where the body was found,” Frank explains.
“Where did they find her?” I blurt out, and nearly cover my mouth with my gloved hand at my mistake. Even though I’m a mystery writer, it simply won’t do to behave like a ghoul asking detailed questions about a murder. Mac is used to it, but we are in public, after all. Wives aren’t meant to be fascinated by the sordid.
Frank doesn’t react negatively to my inquiry, however. In fact, he points to a patch of bushes and trees on the border of the cleared area around the column. “Over there. The body had been tucked behind those trees. Some farmer found it.”
He refers to May Daniels as “it,” not “her,”I think.
Shielding his eyes from the bright sun—the brim of his hat is too small to provide adequate shade—Mac stares at the spot. “The body wasn’t buried?” he asks.
“No,” Frank answers. “It had been sort of hidden behind the trunk of those few large trees and the thicket at their base.”
“Strange place to stash a body,” Mac says, giving voice to the thought rattling around in my mind. “Seems awfully close to a public monument. I imagine people stroll around here with some frequency.”
