Designs on the Dead Read online

  Kiki sighed. “Because here in France the past is always complicated. After the war, I remember my mother saying everyone looked out of the corner of his eye, waiting to see what his neighbor would admit before he said anything himself. There were tribunals, purges. If people thought you had collaborated with the Nazis, you could be killed. So of course everyone said they had been saints. When I was growing up, that was the story: every Frenchman a resister, every farmer a maquisard. Of course this is a lie, but we all have to live together, and the lie makes it easier. You agree to believe it, and that allows you to forget that your neighbor might have been a black marketeer, or the man whose liquor you’re drinking might have bought the Chagall on his wall for a fraction of its real worth. And if you single out Maximilien Sauveterre, if you say, ‘He was much admired because he didn’t cheat Jews in World War II,’ you crack the lie open because you are also silently saying, ‘which many others did.’ But if your newspaper says, ‘He was a much admired art dealer,’ those in the know will understand what you mean, and those reading it because it’s part of someone else’s obituary will pass over it. You’ve acknowledged his actions without opening old wounds.”

  What a complex dance! “But if everyone keeps quiet, how did everyone come to know?”

  Kiki shrugged. “They just did. It was whispered.”

  “By Sauveterre?”

  “Ouf, if he’d been that vulgar he would never have been forgiven! But there were ways. After a while he began to sell the paintings on: perhaps he had to mention what he’d done when explaining their provenance. Or perhaps he left the receipts where a tax inspector might see them when he came to look at the accounts, so the tax collector could whisper that he’d seen actual evidence of Sauveterre’s largesse. But certainly my mother said that after the war, the gallery quickly became very successful. When the Rothschilds’ collection was returned to them from Germany, they sold it through Sauveterre, and that was in 1947. By the time I met him, he was the art dealer one wanted to work with. Everyone went to him. My cousin Amandine used him to sell her little Magritte in the sixties; she didn’t even consider going to anyone else.”

  “So what happened that made the business close?”

  “He died.” Kiki said this with typical French frankness. “And the daughter that Geneviève mentioned had no interest in art. She was involved with horses somehow, I think. At least, I remember hearing when she married Pierre Guipure that they’d met in a riding stable. In any case, shortly before her twins—Roland and Antoinette, that is—were born, she sold the gallery and the building it was in and invested the money from the sale in a family trust.”

  “This is the trust that Guipure and Antoinette used to start Sauveterre?”

  Kiki nodded. “That’s why they named it Sauveterre. To honor their grandfather.” Her eyes slid away for a moment, lost in some memory Rachel couldn’t see. Then she gave herself a little shake. “But enough of the past! Tell me how you are here in the present. Are you still studying to be a grande investigatrice?”

  Rachel smiled. “Yes. But it turns out to be much more complicated than I thought.” She explained the long road to private investigator certification, the required online courses in investigational ethics, management of an agency, and introduction to testimonials. Kiki looked so disappointed that she added, “But I did buy a set of lockpicks, and now I can pick a lock like a professional. I’ve managed to unlock all the doors in our appartement, then lock them back up again.”

  “But you must show me! I will lock all my wardrobe doors, and you can open them for me.”

  Rachel laughed. “That’s very kind, thank you. But I don’t want to risk leaving you with permanently locked wardrobes if I fail.”

  Kiki puffed out her cheeks and exhaled, the French expression for extravagant disbelief. “You would unlock them all in a few seconds! And if you didn’t, I wouldn’t mind. They might be better locked.”

  Rache smiled, basking in this unconditional support. Seeing her pleasure, Kiki gave her a soft pat on the cheek. “You know, cherie, I’m happy to help you in any way I can.”

  Chapter Six

  Rachel knew that when you extol the virtues of a city you love, you are supposed to mention aspects like its arresting monuments, its lush and well-groomed parks, its pleasing scents, and the beautiful way the light falls through the air. You are not supposed to wax lyrical about its public transportation system. But the fact was that although she did love all those other facets of Paris, she also deeply loved its métro. In Paris you were never more than a few steps away from a métro station, and on an unexpectedly chilly afternoon in late April that was nothing to dismiss lightly. The métro cars were warm and dry, and their doors had little handles that a rider flipped up and over in order to open them, an old-fashioned touch that never ceased to charm. As her train moved from the Saint-Paul station to Concorde; as she then walked the reassuringly identical white-brick passages of the Concorde station to change to a different line; and as she settled into her seat heading toward Notre-Dame-des-Champs and resumed her meditations, she was thankful for the métro all the while.

  How did people do it? she wondered as she looked out the window of her carriage into the darkness of the tunnel. How did they manage to reconcile great moral complexity and ordinary life? In her own life, the worst thing that had happened was temporary poverty, the greatest moral conundrum the question of whether to keep the two hundred dollars she’d once found in an empty washing machine. What must it be like when the stakes were infinitely higher, when good and evil weren’t abstractions, but close at hand?

  She tried to imagine Kiki’s experience, standing in a room with someone you knew had saved lives—a neighbor or someone you met at a party—someone who had made genuine moral decisions at a time when such decisions were dangerous. Or, less pleasant to imagine, standing in that same room with someone you suspected, or even knew, had done the opposite. If Kiki was right, in 1960s Paris there had been plenty of former profiteers and collaborators seated around dinner tables and taking up space at cocktail parties. How could you make idle chitchat with someone who you knew had benefitted from the Nazi occupation? Better for the soul, surely, to call people out and punish them accordingly.

  But for what? she asked herself as she walked through the tunnels of Concorde station. Justice? As her shoes slapped against the black-painted cement, she thought of the ever more ancient Nazis still being unmasked, the old men being wheeled into courtrooms to face trial. As the accused aged—these days well into their nineties, and the witnesses not far behind—she had to admit to herself, with a certain amount of shame, that she didn’t see the point. What justice could be achieved by putting in jail for the few years left to him someone who had enjoyed seven decades of freedom and pleasure in the interim? What real justice had ever been achieved by jailing any Nazi, or even by executing one? What could balance the scale with the deaths of millions of people who were just as dead whether or not their murderers were alive? And since the scales could never be balanced, maybe the French choice of discretion and deliberate ignorance was a better way to move through life.

  By this time, she was coming up from the Notre-Dame-des-Champs station. She stopped at the corner boulangerie to pick up some bread—only stale baguettes were left, but what could she expect if she bought at four in the afternoon?—and on a last-second whim, decided to get a bag of meringues too. She smiled apologetically at the woman behind the counter, who had to ring her up a second time. Then she gathered her bread, her meringues, and her shoulder bag and stepped out from the warm yeasty air into the chill of the late afternoon.

  Thus burdened, she nonetheless managed to press the entry code on the panel next to her building’s door, push the door open with her shoulder, and step over the raised threshold into the inner courtyard. The mail had arrived, and she put down the shopping to collect it. Amid the pizza delivery flyers and bills in their blue metal mailbox, she saw a heavy cream envelope addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Al
an Field” in elaborately elegant calligraphy. She slit it open. An invitation to one of the many galas the financial community organized in support of various charities. These arrived on a regular basis—early in their marriage, Rachel had even served on the organizing committee for such a gala. As she remembered it, this mostly involved sitting around dining tables in gracious homes, discussing card stock weight and gift bags and who would be likely to buy the biggest table (and thus be named honoree, because in the strange world of charity galas, you paid to be honored). It was boring, but it was what you did if you were a young banker’s wife, trying to fit in.

  And then, her drying bread on the shelf in front of her and her mail in hand, she was struck by a realization. She was a banker’s wife. And banker’s wives organized charity galas. If a banker’s wife wanted to meet with Antoinette Guipure to discuss making her brother a posthumous honoree at a gala, Antoinette Guipure would have no way of knowing that she’d stopped serving on organizing committees years before. And if a banker’s wife was honoring someone at a gala, it only made sense that she would need to gather a great deal of information about his life, his habits, his friends and colleagues in order to do the job well. Kiki was an old friend of the Sauveterre family—she had known Antoinette Guipure’s grandparents; she had lent her mother a lipstick. Old family friends could pave the way to meetings. And Kiki had said she was happy to help in any way she could.

  * * *

  “And she agreed to this?” On Rachel’s computer screen later that night, Alan’s face raised its eyebrows in disbelief.

  “Yes.” In fact, Kiki had been delighted to do it. So mysterieux, so rusé—a little like a spy, eh? Infinitely more exciting than offering up her locks as sacrifices to Rachel’s picking skills. She would call Antoinette Guipure that very afternoon to offer her condolences and suggest a lovely way to memorialize her brother. Just an old family friend offering a thought.

  When she told Alan this, he was skeptical. “It doesn’t sound like Kiki’s an old family friend. Maybe a passing acquaintance, two generations gone.”

  “Oh, you know how those old money people are. They meet someone once, and as long as they’re the right class, they’re intimate friends for life.” She waved a dismissive hand.

  But Alan went on. “I can’t see Antoinette Guipure falling for this. She graduated at the top of her class from Stanford School of Business, and she moved that company from start-up to profit in less than five years. She’s got a reputation as one of the most brilliant minds in major finance.”

  “She doesn’t need to be stupid to entertain a suggestion from a family friend!” Rachel felt herself flushing. She said sulkily, “I thought it was a pretty good way to do some subtle investigating.”

  Alan raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t respond. Instead, he said nothing for a long moment, then took a deep breath and began again. “A friend of my parents also just died.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. You should have told me sooner.”

  “It’s okay—I didn’t know him. I wouldn’t even mention it except that his wife told my mother he died on a business trip to Paris, of all places. Just keeled over in his hotel room, apparently.”

  “My God. Where?”

  “Some hotel in the eighth.”

  “Sauveterre’s headquarters is in the eighth!”

  He gave a little sigh at the failure of his attempt to change the subject, then looked up into the camera. “You’re not going to like me saying this, sweet, but I don’t think you’ll find anything out at this meeting. It’s too soon. Not even two weeks after his death. They’re still going to be in shock. I’ve seen it in business after a CEO has died. People won’t be ready to talk. They’ll be busy trying to distract themselves, focusing on practicalities. You should go later. It’s going to be a wasted opportunity.”

  “You may think that.” Rachel’s voice was cold. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  Chapter Seven

  On the métro to the Sauveterre headquarters, Magda narrowed her eyes as Rachel explained the story they would use. “What’s the point of honoring a dead man? I thought you told me that honorees were selected on the basis of how much money they’re willing to donate to the gala’s chosen charity. Surely if you’re dead, that amount is zero?”

  Rachel shook her head. “That’s how it used to work before the recession. Now galas pick their honorees on the basis of who will draw the largest number of people. The idea is that a lot of people paying a thousand euros a plate works out to more than any single person would give. So strictly speaking, it doesn’t matter if an honoree is dead, provided his friends and relatives are willing to pay to listen to people say nice things about him.”

  Magda made a face. “I wouldn’t put it that way to Antoinette Guipure.”

  “As if I would!” Did neither her husband nor her best friend have any faith in her? Maybe she should make Kiki her accomplice. But Rachel decided to be accommodating rather than outraged. “I’ll tell you what.” She turned in her seat. “Ask me some questions you think might come up, and I’ll practice my answers.”

  Magda seemed delighted to comply. By the time the train reached their stop, Rachel had been so thoroughly questioned that this imaginary charity gala was as real to her as any she’d actually helped to organize. As they walked up the stairs of the Miromesnil station, her head was a whirl of napkin colors, potential head counts, and the size of Roland Guipure’s name on the imaginary invitations.

  As they stepped outside the station, though, all this was swept out of her thoughts. The Rue la Boétie was a view of Paris in all its complex glory. A long, straight vista bounded on either side by sandstone buildings with iron balconies all set at the same height. Its architecture drew the eye calmly but inexorably toward a little knot of trees at its distant end. At ground level, the buildings on the street were crowded with shopfronts and awnings—red and gold for a Chinese restaurant, orange for the café across the street from the station, garish black and yellow for a video store having a closing-down sale—but above them the facades rose in smooth blank stories, a collection of grandes dames ignoring puppies frisking around their feet.

  They crossed and walked to number 21. A beggar sat against a pole across from the entrance; Rachel gave him a couple of euros before turning to look at what she was, literally, getting into.

  This building had no obvious shopfront, but rather a glass door covered by an elaborate art deco metal grille painted a glossy white. A window to the right of the door offered a view into the Sauveterre boutique. The interior appeared to have been bleached. The furniture and carpet, the clothing on display, even the hanging racks, were all the color of freshly fallen snow. For a moment all this white seemed to turn the window opaque, and she saw herself reflected back. One only ever looks better or worse reflected in a window, and to her own eyes Rachel didn’t look better. The pallid background turned her brown hair mousy and her skin pasty; her black turtleneck, made stark and hard in contrast to the surrounding paleness, washed her out even further. Meanwhile Magda, a head taller behind her, was somehow set off to advantage. Her dark skin was radiant against the uniform white, her black and caramel-colored curls enhanced by the red scarf she’d wrapped around the collar of her coat.

  “You look great,” Magda said. She smiled at her in the glass. “Let’s go in.”

  The foyer was the same color as the metal grille and the store. The spotless pallor of its walls and marble floor was interrupted only by the entrance to the store on the right and a white marble staircase rising to the upper stories on the left. The wooden banister of this staircase had been painted white as well, so recently or so repeatedly that it looked as if it had never been defiled by the touch of a human hand.

  Heels clicked on the stairs and a pair of white stilettos appeared, shortly followed by the rest of a young woman wearing a white sheath and holding a white clipboard. Her skin was pale—Perhaps it’s a job requirement, Rachel thought—but her hair was bright copp
er, pulled back into a bun at the base of her neck. Her lips, painted the tomato red of every fashionable Parisian woman, opened. “Madame Field?”

  Who was Madame Field? Then Rachel understood. Kiki had given Antoinette Guipure her married name, the better to mark her out as a banker’s wife. For this meeting, then, she was Mrs. Rachel Field, wife of Alan Field, VP of international banking at CorBank. She recovered herself. “Yes. And this is Madame Stevens, my co-coordinator.”

  “I’m Gabrielle Aubert, Antoinette Guipure’s assistant. Follow me, please. Antoinette’s been slightly delayed—it’s confused here at the moment, as I’m sure you understand—and she asked me to make you comfortable. As soon as she’s done, she’ll be free to talk to you about the—the …” She frowned at her clipboard.

  “The Franco-American Heritage Society Benefit,” Rachel supplied.

  “Yes, the Franco-American Heritage Society Benefit. Antoinette was delighted at the idea of honoring her brother, and she’s eager to hear more about what that involves.”

  They had passed the first landing. As they continued upward through an expanse of unadorned white walls and blond wood floors, Gabrielle’s voice became increasingly mechanical, the sound of a tour guide giving an overfamiliar speech. “This building housed the gallery and home of Roland and Antoinette Guipure’s grandpère, the art dealer Maximilien Sauveterre, from 1936 until his death in the seventies. The Sauveterre label is named in honor of Monsieur Sauveterre, who is known for his decision to pay a fair price for all art he bought during World War II, no matter who the seller.” Thinking of Kiki, Rachel noticed this careful circumlocution and grinned to herself. “Once Maison Sauveterre began to do well,” the girl continued, “Antoinette bought it back. She and Monsieur Guipure liked the idea of deepening the family connection. Since the purchase, it’s been renovated into a complete work-life space. The top two floors are Monsieur Guipure’s studio and appartement, and, as you’ve seen, the ground floor houses the label’s boutique. In between are a couture salon and our storage; the ateliers for beading, embroidery, pleating; and of course the sewing rooms. Although you can’t tell from outside,” she said with automated delight, “this building extends for a full city block! Our third floor, where I’m taking you now, houses the label’s business offices, while the basement holds the archives of both the label and the former gallery. Monsieur Guipure and Antoinette like the sense of continuity the blended archive provides.” She stopped abruptly, her expression stricken. “Liked. I should say Roland liked the sense of continuity.” Her face twitched, then smoothed to neutrality once more. “And here we are!” she said brightly as they came to the third-floor landing.