She held up a slim volume. He took it and read the title on the spine. De Laclos:
“I’ve never read it,” she said.
“It’s unlucky,” Yashim replied.
“You believe that?”
Yashim slipped the book back into the shelves. “I read it once. I liked it very much.” He pushed against the spine with his thumb. “Six, seven people died.”
“And now?”
“Three men have died,” he said. “One was a bookseller. One was a moneylender. Your husband was the third.”
Amelie flinched. “My husband,” she echoed. She drew her arms over her knees and rocked back and forth on the divan. “Tell me. Tell me who the others are.”
Yashim sat down beside her, trailing his arms between his knees.
“There was a bookseller,” he began. He told her about Goulandris.
“So who killed him?”
He let his head hang.
“I thought—for a moment—it might have been your husband.”
Amelie stood up. “Max?”
“Please. Monsieur Lefevre paid for information. The man he paid has disappeared. I think he’s dead. He owed money to a moneylender. Your husband paid him off: two hundred francs.”
“You know so much,” Amelie said. She sounded bitter.
“The moneylender I found last night,” Yashim pressed on. “After you came.”
“So Max paid for information. What of that?”
“The moneylender was dead.”
Amelie went to the stove and leaned over it. She turned. “I don’t understand. Max—this bookseller, the moneylender. You didn’t like him? My husband.”
Yashim blinked in surprise.
“He wrote to me about you,” she said. “He thought that you were his friend.”
“I thought—I thought that we were alike. In certain ways.”
“You!” She snorted. “Max was many things, yes. But he was a man.”
Yashim thought: she is alone, her husband dead. He gestured to the divan and she sat down where she had sat that first night, when they were friends.
“I am sorry, monsieur. Please forgive me.”
“I am making coffee,” Yashim said. “Will you have some?”
She nodded, and Yashim turned gratefully to the stove.
“A man came here,” she said. “He opened the door.”
“Yes? Who?” Yashim measured the coffee into the copper pot.
Amelie bit her lip. “I don’t know. He just sort of—stared.”
“Did he say anything?”
“I tried French—then a little Greek. But he just backed away.”
“How was he dressed?”
Amelie pursed her lips. “He looked like a bandit, really. He opened the door with a knife.”
Yashim felt the hairs prickle on the back of his neck.
“A knife?”
Amelie laced her hands under her chin. “Forgive me. You and Max—you are alike, I think. He likes to find things out.” She paused, then corrected herself. “He liked to, I mean.”
“Yes.” He dug the pot into the coals. “I only wish I knew what he’d been looking for.”
He turned and looked at her. It was a question. Their eyes met; she shook her head and shrugged.
They must have been a strange couple, Yashim thought. She seemed so—fresh, with a face that told him everything he wanted to know. How had Lefevre found her? In their country, Yashim knew, people took their pick. What made her choose Lefevre, then, with all his secrets? The assignations. The hints. And the hidden life, too: this Amelie. She was the most surprising secret of them all.
“Your husband didn’t tell you why he had come?”
“To meet some people he knew.” She looked uncomfortable.
“People?” He had been under an impression that Lefevre worked alone.
