The Body in the Vestibule

not packing for two,' Faith pointed out. Although packing for Ben was easy. You took everything. The problem was finding space in the bag for one's own modest requirements.

She looked at Tom. He'd fallen asleep over the Miche-lin guide. She gently took the green bible from his hands, turned out the light, and kissed him. He mumbled something she interpreted as an endearment and was down for the count.

Faith, however, was wide awake. After she finished packing, she went into the kitchen and made herself a tisane—camomile. At home, she now drank Sleepy Tune tea, which was much the same but, with a bear in a night shirt on the box, lacked some of the eclat of the French brew.

She sat down at the dining room table and looked out the long windows across the narrow side street into the school opposite. It was completely dark. The windows were arranged in rows as tidily as the desks within. Tomorrow the scene would be filled with the children and teachers she had become used to watching every day except Sunday. It was like a play and she had their routines down pat. When they would stop for gouter—a snack—when they would go outside to the blacktop next to the car park by the river, which served as their playground, and when they would finally get to go home. If she looked out the front windows of the apartment, she saw different productions—weddings, funerals at the church, an occasional manifestation in the street, with marchers protesting the latest indignity toward the Algerian-French community or demanding a stop to the importation of foreign cabbages or some such things. She would like to be able to sit by the windows for an entire year and watch the events and changes each month brought. She took a sip of the hot tea. Of course, one change had already taken place. The dochard was gone.

She took another sip.

Who could have murdered him?

She had been assuming that it had to have been someone associated with le milieu, because of the way Marie had worded her warning, but the three women stood on the corner and observed everyone in the neighborhood. It could just as well have been locals. Faith sketched out a possible scenario. The clochard is lured into the vestibule by the promise of a drink or whatever, killed for some reason as yet unknown to her, and placed in the dumpster for safekeeping while whoever goes to get transport or waits until it's late enough to take the body out to the river undetected and throw it in. Clochards were pulled out of the Saone and Rhone with some frequency, and the police wouldn't bother with an autopsy. Which, it suddenly occurred to her, they may not have done with Marie, either. Knowing her profession, they probably assumed it a suicide and decided to save a few francs. The policemen, Martin and Pollet, had mentioned an autopsy, but she didn't put much stock in what they said. Just placate Madame Lunatique any way possible. She wished for the thousandth time that Ravier were back. She'd tried again when she'd returned from the tea party. And she could try again now.

Faith went to the phone and, after dialing, listened to ring after ring with a growing feeling of helplessness. But, she thought, she could write a letter and leave it at his apartment on the way to Carcassonne, after she got her hair cut. This way, if he came back before she did, he could start things moving. She especially had to tell him what she suspected in case an autopsy had not been performed.

She got some writing paper, an envelope, and a pen and sat down again. What to say? The most important things were her discovery that the man posing as the cloch-ard was a fake—her discovery of the corpse had apparently made it necessary—and that Marie had been killed. She started to write. The whole thing sounded incredible, but she kept going. After she mentioned finding the hair at the hotel de ville—she enclosed the strands—and wrote, 'I'm very much concerned that an autopsy was not done, or perhaps just a cursory examination made. Even if they did do one and found water in her lungs, she could have been drugged before being pushed down the tunnel—to make it look like drowning.' She was on her third sheet of paper.

What else? Her suspicion that the man playing the clochard was a relative of the d'Ambert's? No, best keep to the two main points and she'd tell him more when they could speak in person—not an unpleasant prospect. She gave him the name of the hotel where they would be staying in Carcassonne—the Hotel du Donjon, which the guidebook had praised for cassoulet and comfort, despite the suggestions to the contrary implied by the name—and signed the letter 'Sincerely, Faith.' The standard French closure for friends, embrassons, seemed a bit too—well, what? Intimate? Maybe honest? She smiled at herself, sealed the envelope, and put it in her purse.

Tumbling into bed, she drifted off to sleep with images of Carcassonne drifting through her mind: bright pennons flapping in the breeze, the sound of trumpets, rough cobblestones, and high fortress walls overlooking the plain where the enemy was fleeing in disarray.

At eight o'clock sharp, Faith was leaning back in a chair, luxuriating in the sensation of the warm spray of water on her hair as Giovanni rinsed out the shampoo he had vigorously massaged into her scalp. He squirted some conditioner on and it felt cold, then more of those magic fingers and her hair was rinsed again. He put a towel around her head and motioned her to another chair. It wasn't a particularly elegant shop, and Giovanni and his receptionist seemed to be the only people working today, but it did sport an espresso machine. She sipped some as he combed her wet hair and stared at her in the mirror with intense concentration. She set the cup down and he went to work. More hair than she thought she had on her head fell to the floor as he snipped away. She had a moment of panic, then remembered how Solange looked—and also that hair grew back, eventually. So far, Giovanni had not said a single word to her after asking whether she wanted coffee. Now, he stood back, apparently satisfied with his labors, and reached for the blow-dryer. She followed his every move in the mirror so she could try to duplicate the style later. There was no question. It looked great. She thanked Giovanni profusely and went to the door.

“Madame Fairsheeld?' It was the receptionist, whose black dress had a high neck but barely covered her thighs. She wore a long strand of oversized pearls and had neatly coiffed bright orange hah- with one white streak down the side. There was something feline about the whole effect.

“Yes?' Faith replied.

“Your husband has called with a message. He is going to get gas and will pick you up in front of the art museum at Place des Terreaux, since it is so hard to park here.”

Faith thanked her. That made sense. They should have arranged it in the beginning. She hoped Ben was cooperating; the prospect of a long car trip in his beloved Deux Chevaux probably had him hastening Tom along. Normally, getting the three-year-old to dress himself was prac- tice for sainthood. He'd get one sock on, then sit and hold the other, gazing at something, anything, nothing in total concentration. 'Your sock, Ben,' she'd remind him gently, or not so gently if they were in a hurry. He'd look at the odd bit of clothing in his hand as if seeing it for the first time. 'Sock?' It was Tom's turn today, Faith thought happily as she left the salon.

Out on the sidewalk, she walked quickly toward the museum, aware that the sun was shining down on her own shiny coif. She passed a window and admired the way her hair moved when she tipped her head. Ah, vanity, vanity, thy name is ... She hoped Tom liked it. Husbands tended not to like any changes in their wives' appearance. 'But I liked you the way you were!' In addition, Tom fell under the Rapunzel rubric and would have Faith's tresses falling in golden waves to the floor if it were left to him.

She crossed the street and walked down rue Terme, past a toy store whose windows never failed to fascinate both mother and child on their way home from school. There was a new display of small, brightly painted knights in armor. Ben would love it—a large castle with some knights manning the towers and others on horseback in front of the drawbridge. It seemed appropriate and auspicious. She could hardly wait to get to Carcassonne.

A car pulled over to the curb, someone wanting directions. It had happened before. It was easy to get lost in Lyon. Faith walked over, starting to tell them apologetically that boy, did they have the wrong person, when the back door opened, a man in a ski mask jumped out, grabbed her, and pulled her into the car.

She wasn't the wrong person at all.

After a second of shocked disbelief, Faith started to struggle. The car was speeding up toward the Croix Rousse and her assailant had a firm grasp on her wrist. She started to scream and banged on the window with her fist, hoping to attract attention. The driver hadn't turned around. As the car slowed slightly for an intersection, she dove down and bit her captor on the wrist with all the force she had. He cried out and instinctively pulled his hand away. She already had her other hand on the door handle; the moment she was free, she pushed it open and ran