The Body in the Vestibule

to achieving such a dream to visit the former. Faith was beginning to think she should get the key to the Big Apple for all the public-relations work she was doing. She was about to answer Jean-Francis when Tom beat her to it.

“The place we live, Aleford, is a. petit village near Boston, about four hours' drive from New York City and, oui, my wife does seem to have an interest in crime, in addition to a particular knack for discovering dead bodies.”

Everyone laughed, assuming it was some sort of American joke, a blague, tres drole. Faith did not correct them and shot Tom a look to fermer his bouche. Yes, she had been involved in some investigations—a bit difficult to explain, especially in the midst of a dinner party and in a language for which she had a large vocabulary but unreliable grammatical skills. Jean-Frangois seemed to find the joke particularly funny. Like the rest of his family, he was good-looking, but perhaps on the verge of carrying too much weight.

“Since you are interested in crime, you will enjoy meeting our friend, Inspector Michel Ravier. He will be at the vernissage tomorrow night, unless he is called away. I will introduce you. You can ask him about the break-ins, but'—Valentina Joliet's piercing dark eyes swept the room—'I do not think you have to worry.'

“Could the clochards be responsible?' Faith asked, thinking to steer the conversation away from her own personal history.

There was more laughter. 'A clochard would take the wine and maybe the TV or something like that—if he could figure out how to get into an apartment,' Paul said. 'These men have been drinking so long, their mental state is not very clear. Additionally, in some cases they are schizophrenic or have some other form of mental or physical illness.'

“But you seem to admire them so much. I see well-dressed people sit and talk with this clochard all the time.'

“Of course, we admire them. They are free. We envy them their lack of responsibilities. They never have to stand at the guichet at the post office and arrive at the front of the line, only to be told by the cretin in power to go to another window. Or produce the birth certificate of their grandmother's second cousin once removed in order to get permission to buy a car. They don't mail letters, pay bills. They don't care about birth certificates, or passing the bac, or any other worries.”

It did not make a whole lot of sense to Faith, but she supposed it was all part of the incredibly complex nature of the French, which was even now being vividly illustrated at her dinner table. Envy of the clochards was part and parcel of the same impulses compelling the French to drive like maniacs when set free on the autoroutes. Tom had told her highway deaths were twice the kilometer rate as those in the United States. All that pent-up frustration had to go somewhere.

“I do not admire these clochards,' Madame Vincent said. 'They are filthy and disgusting. They prey on people to get money for drink. You see them sitting so pathetically with little signs, J'ai faim. Bien, just try to give them food instead of money. I offered the one in front of the church a sandwich from the baker one day and he threw it at me! They are sick people, perhaps. I am sure this one is not so old. The drink has aged him, but he has no business on this earth. As far as I'm concerned, Lyon would be a better place if he and his friends were eliminated.”

Faith was a bit surprised at the vehemence of Madame Vincent's remarks.

Jean-Francois agreed. 'I am with you, madame. It does not do to become sentimental about these people. The police should round them up and make them go to the shelters. They cost us precious tax money better spent on things like catching criminals.”

It was yet again time to turn the conversation in another direction and Faith hastily searched her mind for a topic. She needn't have worried. Tom stretched his arms back and said, 'I need a little exercise after all this. Why don't we walk into the next room and have some cognac.' The somewhat askance looks that had greeted the first part of his statement—Americans were known to jog at unseemly hours—gave way to laughter and general movement. There were offers to help Faith clean up—offers from the women, she observed—but she refused, saying she would do it later.

The party drifted into different parts of the apartment Ben was sound asleep in his small room. Amelie d'Ambert, age fourteen, had come to take care of him during the earlier part of the evening and also put him to bed before going back downstairs to her own apartment. She was very shy, very dark, unlike the others in her family, and Faith hoped to enlist her as a baby-sitter for the duration of their visit.

Faith joined the Leblancs, who were gazing at the Eg-lise St. Nizier, which was illuminated at night, the steeples and statuary silhouetted against the dark sky. The bright lights shone only on the front of the church, flattening it in a curious way that suggested one might walk around to the side and see wooden props holding up a stage set, rather than the ancient, massive stones of the church.

“I prefer the Gothic brick steeple,' Paul said, pushing away the strands of light brown hair continually falling across his forehead. He was losing hair from the top of his head and seemed to want to keep whatever was left, however inconvenient. 'The new one is an atrocity. So much damage was done in the nineteenth century by all the Viol-let-le-Duc fanatics seeking to harmonize and restore what was best left alone.'

“Here we go,' Ghislaine said, laughing. 'Paul is a fanatic himself on the subject.”

But Faith was interested, and Paul promised to take the Fairchilds on a tour of his Lyon, 'le vrai Lyon,' he added. She liked both of them so much and understood why Tom had become friends with these newlyweds, and newly parents, years ago. Ghislaine worked at a travel agency on rue de la Republique and seemed happy to take time off to shop or just to meet Faith for a coffee. Faith felt as if she had known her for years.

Clement Veaux came up behind them. 'Everyone has a different Lyon. I will show you mine someday. Not, as you may suspect, the abattoirs, but the gardens and greenhouses in Pare de la Tete d'Or.'

“We took Ben to ride the carousel there last weekend and didn't have time to explore any further. We'd love to go.'

“Bien, it's done. We can go on a Sunday after we close the shop at noon and eat pommes frites and saucisson while we stroll. Benjamin can bring his velo and join all the other children who ride like madmen on the paths—as I did at his age.”

So that's where it starts, Faith reflected. Velos in the park, then Renault 5's on the autoroutes. She looked down into the Place St. Nizier. It was late, but there was still a great deal of activity and noise. Cars were parked everywhere—on the sidewalks, in small streets—in total disregard of regulations and, in fact, they wouldn't be ticketed. It was after six o'clock and anything went. She saw someone enter the building and wondered who it was. It seemed everyone in residence was here. The door was locked after the pharmacy closed each night, so it must be someone who lived here, someone with a key—probably one of the students from the top floor. She saw Marilyn walk by, arm in arm with a young man, her hair iridescent in the orange haze of the sodium vapor streetlight. Something about the way she was looking up at him suggested he wasn't a client, but a boyfriend—or her pimp? Ghislaine had told her the French word was macquereau, mac for short—so much slang seemed to involve food, she'd noticed—the national passion. Ghislaine had also told her the penalties for pimping were extremely severe—lengthy prison terms—whereas, although against the law, prostitutes were viewed as victims and rarely arrested. Faith sighed. Marilyn looked about eighteen. She hoped it was a boyfriend and they were off to the cinema.

She went into the next room. People had brought in the chairs from the dining room. Valentina was sitting on her husband's lap and whatever she was whispering in his ear was evidently promising. His face was raptly expectant and he was stroking her long black hair. It was hard to imagine him at the barricades. Now he looked like a rumpled, slightly balding middle-aged man whose sole concern was whether to take another sip of cognac and possibly impair his projected performance—or not.

Solange d'Ambert had lit another cigarette and was talking to Delphine Veaux about children. The surgeon general or whatever the equivalent was in France had not made much headway in changing the smoking habits of the French, and Faith worried about the effects of secondary smoke on the baby. The baby! She was feeling so well these days and was so busy, she occasionally forgot she was pregnant—sometimes for as long as ten minutes.