Shallow Be Thy Grave (30 page)

Lily opened her mouth but Sian didn’t let her speak. Words rushed out of her. “I know because he want to leave me. He tell me yesterday. He was waiting for me here when I got back. Already his things were packed.”

“He’s trying to throw you off the scent, cover his tracks.”

“He is left the home, he has gone to be with her.”

“I thought you said you’d resolved your differences?”

“We have. Our differences are that he is complete prick and I deserve more than this.”

“So what’s with the champagne? You’re telling me you were celebrating your divorce?”

“Not with Philippe.”

Lily pulled a face. Was she imagining it, or was Sian blushing? She studied the French woman more carefully. She looked fifteen years younger than she did yesterday, out of the uniform of her suit and harsh hairstyle.

“Nell was here. We had a bottle of wine and then decided we should celebrate a little.” Sian, sensing the crisis had passed, took a dustpan and brush from a cupboard and began sweeping the shards of broken glass. “Philippe had left. Of course at first, it was a huge shock. But then, for a long time we haven’t wanted the same things. We think we are ok, happy together, but really we are not together. We are sharing a house and sharing some children, but we are not really together.

“He’s bluffing-”

Sian shook her head. “He will be devastated when he hears.”

“Where is he now?”

“He has gone to stay in the apartment. He says he will wait until Fiona comes back to him.” Lily could see tears filling Sian’s eyes. “I almost feel sorry for him. The stupid fool.”

The doorman stood up from behind his desk as soon as he spotted Lily cannoning through the revolving doors. His face showed his displeasure at seeing her again. She didn’t let him speak. “Ou est Alain?”

“Alain?”

“Oui. Alain.”

The doorman glanced around the hallway, like he was weighing up the options. Lily counted to three in her head and then opened her mouth. She shouted at the top of her lungs, “Alain?” so loud her throat screamed with pain. The doorman leapt around the desk, very sprightly for a man of his age. He put his hands on her shoulders. “Ok Ok. Ssh please. I call him.”

Alain appeared a minute later, and his face lit up in a grin when he saw her walk in to the foyer. Even in the state she was in, she couldn’t fail to be taken aback by how gorgeous he was. His T-shirt was so thin she could see the outline of his chest muscles through the material. “Hey, Lily. I have been missing you too.”

She pulled him out of earshot of the doorman, into the emergency stairwell where he’d first given her his phone number. He clearly thought his luck was in, tried to pull her into his body for a kiss. She pushed him away. “I need to go to the apartment. 411.”

“Monsieur Chicot?”

“Have you seen him?”

He nodded. “He went to get a newspaper. I think he is upstairs.”

“I need to speak to him.”

“You are sad?” He brushed a dreadlock from her face, his dark eyebrows crumpled in concern.

She bit down on her lip, tried to stop the tears that threatened to spill. “My sister is dead.”

He asked no questions, for which she felt she might love him forever. He just took her hand and pulled up her up the stairs.

“I will come with you,” he said.

There was no answer when she knocked on the door. Alain tried the door handle. “Monsieur Chicot?” He spoke in a stream of French that Lily didn’t understand. She heard a man’s voice shout back from behind the locked door.

“What did he say?”

Alain turned to Lily. “He said ‘go away.’”

“I’ve got to see him.” She fixed her gaze on Alain. “Please?”

Lily saw the muscles in his forearms flex as he banged on the door again, his fist clenched. He shouted again.

“What did you say?” asked Lily.

“I tell him I have to let myself in, if he does not open the door. Gas leak.”

Another door down the hallway opened and a man’s face peered out. He spoke to Alain. Lily guessed he wanted to know more about the gas leak. Alain took a couple of steps down the corridor to speak to him, gesturing for him to go back to his room. When Alain returned, he took a bunch of keys from his belt, selected one and opened the door to Room 411.

Beaumont’s door swung back and Lily stepped into the room. The light came from a small lamp on the cabinet, as the curtains were still closed. Newspapers were spread across the bed and the room was filled with the fog of cigarette smoke. Lily tripped over an empty bottle of whisky, which was lying on its side on the floor. Alain crossed the room towards the bathroom, when Lily noticed the curtains were swaying in the breeze. Alain stopped in his tracks, as he saw what Lily was staring at. She pulled back one of the thin drapes. Monsieur Beaumont stood on the window ledge, on the other side of the glass. He was dressed in a pair of beige shorts and a T-shirt. His feet were bare. “Don’t come any closer. I’ll jump.”

Lily was aware out of the corner of her eye, of Alain turning, quickly and silently and moving out of the room. Lily sat down on the edge of the bed. “Relax.” She took out her packet of Marlboros. “I’m not going to do anything. Mind if smoke?”

“She’s dead.”

Lily bit down on her lip again until the pain burst through the clouds in her mind. “How do you know?”

“The news this morning, they say they find a body. A young woman. Straight away I know. It is more than one week since she speak to me. I knew she would never last this long, with the anger.”

Lily lit a cigarette and tried not to freak out at how much her hands were shaking.

“I ring the police station. I know many of the peoples there. They say they cannot tell me anything, but I ask whether it is confirmed that she is English girl. They ask me to come in to the station. Then I know.”

“Why didn’t you go? Make sure?”

“I can’t bear the truth.”

“Did you kill her?”

“Non!” He shifted his position so that he was crouched, squatting on his haunches. He turned to face into the room, and for an awful second Lily thought he’d lost his balance and was going to tumble off the ledge backwards. He held onto the window-sill. “Of course not. I love her, Lily. This you must believe. Last night I tell my wife, I cannot be married to her any more.”

“Then what’s with the window ledge? Why not go to the police station? Tell them what you know. We need to find who did this to her.”

“It doesn’t matter who did this to her. It is my fault. I take the responsibility. If I had had the courage, she wouldn’t have moved to the 9
th
. It is because she moved to the 9
th
, because she cannot live with me and pretend not to love me, it is because of this that she is dead.”

Lily turned so that she was lying on her stomach on the bed. “Do you want a cigarette?” she asked, holding out the packet.

“I smoked two packets this morning.”

“One more won’t do you any harm,” she said, but he didn’t appear to hear her. He was lost in his own thoughts. He turned back to face the outside world and Lily had to lean forward to catch what he was saying.

“Brigitte, she mix with the underground, the people who take drugs and steal. I know these people. I see them every day with my work. One of these peoples has done this to my baby. Putting them in prison won’t make any difference. Fi will still be dead.”

“Standing on the window ledge isn’t going to help anyone.”

 “My wife hates me. My children will learn to hate me. Fiona is dead. What reason is there to live?”

Lily noticed Alain had reappeared at the doorway. He was out of breath. He leant his arm on the doorframe, but didn’t cross the threshold. She turned her head slightly to look at him. “The police are coming,” he mouthed.

Lily turned back to Monsieur Beaumont. She couldn’t see his face any more. He’d adjusted his position so that all she could see was his left shoulder. She edged a little nearer across the bed. Still smoking. “We’ve got to catch the person who did it,” said Lily. “We have to stand up for her, now she can’t stand up for herself.”

“What good will that do anyone?”

“You’re a lawyer. You might be able to help.”

“I see the people we send to prison. They are poor, uneducated, abused. We send one to prison they are another twenty out there to take their place. I do this every day. This will not help me.”

Lily heard police sirens in the distance. “Have another cigarette. Come on, one last smoke.”

She offered the packet, arm outstretched. She was still five feet away from the window.

“Light one and throw it to me. It doesn’t matter about the table.”

Lily did as he’d asked. He came back into view and carefully crouched down to retrieve the smouldering cigarette from the wooden desk. He sat down on the window ledge, leaning his head back against the wall. He smoked quietly for a few minutes. “There is something you don’t know,” he said eventually. “They will find it out at the autopsy. Fiona is, was, pregnant.”

“Pregnant?” Lily tried to control her voice, not let her shock show.

He inhaled on the cigarette, let the smoke out in a series of rings. “She told me on Thursday.”

“What did she say? I mean, was she…?” Lily didn’t know what the question she was trying to ask was. How would Fiona have felt about being pregnant? She had no idea.

“We had arranged to meet, to say goodbye. She was going travelling for the summer.  She all the time feel bad because of my wife, the children. She think if she go away we can forget about each other. But that day, she take the test.”

Lily sank her head into her hands. “God, poor Fi.”

“She wanted me to tell her not to go.”

Lily wanted to curl into a ball and weep for all of them. For her sister, her unborn baby, herself. A generation of girls let down by the men they loved. The sirens grew louder, piercing the silence.

When she looked up Beaumont was staring at her again. She noticed a tear running down his cheek. “I panicked. I didn’t know what to say. I worried about my wife, what she would do, about my children.”

“The money you gave me,” said Lily. “The money for Fiona. It was for an abortion.” There was no anger, no recrimination in her voice. Just a quiet statement of fact.

Beaumont nodded.

Lily understood Fiona’s last phone call, the fear in her voice and the tears. Lily screwed up her face against the thought of her sister’s lonely last hours. Pregnant, unemployed, abandoned by her lover and her best friend.

“It is only since she disappeared, that I realise I cannot live without her.”

“How pregnant?”

“She only just find out.”

Whenever Lily pictured Fiona, she pictured her in school uniform, how she was dressed when they first met. It didn’t seem that long ago. To Lily Fiona was still a child. Lily was still trying to get her head around the fact that that schoolgirl in her mind was now pregnant when Monsieur Beaumont vaulted from the ledge and disappeared in the direction of the police sirens below.

Someone screamed, and by a process of elimination - she was the only one left in the room - Lily realised it must have been her. Alain rushed in and held her tight, squashed her face against his hard chest. “It is not your fault.” He said it over and over and Lily began to wonder whether he was trying to convince her or himself.

The police arrived a few minutes later. One of them crossed the room and peered out of the window that Monsieur Beaumont had leapt from. The other, a policewoman in a pale blue shirt, spoke in rapid French to Alain. Alain kept his arm around Lily’s shoulder the whole time he was speaking to the officer. He turned to Lily. “They want to know, did he tell you he killed your sister?”

Lily shook her head. “He felt responsible but he didn’t kill her.”

Time kept morphing. Yvette arrived what seemed like seconds, but was actually half an hour, later and told Lily she’d drive her to the police station. Lily didn’t even notice the policeman open the rear passenger door for her, she just climbed into the front seat, nearly getting in the driver’s seat, before she realised it was on the other side. Yvette waved the police officer away and got in to the driver’s seat next to Lily. Lily rode in stunned silence, aware that Yvette kept glancing at her as she negotiated the traffic around the Champs Elysee. Even though it was Sunday, the lanes were still packed with cars. “You think it was him?”

“No,” said Lily. “I think he loved her.”

“Men often love the women they kill.”

“He wanted to confess, to be forgiven. She was pregnant.”

“I was going to tell you. We found out this morning. He was the father?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

Lily stared out of the window.

“I’ll be in on the interview. My boss is coming in too. He agrees it makes sense for me to be there. I can translate for you.”

Lily had left Alain at St Paul’s Apartments. She’d given him the name of the hotel where she’d left Stuart and Jo and he had promised to find them and let them know what had happened. When they got to the police station, Yvette led her into a small interview room that contained a table, a tape recorder, four straight-backed chairs and nothing else. Yvette bought her a black coffee and an ashtray.

They sat together in the room for half an hour before Yvette’s boss arrived. Yvette kept apologising for the delay, but Lily didn’t mind. It gave her time to get her thoughts together. “He doesn’t usually work on Sundays,” said Yvette. “He is probably away with his family. They don’t see much of him during the week.”

When he finally did arrive, Yvette made the introductions. “This is Commissaire Charbonneau.”

He was a tall man, approaching fifty, Lily guessed, with a very unflattering moustache. Not that, in Lily’s opinion, a moustache could ever be flattering. He spoke every sentence like it was a statement of fact and then Yvette would say it in English and it came out as a question.

Lily drank a second cup of coffee and answered where she could. She told them about the phone call from Fiona on the Thursday night.  She told them Fiona had been intending to go travelling with a flatmate, on the Saturday. She told them she’d been in Paris for the past five days trying to find her, and that she’d discovered her younger sister had been having an affair with Monsieur Beaumont. She told them what Beaumont had told her, just before he’d died. That Fiona had told him she was pregnant, on that fateful Thursday, that he hadn’t reacted the way she wanted him to react, and that he’d killed himself because he didn’t think he’d be able to live without her.