The Blue Hour (13 page)

But I raced ahead, throwing open the door when I reached it. When I stepped inside what I saw was . . .

Chaos.

It did look like a crime scene—in which robbery and violence played prominent roles. Clothes strewn everywhere. Every drawer pulled out, contents dumped. Two of his sketchbooks torn apart, the ripped, decimated paper littering the room like deranged confetti. And on the stone wall in front of our bed, a cascade of blood in the process of drying.

Next to the documents and the note I left for Paul was a piece of paper. On which was scrawled—in his characteristic cramped calligraphy—five words:

You're right. I should die
.

“DON'T TOUCH THE
documents,” Picard warned me when I reached for Paul's scrawled note.

“But they belong to me,” I said.

“The police might think otherwise.”

“The police?”

“Your husband was last heard screaming in this room. Then there was silence. Ahmed reported all this to me when I returned to the hotel just ten minutes ago. He said he didn't want to disturb Monsieur Paul, as there had been no further screaming since his initial outburst. I told him to go upstairs and check on him. What Ahmed discovered was that your husband had vanished, but blood was covering the walls. Of course we called the police, as I was initially concerned that it might be your blood. Until I saw the letter you left him. Where were you when all this was going on?”

“I was out hiking along the beach.”

“I see.”

His tone unsettled me. It sounded studiously neutral—as if he was hinting that he didn't believe me.

“I was back here briefly around four thirty and then went out for my usual walk.”

“There's no need to explain this to me. It is the police who will be asking the questions.”

“Questions about what? I should be out looking for my husband.”

“The police should be here shortly. I had them standing by, waiting for your return.”

The cops did arrive two minutes later. A corpulent officer sweating in his blue uniform, and a narrow-shouldered detective in a cheap suit, a white shirt yellowed from overwashing, and a thin paisley tie. He was around forty with a pencil moustache and slicked-back hair. They both saluted me, simultaneously eyeing me with professional interest. Ahmed showed up in the doorway as well. The detective spoke to M. Picard in Arabic. Picard spoke back at an equally high speed. Then the detective questioned Ahmed, who half-gestured toward me several times. Meanwhile the uniformed officer inspected the bed, the documents, and the two scratched notes that we'd left for each other, the disarray of the room, the bloodied stonework. The officer said something to the detective, who came over to inspect the blood, pulling out a small handkerchief to dab at a drop of it, studying it intently. He asked a question of Ahmed, who replied in a torrent of Arabic, again gesturing at me throughout. Then the detective introduced himself to me, in French, as Inspector Moufad.

“When did you last see your husband?” Moufad asked.

“Around twelve fifteen. We'd slept in late. My French teacher, Soraya, woke us up.”

“What's her full name and address?”

Picard supplied these immediately, which the officer dutifully wrote down. Moufad continued. “So you slept late . . . your teacher arrived . . . and then?”

“I had my lesson. Soraya saw my husband leave our room. He was heading off to have lunch and work at Chez Fouad.”

“Your husband was working at the café?”

“He's an artist . . . and a professor at a university back in the States. He was working on a series of line drawings about life in the souk.”

“Where are these drawings?”

I pointed to the cascade of torn paper everywhere, tears coming to my eyes as I took in the debris around me. His exquisite, extraordinary drawings. The best work he'd ever done; the new turning point in his creative career. And now . . . shredded beyond redemption.

“Who tore up these drawings?” Moufad asked.

“I presume it was Paul.”

“Do you have your husband's passport?”

“Of course not.”

“Why do you think he tore up his artwork?”

“You'd have to ask him that.”

“But he's not here, is he,
madame
? M. Picard reports that one of his cleaners heard a commotion in the room around four o'clock. M. Ahmed went upstairs to check—but found the room empty, turned upside down, this fresh blood everywhere.”

He brandished his handkerchief with the still-wet sample blotting into its cotton fibers.

“Was someone here with him?” I asked.

“Was that someone you,
madame
?” Moufad countered.

“I was taking a walk on the beach—as I do almost every afternoon.”

“Did anyone see you take that walk,
madame
?”

“No, I was on my own, as always.”

“So you weren't with somebody then?”

“I just told you I was on my own.”

“How do I have proof of that?”

“What you have proof of is an incident in our room when my husband was here and I was out walking the beach. Look at the state of this place! My husband's been robbed and clearly injured.”

“But where is your husband now if he was so injured?”

“I am desperate to find that out.”

“If it was a robbery, why didn't they take either of your laptops?” Moufad asked, pointing to the pair side by side on the desk. “And there is that very expensive Canon camera by the bed.”

The uniformed cop now picked up a mug on the desk, looked inside, and said something to Moufad. He asked him to bring the object over. Once it was handed to him, he pulled out a small wad of dirhams.

“And a thief would have also definitely taken all this cash that you unwisely left out,” Moufad said.

Picard seemed offended by this remark.

“In the twenty-three years I have run Les Trois Chameaux,” he said, “we have never once had a robbery.”

“There's always a first time,” I said. Picard and Moufad exchanged a fast knowing look with each other.

“Even if your husband had surprised the thieves,” Moufad said, “even if they had slammed his head against the wall, they would have left with the cash and the electronic goods. They would have grabbed what was valuable and in plain sight—as all these items were. So the fact that the computers, the camera, the cash were left behind . . . a little strange for thieves. Then there is the matter of the whereabouts of your husband. Why would thieves smash his head against a wall and then drag him away with them, while leaving all the valuable booty behind? It simply doesn't make sense.”

“But surely someone saw my husband leave the hotel.”

“One of the young cleaners—Mira—heard the commotion in the room,” Picard said. “She came downstairs to the reception and raised the alarm. Ahmed came racing upstairs, found the room in its current state of disorder, and found me. We searched the hotel. No sign of your husband.”

“Might he have headed out while Ahmed was upstairs?”

“That is a possibility,” Moufad said. “Another possibility is that you and your husband had an altercation.”

“We didn't have an altercation.”

“There was an angry exchange of notes, wasn't there? I don't read English—but M. Picard, when he called us, translated them for me.”

Inspector Moufad reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small black vinyl notebook. He thumbed through it until he found the page he wanted.

“One note—I presume it was yours—reads, ‘You have killed everything and I hate you. You don't deserve to live
.'
You did write this, yes?”

I hung my head, then quietly said: “I wrote that.”

“And his reply: ‘You're right. I should die.' If, that is, he actually wrote that.”

“Who else could have done that?” I asked, sounding angry now.

“Someone who might have wanted to harm him.”

“Let me get this straight, Inspector. Are you actually thinking that I had an altercation with my husband that saw me—a woman around half his physical size—slam his head against the wall, smuggle his unconscious body out when nobody was looking, but before doing that, write a note in his handwriting, indicating that he was planning to kill himself?”

The inspector thought this one through for a few moments, then said, “Who's to say that you haven't hidden the body somewhere in the hotel?”

“But I wasn't here.”

“Nobody saw you leave for your alleged beach walk.”

“I did no harm whatsoever to my husband,” I said, the anger again flashing. “After he headed out to Chez Fouad I didn't see him again.”

“But you nonetheless left all these documents behind for him to discover, along with a note wishing him dead. M. Picard translated all the medical transcripts for me. They too make interesting reading. A record of your husband having undergone a vasectomy.”

Silence. I could see the three men quietly relishing my immense discomfort at discovering that they knew everything about this grubby business. I motioned to a chair, indicating that I would like to sit down. Moufad gave me his okay. I positioned myself on the armchair for several moments, trying to figure a way out of this. I decided the only way forward was to tell the truth.

“I am an accountant back in the States. My firm also does my husband's accounts. One of my associates contacted me today with the information you discovered on the bed. Information that my husband, having agreed with me that we would try for a child—and knowing full well that, at the age of forty, time was no longer on my side—went ahead and got himself . . . sterilized. As you can imagine, the discovery of this . . . betrayal . . . well, it was shattering. My husband was out at Chez Fouad when these documents arrived. I printed them up and left them on our bed with an angry note in an attempt to prick his conscience. Then I left for my beach walk—and returned to find all this.”

Silence. A quick glance between the inspector and Picard. The inspector then approached me.

“As sympathetic as I am to what has befallen you,
madame
, you have left out a key part of your story: the fact that, earlier this afternoon, you booked a flight back to the States tomorrow at twelve ten from Casablanca.”

I felt myself tense.

“You work fast,
monsieur
,
” I said.

“My job,” he replied.

“But . . . the decision to fly back tomorrow . . . that was my determination to leave him there and then. I had decided that, in the wake of what I had discovered, it was over.”

“And you left him a note saying he should die for what he did.”

“That was anger,” I explained. “Pure rage. I certainly wouldn't want any harm to come to my husband.”

“Even though there is written evidence that you wanted him dead. Perhaps with good reason—as he did something so cunning, so calculated, so treasonous.”

Moufad had me locked in his line of vision—to the point where I was beginning to feel my hands go clammy and beads of sweat cascading down my face. As far as he was concerned I was the person of interest in this case.

“Monsieur,” I said, trying to calm myself, “why would I leave a note like that if I was planning to do my husband harm? Why would he leave me his reply if he didn't feel horrendous about being caught out in this terrible lie?”

A little shrug from the inspector.

“Perhaps you wrote his note yourself.”

I stood up and walked over to the desk where Paul kept the large black hardcover Moleskine notebook that was his journal—and which I never dared touch, as I do believe that privacy is sacrosanct (especially after experiencing my mother's habit of going through my own journal back when I was in the throes of adolescence). The uniformed officer tried to stop me from collecting it, but the inspector said something that made him back off. I opened the journal and found page after page of Paul's spindly penmanship. Followed by pages of sketches, doodles. And several bulky items in the inside pocket on the back cover. I came over to the bed and placed a page of the handwritten journal next to the note Paul left on the bed. Even if you weren't a trained forensic penmanship specialist, it was blindingly evident that the writing belonged to the same person. The inspector, the uniformed officer, and Picard all took turns staring down at the comparative scrawls. The inspector pursed his lips.

“And who's to say this isn't your journal?” he asked.

I felt myself getting very defiant. I stormed back over to the desk and picked up my own diary, flinging it down on the bed next to the enraged note that had landed me in such deep trouble.

“This is my journal—and, as you will note, the handwriting matches my own.”

Another shrug from the inspector.