curtains together, and hide. And even then, I was anxious, for it did not seem so much like home as it had before. In spite of the photographs of friends on the mantel, my books on the table, it was just a couple of rooms. The night was silent. The children who usually played in the street had gone in for dinner.
For a while, Foxy by my side, I played a slow and sad folk tune on my flute. It was a song about a child romance, but I could not concentrate. The murder intruded into my mind. Was Agatha’s death suicide? I didn’t think so. If it was murder, how had she been killed? It didn’t have to have been in the bathroom. The murderer could have killed her in the little reference room and dragged her there. Either a man or a woman could have done it. Unlike those in the United States, French public bathrooms tend to be unisex. I have often left a toilet stall at a French bathroom to see a man exiting at the same time. As the gentleman is zipping up, he is likely to incline his head in a quick bird-like dip with a “Bonjour, Madame.” The French are too practical to be prudish about such matters.
If there was a murderer, didn’t he or she have to be somewhat thin in order to get out the door of the bathroom and leave the body blocking the door? But no, the body could have been placed so the head was against the door and the body would flex as the murderer opened the door, then fall back to make a barricade. I shuddered, and I couldn’t stop. My hand trembled in Foxy’s fur.
If there was a murderer, that person must have known that nuns mortified themselves by putting needles in their tongues back in the past. And wasn’t it true that the time of death had to have been close to the time when I found the body? Rigor mortis would have set in otherwise, and I would not have been able to close Agatha’s mouth.
If there was a murderer, did that person know something about the diary?
No real conclusions. None possible. Leave it to the police.
Eventually I went to bed, shut off the light, and lay in the dark, Foxy next to me.
The darkness waited outside the windows. Until four in the morning, I heard the church bells tell the hour. Finally, I fell half asleep and had a waking dream in which the archive blew up: the roar; blocks of yellow stone lifting to the skies in a shower of shattered, sharp-edged golden debris, falling up and out in an orgasmic, ear-splitting crescendo; the tiles from the roof clattering to the cobblestones; the archive’s documents flying like leaves, let out to dance in the intense sunlight, people in the plaza racing after them and reaching out and up to catch them. All the records gone to chaos—cartularies falling on nineteenth century diaries, marriage certificates rubbing against death sentences, city plans resting on kings’ letters, contracts of property exchanges tumbling into the shallow gutter. A glorious mix of the sacred and profane, significant and trivial, pompous and humble. The other readers and I played in the papers like kids with autumn leaves while stones crashed around us.
I awoke with a start and a pounding heart. The wind banged the shutters. No bogeyman was there.
Chapter 9
The vision of the exploding archive had not yet ebbed from my mind by the time I arrived there the next morning. With some apprehension, I looked up at the battlements of the Palace, the solid stone archive building next to it, and the statue of Our Lady, erected in 1859 and still there, on top of the cathedral on the other side of the archive building.
The archives opened as usual, though a security guard made us check our personal possessions when we entered. A hole existed where Agatha had been. No big laugh. No teasing. No one sitting at the table in the back of the reading room. The place was unnaturally quiet.
Jack Leach stopped me before I could get to my place. “It makes no sense, given that she was the ultimate Catholic,” he said. Tiny beads of sweat stood on the pale blond
For a while, Foxy by my side, I played a slow and sad folk tune on my flute. It was a song about a child romance, but I could not concentrate. The murder intruded into my mind. Was Agatha’s death suicide? I didn’t think so. If it was murder, how had she been killed? It didn’t have to have been in the bathroom. The murderer could have killed her in the little reference room and dragged her there. Either a man or a woman could have done it. Unlike those in the United States, French public bathrooms tend to be unisex. I have often left a toilet stall at a French bathroom to see a man exiting at the same time. As the gentleman is zipping up, he is likely to incline his head in a quick bird-like dip with a “Bonjour, Madame.” The French are too practical to be prudish about such matters.
If there was a murderer, didn’t he or she have to be somewhat thin in order to get out the door of the bathroom and leave the body blocking the door? But no, the body could have been placed so the head was against the door and the body would flex as the murderer opened the door, then fall back to make a barricade. I shuddered, and I couldn’t stop. My hand trembled in Foxy’s fur.
If there was a murderer, that person must have known that nuns mortified themselves by putting needles in their tongues back in the past. And wasn’t it true that the time of death had to have been close to the time when I found the body? Rigor mortis would have set in otherwise, and I would not have been able to close Agatha’s mouth.
If there was a murderer, did that person know something about the diary?
No real conclusions. None possible. Leave it to the police.
Eventually I went to bed, shut off the light, and lay in the dark, Foxy next to me.
The darkness waited outside the windows. Until four in the morning, I heard the church bells tell the hour. Finally, I fell half asleep and had a waking dream in which the archive blew up: the roar; blocks of yellow stone lifting to the skies in a shower of shattered, sharp-edged golden debris, falling up and out in an orgasmic, ear-splitting crescendo; the tiles from the roof clattering to the cobblestones; the archive’s documents flying like leaves, let out to dance in the intense sunlight, people in the plaza racing after them and reaching out and up to catch them. All the records gone to chaos—cartularies falling on nineteenth century diaries, marriage certificates rubbing against death sentences, city plans resting on kings’ letters, contracts of property exchanges tumbling into the shallow gutter. A glorious mix of the sacred and profane, significant and trivial, pompous and humble. The other readers and I played in the papers like kids with autumn leaves while stones crashed around us.
I awoke with a start and a pounding heart. The wind banged the shutters. No bogeyman was there.
Chapter 9
The vision of the exploding archive had not yet ebbed from my mind by the time I arrived there the next morning. With some apprehension, I looked up at the battlements of the Palace, the solid stone archive building next to it, and the statue of Our Lady, erected in 1859 and still there, on top of the cathedral on the other side of the archive building.
The archives opened as usual, though a security guard made us check our personal possessions when we entered. A hole existed where Agatha had been. No big laugh. No teasing. No one sitting at the table in the back of the reading room. The place was unnaturally quiet.
Jack Leach stopped me before I could get to my place. “It makes no sense, given that she was the ultimate Catholic,” he said. Tiny beads of sweat stood on the pale blond
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