Read Online Come, Barbarians by Todd Babiak - Free Book Online Page B

our continental breakfast and, if you like, for a picnic lunch. I can learn a lot from a person by watching them eat. Your wife ate some fruit and cheese for dinner, when she arrived. I offered her a glass ofwine. She said no. Normally, when a foreigner arrives in Paris—especially a woman—she is filled with delight. Madame was …”
    “What?”
    “Haunted. And this name, Evelyn, she did not use it. She called herself Agnes. It was the journalist and the police who used the name Evelyn. She registered as Agnes May, and since I had only taken her credit card number to hold the room …”
    “Her mother’s name.”
    “There you go, Monsieur. We long to be our fathers and they long to be their mothers.”
    Two guests, a retired couple, arrived at the bottom of the stairs and walked hand in hand through the lobby. Kruse could tell, before they spoke, they were not French. “Hello,” they said, in American English, as they passed. They left the key with Monsieur Balon and he thanked them, also in English. When they were gone, Kruse continued.
    “This kindly man who came to see her, did he represent anyone or anything?”
    “He wore a well-cut suit. I remember thinking, as he walked in, he is much too wealthy to stay here. Not just the suit. He was a Four Seasons man. It was the way he walked and smelled, his tie, certainly the way he spoke. His accent was … do you know of the
grandes écoles
?”
    “Yes.”
    “Like that.”
    “An aristocrat.”
    “Yes, Monsieur. Like that. An air of noblesse oblige. Perhaps that is why I had assumed he was seeking her to offer help.”
    “What did he want?”
    “Like you: to see her. He asked several questions. Since he was not, like you, an immediate family member, I told him nothing.”
    “Can I see her room?”
    “The room where she stayed? It has long been cleaned since then, Monsieur, and another guest is in there.”
    “Did she say where she was going?”
    “She wasn’t a talkative woman.” Monsieur Balon arranged some papers on his desk. “Perhaps I should be phoning the police instead of checking you in. They did say others would come looking for her.”
    “And what did you tell them? These police?”
    “Monsieur, please.”
    Kruse pulled out his collection of photos: the passport shots of Evelyn and Lily and another of the three of them at Niagara Falls.
    “I was there once,” said Monsieur Balon. “I took a ride in the boat, to get close to the falls. There was a wax museum as well. Tasteless, no?”
    “Is there anything more you can tell me?”
    “No.”
    “Was the aristocrat alone?”
    “All right, this is peculiar. A second man stood outside, smoking, Monsieur Kruse. I might not have noticed him at all but he had no nose.”
    “No …”
    “No nose, no nose. You see a lot of people with quirks, as an hotelier. This was the first time I had seen a man with no nose.”
    “Young man? Old man?”
    “I will call the police. Together you can sort this out.”
    “Please, Monsieur Balon.”
    “Thirties, maybe early forties. Your age. Both men were trim, like you. You look like a small team of football players, you three together.”
    “No nose. And what did the aristocrat ask you, specifically?”
    “When did she arrive and how long did she stay? Did anyone visit her? Did she make any calls?”
    “And you didn’t answer.”
    “No. Well, yes. I told the gentleman ‘I don’t know’ to all of them, to finish the conversation. He was charming but persistent.”
    Kruse used the lobby telephone to call the journalist. She was out for lunch. The metro was not an option, with the strike, so Kruse asked if Monsieur Balon might call him a taxi.
    “Taxi drivers are not on strike but I grant you they are difficult to find.” He tried to phone and shrugged. “You see? Nothing. A catastrophe. But please, take one of the hotel umbrellas. They’re much stronger in the wind.”
    The newspaper headquarters was a sloping rectangle of glass tucked between