“What secret, Dr. Brockton?”
I shook my head. “I wish I knew. I just got the feeling that this place was more than an old building to Stefan.” I picked at my memories and intuitions a bit deeper. “There was something about the way he was behaving,” I finally managed. “When we first got here, it was almost like he was checking the place out—he looked up and down the street very carefully before he led me through the passageway, and he checked the courtyard before we went inside the chapel.” And then, when we left, he sent me away, but he stayed behind. It was almost like he was eager to get rid of me.” A realization finally crystallized. “Almost like he was expecting someone else to show up very soon.”
He leaned forward, his gaze intensifying. “Any idea who he was expecting?”
“None. Sorry. I wish I did.”
He leaned back, obviously disappointed, and studied his notes. Then he rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath, followed by another. “Inspector? Are you okay?”
He gave his head a shake, blinked hard, and raised his bushy eyebrows high, as if to open his eyes as wide as possible. “I’m just a little tired,” he said. “I put in some long hours on a case recently. An art forger who committed suicide.” He suppressed a yawn. “Tell me about Mademoiselle Lovelady.”
The request caught me by surprise. “Miranda? She’s great. Smart as hell. Hardworking. Strong-minded. Funny. Spunky.”
“Spunky? What is spunky?”
“It’s slang. It means feisty. Brave. Tough.”
“Ah. In French, we say plein de cran. ‘Full of guts.’”
“Oh, yes, gutsy. Miranda is very gutsy.”
“Do you trust her, this gutsy assistant?”
“Miranda? Completely. I’d trust her with my life.”
Descartes flipped back through his notes, twirling his pen between his fingers. He had just looked up to ask another question when his cell phone rang. Excusing himself, he stood up and walked toward the mouth of the passageway to take the call. He was gone for several minutes. When he returned, he sat, looked me square in the eyes, and said, “Your assistant—what was her relationship with Monsieur Beauvoir?”
The question caught me off guard, and Descartes would have to have been blind not to notice. “Fine, I think. He asked her to come help with this excavation, so he clearly thought well of her. She came, so I assume she thought well of him, too.”
“Do you know why they thought so well of one another? And for how long a time?” Crap, I thought, not this.
“I think they met six or eight years ago. When she was an undergraduate student. Miranda was on a dig in Guatemala that Stefan organized.”
He chewed absentmindedly on the end of a fingernail, still eyeing me closely. “Did you know that they were lovers?”
There, the shoe had dropped; I had known that question was coming. “It wasn’t any of my business if they had a personal relationship.”
He shrugged. “But did you know?”
“Yes. She told me shortly after I got here. She felt awkward about it.”
“Awkward about telling you? Or awkward about being lovers with him?”
“Both, I guess. But it was very brief, and it happened a long time ago, Inspector. I think lovers is too strong a word. It was a quick fling at a field school. It happens all the time.”
“All the time?” He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head slightly.
I flushed at the innuendo. “Not all the time, but it happens. It doesn’t necessarily mean very much. I thought the French were very tolerant about casual love affairs.”
“Sometimes. Not when one of the lovers ends up crucified. Tell me, was she angry with Monsieur Beauvoir? Resentful?”
“Resentful? About what?”
“About anything. About what happened in Guatemala. About what happened—or what didn’t happen—in Avignon.” Good God, did he actually think Miranda might have nailed Stefan to that beam?
“Look, Inspector, Miranda and I have worked together for six years. I never heard her mention this guy until she told me she was coming here. If she were burning with rage for years—or longing for love—I think I’d have heard about it.”
He shrugged again, and I found the gesture annoying; it might simply mean “Who knows?” but it might also mean “What the hell do you know?” “Do you know where Mademoiselle Lovelady was last night?”
I returned the shrug. “I assume she was in her hotel room.”
“And do you know where Monsieur Beauvoir was last night?”
I flung up my hands in exasperation. “Well, if I were guessing,” I said sarcastically, “which is all I can do, I’d guess that for the first part of the night, he was in his apartment, and for the rest of the night, he was here in the chapel dying.”