“You want the truth?”
“Of course I want the truth. I always only want the truth.” For a moment I feared that I’d angered him, but he didn’t look mad; only intense. “Come.” He stood abruptly, beckoning to me to follow him. He led me into the chapel, where the forensic technicians seemed to be looking for the controls of the electrical winch that had hoisted Stefan into the air. Descartes studied the suspended body; then his gaze shifted to the fresco on the wall behind it, the wall above the altar. The painting showed a rosy-cheeked cherub hovering in the sky, beaming, as if delighted by the body hanging a few feet away. The detective shook his head slightly. “I don’t believe in angels or miracles or Holy Sponges, Docteur. But I do believe in the truth. La vérité.” A weary look clouded his eyes, and I wondered if he was thinking about the dead art-forger again. “I just have difficulty to find it sometimes.”
“How would you say it, Inspector—‘Cherchez la vérité’?”
He smiled slightly. “Oui. Exactement. So yes, please, tell me the truth about why Monsieur Beauvoir was so secretive.”
“This is just my opinion,” I stressed, “but I think Stefan wanted to keep it a secret because he was afraid someone else would take credit for the find; someone else would get the glory—some bureaucrat at the palace or the Ministry of Culture or wherever. I think he wanted all the glory for himself. Stefan wanted to be the one in the spotlight.”
I heard the whine of an electric motor. Overhead, the beam twitched and Stefan’s body jerked as the cable spool began to turn. As the wire unwound, the beam descended, slowly spinning in the glare of the theater lights.
Stefan had gotten his wish. He had taken center stage, and he was in the spotlight.
CHAPTER 22
MIRANDA WAS QUIET ON THE WALK BACK TO HER hotel, which was fine by me.
She looked tired and sad. I felt tired and sad, too; also confused and unsettled. I was shocked and puzzled by Stefan’s murder, but I wasn’t traumatized by it; he was a colleague, true, but I’d barely known him, so finding his body had been almost like stumbling upon a murdered stranger. No, my confusion and distress had more to do with Miranda. Was there something going on between her and Stefan after all? Had she lied to me about that? If she had, what else had she lied to me about? And was Descartes right—had his murder, and our involvement, made Miranda’s private life my business?
Perhaps it had, I concluded reluctantly. I was wrestling with what to say when I looked up and noticed where we were. Ambling on automatic pilot, we’d reached the Palace of the Popes. Miranda stared bleakly at the stone fa?ade; silent tears sprang from her eyes and rolled down her face. “God, I hate this place,” she whispered fiercely, not so much to me as to herself, or perhaps to the palace. “I thought I’d died and gone to heaven, or at least to Disney, when I first saw it. The glory and the glamour, I totally fell for it, you know?” She laughed bitterly. “I was too dazzled to see that Stefan was just playing me. Probably using me to get to you—wanting to add your forensic heft to the project to give it more credibility. It never occurred to me to suspect him of that. I only suspected him of wanting to get into my pants again.”
It was, I supposed after my initial shock, as good an opening as any to the conversation we needed to have. “And did you want him to?”