THE POLICE CAME EARLY THE NEXT MORNING.
I had expected them to, of course, knew that the time between when they would knock on my door and when I would be left in peace—in quiet, in that in-between state where I could still pretend that something horrible hadn’t happened, that it was all just a dream—was inching closer and closer.
John was dead. They had told me the day before—Maude and Lucy—though it had still failed to become real, to work itself into my mind as the truth, something concrete and unwavering that could not be challenged, changed, or altered. I had lain in bed, Maude tucking me in as though I were a child, an invalid, a problem she could never quite manage to shake, and I felt the word reverberating in my mind. Dead. It was all too familiar, and yet somehow foreign. It couldn’t be true, I wanted to tell my aunt, feeling her tug and pull at the sheets. John couldn’t be gone, couldn’t be dead. He was the one, I wanted to explain to her, the one who was supposed to pull me up and out of the depression, out of the darkness that had swirled around me ever since that bitter cold night in Vermont. Since before that, even. He couldn’t be gone, couldn’t be dead.
My mind simply would not accept it. Not even later, when they showed me his body under the harsh, glaring lights of the coroner’s office, the color draining from my face as I stepped backward, staggering, conscious all the while of Aunt Maude beside me, of the officers’ eyes evaluating my every movement, every intake of breath. I felt them—all of them—waiting, watching, for the tears, for the hysterics. For a performance that I did not seem to have the energy to enact.
I turned away, setting my face to stone.
“Madame?”
I looked up at the two officers, their faces hesitant, uncertain—as if they were afraid, I thought. I wanted to laugh then, for what on earth had they to fear from me? I wanted to know. I was moved to ask them—but then the weight of the moment, the emotions that I was supposed to be feeling, that they were expecting me to display, became all too much. I nodded at the men—a clipped little gesture, something like a bow—and started to back away, heading toward the door. It was the same feeling I had experienced at Café Hafa, at countless other moments in my life, when the panic had started rising in me, the feeling of being trapped threatening to overtake me so that I needed nothing so much in that moment as to be able to leave the space I was confined within. Despite this, I paused, looking to my left, to my right, convinced that there was something missing, something I was forgetting.
It was Lucy, I suddenly realized.
I had been looking for Lucy.
This time, I did laugh.
“Madame.” I heard the officer speak again, could feel Aunt Maude’s sharp eyes on me, but still, I could not respond, could not do anything but turn and walk away, out of the coroner’s office, out into the hallway filled with doors, though none of them seemed to hold the exit I was searching for. I pushed up against one, and then another, each of them refusing to yield. There was no way out—I was trapped, stuck in this labyrinthine hall.
A figure emerged in front of me. “Madame McAllister?”
No one had ever called me by my husband’s name. I thought about the absurdity of it: hearing it for the first time while standing only steps away from his corpse. “Shipley,” I whispered, my voice trembling. “My surname is Shipley.”
The man frowned. “All right, Madame Shipley.” He paused, indicating the door next to him. “Follow me, please.”
The man standing in front of me was not particularly large, his eyes reaching just a fraction above my own, and yet there was something about him, something that made me pause, something that made my heart begin to pound in fear. He was quite obviously of a higher rank than the two previous officers that I had spoken with, and I wondered what he wanted. I looked at the door that he had pointed toward, filled with panic at the thought of what might be hidden just behind it. There was too, somewhere at the back of my mind, the vague realization that I should ask exactly who he was and what he wanted, but the only question I could manage was, “Where are we going?”
“To my office,” he answered simply, offering no more explanation than that.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to find Aunt Maude, a light sheen of sweat breaking just above her lip. “You heard the man, Alice,” she said, her voice terse. “Let’s go inside.”
The man frowned, disappointed, it seemed, that she would be accompanying us.
His office was sparse, little else dotting the walls besides the thin layer of yellow paint that seemed to be peeling, flaking in the corners. I settled into one of two chairs placed in front of his desk, Aunt Maude taking the other.
Once we were seated, the officer lowered himself into his own chair behind the desk and leaned forward. “Madame Shipley,” he began. “Do you know of any reason why a man by the name of Youssef might have been in possession of your husband’s articles?”
I shook my head, surprised by the question, for whatever it was that I had been expecting, it was not this. But then something poked, needled, and I remembered what Lucy had said the other night to the policeman, about Youssef.
“No,” I whispered, my voice low and hoarse. “I have no idea.”
He frowned, watching me. “Are you quite all right, madame?”
I considered telling him then. About Lucy, about how she had deliberately mentioned Youssef to the policeman, how she had, more than likely, been responsible for whatever it was that they were talking about. I considered telling him this and everything else that had happened—but then I noticed the way that he was looking at me, his features sharp and narrow, and the words died on my lips.
“Could I have a glass of water, please?” I asked instead.
He looked irritated at this request but nonetheless signaled to one of his officers standing just outside the door. A few moments of silence passed until at last a glass of tepid water was placed in front of me.
“Thank you,” I murmured. I placed the glass back onto his desk, watching as a small puddle formed, the ring that encircled it eventually sinking into the wood beneath. I could feel Aunt Maude’s eyes on me, but I could not bring myself to return her gaze. Not just yet.
“I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?” I asked the man, stalling.
He sat back in his chair and sighed. “My apologies, madame. I am Officer Ayoub,” he said. “Now, I understand you knew the man.”
I frowned, placing a hand to my temple, wondering if anyone else had noticed just how stuffy and confined the office was. “Who?” I asked, not knowing, in that moment, who he was referring to.
“Youssef,” he responded, his voice curt, the word overenunciated. “Or perhaps you knew him as Joseph. He is the man responsible for your husband’s death, madame.”
“No,” I responded, shaking my head at the impossibility of the idea. No, they had got it all wrong. I could feel Aunt Maude stir beside me.
“No?” Ayoub raised his eyebrows. “Do you mean that you do not know him, or that he is not the one responsible?”
“No, I don’t know him,” I said, wanting, and failing, to say the other as well.
“That is not what my men reported to me.” Ayoub’s eyes narrowed. “They say that you were well acquainted.”
“No, that isn’t true,” I protested, worried that it had already progressed to this—from knowing him to well acquainted. There was a difference, I was well aware. “I knew of him, but not him personally. John—” I stopped, my voice halting for a moment, stumbling over his name. “He warned me about him.”
“Warned you—why?” Ayoub asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. To watch out for him, I suppose. To be careful if I ever ran into him, while I was on my own.”