The Picture of Guilt Page 7

  George asked, "Who can confirm your story?"

  "It's not a story, it's what happened," he burst out. "Cindy can. She'll certainly remember giving me the note. She even made a joke about playing postman."

  "Yes, but what about the time you spent in front of the bookstore," George continued. "Did you see anybody you know?"

  David's face turned red. "That is such a dumb question, George. How many times do you run into somebody you know on the street? Once a month? And I've only been in this town since September. No, I didn't see anybody I knew."

  "Hey, take it easy," Nancy told him. "We're not out to get you. We simply want to find out what happened."

  "I'm sorry," David mumbled. "But I've had this thing hanging over me ever since Pam told me about Jules. It's a relief to tell you about it, even if you don't believe me. Er—does Professor Mathieson have to hear about this?"

  "We can't promise to keep it secret," Nancy replied. "But we're not into gossip."

  "I guess that's all I can hope for," he said gloomily. "Why did this happen to me?"

  "What happened to you isn't as bad as what happened to Jules," George reminded him.

  David was struck silent before he turned away. "You'd better go now," he said. "There's nothing else I can tell you, and I've got a lot of work to finish." He went back inside.

  Nancy caught George's eye and nodded toward the stairs. "Let's take a look at the checkbook later," she whispered to George. "Right now I want to talk."

  Back in their apartment, George led the way to the living room and sank onto the sofa. "What do you make of David's story?" she asked.

  Nancy fiddled with the flowers on the mantel while she sorted out her thoughts. "I don't believe for a moment that Jules called up and left that message for David. Why would he do that, at a time when he was rushing to his meeting with Professor Mathieson? He and David werea't even friends. Just the opposite if anything. And remember, when we saw Jules, just before the accident, he was headed in this direction. The avenue de Ledru Rollin is in the opposite direction. So Jules was not on his way to a rendezvous with David."

  "Then you think David made up the whole thing?" George pursued.

  "Not necessarily," Nancy said. She crossed to the window and peered out- The sky overhead was still blue, but to the east was a bank of dark gray clouds.

  "There must have been a note, for one thing," she continued. "David wouldn't have dared invent that. We'd learn he was lying the minute we asked this giri, Cindy, about it."

  "But he could have written the note himself, then left it by the telephone for somebody to find," George pointed out.

  "I know, I thought of that," Nancy told her. "But look at it this way. Suppose David overheard the phone call Jules made to Professor Mathieson and decided, for whatever reason, to ambush Jules before he got here. And then he decided to construct a phony alibi for the time of the planned ambush. Okay so far?"

  George studied Nancy's face suspiciously. "It could have been that way," she said.

  Nancy nodded. "Sure, it could have been. But if David were trying to give himself an alibi, why on earth did he invent a story that isn't an alibi? Not to mention a story that links him directly with Jules?"

  "When you put it that way," George said, "it doesn't make much sense, does it? Unless he expected us to reason like that. In that case, the fact that it makes him seem innocent is really evidence that he's guilty."

  Nancy picked up a pillow from the sofa and tossed it at George. "With reasoning like that, you can prove that Fm the queen of England!''

  She glanced at her watch, then stood up and crossed to the telephone. "I hope there's time to get in touch with the local gendarmes before the ofl&ces close."

  After twenty minutes of being switched from one extension to another, each time explaining what she wanted, Nancy replaced the receiver and sighed out loud.

  "Jules's death is recorded as an accident," she reported to George. "And his briefcase hasn't turned up. I tried to tell the guy in charge about what's been happening, but he didn't sound very interested. He told me to come in on Monday and fill out a report. Until we come up with some solid evidence, we're obviously on our own."

  "Do you think this is wild enough for a studio party?" George demanded

  George had burgundy tights on under a long navy blue tunic, with a burgundy-colored scarf tied at her waist. Her dark, curly hair was caught up off center with a blue enamel clip.

  "You look terrific," Nancy assured her, and went back to examining her own image in the mirror of the armoire. She had chosen shiny black stirrup pants and a burat-orange blouse. Now she was wondering if the blouse clashed with her reddish blond hair. With a decisive gesture, she switched the blouse for a white one, topped it with a big purple sweater, and pulled on a pair of purple suede ankle boots.

  "I'm set," she announced, after a last look in the mirror.

  Nancy and George left the apartment and walked past the place de la Bastille to the Seine. Just across the river was the Latin Quarter, called that since the days when university students and professors spoke Latin among themselves. The girls strolled slowly through the narrow, winding streets, stopping occasionally to window shop or admire a view.

  Didier's studio was in an old building in a stone-paved courtyard. They could hear the noise of the party the moment they went in and started up the worn stairs.

  The studio, on the top floor, was one big room with a ceiling that rose up to fifteen or twenty feet. Three huge pink kites shaped like fish dangled from the top rafter and swayed in the currents of air. Throu^ one of the windows, Nancy caught a distant glimpse of the upper section of the floodlit Eiffel Tower.

  Alain noticed them and came over. "Welcome," he said. "You are Keith's friends, no? He never told me your names."

  Nancy and George introduced themselves. Alain called over a short guy with long, sandy-colored hair and pale blue eyes. This was Didier, the other host of the party.

  "Nice to meet you," he said. "Refreshments are over by the window. Have fun.''

  As he drifted away, Pam hurried over. "George! Nancy!" she said. "I was starting to think you weren't coming. Listen, what happened to you? I tried to call all afternoon. You must think I flaked out on you this moming, but I'd already put ofi* that lunch twice. Frankly, I would rather have stayed and helped you."

  Nancy smiled politely, but she couldn't help recalling her earlier suspicions of Pam.

  Keith joined them, nodding hello. He had dressed up for the party, adding a pair of black leather wristbands to his usual black shirt, jeans, vest, and boots.

  "Tonight you'll get an inside look at the real Bohemian life— la vie de Bohime/' he said, waving to indicate the party-goers in the studio. As if on cue, an accordionist in the comer began to play a bouncy tune in three-four time. Keith wordlessly grabbed Pam and danced off with her.

  Nancy glanced across the room. David was standing rigidly, staring at Keith and Pam, his features set in a grim expression tinged with strong dislike. His eyes shifted and he noticed Nancy watching him. An expression of alarm crossed his face and then he gave her a thin smile.

  "George, hi!" A tall, thin guy with a boyish smile and a lock of dark hair falling across his forehead came up to them. His T-shirt was from a folkdance festival in Ontario. After a moment, Nancy placed him—James, who had taken George on the walking tour of town.

  "Hey, let's dance," he said to George after giving Nancy a smile and a nod. "This is a dance from the twenties called the Java. Come on, FU teach you. It's easy and loads of fun."

  "I'll try," George said, laughing. "But no promises."

  As the party continued, Nancy danced a couple of times with Alain, once with Didier, and even one time with Keith, who stared at her intently the whole time. He walked away without a word when the music ended. She also met a lot of people, including a chain-smoking art-rock composer who wanted to move to New York, an architecture student from a former French colony in central Africa, and two American
girls who seemed uncomfortable and out of place.

  Through it all, Nancy kept an eye on Keith, Pam, and David. The pattern set at the beginning of the party continued. Keith was always in the thick of things, with Pam in his wake, and David glaring at them. Finally Pam took her twin aside and evidently gave him a talking-to. The next time Nancy looked for David, she didn't see him, and she concluded he had left the party. Pam acted unhappy but relieved.

  At about one o'clock, Pam approached Nancy and George. "Keith's meeting some people at a jazz club," she said, "but I want to go home. It's too late for the metro. Want to share a taxi?"

  "Sure. I'm ready to go," Nancy replied.

  George turned pink. "James asked me to go dancing after the party."

  "Oh? Fine, have fun," Nancy said. "You have your keys and the code for the downstairs door?"

  "Sure," George replied. "See you later."

  Nancy and Pam found Didier and Alain, thanked them, then left. The streets were still crowded and lively. They paused to watch a street mime, then hunted up a taxi rank.

  The ride to Pam's house took surprisingly little time. "Some of the people in the exchange program are planning a picnic tomorrow afternoon at Vincennes," Pam offered as she was getting out. "If you and George want to come, why not give me a call in the morning?"

  "I'll do that," Nancy promised.

  Five minutes later the taxi stopped in front of Nancy's building. She paid the driver, then stepped out, locating in her purse the slip of paper where she'd written the door code. She used the keypad on the wall to let herself into the darkened courtyard. She was just reaching for the button that turned on the courtyard lights when an arm grasped her neck. Choking, she felt herself being dragged backward, deep into the shadows.

  Chapter Eleven

  NANCY TRIED to call for help, but the attacker tightened his stranglehold on her and dragged her toward a dark comer of the courtyard.

  Once her initial moment of shock passed, Nancy began to think quickly and coolly. She knew it was useless to try to pull the arm off her neck. Her attacker had the leverage in his favor. No, in order to free herself she needed a moment to regain her balance. And for that, she needed to get him off balance.

  A kung-fu move she had once learned came back to her. Clasping her right fist in her left hand for added power, she drove the point of her right elbow backward, into her attacker's midsection. He gave a grunt of pain and surprise, and his arm around Nancy's neck loosened slightly.

  Instantly Nancy took his forearm in both hands, fell to one knee, and executed a perfect shoulder throw. As her assailant hit the ground, she sprang up and aimed a kick at him.

  "Ow!"

  The kick had obviously connected. Nancy moved in to deliver another, but the frustrated assailant jumped up, shoved her aside, and ran. Taken by surprise, Nancy was a second late in pursuing him. As he tugged open the door to the street, she caught a glimpse of him, but all she could tell was that he was of average height and | build. The hood pulled down low over his face kept her from making out his features.

  As Nancy reached the door, she heard the sound of a mobylette speeding off. By the time she got to the sidewalk, it was out of sight, but she was ready to bet that it had a Pizza Pow! box on the back.

  Nancy rubbed her neck and swallowed a couple of times before going upstairs to telephone the police. An ofl5cer took her statement over the phone and promised an investigation, but I pointed out that the assailant had already escaped. Before hanging up, he apologized to her on behalf of France.

  On the dining room table, Nancy found a note from her father. He had turned in early but wanted to remind them of their brunch date the next morning. Nancy considered waking him to tell him about the attack, then decided it could wait until morning. She found a notepad and pen and curled up on the sofa to plot out the next steps in her investigation.

  "Nan, how awful!" George exclaimed, wide-eyed. It was ten a.m., and Nancy, who had been up for a couple of hours, had just told her friend about the attack on her.

  "That means those earlier attacks weren't just coincidence," George continued. "We must really be bothering somebody."

  "Somebody who knew about what time Fd get home and who also knew the door code," Nancy pointed out.

  "Nancy?" George said. "I hate to say it, but there's at least one suspect who knows the door code. Ellen's new research assistant—David."

  "I thought of that," Nancy replied. "But I called Ellen this morning. All the students in the exchange program were told the door code last month, when she held an evening meeting here. And it's possible that whoever attacked me didn't know it, that he waited outside and slipped in when somebody went in or out."

  Carson's bedroom door opened and he appeared, already dressed. "What?" he said in mock astonishment. "Still in pajamas, at this hour? Time's a-wasting!"

  Nancy and George hurried off to dress. When they returned, Carson telephoned for a taxi. "It's not an extravagance," he explained cheerfully. "There's no metro station close to where we're going, and most buses don't run on Sunday. With three of us a cab's probably the best way to go, anyway."

  The taxi crossed to the Left Bank, then took a ramp that went down to the quay, the paved embankment along the river. The driver came to a halt next to a brightly painted canal barge that was moored in the shadow of Notre Dame Cathedral.

  "Is this where we're having brunch?" Nancy asked.

  "It is indeed," Carson replied. He led her and George over the gangplank, onto the deck of the barge. The main cabin had wide windows on both sides, the whole length. The widely spaced tables were set with sparkling china and silver, but they were the only customers.

  A smiling woman in a flowered skirt and white blouse led them to a table next to a window with a view directly across the water to the towering Gothic cathedral.

  "This place is really special," Nancy commented as the woman brought a basket of bread and croissants, a dish of butter, and jars of jam and honey, before going back for a tray of coffee, tea, heated milk, and chilled orange juice.

  As Nancy was buttering her croissant, her father said, "I'm sorry you two couldn't have been at the theater with me last night. The actors were sensational. But how did you enjoy your studio party?"

  "The party was a lot of fun," Nancy replied. "But the sequel wasn't." She told her father about the attack on her in the courtyard of the building.

  "Nancy," he said gravely. "You know I don't believe in interfering in your work, but Fd be neglecting my duty as a father if I didn't warn you to be more careful. You're obviously dealing with a desperate person."

  "He has a right to be a little desperate," Nancy replied. "We're starting to close in on him." She told her father about the note David had supposedly received from Jules, and why she was sure that it hadn't been from Jules.

  "I see your point," Carson said. "But in that case, and if there wasn't a call from Jules, then who wrote that note, and why?"

  "Unless David did it himself, his own explanation is the most obvious one," Nancy said thoughtfully. "Somebody tried to set him up by making sure that he didn't have an alibi for the time Jules was expected to arrive at the professor's.

  "So whoever killed Jules must have been one of the people at the open house," George commented. "So it couldn't have been Censier or Leduc or whoever may have been blackmailing Solo. We've been searching in the wrong direction the whole time."

  "Not necessarily," Nancy replied. "Someone who was at the party may be working with

  Censier or Leduc or G.A. in whatever their scheme is. Our Mr. or Ms. X overheard Ellen's phone call from Jules, realized that it threatened the scheme, and either alerted his partner or decided to take action on his own. Roping in David by way of that note was just an extra flourish to confuse the trail."

  The barge rocked gently as a glass-roofed sightseeing boat went by twenty feet from them in the narrow channel. A couple of the tourists aboard aimed their cameras at Nancy, George, and Carson. George smiled and
waved, then turned back to Nancy. 'Then you don't think it was David who attacked you last night?" she asked.

  Nancy frowned. '*It could have been," she said slowly. '*! can't tell you why Tm so sure that it wasn't. But somehow, I am."

  "A day or two ago you thought he might be capable of pushing Jules in front of a truck in order to take over the job," Carson pointed out. "Now you've changed your opinion. Why?"

  Nancy leaned back in her chair and fiddled with the handle of her coffee cup. ''I don't really know," she said at last. "And Vm not crossing him off my list of suspects, but if he turns out to be guilty, I'll be surprised."

  Carson smiled grimly. "Every time someone commits a particularly grisly crime, the news cameras find dozens of neighbors and friends who say how surprised they are. To me, all that means is that people are too easily surprised."

  "Dad, you're such a cynic!" Nancy exclaimed. "It probably comes from spending so much of your professional life dealing with crooks."

  "All my clients are innocent until proven guilty," Carson replied with a grin. "But back to your case. What next?"

  Nancy rubbed the back of her neck and tried to think. "After the attacks on me and George, it's hard to believe that Jules's death was just a random accident," she said. "So either his killer ran across him by chance—which doesn't explain that note to David—or he knew where Jules was going to be. In that case, we can try to find out who knew, and how.

  "Someone at Ellen's open house who overheard Jules's phone call," George said. "Or anyone they might have told. But if they knew the information was important enough to pass along, they were probably part of the scheme already."

  Nancy nodded. "Pam said that a lot of the students in the exchange program will be at that picnic this afternoon in Vincennes," she said. "Dad, will you excuse me for a moment? Vm going to call Pam and find out where people are meeting. Having so many suspects in one place should be a real treat."

  Following Pam's directions, Nancy and George caught a bus to take them to the park of Vincennes, at the eastern border of Paris. They then walked along a winding path to the edge of a lake. They found several dozen people, including Keith and David, gathered on a grassy point near a footbridge that led to a tiny, tree-covered island.