15
It was another quiet day in the bookshop.
‘Shall I put the kettle on?’ Nancy asked Philip as he lugged another box of new titles out of the office.
‘Good idea,’ he said, dropping the box by the bookshelf near the window.
Nancy headed into the office. The kettle had just started to whistle when she heard an even more piercing sound coming from inside the shop. It must be some sort of alarm. Was someone breaking into the till? She turned off the hob and started to head back to the shop floor when the office door burst open and Philip ran in.
‘Watch the shop!’ he shouted as he snatched open the door marked Privé and ran up the stairs to Madame Dubois’s private apartments.
What the hell was going on? Nancy was torn between following him and heading back into the shop. She supposed she should do as she was told, but this would be the perfect opportunity to find out what was going on upstairs. She hadn’t heard the tinkle of the bell on the shop door since the arrival of Madame Dubois’s latest client, so there shouldn’t be any customers around. She went inside to check. No. Not a soul. She looked at her watch. It would be lunchtime in fifteen minutes. It wouldn’t hurt to shut a bit earlier. It was hardly likely to cost them a sale.
She dropped the lock on the front door and turned the closed sign over, then dashed upstairs to make sure there was no one on floors one or two. They were both empty, but she could hear some muffled shouting and grunting from Madame Dubois’s private apartments.
She ran back downstairs. As she opened the door to the back room, Philip ran from Mme Dubois’s apartments and picked up the phone.
‘Ambulance please,’ he said in French, ‘It’s an emergency. Yes. Yes. Heart problem, I think. Yes. Dubois’s books, on the corner of Rue de la Cour and Rue Saint Aubin. Come in via the shop door. Thank you.’
He put the phone down.
‘But I’ve locked the shop door,’ Nancy said.
‘Well, unlock it,’ Philip snapped. ‘Monsieur Ferrier has had a heart attack. The ambulance will be here in five minutes. Stand outside and wait for them.’
He ran back upstairs before she could ask any questions.
Nancy didn’t argue. By the time she’d unlocked the door and gone out onto the top step, she could hear the distinctive, almost musical sound of an emergency siren.
‘We had some excitement at work today,’ Nancy said to Olivia when she arrived home. ‘I finally got to see inside Madame Dubois’s flat’
Nancy had Olivia’s complete attention. ‘How?’
Nancy explained about poor Monsieur Ferrier. ‘I followed the ambulance men upstairs, and there he was, spark out in the floor of the living room.’
‘Was he alright?’
‘He looked grey, but he was still breathing when they carried him out. And Madame Dubois phoned the hospital this afternoon and they said he was on the mend.’
‘Was he fully clothed?’
‘Yes.’
‘So much for your theory then.’
‘But his shirt buttons were done up oddly.’
Olivia looked thoughtful. ‘Madame Dubois or Philip could have tried to resuscitate him? You’re meant to open the shirt so you can find the right place to push down on the rib cage.’
‘But why do his shirt up again? And then there were the moans and groans I heard on the upper floor of the shop. Her living room is nowhere near that part.’
‘They must have moved him before the ambulance arrived. No other clues?’
‘No. It’s a very tastefully decorated Parisian flat, like something you’d see in an interior design magazine.’
‘That doesn’t tell us anything. Her well-to-do clients are unlikely to want to go somewhere seedy. How much more of the apartment is there?’
‘I couldn’t tell. All I could see were the living room and a glimpse of a small kitchen. There must be at least one bedroom beyond that.’
‘How are you going to find out?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Could you sneak up there while she’s out?’
Nancy had already considered that. ‘What if Philip catches me or Madame Dubois comes back early - what would be my excuse for being there? I need this job. I can’t join Patty on the yacht otherwise.’
‘We’ll have to let our subconsciouses work on the problem. Today hasn’t ruled out your theory but it hasn’t proved it either.’