Paris when I worked for André. That much I know. And she fell in love with this man, who must be Sinh Cao. He was a communist and she became a communist, too. She even wrote for L’Humanité, if you can believe that.” He looked at my face. “Yes, I suppose we can believe anything at this point,” he continued. “Her parents found out and were very upset. Her mother is the Michelin, her father is a minister. Or a senator? Something important, and very conservative. They learned that Sinh was traveling back to Indochine, and they asked André to intervene on their behalf. They wanted to make sure that this boy, this communist, could never set foot in France again. I think I helped André with it all, actually. We dealt with the secret police all the time then. We still do. André wrote to someone in Annam, that’s where this boy was from, I believe, and it was done.”
“And that caused Marcelle and Khoi to hate Michelin? And to hate us by association?”
“Maybe,” said Victor reflectively. “Who are they to her?” he asked, his eyes red and exhausted.
“I believe they are Anne-Marie’s best friends,” I said after a moment. “Family, to her.”
“I remember now,” said Victor, standing up suddenly. “That boy, he died. In Haiphong. Something went wrong when he was detained at the port, and I think by no fault of ours, except maybe tangentially, he was shot. He died in Haiphong.”
“He died?” I exclaimed.
“Yes,” said Victor. “I’m only remembering it now because we just again employed the man who shot him. A few days after we arrived, Édouard sent a note saying that we were indebted to him—that he’d helped solve a problem for us—but that he’d fallen on a bit of a hard time and that we should hire him. He was a policeman before, but now he’s in Haiphong. You met him, actually,” he said, pausing, as if starting to see the way the web was weaved. “In Haiphong. His name is Paul Adrien.”
THIRTY-SIX
Jessie
January 7, 1934
I turned in the Delahaye and looked out the back window at the yellow house as it faded into the distance, its beloved shape receding behind us. It wasn’t Lanh who was taking us to the train station; it was a hired man. Lanh was on vacation. Victor had wanted to do something kind for him, a gesture to show how thankful we were that he had saved me. A trip, I had suggested. A long rail journey so he could see every train station in the country if he wanted to.
Next to me was Lucie, in pants instead of a starched dress. She looked like a different child, as we had cut her long hair to her chin the week after I’d left the hospital. We had all needed a fresh start, but thankfully, she still felt like my Lucie. I put my right hand on hers but gripped the gift that Lanh had given me before he left with my other. He had told me not to open it until we were out of Hanoi, and somehow I’d managed to obey his wishes.
After weeks of chaos, calm was starting to return to our lives.
After a second night in the hospital, the doctor told me that he suspected poisoning. I had been fearful that I would have to lead the horse to water concerning the diagnosis, but the French doctor was thankfully intelligent enough to recognize how my symptoms fit together. When the policeman got involved, I told him that I strongly suspected Marcelle de Fabry was behind my poisoning. She had illegally obtained my medical files from France. She was plotting my return trip before I even arrived in Hanoi. Her cigarettes, I told them. That was how she poisoned me. And through my drinks, too. Through a strong tea. The policeman went to the de Fabry home, where he and another officer found a large amount of ky nham, as they later described it to us, in her dresser and, as I had suspected, rolled into cigarettes. Arnaud was home at the time, an unfortunate turn of events. He said it was all a great misunderstanding, that they used the herb in small quantities themselves as a relaxing agent, and accompanied the police to Khoi’s palatial home, where Marcelle was.
I was later told by Lanh, who obtained the full story from Khoi’s surprisingly bribable servants, that Marcelle flew into a rage, claiming I had tried to