Disappointed, I leafed through other issues to immerse myself in the atmosphere of the time. Courrier Sud was a perfect window onto school life in the early 1990s. Every possible activity was covered in detail. I flicked through the pages at random, dipping into the events that punctuated the monotony of school life: the sports results, the fifth-year class trip to San Francisco, the listings for the film club (Hitchcock, Cassavetes, Pollack), behind the scenes of the school radio station, poems and prose by students taking the writers’ workshop. Jean-Christophe Graff had published my first short story in the spring of 1992. In September, the drama club announced its program for the coming year. Among the plays was a loose adaptation—probably by my mother, who was running the club at the time—of scenes from Patrick Süskind’s Perfume, with Vinca as “the girl from the rue des Marais” and Fanny as Laure Richis. Two redheads with pale blue eyes, pure, seductive, and—if my memory of the novel serves—both murdered by Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. I had no memory of seeing the play or of what the response to it was. I opened Pianelli’s book to see whether the play had cropped up during his investigation, but he made no mention of it. But as I scanned the book, I came across copies of the letters Alexis Clément had sent to Vinca.

As I reread the letters for the hundredth time, a shiver ran through me. I felt that same frustration I had experienced at Dalanegra’s house, of being within a hairbreadth of the truth only to have it slip through my fingers. There was some connection between the contents of these letters and Clément’s personality, but, try as I might, I came up against a mental block, as though my conscious mind feared these “repressed memories.” The problem was me—my guilt, my long-standing belief that I was to blame for the tragedy, that, consumed by my own pain, my own destructive passion, I had been too blind to realize that Vinca was going off the rails.

On a hunch, I picked up my cell phone and called my father.

“Could you do me a favor, Dad?”

“What is it?” he grumbled.

“I left some papers on the table in the kitchen.”

“I noticed. It’s a mess.”

“Among them are some of my old philosophy essays. Do you see them?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on, Dad, make an effort. Or put Mom on.”

“She’s not back yet. Okay, hang on, I’ll need my glasses.”