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Back The Shoe Queen Save as PDF
Chapters (67)
  1. Cover
  2. “And may I say, those shoes are adorable.”
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. ( I )
  7. ( one )
  8. ( two )
  9. ( three )
  10. ( four )
  11. ( five )
  12. ( six )
  13. ( seven )
  14. ( eight )
  15. ( nine )
  16. ( ten )
  17. ( II )
  18. ( eleven )
  19. ( twelve )
  20. ( thirteen )
  21. ( fourteen )
  22. ( fifteen )
  23. ( III )
  24. ( sixteen )
  25. ( seventeen )
  26. ( eighteen )
  27. ( nineteen )
  28. ( IV )
  29. ( twenty )
  30. ( twenty-one )
  31. ( twenty-two )
  32. ( twenty-three )
  33. ( twenty-four )
  34. ( V )
  35. ( twenty-five )
  36. ( twenty-six )
  37. ( twenty-seven )
  38. ( twenty-eight )
  39. ( twenty-nine )
  40. VI
  41. ( thirty )
  42. ( thirty-one )
  43. ( thirty-two )
  44. ( thirty-three )
  45. ( thirty-four )
  46. ( VII )
  47. ( thirty-five )
  48. ( thirty-six )
  49. ( thirty-seven )
  50. ( thirty-eight )
  51. ( thirty-nine )
  52. ( forty )
  53. ( forty-one )
  54. ( forty-two )
  55. ( VIII )
  56. ( forty-three )
  57. ( forty-four )
  58. ( forty-five )
  59. ( forty-six )
  60. ( forty-seven )
  61. ( forty-eight )
  62. ( forty-nine )
  63. ( fifty )
  64. ( fifty-one )
  65. Acknowledgments
  66. Acknowledgments
  67. Questions for Discussion

The door flew open.

( thirty-four )

THEY LAY SIDE BY side on the bed, fully clothed. The tiny woman had a bullet hole in her left temple.

The man had an identical hole in his right temple. A.25-caliber Belgian pistol lay on the floor, where it must have dropped. They were holding hands, and their feet were bare. A tattooed skull was clearly visible on the man’s forearm. The woman had an identical tattoo on the sole of her left foot. Their shoes were placed neatly on the floor in front of the bed.

Hart Crane would later write an elegy to Guy Monteray called “The Cloud Juggler.” It was his last published work before his own suicide.

E. E. Cummings would write the epitaph:

2 boston

Dolls; found with

Holes in each other

’s lullaby

“Thank God.” Robert couldn’t help himself. In spite of this carnage, he was relieved. Genevieve wasn’t here. He reached to loosen his collar.

Felperstone was over by the broken door, wiping the handle clean with a large, white handkerchief, but then, seeing Robert about to sit down on a chair, he came rushing forward, shouting, “Don’t touch anything!”

Robert swallowed heavily. “I’d better get down to reception and have someone call the police.”

“No!” The detective wiped sweat from his brow and thrust the handkerchief back in his pocket.

“So what do you suggest we do?”

“We get out of here. Fast.”

Robert looked down at the bodies. There was very little blood. In spite of the obvious violence of their deaths, the couple looked peaceful. More peaceful—or at least more real, more human—than his father had looked in his coffin, once the funeral directors had prettied him up.

“Sir.” Felperstone grabbed him by the arm. “You don’t want to be dragged into a mess like this. A man of your standing.”

“These poor people,” said Robert.

“I’ll kill that bloody Cannes,” said Felperstone.

The bodies of Guy Monteray and Elizabeth Leicester (known as Whisper) were officially discovered just before noon by a fourteen-year-old chambermaid, who’d never seen a dead body before. Her shriek reverberated around the glass-topped oval atrium and out onto the Rue des Beaux-Arts, where people stopped and stared up at the smart stone façade of the Hôtel d’Alsace, and at the sculpted ram’s head above the main entrance, and then shrugged and carried on their way.

The shriek was almost—but not quite—loud enough to reach the Hôtel Lutétia on the nearby Boulevard Raspail, where Genevieve Shelby King and Paolo Zachari were making love for the second time that morning behind a locked door.

( VII )

HEEL

( thirty-five )

Dear Sir,

Don’t you think your wife has spent more than enough time at the shoe shop lately?

A WELL-WISHER