Sophie

Sophie

Penthouse

“He’s dead. He’s dead—you’ve fucking killed him.”

“I have to go, chérie,” I tell Mimi. “I have to go and deal with this.” I step onto the landing, leaving her in the apartment.

I look upward. It has happened. The girl is in the chambres de bonne. She’s found him.

I remember pushing open the door to his apartment that terrible night. My daughter, covered in blood. She opened her mouth as though to speak, or scream, but nothing came out.

The concierge was there, too, somehow. But then of course she was: she sees, knows, everything—moving around this apartment building like a specter. I stood looking at the scene before me in a state of utter shock. Then a strange sense of practicality took over.

“We need to wash her,” I said. “Get rid of all this blood.” The concierge nodded. She took Mimi by the shoulders and led her toward the shower. Mimi was muttering a stream of words now: about Ben, about betrayal, about the club. She knew. And for some reason she had not come to me.

When she was clean the concierge took her away, back to her apartment. I could see my daughter was in a state of shock. I wanted to go with her, comfort her. But first I had to deal with the consequences of what she had done. The thing, in all honesty, that I had considered doing myself.

I found and used every tea towel in the apartment. Every towel from the bathroom. All of them, soaked through crimson. I wrenched the curtains down from the windows and wrapped the body in them, tied it carefully with the curtain cords. I hid the weapon in the dumbwaiter, in its secret cavity inside the wall, and wound the handle so it traveled up to a space between the floors.

The concierge brought bleach; I used it to clean up after I’d washed the blood away. Breathing through my mouth so as not to smell it. I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth. I couldn’t vomit, I had to stay in control.

The bleach stained the floor, leached the varnish out of the wood. It left a huge mark, even larger than the pooling blood. But it was the best I could do, better than the alternative.

And then—I don’t know how much later—the door opened. It wasn’t even locked, I had forgotten that in the face of the task ahead of me.

They stood there. The two Meunier boys. My stepsons. Nicolas and Antoine. Staring at me in horror. The bleach stain in front of me, blood up to my elbows. Nick’s face drained of all color.

“There’s been a terrible accident,” I said.

“Jesus Christ,” Nicolas said, swallowing hard. “Is this because—”

There was a long pause, while I tried to think of what to say. I would not speak Mimi’s name. I decided that Jacques could take the blame, as a father should. This was, after all, really his mess. I settled on: “Your father found out what Ben had been working on—”

“Oh Jesus.” Nick put his face in his hands. And then he howled, like a small child. A sound of terrible pain. His eyes were wet, his mouth gaping. “This is all my fault. I told Papa. I told him what Mimi had found, what Ben had been writing. I had no idea. If I’d known, oh Jesus—”

For a moment, he seemed to sway where he stood. Then he rushed from the room. I heard him vomiting, in the bathroom.

Antoine stood there, arms folded. He looked equally sickened, but I could see he was determined to tough it out.

“Serves him right, the putain de bâtard,” he said, finally. “I’d have done it myself.” But he didn’t sound convinced.

A few minutes later, Nick returned, looking pale but determined.

The three of us stood there, staring at one another. Never before had we been anything like a family. Now we were oddly united. No words passed between us, just a silent nod of solidarity. Then we got to work.