Jackie tucked in her lips. “Okay, that’s a little weird. The timing’s a bit off.”
“Way off. I was told the metalsmith never removed the ring from his finger, so he was apparently wearing it the day he died.”
“Which was when?”
“The morning of D-Day.”
“So his family removed the ring before they buried him and some greedy relative later sold it, which makes Woody all mixed up about the heirloom business.”
“But no one ever found the ring.”
“If Woody’s wearing it, someone must have found it.”
“Here’s the thing. Five members of the French Resistance undertook a mission the night before the invasion. Four of them were killed. In the Allied bombing raid the following morning, their bodies were burned beyond recognition. One of them was identified by the fragments of two gold teeth, but there was no brass ring to help identify the metalsmith.”
“Could the brass have melted in the bombing?”
“If it did, how did the fully intact ring leap onto Woody’s finger?”
She studied me with a one-eyed squint. “So if Woody is wearing a ring that was reputed never to have left the metalsmith’s finger, either the metalsmith wasn’t wearing it when he died or—”
We exchanged a long look.
“Or the metalsmith didn’t die,” I finished for her.
“But if he lived through the mission, why would he want people to think he was dead?”
“Because the fifth member of the team was rumored to have been an enemy collaborator who betrayed the mission to the Nazis. To reward his cooperation, they might have allowed him to escape with both his life and his ring. And if he were smart, he would have run far, far away, where he’d never be recognized again.”
“Wait a sec, Emily. Are you suggesting that good old Woody ‘I Love Ketchup’ Jolly was a former French metalsmith who betrayed his countrymen to the Nazis and has been living in self-imposed exile in the United States ever since, disguised as a funeral director?”
In my mind’s eye I saw the excruciating pain in Solange Ducat’s face as she’d peered at the old man standing before her. I heard the agony in her voice as she’d screamed her accusations. C’est toi. C’est toi. But she hadn’t recognized Woody by his physical appearance. She’d recognized him from the ring on his finger—the one whose likeness she had fashioned in embroidery thread and framed. The one she hadn’t seen since before D-Day. The one that had belonged to Pierre Lefevre, the metalsmith whose betrayal had resulted in the death of her only brother.
“Yup.” I stared Jackie straight in the eye. “That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”
fourteen
“As many of you might have heard by now, the guest who died in the tragic accident at Étretat yesterday suffered a brain hemorrhage that led to her death.”
We were packed in like sardines as Rob addressed us from the square of parquet flooring in the center of the lounge. The evening’s discount cocktail was a supersized Bloody Mary with extra olives and celery, so while guests squeezed together on the cushy furniture, Patrice worked the room by taking drink orders, then dashing back to the bar to mix them, which shattered a misconception I had about river cruise companies.
They didn’t earn the bulk of their income from tour packages.
They earned it from alcohol.