I saw that Constance had emailed me suggesting we meet. She was embroiled in a mystery and needed my help. She would tell me more in person.

We met on a bench in a park.

The mystery was complicated. It involved two or more people who appeared to be one, and certain inexplicable changes to the environment. In addition, she mentioned events that had never happened and four doorways that seemed significant. 

We needed to go to the Continent. When we got there, she would tell me more.

We took the ferry. The crossing was rough. Constance pointed out a man who walked past us. She had once had an affair with him. Love was a continuum, she said, like a river with a fish in it. I did not see his face. By the time she mentioned him he had already passed us and turned the corner. All I could picture were the sleeves of his jacket and the shirt cuffs which protruded from them, white, crisp and controlled. The sleeves exuded a confidence which I distrusted, suspecting brazenness. I asked her if he was connected to the people who were the same as each other—the two or three that were one, or the one that was three—or four. It occurred to me there might be four. This would justify the unknown significance of the four doors. They would at least have their own entrances and exits.

Constance didn’t know. That was why we were going to the Continent—to determine their identities. Then things would fall in to place, for better or for worse.

We took the train to Paris and checked into a hotel in the fourth arrondissement. We had an early dinner. She was effusive about the way I thought, which was why she had asked me to get involved. I was not aware of thinking in any particular way and her lengthy praise was unsettling. I wondered if what we knew of other people was only an extension of ourselves, a projection. In that case relationships were misunderstandings. A marriage that lasted years, and was generally happy could be considered a perfect misunderstanding. Divorce would require a modicum of comprehension.

I went for a postprandial walk. Constance had gone to her room. Within minutes I was looking up at the Centre Pompidou, the inside-out building.

It was still open. I went to the modern art museum it housed. On the fifth floor were pieces from the early twentieth century. It was there that I saw The Dada Head, a sculpture by Sophie Tauber. I had seen photographs of it but to stand before its original three dimensional representation affected me with a kind of resonance. It inspired bursts of disparate thoughts. A door did not have to be real. It could be symbolic and pertain to a mental process of discovery or exclusion. The doors that had occupied me since Constance first mentioned them were not doors at all. This head with its totemic gravitation that hinted at technology from another time was one of them. The question was how to open it and what was on the other side, and indeed what the other side actually was.

I went back to the hotel and slept fitfully. In the morning I went down to the restaurant for breakfast expecting to meet Constance as arranged. I would tell her about my discovery and see if it made any sense to her. But she never arrived and I ate alone. Afterwards I went up to her room—number seventeen. She was not there. The door was open and a maid was making the bed. 

I went back down and asked the concierge if she had left a message for me. She had not. He was evasive when I questioned him further, until I opened my wallet. Then he told me she had checked out early. She had left with a gentleman in a coat with an astrakhan collar and a capuchin monkey on his shoulder. I wanted to know whether there had been an altercation of any kind, if there was any sign that she had been abducted. She had gone on her own volition, the concierge told me. There had been no trouble.

If he was being truthful then Constance had lured me to Paris for some reason other than what she had divulged. This brought into doubt everything she had told me. The Dada Head might not be a symbolic door after all. Perhaps those events which had never happened, actually had happened. It wasn’t that I was back where I started. I was further back than I had been before I started. Of course that was a figure of speech and a little too linear in implication for my taste. I preferred curves.

I would leave. There was no point in staying longer, but then I wondered what Constance would expect me to do. She would most likely assume that I would return home, seeing that her absence would leave me at a loss regarding her mystery. If that is what she thought, then that is probably exactly what she wanted me to do, so I resolved to stay in Paris.

Constance was no fool. She would understand that I would stay in Paris because she knew I thought that she wanted me to leave. Therefore, what she actually wanted was for me to stay. Bluff and counter bluff. I oscillated between them. In the realm of espionage bluffing could move through different levels of abstraction, not that Constance’s mystery involved espionage. It was possible I supposed. Its subterfuge and murkiness certainly pointed in that direction. I wondered how many levels of abstraction a bluff could traverse before the original purpose behind it lost its meaning and all that remained was paradoxical. The obvious escape from the paradox would be that there was no logical purpose behind the bluff. It could be bluffing for its own sake, or bluffing for pleasure, or even from compulsion.

I would do the unexpected. I just had to discover what that was. I tried to imagine things I didn’t expect, but once something has been imagined it is no longer a surprise. The nature of a surprise is that it has not been imagined.

I went up to my room and stayed in bed for three days. She wouldn’t expect that. 

I didn’t expect the large bill that was slipped under my door and the questions about how long I wished to stay. Constance had only paid for one night. 

That was a surprise—something I hadn’t imagined. With all my thoughts about her sudden disappearance and how she was manipulating me, it had never occurred to me that she would only pay for one night. 

I found myself a cheaper hotel. The fact that Constance was an integral part of her own mystery and that she had involved me for some reason was going to keep me in Paris until I uncovered what was going on. She knew I could never turn my back on a puzzle. My profession as an archaeoastronomer had nothing to do with it. I’d been that way since childhood.

Constance had never been timid. She had always known what she wanted and pursued it without fear or doubt, and she was usually successful. There was only one time I could recall when she had failed. She had said that she aspired to become a novelist but as far as I know she never wrote anything at all and never even attempted to. This was quite unlike her. The best explanation I could think of was that she aspired to the idea of becoming a novelist without feeling the need to actually be one.

Despite her ironclad insistence on doing what she wanted, Constance was never overly self-absorbed or egotistical, and was naturally gracious and generous. At some risk to herself, she had once provided me with an alibi when I had been falsely accused of vandalising Stonehenge.

We first met when our mothers became friends. We were both about seven years old. The two of us were left to our own devices while they talked. She soon suggested that she would show me hers if I showed her mine. And so, unforeseeably at the time, began a long association, never quite close enough to become an intimate relationship but close enough to last for years, at least until this moment. 

I didn’t know what to do next, so I went back to our original hotel and walked around the area hoping to find something that would narrow my search but saw nothing unusual. I gave up and decided to visit the art museum again but on my way I thought I saw a monkey. A second later it was gone. I could not say that it was a capuchin but it was definitely one of the smaller simians. Whether I had actually seen it or not, this was the best lead I’d had yet and I set off in the direction I imagined it had taken.

Following a potentially nonexistent monkey was an apt metaphor for Constance’s mystery. Though I never saw it again, it increased my confidence that the man with the astrakhan collar on his coat was nearby. I squinted at the buildings around me to try to get a sense of where he might be. Not having clues, or firm evidence, or any information at all, I had nothing to go on except my intuition. Then a man across the street caught my eye. He was carrying a baguette. He could be the man I was looking for. He didn’t have a coat with an astrakhan collar, but that didn’t mean much. He might have decided to wear different clothes that day. He wasn't in fact wearing a coat at all but a blue shirt of the kind favoured by French workmen. I watched him as he entered a building.

Then I proceeded to the museum and returned to the fifth floor. I wandered through the galleries until I stood before Femme à la guitare by Georges Braque. I had the strong and sudden feeling that this was the picture I had come to see and I need look at nothing else.

The painting suggested that my approach should be cubist, in other words I should examine everything with a simultaneous perspective. It was a confirmation of what I had already been doing using my intuition. The realisation gave me pleasure as if I had received approval. 

The guitar, which was small and not quite square, being slightly trapezoidal, only had five strings, which extended casually beyond it into the rest of the painting. Sometimes it appeared to be on the same plane as the gallery floor and at others on the plane parallel to the walls. The cubist woman playing it was right handed. I could tell by the position of the bridge. At first I had thought she was left handed. It took me a moment to account for the flip of axis. This flip always occurred between the observer and the observed, the subject and the object, at least for humans and most other mammals. It seemed quite obvious but was rich with inference and meaning if given any thought. The entire visual world was a mirror with no reflection. It might be different for insects but I knew nothing of their eyes or brains. 

Below the guitar were three words in black letters, the third running at an angle to the other two. What initially caught my attention was: Le Reve —The Dream, except the beginning of another letter followed the last 'e', and was obscured as if by a fold in the clothing. The first 'e' was also missing the circumflex accent that should have been above it. Perhaps Braque had decided to omit accents.

The obscured and unfinished word was tantalising. Maybe it was Le Rêveur—The Dreamer, or possibly even Le Rêveille—The Alarm. I felt that if the painting was giving me a message, it was telling me to wake up from a dream. The other word looked like: Soate, which made no sense to me. Again, there was the hint of another letter, or letters, following the 'o', also hidden by a fold.

I had the urge to see the room from the same point of view as the painting and turned abruptly. I was shocked to discover a woman who had been standing behind me, who I hadn’t noticed. I had been so absorbed in my thoughts and felt embarrassed by my lack of awareness. The woman I was looking at smiled in amusement, which she tried to suppress.

“You can’t look at it anymore?”

I turned back to face the painting, not knowing how to explain myself without mentioning my thoughts about the non-reflecting mirror. But there was no need to explain my behaviour to a stranger. She could put it down to one of life’s little anomalies if she wanted.

“It’s a wonderful painting, don’t you think? There’s something special about the art from that time. It was a leap in consciousness. It affects me profoundly.”

“Yes, naturally.”

We stood side by side, silent for a moment, looking at the painting. Then she turned and looked at me.

“You should leave Paris, Monsieur.”

This was the second shock in as many seconds. I spoke French passably but was not fluent and I wondered if I had understood her correctly.

“Me? Leave Paris?”

“Yes.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I am not at liberty to say, Monsieur.”

With that she moved off into the gallery before I could question her further. I watched her elegant back disappear into another room. I followed her but she was gone.

On the way back to the hotel I stopped at the premises the man with the baguette had entered. It seemed to be a shop. There were tools and spools of wire in the window display. The man with the baguette was most likely an electrician or a plumber. That didn’t exclude the possibility that he was also the man with the monkey. Constance had mentioned different people being the same, though I would be a fool to take what she said literally. He might be the same person and just sported the monkey when he wasn’t at work. The possibilities were so wide open they were almost meaningless.

I lay on the bed in a frustrated and apprehensive mood. I was being watched, which meant I was being followed. The woman in the museum had been sent to give me a message. She hadn’t delivered it as a threat, but by telling me she wasn’t free to speak she was warning me there were others who might be less polite if I chose to stay. I had inadvertently crossed some boundary just by being here. 

What part did Constance play in this? It was her mystery after all, or was she just a bit player in something bigger? Knowing Constance as I did, I could not picture her in a subordinate role. It had to be something else.

I thought of the man with the monkey. How likely would it be to see someone like that walking around Paris? It was certainly possible, but only just. A character like that, along with some description of him would more likely roam the streets in a book. The astrakhan collar… Now I understood. Of course! 

Constance had indeed left a message for me with the concierge. It had been to tell me that she hadn’t left a message but had gone off with a man who had an astrakhan collar on his coat and a capuchin on his shoulder. There was no such man.

It was brilliant. She had in fact accomplished her goal to become a novelist, without putting words on paper. Her novel, or short story, was played out in the real world using both real and fictitious characters. She had hinted at such a thing when she told me about events that had never happened. She must have been testing me to see if I had any idea of what she was up to, and seeing I did not she proceeded.

Such a book, at least in this iteration, would only have one reader and that was to be me. I was also a character in her story—the detective who tries to solve the mystery. On the surface it was masquerading as a mystery—a mystery that was not a mystery.

She knew my characteristics and used them to manipulate me just enough to make it work but she also allowed me to be a co-author and make my own decisions. She must have had me followed, and paid an actress to tell me to leave Paris. It was a wondrous feat of imagination and logistics. I think it was always her intention for me to ultimately find that there was nothing to solve.

Realising that I was a co-author of this work as well as its only reader, I decided to rethink what had just happened to me in the museum. Constance had adroitly caused me to spend hours wondering about the identity of the man with the monkey and his significance, only to discover he was an invention. I felt justified in altering the narrative.

***

“You should leave Paris, Monsieur.”

This was the second shock in as many seconds. I spoke French passably but was not fluent and I wondered if I had understood her correctly.

“Me? Leave Paris?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I am not at liberty to say, Monsieur.”

With that she moved off into the gallery. I chased after her.

“Can I ask you a question?”

She stopped. I could tell she was annoyed. She revealed her emotions by covering them.

“Have you seen a man in the Marais with a monkey on his shoulder? He has an astrakhan collar on his jacket.”

“No, but I’ve heard of him.”

“Who is he?”

“How do I know? 

“What have you heard about him?”

“Apparently, he’s a metallurgist from Eastern Europe. He defected. He lives in London, but he often comes to Paris on business. Now if you’ll excuse me…”

“Who told you this?”

She hitched up her bag impatiently.

“There’s an old accordionist who’s a fixture around here. Tourists enjoy that Parisian trope of an accordion player and he ekes out a living from them. He sees everything that goes on in these streets. He told me.”

“But why does the metallurgist have a monkey?”

She didn’t answer but strode off. I watched her elegant back as she blended in to the crowd until I could no longer differentiate her from the other people.

I didn’t believe what she had told me. I had scoured the streets in this area and had never seen an accordion player.

***

This alternate scene in Constance’s story was not completely satisfactory, though it wasn’t bad for a first attempt.

The next morning I left Paris but I didn’t return home to Rutland. 

I went to Carnac to look at the stones.

 

© Tom Newton 2025

This story is from the collection The Right Moment & Other True Stories by Tom Newton, Recital Publishing 2025.