Murder in the Bastille

“What are you doing?”

Of course, he’d kill her.

“None of your business.”

She heard him swearing, slamming drawers.

“So Dragos skimmed some uranium off the top?”

She felt the hard rungs of a chair whack her ribs. A cracking, searing pain shot up her side. Then again.

Try to stay upright. Keep him talking, keep his attention away from her.

“But Mathieu’s a craftsman . . .”

“Mathieu’s father participated, too. And his father. Half the art world steals from the other half. Over and over. Skip a generation or two and the original owner steals it back. You think Leonardo da Vinci’s work stays in one family? Look at the Comte de Breuve.”

The water cooler jug was on the stand. Heavy.

“I thought you dealt in art because . . .”

“I’m passionate about it?” he interrupted, his educated formal French gone. “I hate old things. They smell. Ever since I could crawl, we’ve had decaying, musty pieces built or painted by dead people everywhere. I’m alive. I don’t want to be chained to the expressions of someone who died four hundred years ago.”

“So it’s all a front?”

“Front? People see what they want to see. The hotel partic-ulier . . . no real choice there. If I sold it, taxes would cost me eighty percent of the profit on the sale of the building.”

She clung to the lamp pole for support. Gasped. Her ribs felt as if they were broken.

“Everything’s protected by historical decree. The furniture goes with the place, I can’t even sell it. The oil paintings are blistered, the lacquered furniture peeling, and I don’t have the money for repairs. It costs next to nothing to stay there if I use it for a gallery/showroom like my parents did. But in my wing, everything comes from Ikea and Conran. Plastic—that hated word—I love it.”

She felt the base of the lamp.

“You know you’re wrong about Vaduz,” he volunteered His footsteps were closer. She heard him grunting and pushing. Something inching along on the floor. And that tar smell.

His shampoo. He couldn’t be much more than an arm’s length away.

“But I knew Vaduz didn’t attack me,” she said.

She lurched against the porcelain water cooler. It cracked and shattered. Water sprayed and flooded over the sloped floor, pooling toward the heater.

“Salope. . .you’ve got my tuxedo sopping wet!”

She whammed the lamp full force in the direction of his voice. Her ribs jabbed like knives against her skin. As the glass bulb shattered, she felt him recoil. But she didn’t want that.

She thrust the lamp pole forward, whacking him again, keeping the exposed socket toward him. She felt him trying to get it away. But it connected with something metallic on his wrist. A bracelet? Or his cufflinks? He yelled as the alternating current traveled up his right hand. Shook and tried to get free. She held the pole as long as she could. He went rigid. She heard a faint low buzz, barely audible over the music.

And then water dripped on her and she let go of the pole.

SOMETHING BEEPED. Layers of unconsciousness peeled away, slowly, like veils of fog. She felt around for the phone in her pocket.

“Allo?”

“You’re a Catholic, aren’t you Leduc?” said Bellan.

Echoing sounds came from the background.

Her brain felt fuzzy, her mouth even more. Little twitches of light ran across her eyelids.

“Made my First Communion,” she said.

“Bon . . . where would you hide something in a chapel?”

“Under the holy water font.” It was the first thing that came into her mind. “Sometimes they have a donation box in the bottom. But if it’s uranium you’re looking for, there’s some right here. Bodies, too.”

“Where?”

“Mathieu’s atelier. Easy to find. We probably glow in the dark.”

She heard moaning and someone stirring.

“Better hurry, someone’s waking up,” she said. “I wish I could tell you who it is.”

Sunday Afternoon

BELLAN EMPTIED THE WHISKEY flask down the toilet, pulled his jacket off the hook in the dormitory, and left. In the Metro, he fingered the folded pamphlet for parents he’d picked up at the Mairie. He climbed the Montgallet Metro stairs and almost turned back. Non, keep going, he told himself.

Place de Fontenay, in the shadowed twilight, was crowded with children returning home from lessons and couples going out. Clusters of discount computer shops in nineteenth-century storefronts lined the street. The old, faded lettering tapisserie was visible under a sign reading TEKNOWARE. Bells pealed from a distant church.

Bellan saw the Jardin de Reuilly, a vast open green space with its state-of-the-art covered indoor pool. The girls would love it; Monique could start swimming lessons.

Bellan paused at the door of 11, rue Montgallet, under the sign Services Sociaux Assoc de parents d’enfants deficients men-taux. Three cigarettes later, he still paced in the doorway.

Would it matter to Marie if he went in? Would she believe him? And what would a meeting of blathering, self- involved parents with Down syndrome children tell him that he didn’t know? That he didn’t feel already? Who needed a moan and groan session . . . he got enough of that at the Commissairiat with all the staff cuts.

He turned to leave and bumped into a middle-aged man, out of breath, who held the hand of a young girl. A Down syndrome girl who was laughing.

“Excuse us, we’re late,” he said. “The soccer game ran into overtime.”

Bellan noticed the girl’s striped jersey, black shorts, muddy soccer cleats, and socks. And her flushed face, wreathed in smiles.

“Who won?”

“My daughter Arlette’s team. She’s the goalie,” he said, beaming. “On to the quarterfinals!’

Arlette hugged her father, then reached out her mud-spattered palm to Bellan.

“Well done,” he said, shaking her hand.

“After you, monsieur,” the man said, reaching for the door. “We don’t want to make you late, too.”

Bellan’s hand twisted in his pocket. He couldn’t do what Marie or anyone wanted him to. Only what his heart told him to. And for that he had to take the first step.

“I’m already late. Merci,” Bellan said. “But I’m here.” He took a deep breath and went in.

Sunday Evening

AIMEE STROKED MILES DAVIS. His wet nose nudged her neck and his dogtags tinkled over the hospital bed.

“I think you have a princess complex,” said Rene, a shadowy figure beside her.

“Why?” She felt her taped-up ribs. Smelled roses somewhere near her. A glowing rectangular blur of white passed in the distance. A nurse?

“In pre-op you said some funny things under anesthesia.”

She froze. “Mon dieu, what did I say?”

She heard him laughing.