AL01 - Murder in the Marais

Hartmuth knew he could never tell her the truth. Sarah would not understand why he lied. It was all he could do to bring the food with his meager army pay swallowed in bribes. The evening his Kommandant visited the opera, Hartmuth had slipped into the office at the Kommandantur where Missing-Active Search files were kept. He'd crossed out her name, the only thing he knew to do to save her.

MONDAY

Monday Morning

MARTINE SITBON, AIMEE'S FRIEND since algebra class in the lycee, sounded tired. Her graveyard shift at the newspaper Le Figaro had fifteen minutes left.

'Ca va, Martine? Got a minute or two?' Aimee said.

'Well, Aimee, long time no hear,' came the husky voice. 'Is this a friend-in-need-is-a-friend-indeed call?'

'You could say that and I'll owe you dinner big-time,' Aimee chuckled.

Martine yawned deeply. 'Hit me now before I fade; you're keeping me from the warm body in my bed, about whom I'll tell you more at dinner. We'll go to La Grande Vefour—the pate and the veal d'agneau are superb.'

Aimee flinched. A meal without wine began at six hundred francs. But Martine, a gourmet, always dictated the restaurant.

'Agreed, you'll definitely earn your dinner on this stuff. First, you still have that friend in social security?'

'Bien sur! I love and nurture my connections, Aimee. I'm a journalist.'

'Great. Need everything you can get on some members of Les Blancs Nationaux. I want to know where their money comes from.' She gave Martine Thierry's and Yves's names.

Martine paused. 'What's this about, Aimee?'

'A case.'

'Aimee, Aryan supremacist types don't play by the rules. This EU trade summit is causing lots of rats to surface. Just a word of caution.'

'Merci. One more thing. Check on a non-Jew murder in 1943 on the rue des Rosiers, reported or not. And while you're at it, collaborators in the Marais.'

'As in Nazi collaborators?' Martine said. 'Touchy stuff! No one likes to talk about them. But I'll sniff around if you promise to be careful.'

'Careful as lice staring at delousing powder,' Aimee said.

'Keep that smart mouth in line. I know that during the Occupation all newspapers were taken over, turned into essentially rote German propaganda. Some arrondissements printed their own one-pager cheat sheets with local info such as births, deaths, electricity rates. But I'll check on that and get back to you. One more thing.'

'I'm listening, Martine.'

'Make three reservations, in case my boyfriend wants to come.'

Aimee groaned. This really would cost.

'MONSIEUR JAVEL, you remember me, right?' Aimee smiled brightly at the cobbler. 'How about something to drink? Let's discuss our mutual interest.' She held up an apple green bottle of Pernod.

'Eh, what could that be?' Felix Javel growled, swaying on his bowed legs.

'Arlette's murder,' she said. 'Maybe if we share information, things will be mutually beneficial.'

Before he could hesitate, she nudged herself between him and the door leading out the back of his shop. She was determined to find out what he really saw in 1943. Despite the Gallic genius for evasion, she counted on the Pernod to loosen his tongue.

He shrugged. 'As you like. I don't have much to say.' He scrubbed the back of his neck with a grayish flannel washcloth as he led her down the narrow hallway lit by a yellowed bulb. Sliding off his shoes, he indicated that she should do the same before entering a parlor sitting room.

This room, suffocatingly warm due to a modern oil heater, smelled of used kitty litter. A Victorian rocker plumped with threadbare chintz cushions sat in front of a sixties greenish chrome television set. A bent rabbit-ear antenna sat on top of it. Cascading strands of blue crystal beads formed an opaque curtain that hung from the door frame to the floor, separating the small cooking area. Javel returned from the kitchen balancing a tray with two glasses and a pitcher of water. Aimee willed herself not to get up and help him while he laboriously set the rattling tray on a scrubbed oak table. She pulled a small tin of pate out with the bottle and his eyes lit up.

'I have just the thing to go with that,' he said.

He clinked past the beads again, carrying a chipped Sevres bowl full of stale, damp soda crackers. Aimee watched him set out embroidered lace-fringe linen napkins and picked one up.

'These are almost too beautiful to use,' she said, noting the ornately intertwined A and F.

'Arlette did these. The whole set is still stored in our wedding chest. I don't have guests much, figured might as well use them.'

'You knew Lili Stein,' she said. 'Why keep it a secret from me?'

Slowly he mixed the water with Pernod until it became properly milky. He rubbed some pate on a cracker. 'Why are you snooping around?' he said.

'Doing my job.' She moved her chair closer to his. 'Lili's murder is connected to Arlette's.'

He chuckled and poured himself more Pernod. 'The prewar Pernod absinthe got made with wormwood and ate one's brain away.'

'Who killed Arlette?' she said.

He drank it down and poured himself another glass.

'Aren't you the detective?' he said.

'But you have your own theory,' she said. 'Something you saw that the flics didn't?' she said.

Surprise flitted briefly across his face.

'What did you see?' she said, excited by the look in his eyes.

A long, loud burp erupted from deep in his stomach.

'Buggers,' he said. 'Beat me.'

'Why? Why did they beat you, Javel?'

His eyes narrowed. 'You're a Jew, aren't you?'

She shook her head. 'What if I was?'

'I don't like your type,' he said. 'Whatever it is.'

'Then don't vote for me at the Miss World pageant,' she said.

He smeared pate on more stale crackers and shoveled them on the plate.

There had to be some way to reach this concrete-headed little man. 'Aren't you afraid, Javel? I mean, you mentioned hate attacks and random neo-Nazi violence in the Marais. But you don't seem very nervous to me.'

He sputtered, 'Why should I be?' He poured himself another glass.

'Exactly. Especially if you knew that Lili's murder had something to do with the past.'

'Leave me alone,' he said. 'Go away.' He turned, his mouth twitching.