AL01 - Murder in the Marais

'Stay here, Sarah. You're not safe on the street.'

Frightened, Sarah crossed her arms. 'But I can't do that. I have a job. Albertine needs my help, she counts on me.'

'Call her,' Aimee said. 'She'll find someone else for now.'

'But there's an important supper party this evening—,' Sarah started to say.

'It's not safe for you or anyone with you. You'll put them in danger. Stay here, off the street. Albertine will manage.' Aimee could tell Sarah hesitated, still not convinced. 'If Lili recognized Laurent and got killed for it'—Aimee paused and spoke slowly—'don't you realize you're next?'

AIMEE ENTERED the schoolyard off busy rue des Blancs Manteaux to see lines of children filing up the lycee steps. Probably just as they had done fifty years ago. This time there were no yellow stars, only clumps of adolescent dark-skinned children with big eyes walking past taunts and insults.

As she approached, a teacher noticed her and quickly admonished, 'Arrete.' The jeers subsided.

'Are you a parent?'

'I have business in the office.'

'May I see your identification? We take bomb threats seriously.' The puffy-faced teacher looked like she needed another night's sleep. 'Ministry of education's edict.'

'Of course.' Aimee showed her.

'Over there and to the right.' Behind the teacher a fight had broken out and she left to break it up.

Inside the school office a rotund ebony-faced woman squinted as she checked the computer. 'Records are in the basement if we've kept them and the silverfish haven't eaten them,' she said.

'Thanks, can you check?'

'Last name?'

'First name is Laurent and the family lived on rue du Platre,' Aimee said.

The secretary raised her eyebrow. 'Years of attendance?'

'Between 1941 and 1945, during the war.'

The secretary looked up immediately and shook her head. 'After ten years, everything is sent to the ministry of education.' She shrugged. 'Check back in a couple of weeks.'

'But I need it now!'

'Everybody needs it now. Do you know how many children attended the school at the time?' She looked at Aimee. 'Frankly, I'd say don't waste your time, nothing got put on microfiche until the sixties.'

'Any teacher or custodian who might have gone to school here?' Aimee said.

'Before my time,' the secretary paused, 'but Renata, a woman in the cafeteria, has worked here as long as I remember. That's all I can suggest.'

In the yellow-tiled cafeteria, Renata, a woman with a thick gray braid wound across the nape of her neck, narrowed her eyes in suspicion.

'Who did you say you were?' she asked.

Aimee told her.

Renata just shook her head.

One of the servers, a prune-faced woman, walked over to Aimee and nudged her. 'She forgets to turn on her hearing aid.'

Aimee thanked her and pointed to Renata's ear. Renata only scowled.

'She's quite vain about it. Thinks none of us know,' the woman, whose name tag said Sylvie Redonnet, confided. 'As if we cared. Half the time we go around yelling at her since she can't hear.'

Renata stirred the ladle of a steaming pot of lentils.

Aimee turned to Sylvie, who grinned. 'Maybe you can help me?'

After Aimee explained, the woman nodded her head. 'Believe it or not, I'm too young to have been here in the forties,' she chuckled. 'Now my sister, Odile, a few years older than me, was. Go ask her—she loves to talk.'

'That would help me, thank you.'

'You'll be a treat for Odile, she can hear.' Sylvie glanced in Renata's direction. 'But she's wheelchair-bound. Around the corner, number 19 rue du Platre.'

Aimee felt a glimmer of hope when she heard the address.

ODILE CACKLED from five floors above as Aimee huffed up the steep metal-grilled staircase. 'One thing I don't have to worry about.'

Aimee reached the landing at last. 'Odile Redonnet?' she said. Looks certainly did not bless this family, Aimee thought, looking at the shriveled crone in the black steel wheelchair.

'Pleased to meet you, Aimee Leduc, my sister phoned about your visit. Come in.' Odile Redonnet wheeled herself ahead of Aimee into the apartment. 'Please shut the door behind you.'

After two potfuls of strong Darjeeling tea and exquisite freshly baked madeleines, Odile Redonnet let Aimee get to her point.

'I'm looking for someone,' she began.

'Aren't we all?'

'A boy named Laurent, his family owned a building on this street. He'd have been about fifteen or sixteen in 1943.'

In answer, Odile wheeled over to an oak chest and slid open a creaking drawer. She pulled out a musty album. Several loose black-and-white photos danced to the floor. Aimee bent down to pick them up. In one she saw a radiant Odile standing upright with her arms around an RAF-uniformed man.

Aimee looked at her and smiled. 'You're beautiful.'

'And in love. That always enhances one's looks,' Odile said. 'This should help my memory.' She laid the heavy album on her dining table and motioned to Aimee. 'A ride down memory lane. Can you slip the phonograph on?'

Reluctantly, Aimee went and stood over an old record player that played 78s. She cranked it several times, then laid the needle on the scratched black vinyl. Strains of Glenn Miller and his forties big band filled the room. Odile Redonnet's eyes glazed and she smiled.

'I left the lycee in '44 to work in a glass factory,' she said, turning the floppy pages.

'Are there any class photos?'

'Can't say we were so sophisticated then,' Odile said, searching the tired pages. She hummed along with the scratchy clarinet solo. 'This is the closest thing to a class picture,' she said, pulling some gummed photos apart.

Aimee almost spilled her hot tea. It was the same photo she'd deciphered from the encrypted disk Soli Hecht had given her. 'Which one is Laurent?'

Odile Redonnet's gnarled finger pointed to a tall boy standing by Lili in the Square Georges-Cain. 'Laurent de Saux, if that's who you mean. Lived at number 23, two doors down.'

This black-and-white photo showed the cafe with strolling Nazis and the park with students.

'How did you get this?

'Madame Pagnol, our history teacher, took it to illustrate the statue of Caesar Augustus. See.' She pointed out the marble statue in the background. 'We were studying the Roman Empire.'

Of course, Aimee realized now. What had appeared as a random street scene worked as an illustration of the magnificent Caesar Augustus statue. That's why it had been taken.

'Did she give one to each student?'

'Oh, no,' Odile said. 'Only to those who could afford it. After this I left school. Never finished.'

She struggled to contain her excitement—Here was the proof. . .but proof of what?

'Laurent informed on students during the Occupation.'