Murder in Belleville

Wednesday Morning

AIMEE PAUSED AT THE entrance of 34 rue Sainte Marthe. KROK spelled out in rainbow colors spread across the door. A middle-aged man wearing an undershirt answered, a frosted white cockatiel perched on his shoulder. The man’s stomach protruded over his stained pants, and he looked vaguely uncomfortable.

“Eh, sorry about the noise,” he said quickly. “I’ll keep her quiet. She’s a bit agitated, that’s all.”

“Monsieur Jules Denet?” Aimee asked. She kept the disappointment from her voice. Denet looked the reclusive type. Too bad. His presence would make things difficult. She needed to break into Eugenie’s apartment, which lay behind his back courtyard.

“Oui,” he said, starting to close the door. “Like I said, I’ll keep her quiet.”

“Monsieur Denet, you misunderstand,” she said showing her card. “I’m a private detective. If you’d be so helpful as to answer a few questions about the incident you reported, I’ll be on my way.”

“I thought you were from the tenants’association,” he said. “There’s nothing more to say.” He stroked the cockatiel, which pranced back and forth on his shoulder. Dark circles hollowed under Denet’s eyes. He seemed as nervous as his bird.

“Please, spare me just a few minutes of your time,” she said.

“My bird’s upset with all this commotion. I need to calm her down.” He grabbed the door handle to shut the door.

She had to think of something that would make him talk.

“What’s your bird’s name, Monsieur Denet?” she said. “I love cockatiels. People say I have a way with them.”

Denet paused, interested, his hand resting on the handle.

“Blanca,” he said. “Espagnol for white. My wife came from Madrid.”

“Blanca’s a lovely bird, Monsieur Denet,” she said. “Very healthy. Obviously you must take wonderful care of her. Won’t you let me come in? The hall is too drafty for her.”

Denet shrugged, then motioned for her to come inside. He stifled a yawn.

“I’m sorry but I’ve got to nap. I go to work at ten o’clock.”

“Why’s that, Monsieur?”

“So Belleville residents get their croissants, baguettes, et pain levain bright and early at the boulangerie, Mademoiselle.”

No wonder he looked tired. He baked all night.

“Eh bien, Monsieur, one simple question.” She edged toward his entryway. “You keep baker’s hours and sleep during the early evening. How would you see disruption in the courtyard that I believe your dining area looks over?”

“Eh, who did you say you work with?” he asked.

She showed him her ID with the less-than-flattering photo.

“Did you hear the explosion, Monsieur Denet?”

“Those people!” he said. He pointed to what Aimee figured was the Visses’ back window. “The screaming brat woke me up, and the lady with her prayers all night. She makes sure I hear her praying for my soul. My sinful soul.”

Aimee controlled a smile, stuck her arm out, and restrained her squeamishness as the bird’s sharp talons clamped her wrist. As Blanca hopped over to Aimee’s sleeve an admiring look showed on Denet’s face.

“Blanca never goes to anyone else,” he said, his voice wistful. “Only my wife and I.”

“Nightingales nest in the pear tree outside my bedroom window,” she said, slowly stroking Blanca’s feathers. “They let me hand-feed them. Why don’t you show me the view, Monsieur?”

Denet led her inside. His apartment, a capsulelike affair remodeled in the seventies, overlooked rue Jean Moinon’s rear courtyards. Several large windows composed most of the wall of his dining area.

“Too much light for me,” he said, gesturing to the skylights and tall windows. “I can’t sleep in the daytime. My health’s being ruined—working by hot ovens all night. Only Blanca enjoys such a warm place.”

Many Parisians would kill for such a light-filled modern apartment, she thought. Warm and toasty with a working heater, plentiful electrical outlets. Even closets.

Her own He St. Louis apartment had a temperamental electrical system, archaic plumbing, and warped seventeenth-century parquet floors overlooking the Seine.

“Tell me what happened, Monsieur,” she said, as Blanca strutted up and down her arm. The pincerlike talons pierced through Aimee’s blue wool sleeve, the bird’s white feathered crest rippling as Aimee stroked it. Blanca’s pigeon-pink eye reminded her of Anais’s suit after the explosion. The suit clumped with blood. Sylvie/Eugenie’s blood.

“Blanca likes you,” said Denet, sitting down heavily in a tubular chrome chair at a glass-topped table.

Good, Aimee thought, hoping the bird didn’t need to relieve herself soon.

“I’m moving to a hotel if I can’t get some sleep,” Denet said.

“You told the police of a noise or some disturbance?”

“Sorry, Mademoiselle, even if I saw something, I stay away from gossip.”

Jules Denet, sallow-faced and paunchy, seemed out of sync with his furniture. And his apartment. A true denizen ofpopulaire Belleville, the socialist working class, he belonged more in the last century.

Aimee wished she could offer him space in her dark cavernous and drafty apartment. He might feel more at home. Maybe he’d be more cooperative.

“You’d like my flat, Monsieur Denet,” she said. “Dark and quiet, no heat to speak of,” she smiled. “But Blanca might object.”

Denet’s eyes softened. For a moment she thought he would open up. He had to be lonely. Then his eyes hardened.

“Bad business,” he said. His mouth set in a firm line^

“Routine questions, Monsieur, are my job,” she said. “I’m hired to find the truth. Not manufacture a theory like the flics often do to keep their statistics high.”

Denet nodded; he understood. Working-class folks were known for their mistrust of flics.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

C’est dommage, she thought. A crying shame.

And a dead end.

Besides requestioning the devout Madame Visse and Elymani—the custodian with two jobs who wanted no part of her investigation—she didn’t know where to go from here. She tried one last question.

“Too bad, Monsieur,” she said. “I suppose you can’t tell me about Eugenie?”

“Aaah, the red-haired one …” Denet trailed off.

Her heart skipped. Blanca still on her arm, she sat down, containing her excitement. “Eugenie lived across at 20 bis, didn’t she?”

“Eugenie told me too much tele was bad for my eyes,” he said.

Not what Aimee expected to hear, but she agreed.

“How did Eugenie know that, Monsieur?”

“Last summer—you know how it stays light so late in the evenings—I tried everything to block out the light. But I couldn’t sleep. And that baby had colic, crying all the time …”

Aimee leaned forward, resting her arm on the table, Blanca content to be continuously stroked. She listened, nodding encouragement from time to time.

“So I watched the tele, something my late wife and I never did. We always had so much to talk about…” He trailed off and looked down at his large hands. “She passed away a year ago yesterday.”

“Desolee, Monsieur Denet,” she said.

Jules Denet, a lonely widower plagued with insomnia … Aimee wanted him to finish painting this