Murder in the Sentier

“But everyone gets charged who comes …”

Liane shook her head. “They hold people for months, sometimes years, before arraignment. At least they used to. She was one of those.”

“So they use Fresnes like a jail?”

“Only for the special ones,” Liane said. “That pissed Jutta off.”

“Did she write to Jutta in prison?”

Pause. The bell sounded the second and final warning. Chairs and stools scraped over the concrete floor.

“The letters are in my cell,” Liane said.

“Letters from my mother?”

“Reading material’s scarce here,” Liane said. “Jutta left me her books. She used to keep her letters in them.”

Aimee’s hope rekindled. She tried to keep her voice even. “What do these letters say?”

The cubicle door opened.

“Barolet! Visiting time’s over,” said the guard.

“Help me to keep my mother’s bones beside my father’s,” Liane said. “My lawyer’s in contact with me. I’ll give the letters to him if you get me a receipt from the cemetery for the money they say is overdue.”

“D’accord, here’s my address,” Aimee said, glancing at the paperwork she had been handed. “Matter of fact, I’ll go there now. Your deadline’s passed. But I’ll take care of it and send you the receipt.”

Liane stood up slowly. “Do you know what I’m in for?”

Aimee shook her head. “Whatever you’ve done, you’re being punished for it.”

“You should know,” Liane said. “So you don’t think I withheld anything.”

“As I said …”

“Blowing up banks. Terrorism,” Liane said, her eyes gleaming in the light. “I’m proud of that. No one ever called revolution a dainty proposition. My ideology hasn’t changed. It never will.” She stared at Aimee. “We regard these as acts of war. But I’m not proud about the little children who happened to be too near.”

Aimee shuddered. She wondered if explosives had claimed Liane’s fingers. Or had prison?

Aimee said, “Keep your end of the deal and I’ll keep mine.”

HER THOUGHTS roamed helter-skelter on the way back to Paris. Did Liane have letters to Jutta from her mother? Was her mother alive? During the long journey, Aimee made several calls.

When she reached Montmartre cemetery on rue Rachel, she remembered her schoolteacher saying that corpses had been thrown into an old plaster quarry—which was now the cemetery—during the French Revolution. And how the vineyards of Montmartre had produced an astringent wine with such diuretic properties that a seventeenth-century ditty went: “This is the wine of Montmartre, drink a pint, piss a quart.”

The grave digger she finally located tapped his shovel. “The old bird was heavy,” he said. “That’s for sure.”

Aimee groaned inwardly. She’d have to give him a big tip.

He looked pointedly at his watch, sighed, then said, “It’s too late to put her back but you can see her for yourself.”

They wound over the gravel and dirt, past the graves of Zola and Degas. Midway, the grave digger paused and wiped his brow. “Over there.”

The marble mausoleum’s gate hung open. Dead flies, fossilized bees, and dusty plastic flower bouquets were strewn within.

“Doesn’t the Barolet family own this?”

“Leased for a hundred years,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact.

“Surely, it’s more trouble to dispose …”

“Mademoiselle, there’s a long waiting list of people eager for this space.” For the second time he looked at his watch.

“Her daughter paid,” Aimee said. “Here are the receipts.”

“Then she’s been notified. According to my patron, she wasn’t up to date with payments,” he said. “If she disputes this, let her talk to him on Saturday when he returns.”

A lot of good that would do, with Liane in prison.

“Meanwhile what happens?”

“We take what’s left to the boneyard.”

“Boneyard!”

The grave digger shrugged. “That’s standard procedure.” His blue overalls were stained and muddy.

What if this man was lying, trying to make more money.

“Let me see the coffin.”

He gestured to the right. “Over there, behind Francois Truffaut.”

Aimee walked behind the mausoleum. She saw two coffins, one newer and with tarnished brass handles, the other wooden and water-stained.

“Which one?”

“The fancy model,” he said. “Think of this like an eviction, I tell people.”

“Evicting the dead?”

“What do you want me to do, eh?” he sneered. “Someday you’ll be here too, Mademoiselle high and mighty!”

Burn me first, she almost said. Scatter my ashes from my balcony over the Seine, before a dirty old coot like you can rattle my bones.

Of course it all came down to money.

“How much?”

“Take that up with administration,” he said. “All I do is shovel up the leftovers and leave them for the bone men.”

Aimee hoped he didn’t see her shudder.

The cemetery office was closed. Shadows lengthened over the stone houses of the dead.

“Can’t you put her inside the mausoleum until I straighten this out?” she said, placing a hundred francs in his palm.

He rubbed his arms. “She’s heavy, that one!”

“I’ll make it worth your while,” she said, hating to have to smile and to try to coax the favor from him.

In answer, he wheeled a hydraulic lift from a nearby shed. She stared at the coffin, faded sepia images of her mother crowding her mind. Was her mother crumbling in one of these somewhere?

“If there’s no payment in three days, she’s out. Permanently,” he said. “I don’t do this twice.” The grave digger pumped the lift and pushed the coffin toward the mausoleum.

Aimee watched him. She stood perspiring in the heat, and he hadn’t even broken a sweat. “I thought you said she was heavy.”

“Mais she was!”

“Don’t tell me she lost weight since you moved her.”

He leered. “The other day she was heavy … you think I’m lying?”

“But, look, aren’t coffins supposed to be sealed?”

She pointed to the cracked white chips along the coffin lid ledge.

“I didn’t do that.”

“Why so defensive all of a sudden?”

“Freaks,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Satan worshippers.” He looked over his shoulder, lowered his voice. “We don’t tell the families but cults break in here some nights. I find candles melted on the stones, even a dead chicken once!”

“Do they rob the coffins?”

He wouldn’t meet her eye, but he swiped his dirty finger across his lips. She took it to mean that he wouldn’t say.

“Open it,” she said. “I’m not paying otherwise and I’ll make a big stink with your boss.”