Murder in the Sentier

and the bus exhaust.

Inside the tall-ceilinged apartment, once an industrial workshop she figured, stood a few rattan cafe-style chairs. Apart from the formal dining room, with its long table, the place had few furnishings. In the front of the atelier were huge period windows encased in dark green iron, overlooking the rooftops across the narrow street.

Christian Figeac’s face was a mask, yet anxiety emanated from him.

“Something wrong?” Aimee asked.

He tore out of the room and rushed down the hallway.

Aimee followed.

“Idrissa, Idrissa, I’m back,” he shouted.

By the time she’d caught up with him, he was leaning against the wall of the dark-timbered kitchen.

“Weren’t you going to show me …”

“She’s gone,” he interrupted.

“Who’s gone?” Aimee asked, looking around. A blue iron La Cornue stove filled a third of the kitchen.

“My girlfriend, Idrissa. Idrissa Diaffa,” he said. “Her bags, her things, her prints gone from the walls.”

Piles of dishes, encrusted with dried food, filled the porcelain sink. A pot of turmeric-peanutty-smelling stew sat on the cook-top.

“I’m sorry, but we really need to continue talking about your father’s work.”

“After I sold the apartment, we were going to invest in Gouee, that island in Senegal,” he said, his tone wistful. “She’s from there.”

Then he sniffled and his head drooped. Like a beaten dog, Aimee thought. He wiped his runny nose with his jacket sleeve.

“Anyway, I must get rid of this museum,” Christian Figeac said. “Sell it.”

He seemed to gather himself together. Had this happened before, she wondered, or was he used to being abandoned? Aimee noticed a dark wood-paneled room off to the right. The room was sealed—protected from trespassers—with glass. Women’s clothes were strewn on the bed, leopard jumpsuits and fringed vests. He followed her gaze.

“That was my mother’s room. Le Palais de Nostalgie, I call it, like a shrine. Papa wouldn’t let it be touched.”

The ghoul factor, she thought. Someone would want this apartment just for that … not to mention the location.

She noticed the scuffed woodwork and cobwebbed corners.

“Do you live here?”

“Most of the time,” he said, scratching his arm. He kept his jacket on in the musty apartment. “But I haven’t been back since I heard the typewriter.”

“The typewriter?”

“Papa had a typewriter.”

What was this about? He knew his father was dead. It was hot and sticky and she felt cranky.

“Why don’t you show me your father’s room, tell me about his work,” she said, keeping her voice level.

“There’s nothing to see,” he said. “Take my word for it.”

Christian seemed intent on being contradictory. Something sad clung to him, like a shroud.

“Sorry, all this must be difficult,” she said. “And I understand it’s painful but I can’t help if you don’t let me see it.”

“The room hasn’t been cleaned.” He stood, hesitant.

“No problem.” Even better, but she didn’t say it.

In the front hallway, Christian Figeac took a ring of old-fashioned keys from a hook. He tried several before one grated in the lock, which opened with a loud click that echoed in the parquet-floored entrance.

The twenty-foot double doors swung back to reveal a rectangular breakfast room, spacious and light due to floor-to-ceiling windows.

“Doesn’t look used much.”

“I haven’t stepped inside since …” He paused. “The cleaners should be here soon.”

“Maybe your girlfriend …”

“Never,” he said. “She didn’t like rooms where spirits linger.”

“Lingering spirits?”

“That’s why I curse him,” Christian Figeac said. His voice had slowed. “We told the newspapers Papa took his life in bed. But he shot himself here.” He pointed to the long panel of a desk, in the middle of the room. Chocolate- looking smudges covered the wallpaper behind the chair.

Poor Christian Figeac. Why would a father let his son discover that?

“Right at his desk,” he said. “Couldn’t be bothered to do it in the park. Left his brains on the wall for me to find.”

Like Jutta Hald.

“Did he leave a suicide note?

“Just ‘Goodbye’ and a Mallarme poem on the typewriter. One my mother loved.”

Every poem has an unwritten line. In this case, Aimee thought, a tragic one.

She thought again of Jutta Hald.

“Sorry to ask, but was he holding the gun?” It would have had to be a large caliber for a bullet to cause splatter like that.

“I think so … no, it had fallen onto the floor.”

“It fell on the floor?” she said. Something didn’t add up.

“The room was dark, Papa was slumped over.”

Had shock confused Christian Figeac?

“Over his desk?”

Christian Figeac’s face contorted. “Maybe it fell when I tried to pull him up.”

The desk and chair were in the middle of the room, the wall a few feet away. “Was it a handgun?”

He nodded, adding, “Papa drank, a lot. We wiped up most of the whiskey.”

And the evidence of foul play if any had existed.

“Were the flics suspicious?”

“They weren’t involved. It was a suicide. Papa always said true writers die for their art.”

“How’s that?”

“Moliere, for example—he died in his chair onstage at the Comedie-Francaise.”

She walked past the desk. “Where was the manuscript he was working on and his research notes?”

Figeac’s eyes welled with tears. “Idrissa said there were things in boxes. I don’t know.”

He sniffled, rubbing his dirty sleeve across his eyes.

Aimee bent, then stopped. Footprints trailed across the dust.

Either someone had walked backward in his own footsteps, or he had floated up to the ceiling. She wasn’t so certain it hadn’t been the latter. Stale dead air filled the space. The calendar on the wall was opened to July….

“Where’s the gun now?” she asked.

Christian Figeac looked stricken, as if his memory had blanked. “So much happened at once …” he trailed off.

“What kind of gun was it?”

“Papa’s prized possession was a fancy-handled one, a gift from Hemingway, his favorite author. They drank in the Ritz bar after the war. He kept it over there.”

Aimee looked. A plaque beneath empty glass read .25-CALIBER DESIGNED BY TOCHER FOR HEMINGWAY. The outline where a small pistol had rested was visible against the yellowed background.

“The autopsy results?”

“No flics, no autopsy. Our family’s tired of public circuses.”

She knew, in cases of suicide, families had the right to refuse an autopsy and insist on immediate burial. The police would be happy to declare it a suicide if the corpse was that of an old geezer who drank. Even more so if he’d left a note. Or if he was a depressed writer suffering from writer’s block.