Murder in the Bastille

Cavour rubbed his brow with the back of his hand, “Sorry, I drift in and out of sleep, I can’t remember.”

Did he have some medical condition?

“Lived here long, Monsieur Cavour?”

“Long? I was born upstairs. But the quartier has changed. The conniving developers want to take over.”

“More and more,” said Rene, nodding in sympathy.

The telephone rang. No one answered and Cavour looked flustered, as he ignored it.

“Here’s my card. In case you think of something that might help,” Rene said. On his way out, he saw a broom and rusted dust pan by a full garbage bin. Might Cavour have found something of Aimee’s?

“Did you sweep this morning?”

“As always. The shop, the courtyard. Some of these people don’t care if the quartier’s run down, no pride.”

He stood, Rene thought, like a stubborn island in sea of slick renovation.

In Cavour’s waste bin, topped off by sawdust and Malabar candy wrappers, Rene saw a crumpled sheet of music, the black notes faded on the yellowed page.

“Look at what they leave in the passage, even in my courtyard,” he said, following Rene’s gaze. “That’s not the half of it. Condoms. Once a broken guitar.”

And Rene heard voices, a chorus. Then a lone soprano. Their timbre softened by the stone. Timeless.

“Where’s that coming from?” Rene asked.

“Opera rehearsal,” said Cavour. “We’re behind the Opera, you know. A chorus from Le Barbier de Seville, would be my guess.”

Cavour was an interesting mix, Rene thought. A blue collar craftsman with a knowledge of opera who worked on antique furniture. He liked Cavour, and yet, without knowing why, he felt uneasy about him.

As he walked down the passage, he realized this detective business was harder than he’d imagined. He’d gotten no real information from Cavour. Cavour hadn’t answered his questions. Would Cavour have told him if he had seen anything? He wished he had Aimee’s knack for getting information out of people.

And then Rene realized he’d forgotten to pack all of Aimee’s things. The cell phone.

Wednesday Afternoon

MATHIEU CAVOUR LATCHED THE door behind the dwarf. His hands shook. Shook so much he dropped the old-fashioned key and had to get on his knees to find it between the stones. The pressure, the hiding, running a business . . . he couldn’t take it.

And now this.

His anxiety of last night came back.

He’d awakened in his chair in the atelier, startled by a noise, and shot bolt upright. Sweat had dripped down his shoulder blades. Slanted moonlight had made patterned rectangles on the courtyard’s uneven cobbles.

Then he had heard the scrape of the gate, like before. Fine, he’d get the furniture piece ready. Ignore the guilt he felt. The less he knew or thought about it, the better.

Then the sounds of a struggle had come from the passage, like in his nightmares. The last time he’d heard that sound the serial killer, the Beast of Bastille, had claimed another victim. What should he do? He couldn’t very well call the flics and risk exposure.

His restoration work paid the bills and kept the timbered roof over the shop. Barely. Never mind where the pieces of furniture came from or who they’d once belonged to.

When would his contact come? He’d left the metal gate open . . . but one never knew. He paused near the half-open window, his undershirt damp. The struggle had come from the small, paved inner courtyard.

He had held his breath. His hand had quivered as he tugged the limp lace curtain. He had taken a deep breath and parted the lace.

In the courtyard, a man stood in his bathrobe rocking a crying infant. Mathieu had heard cooing as the man soothed the bundle in his arms under the honeysuckle. So the screams had wakened the baby, too.

It must have been teenagers fighting, he told himself. Those sulky ones who hung around the pizza place, an upholsterer’s before the old boss died and Mirador Development had snapped up the building.

He had wanted to go down and check the cave. Make sure the piece was safe. But the old stairs creaked and the doors were rusty and stiff. The years had taken their toll. His knees had protested. And the shadowy cobwebbed basement corners, damp stone and crumbling brickwork, were things he avoided even on sunny, warm days.

He had found a Lizst piano concerto on the transistor radio on his work table. Had kept the volume low, hoping he’d fall asleep. But his eyes had stayed glued to the window until long after the baby’s cries quieted and a rosy dawn had painted the jagged Bastille rooftops.

How would telling the dwarf about it help the woman now?

Mathieu should have known, he realized later, that it was a warning. A foretaste of the next day. When the past opened like a fresh wound.

Wednesday

“BONJOUR, ” SAID A VOICE from the shop interior.

In the workshop, Mathieu paused, stretching the band of ash to fit in the grooved notch. He lifted his foot from the foot pedal, halting the rotor blade saw. Sawdust and the smell of freshly sawed wood filled the dusty space.

“Suzanne . . . Suzanne, someone’s in front,” he said, as the metal saw teeth ground to a stop.

But no answering footsteps came from his assistant’s desk.

Where was that girl? She’d gone on an errand more than an hour ago.

“A moment please, and someone will help you,” he called out. He dabbed glue mixed with wood resin in the crack, stretched the wood taut, and slid it gently in place. After wiping off the excess, he sanded the rough edge until no distinction could be felt, as though it were one piece with the wood.

“Delivery!” Another voice shouted. “I need a signature.”

Where was Suzanne? He had an art nouveau rosewood desk drawer to repair and the facade of a console to finish filing. . . . He couldn’t do that and run the shop too. He’d gotten behind since his apprentice Yvon had gone on vacation.

“Oui,” he said, wiping his hands on his stained apron and peering over the reading glasses perched on his nose.

“Shall I deliver at the rear as usual, monsieur?”

Mathieu went to the front shop, signed the receipt and stuck it on the counter. He dimmed the chandelier, a remnant from his grandfather’s day, and assumed the customer had left.

But when he looked up he saw a slender older woman, wearing a tailored black suit, her blunt-cut steel grey hair brushing her shoulders. She watched him from behind the marble-topped mahogany commode.

“Exquisite!” she said.

Her fingers traveled over the marquetry wood decorated sides.

Though she spoke French well, he detected a slide in her sibilants. She stood, sleek and stylish, carrying a designer tote bag over her arm.

The delivery truck’s brake squealed in the rear cobbled passage. Over the open skylight, a flurry of blackbirds fluttered from the flowering honeysuckle. “My assistant’s disappeared, but if you’ll look at our catalogue while I deal . . .”

“Please, go ahead.”

By the time Mathieu guided the chestnut planks to the rough pine pallets, Suzanne, breathless and red-faced, appeared.

Mathieu’s lips turned down in disapproval. “Suzanne, clients, deliveries and how I can work when . . .”