AL06 - Murder in Montmartre

Then the boy clapped his hand over his mouth.

Two flashes. Did that mean two shots?

“You’re sure?”

He nodded.

Had the boy witnessed the murder?

“Back to school, children,” the teacher said, gathering the group. “Paul, allez-y! Thank Monsieur Toulouse-Lautrec for his help. I’m sure you gathered a lot of information for your report.”

The boy stiffened. Rene saw the fear in his eyes. What should he do? He slipped a Toulouse-Lautrec guide into Paul’s hand and grinned at the teacher.

A look of relief flooded Paul’s pale face. Rene waved goodbye, pulled out his phone, and called Aimee.

“I found a witness,” he said.

“Good job!” she said. “So you did some poking around.”

Rene heard pride in her voice. He’d never tell her about this foolish costume.

“Can you get this person to come forward and testify?” Aimee asked.

Rene hesitated. “There’s a catch. Paul’s maybe nine years old. He lives across from the murder site. He said he saw two flashes on the roof.”

“Two, you’re sure?”

“That’s what he said. He was with a school group. He’s doing a report on Toulouse-Lautrec.”

Pause.

“You mean you . . .” Pause.

Why had he admitted that?

“Bet he could use some homework help,” she said.

“But, Aimee—”

“I’m sure you can handle it, Rene. Talk to his mother. I’ve got other fish to fry at the Prefecture.”

RENE SPENT the next freezing hour shifting from foot to foot on the cobblestones, keeping watch on the building and avoiding the tourists. The only people he saw enter the building were a team from EDF, Electricite de France, two men who spent ten minutes inside and then left.

As dusk fell, shading the buildings, Rene trudged up the long staircase of Paul’s house armed with more warm pastries. Up six flights of worn wooden steps, the smells of fried onions and garlic permeating the stairwell. It was an old building with a WC shared by two floors on alternate landings.

His hip ached and he wished for an elevator, even one like the wire-framed, grunting affair at their office. He’d speak with Paul’s mother first; he’d have to overcome Paul’s fear in order to coax him to elaborate on what he’d seen.

Rene knocked on the first door. No answer. The second was answered by a toothless old man bundled in sweaters.

“Try next door,” the old man said, his gums working.

At the third, he heard reggae music. He knocked. The music lowered and the door scraped open. He saw a dark, low-ceilinged room with beaded curtains partitioning off a galley kitchen.

“Oui?” said Paul, halfway behind the door.

“Remember me?” Rene smiled.

Paul’s large brown eyes blinked. “Maman’s sleeping.”

Too bad, he would have liked to speak with her.

Rene handed Paul the bag of pastries. “I can’t stay long but I forgot to tell you about my accident and why I painted horses. See?” Rene pulled out the book he’d bought at a shop on Place des Abbesses. He flipped open to the page of Toulouse-Lautrec’s early sketches.

“Beautiful . . . they look like they’re breathing.”

Rene agreed. The rounded flanks and flared nostrils brought the racehorses to life.

“Let’s look at it on the roof.”

Paul shook his head. “Why?”

“Didn’t you say it was easy to go there?”

Reluctance gave way to a mischievous look in his eyes. He opened the door wider. “Shhh!” Bottles clinked behind him, one crashed to the floor.

“Let’s go,” Rene said.

Rene followed Paul to the skylight at the end of the hall, helped him take down the ladder, and together they steadied it.

“After you,” Rene said, groaning inwardly.

Paul climbed the ladder, popped open the skylight. “The lock’s simple, I can open it myself. The concierge showed me how.”

A lonely boy with a roof for a playground? The darkening view, an expanse of jagged rooftops framing the Paris skyline, made the aching climb worth it. He dealt with heights every day, knew how to balance the awkwardness of his ill-proportioned body and, when climbing, to look up, to concentrate on his goal. He followed a nimble Paul, climbing the rusted iron rungs protruding from the cement wall.

Rene trained his binoculars, hanging from a strap around his neck, on the scaffolding. He took a Paris Match magazine from his pocket, set it on the damp ledge, and sat.

“My teacher says you’re an actor,” Paul said. “You act like Monsieur Toulouse-Lautrec so we can understand his work.”

“She’s right.” Rene nodded. “I was going to tell you.”

“Tell me about the horses,” Paul said.

And Rene told him how Toulouse-Lautrec had fallen from a horse. Due to genetic weakness resulting from family intermarriages, his bones had been too weak to knit together. “His father, the comte, had stables of racing horses, heavy-footed Clydesdales for work, and even ponies for visiting children. All that summer after the accident, Toulouse-Lautrec sat in a special wicker wheelchair and drew them. They were his friends. His only friends.”

Rene opened the book, and, together, using his pen flashlight, they leafed through the pages.

“Why don’t you try, Paul?”

Rene passed him a tin of pastel chalks and a sketchpad.

“Horses?”

“Draw the roofline, that’s what’s familiar, non? You could start with the gray . . . try the blue one to shade in the building, smudge it . . . see?”

Rene wiped his thumb across the line. “Give it depth, suggest . . .”

“Can I use that in the report for my teacher?”

“Why not? And the drawing, too. She’d like that. It shows you are resourceful.”

Paul nodded, his hands busy. Ten cold minutes later, he looked up. “You mean like this?”

Rene looked. The bold gray lines depicting the building were quite skillful. “You’re a born artist, Paul. Good job!”

A wide smile split Paul’s face. Rene realized it was the first time he’d seen the boy’s teeth. Didn’t his mother ever praise him?

“I see this every day, like Toulouse-Lautrec saw his horses every day.”

Rene grinned. “Of course, draw what you know. But you must work at it. He did. Every day.”

Paul nodded.

And then Rene noticed a half-open plastic bag in which model airplanes were just visible. Expensive ones.

“They’re mine,” Paul said, following his gaze.

“Eh, why do you keep them up here?”

“My friend gave them to me!” Paul’s lip quivered.

Rene doubted that. “Look, it’s not my business—”

“None of your business. You’re wrong,” Paul interrupted.

“Correct, none of my business. I once stole car magazines. The shop owner caught me. Told me if I ever did that again he’d take me to the Commissariat.” Rene shifted on the tiled roof. “I know you didn’t