documentary as a child of the Lebensborn. What was the connection here? Was there one?
She downed her espresso and read further. Chateau Menier, outside Paris in Lamorlaye, bordered the only Lebensborn site in France. Aimee hadn’t known one existed. She was shocked. She read further. The article quoted an excerpt from the account of Elise Tardou, identified as a Dadaist poet, about her captivity there in 1944. What Aimee read astounded her.
“There were French women in the chateau, though not many,” Elise was quoted as saying. “Few admit it. The shame. It wasn’t our choice, we were captives. Most of the women were prisoners from Poland, and blue-eyed Hungarians. They had a nursery, ran it like a birthing factory.”
Nineteen forty-four. Zoe looked to be in her fifties. A terrible idea entered Aimee’s mind. She printed out the page. And then located an article on a summer art colony, the haunt of the old Surrealist icons in the sixties. It had been located in Corsica.
Corsica! According to an article she’d read previously, the Tardous had spent their holidays in Corsica every August. For years.
She’d caught Zoe Tardou in a lie. Now she thought she knew why. She had to test her theory.
“MADAME TARDOU! ” she said, knocking on Zoe Tardou’s door.
No answer.
After five minutes of knocking, when her knuckles were sore, the door opened a crack.
“I spoke with you the other day, remember? You had a miserable cold,” Aimee said. “I hope you’re feeling better. I brought you some Ricola cough drops.”
“That’s very kind.”
Aimee put the cough-drop box into Zoe’s hands, noticed the blond-gray hair pulled into a bun, her slim figure under the wool sweater. The striking aqua blue eyes.
“May I come in?”
“I answered your questions,” Madame Tardou said. “I won’t go to the police station.”
Again, that fear of the outside. Agoraphobia?
Aimee put her boot into the doorway. “I just need to clarify a detail, to remove it from the inquiry. That’s all.”
Hesitantly, Zoe opened the door wider. “You’re persistent, Mademoiselle,” she said, “but I have nothing more to say.”
“Please, this won’t take any time at all. You’ll see.” Aimee edged past her and kept walking toward the large room filled with Deco furniture. The room with black blankets hanging over the windows. She felt in her bag for her hairbrush.
Zoe Tardou, reading glasses perched on her chapped nose, stood with a red pencil in her hand. “I’m copyediting proofs on my treatise, you see. I can spare you only a moment.”
Aimee paused to look at the photos on the grand piano. Studied them.
“You spent summers in Corsica, Madame Tardou, didn’t you?”
“Is that a crime?”
“Corsica, L’Ile de Beaute. Yet you told me you summered in Italy.”
“We went to Italy, too.”
Aimee nodded. “Your stepfather, Max Tardou, established an art colony in Bonifacio where he tried to resurrect Surrealism. You went there for years while you were growing up.”
Aimee ran her palm over the smooth blond wood case of the piano. She pointed to a photo. A black-and- white scene of sunbathers with an awninged cafe in the background.
“Cafe Bonifacio. It’s still there.”
“What does this have to do with anything?”
“You understand Corsican. And you speak it, don’t you?”
Zoe Tardou’s fingers twisted the red pencil back and forth.
“I was only a child.”
“Even as a teenager you must have summered in Corsica,” Aimee said. “You may even have attended a Corsican school.”
“Yes, I did. How does that matter?”
Aimee moved closer to the woman.
The pencil snapped between Zoe’s fingers.
“The voices you heard from the roof spoke Corsican, didn’t they? You understood them, recognized the names of the planets and constellations.”
Fear shone in those compelling blue eyes. She pushed the glasses up on her nose with trembling fingers.
“Maybe . . . yes . . . I’m not sure.”
“Think. They spoke Corsican. Exactly what did they say?”
Zoe covered her glasses with her hands, then looked up and nodded. “Yes. But it had been so long ago since I heard that language. From another lifetime.”
“Why couldn’t you tell me?” Aimee said, controlling her excitement.
“It was so strange to hear Corsican, I thought I was dreaming, I was unsure—”
“You looked out, pretending to be watering your geraniums,” Aimee interrupted. “That’s natural. You understood what they said. It was quiet, as the storm hadn’t erupted yet.”
Aimee paused. Waited. “It’s all right, we’re telling the truth now,” Aimee said, her tone soothing, urging. “Accounting for all the details, clearing this up, eh? Most investigative work depends on the tedious details, checking and rechecking.”
Zoe watched her. Unmoving. An aroma of
Aimee sighed. “Nothing glamorous in this, believe me.” She tried for a matter-of-fact voice. “Did you hear the glass break in the skylight?”
Zoe shook her head.
“Yet you recognized the men on the roof.”
“But I—” She covered her mouth with her hands, again that little-girl manner, as if she had been caught in a fault.
“—got scared?” Aimee finished for her.
Zoe Tardou nodded.
“Who did you recognize?”
“No trouble, I can’t have trouble,” Zoe said, putting her hands up like a shield and stepping back. “I can’t get involved. Now, I’ve got something cooking on the stove. . . .”
The smell of thyme was stronger now.
“All I need is a name.” Aimee smiled and reached for a notepad in her leather backpack.
“I don’t know his name. The one I recognized—anyway, it doesn’t mean he shot anyone.”
“Of course not, you’re right. But he can help us find the one who did, don’t you see? We need your help.”
Zoe Tardou hesitated.
“Does he live here?”
“I’ve seen him on the stairs, but I don’t know him.”
“What does he look like?”
“He had bleached hair the last I saw him. He changes it. I don’t really know, I don’t think he lives here.”
Aimee wrote in her notepad.
“But he could work in the building? Or for someone who does live here?”
Zoe shrugged. “He’s too coarse.”
Was this the
“Coarse? You mean he was a construction worker? One of the men doing the remodeling?”
