AL07 - Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

Krzysztof’s room and noticed in Vavin’s office. She’d better check this out.

Her footsteps echoed in the damp tunnel-like passage that led to a seventeenth-century courtyard like that of her own building. The theatre proper and rehearsal studios were upstairs. She climbed a switchback series of neo- Gothic wood-railed steps and heard a voice coming through a window that opened onto the courtyard. The words themselves were in old formal French. I find that everything goes wrong in our world; that nobody knows his duty, what he’s doing, or what he ought to be doing, and that outside of mealtimes . . . the rest of the day is spent in useless quarrels. . . . It’s one unending warfare.

She recognized lines from Voltaire’s Candide. Valid then and today.

Loath to interrupt the rehearsal, the first drops of rain pattering in the vacant courtyard, and with nowhere else to stand but the dank hallway, she entered the small theatre. Red crushed-velvet curtains were halfway drawn. The brightly lit stage was bare except for a throne-like wooden chair and a woman mopping the scuffed black- painted floor planks, humming, her bucket beside her.

“Madame, are any of the crew about?”

The woman looked up, squinting into the darkness beyond the stage lights. She pointed. “Rehearsal.”

“Merci, I’ll wait.” Aimee pulled up a corner of the dust sheet that covered a seat, glad to take a rest, even in the cramped velvet chaise designed in the nineteenth century for a less statuesque person. She put her feet up, rubbed her calves. Checked her voice mail. No message from Vavin or Rene.

The woman finished mopping and left. Aimee tried Vavin again. No answer. She let the cell phone ring.

In the middle of a yawn, she heard a digitized ring-tone version of “Frere Jacques” from the stage. Then an ear-piercing scream made her sit up. It was followed by another, higher pitched.

She ran down the aisle and up the side steps leading backstage. The white-faced cleaning woman leaned, heaving, against an electrician’s stage-light panel.

“Are you hurt?”

A salvo of Portuguese erupted from the woman’s mouth. She crossed herself. “Maria Madonna” was all Aimee could make out as the shaking woman pointed to the partly open door of a broom closet.

A stout security guard arrived, red faced and panting. The ring tone was repeated. It was closer now.

“Not another mouse! Xaviera, I told you last time, old buildings have them,” said the guard. Catching Aimee’s glance, he rolled his eyes. “Answer your phone, Xaviera!”

The cleaning woman’s hands were trembling, her eyes wide with terror.

“Non . . . telefono de mi . . . non ai . . . non telefon.”

No phone, that much Aimee understood. She stepped over the fallen mop and opened the broom-closet door wider. The annoying ring tone was repeated.

Vavin’s trouser-clad legs sprawled. His head was turned away and slumped onto his shoulder. The brooms and a tin pail were overturned next to him inside the closet.

“Monsieur Vavin?” she said. She knelt and gripped his shoulders. “Can you hear me?”

His body slid forward, limp. He was not conscious. She took his head in her hands, turned it to face her. His eyes stared up at her, lifeless. Then she saw the clotted blood on his temple and glimpsed the cell phone in his hand. No wonder he hadn’t answered it.

“Nom de Dieu!” the guard gasped, knocking over a bucket and spilling ammoniated suds over the wooden floor.

“Quick! Get help.” Aimee grabbed the guard’s arm and they laid Vavin flat on the suds-soaked planks.

Xaviera backed away, crossing herself.

Vavin’s phone tumbled to the floor. Aimee hit a button to stop the ringing and thrust the phone at Xaviera. ”Call 17 . . . call the ambulance!”

Vavin’s eyes seemed to stare at her. Watching her, he was watching her. The guard cleared Vavin’s mouth of spittle, began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Aimee tried to steady herself. Her fingers on Vavin’s wrist confirmed that he was not even cold. His fists were clenched.

“How long has he been here? Did you see him come in?”

Xaviera shook her head. “I non . . . non see him.”

No pulse. Lifeless.

Aimee looked around the barren backstage; there was no place for the attacker to hide. She didn’t remember seeing anyone else in the theatre.

The guard said, “He’s gone,” and reached for his walkie-talkie.

She’d been too late. She wondered what he’d wanted to tell her. He’d left the message an hour and a half ago. Why had he asked her to meet him at the antique store?

To see Nelie? But a few weeks had passed since Nelie had accompanied Vavin there.

She heard the static of the guard’s walkie-talkie. Her eye rested on the photo of a child amid the soaked clutter spilling from Vavin’s briefcase onto the floor. A happy little girl sitting on a rocking horse.

The guard got to his feet.

Something glinted among the broom bristles. A key ring. One she remembered Vavin pocketing in his office. Had the killer, searching through Vavin’s briefcase, missed it? Or had Vavin tried to hide the keys? She had to deflect the guard’s attention.

“Did you check in the wings?” she asked him.

As he turned, she reached down and clutched the keys, dropped them into her pocket, and stood. She backed into the velvet curtain, then made for the stage stairs.

“Attendez, you know him, don’t you?” the guard asked.

He was sharp, just her luck.

“Hold on,” he called out.

And wait for the flics and a trip to the Commissariat to give a statement that would reveal her connection to Vavin? Not on her life. She had to work fast, use her sysadmin access, and read his e-mail before the firm turned it over to the police. She wanted to search his office before whoever did this got there first.

He’d wanted to tell her something. And was murdered before he could.

More crackling sounds came from the walkie-talkie. The guard spoke into it.

The implications spiraled, spinning in her head. Vavin’s knowledge of Nelie, his desperation concerning a co- worker’s e-mail, and the meeting, the fact that he was her boss . . . she’d mull that over later. Right now she had to leave.

“I’ll show them the way,” she said, edging down the steps.

“The location’s been radioed in. What’s your name?”

But she was already striding up the aisle. “Non, it will be quicker if I guide them.”

“Wait,” he barked.

Xaviera’s sobbing and the guard’s shouts telling her to stop echoed in the empty theatre.

SHE RAN DOWN THE stairs, colliding with a man in a black turtleneck sweater who held a folded-back script. Irritation knit his brows.

“Pardon me.”

The hall was full of people; conversations buzzed all around her.

“Point me to the restroom, please?” she asked him.

“Down there.”

She rushed past him down the stairs to the street level, realizing she smelled of ammonia. The door to the ladies’ room was locked. The mens’ room door, too.

A siren wailed from down the passageway. Morbier would give short shrift to her deepening suspicions. And so far, that’s all she had.

Vavin . . . his eyes staring up at her. Why kill him?

She had to find a way out and get to his office fast.

Several doors lay ahead. She tried one. Locked. And the next.