AL07 - Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

tunnel before they disappeared in the darkness.

“Where do we go?” Rene shone his torchlight beam alongside hers.

“Follow the yellow tubes,” she said. She noticed footprints on the loose grains of the sandstone floor.

“Is this part of the old quarries?” Rene asked.

Who knew what lay ahead? The mushroom cultivation industry had thrived underground in tunnels like this one until the end of the nineteenth century, a fact she remembered from science class. Even today, mushrooms were cultivated on a smaller scale under Montrouge.

“I’d guess this leads to the quarries.” It was hard to believe they were almost under the Seine. They walked for a few minutes. Along the way she noted regular gouges in the sandstone, evidence of pickaxes. They turned a corner and a light bobbed in front of them.

“Ca va?” said a man wearing a jumpsuit and a utility belt. He was dressed in knee-high rubber boots and a miner’s hat with a light on his head. She’d heard of these cataphiles, underground aficionados, who explored the quarries and sewers, held parties in them, and even camped out in them on the weekends.

“Have you seen Helene, an older woman . . .”

“Not me,” he said. He took a sip from a bottle of water and grinned as if he’d run into them on the street. “Try the next cavern. Bonsoir.”

They rounded more corners in the winding tunnel and finally came to an open space. The shuffle of footsteps sounded from deep inside the dark cavern.

“Helene?” Aimee’s voice echoed.

“Jean?” a woman’s voice quavered in reply.

“Helene, it’s Aimee Leduc.”

Aimee shone the penlight. An old woman, her white hair in two long braids, wearing a white wool jacket, stood in the shadows up against the wall. Aimee saw violet eyes and a young face, incongruous with the woman’s white hair and stooped posture. Then the woman shielded her eyes with her hands. A Pharmacie Leclery shopping bag sat on the floor at her feet. “You’re blinding me.”

“Jean’s hurt, Helene. I came instead.”

“Oui, I know. Put out the light. Paulette’s sick. . . .”

Paulette?

“Please, Helene, we can’t see without light. Where’s the baby?”

Aimee heard a hiss as a gas camping lantern went on, flooding the chiseled walls with light. She saw a camping stove, a metal pot, plates, a broken chair, several shopping bags. Not much. In the corner, Helene, crouched near a metal cot. On it lay a young, hollow-cheeked woman covered in brown sheets and green army blankets. Her brown hair was plastered to her face in wet strands.

Aimee recognized Nelie. They’d found her at last. And stood paralyzed with horror as she realized that the sheets Nelie was wrapped in were brown from dried blood.

“The bad man’s coming to hurt Paulette.” Helene’s eyes were wide with panic. She grabbed Aimee’s arm. “Did he hurt you, like the other girl?”

Helene was living in the past; she’d confused Nelie with Paulette. And because of that she’d saved Nelie’s life.

“You mean Orla . . . the girl he threw into the Seine?”

“But I took care of Paulette, I thought I’d done for him.”

So that’s what she’d meant in her words to Jean Caplan.

“I saw him—”

“Helene,” Aimee interrupted, putting her arm around the thin, shaking shoulders. “Where is the baby?”

“Shhh,” Helene said, her eyes fluttering in terror. “The bad man’s here.”

“Nom de Dieu, we have to get this girl to the hospital,” Rene said. “Now!”

Aimee bent over Nelie, whose face was sweaty and pale, and whose breath was labored. She was hemorrhaging by the look of the new bright red stains on the sheets. She must have lost so much blood. She looked like a broken bird.

“Call for the ambulance, Rene.”

She propped Nelie’s head up, took a bottle of water from the floor, and raised it to Nelie’s lips. Helene stood in the shadows by the wall again, wringing her hands.

“After my C-section,” Nelie said, “there were . . . complications. . . . I became so weak that . . . I couldn’t take care of my baby. I had nowhere else to go . . . but I knew . . . you were working with my uncle; he told me. Then one time . . . on your street . . . I saw you. I looked up your telephone number.”

The effort of saying so much exhausted her and she closed her eyes.

So that was it. . . .

Nelie made an effort to go on. “At the march, I . . . couldn’t walk; the incision had beome infected. We hid in your courtyard but I heard noises. Orla ran the other way, to distract him . . . then I . . . I know he’s after me . . . but now I can’t move,” she said, then whispered, “Helene thinks I’m someone else . . . but she has been feeding me and hiding me. Otherwise . . . he would have found me . . . by now.”

“We’ll get you to the hospital.”

Rene had his cell phone out and was muttering at it. “Bad reception,” he said.

“My baby, she’s . . .” Nelie continued haltingly.

“But Helene has her, doesn’t she?” Aimee asked. “Helene?” She called. But there was no Helene, just the sputtering camp light.

Aimee panicked. What had Helene done with Stella? She ran to the mouth of the cavern. “Helene, come back!”

And then she heard noises from the nest of blankets near Nelie.

“What’s that?” Rene said, going over to the blankets.

A gurgle. So familiar an ache of longing filled her. Please, she prayed, let it be her.

Rene leaned over and rose with Stella cradled in his arms. He draped a blanket around her and gave Aimee a meaningful look. “I’ll take Stella to the bookshop and call SAMU from there. Can you manage?”

“Go.” The sooner the better, she thought. “Take the camp light. Go, Rene, hurry.”

Rene took off with Stella in his arms; his footsteps echoed from the tunnel.

Aimee rested her palm on Nelie’s forehead. She was scorching hot, but she shivered in the damp blankets, burning up with fever.

“The doctor told me . . . I have proof,” she said, her eyes bright and wandering. “They framed us. We were running like fugitives . . . but I couldn’t run anymore.”

“I understand. Tell me about the proof in the doctor’s report.”

“Alstrom loaded an old tanker with toxic waste, sent it out to the oil platform . . . and they sank it there. The crew all died . . . drowned . . . except for the captain. He’s dying from uranium poisoning.”

“How do you know this?”

“I found out in La Hague,” Nelie said. Her eyes fluttered. “I saw the captain. He admitted it. And the doctor’s examination notes . . . symptoms of uranium poisoning. That’s proof that Alstrom lied.”

She had to get Nelie out of here right away. But Aimee’s ribs ached and she knew she couldn’t carry Nelie through the quarry tunnels and up the rungs of the ladder to the surface.

“Nelie, I’ll tie you to the blankets and pull you, OK? We have to get you help.” Aimee laid a blanket on the sandstone floor, reached under Nelie, and lifted her onto it, then folded another blanket over her and tied it around her.

“Your uncle found the files, didn’t he?”

Nelie blinked. Then her eyes closed.

“Stay with me, Nelie,” Aimee pleaded.

“Everything . . . the doctor told me,” Nelie said. ”But it’s all . . . report.”

They heard footsteps. “Helene?”

No answer.

And then her penlight went out.