Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

Sunday, Noon

RENÉ LOOKED BOTH ways before stepping into rue Bailleul. The thwack and scrape of the street sweeper’s green plastic-pronged broom provided counterpoint to the shouts of the man unloading crates of wine from a truck into the café’s rear.

All clear. At least his hip was cooperating today. He needed sun, heat, and the last installment for his Citroën. What he had was the DST on Aimée’s tail, the uneasy feeling Meizi was keeping things from him, and a crazy errand in a church.

He shut the Citroën’s door, keyed the ignition, and blasted the heater. His leather-upholstered seats heated up within a minute. One out of three wasn’t bad. He shifted into first and turned right into rue de l’Arbre-Sec.

“STAND HERE, MONSIEUR.” The young, black-frocked priest gestured René toward Chapelle Saint-Sauveur, the ninth of the twenty-seven side chapels. “Few visit our petit jewel. Or ask about it.” The priest, who had sideburns, let out an appreciative sigh. “Beautiful, non?”

From his vantage point, all René could see was a dance of silver-white light shivering on the worn stone-slab floor.

“Look higher in the apse, Monsieur, past the left chancel columns.”

Not for the first time, René cursed his short legs. He leaned back, staring upward at the vaulted Gothic arcs of stone. He saw only soaring light framed and half blocked by the damned columns.

Rows of votive candles flickered in this cold south-wall chapel. The musky drafts of incense, fading floral scents from sprays of drooping winter lilies—all smells he remembered from childhood. And his mother’s whispered novenas in the chapel of the count’s château, where she prayed his legs would grow.

René gestured to the prayer kneeler. “Do you mind if I try a better look, Monsieur le curé?”

“Pas du tout, Monsieur. Please call me Père André, we’re modern these days.”

René untied the laces of his handmade Lobb shoes. Using the prayer kneeler’s straw seat for a step, he climbed onto the ledge of the recessed niche below a statue of Mary. He balanced on the ledge below her blue robe and craned his neck.

He saw a cluster of grisaille glass panels. But crowning it was a blossom-like luminescence of white emanating from a star shape high in the church nave. An intense shimmering.

“All of God’s children should gaze on this,” said the priest. “The unwavering radiance speaks of strength. It lifts the soul.”

René wondered why this small, glittering star shone unlike the other panels.

The priest crossed himself and waved at a few teenagers near the baptismal font. One held a guitar. “Time for our folk music practice,” he said. “We strive to involve our young community. We sing and celebrate the early Sunday Mass. You should come.”

Priests never changed. Always recruiting a new flock.

“Do you know the window’s history, Père André?” Saying that felt foreign to him.

“I’m new to the parish. We’ve run out of guides.” He paused. “Ask Evangeline.”

The priest gestured toward a room labeled Saint Nicolas des Champs Altar Society and joined his teenagers.

Evangeline, a lace mantilla over her gray pageboy coif, wore a chic purple wool suit. René found her reaching on tiptoes into the altar linen cabinet. Only a head taller than René, she was short-statured like others of the generation that grew up during the war. She gave him a lopsided smile. “I’d ask for your help, mais alors, you’d have the same problem.”

René pulled a wooden chair to the cabinet, undid his laces again, and climbed on the chair. “Pas de problème.” She handed him the ironed altar linens. One by one he organized them in the old bleach-scented cabinet. “I’ll have to ask for something in return, you know,” he said, wishing the room had heat.

“Name your price,” Evangeline said.

“Know the history of the star in the stained-glass window?”

Evangeline handed René another stack of linen. “Early fourteenth century. An anomaly, considering the surrounding sixteenth-century chapel. The records from that time … phfft, gone.” She shrugged. “We know the church’s foundations date from the eleventh century, then a hodgepodge of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and the bell tower later. Why?”

“I’m researching fourteenth-century glassmaking guilds.” That much was true. “That star window is so different from everything around it.…”

“Striking, that sparkle. So different, like you say. Not like any other glass I’ve seen. Yet you’re asking the wrong person. Who would know now?”

“Have you heard any legends or stories about this window?”

She paused in thought. “Funny, someone else asked me that.”

Had Pascal been searching for the window’s secret? René turned and looked down at her. “Reddish hair, glasses?”

“Your associate?”

Saddened, René gave a brief nod. “But what did you tell him?”

“The same as you.” Her expression became bashful. “It’s nothing, but after vespers at night, when I change the altar linens, well …”

“Go on, Evangeline,” he said.

“The light streaming from the star,” she said. “It’s almost as if the star grabs the streetlight from outside. Somehow transfuses, brightens, or magnifies it, sending a sheer white light beam. That’s not explaining it well. But there’s a radiance, a clearness. Power.” She gave another lopsided smile. “Silly, eh?”

René stepped down from the chair. Sat and tied his shoes, his mind working. “I think I know what you mean. Merci.”

THE WORDS PLAYED in René’s mind: grabs, transfuses, magnifies. Power. Pascal had found part of the formula for this special glass hidden in the museum’s archives and … what? Tried to replicate it? And couldn’t?

The question rearing up in his mind was why a fourteenth-century document had been hidden in a museum devoted to the pre- and post-industrial revolution. Pascal must have stumbled across the stained-glass window formula either miscataloged or hidden centuries ago in the Archives Nationales, stored during the war. And as Aimée had intimated, found its relevance today.

René gunned down rue Saint-Martin heading toward the Archives Nationales. The archives held a place to work in peace and find answers.