Murder in Belleville

Wednesday Morning

AIMÉE PAUSED AT THE entrance of 34 rue Sainte Marthe. KROK spelled out in rainbow colors spread across the door. A middle-aged man wearing an undershirt answered, a frosted white cockatiel perched on his shoulder. The man’s stomach protruded over his stained pants, and he looked vaguely uncomfortable.

“Eh, sorry about the noise,” he said quickly. “I’ll keep her quiet. She’s a bit agitated, that’s all.”

“Monsieur Jules Denet?” Aimée asked. She kept the disappointment from her voice. Denet looked the reclusive type. Too bad. His presence would make things difficult. She needed to break into Eugénie’s apartment, which lay behind his back courtyard.

“Oui,” he said, starting to close the door. “Like I said, I’ll keep her quiet.”

“Monsieur Denet, you misunderstand,” she said showing her card. “I’m a private detective. If you’d be so helpful as to answer a few questions about the incident you reported, I’ll be on my way.”

“I thought you were from the tenants’association,” he said. “There’s nothing more to say.” He stroked the cockatiel, which pranced back and forth on his shoulder. Dark circles hollowed under Denet’s eyes. He seemed as nervous as his bird.

“Please, spare me just a few minutes of your time,” she said.

“My bird’s upset with all this commotion. I need to calm her down.” He grabbed the door handle to shut the door.

She had to think of something that would make him talk.

“What’s your bird’s name, Monsieur Denet?” she said. “I love cockatiels. People say I have a way with them.”

Denet paused, interested, his hand resting on the handle.

“Blanca,” he said. “Espagnol for white. My wife came from Madrid.”

“Blanca’s a lovely bird, Monsieur Denet,” she said. “Very healthy. Obviously you must take wonderful care of her. Won’t you let me come in? The hall is too drafty for her.”

Denet shrugged, then motioned for her to come inside. He stifled a yawn.

“I’m sorry but I’ve got to nap. I go to work at ten o’clock.”

“Why’s that, Monsieur?”

“So Belleville residents get their croissants, baguettes, et pain levain bright and early at the boulangerie, Mademoiselle.”

No wonder he looked tired. He baked all night.

“Eh bien, Monsieur, one simple question.” She edged toward his entryway. “You keep baker’s hours and sleep during the early evening. How would you see disruption in the courtyard that I believe your dining area looks over?”

“Eh, who did you say you work with?” he asked.

She showed him her ID with the less-than-flattering photo.

“Did you hear the explosion, Monsieur Denet?”

“Those people!” he said. He pointed to what Aimée figured was the Visses’ back window. “The screaming brat woke me up, and the lady with her prayers all night. She makes sure I hear her praying for my soul. My sinful soul.”

Aimée controlled a smile, stuck her arm out, and restrained her squeamishness as the bird’s sharp talons clamped her wrist. As Blanca hopped over to Aimée’s sleeve an admiring look showed on Denet’s face.

“Blanca never goes to anyone else,” he said, his voice wistful. “Only my wife and I.”

“Nightingales nest in the pear tree outside my bedroom window,” she said, slowly stroking Blanca’s feathers. “They let me hand-feed them. Why don’t you show me the view, Monsieur?”

Denet led her inside. His apartment, a capsulelike affair remodeled in the seventies, overlooked rue Jean Moinon’s rear courtyards. Several large windows composed most of the wall of his dining area.

“Too much light for me,” he said, gesturing to the skylights and tall windows. “I can’t sleep in the daytime. My health’s being ruined—working by hot ovens all night. Only Blanca enjoys such a warm place.”

Many Parisians would kill for such a light-filled modern apartment, she thought. Warm and toasty with a working heater, plentiful electrical outlets. Even closets.

Her own He St. Louis apartment had a temperamental electrical system, archaic plumbing, and warped seventeenth-century parquet floors overlooking the Seine.

“Tell me what happened, Monsieur,” she said, as Blanca strutted up and down her arm. The pincerlike talons pierced through Aimée’s blue wool sleeve, the bird’s white feathered crest rippling as Aimée stroked it. Blanca’s pigeon-pink eye reminded her of Anaïs’s suit after the explosion. The suit clumped with blood. Sylvie/Eugénie’s blood.

“Blanca likes you,” said Denet, sitting down heavily in a tubular chrome chair at a glass-topped table.

Good, Aimée thought, hoping the bird didn’t need to relieve herself soon.

“I’m moving to a hotel if I can’t get some sleep,” Denet said.

“You told the police of a noise or some disturbance?”

“Sorry, Mademoiselle, even if I saw something, I stay away from gossip.”

Jules Denet, sallow-faced and paunchy, seemed out of sync with his furniture. And his apartment. A true denizen ofpopulaire Belleville, the socialist working class, he belonged more in the last century.

Aimée wished she could offer him space in her dark cavernous and drafty apartment. He might feel more at home. Maybe he’d be more cooperative.

“You’d like my flat, Monsieur Denet,” she said. “Dark and quiet, no heat to speak of,” she smiled. “But Blanca might object.”

Denet’s eyes softened. For a moment she thought he would open up. He had to be lonely. Then his eyes hardened.

“Bad business,” he said. His mouth set in a firm line^

“Routine questions, Monsieur, are my job,” she said. “I’m hired to find the truth. Not manufacture a theory like the flics often do to keep their statistics high.”

Denet nodded; he understood. Working-class folks were known for their mistrust of flics.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

C’est dommage, she thought. A crying shame.

And a dead end.

Besides requestioning the devout Madame Visse and Elymani—the custodian with two jobs who wanted no part of her investigation—she didn’t know where to go from here. She tried one last question.

“Too bad, Monsieur,” she said. “I suppose you can’t tell me about Eugénie?”

“Aaah, the red-haired one …” Denet trailed off.

Her heart skipped. Blanca still on her arm, she sat down, containing her excitement. “Eugénie lived across at 20 bis, didn’t she?”

“Eugénie told me too much télé was bad for my eyes,” he said.

Not what Aimée expected to hear, but she agreed.

“How did Eugénie know that, Monsieur?”

“Last summer—you know how it stays light so late in the evenings—I tried everything to block out the light. But I couldn’t sleep. And that baby had colic, crying all the time …”

Aimée leaned forward, resting her arm on the table, Blanca content to be continuously stroked. She listened, nodding encouragement from time to time.

“So I watched the télé, something my late wife and I never did. We always had so much to talk about…” He trailed off and looked down at his large hands. “She passed away a year ago yesterday.”

“Désolée, Monsieur Denet,” she said.

Jules Denet, a lonely widower plagued with insomnia … Aimée wanted him to finish painting this picture.

“Until Eugénie—an angel, that one,” he said, spreading his fingers over the coffee table.

Aimée’s response caught in her throat. She took a deep breath. “Eugénie sounds very thoughtful, Monsieur Denet.”

Denet’s eyes held a faraway look.

“I told her about the boulangerie,” he said. “Looking back, if she was bored, she never let on. Told me it was better than waiting for her boyfriend.”

“Her boyfriend?”

“I never saw him,” he said. “Seems he was married. You know the type!”

Aimée nodded, unsure that her meaning of the “type” matched Jules Denet’s.

It was hard for Aimée to picture Philippe de Froissart, an aristocrat gone socialist, having a rendevous with Sylvie/Eugénie in this dilapidated building. Why not a hotel? Then again maybe he’d liked slumming in has Belleville.

“But you saw her girlfriends, of course,” Aimée said. “Did she have a friend with long dark hair?”

“Not that I remember,” he said. “I’d see Eugénie every few weeks. Maybe a month would pass.”

“What about her friends?” she asked. “Did you see them?”

Denet’s face fell. “I wouldn’t call them friends.”

Aimée sat up. “How’s that, Monsieur Denet?”

“Arabes,” he said, his mouth tight.

“Young or older?” Aimée asked.

“Eugénie had a good heart,” he said and sighed.

Aimée remembered that Roberge the jeweler had said the same thing.

“She helped anyone,” Denet said. “I told her, ‘Don’t let those types hang around. They’ll take advantage. Steal.’“

“What did she say to that, Monsieur?”

“She’d smile. Say everyone deserved a chance in life. Everyone.” Denet shrugged. “Who can argue with that?”

Aimée saw that it bothered Denet.

“Eugénie liked pearls, didn’t she, Monsieur?” she asked.

He seemed taken aback. “She wore overalls—like my baker’s ones—we used to joke about that. Very down-to-earth.” His smile turned bittersweet. “She seemed sad sometimes. There was a big hurt in her.”

Was she sad that Philippe, a minister with a family, wanted only an affair in has Belleville while he lived in the heights?

Aimée noticed Denet’s tapered fingers, trimmed nails, his graceful little movements illustrating his words. Here was an artist who used his hands. Every day.

She tried to question him further, but he protested, finally revealing he’d seen nothing, only heard noises, and he hadn’t been sure of that since he’d been watching a Jet Li action flick. She wondered how that soothed his nerves to sleep.

“Here’s my card,” she said. “If you remember anything else, please give me a call.”

But he’d seemed more concerned about his noise trouble with the Visse family. And that bothered her. She figured he’d heard her and Anaïs in the old garage yard and wanted to get back at the Visses. But at least now she knew when to break into Eugénie’s place.