Murder in Clichy

Wednesday Night

NADÈGE PULLED DOWN HER sleeves, took a breath, and entered her father’s mansion facing the Parc Monceau. She had to explain to him about Thadée; she needed his help. She could hear her father’s reply ‘He’s always in trouble . . . like you.’ True. But Thadée was still his brother-in-law, wasn’t he? Her tante Pascale’s ex, it’s true, yet part of the family. And there was a lot more to it.

The uniformed butler stood aside, letting her ascend the marble staircase lined with hanging tapestries. She grabbed the handrail to steady herself. Her spike heels clattered above the noise of the reception; conversations, tinkling of glasses and the strains of a baroque chamber music ensemble.

The usual.

Her petite great-grandmother, tottering on her bound feet in their tiny embroidered shoes, had told her when she was small, “You are of the Lang-shun princess blood line. There’s royal blood in your veins.” Right now there was a lot more than that in them.

With Chinese and Vietnamese heritage on her mother Phuong’s side, French on her father’s, Nadège had been termed l’asiatique behind her back at school. Her mother had died when she was four. Nadège had been raised by her grandmother, the first in her generation not to have bound feet.

She found her little boy, Michel, asleep in the black lacquer bed, grand-mère’s marriage bed. A tart odor of incense surrounded him and the faint, suffused red light from the small altar in the corner gave a blush to his cheeks. Against the wall, a Chinese chest held linens and his tumbled treasures of Legos and wooden blocks.

She planted a kiss on his warm forehead, leaving a fuchsia imprint, then headed next door. Passing through a long parlor, she entered a small, darkened sitting room. 1950s Chinese movies flickered in scratchy black and white on a large screen. Grand-mère lay snoring, her thin jet-black hair combed into a bun. Her head rested on a stone pillow.

Nadège saw the Longchamp racing forms, the betting stubs under the chaise. Everything neat and arranged. Grand-mère played the horses, winning more often than not. And she liked modern gadgets like the newest cell phone.

For a moment, Nadège wanted to lie down next to grand-mère, to nestle in her arms like she had as a small child. But the craving wouldn’t go away. No good wishing it would.

Nadège rooted in her makeup bag. Found her small pipe, rolled the gummy black-brown pellet between her thumb and forefinger, lit the pipe and inhaled. The heavy, sickly sweet smoke hit her lungs. Took her away.

When she came to, she found herself sprawled on the wood floor, her nose running, her sweater ripped, its feathers and beads stuck in the parquetry crevices. The TV screen still flickered. Her grand-mère’s eyes were open, watching her.

“No good girl!”

Guilt flooded her. As it always had throughout her childhood.

Her grand-mère lapsed into a harsh mixture of Vietnamese interspersed with Chinese.

“I don’t understand when you talk like that,” Nadège said.

“Where is your hiêú? Your greeting for your elders?”

Nadège knew she meant filial respect. “Tiens, grand-mère!”

“Little Michel doesn’t need you around. A bad example,” she said. “Don’t come back. Méchante . . . like your mère! No good!”

But you raised us, Nadège wanted to answer. “I’m hungry,” she said, instead.

“Too much food downstairs. Too much drink. Fancy French like your papa. Gweilo,” she spat. “You like them.”

As if every person outside her grand-mère’s enclave was a white-faced devil.

“Papa won’t talk to me,” she said. “You know that. I need your help, grand-mère.”

She had no place to stay now. Nowhere safe.

“Thadée’s dead.”

Grand-mère shook her head. “Sad. Sorry. He your uncle by marriage but mix with bad people. Like you. You too lo fan, all foreigner,” she said. “Don’t listen nobody. Too much this,” she said, pulling Nadège’s sleeve up.

Only old bluish marks.

Nadège chased the dragon now, inhaling the wispy trail of smoke from a pellet burning on tin foil. Quitting, she was quitting.

“The horses running good, grand-mère?”

“Don’t change subject. I try but no good breeding.” She sat up, readjusted the jade hairpiece in her bun. “But I take care, Michel. So smart, that boy.”

Just as she’d raised Nadège. After her mother’s death, Nadège’s papa had shunted her off to these rooms in the back wing. Grand-mère kept her own servant, her own entrance, even her own little kitchen filled with the special smells of Saigon. And every Friday night, under the watchful eyes of Victor Hugo and Buddha, both revered as saints by her grand-mère’s Cao Dai sect, her mah-jong pals could be found clicking the mah-jong tiles atop the black lacquer table.

“Thadée was killed,” Nadège said. “Shot.”

Grand-mère shook her head. Was there something else in those sharp eyes?

“Sad, like I say. But bad people, bad business. Bad aura, all gweilo,” she said. “He no relation to me, no business of mine.”

Her grand-mère’s ringed hand put a fistful of francs in Nadège’s hand. “Go now.”

“Where’s papa?”

But her grand-mère had already turned up the volume on the TV set.

Nadège cleaned up her nose, applied more makeup, and found her way through the kitchen. The cooks, busy stuffing squabs, ignored her and the hired servers, with full trays, elbowed her out of the way.

She slipped into the main room and took a glass of kir royal from a waiter. Her former stepmother, a year older than Nadège, whose blonde hair hit her waist, was holding court by one of the Rodin statues.

Nadège made her way to the high-ceilinged glass solarium. Often her father hid in there; he hated this kind of party, just as she did. And there he stood, under the Belle Epoque iron-and-glass framed roof. Her father, black hair graying at the temples, glinting in the candlelight, tapped his cigar ash into the base of a palm tree.

As she moved closer, she saw he was speaking with two men. One wore a blue police uniform. And from the tense look on her father’s face she realized he now knew about Thadée. Nadège edged out of the solarium, through the kitchen, and into the night.