Murder in Montmartre

Tuesday Afternoon

RENÉ SHIFTED ON THE wet cobblestones. Thank God he’d worn his thermal underwear and several layers under the painter’s smock. So far he’d seen no prostitute or anyone else in or around the building.

He shouldn’t have followed through on his big idea. What a joke. He’d just wasted an afternoon.

Had he really believed he could pull this off? Feeling sheepish, he’d hidden his online PI class from Aimée. If he kept at it, in a year or more he’d have enough credits to earn a PI license. The difficulty had been the undercover work required for field research credit. This had seemed to be a golden opportunity.

But a freezing afternoon spent with no result . . . . Delusional, that’s what he was. No one his size could do undercover surveillance. After all this effort, it rankled. He’d worked a deal with an acting troupe, rented a costume—all in all a costly project just so he could stand outside in the cold. He felt like an idiot, but without the costume to impersonate Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the crippled artist famous for sketching Montmartre nightlife, he’d never have fit into the neighborhood.

One of the actors pumped an accordion, his fingers racing over the keys. A tall thin woman with bright red hair piled on her head 1890s style, black skirt and ruffled pantaloons à la Jane Avril from a Moulin Rouge poster, did the cancan on the slick pavement. A cluster of small schoolchildren divided their attention between her and René. Le vieux Paris! Something they’d heard of in between bouts of video games. Most stole glances at the fun fair carousel being set up near the Metro exit.

A pale-faced boy close to René’s height nudged him. “Can I see?”

René showed him a prepared pastel, a print of one Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec had done while studying in an atelier nearby. Now the atelier was part bathroom-fixture warehouse and part dance studio.

He’d heard the teacher identify the group. They were from the local école primaire around the corner and he figured the boy must live nearby. This was René’s first chance to question someone and it turned out to be a little poulbot, a pint-sized Montmartrois with too-short jacket sleeves revealing a dirty shirt beneath.

“You live on the square?” René asked.

The boy shook his head. “Over there.” He pointed to a building down the steps from the Abbesses. “But we’ve lived lots of places.”

René’s interest heightened. Establish rapport, wasn’t that what the detective manuals said? “You mean the building with scaffolding?”

The building where Jacques had been shot.

“Across the street, on the top floor,” the boy said. “I pull my book bag up by a rope.”

René controlled his excitement.

“I move a lot, too,” said René. Toulouse-Lautrec had lived all over Montmartre, his landlords kicking him out when he’d been too drunk to pay his rent bill.

From a wax-paper bag in his pocket, René pulled a villageoise, Montmartre’s brioche-type specialty. The small boy sniffed and looked with longing at what René held.

“Like one?”

“We’re not supposed to accept food from strangers,” he said.

“Of course, but I’m Toulouse-Lautrec.” René winked. “You know me, eh?”

The boy nodded. René put the warm pastry bag in the boy’s cold hands.

“Voilà.” René nodded. “Share them with friends.”

The boy shook his head. “We haven’t been there long. But I know the concierge; I help him with jobs.”

A loner? René noticed now the boy kept apart from the others crowding around the teacher.

“Jobs, like what?”

“I carried his hammer when he fixed the gutter.”

The gutter bordering the roof? René remembered the layout Aimée had described. Had the boy seen something?

“So your apartment looks out onto the roof with the scaffolding?”

The boy nodded.

“Dangerous, non. Climbing at that height for a little boy!”

“Easy,” he said. “Maman says I climb like a monkey.”

“Even for someone with short legs, like me?”

The boy’s eyes sparkled for the first time. “You can see everything from up there. The roofs, the Tour Eiffel, even people cooking and getting undressed!”

A lonely, mischievous boy who watched life from the rooftop? René thought fast.

“But you couldn’t have seen those men on the roof with the scaffolding last night. You must have been in bed.”

“I go to bed when I want!” The boy pointed again to the pastel René held. “She looks sad,” he said, his mouth full. “Like Maman looks,” he went on, brushing his hair from his eyes. He had no gloves.

René looked for the teacher. She stood surrounded by a group of bundled-up children, explaining how the accordion music came from ivory keys and a sound box.

“What happened to your legs? Why didn’t they grow?” The boy licked the crumbs from his chapped lips.

René had asked the same question when he’d realized he’d never grow like other children and would always have to reach up for door handles, get on his tiptoes to grasp a boiling kettle, hike himself up to sit on a chair from which his legs always dangled.

“When I was young, something happened and my legs never caught up with my body,” René said.

“Sometimes things shouldn’t catch up, my maman says, or we’d be in the street.”

René wanted to steer this conversation back to the roof. But he didn’t feel much like a detective, questioning a little boy who looked as though he wore the clothes he’d slept in. Still, he had to try.

“So you didn’t see what happened last night, you were asleep.”

“Mais non, I heard a shot, saw a flash like on the télé. Then another flash. Maman got mad, said I shouldn’t talk about it.”

Then the boy clapped his hand over his mouth.

Two flashes. Did that mean two shots?

“You’re sure?”

He nodded.

Had the boy witnessed the murder?

“Back to school, children,” the teacher said, gathering the group. “Paul, allez-y! Thank Monsieur Toulouse-Lautrec for his help. I’m sure you gathered a lot of information for your report.”

The boy stiffened. René saw the fear in his eyes. What should he do? He slipped a Toulouse-Lautrec guide into Paul’s hand and grinned at the teacher.

A look of relief flooded Paul’s pale face. René waved goodbye, pulled out his phone, and called Aimée.

“I found a witness,” he said.

“Good job!” she said. “So you did some poking around.”

René heard pride in her voice. He’d never tell her about this foolish costume.

“Can you get this person to come forward and testify?” Aimée asked.

René hesitated. “There’s a catch. Paul’s maybe nine years old. He lives across from the murder site. He said he saw two flashes on the roof.”

“Two, you’re sure?”

“That’s what he said. He was with a school group. He’s doing a report on Toulouse-Lautrec.”

Pause.

“You mean you . . .” Pause.

Why had he admitted that?

“Bet he could use some homework help,” she said.

“But, Aimée—”

“I’m sure you can handle it, René. Talk to his mother. I’ve got other fish to fry at the Préfecture.”

RENÉ SPENT the next freezing hour shifting from foot to foot on the cobblestones, keeping watch on the building and avoiding the tourists. The only people he saw enter the building were a team from EDF, Electricité de France, two men who spent ten minutes inside and then left.

As dusk fell, shading the buildings, René trudged up the long staircase of Paul’s house armed with more warm pastries. Up six flights of worn wooden steps, the smells of fried onions and garlic permeating the stairwell. It was an old building with a WC shared by two floors on alternate landings.

His hip ached and he wished for an elevator, even one like the wire-framed, grunting affair at their office. He’d speak with Paul’s mother first; he’d have to overcome Paul’s fear in order to coax him to elaborate on what he’d seen.

René knocked on the first door. No answer. The second was answered by a toothless old man bundled in sweaters.

“Try next door,” the old man said, his gums working.

At the third, he heard reggae music. He knocked. The music lowered and the door scraped open. He saw a dark, low-ceilinged room with beaded curtains partitioning off a galley kitchen.

“Oui?” said Paul, halfway behind the door.

“Remember me?” René smiled.

Paul’s large brown eyes blinked. “Maman’s sleeping.”

Too bad, he would have liked to speak with her.

René handed Paul the bag of pastries. “I can’t stay long but I forgot to tell you about my accident and why I painted horses. See?” René pulled out the book he’d bought at a shop on Place des Abbesses. He flipped open to the page of Toulouse-Lautrec’s early sketches.

“Beautiful . . . they look like they’re breathing.”

René agreed. The rounded flanks and flared nostrils brought the racehorses to life.

“Let’s look at it on the roof.”

Paul shook his head. “Why?”

“Didn’t you say it was easy to go there?”

Reluctance gave way to a mischievous look in his eyes. He opened the door wider. “Shhh!” Bottles clinked behind him, one crashed to the floor.

“Let’s go,” René said.

René followed Paul to the skylight at the end of the hall, helped him take down the ladder, and together they steadied it.

“After you,” René said, groaning inwardly.

Paul climbed the ladder, popped open the skylight. “The lock’s simple, I can open it myself. The concierge showed me how.”

A lonely boy with a roof for a playground? The darkening view, an expanse of jagged rooftops framing the Paris skyline, made the aching climb worth it. He dealt with heights every day, knew how to balance the awkwardness of his ill-proportioned body and, when climbing, to look up, to concentrate on his goal. He followed a nimble Paul, climbing the rusted iron rungs protruding from the cement wall.

René trained his binoculars, hanging from a strap around his neck, on the scaffolding. He took a Paris Match magazine from his pocket, set it on the damp ledge, and sat.

“My teacher says you’re an actor,” Paul said. “You act like Monsieur Toulouse-Lautrec so we can understand his work.”

“She’s right.” René nodded. “I was going to tell you.”

“Tell me about the horses,” Paul said.

And René told him how Toulouse-Lautrec had fallen from a horse. Due to genetic weakness resulting from family intermarriages, his bones had been too weak to knit together. “His father, the comte, had stables of racing horses, heavy-footed Clydesdales for work, and even ponies for visiting children. All that summer after the accident, Toulouse-Lautrec sat in a special wicker wheelchair and drew them. They were his friends. His only friends.”

René opened the book, and, together, using his pen flashlight, they leafed through the pages.

“Why don’t you try, Paul?”

René passed him a tin of pastel chalks and a sketchpad.

“Horses?”

“Draw the roofline, that’s what’s familiar, non? You could start with the gray . . . try the blue one to shade in the building, smudge it . . . see?”

René wiped his thumb across the line. “Give it depth, suggest . . .”

“Can I use that in the report for my teacher?”

“Why not? And the drawing, too. She’d like that. It shows you are resourceful.”

Paul nodded, his hands busy. Ten cold minutes later, he looked up. “You mean like this?”

René looked. The bold gray lines depicting the building were quite skillful. “You’re a born artist, Paul. Good job!”

A wide smile split Paul’s face. René realized it was the first time he’d seen the boy’s teeth. Didn’t his mother ever praise him?

“I see this every day, like Toulouse-Lautrec saw his horses every day.”

René grinned. “Of course, draw what you know. But you must work at it. He did. Every day.”

Paul nodded.

And then René noticed a half-open plastic bag in which model airplanes were just visible. Expensive ones.

“They’re mine,” Paul said, following his gaze.

“Eh, why do you keep them up here?”

“My friend gave them to me!” Paul’s lip quivered.

René doubted that. “Look, it’s not my business—”

“None of your business. You’re wrong,” Paul interrupted.

“Correct, none of my business. I once stole car magazines. The shop owner caught me. Told me if I ever did that again he’d take me to the Commissariat.” René shifted on the tiled roof. “I know you didn’t steal them but things can be returned in a quiet way with no one the wiser. I mean if your friend had taken them, of course.”

“He’s a good friend.”

“Good friends need help.” René winked, thinking it best to plant the seed and change the subject. “But I still don’t understand how you could have seen those flashes from here,” René said. “You didn’t have binoculars, did you?”

“Of course I could see. They were right there.”

“You must have good eyes. How many?”

“Two flashes.”

René shook his head. “Impossible.”

“There were two men arguing,” Paul said, his voice serious.

“Then another man came, they were nice, and then . . .”

“What?”

Paul looked away. “My maman told me not to talk about it. She said it could get us in trouble. And we have all the trouble we need. She hates the flics.”

So that was it.

“She’s not alone in that, Paul. But I know someone who’s a private detective. She can do things and not get people in trouble.”

“Like what?”

René leaned forward. “I’d have to tell her what you saw. Exactly. But she can make anonymous calls and investigate without anyone knowing. That’s what she does best; she’s a computer detective. No one will know.”

Paul’s mouth dropped.

“A computer detective?”

René nodded, stuffing his gloved hands in his pockets. Lights twinkled beyond the dark outlines of the roofs stretching before them.

“No one will know?”

“I promise.”