Murder in Montmartre

Late Thursday Afternoon

IF ANOTHER BULLET EXISTED, she had to find it. Back in the office she located her jumpsuit in the armoire and stuffed it into her bag along with a tool kit. By the time she reached the building on rue André Antoine, she’d controlled her apprehension and had a story ready. The photo of her and Cloclo had been taken right outside this building. She had to forget that. There was no sign of Cloclo there now.

“You again,” the concierge said, as she swept the cold hallway. Today she wore a housedress with a blue smock over it, but still had on rain boots. “The apartment’s been sealed by the police. No access is allowed.”

“You’re right,” Aimée said. She showed the concierge a work order she’d typed up. “It’s the skylight this time. Mind letting me get to work? My partner’s out sick and I’ve got three other calls to make.”

A dog barked from the concierge loge. “Let me see that.” She read the work order. “Men came yesterday for this. I had to vacuum the hall again, double my work. You’ve wasted a trip. A mistake.”

The killers back looking for the bullet? Or the true locksmiths? “Louis and Antoine?” she asked the concierge.

“Eh? I’m not on a first-name basis with all the workers who traipse through here, Mademoiselle.”

“A mec with bleached white hair?”

The concierge’s brow furrowed. She shook her head.

“Aaah, then Antoine. A black cap, down jacket, and bad teeth?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “Check with your dispatch office but I tell you the work’s been done.”

The dog barked louder, its nails scratching against the closed loge door. “If you don’t mind—”

“Madame, you must have heard the skylight break that night.”

“I’ve had enough questions. Like I told the flics, there was a storm.”

For a nosy concierge she hadn’t noticed much.

“It says right here to fix the rear-hall skylight on the third floor,” Aimée said, holding out the form. “The least you can do is let me check it out.”

The concierge shushed her dog, set the broom against the wall, and put her hands on her ample hips. “Keep your hair on, Mademoiselle, I’m only doing my job.”

“Same here,” Aimée said. “I take it you have no problem with me going up to see if the rear skylight’s secured while you feed your dog, who’s jumping out of his skin with hunger?” Blame it on the dog; that might work.

A guilty look crossed the concierge’s face. “Since you insist.”

Aimée pushed past her. “Excuse me.”

She had to work fast. On the third floor she set down the tool kit. What if those guys had already found the bullet? If they were the shooters, it would be gone. But if they were just hired goons, as she hoped, she had a chance. They’d have been searching just as she was. Maybe they hadn’t been lucky. Maybe she would be.

One way to find out.

A frieze of carved rosettes and leaves framed the ceiling, thick with years of coats of paint. A table saw and planks of wood stood near the skylight. All the apartments on this floor were being remodeled. The vacant one’s door was now barred by a red-wax police seal. A perfect secret meeting place. Yet instead, Jacques had been lured up to the roof.

With both hands she dragged the table under the skylight, climbed on top, reached up, and felt for the hasp.

Downstairs, the dog barked louder. She heard the concierge’s voice speaking to someone on the telephone, then her footsteps mounting the stairs.

Aimée turned the hasp and pushed with both hands. The heavy skylight opened a few inches. Wind swirled inside, carrying gravel and grit, spitting at her face. She gave another heave and the skylight fell back, opening to the sky.

She stretched her arms up, hooked her elbows over the frame, jumped up, and wiggled her hips through the opening.

She pulled herself onto the roof, now covered in a layer of gray slush. The flat area of the roof looked much smaller in the late afternoon light. The slate tiles ascended, angled every which way like children’s blocks. The roof overlooked the street and faced the building where she figured Paul must live. He would have had a perfect view. The church’s high roof blocked visibility from all other sides. No wonder no other witnesses had come forward.

Here she was, climbing on a roof, and she’d promised herself, never again. Yet she had to find the other bullet. She must keep her gaze focused ahead of her. And not look down.

Her foot slipped and she grabbed a metal pipe. She closed her eyes, inhaled, then exhaled. Her fingers scraped against the cold rough metal and her heart felt ready to jump out of her chest. Again she inhaled, exhaled, concentrating on her breathing, imagining a white light as her sessions at the Cao Dai temple had taught her. Trying to ignore the brisk wind.

She repeated the routine ten times, until her nose tingled with cold. She opened her eyes, calmer, and tried to visualize that Monday night: the sleeting wind, drifting snow, and the flat spot where Jacques’s body lay.

She edged across the tiles to the tall chimney that she and Sebastian had climbed over, reached out, and found the spot she remembered. She ran her hands over the rough pockmarked stucco that flaked between her fingers. Wrong, the place she’d felt was smooth. She slid, leaning against the chimney, to its rear, gripping the ledge with one hand, the other tracing the smooth wall.

Aimée’s fingers found an indentation. Circular, the size of her pinkie tip. Her breath came fast as she pulled herself around. Below her feet lay the leaf-clogged gutter, and then, several floors down, the street. Perspiration beaded her forehead. She pulled out her penlight. Saw a charcoal-powder sunburst in the midst of white-gray-caked pigeon droppings.

“Mademoiselle, please come down.” The concierge’s voice whipped by her in the wind.

Had the concierge climbed up and poked her head out the skylight? Didn’t she have anything better to do?

“Un moment, my tool bag fell,” Aimée shouted back.

Her penlight revealed the copper gold stub end of an embedded bullet.

“You’ve made a mistake, Mademoiselle,” the concierge said. “What are you doing up there?”

Exasperated, Aimée blew air from her mouth and felt the perspiration dripping from her forehead.

“Madame, go back downstairs. I’ll join you in a moment.”

“The office said—”

“Madame, attention, it’s dangerous. Don’t come up here.”

Aimée heard the skylight shut. She had no time to waste. She needed to gouge out the bullet before the concierge returned with the flics. She felt her foot sliding and hugged the wall, terror stricken. Bits of gravel fell from the roof and she looked down, hearing horns and shouts.

The gravel rained over a stalled truck in the street.

Big mistake. She shouldn’t have looked down. Her stomach felt queasy. Crippling fear overwhelmed her.

Concentrate. She had to push it aside, and concentrate.

She took the miniscrewdriver from her tool kit, chipped at the stone surrounding the bullet, then with a swift turn gouged it out. She caught the bullet, scooped it into a Baggie, and put it into her pocket. Shaking, leaning against the wall, she felt her way down.

By the time she made it back to the skylight, opened it, and slid back into the hall below, her hands had steadied.

She grabbed her bag, shoved the table into its place, and met the concierge on the stairs. “Madame, everything’s taken care of here,” she said. “I’m leaving now.”

“I checked with the locksmith office; the woman has no record.”

“Schizophrenic! That new woman’s schizophrenic.” Aimée rushed past her. “I guess I have the afternoon off.”

FROM THE Metro station she called Viard at the Laboratoire Central de la Préfecture de Police and arranged to meet him. Trying to control her excitement, she ran all the way to the police lab situated near Parc Georges Brassens. At the brown-red brick building she caught her breath and showed her police ID, an updated version she’d made from her father’s.

She found Viard in the basement firing range. Shredded black figures on white paper hung from a wire. From the star-burst shots centered in the figures’ stomachs and hearts she figured he practiced every day.

“Not bad,” she said. “You know what the customs officials say?”

“Our black-figured targets differ from their white ones, which shows our priorities?”

She grinned. “You said it, not me. I’ve got a puzzle for you to solve.”

“Make it good,” Viard said, returning the SIG Sauer automatic to a drawer and pulling off his safety goggles and earmuff headgear. He ran the ballistics lab and he owed Aimée. She’d introduced him to René’s apartment neighbor, Michou, a female impersonator who worked in a Les Halles club. Last month Michou and Viard had celebrated six months together, a record for him, and they had invited Aimée and René to their anniversary dinner.

“Can you tell if a bullet’s responsible for the GSR in this report?”

She handed him a copy of the lab report she’d gotten from Maître Delambre. “Viard, notice the ninety-eight percent tin content in this column. Anyone who’s loaded a Manhurin knows that gun doesn’t fire high-tin-content bullets.”

“Of course. I also see that residues were found on the subject’s hands,” he said.

“Let’s talk in your office,” Aimée suggested.

His office, on the second floor, held a standard-issue metal desk and bookshelves crammed with ballistic and gun manuals; the floor was covered with a nondescript fawn carpet. In contrast, by a curtained window, were shelves crowded with orchid plants. Exquisite and delicate in appearance, they were rooted in fir bark, peat moss, pearlite, and lime. Their petals were colored all hues of purple, from light violet to a deep almost indigo. Others were yellow, some white. They were like butterflies caught in midflight.

“You’ve gotten more orchids.”

He nodded. “Mexican and South American varieties like these Phragmipediums thrive in indirect sunlight,” he said, picking up a spray bottle and misting them.

Did Viard tend his orchids to find a beauty absent in his work? She noticed the lines around his mouth were deeper, his brow’s crease more pronounced. Did staying in the closet wear on him?

Above his desk hung gun-show posters and a colored spectrum showing the trail of magnified bullets, arced like rainbows.

She took the Baggie out of her pocket and dangled it in front of him. “I’m not a betting person, but a franc says the GSR in this report came from this.

“A franc?”

“I’ll throw in a bottle of Château Margaux.”

He whistled, incredulous. “Do you know how much these tests cost to run, Aimée?”

She shook her head. “As a taxpayer, I pay for it.”

“You and a few others. Listen, my department’s budget couldn’t absorb this. Or even Internal Affairs’.”

Was that why Delambre had rejected her idea? He knew they didn’t budget for special tests? And procedure didn’t call for it?

“So Internal Affairs covers the costs?”

“Most of it, but only the basic test. Standard procedure, end of story.” He shook his head as he kept on misting the orchids. “You know I’d help if I could. It’s impossible. I’m sorry.”

She had an idea. It might work.

“But, Viard, the Ministry’s involved. In tandem with Internal Affairs. Didn’t I mention that?” She knew there was a link there somehow. Right now she didn’t know where. That could wait. “I just assumed you knew.”

“Ministry of the Interior?” He shrugged, set down the spray bottle, and checked his desk. “I haven’t received any requisition or paperwork.”

“Let’s see, what was the name . . . the man responsible?” She ran her fingers through her spiky hair, glanced at the piled-up SIG Sauer pistol manuals. “Starts with a J. Jubert, that’s it. Ludovic Jubert.”

He nodded. “In that case. Well . . .”

She tried not to show surprise, eager to find out which office Jubert worked in.

“I forget which division he’s in.”

Viard stared at the lab report. “There’s an incompatibility between a Manhurin bullet’s residue and the GSR on the officer’s hands?”

“Incompatibility, yes. Also, please test to see if this bullet’s tin content is compatible with the GSR on the officer’s hands.”

She hoped she’d left enough residue traces on the wall from which she’d pried the bullet for the flics to find later.

“Well, if the Ministry’s paying . . .” His eyes lit up and he pulled out a requisition form. “I suppose, in lieu of the requisition, I could note approval en route.”

“Wonderful idea,” she said.

Despite her eagerness to pinpoint Jubert’s location, right now she mustn’t deflect Viard from running the test, or raise his suspicions by asking how to reach Jubert.

Viard slipped latex gloves on and took the Baggie from her. She’d hooked him.

“What’s the white stuff?”

“A gift from the pigeon gods.”

“Aaah merci . . . fascinating,” he said, pulling goggles from his desk drawer. His voice had changed, it was higher. Excitement vibrated in it. “High tin content is a signature of the Eastern European models hitting the marketplace these days.”

Something resonated in the back of her mind. Bordereau’s words. Think. “You mean the Eastern European arms used by the Armata Corsa?”

She could swear he almost rubbed his gloved hands in glee. “After the Bucharest conference last year, I’ve been dying to try this.” He stared at the dull copper-nub-nosed bullet. “I’d say it’s a Bulgarian make but let me run a test I saw performed on a Sellier-Bellot.”

AT LEAST Jubert’s department would foot the bill for tests run on a Sellier-Bellot, whatever that was. She liked that it was expensive and that Viard had fairly salivated to carry it out. She felt it in her bones—she’d exonerate Laure. And find the culprit.

Time weighed heavily. It would be hours, maybe a day, before Viard got back to her with the results. In the meantime she had to deal with questions she’d put aside.

She exited the Les Halles station and found an Internet café with cane-bottomed stools and posters advertising the Chatelet ethnic music festival papering the walls. The steady beat of trance music competed with the whoosh of the milk steamer. She slid ten francs to a doe-eyed waitress in flared paisley pants, found a vacant terminal, and logged online. First, she trawled the net for Ludovic Jubert’s name in the Ministry system. Once again, she found nothing.

It was time to address the feeling she’d sensed behind Zoe Tardou’s hesitant answers, her frightened manner. She’d meant to revisit her earlier—this reclusive medieval scholar who lived in an elegant Deco apartment across from where Jacques was murdered.

The geranium stem. Had Madame Tardou witnessed the murder when she was watering the flowers in her window box and kept silent out of fear? She had mentioned overhearing the names of planets, spoken in another language from the roof. Corsican? And she had let slip that she had spent time in an orphanage. An anomaly struck Aimée. If Zoe was the stepdaughter of the well-known Surrealist Max Tardou, why would she have lived in an orphanage? How did that fit?

If something itched, scratch it, her father had said. She had to probe deeper. What better place to start than online.

She searched under Surrealism and Max Tardou, finding an array of Web sites. She plowed through them. Tardou, a well-known painter, had fled the Occupation to Portugal at the onset of World War II. So much for his later claims of fighting in the Résistance. According to a Surrealist Web site, Zoe’s mother, Elise, had met him after the war.

She searched further. She found photos of Elise; one in profile, taken at a Montmartre Dadaist ball. It showed a crowd in turbans and bowler hats with the Greek letter š painted on their faces. Another showed Elise backlit, her blonde hair pulled high on her head in a halo effect, her mandarin eyes slanted with kohl, draped in a cloak of her own design. A striking woman, renowned for her Dadaist poetry.

Unable to find more current information, Aimée was about to exit, when she noticed a cross-reference. This one listed the name Elise Tardou in a 1980s documentary film about Lebensborn. Strange. Was it the same Elise Tardou? Lebensborn referred to the Nazi stud-farm program to propagate Aryans. It had been established in Norway, Germany, and occupied Europe. Even a member of the seventies group ABBA was listed in the documentary as a child of the Lebensborn. What was the connection here? Was there one?

She downed her espresso and read further. Château Menier, outside Paris in Lamorlaye, bordered the only Lebensborn site in France. Aimée hadn’t known one existed. She was shocked. She read further. The article quoted an excerpt from the account of Elise Tardou, identified as a Dadaist poet, about her captivity there in 1944. What Aimée read astounded her.

“There were French women in the château, though not many,” Elise was quoted as saying. “Few admit it. The shame. It wasn’t our choice, we were captives. Most of the women were prisoners from Poland, and blue-eyed Hungarians. They had a nursery, ran it like a birthing factory.”

Nineteen forty-four. Zoe looked to be in her fifties. A terrible idea entered Aimée’s mind. She printed out the page. And then located an article on a summer art colony, the haunt of the old Surrealist icons in the sixties. It had been located in Corsica.

Corsica! According to an article she’d read previously, the Tardous had spent their holidays in Corsica every August. For years.

She’d caught Zoe Tardou in a lie. Now she thought she knew why. She had to test her theory.

“MADAME TARDOU! ” she said, knocking on Zoe Tardou’s door.

No answer.

After five minutes of knocking, when her knuckles were sore, the door opened a crack.

“I spoke with you the other day, remember? You had a miserable cold,” Aimée said. “I hope you’re feeling better. I brought you some Ricola cough drops.”

“That’s very kind.”

Aimée put the cough-drop box into Zoe’s hands, noticed the blond-gray hair pulled into a bun, her slim figure under the wool sweater. The striking aqua blue eyes.

“May I come in?”

“I answered your questions,” Madame Tardou said. “I won’t go to the police station.”

Again, that fear of the outside. Agoraphobia?

Aimée put her boot into the doorway. “I just need to clarify a detail, to remove it from the inquiry. That’s all.”

Hesitantly, Zoe opened the door wider. “You’re persistent, Mademoiselle,” she said, “but I have nothing more to say.”

“Please, this won’t take any time at all. You’ll see.” Aimée edged past her and kept walking toward the large room filled with Deco furniture. The room with black blankets hanging over the windows. She felt in her bag for her hairbrush.

Zoe Tardou, reading glasses perched on her chapped nose, stood with a red pencil in her hand. “I’m copyediting proofs on my treatise, you see. I can spare you only a moment.”

Aimée paused to look at the photos on the grand piano. Studied them.

“You spent summers in Corsica, Madame Tardou, didn’t you?”

“Is that a crime?”

“Corsica, L’Ile de Beauté. Yet you told me you summered in Italy.”

“We went to Italy, too.”

Aimée nodded. “Your stepfather, Max Tardou, established an art colony in Bonifacio where he tried to resurrect Surrealism. You went there for years while you were growing up.”

Aimée ran her palm over the smooth blond wood case of the piano. She pointed to a photo. A black-and-white scene of sunbathers with an awninged café in the background.

“Café Bonifacio. It’s still there.”

“What does this have to do with anything?”

“You understand Corsican. And you speak it, don’t you?”

Zoe Tardou’s fingers twisted the red pencil back and forth.

“I was only a child.”

“Even as a teenager you must have summered in Corsica,” Aimée said. “You may even have attended a Corsican school.”

“Yes, I did. How does that matter?”

She’d admitted it!

Aimée moved closer to the woman.

The pencil snapped between Zoe’s fingers.

“The voices you heard from the roof spoke Corsican, didn’t they? You understood them, recognized the names of the planets and constellations.”

Fear shone in those compelling blue eyes. She pushed the glasses up on her nose with trembling fingers.

“Maybe . . . yes . . . I’m not sure.”

“Think. They spoke Corsican. Exactly what did they say?”

Zoe covered her glasses with her hands, then looked up and nodded. “Yes. But it had been so long ago since I heard that language. From another lifetime.”

“Why couldn’t you tell me?” Aimée said, controlling her excitement.

“It was so strange to hear Corsican, I thought I was dreaming, I was unsure—”

“You looked out, pretending to be watering your geraniums,” Aimée interrupted. “That’s natural. You understood what they said. It was quiet, as the storm hadn’t erupted yet.”

Aimée paused. Waited. “It’s all right, we’re telling the truth now,” Aimée said, her tone soothing, urging. “Accounting for all the details, clearing this up, eh? Most investigative work depends on the tedious details, checking and rechecking.”

Zoe watched her. Unmoving. An aroma of herbes de Provence and something roasting, Mediterranean style, wafted from the kitchen. Wonderful. Aimée’s stomach growled.

Aimée sighed. “Nothing glamorous in this, believe me.” She tried for a matter-of-fact voice. “Did you hear the glass break in the skylight?”

Zoe shook her head.

“Yet you recognized the men on the roof.”

“But I—” She covered her mouth with her hands, again that little-girl manner, as if she had been caught in a fault.

“—got scared?” Aimée finished for her.

Zoe Tardou nodded.

“Who did you recognize?”

“No trouble, I can’t have trouble,” Zoe said, putting her hands up like a shield and stepping back. “I can’t get involved. Now, I’ve got something cooking on the stove. . . .”

The smell of thyme was stronger now.

“All I need is a name.” Aimée smiled and reached for a notepad in her leather backpack.

“I don’t know his name. The one I recognized—anyway, it doesn’t mean he shot anyone.”

“Of course not, you’re right. But he can help us find the one who did, don’t you see? We need your help.”

Zoe Tardou hesitated.

“Does he live here?”

“I’ve seen him on the stairs, but I don’t know him.”

“What does he look like?”

“He had bleached hair the last I saw him. He changes it. I don’t really know, I don’t think he lives here.”

Aimée wrote in her notepad.

“But he could work in the building? Or for someone who does live here?”

Zoe shrugged. “He’s too coarse.”

Was this the mec Cloclo had referred to? Or just a workman, like Theo, who had offended her delicate sensibility?

“Coarse? You mean he was a construction worker? One of the men doing the remodeling?”

“He was not a workman. He made rude comments. But he was dressed in designer black. Trendy.”

“A young man?”

“I didn’t pay attention.”

“What about the other man?”

“Just his back, that’s all I saw.”

“Did you hear the gunshot or see the flash?”

Madame Tardou shook her head. “When I heard voices talking about constellations . . . what they said was mixed up with words that didn’t fit.”

“What did you hear?”

“I didn’t tell you before because it doesn’t make sense.” Zoe paused, rubbed her cheek.

“Go on, it’s all right,” Aimée said, trying to control her impatience.

“They said ‘turrente,’ a stream; ‘parolle,’ which means ‘words,’ but it didn’t make sense or seem to mean anything. They spoke about planets and streams. No, there was more . . . that’s right . . . cincá, searching for, searching, they said ‘searching.’”

Planets and streams and searching, talking about Corsica, and then murder? “You’re sure?”

“Corsicans don’t articulate, they swallow the consonants at the ends of words.” Zoe’s gaze settled on her piled desk. “They did repeat the old saying, that I recognized.”

“Which is?”

“Corsica audra di male in peglyu.” She shook her head.

“‘Corsica will always go wrong,’ typical of their pessimism tinged with pride.” Zoe shrugged, spent. As if she’d run out of things to say. “My head ached, I felt miserable. I lay down and must have fallen asleep watching the télé. That’s all.”

Aimée believed her, but she had to check.

“What show did you watch?”

“Show? An old Sherlock Holmes film. Too bad I missed the ending. Now I must work,” she said, eager for Aimée to leave. “I don’t know any more.”

“There’s something else,” Aimée said. How could she phrase this? “I admire your mother. It takes a courageous woman to speak of Lamorlaye, and the Lebensborn. Why did she finally . . . ?”

“Talk about her captivity? The way they used the women?” Zoe asked, all in one breath. And for a moment, Aimée saw the same wistful gaze she’d noted in the photo of Elise.

Aimée nodded.

“The past was too heavy to bear any longer, Maman said. When the filmmaker approached her, she felt it was time. Nothing that horrible was worth all that effort of concealment, my mother said.”

“That took such courage.”

“And the odd thing was: after that, she wrote poetry again. It was as if the weight of her history had lifted.”

“I respect her for speaking out,” Aimée said.

Zoe’s brows knitted in anger. “My stepfather didn’t,” she said. “He threw her out and tried to disinherit me, but he died before he could.”

“To disinherit you because you were fathered by a German?” Aimée asked.

“Those twenty-fifth-hour Résistants who watched the Occupation from afar turn out the most heroic of all!”

“I’m sorry.” Aimée didn’t know what else to say.

“Sorry?” She gave a short laugh. “So were the women, so are we, the children. Children of the enemy. Raised in guilt for who we were. Our very existence was the cause of shame. Whether I was too young, or just misplaced in the chaos of the German retreat in 1944 I’ll never know, but I wasn’t transported to Germany like the others,” she continued. “My mother found me in the room with telescopes, an observatory adjacent to the château that had been turned into an orphanage. I was lucky. Others displaced at the war’s end were reared in group homes with hardly any food or nurturing, ostracized for their background, and became misfits. Bereft of parents who never searched for them, either dead or lost or wanting to forget, many ended up in mental institutions. At least, I found my biological father, alive after all this time.”

Aimée stared, incredulous. “Did you meet him?”

“A sad old gentleman living in Osnabrück. He remembered my mother. After the war, he’d owned a pharmacy,” she said, with a small smile. “He’d studied medieval history at university.”