Murder in the Bastille

Wednesday Afternoon

MATHIEU CAVOUR LATCHED THE door behind the dwarf. His hands shook. Shook so much he dropped the old-fashioned key and had to get on his knees to find it between the stones. The pressure, the hiding, running a business . . . he couldn’t take it.

And now this.

His anxiety of last night came back.

He’d awakened in his chair in the atelier, startled by a noise, and shot bolt upright. Sweat had dripped down his shoulder blades. Slanted moonlight had made patterned rectangles on the courtyard’s uneven cobbles.

Then he had heard the scrape of the gate, like before. Fine, he’d get the furniture piece ready. Ignore the guilt he felt. The less he knew or thought about it, the better.

Then the sounds of a struggle had come from the passage, like in his nightmares. The last time he’d heard that sound the serial killer, the Beast of Bastille, had claimed another victim. What should he do? He couldn’t very well call the flics and risk exposure.

His restoration work paid the bills and kept the timbered roof over the shop. Barely. Never mind where the pieces of furniture came from or who they’d once belonged to.

When would his contact come? He’d left the metal gate open . . . but one never knew. He paused near the half-open window, his undershirt damp. The struggle had come from the small, paved inner courtyard.

He had held his breath. His hand had quivered as he tugged the limp lace curtain. He had taken a deep breath and parted the lace.

In the courtyard, a man stood in his bathrobe rocking a crying infant. Mathieu had heard cooing as the man soothed the bundle in his arms under the honeysuckle. So the screams had wakened the baby, too.

It must have been teenagers fighting, he told himself. Those sulky ones who hung around the pizza place, an upholsterer’s before the old boss died and Mirador Development had snapped up the building.

He had wanted to go down and check the cave. Make sure the piece was safe. But the old stairs creaked and the doors were rusty and stiff. The years had taken their toll. His knees had protested. And the shadowy cobwebbed basement corners, damp stone and crumbling brickwork, were things he avoided even on sunny, warm days.

He had found a Lizst piano concerto on the transistor radio on his work table. Had kept the volume low, hoping he’d fall asleep. But his eyes had stayed glued to the window until long after the baby’s cries quieted and a rosy dawn had painted the jagged Bastille rooftops.

How would telling the dwarf about it help the woman now?

Mathieu should have known, he realized later, that it was a warning. A foretaste of the next day. When the past opened like a fresh wound.