Murder in the Bastille

Saturday Night

AIMÉE SHUDDERED AND CALLED out, “Tell me . . . Lucas, are you all right.”

Mozart’s piano music trilled faintly in the atelier’s background.

Had Lucas been knocked out . . . by Mathieu?

“Mathieu . . . who’s that?”

A sound like a deadbolt slipping into place.

“Who’s there?” Her words caught in her throat.

What was going on?

She couldn’t wait to find out, she had to do something. Quickly.

She groped ahead of her along the floor. Felt a sheet of dense, smooth metal. Hard and thick. She figured it was lead.

Something rustled from the far corner.

Her breath caught. She reached her hands out. Felt a shoe . . . no the curved wooden heel of a clog. She kept on. Her fingers came back sticky and metallic smelling. Blood.

Mathieu.

Now she knew why his door was open but he didn’t answer. Her fingers brushed a smooth round dome. His head. Then she froze.

He was bald.

Why hadn’t she thought to ask before. He was bald. No need for that shampoo.

Too late. She’d been about to accuse him of attacking her, killing Josiane, but he couldn’t have. So dumb. Why hadn’t she realized? If she had, he might still be alive.

And it all fell into place. The tar smell, the burns on Dragos, the lead, and the odd thing she’d knocked over, then touched. She realized that Morbier had been on a wild goose chase looking all over Paris for the “explosives” when they were here.

Right here.

She felt around Mathieu’s body. Next to the sheet of lead were glass bulbs and beakers. Like the ones René had found. But these had raised letters on them. On the bottom.

The script must be Cyrillic. But she traced an upside down U, then numbers. Her stomach jolted.

The symbol for enriched uranium.

U-235.

Weapons grade enriched uranium.

Probably five or ten gram samples from the size of the beaker. Dangerous enough. More than lethal if enough samples were put together. Enough for a dirty bomb.

And the killer had the perfect cover for customs checks.

Of course he must have been here, unpacking a shipment. They’d interrupted him. She prayed he’d knocked Lucas out, not killed him. All she could do was to try to get him talking. Get him near her.

“I know how you did it,” she said, her voice steady. “Ingenious. And I have to say, I admire your plan. But why?”

The Mozart piano concerto rose in the background.

“You,” he breathed. “You’re the one.”

Her breath caught again as she recognized the voice. Shivers ran down her spine. The uranium . . . where was it? Had she touched it?

“I don’t understand. Why?”

“It’s my business,” said Malraux. “I sell and trade.”

“This isn’t smuggling Fabergé eggs, antique icons, or fake Lee jeans,” she said. “Uranium and radiation kill people. Horribly.”

“Commodities,” he said. “They’re called commodities.”

“So you know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

“I like that.”

“Oscar Wilde said it first.”

“But you’re wrong,” said Malraux. “I know the price and the value.”

Malraux’s tone, chillingly matter-of-fact, filled her with disgust and fear.

“It’s a business,” he said. “Like any other.”

“But Josiane found out, didn’t she? Somehow Vincent owed you. In return he let you use his e-mail account.”

She heard him sigh. “That part I’m sorry for,” he said, his voice softening, “I never wanted to hurt her. And if you hadn’t got in the way . . .”

“Me?” As if it were her fault?

“I was trying to talk Josiane out of writing her story. Make her listen to reason. This was the last shipment.”

It was always the last shipment, the last time, the last throw of the dice.

“Years ago, we were lovers,” he said. “But we were married to other people at the time. You know, regret lodged in my heart. Buried deep. Then when we met again after all those years at an Opéra benefit . . . it was like we’d never been apart.”

Startled, Aimée listened. Had he been at least a little in love with Josiane? Had she fallen for him again, then discovered what he’d done? And paid with her life?

“I’m not a killer.”

“So how do you explain Mathieu?”

“He tried to stop me tonight; he’d grown a conscience.”

“Maybe over something else,” she said. “But I don’t believe he knew what you really were doing. You’d planned it all. From someone in your set you heard of the Beast of Bastille’s release.”

“My cousin’s married to his lawyer, Verges.”

Of course.

“So you staged a copycat murder and Vaduz conveniently died before he could deny murdering Josiane. All to conceal the fact that you had the uranium, sheathed in lead, hidden in the drawers of furniture.”

“Mademoiselle, you’ve got something under that messy head of hair after all.”

Now she wanted to punch him. But she had to get close enough first. Stay patient, keep him talking. Keep him talking until she could figure a way out.

She kept feeling around with her hands, away from Mathieu. Poor, sad Mathieu.

“I didn’t understand why Mathieu dealt with you,” she said. “But he had to. You had the sales connections.”

“And now I have the pieta dura. Mathieu tried to keep the real estate developers at bay so he could keep his atelier open,” said Malraux. “It’s over. He fought a losing battle. The smart choice would have been for him to join the winner.”

Her hands touched a large, cold, ceramic jug . . . beaded with chill liquid. Drinking water.

“But it’s so ingenious,” she said. “These antique pieces all have secret compartments, hidden places and false fronts, pillars that pull out. They’re so heavy anyway, adding sheets of lead wouldn’t matter.”

“Please know, that night, when I had you round the neck,” he said. “I couldn’t do it. You’re attractive, you know . . .”

She doubted that he had spared her deliberately. He made her sick.

“Then people came,” he said. “I heard Josiane run towards the atelier.”

The big work table crashed against her. Tools clattered onto the floor. Over Mathieu’s body?

She wondered if the lights were on? Malraux must have covered the windows. The atelier would have shades or wooden shutters. Mozart’s piano étude soared now. He must have turned up the volume . . . easier to kill her that way.

Where was her Beretta?

“I’ve dealt with this scientist for years,” said Malraux, his voice patient now. She heard him moving, hammering things. Shoving things across the floor. “We met when he wanted to sell some of his family icons. Later, his friends’ families’ icons. Then the country’s power shifted. This scientist liked heading a nuclear submarine plant, having a country dacha and driving a Lada. But the Soviet Union fell and there was no more gas for the Lada or food on the table. But he still has access to the top grade stuff . . . not orphaned uranium that was lost, stolen or abandoned, or spent nuclear fuel. He suggested it to me, he has the contacts here. All I did was arrange for transport. That fool Dragos thought he could double-cross me. Greedy. Look what happened.”

“Dead from radiation sickness.” She shook her head.

“People want my product. Finding buyers presents no problem,” he said. “It’s like in the war. My mother had paintings and art for sale to the highest bidder. Who didn’t? That was, anyone who wanted to survive. The Oberstampführer dabbled in art. And in Maman. How else could she have kept the business? While Papa dabbled in everyone and everything. Clothilde was his mistress once.”

Perhaps that was why she’d pointed Aimée at the wrong person.

“Where’s Lucas?”

No answer. She heard rubbing and scraping. Tried to visualize where she was. Not far away from the heater. But were the lights on . . . was he watching her closely? Or was he more attentive to his uranium? Then her hand hit a pole . . . a lamp? It felt hot.

Now she had a plan. She had to keep him talking and get him to touch her.

“No one deals in the art world wearing white gloves.” A snicker. “Only the wealthy own art. The ones with power. They used to say if there were no Jews, there’d be no art collectors. Alors, before the war, it was true. In art, one trades with those in power. Let’s face it. You need bread you go to the boulangerie. To pass something down in the family, you go first to the art dealer, then the stockbroker. Nowadays they buy cars, computers, bigger houses—but the best investment, besides diamonds, is art. Look how it endures.”

She shuddered at his tone. He sounded as if he spoke about differences of investment opinion, not weapons grade enriched uranium capable of killing and irradiating a whole chunk of some city.

Lights blipped across her eyes . . . crinkled then waved. She steadied herself against the table.

“Don’t get any ideas,” he said.

“It’s my eyes . . . they make me dizzy.”

“Don’t worry, that won’t matter soon.”

“What are you doing?”

Of course, he’d kill her.

“None of your business.”

She heard him swearing, slamming drawers.

“So Dragos skimmed some uranium off the top?”

She felt the hard rungs of a chair whack her ribs. A cracking, searing pain shot up her side. Then again.

Try to stay upright. Keep him talking, keep his attention away from her.

“But Mathieu’s a craftsman . . .”

“Mathieu’s father participated, too. And his father. Half the art world steals from the other half. Over and over. Skip a generation or two and the original owner steals it back. You think Leonardo da Vinci’s work stays in one family? Look at the Comte de Breuve.”

The water cooler jug was on the stand. Heavy.

“I thought you dealt in art because . . .”

“I’m passionate about it?” he interrupted, his educated formal French gone. “I hate old things. They smell. Ever since I could crawl, we’ve had decaying, musty pieces built or painted by dead people everywhere. I’m alive. I don’t want to be chained to the expressions of someone who died four hundred years ago.”

“So it’s all a front?”

“Front? People see what they want to see. The hôtel partic-ulier . . . no real choice there. If I sold it, taxes would cost me eighty percent of the profit on the sale of the building.”

She clung to the lamp pole for support. Gasped. Her ribs felt as if they were broken.

“Everything’s protected by historical decree. The furniture goes with the place, I can’t even sell it. The oil paintings are blistered, the lacquered furniture peeling, and I don’t have the money for repairs. It costs next to nothing to stay there if I use it for a gallery/showroom like my parents did. But in my wing, everything comes from Ikea and Conran. Plastic—that hated word—I love it.”

She felt the base of the lamp.

“You know you’re wrong about Vaduz,” he volunteered His footsteps were closer. She heard him grunting and pushing. Something inching along on the floor. And that tar smell.

His shampoo. He couldn’t be much more than an arm’s length away.

“But I knew Vaduz didn’t attack me,” she said.

She lurched against the porcelain water cooler. It cracked and shattered. Water sprayed and flooded over the sloped floor, pooling toward the heater.

“Salope. . .you’ve got my tuxedo sopping wet!”

She whammed the lamp full force in the direction of his voice. Her ribs jabbed like knives against her skin. As the glass bulb shattered, she felt him recoil. But she didn’t want that.

She thrust the lamp pole forward, whacking him again, keeping the exposed socket toward him. She felt him trying to get it away. But it connected with something metallic on his wrist. A bracelet? Or his cufflinks? He yelled as the alternating current traveled up his right hand. Shook and tried to get free. She held the pole as long as she could. He went rigid. She heard a faint low buzz, barely audible over the music.

And then water dripped on her and she let go of the pole.

SOMETHING BEEPED. Layers of unconsciousness peeled away, slowly, like veils of fog. She felt around for the phone in her pocket.

“Allô?”

“You’re a Catholic, aren’t you Leduc?” said Bellan.

Echoing sounds came from the background.

Her brain felt fuzzy, her mouth even more. Little twitches of light ran across her eyelids.

“Made my First Communion,” she said.

“Bon . . . where would you hide something in a chapel?”

“Under the holy water font.” It was the first thing that came into her mind. “Sometimes they have a donation box in the bottom. But if it’s uranium you’re looking for, there’s some right here. Bodies, too.”

“Where?”

“Mathieu’s atelier. Easy to find. We probably glow in the dark.”

She heard moaning and someone stirring.

“Better hurry, someone’s waking up,” she said. “I wish I could tell you who it is.”