Murder in the Sentier

Tuesday Afternoon

ALAIN VIGOT LOCKED his office door and set the silver flask on his polished cherry-wood desk. He lifted it up quickly. The flask had left an oval of spilled Scotch and he wiped it up with his sleeve.

Beside the window overlooking the publishing house courtyard near Saint Germain, framed book jackets filled Vigot’s wall. In the place of honor stood the photo of Figeac receiving the Prix Goncourt. Figeac, oblivious of his own talent, had taken it for granted.

But for Alain, as his editor, it had been the ultimate triumph—the writer he’d discovered and nurtured, baby-sat through drinking bouts, the birth of a son, disastrous political choices, a failed marriage and bitter divorce—to see him so honored.

He stared at the box of Romain Figeac’s work. Inside lay partial manuscripts and dog-eared photos from Tallimard’s banquets honoring Figeac. The last one had been an affair to remember. Jana, Figeac’s movie star wife, once the darling of Godard and the New Wave cinema, was there with her entourage of radicals. Jana had gone from being his muse to orchestrating his downfall. And her own.

Bored and restless when not working, Jana treated her son as if he were an untrained puppy when she even noticed him. Her cocaine-and-champagne lifestyle took a toll on her looks, yet she remained a temptress who drove Figeac crazy. Crazy in love with her. The miscarriage and her suicide five years later on its ghoulish anniversary had ended Figeac’s writing, as far as he was concerned.

Alain conceded he’d been jealous of her … the self-absorbed bitch. Figeac had even banked her terrorist lover’s loot for her, the loot of the supposed father of the child he’d always claimed was his.

Earlier that day Alain had submitted his resignation to Tallimard. He knew the time had come to withdraw from the world of publishing, which was being transformed by electronic books and on-demand publishing. Who knew what else they’d dream up? It was not Figeac’s or his world anymore … the bottom line was what counted. Not literacy or literature. Who even used pen and ink anymore?

He’d burn the contents of this box personally. Let Figeac be remembered as the great writer he’d been, not the alcoholic hack who’d become obsessed with his wife’s terrorist lover. But first he’d read what was inside the manila envelope Figeac had sent him before he killed himself.