Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

Tuesday Afternoon

BON, HÉLÈNE THOUGHT, counting eighty-four glasses. She hadn’t broken even one washing up! Her quavering hands rubbed the linen towel over the last champagne flute stem. She felt the warmth of satisfaction as she aligned the glassware in sparkling rows on the shelves just so. The Comte liked everything in order.

From the Polish Foundation’s kitchen window she could look out over the manicured garden in which trellised ivy climbed the courtyard walls. She imagined last night’s gala—the wax-encrusted candelabra she’d cleaned blazing with tapers, platters of hors d’oeuvres dotted with caviar she’d washed, the gowned and tuxedoed crowd milling in the high-ceilinged salon under carved gilt boiserie. Each detail to savor and recount later to her sister, Paulette.

“Hélène?”

She paused, startled. Listening, she took a deep breath. She suppressed her fear, the fear that was always with her, the fear that never went away.

“Hélène?”

Non, the voice was different, it was not the bad man. She gathered herself. “Oui, Monsieur le Comte?”

Comte Linski leaned on his cane, a strained smile on his gaunt face. “Please, no need for formality,” he said. “I’m the chargé d’affaires, only a glorified watchman, you know. And I’m even too old for that now, Hélène.”

Hélène folded the towel. Always too modest, the comte. “They’re lucky to have a cultured man like you. A decorated war hero.”

And she was lucky, too, that he asked her to work odd jobs after receptions and gave her the leftovers.

“A Polish community that’s dying out and a heritage to protect; it’s not an easy task.” The comte went on, “If only the young generation . . . ah, that’s another discussion. But I must thank you for your efforts.”

She beamed, smoothing down her apron, until he held out an application form to her.

“Hélène,” he said, “write down your address so I can process your paycheck.”

Paperwork . . . why did people always need paperwork? She avoided all banks, forms, bureaucracy.

“Mais, Comte, you’ve always paid me in francs before. I prefer cash. I don’t trust banks.”

“Now I must pay you by check,” he said. “We have to protect our nonprofit status should we be audited. Just fill this out, Hélène.” He set the form on the counter.

She untied her apron, folded it, backed away. No paper trail . . . never leave a way to trace her.

“I’m late, pardon,” she said.

The comte’s eyebrows rose.

A tall woman rushed into the kitchen and shot a withering look at Hélène. She was puffed up with self-importance, this one, Hélène knew.

“Comte, the director needs to speak with you about the Adam Mickiewicz display in the library. As he was the leading poet of Polish romanticism, the director deems it fitting that we—”

“Pardon, Hélène,” the comte interrupted. “Talk to me before you leave.”

Hélène nodded but she had no intention of doing so. She knew she could never come back here again. In the coatroom off the courtyard she gathered her shopping bags and put on her woolen jacket.

She paused at the glassed-in temperature-controlled storage salon, where paintings to be cataloged were stacked. She recognized the portrait in a gilt frame on the very top. A young girl on a swing, skirt trailing over the sun-dappled riverbank grass, painted by a Polish Impressionist. One of Paulette’s favorites, it had hung in her family’s brocante, once the only secondhand shop on the island.

Out on the quai, Hélène knotted her scarf over her white braids, picked up the shopping bags that held most of her earthly possessions, and tried to ignore the pangs of hunger. No leftovers this time.

Somehow she’d have to feed them.

She turned onto rue des Deux Ponts. At least the bains-douches municipaux were free. And warm. Inside the white-tiled bathhouse she set her bags down. The bored middle-aged attendant listened to the weather on the radio as he handed her a key. “Take cabin three,” he instructed her.

“Merci.” She took a towel from the pile on a plastic chair and shouldered her bags again, ignoring the curious look that he didn’t bother to hide.

She turned on the chrome shower faucets. Hot water steamed out into the warped wooden stall, which was like the one in which she and Paulette had changed their bathing suits at Dieppe. But instead of coarse sand underfoot, there was a slick tiled floor.

“I’ll wash all our socks,” she said. “It’s so hard to keep clean where we live.” She wondered how much longer they could stay there; the waters kept rising.

She undid her long white braids and pulled out the cheesecloth bag that held bits of Marseilles lavender soap. She’d saved these soap chips, like her maman had taught them to do during the war. Les Boches would like it if we were all dirty all during the Occupation, Maman had said, but they would save soap scraps and keep clean. So there.

“Hey, what’s going on? Only one person to a stall,” someone said.

She overheard the bath attendant. “She comes every week, keeps herself clean. Harmless.”

Not again. Another one of those hurtful people who ignored Paulette, never even offered her a bonjour as they entered a shop. These days only Jean, their schoolmate before the war, exhibited any manners. Most of the others were gone. Up in smoke.

She soaped up with the cheesecloth and lathered her hair.

“Paulette, don’t be afraid,” she whispered. “No one will hurt you. What? The bad one? We’ll never see that bad one again. Non, the bad one won’t hit you. I won’t let him push you in the river like he did the girl. I promise, Paulette.”

“So go farther down. Take cabin six,” the bath attendant said. “She’s talks to herself but she’s not dangerous, believe me.”

Why did people say that? Talk to herself? Not she.

“Paulette, stop that,” she said. “I told you. You’re fifteen now; act like it.”

Clear hot water ran over Hélène’s face. “Méchant! You are naughty, Paulette. Give me the towel. Bon. Eh? You’re safe. How do I know? Oh, I took care of him. I had to.”