Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

Tuesday Afternoon

AIMÉE STARED AT the small bundle that was keeping her hostage in her own apartment. Her laptop had cleaned up well and apple vinegar had dispelled the odor. Wonder of wonders, it still functioned. But there were still deposits of baby spit-up dotting her father’s old flannel bathrobe, the sagging bunny ears of the cap, all over. Should she feed the baby again? Or maybe it had gas? Aimée needed a step-by-step manual.

The baby flexed her pearl pink toes and unfurled her small fists. Her hiccups reverberated against Aimée’s chest. Then a big burp and a sensation of warmth filling the diaper. Again.

“So that’s the problem. Warn me next time, eh?”

A gurgling stream of bubbles trailed from the side of the little mouth. “That’s your answer then?”

More bubbles.

Aimée changed her, becoming increasingly efficient with the help of the aloe-scented baby wipes and Michou’s detailed diaper diagram.

The group picture was burning a hole in her pocket. She needed to show this photo around, figure out the mother’s movements, and why she’d left the baby. And, of course, who she was.

But Aimée was loath to take the baby outside and possibly endanger her. This tiny thing with feathery lashes, whose chest rose and fell softly against her, who smiled in her sleep. “Gas,” Michou had informed her. ‘”It’s gas. They don’t smile until three months.” She disagreed.

She couldn’t keep calling her “it” or “the baby.” She thought of the stars patterning the night sky when she’d found her. Stella meant star; she’d learned that on a holiday in Italy.

“Stella,” she breathed. “I’ll call you Stella because you glow like a star.”

René was working in Fontainebleau, Michou had gone to Deauville. She needed to get to the dry cleaner’s and to give Miles Davis another walk. Most of all, she needed a nanny.

Errands would have to wait. Other things couldn’t. She’d change her style, cover up Stella, and hope to blend in with the stroller crowd. From the collection in her drawer she chose large dark sunglasses, Jackie O style; a cap with STADE DE MARSEILLES printed on it; a black corduroy miniskirt; and metallic red Puma trainers.

She left her cell phone number on her answering machine. That done, she found the newly purchased baby sling, a striped affair of blue ticking, nestled Stella into it, and grabbed the dog leash.

DOWNSTAIRS IN THE courtyard, she paused before the concierge’s loge. A warm breeze ruffled the potted geraniums on the steps leading to the concierge’s door with its lace curtain panel.

“Bonjour, Madame Cachou,” she said, peeking inside, where a woman with steel gray hair was punching in figures on an adding machine.

“May I ask a favor, Madame? I’ve got to take Miles Davis out. Would you mind watching the baby, just for an hour?”

Madame Cachou’s lips pursed. “Mademoiselle Leduc, did you get the notice? The second notice, to move the items from your space in the cave? I put it in with your mail.”

Aimée groaned internally. Clearing her storage area was a task Madame Cachou deemed of highest importance due to the plumber’s whining that he needed more space to refit pipes under their building. On her return from a several months’ absence helping her sister, ill in Strasbourg, Madame Cachou had resumed her responsibilites with vigor. Aimée hoped the broken front door digicode would make her priority list.

“This weekend, Madame. My cousin Sebastian will help me.”

Madame Cachou, a widow, pushed her glasses up on her nose, then folded her arms over her ample chest. In her light blue smock, flesh-toned support stockings, and clogs, she personified the traditional concierge captured by Brassaï in old photographs. She was a rumormonger who delivered the mail twice a day. But Madame Cachou was one of the handful of concierges still working on the island and one of the fewer still who weren’t Portuguese. The new immigrant Portuguese women not only managed multiple buildings, they also juggled cleaning jobs and raised families, but rarely spoke much French.

“Tiens! Today, s’il vous plaît. Tomorrow they’re off and then . . .”Madame Cachou shrugged, as if to ask who knew when they would return. “The plumbers union is strike prone; it could be next month, next year.”

Aimée had to stall the concierge and convince her to watch the baby. “As I said . . .”

Madame Cachou expelled air from her mouth. “Bon. Then you must sign the release to absolve the building of liability. No guarantee of responsiblity, you know, but at least then they’ll move things aside and finish the work. It’s covered in your agreement, Mademoiselle. The leaks affect the water pressure in the whole building. We’ve had complaints.”

Aimée hadn’t been down there in years and had forgotten what her grandfather had stored in his underground compartment. She’d sign. That would give her one less thing to deal with.

She stepped inside the neat and narrow concierge’s loge, one wall lined with calendars stretching back to 1954, the other with romance novels. A large-screen television took up the back wall. Madame Cachou pointed to a release form next to a state-of-the-art laptop.

It occurred to Aimée that Madame Cachou might have seen the baby’s mother.

“Monday night, Madame,” she said. “Were you here around 11:00 P.M.?”

“What’s this question and answer?” Madame Cachou shook her head. “Monday’s my night off. It’s in my contract, eh? I go to my writers’ group.”

Aimée had lived here for years and had no idea.

“I earn a little money, you know,” she confided. “On the side.”

More than a little, Aimée thought.

“I see.” But she didn’t, surprised that a concierge who minded the building and mopped the floors also attended a writers’ group.

Madame Cachou ignored Stella.

“Never interferes with my duties here, if that’s what you’re implying, Mademoiselle. At 8:00 A.M., I’m here on Tuesday morning. Mop the stairs, wax the foyer. Before that, I’m where I want to be on my own time.”

There was a stack of Xeras, a line of “liberated” women’s romance novels, by the side of the laptop. Those novels were really soft porn, Aimée thought.

“Sign, please.”

“Do you study these . . . kinds of books in your writers’ group?” Aimée asked.

Madame Cachou’s chin jutted forward. “I write these books, Mademoiselle.”

Aimée wondered if she was in the wrong line of work. No wonder Madame Cachou could afford the laptop and a high-end télé.

Before she could ask more, a plumber in blue overalls appeared. “If we’re not going to measure for the pipe fittings, I might as well go home.”

“I’m coming.”

Aimée’s idea of begging the concierge to babysit evaporated.

Madame Cachou turned toward Aimée. “You young women have babies and expect the world to take care of them. But it’s your responsibility.”

“Madame Cachou, it’s an imposition, of course, but just for—”

“Et alors, leave my friend Miles Davis,” Madame Cachou interrupted. Her expression softened as she petted him. “We’ll go to the park later.”

Miles Davis wagged his tail and sniffed the treat bag she kept hanging from the door.

Now she’d have to take Stella with her. Put Plan B into action. She’d use her disguise, cover Stella with the blanket. The baby should be safe so long as they remained anonymous. She put on the dark glasses and cap, draped the blanket over Stella, and opened the ivy-covered back door, then wended her way through the dark rear courtyard.

She pushed open a small door cut into a larger wooden portal that filled the archway and stepped over the sill to stand on bright and busy rue Saint Louis en l’Isle. This narrow commercial artery, the principal one on the island, lay full of trucks unloading and of scurrying passersby. It was sheltered from the Seine breeze. She emerged onto the pavement in the midst of several women with strollers blocked by a moving van unloading furniture.

“Bonjour,” a woman greeted her. She bent down, smiling, to look at the baby, then shook her head. “Impossible.”

“What do you mean?” Aimée asked, nonplussed. Was it obvious that Stella wasn’t hers?

“A newborn and you with such a flat stomach. How do you do it? That grapefruit diet?”

Relief flooded her and she nodded. She was eager to get away and question the garage owner, but she couldn’t move quickly. The narrow pavement was blocked, as usual at this time of day. Overhead were wrought-iron balconies accessed via open doors with fluttering curtains behind them. The tall doors open to catch any breeze in the unusual heat, through which the murmur of conversations reached her.

At least, she could blend in. Nothing for it but to smile, join them, and eavesdrop on the discussions around her concerning playgroups, mother and baby yoga, errant nannies who took more than one day off. These were the conversations of women engulfed in a world ruled by little people who couldn’t even talk. And for a moment, with the sun hitting her back with a slow delicious warmth, she wondered what it would be like to have the biggest crisis of the day be deciding which park to go to.

But that was not her life. A body lay in the morgue and the baby breathing warmly against her chest was in danger. She thought back to the marks under Stella’s arm, the mother’s frantic plea—“no flics”—and she knew the mother was depending on her.

Two blocks later, having passed leaning soot-stained buildings with paved courtyards big enough to hold carriages and horses—now relegated to storing green garbage containers and the occasional truck—she entered the dimly lit garage across from Place Bayre.

“Monsieur, Monsieur?” A generator thrummed and she jumped, hearing shots. She ran behind a Renault on a lift and clutched Stella tightly. She felt foolish when she saw that the noise had come from a mechanic in an oil-stained jumpsuit who was shooting lug nuts onto a tire rim with an air-powered wrench.

A man wiping his hands on a rag appeared from behind a small cage in which two yellow parakeets trilled.

“We’re full up,” he said. “No more appointments until Thursday, Madame.”

“It’s Mademoiselle. And I don’t own a car.”

She walked, biked, or Metroed everywhere. She would never understand anyone having a car in Paris. Yet she knew René couldn’t envision life without his customized Citroën.

“A woman made a call from your garage last night. Late, around ten . . .”

He shook his head. “Impossible. We close at 8:00 P.M.”

How could she explain that she’d had the call traced?

The other mechanic handed him a power wrench. “Stas, I forgot to tell you. The baron called. He wanted special treatment. As usual. He’d punctured a tire.”

“Again, eh?” Stas rubbed his cheek, leaving an oil smear. “You keeping other things from me, too, Momo?”

Looked like she’d opened a can of worms.

“You know those aristos.” Momo shrugged. “I tried to say no but—”

The phone rang in the small office and Stas ran to answer it.

“Do you mean you opened the garage last night after hours?” Aimée asked.

Momo rolled his eyes. “Just for him. He knows I live upstairs. Can’t seem to get away from doing him favors.”

More than one baron lived on the island. “The baron lives near here?”

Momo jerked his oil-encrusted thumbnail toward Hôtel Lambert’s high stone wall. “Rents his wing out most of the time. Stays with the owners in the country.”

Aimée took the photo from her bag, pointed to Orla’s face. “Did you see her last night?”

Momo shook his head. “Why should I have?”

If Orla had sneaked in while he was busy working, she was no further than before. Perplexed, she pulled her cap lower. Unless he was keeping his knowledge close to his chest. She pointed to the pay phone that stood under an oil-stained Michelin map of Burgundy.

“Come on, Momo. I’m sure she called me from here last night.”

Momo looked down, reaching for his tools. If she pushed him a little more she thought he’d admit it.

“We’ll keep it just between you and me,” Aimée said, coaxing him.

He glanced at Stas, who was still speaking on the office phone, then turned toward her.

“He’s a tightwad. He makes the customers use the pay phone. And I’m not supposed to let people in.” Momo lowered his voice. “But”—he pointed to the dark-haired girl seated next to Orla in the group photo—“she said her cell phone battery had run out.”

Surprised, Aimée looked again at the names on the back. Nelie. She guessed Momo liked a pretty face and leaned closer. Birdseed from the parakeets cage crackled under her feet.

“So you let her in. What did she say?”

“She was walking funny. Her face was white as a sheet,” he said. “She seemed nervous. That’s all.”

“Was she by herself?”

“I didn’t see anyone else. I changed the tire and when I looked up, she’d gone,” he said.

Stas had returned. “Hey, Momo . . . you’re on the clock.”

“How old’s your baby?” Momo asked.

Aimée gulped. “Close to two weeks.”

She walked past an air pump, her mind spinning. The dark-haired Nelie, not Orla—who was now lying in the morgue—had called her. She stared at the face in the photo and felt a fleeting sense of familiarity. Had they passed in the street, stood in line at a shop? But if it was Nelie who had called her, why had Stella been wrapped in Orla’s jean jacket?

She turned around. “Momo, have you lost any tire irons, those things you use to change a tire?”

He rubbed his chin. The moons of his fingernails were rimmed with black. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Would you mind checking?”

“The equipment’s kept in back,” he said. “Sorry.”

She pulled out twenty francs, put it in his hand. “Does this make it any easier?”

He nodded. She put her card in his grease-rimed pocket.

“Let me know, Momo.”

PUNGENT AROMAS WAFTED from the white-walled cheese shop on rue Saint Louis en l’Isle. Runny cheeses perched on the marble counter leaked onto their straw beds. The old orange cash register sat by the wall, as always. Bernard, le maître de fromage, was also le maître de gossip. Most people on the island passed through his shop. And if anyone knew anything about them, he did.

“Haven’t see you in a while, Aimée. Try a piece.” Bernard, compact in his white coat and apron, pared the rind off a Reblochon and offered her a taste. “Perfect for after dinner tonight.” His eyes widened when he noticed the baby. “I had no idea . . . you’ve been busy, eh?” He grinned. “Quelle mignonne! I can hear it now—all the old biddies on the island discussing you and your baby. Why, just the other day—”

“I’m babysitting, Bernard.” She slipped some francs over the counter to him along with the photo.

“Do you know her?”

He pulled on his glasses. “Who?”

“Either of these girls. They’re MondeFocus activists.”

Bernard shook his head.

A dead end. If Bernard didn’t recognize her, well . . . Disappointed, she picked up the ripe slice of Reblochon in its white waxed-paper wrapper, slipped it inside the baby bag, and turned to go.

“Attends,” he said, scanning the photo more closely. “She seems familiar.” He pointed to Nelie, sitting next to Orla.

“Did you see her yesterday?”

“Those students sneak cigarettes at the café. Try there.”

AIMÉE NODDED TO the older woman, wearing a green sweater set and wool scarf knotted around her neck despite the heat, behind the zinc counter of her corner café. One of the handful on the island sure to stay open late in winter. A few empty tables and booths stood in the rear room, which normally catered to the lunch crowd. Now only a single couple sat there, deep in conversation over a carafe of wine. The decor, redone in the seventies when smoked-glass dividers were introduced, didn’t hide the Art Nouveau banister of the staircase leading down a flight to the phone and bathrooms.

“Bonjour, Sabine, un café, s’il vous plaît.”

“Right away,” Sabine said, rubbing the milk-steamer wand with a wet dishcloth. She was a typical Auvergnat—brusque, born into the business, accustomed to watching every franc.

“Nico still on vacation?” Aimée asked. Nico, the co-owner, took February off.

Sabine nodded, setting down a demitasse of steaming espresso with a respectable tan foam head and pushing the aluminum ball holding sugar cubes toward her. Stella was asleep, her soft breaths just audible to Aimée.

“Merci,” Aimée said, unwrapping two sugar cubes and letting them plop into her cup. She moved the baby sling to the side, leaning toward her, as if to speak in confidence. As in Bernard’s cheese shop, not much went on in the café without Sabine’s knowledge.

“Not your usual style,” Sabine said, glancing at Stella.

“I’m helping my friend. You know how that goes!”

“Thought so,” Sabine said.

“Et alors, but I’ve got to work, Sabine.”

“Bit off more than you could chew this time?”

Little did she know.

“You could say that, Sabine.” She slid the photo onto the zinc countertop. “I need to find these girls to babysit for me. Bernard said he’s seen them here. You wouldn’t happen to have seen her this morning, would you?”

She pointed to Nelie.

Sabine shook her head. “Not this morning.”

“I hope they’re not out of town.” Aimée paused as if in thought. “What about last night, did you see either one last night?”

“Janou closed up as usual,” Sabine said, rinsing dirty cups in the sink and stacking them in the small dishwasher under the counter.

Janou, her brother, wearing a blue workman’s coat and his habitual frown, wheeled a handcart of stacked Orangina cartons past the staircase leading down to the bathrooms and phone.

“Ça va, Janou,” Aimée called to him. “Remember seeing either of these girls last night?” She held out the photo.

“A lot of students come here.” He straightened up, paused, pulled his chin. “A blonde, a young fille, with a baby thing like yours. Could have been her last night.”

“Was she wearing a jean jacket with blue beads embroidered on the pocket?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t pay much attention. The mecs were watching the motocross rally replays on the télé. You know how loud they get.”

That meant a bunch of beer-swilling motorcycle enthusiasts and a crowded, steamy café if Janou hadn’t noticed much. But she wouldn’t give up. A sharp-eyed Auvergnat, Janou reminded her of a crow, a nice crow with his close-set black eyes, who’d spot the shine of a franc lying in the gutter a street away.

Sabine, now with her glasses on, stared at the photo. “That blonde one. I remember now. She wiped her denim jacket sleeve on the fogged-up window. Her jacket was trimmed with funny blue beads in the pattern of a whale.” Sabine’s finger stabbed Orla’s face in the photo. “That I noticed before I left.”

At last!

“She left streak marks all over.” Sabine pointed to the window. “Like those.” Outside, a group of students stood in line at Bertillon’s to choose from more than forty flavors of ice cream, blocking the café door. This was a sore point for Sabine. “Gave me the job of cleaning the whole window this morning, inside and out.”

She’d washed away any fingerprint evidence then.

“Sabine, do you think she was looking for someone?”

Sabine shrugged. “Hard to say. Tell her to leave the window alone next time, eh?”

Aimée stroked the fuzz on Stella’s head.

“Did she meet anyone?”

Janou leaned down and hefted a crate. “I served the mecs, and when I had finished, she’d gone. When I stacked the café chairs outside, she was just leaving the ATM across the way.”

“Alone?”

“Some girls were running. She could have been one.” Janou pointed to the dark-haired girl in the photo, then opened the cabinet door, which concealed a dumbwaiter to the cellar, and slid a carton of Orangina onto it. “But I’m not sure.”

“Running?”

Janou scratched his cheek. “One of them kept looking back over her shoulder.”

“In what way?”

“Like everyone does after they take cash from the machine, alors!”

Or had she been scared and running for her life?

“She limped. Stopped every so often.”

“The blonde?”

“The dark-haired one.”

Nelie.

“Does she live around here?”

“You’re curious this morning.” Janou paused, his head cocked, watching her.

She had to think fast. “Count on me to lose her number and I have a meeting. I wish I hadn’t told my friend I’d watch her baby.”

Janou shook his head. “Try the women’s hostel! You’d think they might order a sandwich to eat, just once, eh, since they make this place their living room.”

“The woman’s hostel on rue Poulletier?”

He nodded.

Aimée knew the place around the corner from her apartment that sheltered students and troubled young women.

Aimée set some francs on the counter. “Merci.”

SHE LEFT THE café and walked down the narrow street thinking. Unease filled her.

Had she looked at this all wrong? She stared at the photo, concentrating on the dark-haired girl, Nelie. Momo had let her use the phone in the garage. Bernard, Sabine, and Janou had recognized her.

Had Nelie, though limping and injured, met Orla after the demonstration at the café? But then why hadn’t she used the telephone downstairs in the café rather than the one at the garage? On top of that, why hadn’t Nelie explained the situation calmly and clearly to her over the phone? Instead, she’d spoken frantically, almost incoherently. She had seemed desperate, sure that someone was after her. And now Orla was dead.

There was still no clue as to why Nelie had chosen to telephone Aimée. Nor any explanation of the writing on Stella’s skin. Questions swirled in Aimée’s mind as she tried to fathom a frightened woman’s thought processes. But now at least she knew whom she was looking for. She had to find Nelie, get answers, and resolve the baby issue without involving the authorities. She turned into rue Poulletier, feeling a frisson in her bones as she passed the words carved in worn limestone—SAINT-VINCENT DE PAUL ÉTABLIT LES FILLES DE LA CHARITÉ 1652. A reminder of the time when priests found babies abandoned on church steps and the parish provided social services that the king didn’t. A newer sign, hanging near the ancient metal S-shaped hinge, which compressed the inner beams and held the floors together, read WATCH OUT.

In a few minutes, she imagined, she might be handing Stella over to Nelie. Stella stirred and Aimée felt a pang of regret.

Get on with it! she told herself. Resolutely, she pressed the digicode at the entrance to the soot stained stone building. The door buzzed open. Now she’d find out why Nelie had entrusted Stella to her.

“NO BABIES ALLOWED, MADAME.” A honeyed voice belied the sharp expression of the stout woman at the window of the reception area.

In the crowded alcove behind the woman, faxes hummed and a phone console lit up with red lights.

“I’m meeting Nelie,” Aimée smiled, determined not to let this dragon of a sentry put her off. “Can you ring her room?”

“We’re a busy office. You’ll have to call her yourself.”

“Her room number, please?”

“We don’t give out that information,” the receptionist said warily. “You should know that.”

Had the flics sniffed her out and come for Nelie already? She doubted that.

“I’d appreciate your help, Madame.”

“You’ll have to excuse me, it’s our busiest time. If you’re meeting her, she’ll come down,” said the woman. A red light was blinking on the switchboard. Several young women entered the vestibule, crowding around the window asking for mail.

A brunette with a long braid down her back leaned down and cooed at the baby. “What’s her name?”

“Her name . . . Stella.” Aimée seized the opportunity. “You don’t know Nelie, do you? We’re supposed to meet and I forgot her cell phone number.”

“I’m sorry.” The brunette shook her head.

Aimée showed her the photo. “Maybe you’re on the same floor.”

The girl shook her head. “I’m in the exchange section, just here short term.” She smiled, a milk-fed provincial girl. “Sorbonne students occupy the second floor, that’s all I know.”

Aimée found a seat near a table bearing old magazines. Another group of girls in tracksuits carrying soccer balls in a net assembled by the desk. On the back wall Aimée saw room numbers next to linen assignments on a blackboard. She stood and scanned the numbers until she came to one for Nelie Landrou on Staircase C. Finally! That had to be her.

She edged through the glass doors to the courtyard while the receptionist was busy. Charcoal gray tiles formed the slanted rooftop overlooking the grass-covered rectangular courtyard. There were no blue zinc roofs on this island; that would have been too modern.

Stella nestled closer in her arms, radiating warmth. “Such a good girl,” Aimée whispered. If only she’d stay that way.

Staircase C lay at the back. Aimée mounted a flight of covered stone steps. She faced a line of planked doors. There was a name holder outside each room, next to the door.

Nelie’s resembled the others. At least no police crime-scene tape was visible. She took a breath before she knocked. “Nelie, it’s Aimée Leduc. I can help you.” There was no answer even after she knocked repeatedly.

She’d never picked a medieval lock before. Certainly never picked a lock of any sort with a baby in her arms. She didn’t think her credit card would work so she inserted her miniscrewdriver into the lock, swiveled it around, and then heard the tip snap. Great! Propping a gurgling Stella on her hip, she reached in her bag for her key ring, found the long old-fashioned keys to her cave, and used one as a lever to prise out the broken screwdriver shank. That done, she slid in the narrow lock-picking tool with a quick twist and upward shove.

She heard laughter from down the hall; she had to hurry. She jiggled the lock-picking tool, heard scraping metal and a click. She pushed the door open.

“Allô?”

No Nelie. Empty and like a monastic cell, spartan; narrow, white-washed stone walls, a small coved window filled with old blue bubbled glass with bars across it. She saw a poster of a munitions site with the legend: One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day on the wall, a textbook on the floor, and an Indian cotton print bedspread on the single bed, which gave the room a student feeling. But it was an unlived-in feeling.

Her hopes dashed, she debated what to do. She picked up some notices left on a chair. The one on top was for a mandatory house meeting dated a month ago. A brief message in an opened envelope read: Madame needs to meet with you regarding the balance owing on end-of-term rent. It was dated three weeks before.

She’d been here, opened this envelope. Or someone had. Aimée wondered if she’d left when she couldn’t hide her pregnancy anymore.

Aimée didn’t have much time. Clutching Stella in the baby sling, she searched under the bed. Nothing. She examined the sheets, the pillow, and the gray sweater tossed down on an orange crate. This girl had left little more than a textbook and that sweater.

She hadn’t just moved out, she had fled. Aimée felt it in the pit of her stomach.

She opened the window. In the courtyard, several uniformed flics stood talking to the woman from reception. The woman pointed up at the window. Nelie’s window.

Her pulse raced. She had only minutes. Forget searching, she had to get out. Her foot slipped on a rag rug and she cushioned Stella with one arm, grabbing the metal bed frame with the other hand. It was a cheap tubular frame, typical of dormitories. Hollow tubed! And the screw where the tubes joined was loose. A good place to hide something, Aimée realized. After two turns, the screw came off and she wrenched the tubes apart. Inside, her index finger found a rolled-up plastic folder. Empty. The name Alstrom was embossed on the cover.

Their client, Regnault, ran Alstrom’s publicity campaign. The protesters she’d seen from Regnault’s window, the blue lights that had illuminated the demonstration last night just across Pont de Sully . . . somehow they were related to the victim Orla, Nelie, and the baby.

She rerolled the folder, stuck it back in the bed frame, scrabbled to her feet, and draped her jacket over her shoulder. By the time she’d closed the door behind her, the jacket covered Stella as well. She heard footsteps and the murmur of voices from across the courtyard.

A single file of flics tramped up Staircase C on her right. She ducked behind a pillar. But not before she’d seen the leader point to Nelie’s door. The other officers fell back, in position. A keening cry came from her arms. Aimée wiped her finger, stuck it in Stella’s mouth, praying it would pacify the baby until she could give her a bottle.

She padded down Staircase B, keeping close to the wall of the arcade. Stella’s mouth gummed her finger. She reached in the bag, found the bottle, and shook it. Thank God, the formula line reached the top.

Head down, she threaded her way through the soccer team crowd, made it to the covered entryway, and opened the vestibule door.

“Excuse me, Madame?” said a blue-uniformed flic.

She froze.

He smiled, and handed her a diaper. “This fell from your bag.”

“Merci,” she said. “Excuse me.” She edged past him, eager to get away.

Rain pattered on the warm stone buildings turning to steam in the unseasonable heat. She shielded Stella with the baby bag, quickened her step, and turned the corner onto Quai d’Anjou. Mist curled under the supports of Pont Marie. Then the spring-like drizzle turned into a downpour before she could take shelter in a vaulted doorway. Drops beaded her eyelashes. She took a few more steps, then caught her breath. An unmarked police car blocked her building entrance.