Murder on the Champ de Mars (32 page)

His face had graced every newspaper of the day, and here he was caught in flagrante delicto, or whatever they called it. Explosive if it were leaked to the public. So this was the man, long dead, subject of the tell-all memoir … She turned it over, looking at the note on the back again:
Insurance via Pascal
. Also in the folder she’d stolen was a sheet of yellow legal paper with a few names written under the heading
COMMISSAIRE BLAUET
.

A police
commissaire
? Her mind jumped to the implications: a huge cover-up involving ministries and the police.
More important than money
—
power
. Cover-ups necessitated strings of payoffs. Supposing Pascal had tried blackmail, but had bitten off more than he could chew?

Miles Davis, curled at her feet, stirred on the duvet. She propped up her feather pillow and hit Martine’s number.

“So how’s Benoît’s
pot-au-feu
?” Martine asked.

Martine amazed her sometimes. “How do you know, telepathy?”

“Babette,” she said. “I called about my press pass, and to say goodnight to Chloé. I heard about your leakage incident. Don’t worry—he probably found it attractive. Men, for some strange reason, like to protect. They enjoy a minor freakout now and then.”

“Minor freakout, Martine? Major, I’d call it. And leaking all over my agnès b. blouse. I almost died.”

“No worries,” she said. “The Italian cousin’s not bad as backup.”

“Backup? This Benoît couldn’t even look at me, and no wonder. A raccoon-eyed mess, unbuttoned, stockings in shreds.”

“Not to mention neurotic,” Martine added. “But remember he has a sister—I’m sure she has her moments, too.”

Aimée heaved a long sigh. Right across the courtyard, and a hunk. How often did that happen?

Little whistles of sleep came from the baby monitor. For once Chloé slept and she couldn’t. Talk about bad timing.

“Melac, that snake, threatened me today. He was at the lawyer’s appointment I missed.”

“Missed it? How could you? And give him ammunition?”

Moonlight filtered through the window over her mauve silk duvet.

She explained that she’d been hijacked by the staff at l’Hôtel Matignon, and hadn’t much choice in the matter.

“Not so bad, Aimée. You rescheduled with the lawyer,
non?
What’s really up?”

With a kick at Chloé’s zebra rattle, she gave Martine a condensed version of what had happened in the last few hours.

“Leseur, a
haut fonctionnaire
knifed to death on the Champ de Mars?” Martine sucked in her breath. “Stay away from this, Aimée. Someone’s more than desperate.”

“Tell me about it,” said Aimée. “I got Delavigne and her daughter out on the last Eurostar to London.”

“
Mon Dieu!
This’ll be spun as an assignation gone wrong, Aimée, you know that. The ministry won’t let it blow up in their faces.”

“But I have this old file of Gerard Delavigne’s, Martine. There’s something in it I don’t understand.”

“That’s why you called, eh?”

“Can I fax a photo and an accompanying list over so you can you see what you think?”

A sigh. “Hold on,” Martine said, then gave Aimée her
tante
’s shop’s fax number. “Give me five minutes to go down to the shop.”

B
Y THE TIME
Martine called her back, Aimée’d drifted off.

“As I see it, there are two investigations, Aimée,” said Martine, yawning. “You started off searching for Drina, and now you’re looking for her sister’s murderer, from twenty years ago, who might have engineered your father’s death.”

“One and the same, Martine.”

Aimée pulled the duvet around her for warmth. The fretwork of moonlight quivered on the duvet’s mauve silk sheen. Miles Davis opened one eye, then the other, and stretched his right paw.

“You’re assuming, Aimée. Where’s the proof?”

“Drina’s last words. And proof in her notebook that she informed for Papa.”

“Which you’ve never seen, and which is missing. You need more than that,” said Martine. “At least, I would need more to write a story. No editor would buy it.”

“And Gerard Delavigne’s file?”

“The photo’s incriminating,
bien sûr:
a minister with a young teenager in a hotel. But that’s already been squashed—a gag order on publication. It’s people in the government and police, that’s what you’re talking about—the prime minister at l’Hôtel Matignon and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at d’Orsay. And you have to be very careful what you write about them.”

“Djanka’s body was discovered in the moat at les Invalides,” said Aimée, sitting up, rustling the duvet.

Miles Davis cocked an ear. Stretched and licked his paw.

She studied the file and spread out the crime-scene photos from her father’s
procès-verbal
, which she’d brought home. “The military were denied an investigation on their own turf.
Doesn’t the prime minister trump Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defense because he oversees all of them?”

“Aimée, it’s all an old boys’ club, favors galore. They all went to the
grandes écoles
. Except those from the officer academy at Saint-Cyr, the military elite.”

“
Ainsi donc
, they’re the outsiders, Martine. The old boys froze out the
armée.
”

“There was a cover-up,” said Martine. “What’s new? Then and now, it’s who you know. Who’s got something to lose or to gain by shutting up.”

“Pascal Leseur gave this photo to his friend, Gerard Delavigne, as some kind of insurance,” Aimée said. She propped up more feather pillows, pulled the duvet tighter against the chill in her bedroom. The rustle of the smooth silk and Chloé’s whistles of sleep over the monitor lulled her for a moment.

“Françoise, Gerard’s wife, called Pascal a manipulator, out for everything he could get. So I figure he held this over the minister’s head and expected favors.”

Martine yawned. “Go to sleep.”

“Can you ask your friend at
Le Monde
a favor, the one who works in the archives? I need articles on Commissaire Blauet. Anything from 1978. His present whereabouts. Check the obits in case he’s dead, too.”

A sigh. “Why?”

“If Blauet’s alive, I need to reach him. His name’s there, Martine. He’d have been the one to shut down my father’s investigation.”

“
Zut!
And you think,
quoi
, he’ll admit it just like that after all this time?”

“You don’t think ‘pretty please with sugar on top’ will work?”

Another yawn. “If I say yes, will you go to sleep?”

If only she could. Miles Davis emitted a snore, and the moon had dipped behind the mansarded rooftops across the river.

“Promise.
Merci
, Martine.”

A
IMÉE PARKED THE
Gucci-print pod stroller—bought on René’s insistence—at the Saint-Germain
piscine
. The humid air was tinged with chlorine.

“Here you go, water baby,” she said, handing Chloé to Babette, who was already in the pool. “René or I will meet you at the park later.”

The
mamans
in their
maillots de bain
at the baby swim class waved—Aimée had been a part of their group during her maternity leave. She felt a tug of regret at not joining them. “See you next time,” smiled one of the
mamans
. The lifeguard, a hunk in a Speedo, whistled for their attention. And scrutiny.

“Enjoy,” she called back.

She checked her messages. Maxence had picked up her scooter from Champs de Mars, thank God. But she was waiting to hear what Dussollier had uncovered about Fifi and Tesla, the missing pieces of the puzzle. Nothing. His number answered with an impersonal voice instructing her to leave a message. Why hadn’t he gotten back to her yet? Wasn’t he taking her request seriously? Maybe he didn’t realize how urgent it was.

No news from Martine on her archive query either. Frustrated, she tried René.

“Found another translator for Drina’s Romany?”

“Working on it, Aimée.” René sighed. “What do I say to my friend about that tracker chip? It was a unique prototype. Valuable.”

“So’s a human life, René.”

Pause. “Aimée, walk away from this.” René cleared his throat. “Please, you can’t let—”

“Nicu’s death go for nothing?
Non
, René, my father wanted me to make it right.”

The sidewalk horse chestnut trees bloomed in white and pink as she headed away from Saint-Germain. With almost no warning, the sky opened, as it often did at this time of year—a
giboulée
, a sudden brief downpour followed by sun, characteristic of March. But March was over—where was spring? She ran for cover, ducking into a doorway.

“Won’t you help me, René?” she asked when she could hear herself again over the rush of the rain.

His answer was lost as she dropped her phone in the streaming gutter.

F
ROM THE CLANGING
splash and then buzz on the end of the line, René feared Aimée’d ruined another phone.

He shook his misgivings aside. Rubbed his brow and took a Doliprane for the ache in his hip. Aimée needed him.

Again.

After a second expensive conversation with the
femme
at La Bouteille, he had finally found a Romany translator and made an appointment. Armed with her introduction and an address, he said a prayer to the parking gods—à la Aimée—and plunged into the traffic on the Rive Gauche.

René tried a shortcut. He shifted into first on a rain-slicked street in the warren behind the Musée d’Orsay. Big mistake. Outside Serge Gainsbourg’s former house, grafittied with tributes to the dead icon, a delivery truck blocked the street. Fuming, René honked and rolled down his window.

He saw a man in front of the shrine, adding to the graffiti. He looked like the ghost of Gainsbourg himself: tousled hair, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, a day’s worth of stubble cultivated on his chin, crisp white shirt, vintage jacket, suede brogues. Harmless, but a man who clearly, René thought, seemed a few slices short of a baguette.

By the time the truck had moved, he had to hurry.

Ten minutes later, the downpour lifted and shoppers filled the boutiques on rue de Sèvres. This was where the fusty 7th bordered the lively 6th, and the streets teemed with life—the
damp pavement was thronged, the outdoor cafés bustling. René loved the energy, the crisp morning light sparkling like crystal and dancing as it hit the wet zinc rooftops.

His prayer had worked; the parking gods were smiling, for once. Two minutes later, across Le Bon Marché, he walked into square Boucicaut, which had been built on the site of an ancient cemetery, or was it a medieval leper colony? He could never remember. Light scudded through the plane tree leaves, striking the swollen raindrops clinging to the grass. He passed the statue of Madame Boucicaut, the Bon Marché founder’s wife, immortalized in marble beckoning the poor children—offering bread crumbs while she kept the loaf, as the
clochards
used to say. The April breeze blew flurries of twigs and leaves over the gravel. Benches dotted this oasis of calm; the blaring of traffic horns seemed suddenly far away. A few children climbed on the play structure, their parents chatting and keeping an eye on them.

Where was his translator? He punched in the number he’d been given.

“
Désolée
, Monsieur, I can’t leave for another hour. Can it wait?”

“There’s no time to spare,” said René. “I’ll come to you.”

Annoyed, he made his way around puddles, exited the square and turned left. Past the inviting
terrasse
tables at the café on rue de Babylone. He battled an urge for something warm.

On rue du Bac, he joined the pilgrims entering the Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal with its shrine of Saint Catherine Labouré. He followed the cobbled entry past a wall of marble plaques and a religious gift shop selling medals depicting the Virgin’s visit to the young Saint Catherine.

He hated crowds, everyone taller than him and no way to see ahead. Nuns shepherded a group of young blue-robed novices, who were speaking to one another in Spanish. A woman paused before the statue of Saint Vincent de Paul, touched his open hand and crossed herself.

Jammed among the worshippers, caught and claustrophobic, he felt like a gnat about to be crushed. Trying not to trip, he moved in the press of people to the whitewashed chapel with its soaring arches, blue murals of the Virgin framing the altar and balconies full of praying supplicants. Ahead he saw a crowd gathered to the right of the main altar. At a door beyond that stood a short nun. She matched the description Madame Bercou at La Bouteille had given him. His translator.

René made his way past the glass case displaying the coffin and incorruptible body of Saint Catherine Labouré, which had been exhumed years after her death in the nineteenth century, still in pristine condition. Shivers ran down his arms when he looked at her wax face framed by a white-peaked wimple, her black rosary trailing over her nun’s habit. The body heat of the fervent and the smoke from the melting candles made him light-headed.

Keep going, he had to keep going.

“Monsieur Friant?” asked the nun, only a head taller than he. Petite, she had deep dark eyes and an olive complexion. A simple blue veil was pinned to her dark hair. “You need help translating Romany? I’m Sister Dorothée. Please come this way.”

He followed her through a door to a narrow courtyard next to the chapel, then over wet pavers and through another door to another courtyard. From such an oppressive atmosphere, he found himself enveloped in a silent stillness, protected from the wind. The courtyard smelled of damp mowed grass. Sunlight sparkled on the wet chains of a sunken stone well.

“It’s much more peaceful here, we can hear ourselves think,” said Sister Dorothée as they sat on a bench under the cloister’s cold stone arches.

René handed her a hundred-franc note along with the notepad. “My donation,” he said.

Sister Dorothée’s smile faded. “In the donation box, please.”