Murder in the Latin Quarter (28 page)

T
he elderly priest
stepped up from behind one of the taller gravestones. He was dressed all in black except for the dingy white collar that peeked out from below a long gray beard.

“Gosh, you startled me,” Maggie said, her hand to her throat. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to trespass.”

“Can I help you, Madame?” He didn't sound unfriendly but like most French—especially out in the countryside—he wasn't particularly warm either.

Maggie had been hoping to track down someone from the church before she left anyway. She'd have preferred not to be caught skulking around the graveyard but she quickly pulled herself together. She reached into her tote bag and pulled out the German's diary and found the photo of Camille and Delphine. She handed it to the priest.

“I'm trying to find out what happened to Camille Victoire's daughter,” she said.

The priest looked carefully at the photo and then handed it back to Maggie. “As you see,” he said with a shrug.

“Right, yes, I do see that she's dead. But I was wondering if you knew the family? Or maybe the priest who had the job before you?”

He narrowed his eyes at Maggie and seemed to closely examine her clothing. She was wearing sneakers, jeans and a thin rain jacket. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a low-hanging ponytail. Maggie knew she didn't look like a criminal and there was no doubt he could tell she wasn't French.

He turned away and began walking toward the church.

“You'll have tea?” he called over his shoulder. “You English love your tea, yes?”

It didn't matter that he thought she was English. The fact was, he spoke English and was willing to answer her questions.

“Oh, yes, we do,” Maggie said as she hurried to catch up with him.

T
he village rectory
was small and except for the refrigerator and microwave, looked like it had served the same purpose for a few centuries. Maggie sat on the couch while the priest put a kettle on the stove and a cat ran to her and instantly rubbed up against her legs.

“I am Père Michel,” he said. “In fact I knew both Coeur and her daughter.”

“Amelie?”

The priest turned to look at her as if analyzing her. “You know Amelie?”

“She's the housekeeper for my husband's aunt in Paris.”

The man nodded as if this was not a surprise to him. “She is doing well?”

“I guess so,” Maggie said. “She's going to inherit a lot of money so she'll probably be doing a lot better real soon.”

Should she not have said that? Maggie wasn't supposed to know what was in the will. But the priest didn't seem to register her words. She sat quietly forming her questions until he came back into the room with a tray of two mugs and a plate of thinly sliced bread.

“I am afraid I have no biscuits,” he said. “I rarely have company.”

“No worries,” Maggie said, taking her tea mug. “Thank you for this.”

“I have not kept up Madame Victoire's gravesite and for this I apologize. I am an old man.”

“I guess she doesn't have any family left to do it?”

“Only Amelie.”

“I was wondering if you could tell me what you know about Camille. Did you know her personally?”

He shook his head. “
Non
. I was not yet a priest then. But the rector before me, Père Joseph knew her family very well.”

“I guess he was pretty shocked by what happened.”

“He never believed it. Not for a moment.”

“He didn't believe that Camille had been consorting with Germans?”

Delphine had said all the young German officers were
hot
. Even the good girls were swooning over them—especially when they knew they shouldn't be.

“He swore that she could not have done what she was accused of.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“It was something Camille told him in the confessional.”

Father Michel solemnly tapped his nose with a forefinger. Maggie wasn't familiar with the gesture but the message was clear: Camille had a secret that she'd revealed to her priest that made it impossible for her to have been with the German. Or perhaps any man?

“Camille was
gay
?” Maggie blurted out.

“I never met her myself,” the priest said, a thin smile on his lips. “But Father Joseph was quite adamant about her innocence in this matter.”

“Well, that would explain a few things,” Maggie said with a sigh. “Did you know Coeur?”

“Of course. A good woman but troubled.”

With every right to be.

“She was raised by Camille's parents until they passed and then taken on by a family who informally adopted her.” The priest shrugged as if to indicate this might not have been a great thing. “Coeur changed her name from Victoire to Tavel, which was the name of her foster family. She never married and died of cancer before she was forty. She had one child, Amelie. Out of wedlock.”

So there's that mystery solved.
Delphine had surely known all along where Camille's daughter was. That's why Amelie is in the will.

It wasn't Camille who consorted with the German officer.

It was Delphine.

It had always been Delphine.

“I am sorry, Madame. Is this information not helpful to you?”

Maggie set her tea mug down. She was suddenly feeling very tired. “Oh, no, it's helpful. It's just…so tragic. Don't you think?”

He shrugged. “But of course,” he said. As if all of life was tragic and some parts simply more so than others.

F
rom her corner
café table Amelie saw when the tall blonde woman left the apartment. She shifted in her café chair. It was too cold for anyone to sit outside and for that Amelie was glad. The waiter had demanded payment in advance for her coffee.

Amelie didn't care.

Amelie had watched Madame Dernier's husband leave first followed later by Madame Dernier. With the blonde woman gone, that just left the babysitter. And of course the children.

When you're no longer afraid of prison
, Amelie thought,
all opportunities open to you.

Killing the babysitter will be easy. And the other children too. Yes, why not.

But her true goal was Madame's little niece. The one who had sat in the apartment this entire last week charming Madame and taunting Amelie. Taunting her with all that she had—her loving parents, her expensive sweaters and shoes, her sheltered life—in the face of all that Amelie and her mother had lost.

Yes, her true goal will be that the baby breathe its last this very hour.

Amelie slipped her hand into her coat pocket to touch the razor sharpness of the knife. She sighed with pleasure at the sensation of the prick against her finger.

Then she stood up and walked to the apartment building.

M
aggie sat
in her train seat. She stared out the window, her mind numb with all that she'd learned.

Delphine had been carrying on with the Nazi. Delphine had led the Resistance to Camille's door. Delphine had had a child and passed it off as her younger sister's.

Maggie's brain spun. Did she really know the woman she'd lived with for the last week? Could Delphine have changed so much from the person she'd been back in 1944?

And then there was Amelie. There was no doubt that Delphine knew her housekeeper was the direct descendant of the woman she'd betrayed.

Camille's daughter.

Maggie thought of all the times she babbled on to Delphine about how she was working hard to find Camille's daughter and all along Delphine knew Coeur was dead and her daughter was washing dishes in Delphine's kitchen

Maggie looked out the window of the passing scenery of the countryside as the train sped toward Paris.

Amelie had sought out Delphine and taken the job in her house. For what possible purpose?

What purpose could there be? Except revenge?

Could Amelie have killed Isla? What about Gerard? He'd certainly have opened his door to Amelie, unconcerned that she was any kind of a threat to him.

But why attack the ones around Delphine? Why not go after the source?

Could it have been
Amelie
who followed Maggie into the catacombs? Or who leapt over the body of Isla in the stairwell? Maggie shook her head. She was positive that both of those had been men. She hesitated. But was that because she'd assumed it?

Everyone believed that Noel was the last one to see Delphine before Maggie found her but of course Amelie could come and go and nobody would think anything of it.

Had Amelie done something to Delphine?

Maggie pulled out her phone. Laurent
had
to change his mind and okay an autopsy, she thought. She started to text him as much but decided it was an argument best done in person. Instead she texted: <
Coming home soon. See you then.>

Maggie had one more errand to run and it wouldn't do to have Laurent worry needlessly about her.

She had no idea in what section of Paris Amelie lived in but she was sure she could find something at Delphine's apartment with her address on it.

T
he wall-length
mirrors hanging above the long mahogany bar made the brasserie appear twice the size that it was. The restaurant was a classic brasserie, traditionally decorated with marquetry and polished wall paneling against scarlet banquettes with solid, homey food. Laurent and Noel sat in a booth with gleaming copper pans of plump, garlicky escargots and a second bottle of Gigondas.

They had left the attorney's office after the contents of the will had been revealed to them.

Laurent had known before he walked into the office of Delphine's executor that he would walk out a rich man. Maggie had already told him he would inherit an equal share with Amelie Taver and Noel. Maggie had been right about the amount too. What he was mildly shocked about was the unmistakable impression that he'd also walked out of the attorney's office with an uncle he'd never really known before.

“I love this place,” Noel said, ripping off a piece of bread to dredge up the oily garlic butter in his dish. “I used to come here with Delphine, you know. When I was a boy.”

“I had no idea it had been around that long.”

Laurent hadn't known what to expect in meeting Noel this morning. His memory of the man was hazy, almost nonexistent. Family rarely came to visit when he'd lived with his grandmother.

He couldn't imagine being taken to a restaurant such as this as a child.

“Why do you think the housekeeper didn't show?” Noel asked.

Laurent shrugged.

“Incredible that she should get a full third, don't you think? I have to say I was shocked.”

When Laurent still didn't answer, Noel laughed.

“Man of few words, eh, Laurent? Although as I recall you were quiet as a boy too.”

They ate in silence for a moment.

“I can't believe she's gone,” Noel murmured almost to himself.

“You were close,” Laurent said. It wasn't a question. He knew Maggie had her suspicions about the old fellow but even in the few minutes Laurent had spent in Noel's company he could not believe Noel capable of hurting his aunt.

“Close, yes. I was…I am…convinced that she was my mother,” Noel said with a helpless shrug. “But more than that—and this I did not share with your wife—I came into more recent information that made me believe my father was a famous man whose identity Delphine had reason to go to great lengths to prevent me from learning.”

Laurent frowned. “Who do you think your father was?” he asked.

“The story has always been that my father was a dimwitted boy who impregnated Georgette and was then conveniently killed during the liberation of Paris.”

“And the true story? With the famous father?”

“Delphine's stepdaughter Michelle Normand said that Delphine once confessed that my real father was, well, your grandfather, Laurent.”

Laurent poured himself another glass of wine. “Marc Dernier the Resistance hero had an affair with Georgette?” he said.

“Delphine,” Noel said. “At least that's what Michelle said. And it made sense to me since, logically, when Georgette died—if she was truly my mother—there should have been no more reason to keep the secret of my birth. But since Delphine still wasn't admitting anything, it had to be because
she
was the one who'd betrayed her sister by sleeping with her brother-in-law.”

“And you heard this from Delphine's bitter crazy stepdaughter?”

“Yes, I grant you the source isn't credible,” Noel said with a sigh. “And I suppose I wanted to believe it. My constituents already know I am illegitimate. But with a hero father? That could not have hurt me at all.” He glanced ruefully at his plate. “But alas, it was not to be. Turns out I truly am the illegitimate son of a dimwitted boy run over on his bicycle on the most important day in the history of Paris.”

Laurent gave him a questioning glance.

“Delphine confirmed it,” Noel said. “I hated myself for coming to her with the accusation. But if you could have seen the look on her face when I asked her…I'm sure she was telling me the truth.” His shoulders slumped in dejection.

“I'm sorry, Noel.”

Noel struggled back into his smile.

“Oh, well. We all have our life stories to tell,
n'est-ce pas
? I suppose some of us are more intent than others on rewriting them.” He held his wine glass up in a toast to Laurent and after Laurent drank Noel kept his wine glass held up.

“To my aunt or my mother or whoever the hell she was,” Noel said. “She was a good woman and loved me when there were no other volunteers.”

They toasted. Before he knew the words were coming out of his mouth, Laurent lifted his glass again and said, “To Gerard.”

Noel nodded and drank. “Poor bastard.”

Laurent stared at the blood red color of his wine and realized it was a relief to speak Gerard's name without acrimony.

There was a time when I loved you, brother
, he thought. Quickly, he shook himself out of the reflections.

“I hope you will come and visit us in St-Buvard,” Laurent said.

“I would love that, but I am pretty sure Maggie doesn't like me,” Noel said as he popped the last escargot in his mouth.

“It is not a requirement to like family,” Laurent said with a shrug. “But she will welcome you.”

“It's because I behaved badly with Delphine, you see.”

“If I turned away everyone who behaved badly, I would be very alone—starting with my wife. Leave her to me.”

They finished their meal and Laurent felt the first strains of familial connection since the brief days before his own mother died. This elderly, slightly vacuous man—whether his mother was Delphine or Georgette—was his uncle and Laurent found himself grateful to know him.

With Gerard and Delphine gone, it occurred to him that Noel was the only extended family he had left in the world.

An hour later as Noel was taking his leave, Laurent shook his uncle's hand and looked him in the eye.

“I could order a DNA test on Delphine's remains,” he said.

Just the sound of the words felt like a betrayal to his aunt. But if Laurent had learned anything in this world it was that life was for the living. Delphine was gone. Noel was here.

Noel smiled sadly. “Thank you,
mon vieux
,” he said. “And I love you for offering. I cannot believe I'm going to say this, but I think when it comes right down to it, I prefer my own version of who Delphine was to me.” He shrugged. “True or not.”