Murder in the Latin Quarter (31 page)

M
aggie hit
the side of the elevator shaft. Pain thundered through her as her knee hit a narrow workman's ledge that spanned the space. The impact jarred her and she flailed out with one arm to grab the chain elevator cable hanging by her head.

Praying it would hold her, and with Mila in her free arm she swung on the chain to the other side of the small shaft. Her right foot fought and found purchase on the ledge just above the second floor lintel.

The elevator shaft reverberated with Mila's screams—obliterating all other sound. Maggie's hands were slippery with her own blood and burning from holding the cable—the cable that kept her balanced on the ledge. Not daring to breathe, she looked down. Maggie's eyes finally made out the shape at the bottom of the shaft. Victor was sprawled on the top of the stalled car, the open valise beneath him.

“
Ici! Ici! Ils sont dans l'ascenseur
!” a man's voice shouted over the opening above. Maggie looked up and saw a policeman looking down.

She willed herself not to relax. Not yet. She kissed Mila's still wailing face and hugged her tight.

It was nearly over.

T
hirty minutes later
, as the police were bringing Victor's broken and lifeless body out of the elevator shaft, Maggie sat in the apartment kitchen, all three children in her lap, and a cup of tea on the table in front of her. Beatrice—who had been attacked by Amelie hours earlier and shoved unconscious into a closet—was having the cut on her head cleaned and bandaged by an emergency medical technician.

Amelie's body was found between the children's beds where Victor, who hadn't realized the real sitter was alive and in the apartment, had left her after he killed her.

Amazingly, neither Jemmy or Zouzou had been drugged. They were simply sleeping deeply after an exhausting day of play with their beloved Beatrice.

Laurent burst into the kitchen, his eyes wild and astonished. He ran to Maggie and knelt by her, one arm encompassing her and the children.

“
Mon Dieu
,” he said. “What—?”

Maggie laid her head on his shoulder, the fear and the adrenalin finally melting away until all she felt was the safety of his arms around her.

“Later,” she whispered. “I'll tell you everything. Later.”

T
hat night
after the police had cordoned off the floor and Grace's apartment, Laurent moved everyone except Beatrice into a furnished apartment rental two blocks away. Beatrice's parents drove up from Provins and took her home with them. Beatrice, who was happily stoned on painkillers by that time, kissed everyone goodbye and both Jemmy and Zouzou cried loudly for thirty minutes after she'd gone.

When Maggie revealed that there was yet another dead body at Delphine Normand's apartment, it became apparent that it was nothing short of a miracle combined with Laurent's power of persuasion that Maggie wasn't spending the evening in an interrogation room rather than relaxing in a fairly luxurious apartment rental. Nonetheless, she was resigned to spending the better part of the next day at the police station having her statement taken.

O
nce they'd arrived
at the rental apartment and after a quick trip to the grocer's, Laurent quickly fed the children and settled the two older ones down in the larger bedroom. He deposited a sleepy Mila into Maggie's arms where she sat in the living room with Grace. Then he went into the kitchen to put together dinner.

Maggie watched Mila lose her fight with sleep. The very thought that Mila had been in the clutches of that madman earlier today…that there was even a breath of a chance that Maggie could have lost her…made Maggie shudder. She held her baby tighter.

“I can't believe all that's happened,” Grace said quietly.

Grace was sitting on the couch with Maggie, her feet tucked up under her and what appeared to be not a speck of make up on. Maggie noticed that Grace had been very quiet since she'd returned with Laurent, allowing him to make all the decisions—including speaking with the police and Beatrice's parents, finding a place to stay for the night, and finally bundling them all into a taxi for the move out of the apartment.

“I'm so sorry, Maggie,” Grace said, her eyes on the baby in Maggie's arms.

Maggie still didn't know what had gone on with Grace today or where she'd been. She was sure she'd hear all about it in due time.

The sound of Laurent moving pots and pans around in the kitchen filtered through the small apartment. At one point Maggie heard him go into the children's room where she heard their little voices before he came back out. A few moments later he brought two glasses of wine to her and Grace. The front of his shirt was wet and since Maggie knew they'd skipped bath time tonight, she could only assume it was the result of an energetic bout of toddler tooth brushing. She and Grace had heard giggling coming from the bedroom and she thanked God that the children didn't seem to have suffered any lasting damage from the terrible day.

I only hope Beatrice can someday shake it off
, Maggie thought.

“I'm a mess,” Grace said. “Did Laurent tell you?”

“No. He kind of saw I had my hands full with my own drama tonight.”

“See? Can you believe I'm about to tell you what happened to me and André when you and the children were nearly killed today? What is the matter with me?”

“I don't know, Grace.”

“Windsor is taking the kids. Both kids.”

Thank God
. Maggie's face flushed when the thought came to her. Was that a betrayal? It was only the truth.

“I've made such a mess of everything,” Grace said. “Do you think I can fix it?”

“Sure. If you want to.”

“You don't think I want to?”

“I don't know, Grace. Frankly, I don't know who you are any more.”

Grace stared at her, her mouth open and then she burst into tears. Maggie shifted Mila to her other arm and put a hand on Grace's knee.

“Sweetie, I'm sorry,” Maggie said. “I'm so sorry.”

“No, you're right,” Grace said through her tears. “I've made a mess of everything only please don't give up on me, Maggie.”

“I would never, Grace.”

The two were still sitting closely on the couch when Laurent came back in with three plates of steaming Indian curry.

“Do you want more wine?” Laurent asked.

“Do you have to ask?” Maggie said. “Get yourself a glass, too. I'm going to tell my story once and then I'm running back to St-Buvard to be the most perfectly boring housewife the country has ever seen.”

Laurent snorted. “I will believe that when I see it,” he said as he picked up the sleeping baby to transfer her to the bedroom he and Maggie would share tonight.

When he returned, Grace cleared her throat. Her porcelain-white face was blotchy and reddened from her tears.

“I want to thank you for your intervention today, dearest Laurent,” she said. “And I do, most sincerely, but Maggie has warned me that tonight is not all about me.”

“Too right,” Maggie said, grinning at Grace and hoping her friend could take a little teasing. It was going to be a long time before she saw the old Grace again, if she ever did. And if Grace lost Zouzou and Taylor, Maggie was pretty sure she never would.

T
he aromas
from the chicken curry seemed to swirl visibly in the small living room. The wine had already done part of its work and Maggie felt relaxed and, with Laurent sitting by her on the couch, his knee touching hers, safe at last.

She couldn't help but wish Delphine could be here too.

“I'm surprised you got the police to come,” Grace said, sipping her wine. “I'm told they're notoriously slow when it comes to emergency calls by tourists with American accents.”

“I just called and told them I was being held hostage by three members of ISIS. Honestly, if Victor
hadn't
been waiting for me at the apartment it could have been really embarrassing. But I thought it was worth the risk.”

“You always have all the luck, darling,” Grace said with a weak smile as she picked at her plate. “Not a band of terrorists. Just one lone sociopath with a seventy year old grudge.”

“We are ready to hear how it is you and Mila were found hanging from a chain in a broken elevator shaft,” Laurent said gruffly.

Maggie's hands were lightly bandaged and her left knee throbbed from where she'd hit the side of the elevator shaft.

“Gosh, Laurent,” she said. “It sounds so much more interesting when you put it like that.”

He gave her a baleful look.

“The first thing I want to know,” Grace said, “is why? What was Victor's motivation? I thought he loved Delphine.”

“Maybe at one time,” Maggie said. “People forgot that he was a lot younger than her.”

“He didn't look it. I thought they were roughly the same age.”

“That's what he wanted people to think. But he wasn't so much wanting to hurt Delphine as use her to get the treasure he thought he was owed.”

“Talk about reparations,” Grace said, shaking her head.

“Victor blamed Marc Dernier for causing the reprisal that killed his family,” Maggie said. “But Dernier was untouchable because he was a national war hero. Plus I don't think Victor even really had a plan until the night Delphine let it slip that she was in possession of a treasure stolen during the war. Somehow Victor got the idea it was Nazi gold. And that it should be his as recompense.”

“And was there really a treasure?” Grace asked.

“Of course not,” Maggie said, not meeting Grace's eyes. “Victor was crazy.”

“So how did it all go down today, if you'll pardon the expression?” Grace asked.

“I could see the only thing that mattered to him was the treasure. So I used that. When he saw it going down the elevator shaft, I had a split second to jump him and grab Mila. And I did.” She smiled at Laurent who did not smile back.

“Unfortunately, it got a bit sloppy there at the end,” she admitted, “what with me and Mila going over the edge too.”

“When did you know for sure it was Victor?” Grace asked.

“Honestly even after I got Laurent's text about the burner phone I still couldn't believe it. I actually thought for a moment that maybe Victor found the phone in the street and just decided to use it.

“It wasn't until I thought about the hit man whose number the cops found that I realized I had a clue in my possession. It was a note that Gerard's killer had dropped.”

Maggie reached for her handbag and pulled out an envelope with the cigarette packet in it.

“That's called withholding evidence, you know,” Grace said with an arched eyebrow.

“The police already have what they need to convict,” Laurent said, but he glowered at Maggie. The hit man whose number was on the burner phone had been taken into custody earlier in the day. Maggie was confident that forensic evidence would place the man at both crime scenes and he would be charged with the murders of Gerard and Isla.

“Anyway,” Maggie said showing the note to Grace and Laurent, “do you see how the words are written in fountain pen ink?”

“Pretty elegant touch for a contract killer,” Grace said.

“That's because the killer didn't write it,” Maggie said. “
Victor
did when he wrote down Gerard's address for the hit. I'd seen this ink color once before and suddenly I remembered where. Victor signed a menu for someone at the restaurant using his fountain pen with the same turquoise color.”

“Clever you, darling,” Grace said. Her color was pale and Maggie could see she was trying hard to hold it together.

“It is fortunate for us,” Laurent said, “that Rousseau forgot and used the burner phone to call Maggie for the luncheon date.”

“Yeah,” Maggie said, “except by the time I figured out it was Victor, he was holding Mila over an open elevator shaft.”

“What about poor Amelie?” Grace asked. “Why was she in my apartment?”

“I totally misread that situation,” Maggie said with a sigh. “I knew Amelie was unhappy and maybe even wanted a piece of Delphine because of what had happened to her mother—”

“
Quoi
?” Laurent asked. “Who is her mother?”

“Didn't I tell you? Amelie is the daughter of Camille's daughter.”

“So you found her,” Grace said. “Well done, darling.”

“Twenty years too late to do her any good. But yeah, I found her.”

“So Amelie was in Paris looking for revenge because of what happened to her grandmother?” Laurent asked.

“We'll never know for sure,” Maggie said. “But what we
do
know is that she followed me to your apartment, Grace, attacked Beatrice and clearly meant to hurt the kids somehow.” Maggie rubbed her arms as if she felt a sudden chill. “I knew how angry she was with Delphine. I even wondered at one point if she could have killed Gerard, but I never really believed she was capable of something like this.”

“How did the cops know that Victor's burner phone was used to call a contract killer?” Grace asked.

Laurent answered. “They ran the number through their database of known criminal contacts and got a hit with the number of this man in Algiers.”

“So they couldn't see what other calls the burner phone made?” Grace asked.

“No,” Laurent said, giving Maggie a dark look. “It is the reason why Maggie is not sitting in a police station tonight explaining how it is she received a phone call from a suspected murderer.”

“You can hardly be pissed at
me
, Laurent,” Maggie said with astonishment.

“And yet somehow I am,” he said.

“Oh, go easy on her, Laurent,” Grace said standing up, her plate untouched. “One thing I've learned today is that in the end we only have each other. And a little tenderness goes a very long way.”

M
aggie watched
Grace disappear into the children's bedroom where she would sleep for the night.

“She's really in a bad way. I wish I knew how to help her.”

“She'll be fine. I spoke with Windsor. He only wants what's best for the girls. In her heart, so does Grace.”

Maggie picked up her wine glass and leaned back into the couch feeling the exhaustion of the day settle into her bones.

“You have a little more to tell me, I think,
oui
?” Laurent said.

Maggie sighed. “I do. When it all came together, Laurent, it came together like a steam engine being hit by a tsunami.”

Laurent stacked the dishes on the coffee table and poured more wine in each of their glasses.

“Go on,” he said.

“You know I was trying to find Camille's daughter, right? I had this idea that it would give Delphine peace if I found her. Well, while I was trying to find out where she was, I discovered a real jaw dropper.”

“Jaw…? I am not knowing this term.”

“I found out that Noel was the love child of the Nazi everyone thought was carrying on with Camille.”

Laurent frowned.

“Helmut Bauer has Noel's exact, identical nose. And it's a family trait because I met Bauer's grandson and he had the same nose—only he'd had it surgically altered.” She watched a faint flush of annoyance flash across Laurent's cheeks. She probably shouldn't keep reminding him that she'd tracked down the German's grandson.

“Anyway, so that meant Noel's father wasn't the dimwitted teenager that got run over during the liberation of Paris,” she said.

“You are sure about this?”

“Only a DNA test could be more sure. I'll show you the pictures. Noel is the spitting image of his goose-stepping daddy.”

“Noel was hoping his father was my grandfather,” Laurent said.

“Really?”

He shrugged. “He was hoping. He has reluctantly accepted Delphine's story about the boy on the bike.”

“That just leaves the question of who his mother is. I knew it couldn't be Camille because she was executed eight months before Noel was born.”

“Noel never thought it was Camille.”

“And it couldn't be Georgette either.”

Laurent frowned. “Why not?”

Maggie got up and went to the bedroom where she found the folder she was looking for in her suitcase. She brought it back to the living room.

“Delphine had medical files on all the sisters as children. I found it in the storage room.”

“You have been busy.”

“Georgette's file revealed that she was born with something called Turner Syndrome. I didn't think anything of it at the time because the note in the file said it was benign. I looked it up on the train ride back from Brétigny-sur-Orge. Women born with it are infertile.”

“So Noel's mother is Delphine.” Laurent shrugged. “He always suspected as much.”

“And he's wrong. Delphine wasn't his mother either.”

“Are you sure?”

Maggie pulled out the letter she'd found in the German's diary.

“I found this letter that his mother wrote to his father when Bauer was in prison. I thought he was awaiting trial but I'll tell you about that later. Anyway, the first thing I did when you were talking to the cops this afternoon was compare the letter with Delphine's handwriting. It doesn't match. Delphine wasn't the German's lover. So she can't be Noel's mother.”

“So we are back to square one.”

“Maybe not.” Maggie pulled out the diary that Dieter had sent her and handed it to Laurent. “In his diary, Helmut referred to his French lover by the initial cursive letter
C
. I know now it didn't stand for
Camille
but I don't know anyone else whose name starts with the letter C.”

Laurent took the diary, his eyes dark and intractable. “It is not a ‘C,'” he said quietly.

Maggie watched Laurent's face carefully. “It's hard for my American eye to decipher the European cursive,” she said.

“It is the letter ‘J,'” he said. He held his hand out for the letter and Maggie gave it to him. He glanced at it and handed it and the diary back, his eyes finally meeting hers. He nodded briefly in recognition of the handwriting.

Not Camille or Delphine.

But
Jacqueline
.

Laurent's grandmother.

Delphine betrayed her best friend—not to save herself—but to save her sister.

M
aggie washed
her face and changed into her nightgown. She expected to fall dead asleep from her day but found herself surprisingly wound up, even after two bottles of wine. When Laurent came to bed, he slipped under the covers and drew her close to him. They were both exhausted but so grateful for each other and the safety of their family. Within the strong frame of her husband's arms and body against hers, Maggie fell quickly asleep.

Sometime in the middle of the night she awoke and realized the space beside her was vacant. She sat up and rubbed her eyes.

“Go back to sleep,
chèrie
,” Laurent said, his voice soft and distant. He stood by the window and stared out into the Paris night. She knew he could see Notre-Dame from there.

“Talk to me, Laurent,” she said.