Murder on the Champ de Mars (21 page)

“He was hurt, shocked. I saw it in his eyes,” said René. “Guilty, you’re thinking? The Constantin clan shunned Djanka for having a half-
gadjo
baby while her husband was in prison. Maybe after she died that shame was transferred to the child and the sister, who raised him?” René sipped his green tea. “Or maybe Radu only pretended. Maybe he sent them into hiding, fostered the idea of a feud, to protect them. Weren’t they afraid Djanka’s killer was still after them?”

“True,” she said, “and apparently he was. I wonder if there’s anything in this?”

She showed René the Romany words and phrases the nurse had written down in Drina’s last moments. It wasn’t much to go on.

“Even if it’s translated, Aimée, this won’t tell us the men’s identity,” said René. “Tesla, Fifi … Drina only used their code names.”

True again. She hated to admit it, but she had nothing.

She needed to read all her notes over again. Pore over each detail, check and recheck. See if there were any coincidences. The necessary tedious side of investigation.

But that thought shook something loose in her memory. “Wait a minute,” she said. She opened her laptop and pulled up one of the 1978 issues of
Libération
that she’d had Maxence scan from her father’s file. “Look, René.” She enlarged the article on the suicide of a
député
at Assemblée Nationale. “Notice the suicide’s name?”

“Pascal? That’s a leap.” René paused, shaking his head. “How many tens of thousands of men named Pascal were there in Paris in 1978?”

“But the fortune-teller told you Djanka’s lover’s death forced Drina and Nicu into hiding.”

“
Et alors?
How can you connect that to this
député
named Pascal? It’s not even a coincidence—you’re pulling names out of an old newspaper.”

She disagreed. Especially since the newspaper had come from her father’s file. “Let’s just check,
non?”

“Going to communicate with ghosts now?”

“
Grand-père
kept every
Paris Match
for the last fifty years before he died,” she said. Scandals, love affairs, real news—it was all there in
Paris Match
. “It’s bound to be in here.”

“What’s bound to be in there?”

But she’d gone to the library, moved the wooden library ladder, climbed up to scan the dusty shelves. On the top shelf, she found four weekly issues from April 1978.

She dusted them off with her scarf, stepped down, and brought them back to René, plopping down on the recamier next to him to thumb through them.

She checked the index of an issue with a still-young Johnny Hallyday on the cover. Page 34.

“Where are those photos, René?”

René rolled his neck. “Back in the envelope by your laptop.”

But she didn’t want to handle that envelope, couldn’t bear to touch it again. So much dried blood. Nicu’s blood.

“What’s the matter?” he said, noticing her look.

“It’s my fault, René. If I hadn’t …” She paused. “But I did. For what? In the end, Nicu died for nothing. I found Drina, but her message was too cryptic. It did nothing to help solve my father’s murder.”

Or to lessen this feeling that she’d jumped from hot coals into the flame.

Feeling hopeless, Aimée rubbed her aching shoulder. Chloé had gained weight.

René reached for the envelope. “You’re tired. Me too. We’ll go over this tomorrow,” René said, setting the photos on the table.

But if she didn’t check now, it would bother her all night. She turned to the article on Pascal Leseur, an up-and-coming
député
. Pascal’s funeral was splashed through
Paris Match
’s society section in agonizing photographic detail. Photos of his apartment, the grief-stricken family on the steps of Saint-Roch Church, the small cortege to the cemetery in the Berry, the family estate and cemetery. There was one photo of Pascal Leseur, taken when he was a baby. Bizarrely, there was not a single photo of him as an adult.

“It was a long shot, Aimée. You tried.”

So tired, she felt so tired. It had all suddenly hit her: Nicu, Drina. A great sadness filled her. She sank back against the sofa.

“But,” said René, his eyes on his laptop screen, “according to the ministry database, his brother Roland holds office in D’Orsay, the same one Pascal did before becoming the youngest
député
in the Assemblée Nationale.”

She was too tired to worry about it anymore tonight. The next moment, her eyes drooped closed.

René draped Chloé’s wool baby blanket over her shoulders. Kissed her forehead. But she was oblivious.

S
INCE THE DAY
Françoise slammed the door on him twenty years ago, Roland Leseur had spoken to her only once: at the UNESCO reception celebrating one of her ambassador husband’s postings fifteen years ago. Yet he thought of her every day.

He’d kept up with her movements all this time: from embassy to embassy, the return from Venezuela, her husband’s funeral, the family townhouse on the Champ de Mars, her new grandchild, the fact that she shopped at the markets on rue Cler every Tuesday.

Today, like clockwork, she emerged from the family-owned
fromagerie
, La Fermette, with her straw basket. Her step was that of the young woman he remembered.

From the corner of rue Saint-Dominique he watched her exchange a
bonjour
with the fruit seller, then stop at the florist’s and emerge with a bouquet of violet-blue delphiniums. He remembered how the color matched her eyes.

How often had he stood in line outside that cheese shop? Debated, trembling, whether to approach her. To smell whether she still wore the same
parfum
, l’Heure Bleue by Guerlain.

All the women he’d tried to forget her with paled beside Françoise.

He’d heard nothing yet from his lawyer, who was examining the article for defamation and libel. It was only a matter of time, he knew, before the story came out. He’d do anything to
keep it quiet, but how long could that last? Sooner or later, the past would resurface. Françoise needed to be warned. No declarations of love or attempts at happily ever after—he simply had to protect her.

As he watched, she turned back on rue Cler. Forgotten a purchase? But a moment later she turned right and was swallowed up by the throngs on rue de Grenelle. He hurried, cursing himself for not finding the courage to grab the opportunity. At broad, tree-lined Avenue Bosquet, where the Tour Eiffel’s iron latticework poked above the zinc-roofed buildings, he missed the traffic light and got caught behind a bus in the crosswalk. By the time it had passed, her khaki trench coat and trailing scarf had disappeared in the crowd.

Determined now, he ran through the bus’s diesel fumes, dodged taxis and made it to the other side with horns blaring around him. He knew where she was going—home—but she usually went down rue Saint-Dominique. He pumped his legs, but there was no sign of her on the pavement. Where could she have gone?

He poked his head into the café, the cobbler. Not a trace.

Passing narrow rue du Gros Caillou, a sleepy passage of low buildings that had once been workshops and housing for construction workers building the Tour Eiffel, Roland heard laughter.

“
Merci
, Madame,” said a smiling woman on the doorstep of a framing atelier. It was Françoise, holding a square wrapped in brown paper.

The next moment she’d taken off down the street.

Roland ran after her, and finally got the courage to call, “Françoise, Françoise!”

She turned at the crook of the street, where it bent left like an elbow. Her smile was edged with confusion. Her face was older—yes, his too. But apart from the few wrinkles and the fact that her thick hair that pulled back from her face was now a
lustrous winter white, the twenty years didn’t show. Premature white hair aged most women, but on Françoise it highlighted her sculpted cheekbones and unlined face.

“Roland?” She dropped her basket, scattering cheese and delphiniums in the cobblestoned gutter. Her mouth quivered.

“
Désolé
, I didn’t mean to surprise you, but …” He tore his eyes away from her face. Picked up her things. Wiped them off on his trousers.

“Didn’t we agree never …?”

“You’re in danger, Françoise.”

She leaned down and their fingers brushed over a tomato. Hers were warm.

“Danger? Melodrama doesn’t become you, Roland. You know about Gerard’s death, I’m sure.”

A long, painful illness. She had nursed her husband herself, while still taking care of their daughter, who had been deaf since childhood.

“My life’s on an even course now,” Françoise said. “Not that you’ve asked. My daughter’s receiving treatment in London and now my oldest daughter’s child—”

“I want to protect you.” Roland took her hands. “And them.”

“Protect? From what?” Her shoulders stiffened. “What in God’s name, Roland, have you let out of the bag?”

More like tried to keep in the bag. “Pascal, us … I had to warn you.”

“This is all a ruse,” she said. “What you really want to know is whether Gerard knew of our affair. Whether your brother betrayed you to his best friend.”

He’d always wondered. “
Alors
, when you refused to see me, what else could I think, Françoise?”

“Naïve, you always were naïve, Roland.” She sighed. Pulled her hands from his and brushed back her hair. The sun slanted down on them, casting a shadow from a lantern like a black print on the limestone. The deserted street echoed with her
ringing phone. She looked at the display. “I’m late. But yes, your saint of a brother told my husband about us. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut, especially when he’d been drinking.” She noticed the look on his face and sighed. “You still idolize Pascal after all these years, don’t you, Roland?”

“I still think of you every day after all these years,” he blurted out. “I loved you, still love you, Françoise.”

Françoise turned away. Shook her head as if to shake his words away, then combed her fingers through her hair. Like she always used to do after making love. He remembered the arch of her back, how velvet soft and warm her skin felt. The familiar gesture made him ache inside.

“For years I’ve kept my promise, never intruded into your life, only watched from afar.”

“So you had me under surveillance? What, waiting for your chance to swoop in?” The left side of her face was shadowed by the hanging ginkgo branch from a street-facing garden. “You’re a dreamer, Roland. Wake up. Whatever happened between us … that’s ancient history.”

Roland waved her words away. “Françoise, listen to me. I’m here because I need to warn you. What if Pascal didn’t commit suicide?”

“You’re implying someone murdered Pascal? But there was an autopsy, a cause of death. Autoerotic asphyxiation, wasn’t it? But the papers were paid to keep it quiet.”

How could she think that?

“After the cremation, the autopsy report disappeared. My father wouldn’t talk about it.”

“Murder? I don’t believe it.” Françoise shook her head. “For once open your eyes, Roland. Pascal couldn’t face the repercussions of what he had done, the blowback that was about to level his career,
et
 …” Her voice tailed off.
“Désolée.”

Roland’s hand shook. “Françoise, I did things, things I shouldn’t have.”

“No more than anyone else, I’m sure,” she said. “You’re still trying to protect Pascal, but he played politics, made enemies by the dozen. It caught up with him, and he took the easy way out. Why is this all coming up now? What’s changed at the ministry?”

This wasn’t going how he’d expected. Why wasn’t she taking it seriously? “You mean who cares now, Françoise?” His voice rose. Someone above slammed the shutters on their window. He took a breath. “Someone who stands to gain something. That’s who.” He showed her the
Libération
proof sheet.

“Always playing Pascal’s pawn,” she said, looking at the sheet. Her hand shook. “Your brother with a Gypsy lover, blackmailing the higher-ups, bribes disguised as delegation junkets? Amazing how Pascal can still stir up the
merde
even from beyond the grave.” She shifted the basket on her arm. “Don’t let them use you.”

“But Gerard’s mentioned here, too,” said Roland. “You need to know things will come out—things people will do anything to cover up.”

Françoise sighed. “It’ll be squashed before it can reach the press as usual. Stay out of it. Don’t bother on my account, Roland. What you call protection, I call guilt.”

A
IMÉE ROSE AT
6
A.M.
with Chloé, and despite minor diaper leakage, by 8
A.M.
they had walked Miles Davis and bought a copy of
Le Parisien
at the
café tabac
. And she’d drunk two double espressos. If only she could ingest sleep in demitasse-sized shots throughout the day, she might survive.

Chloé had woken up several times last night. Bleary-eyed, Aimée had consulted the
bébé
bible the
mamans
at yoga swore by, a book by Dr. Françoise Dolto. The respected pediatrician and psychologist insisted every
bébé
can sleep through the night, be trained to use a spoon and exhibit rudimentary table manners by six months old. Otherwise it was the parents’ fault. Well, clearly it was Aimée’s fault.

The adamant Dr. Dolto insisted that one needed to talk to one’s baby and explain to her that she shouldn’t wake up at night. Reason with a teething six-month-old? Aimée was supposed to practice
la pause
: “pause a bit” before going to the baby instead of responding immediately to her cries, because the child needs to learn patience. And she was meant to try that with her little siren wailing at 3
A.M.
?

Now, with her two double espressos downed and the world starting to take on some clarity, Aimée had the paper open in front of her, Chloé nestled at her side with cold compresses soothing her teething gums.

She noted that the article about Drina’s abduction took up part of
Le Parisien
’s front page. In the sidebar were photos
of Radu and his extended tribe filling the clinic’s courtyard, human rights groups brandishing placards condemning ethnic inequality. Another photo showed some anti-elder abuse activists marching to the prime minister’s residence, l’Hôtel Matignon, a few blocks away. Bravo, René. The headline was splashy: G
YPSY
K
IDNAPPING
S
CANDAL ON
P
RIME
M
INISTER
’
S
D
OORSTEP IN
E
XCLUSIVE 7TH
A
RRONDISSEMENT
.