Murder Without Pity (14 page)

This one, a Communist journal, included a supplement titled, “The Boucher Affair.” A political cartoon at the top showed his head grafted onto spidery legs that clutched humans in its path. A sidebar chronicled important dates in his career with a gallery of photos beneath. A black-and-white of him in a three-piece suit, conferring with German officers in 1943 Paris. Another, inspecting a roundup of kneeling black marketeers with gendarmes at his side. A third, sipping champagne in the background of a reception for European ministry officials at the German Embassy in Paris. And a fourth, the height of indignity, he thought, having to plead his innocence in the dock at his post-war trial. “‘‘…that traitor to our Republic,’” he read aloud, “‘whose refuge was always the half-truth….’” He stopped. He had had enough of those Leftists and Jews plotting to smear him.

He shuffled the papers into a pile and rose, determined to destroy this evidence that had upset him. Who knew what might slip out in an agitated moment? He must remain calm, maintain he had never heard anything incriminating. Keep up the pretense with his bodyguard. With that examining magistrate. With everyone. That was the only way out. Old hatreds had resurfaced to conspire against him, he could see.

Those nosy reporters outside the Annex had fanned this vendetta, he reflected as he padded down the hallway into the library and toward the fireplace. And from them, the hatred had spread. To the Sorbonne, where, according to the news, students waved vengeful MEMORIES DON’T DIE, BUT TRAITORS MUST in tricolor banners from balconies along Boulevard Saint-Michel. To talk show callers, who argued over him. And then this morning to protestors, massed outside his gate, who had flung rocks up at his apartment, and he had had to call the police, the first time ever. He, a true Frenchman, exiled in a city he had once served. The humiliation made him fling the stack of papers into the hearth.

He grabbed a matchbook from the mantle and set matches to the stack until evidence of his supposed treachery went up in flames.

Late he heard three bulletins about the weather on the radio. The fog had caused a forty-car pileup on the Paris-to-Caen freeway with eighteen killed. Roissy-Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports might close for twenty-four hours. Commuters taking the RER trains into the capital would experience hours delay because visibility had dropped to a hazardous few meters. Good news, he thought. But I’ve got two days left to call Lenny. It might get foggier.

Stanislas Cassel, on the other hand, cursed the fog that Thursday morning. There he sat with Christophe and their driver, stuck in a nightmare on Avenue Kléber, twenty minutes late for his appointment with Madame de Silvy. Nine injured, two bicyclists killed, their radio had announced, and the ambulances’ bluish sweeps through the mist proved the accident’s deadliness. His cell phone call minutes earlier hadn’t calmed the witness over his tardiness. Late was late, she had said. There was simply no excuse. He should have foreseen the delay and started earlier, and he knew he had used up what goodwill remained after he had, weeks earlier, insisted over her objection she might have to confront Boucher with her testimony.

He turned back to the last of the slivers of mail the police had delivered the previous Friday. A flyer announced a reggae dance until dawn on a barge in the Seine to dance away the cold. This announcement reaffirmed his suspicion. Despite Mama Napoleon’s protests, security didn’t exist in her tenement. Anyone could enter, whether to leaflet the floors or to murder.

A policeman blew his whistle. The caravan of commuters revved to life. His driver inched south once more past a limousine with a bicycle crushed under a rear wheel. Stanislas glanced away. The motion exposed his wristwatch. The minute hand ticked forward once more. He was now thirty-five minutes late.

Madame de Silvy, a petite lady with gray hair, greeted them at her front door. She accepted Stanislas’s handshake with lips tight with displeasure. “Any relation to that ’30s writer, Marcel Cassel?” she asked.

Stanislas forced himself to hold his smile. “Cassel is a common name, madame.”

Her forehead crinkled pensiveness as she studied his features, uncaring in her rudeness before she relaxed. “Yes, well, I suppose that’s possible,” she said.

As she led the way down the hallway, she fixed him with a hard glance. “Being a witness has caused some stress,” she said. “My blood pressure’s gone up, and my son insisted I join him and his family in Brussels. After any Confrontation, naturally.”

Her salon felt airy, despite the gloom outside, for it was painted green with yellow trim. Two leather armchairs faced a sofa. A table in the middle stood like a demarcation line, Stanislas thought. He and Christophe on one side, Madame de Silvy on the other. A silver-gilt pot, some pastry, and three cups in saucers on an ornate tray presented as a peace offering.

“I value punctuality,” she said.

Stanislas wandered over to one of the tall windows to break the tension. Beneath her frail appearance, a fire still burned. He needed her help, not her antagonism. He drew back the curtain and squinted out toward an apartment across the avenue. Two policemen in bulletproof vests patrolled next to the wrought-iron gate onto which Boucher had recently piled chains and a lock.

“With this overcast,” she said, “I’m afraid there’s no view.”

And no Renault Safrane either, he realized, gazing as best he could up and down the boulevard. Since detecting it and later that motorcyclist, he hadn’t noticed any further effort to intimidate, if their collective presence were an attempt. His captors had become a specter as if by design to torment.

“What is it precisely you want?”

He turned to notice she had seated herself on the sofa, a severe expression aimed at him. “I’ve a few questions concerning Wednesday morning, 13 September at eight o’clock. When you left for your volunteer work at the Crisis Hotline Center.”

Christophe had already seated himself with his laptop on his knees. He moved toward his own chair. “About the time the police received an anonymous call about a disturbance. A fight outside Monsieur Boucher’s apartment between himself and Monsieur Pincus.” He watched for any flinch at the mention of the call. She simply focused her distaste on him.

“A powerful functionary once in that circus of incompetents at Vichy, my neighbor,” she said. “A powerful man still, with supporters in the upper echelons of government, I’ve heard.”

From a table to her left, she reached for a photograph, which she cradled face outward. “Franz, my only grandchild. If I’d known at his birth that years later there’d be another Franz, I mean that Streible demagogue, I’d have fought my daughter-in-law—she’s German—to choose another name. That first name’s almost as bad as calling him Adolph. My Franz has a promising future, God willing and me too, I can assure you.”

She settled the photograph back on the table and stretched across with a coffee to Christophe. “Except for the Occupation, we de Silvys have lived in the sixteenth for ages. Do you know I can remember seeing the Duke and Duchess of Windsor stroll in the Bois de Boulogne?” She handed the second coffee across to Stanislas with a look that accused him of causing trouble. “You ask a lot from me. Your police also said they had just a few questions. They held me for nearly three hours at that smelly station on Avenue Mozart.”

“I’m not the police.”

“No, you’re not. You’re much more powerful and can cause more harm.” With a sigh, she raised her hand for the oath.

“What do you think you heard?” he asked.

“I can’t say for certain. A last name maybe.” She lifted her delicate head in thought for a time. “I’ve thought about that a lot. Did I really hear that, that morning? Or some word that sounded like it, but was something else. Like
butcher
or… I don’t know.”

Why would Pincus as a beggar yell that word? He waited for her to expand on her uncertainty, but she said nothing more. From a case, he withdrew an enlarged photo of Boucher’s side of the boulevard, taped on a board, and passed the enlargement across. “Would you indicate where you passed when you thought you heard the shout?” he asked.

She laid the photo across her lap and settled into an examination for some time as she chewed her lip in concentration. “You understand I’m not certain,” she said at last, still studying the layout. “The fog that morning was almost as bad as today’s, and that might have disoriented me.”

“I understand.”

“I had more important things on my mind too. Like my volunteer work.”

“Of course.”

She held up the photograph and tapped a fingernail near two street benches. “There,” she said and pitched the board across to him, a burden discarded. “You have your answer. That’s probably where I walked past. Next to that bench on the left. Now please leave.”

Stanislas remained seated, staring at the spot where she had pointed. She had passed near the bench closest to the wrought-iron gate, where Pincus might have sat waiting for some reason for Boucher to leave his apartment. Could he now tie the man to the murder? Not yet, he realized. He had no choice except to call for a Confrontation. The heated exchange between the two witnesses under his questioning might reveal what really happened that morning. He might determine she had heard nothing of consequence. He could then release Boucher and never have anything to do with him again.

The evening of the third day, a Saturday. Of all those nights Louis Boucher had viewed from his library’s window, this looked the foggiest. This was the night for which he had waited, a night of thick mist that deadened footsteps, foggy enough to let even murderous crimes go undetected.

What workers had risked commuting had abandoned their cars and taken the metros, he had heard on the news. That afternoon, radio and television stations started issuing travel warnings on the half-hour. By late afternoon, Roissy-de-Gaulle and Orly Airports had closed for another twenty-four hours at least. The fog must have also dispirited the hecklers because since five o’ clock he hadn’t heard one word of rage. As proof of their dispersal, he noticed the police had quit their vigil at six and also left. This was his night at last, and he dismissed his servant and bodyguard early.

Instinct, though, made him cautious. He paced from room to room, peeking out for anything that might hint at a threat. He could detect nothing. Eight o’clock, and instinct made him dissemble. Now the library’s chandeliers turned up, a Chopin CD inserted and the volume adjusted, though not too high to arouse suspicion. Ten o’clock, and a rear door eased shut.

Trees haloed in fog stood along the distant end of the boulevard. A fence’s iron bars poked through the mist like ribs. Here and there, the glow from streetlamps spread over the shifting vapors. A car stammered along to his right, the path of its beams penetrating the gloom. Walk faster, he urged himself. Faster.

He reached the Palais de Chaillot. He stayed close to the statues that edged one of the pavilions as he rushed across the terrace, then hurried down the steps.

Finally Avenue de New York. He could barely make out ahead the pillars that braced the Eiffel Tower’s enormity. Under its girders and across the Champ de Mars? No, he decided. His movement crossing that wide field, too obvious. He had already risked too much exposure. Better the forest-like passage of the Allée Léon Bourgeois to the right. Faster!

Near the start of its muddy footpath, he hesitated. Branches of enormous oaks had sagged near their tops under the onslaught of dew; far below blotches of mist near the ground menaced into swirls. He scolded himself for his child’s fears and tramped ahead through the muck.

Past a bench, he heard a faint sound like a twig breaking. He swung around and squinted. He could see nothing beyond a step or two in any direction. Squashing through puddles must have caused that noise. Faster, he warned himself. He couldn’t waste another moment.

But as he glanced back again to reassure himself he had heard nothing threatening, a huge presence lunged.

SUNDAY IN THE PARK

Stanislas needed several moments to understand he really had heard a beeping. He fumbled his cell phone to his ear. “Judge Cassel,” he mumbled. Clubbing death, the Eiffel Tower, Professor Jean-Pierre… Leclair’s words through his grogginess sounded like nonsense. He needed wakefulness from the dead hour of the morning to unscramble them. “What was that again?”

“I said a clubbing death at the Eiffel Tower,” Officer Leclair repeated. “He’s dead. Boucher, I mean. Murdered is what I’m trying to say. Someone murdered him.”

Stanislas groped to his right in the darkness for the nightstand’s lamp switch. The sudden glare made him wince, made him realize he wasn’t dreaming. “You’re sure?” he muttered, stalling while he dragged himself up from his sleep.

“His identity card, driver’s license, credit cards, everything’s stolen. But I’d recognize that face anywhere. I’m positive, Monsieur Judge.”

Stanislas brushed the lampshade at an angle to block the glare. “His body’s in the apartment?” It was a curt question of despair. He was sufficiently awake now to understand a major suspect in a murder investigation was dead. He groped for his wristwatch at the base of the lamp, feeling a chill despite the blankets…7:22. He groaned at the early hour.

“No, no. I said the Eiffel Tower. A homeless man, who calls himself Professor Jean-Pierre, found the body in a plant bed along the Allée Léon Bourgeois. That dirt path along the southeasterly side. He called the police. An arriving officer recognized Boucher from his newspaper photos. He knew I was helping your investigation and called.”

“I’ll phone my clerk and notify the public prosecutor’s office we’ve a second death in the dossier. Send one of your boys around. I need to get there quickly.” He started to reach for his cane against the nightstand when a scenario tempted him, and he paused. “His money’s stolen too?”

“Yes, and also his watch. Everything, as I said.”

“Maybe it was a robbery gone bad.” The outline assumed shape, a simple murder that led nowhere, the Boucher part of the case petering out.