Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

by Cara Black

  “That tail of newt, eye of toad nonsense again?”

  Saj expelled air. “This explanation of the symbols cut my work in half, let me tell you. Samour used de Locques’s book as a guide. The same Latin words appear here in Samour’s incomplete segment.”

  Her excitement mounted. “Pascal searched for the missing part of the formula. He knew there was more, and where better to find it than in the museum’s archives.”

  “Formula to what? Alchemical stained glass?”

  “Why not? This connects somehow,” she said. “I’ll comb the museum holdings, Saj. I’ll find it.”

  “Et alors, so we know everything Pascal knew?”

  She paused in thought. “But not the formula’s significance,” she said. “Something so important that Pascal was murdered for it.”

  This added up. But how?

  “A nerd who grew up in the museum’s shadows,” Saj said, “an engineer who’s obsessed about a lost alchemical formula?” He shook his head. “It doesn’t add up.”

  “As René pointed out, he lived in a tower,” Aimée said. “His former classmate spoke of his obsession with the fourteenth century.” At her desk, she downloaded Saj’s enhanced encryption, then powered off her laptop. But Saj’s words raised more questions.

  “Picture Samour, tech-savvy, skilled at encrypting, spending time and energy on a lost formula.” She shook her head. “What would it get him, Saj?”

  Saj stretched. “Bon, in academia he’d publish a paper, write a treatise. Or a book,” he said. “What about Becquerel?”

  His last professor. “Dead in a nursing home at ninety last week.”

  “So another blind alley,” Saj said, looking at the remembrance pages Aimée had copied.

  “Or the usual academic battle,” René said. “Say Pascal tried to garner department funding after discovering a lost medieval stained-glass formula.”

  People killed for less. But that held less water than their poorly functioning radiator.

  “It’s more than just that if the DST wants me to monitor Samour’s activity at the museum.”

  Saj whistled. “So any ideas?”

  “Besides checking my horoscope?” She rubbed her bandaged wrist. “Keep monitoring Coulade’s computer.”

  So far all that they’d discovered put her back in the dark.

  “The conservator mentioned that the Archives Nationales used the museum’s storage during the war,” she said, racking her brain. “They don’t know half of what’s in it, either.”

  “Pascal programmed a dead man’s switch to e-mail this encryption,” Saj said. “He insisted Becquerel be contacted. Becquerel’s role was pivotal to Pascal, yet …”

  “Well, everyone talks about Becquerel’s innovation.” René pointed to the copies from the remembrance book. “ ‘A pioneer who knew no boundaries in the field of optics and technology.’ ” He looked up. “Thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Aimée nodded. “Fiber optics?”

  “It’s an avenue to explore,” he said.

  Saj grabbed his laptop. “Let me see what I find.”

  BEFORE GOING TO the museum, Aimée hoped to find answers in the stained-glass atelier in her cousin Sebastien’s damp courtyard. Disappointed, she stared into the darkened windows. Knocked. No answer, nor at Sebastien’s atelier either.

  Great.

  She pulled her coat tighter and in the porte cochère scanned the mailboxes. Listed under Atelier J, Stained Glass was an alternate delivery address at a Galerie Juno on rue des Archives. A place to start.

  Three blocks away she found Galerie Juno, with a sign in the door that said Open by Appointment Only.

  Merde. Before she met Prévost she needed answers. And a game plan.

  She punched in Galerie Juno’s number on her cell phone, and heard a recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and a voice saying, “Leave a message, s’il vous plaît.”

  “Bonjour, I’m interested in the stained-glass artist who has an atelier on rue de Saintonge,” she said, hoping that the gallery would answer. That she wasn’t speaking to the wind. “I’m at your gallery and want to make an appointment.”

  The message clicked off. Full.

  Lace curtains moved in the window next door.

  Smiling, she put her face to the window.

  The lace curtains parted to reveal a young woman with blue braids wound shell-like above her ears, and matching lipstick. A punkette wearing a dirndl, no less.

  The window frame cracked open. “Juno’s working in back.” She jerked her thumb. The window slammed shut, and there was the sound of a lock tumbling.

  Aimée pushed open the door, stepped over the frame into a courtyard lined with potted plants. Miniature bonsai trees in animal shapes—a rabbit, a bird. Whimsical.

  Keeping her heeled boots out of the cracks between the worn pavers, she reached the atelier in the rear. On the wall were framed certificates from the Artisan Glassmaker Association, a notice of completed apprenticeship to a master glass-maker. Both with the names Juno Braud.

  She’d come to the right man.

  Hot molten-metal smells filled the atelier. Bundled lead rods stood upright like a forest against the glass walls. A man in overalls worked copper foil along the edges of a piece of blue glass using a soldering iron.

  “Monsieur Juno?”

  A wayward brown hair hung over a work mask that covered half his face. He looked young. “Attends,” came the muffled reply.

  He set the soldering iron down on a brick, switched off the generator box. “Oui?” He’d pulled his mask off. A slash for a mouth, a cleft palate. Sad, it could have easily been treated by surgery in childhood.

  “Sorry to bother you,” she said, focusing on his eyes. “My cousin Sebastien’s in the atelier next to yours.”

  He tapped his thick fingers. “So?”

  Impatient. She’d make this quick. “He suggested you could help me. Those for sale?” She gestured to a shelf of shimmering indigo-blue glass boxes.

  “Rejects.”

  “But they’re beautiful.”

  “Imperfections, the glass bubbled …” He paused, a nervous swipe of his hand over his mouth. “But that’s not why you’re bothering me.”

  She gave what she hoped he took for an enthralled gaze. “I need your expertise for five minutes. And I’ll buy those.” She pulled out the copy she’d made of the Latin alchemical formula. The black-and-white encrypted copy. “Could you tell me about this, besides the fact that it’s incomplete?”

  “Where did you get this?”

  She could go two ways here: offer some version of the truth, or coax him and see how far she got.

  “Does it matter?” she leaned forward. “Is it valuable?”

  “Would you ask me if it weren’t?” He stared at it. “It’s medieval symbols, an archaic formula, I’d have to guess.”

  “Meaning it’s a formula for a stained-glass window in a cathedral?”

  “Did I say that?” For a moment she thought she’d lost him.

  But he sat down on a battered stool, ran his fingers over the paper. Nodded. “The Revolution disbanded guilds in 1791. The guild emblem’s unique.”

  “Meaning?”

  “This guild, deTheodric, was one of the oldest, going back to the thirteenth, fourteenth century. They were known for working with the Templars. Not much survives of their work now, though,” he said sadly.

  What did the Templars have to do with anything, she wondered. But Samour lived in what had been the Knights’ old enclave.

  “But why the Templars?”

  “Stained glass was for cathedrals and monasteries.” He ran his fingers over a warm metal frame. “Apart from the aristocracy, tell me who else financed cathedral building? Promoted and used the artisans, the trades and the guilds?”

  She figured it was a rhetorical question.

  “The Templars ran it all. That’s until the Pope outlawed the Templars and took over their coffers.” He paused. “Like I said, little’s left
of deTheodric’s work. They went the way of the Templars in 1311. Disbanded or executed, some accounts say.”

  But a connection had to exist. “It’s your métier, what do you think?”

  “There were stories,” he said, his words slow. A shrug. “But all glass artisans hear them.”

  “Like what?”

  He let out a puff of air. “Well, all trades and guilds were regulated at the time. Statutes and regulations in force until the Revolution. The powerful guilds paid the most tax and kept their craft secrets. Think of the windows at Chartres, no one’s replicated their technique.” He shook his head in rueful respect. “Or Abbé Suger, who developed that resonant blue ‘sapphire glass’ used at Saint-Denis.”

  “But wouldn’t the techniques be passed down by word of mouth?”

  “Or they died with the alchemists,” he said. “Like so many things, secrets lost, shrouded in time. Who knows?”

  Something tugged in her mind.

  “Art can happen by mistake,” he continued, a distant look in his eye.” In the thirteenth century, for example, a monk dropped his silver button into the glass and created indigo for the first time. We only found this out two hundred years ago. This discovery gave us a chance to make the indigo the hue guilds used before the Revolution in 1791.”

  She heard other things in his voice now. A quiet excitement, almost awe. Any self-consciousness about his cleft palate had disappeared.

  “For me it’s expression, glass gives form to beauty,” he said. “A painting with light. Not like the one-dimensional painting, where light shines on it. With glass, the light shines through.”

  A purist, she thought, immersed in his trade.

  He gestured to the diagram and its rows of Latin. “Of course, as journeymen we visited this guild’s masterpiece, a church window, the only one left of their work.”

  Her pulse raced. “But you said this guild collapsed with the Templars.”

  “Rumors handed down through time hint at conspiracies, plots …”

  She straightened up. “Secret lost formulas?”

  “So you think you’ve got one here, eh?”

  “You tell me.”

  He grinned. “But even so, it’s incomplete. Worthless.”

  She pulled several hundred-franc bills from her wallet. “Say the other part of the formula were discovered. How valuable would it be?”

  “More than a historical treasure.” His eyes gleamed. “Think of modern stained-glass windows made from an original ancient formula. The enhancement of cathedral restoration techniques.”

  Ancient techniques for new windows in old cathedrals—interesting—but not sexy enough. Or worth murder. There was more, she knew it in her bones.

  “Hasn’t anyone analyzed the components of this guild’s masterpiece?”

  “A hundred feet up in the nave? Any exploration would damage the glass. It’s protected under historic preservation.”

  Her mind went back to the Templars, the end of the guild. An angle to explain the questions swirling in her mind. “What if this powerful guild owed the Templars for some reason? The Templars demanded their secret formulas as payment. After their downfall the formula was lost and with it the guild’s influence?”

  “Everything’s possible.”

  “This window’s far away?” She imagined a long trip to Chartres or to a countryside cathedral hours away.

  “You call Saint Nicholas des Champs far?”

  Six blocks away and across from the Musée des Arts et Métiers. A block from where Pascal spent his youth.

  “Mais non, it’s on my way to work.”

  WITH THE WRAPPED indigo boxes in her bag, a perfect wedding present for Sebastien, she caught a taxi.

  Her cell phone rang in her pocket. René’s number showed on her caller ID.

  “Has Saj found Pascal’s file on Coulade’s computer, René?”

  He sighed. “Not yet.”

  Too bad. Impatient, she rolled and unrolled the encrypted page in her hands.

  “Meizi keeps asking when you’ll help her,” he said, worry in his voice.

  “As soon as I reach Prévost and find out the timing of the police raid. Tell Meizi to trust me, René.”

  “You’re popular,” he said, sounding anxious now.

  Her throat constricted. The men she’d lost in Zazie’s café?

  “Two men?”

  “I got rid of them.”

  But for how long?

  “Hold on, there’s another call,” René said.

  She checked from the taxi window. If they were following her by car, they were stuck in traffic. But it bothered her.

  “Pull over, Monsieur,” she told the driver.

  “Ici?”

  She paid, took her bag, and slammed the taxi door. Horns blared.

  “Where are you, Aimée?” René asked.

  “A block from the museum.”

  She was around the corner from the church. But she didn’t have time.

  “Right now you need to go to church,” she lowered her voice into her cell phone. Huddled in a doorway from the wind.

  “Church?”

  “Saint Nicholas des Champs. In the ninth chapel transept you’ll see a star-shaped stained-glass window,” she said. “Crafted by the same guild in Pascal’s encryption.”

  “But what does that mean?”

  “The glass guild disbanded with the Templars, but the formula connects somehow. The star, remember, in the formula?” She heard the rapid keystrokes over the line. It sounded like René was running searches. She tried to put this together. “If Pascal discovered properties in this alchemical recipe that could be used in something significant now …”

  “Like you said, that would explain the DST’s interest.”

  “Let me know as soon as you find it, René.”

  She knew it existed. She was certain.

  Pause. “Zazie called from the café,” René said. “Told me to tell you two men are sitting watching our door.”

  Damned irritating. Aimée sucked in her breath. She needed a cigarette.

  “You know what to do, René,” she said. “Go out the back.”

  Sunday, Noon

  RENÉ LOOKED BOTH ways before stepping into rue Bailleul. The thwack and scrape of the street sweeper’s green plastic-pronged broom provided counterpoint to the shouts of the man unloading crates of wine from a truck into the café’s rear.

  All clear. At least his hip was cooperating today. He needed sun, heat, and the last installment for his Citroën. What he had was the DST on Aimée’s tail, the uneasy feeling Meizi was keeping things from him, and a crazy errand in a church.

  He shut the Citroën’s door, keyed the ignition, and blasted the heater. His leather-upholstered seats heated up within a minute. One out of three wasn’t bad. He shifted into first and turned right into rue de l’Arbre-Sec.

  “STAND HERE, MONSIEUR.” The young, black-frocked priest gestured René toward Chapelle Saint-Sauveur, the ninth of the twenty-seven side chapels. “Few visit our petit jewel. Or ask about it.” The priest, who had sideburns, let out an appreciative sigh. “Beautiful, non?”

  From his vantage point, all René could see was a dance of silver-white light shivering on the worn stone-slab floor.

  “Look higher in the apse, Monsieur, past the left chancel columns.”

  Not for the first time, René cursed his short legs. He leaned back, staring upward at the vaulted Gothic arcs of stone. He saw only soaring light framed and half blocked by the damned columns.

  Rows of votive candles flickered in this cold south-wall chapel. The musky drafts of incense, fading floral scents from sprays of drooping winter lilies—all smells he remembered from childhood. And his mother’s whispered novenas in the chapel of the count’s château, where she prayed his legs would grow.

  René gestured to the prayer kneeler. “Do you mind if I try a better look, Monsieur le curé?”

  “Pas du tout, Monsieur. Please call me Père André, we’re modern
these days.”

  René untied the laces of his handmade Lobb shoes. Using the prayer kneeler’s straw seat for a step, he climbed onto the ledge of the recessed niche below a statue of Mary. He balanced on the ledge below her blue robe and craned his neck.

  He saw a cluster of grisaille glass panels. But crowning it was a blossom-like luminescence of white emanating from a star shape high in the church nave. An intense shimmering.

  “All of God’s children should gaze on this,” said the priest. “The unwavering radiance speaks of strength. It lifts the soul.”

  René wondered why this small, glittering star shone unlike the other panels.

  The priest crossed himself and waved at a few teenagers near the baptismal font. One held a guitar. “Time for our folk music practice,” he said. “We strive to involve our young community. We sing and celebrate the early Sunday Mass. You should come.”

  Priests never changed. Always recruiting a new flock.

  “Do you know the window’s history, Père André?” Saying that felt foreign to him.

  “I’m new to the parish. We’ve run out of guides.” He paused. “Ask Evangeline.”

  The priest gestured toward a room labeled Saint Nicolas des Champs Altar Society and joined his teenagers.

  Evangeline, a lace mantilla over her gray pageboy coif, wore a chic purple wool suit. René found her reaching on tiptoes into the altar linen cabinet. Only a head taller than René, she was short-statured like others of the generation that grew up during the war. She gave him a lopsided smile. “I’d ask for your help, mais alors, you’d have the same problem.”

  René pulled a wooden chair to the cabinet, undid his laces again, and climbed on the chair. “Pas de problème.” She handed him the ironed altar linens. One by one he organized them in the old bleach-scented cabinet. “I’ll have to ask for something in return, you know,” he said, wishing the room had heat.

  “Name your price,” Evangeline said.

  “Know the history of the star in the stained-glass window?”

  Evangeline handed René another stack of linen. “Early fourteenth century. An anomaly, considering the surrounding sixteenth-century chapel. The records from that time … phfft, gone.” She shrugged. “We know the church’s foundations date from the eleventh century, then a hodgepodge of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and the bell tower later. Why?”