Murder on the Champ de Mars

by Cara Black

  “Melac, that snake, threatened me today. He was at the lawyer’s appointment I missed.”

  “Missed it? How could you? And give him ammunition?”

  Moonlight filtered through the window over her mauve silk duvet.

  She explained that she’d been hijacked by the staff at l’Hôtel Matignon, and hadn’t much choice in the matter.

  “Not so bad, Aimée. You rescheduled with the lawyer, non? What’s really up?”

  With a kick at Chloé’s zebra rattle, she gave Martine a condensed version of what had happened in the last few hours.

  “Leseur, a haut fonctionnaire knifed to death on the Champ de Mars?” Martine sucked in her breath. “Stay away from this, Aimée. Someone’s more than desperate.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Aimée. “I got Delavigne and her daughter out on the last Eurostar to London.”

  “Mon Dieu! This’ll be spun as an assignation gone wrong, Aimée, you know that. The ministry won’t let it blow up in their faces.”

  “But I have this old file of Gerard Delavigne’s, Martine. There’s something in it I don’t understand.”

  “That’s why you called, eh?”

  “Can I fax a photo and an accompanying list over so you can you see what you think?”

  A sigh. “Hold on,” Martine said, then gave Aimée her tante’s shop’s fax number. “Give me five minutes to go down to the shop.”

  BY THE TIME Martine called her back, Aimée’d drifted off.

  “As I see it, there are two investigations, Aimée,” said Martine, yawning. “You started off searching for Drina, and now you’re looking for her sister’s murderer, from twenty years ago, who might have engineered your father’s death.”

  “One and the same, Martine.”

  Aimée pulled the duvet around her for warmth. The fretwork of moonlight quivered on the duvet’s mauve silk sheen. Miles Davis opened one eye, then the other, and stretched his right paw.

  “You’re assuming, Aimée. Where’s the proof?”

  “Drina’s last words. And proof in her notebook that she informed for Papa.”

  “Which you’ve never seen, and which is missing. You need more than that,” said Martine. “At least, I would need more to write a story. No editor would buy it.”

  “And Gerard Delavigne’s file?”

  “The photo’s incriminating, bien sûr: a minister with a young teenager in a hotel. But that’s already been squashed—a gag order on publication. It’s people in the government and police, that’s what you’re talking about—the prime minister at l’Hôtel Matignon and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at d’Orsay. And you have to be very careful what you write about them.”

  “Djanka’s body was discovered in the moat at les Invalides,” said Aimée, sitting up, rustling the duvet.

  Miles Davis cocked an ear. Stretched and licked his paw.

  She studied the file and spread out the crime-scene photos from her father’s procès-verbal, which she’d brought home. “The military were denied an investigation on their own turf. Doesn’t the prime minister trump Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defense because he oversees all of them?”

  “Aimée, it’s all an old boys’ club, favors galore. They all went to the grandes écoles. Except those from the officer academy at Saint-Cyr, the military elite.”

  “Ainsi donc, they’re the outsiders, Martine. The old boys froze out the armée.”

  “There was a cover-up,” said Martine. “What’s new? Then and now, it’s who you know. Who’s got something to lose or to gain by shutting up.”

  “Pascal Leseur gave this photo to his friend, Gerard Delavigne, as some kind of insurance,” Aimée said. She propped up more feather pillows, pulled the duvet tighter against the chill in her bedroom. The rustle of the smooth silk and Chloé’s whistles of sleep over the monitor lulled her for a moment.

  “Françoise, Gerard’s wife, called Pascal a manipulator, out for everything he could get. So I figure he held this over the minister’s head and expected favors.”

  Martine yawned. “Go to sleep.”

  “Can you ask your friend at Le Monde a favor, the one who works in the archives? I need articles on Commissaire Blauet. Anything from 1978. His present whereabouts. Check the obits in case he’s dead, too.”

  A sigh. “Why?”

  “If Blauet’s alive, I need to reach him. His name’s there, Martine. He’d have been the one to shut down my father’s investigation.”

  “Zut! And you think, quoi, he’ll admit it just like that after all this time?”

  “You don’t think ‘pretty please with sugar on top’ will work?”

  Another yawn. “If I say yes, will you go to sleep?”

  If only she could. Miles Davis emitted a snore, and the moon had dipped behind the mansarded rooftops across the river.

  “Promise. Merci, Martine.”

  Wednesday Morning

  AIMÉE PARKED THE Gucci-print pod stroller—bought on René’s insistence—at the Saint-Germain piscine. The humid air was tinged with chlorine.

  “Here you go, water baby,” she said, handing Chloé to Babette, who was already in the pool. “René or I will meet you at the park later.”

  The mamans in their maillots de bain at the baby swim class waved—Aimée had been a part of their group during her maternity leave. She felt a tug of regret at not joining them. “See you next time,” smiled one of the mamans. The lifeguard, a hunk in a Speedo, whistled for their attention. And scrutiny.

  “Enjoy,” she called back.

  She checked her messages. Maxence had picked up her scooter from Champs de Mars, thank God. But she was waiting to hear what Dussollier had uncovered about Fifi and Tesla, the missing pieces of the puzzle. Nothing. His number answered with an impersonal voice instructing her to leave a message. Why hadn’t he gotten back to her yet? Wasn’t he taking her request seriously? Maybe he didn’t realize how urgent it was.

  No news from Martine on her archive query either. Frustrated, she tried René.

  “Found another translator for Drina’s Romany?”

  “Working on it, Aimée.” René sighed. “What do I say to my friend about that tracker chip? It was a unique prototype. Valuable.”

  “So’s a human life, René.”

  Pause. “Aimée, walk away from this.” René cleared his throat. “Please, you can’t let—”

  “Nicu’s death go for nothing? Non, René, my father wanted me to make it right.”

  The sidewalk horse chestnut trees bloomed in white and pink as she headed away from Saint-Germain. With almost no warning, the sky opened, as it often did at this time of year—a giboulée, a sudden brief downpour followed by sun, characteristic of March. But March was over—where was spring? She ran for cover, ducking into a doorway.

  “Won’t you help me, René?” she asked when she could hear herself again over the rush of the rain.

  His answer was lost as she dropped her phone in the streaming gutter.

  Wednesday Morning

  FROM THE CLANGING splash and then buzz on the end of the line, René feared Aimée’d ruined another phone.

  He shook his misgivings aside. Rubbed his brow and took a Doliprane for the ache in his hip. Aimée needed him.

  Again.

  After a second expensive conversation with the femme at La Bouteille, he had finally found a Romany translator and made an appointment. Armed with her introduction and an address, he said a prayer to the parking gods—à la Aimée—and plunged into the traffic on the Rive Gauche.

  René tried a shortcut. He shifted into first on a rain-slicked street in the warren behind the Musée d’Orsay. Big mistake. Outside Serge Gainsbourg’s former house, grafittied with tributes to the dead icon, a delivery truck blocked the street. Fuming, René honked and rolled down his window.

  He saw a man in front of the shrine, adding to the graffiti. He looked like the ghost of Gainsbourg himself: tousled hair, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, a day’s worth of
stubble cultivated on his chin, crisp white shirt, vintage jacket, suede brogues. Harmless, but a man who clearly, René thought, seemed a few slices short of a baguette.

  By the time the truck had moved, he had to hurry.

  Ten minutes later, the downpour lifted and shoppers filled the boutiques on rue de Sèvres. This was where the fusty 7th bordered the lively 6th, and the streets teemed with life—the damp pavement was thronged, the outdoor cafés bustling. René loved the energy, the crisp morning light sparkling like crystal and dancing as it hit the wet zinc rooftops.

  His prayer had worked; the parking gods were smiling, for once. Two minutes later, across Le Bon Marché, he walked into square Boucicaut, which had been built on the site of an ancient cemetery, or was it a medieval leper colony? He could never remember. Light scudded through the plane tree leaves, striking the swollen raindrops clinging to the grass. He passed the statue of Madame Boucicaut, the Bon Marché founder’s wife, immortalized in marble beckoning the poor children—offering bread crumbs while she kept the loaf, as the clochards used to say. The April breeze blew flurries of twigs and leaves over the gravel. Benches dotted this oasis of calm; the blaring of traffic horns seemed suddenly far away. A few children climbed on the play structure, their parents chatting and keeping an eye on them.

  Where was his translator? He punched in the number he’d been given.

  “Désolée, Monsieur, I can’t leave for another hour. Can it wait?”

  “There’s no time to spare,” said René. “I’ll come to you.”

  Annoyed, he made his way around puddles, exited the square and turned left. Past the inviting terrasse tables at the café on rue de Babylone. He battled an urge for something warm.

  On rue du Bac, he joined the pilgrims entering the Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal with its shrine of Saint Catherine Labouré. He followed the cobbled entry past a wall of marble plaques and a religious gift shop selling medals depicting the Virgin’s visit to the young Saint Catherine.

  He hated crowds, everyone taller than him and no way to see ahead. Nuns shepherded a group of young blue-robed novices, who were speaking to one another in Spanish. A woman paused before the statue of Saint Vincent de Paul, touched his open hand and crossed herself.

  Jammed among the worshippers, caught and claustrophobic, he felt like a gnat about to be crushed. Trying not to trip, he moved in the press of people to the whitewashed chapel with its soaring arches, blue murals of the Virgin framing the altar and balconies full of praying supplicants. Ahead he saw a crowd gathered to the right of the main altar. At a door beyond that stood a short nun. She matched the description Madame Bercou at La Bouteille had given him. His translator.

  René made his way past the glass case displaying the coffin and incorruptible body of Saint Catherine Labouré, which had been exhumed years after her death in the nineteenth century, still in pristine condition. Shivers ran down his arms when he looked at her wax face framed by a white-peaked wimple, her black rosary trailing over her nun’s habit. The body heat of the fervent and the smoke from the melting candles made him light-headed.

  Keep going, he had to keep going.

  “Monsieur Friant?” asked the nun, only a head taller than he. Petite, she had deep dark eyes and an olive complexion. A simple blue veil was pinned to her dark hair. “You need help translating Romany? I’m Sister Dorothée. Please come this way.”

  He followed her through a door to a narrow courtyard next to the chapel, then over wet pavers and through another door to another courtyard. From such an oppressive atmosphere, he found himself enveloped in a silent stillness, protected from the wind. The courtyard smelled of damp mowed grass. Sunlight sparkled on the wet chains of a sunken stone well.

  “It’s much more peaceful here, we can hear ourselves think,” said Sister Dorothée as they sat on a bench under the cloister’s cold stone arches.

  René handed her a hundred-franc note along with the notepad. “My donation,” he said.

  Sister Dorothée’s smile faded. “In the donation box, please.”

  He’d offended her already. He winced.

  “My mother’s third cousin’s wife asked me to help you,” she said. “I do it as one of God’s creatures to another. Not all gens du voyage want to take your money, Monsieur.”

  “Please forgive me, Sister Dorothée,” he said, ashamed that his prejudice had showed. “I’m told these words contain a curse, and that voicing it would give the words power.”

  “Some say that, Monsieur Friant,” she said. “Others say a curse only has power if you grant it power.”

  While she read, he gazed at this ancient convent garden, its expanse of lawn lined by fruit trees and blue and purple hydrangeas. A jardin potager, a kitchen garden, extended to a wall almost a soccer field away. Vast for the center of Paris. This had all been farms and countryside until Marie de Médicis awarded her land to the convents. The Sisters of Charity convent was just one of many institutions and parcels of land the church owned in the arrondissement.

  The tree branches dripped and hung low, heavy with rain.

  “C’est privé.” A gardener in a blue workcoat emerged from a side path, pushing a wheelbarrow. “The garden’s not open to the public,” he said sharply to René. “Ah, pardonnez-moi, I didn’t see you, Sister.”

  Sister Dorothée nodded.

  “Can you make sense of some of it?” René asked.

  “It’s very sad.”

  The last thing René expected.

  “You’re sure you want to know?” she asked.

  What could it contain? A dying woman’s last words? He nodded.

  “D’accord, well, some makes no sense,” said Sister Dorothée. “But from here it’s more coherent. He covered up my sister’s murder by those men. I understood. He couldn’t do anything else, he had a daughter. What could I do … my people shunned the boy Nicholás, painted me black. He kept the cloak over the guilty. Unfair. That’s why we live our own way, with our own kind, only trust our own. But that didn’t exist for me. Radu said Djanka was a whore—all family honor gone. I had nothing, so I took his help. When they’d gone too far and he refused to cover up more dirtiness, they blew him up. I saw them. Then we ran and hid, no protector anymore. But he wanted his daughter to know he did it for her, that she should make it right. I owed him that. Tesla, Fifi, I spit in their eyes, on their souls.”

  René bowed his head, sadness flooding him. He and the nun sat in silence. Some pink and white petals of the blooming plum and almond trees had drifted to the ground, joining the pastel carpet of blossoms already covering the vegetable beds. A church bell chimed in the distance. How could he tell Aimée that her father had been part of the cover-up—had died trying to get out of it?

  Wednesday Morning

  ON RUE DU Pré-aux-Clercs, named for the ancient monk’s abbey and once a popular dueling site, a shudder of wind misted Aimée’s cheeks with the spring rain. She had salvaged her phone from the gutter, wiped it off, shaken it. Still working. She waited out the second sudden shower under a stone portico. Across the street, a concierge leaned out of her open ground-floor window, talking to the postman huddling in his yellow rain slicker. And just as quickly as the shower burst, it stopped and sunlight broke over the glistening wet pavers.

  At the smudged reception window in the commissariat, she asked for Commissaire Dejouy, crossing her fingers he hadn’t retired.

  “In a meeting,” said a young recruit, his ironed collar standing at attention.

  Great. Her only contact here.

  “Can you tell him it’s Aimée Leduc?”

  “Concerning?”

  “An investigation.”

  “Your identification.”

  She passed over her new PI license. He shook his head. “Then that’s an official visit. You’d need permission from the commissaire, and he’s in a meeting.”

  Helpful, this new recruit. And the stale air in here was as bad as his attitude.

  “Five minutes, pl
ease,” she said, glancing at her Tintin watch. “Can you check with the commissaire?”

  Jojo Dejouy stuck his head round the door. “I’ll take care of this, Lelong.”

  Repressing the urge to smile at the bewildered Lelong, she went through the door Dejouy had opened for her.

  Jojo, greyer than she’d remembered and with an expanding waist, led her past institution-green cubicles, through the haze of cigarette smoke and into his office. Brittle fluorescent light highlighted the dust layer on his file cabinet.

  He closed the door. “It’s good to see you, Aimée.” said Jojo. “I appreciate you inviting me to your baby’s christening, I’m just sorry I couldn’t make it. Your father meant a lot to me. Maybe I didn’t show it when they put him against the wall.” Jojo shrugged. “I know you’re a bigger person than me. You look at the good in people, like he did.”

  Jojo, like many in the force, had distanced himself from her papa when he’d been fingered for an offense he didn’t commit. Years later, her father had said it was the best thing that had ever happened to him; it had driven him to private work. If he could forgive his old team, she’d decided she could, too. And she knew her father would be smiling.

  “Here’s the card I’ve been meaning to send.” He handed her a baptism card.

  “That’s sweet, Jojo.”

  “Got a picture of her?”

  “Bien sûr, but …” She rummaged for her wallet. “Bad mother, moi. I took out Chloé’s newborns and forgot to put in the ones where she’s sitting up.”

  Jojo smiled. “Your papa would be over the moon.”

  She nodded. But she hadn’t come to socialize “You’re investigating Nicu Constantin’s knifing under the Métro at La Motte-Piquet–Grenelle?”

  “Same twenty-two-year-old manouche questioned about the mercy killing of a patient who disappeared from Hôpital Laennec?” Jojo asked.

  She nodded, disappointed he would even bring that up now that the real story of Drina’s death was public knowledge, splashed all over the papers. “Admit it, Jojo, moot point. A frame-up. Then, right after your men take him in for questioning, he’s knifed. A hate crime? I don’t think so.”