Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

by Cara Black

  “It’s time.” The old man gripped Krzysztof by the elbow. “Please, stay until the unveiling. For me,” he said, his voice softening.

  Krzysztof hated to hear his uncle beg. The last thing he wanted was to disappoint him. Reluctant, he nodded.

  “Mesdames et messieurs,” a voice announced from the rear of the salon, “join us for the unveiling of Chopin’s death mask, our tribute to a great musican and son of Poland.”

  A bit late, Krzysztof thought. When Chopin, tubercular and estranged from the Polish aristocrats, died, his lover, George Sand, had footed the bills.

  “The monarchy lives,” his uncle whispered. “You’re in the line of succession. Be proud.”

  Proud? What were obsolete titles compared to toxic oil spills, killing wildlife, and depleting the ocean of oxygen? The lies of Alstrom, the guilty oil company, had to be exposed; the Ministry prevented from signing the proposed agreement.

  “Pour me some champagne before it’s gone, young man.”

  He turned to see an old woman, wearing a fur stole, too many pearls, and too much makeup for her age. She was feeding the Chihuahua at her side from her plate with a fork. He would humor her and then escape, Krzysztof decided.

  “With pleasure.” He executed a small bow, his manners ingrained. On weekends he did this for a living. “Your dog has a good appetite, Madame.” He poured and handed her a Baccarat flute of fizzing champagne.

  “Tiresome, this reception fare. Always the same,” she said. “But Bibo loves pommes dauphinoise.”

  He repressed a sniff. The old woman hadn’t washed in a while or maybe it was Bibo, a bulging-eyed thing whose teeth were bared at him.

  The old woman said in Polish, “You’re the comte’s—”

  “I speak French” he interrupted.

  “Hardly a trace of an accent either,” she said. “So you’re the troublemaking prince he complains about. Highstrung, a rebel.” She smiled at the little dig she’d managed to inflict.

  “My mother taught me French,” Krzysztof said. “And the system of kings and aristocrats is dead.”

  To his surprise, she beamed. “Dead? Try telling them that, young man.” She waved her arm in a vague gesture at the crowd. “But I see, you’re like me.”

  He doubted that.

  “Believe it or not, in my day we were enthralled by the anarchists, idealists with letter bombs, all very romantic and exciting. I raised hell, too.” She patted his arm and left her hand there. “Isn’t that the expression?”

  Krzysztof cringed. She still thought of herself as a coquette.

  “I’m just a student.” He glanced at the hand of the Sèvres clock. “There’s a protest against North Sea pollution . . .”

  “Marvellous,” she interrupted, noticing his gaze. “The young always protest, that’s your job. I find those who stir things up fascinating.”

  “Stir things up?” She made it sound as if it was a lark. If they didn’t bring the facts to the world’s attention, the Ministry would sign an oil rights agreement with Alstrom the day after tomorrow.

  She let out a meaningful sigh. “Boris Bakunin. Now if he’d put as much energy into revolution as he did between the sheets . . . our movement would have succeeded.” There was a wicked grin on her face. “We learned how to build, set, and defuse explosives. It was my idea—that book bomb—not that anyone cares these days.”

  He shifted his feet. He wanted to slip out before his uncle noticed.

  “I hope you’re involved in something illegal and thrilling.” Her eyes sparkled, amazing green young-looking eyes revealing traces of the beauty she must once have been. “It’s the only way to live, young man.” She fed Bibo a forkful, then leaned forward. “Just watch your back. If Trotsky had paid more attention to what was going on behind him, he wouldn’t have been assassinated in Mexico.”

  “Pardon?” He stood, eyeing the door, distracted.

  “They hatched the plot here; we knew the saboteur. I warned him myself.”

  And then he realized who she was. Jadwiga Radziwill, the once notorious revolutionary, double agent, and rumored lover of a Wehrmacht general. Zut, he’d thought she was dead.

  DARKNESS SHADED THE narrow cobblestone surface of the Left Bank street. Fewer than a hundred had gathered for the march; Krzysztof had expected more. And the press? Not a camera crew in sight.

  Disappointed, he wiped damp hair from his forehead, passing a candle to the next demonstrator. The march would culminate two blocks away in a peace vigil on the grounds of l’Institut du Monde Arabe, the cultural foundation where the conference was being held. A multistory building part library, museum, and seminar center, l’Institut du Monde Arabe’s countless bronze light-sensitive shutters imitated the moucharabiya, an Arab latticework balcony. Another Pompidou design project not working half the time.

  He looked for Orla, who’d promised to provide them with more information, but she was late as usual. A camera truck from France2 pulled up. He brightened; now they’d get coverage on the television news. The word would spread.

  Fellow Sorbonne students wearing bandannas strummed guitars, and the old Socialists, always ready for a demonstration, circulated bottles of red wine among those standing in loose ranks. Handheld candles illuminated expectant faces. He smiled at his fellow organizer, Gaelle, who had draped a red-and-white Palestinian scarf over her tank top. She raised her fist in a power salute, grinning back as he dumped an empty candle box in a bin.

  “My press contact’s coming. I told him you’d convinced Brigitte and the MondeFocus to sponsor this demonstration,” Gaelle said, her face flushed with excitement.

  Perfect, everything was running according to plan. His nervousness evaporated. Now he was sure everything would work. He’d followed the right channels, applied for and obtained a permit. There was not even a flic or a police car in sight.

  A girl with long blonde hair smiled and kissed him on the cheek, her scent of patchouli oil surrounding them both. “Comrade, help out a minute, won’t you?”

  He caught a whiff of kerosene and hoped no one had brought a lantern. Their march was supposed to end in a silent protest illuminated only by hundreds of flickering candles as they submitted their alternative proposal. A lantern would ruin the effect.

  She smiled up at him and slung her backpack strap over his shoulder. “Take this, will you? I’ve got to carry the rest of the candles.” The clink of bottles came from within the backpack. She winked. “I’ve brought something to quench our thirst while we keep vigil.”

  He hesitated and shrugged. “Why not?” He hefted the bag. Voices around him rose in song and he recognized “The Internationale,” the old Socialist anthem. He found himself stepping out in time with the singing. And then she vanished, dropping behind the ranks of marchers, as someone hugged him.

  The group linked arms and strode over the cobbles. Beside him, Gaelle held the green STOP THE OIL DRILLING banner aloft.

  As they marched, their voices and laughter echoed off the stone buildings. Their candles flickered in the soft breeze from the Seine. His uncle’s speech came to his mind. Proud of his ancestry? This made his heart swell with pride.

  They reached the corner and rounded it. Ranks of uniformed CRS, Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité, an armed riot squad, stood in front of l’Institut du Monde Arabe.

  This made no sense to Krzysztof. They were marching peacefully to protest oil pollution.

  He paused in midstep, as did the others. The CRS was drawn up in riot formation. The revolving police-car lights cast a bluish light that was reflected by the clear shields they held positioned in front of them.

  This was only his second demonstration and he almost jumped out of his skin as a Mercedes limo screeched down the institute’s exit ramp and tore off toward the Seine.

  “Merde,” Gaelle said at his side, “the bigwigs are taking off before we can present our proposals. The pigs!”

  Krzysztof exchanged a confused look with Claude, a tall, leather-jacketed doc
umentary filmmaker who stood on the sidelines.

  “Get this on film, Claude!” he called.

  Claude raised his fingers in a V, video camera crooked between his neck and shoulder. “Got it, from the beginning!” Claude considered himself a master of cinéma vérité. His ten-year-old documentary of activists fighting the building of African oil platforms was already considered a classic.

  The marchers were at a standstill. Strategize, Krzysztof told himself. They had to strategize and keep the momentum going.

  “Gaelle. Over here.” He made his way through the crowd, toward plane trees with peeling bark. Amid the planters holding bushes he set the backpack down.

  The CRS loudspeaker broke the silence. “Advance no further.”

  “Everything’s legal,” Gaelle shouted back, “approved by the—” Her voice was drowned by the clanking of the metal-heeled boots of the CRS scraping against the cobblestones.

  “This is an unlawful assembly. Your permit has been revoked,” the loudspeaker blared. “Put down your weapons.”

  Their permit revoked? Weapons?

  “We’re conducting a sanctioned peaceful assembly,” Krzysztof shouted. MondeFocus only countenanced peaceful lawful demonstrations.

  All of a sudden, a figure ran toward the front line of marchers, cradling something to her chest. “Wait . . . !”

  Before he could see who it was, the stark white glare of police searchlights blinded him. He shielded his eyes.

  “Krzysztof!”

  He recognized Orla’s voice. But more blinding light prevented him from seeing her.

  “Look, Orla’s arrived,” Gaelle said.

  “This is your last warning.” Static crackled from the loudspeaker.

  He stepped back in a panic. “But I obtained the permit. How could they revoke it?” he asked, dazed.

  “They can’t do this,” Gaelle told him.

  “Of course not. No one informed me!”

  “Lies!” The crowd started chanting, their voices mounting in the humid air.

  “They’ll have to understand,” Gaelle said, desperation in her voice, as she broke past the marchers and ran ahead.

  The CRS advanced in a single rank, clear shields positioned in front of their faces.

  Gaelle raised her candle and took a step forward, into the boulevard.

  What was she doing? The CRS came closer, truncheons raised. He could see their features behind their clear shields. He sprinted forward. She took another step.

  “Gaelle, non!” He reached for her arm.

  People behind him shoved forward and he tripped, losing his balance. The banner fell. He was pressed against a stone bollard.

  “We’re presenting a peaceful petition—”

  The rest of Gaelle’s words were lost in the bone-cracking whack of a truncheon. She crumpled to the ground. For a moment, all was silent, then cries of horror rose around him. Blood spurted from Gaelle’s head, drenching her scarf. And Krzysztof was pushed to one side in the melee as the crowd surged around them.

  Monday Night

  AIMÉE ANSWERED THE door, her hands shaking. The Chanel dress she wore was now caked with clumps of beige formula.

  “About time, René!”

  Her partner, René Friant, a dwarf, all of four feet tall in his tailored Burberry raincoat and custom-made shoes, stared at her.

  “Interesting fashion statement. Sorry I’m late,” he said, hanging his coat on a chair. “They cordoned off the bridge because of some MondeFocus demonstration.” He sniffed. “Did Miles Davis have an accident?”

  “I need your help, René,” she said.

  “System up and running, right? Is this about tomorrow’s meeting . . . ?” He paused, his eyes searching hers. “Don’t tell me you missed the deadline.”

  “Come here.” She took his hand and led him down the hall.

  The baby’s mauve-hued eyelids were closed, the small chest rose and fell. She was at peace, asleep on the duvet.

  “A baby? Instead of playing house, we need to monitor Regnault’s security update.”

  Miles Davis cocked his head at the baby’s gentle breaths.

  “René, it’s not like that.”

  He took a step back. “Did I miss something during the past nine months?”

  She shook her head. “No cracks about the Immaculate Conception either.”

  “Shouldn’t her mother come for her?”

  For once she agreed.

  He sat, his eyes intent on the screen. “What’s this ‘system down for maintenance?’” he asked. “You didn’t get the system back online.”

  “I indicated we had maintenance issues because I needed to buy more time. Everything’s up and ready. I checked.”

  “We can’t use that delaying tactic again, Aimée. We have to get the system admin done in time, every time. Our clients have to have confidence that we’ll get the job done. Otherwise we’ll lose our big account because you’re babysitting. Have you gone soft in the head?”

  Soft in the head . . . never. “I got a mysterious phone call, I went downstairs, and found this baby.”

  He turned in the chair, his legs dangling. “What?”

  “Sssh, it took forever to get her to sleep.” She pointed to the second laptop screen displaying the system program. “Tell you later. Once I go back in, we’ve got seven minutes. Ready?”

  Her fingers ached by the time they’d checked the last user configuration but they finished with two minutes to spare.

  “Close, Aimée. Too close.”

  “Just listen, René.”

  “It better be good.”

  And she told him.

  He frowned. “Somehow the woman found your name and your phone number,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact. “It’s some scam. Now she’ll demand money.”

  Aimée doubted it. The desperation in that voice had been real.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, running her hands through her spiky hair. “I didn’t have time to check earlier, too much was happening.” She dumped out the diaper bag’s contents, spread them on the parquet floor: diapers, wipes, another tin of powdered Lemiel formula. She turned the bag inside out and noticed stains. Earlier, she hadn’t paid attention to the rust-colored smears on the lining. She leaned down and sniffed.

  “Dried blood, René.”

  René sat back, open mouthed for the second time.

  “The woman said someone was trying to kill her. And they may have threatened . . . the baby.”

  She stared at the duvet. The infant’s tiny nose crinkled, and the little mouth yawned, revealing a glistening rose tongue.

  Almost two hours had passed since the telephone call that had summoned her to the courtyard. She had to do something.

  “You still have that friend in Centre d’Écoute Téléphonique, René?”

  “Martin?”

  She handed René her cell phone. “Ask Martin to locate the public phone booth from which my land line was called. The number was 01 33 68 42 18.”

  “Look, Aimée . . .”

  “Talk to him nicely, René. Tell him you’ll owe him big-time.”

  Ten long minutes later, René handed her the address scribbled on the back of an envelope.

  “Alors, asking him didn’t hurt, did it?”

  “My promise to overhaul his motherboard helped.”

  She looked at the address: 5 Boulevard Henri IV, only two blocks away, near the tip of Ile Saint-Louis. “But that’s close by. She could easily have been here by now unless . . .”

  René blinked. “Isn’t she coming to get the baby?”

  “This bloodstain’s in the baby bag. . . . She may have been hurt. What if she can’t?”

  “I don’t like this, Aimée,” he said.

  “René, it’s just two blocks away. Do me a favor. Watch the baby a few minutes.”

  “Me?”

  She handed him a bottle of formula. “All babies do is pee, cry, eat, and sleep.” She remembered this line from a late-night program on the télé.


  “But what if she wakes up?” Alarm showed in René’s eyes.

  “You’ll figure something out, René.”

  AIMÉE SLID INTO the warm night. She saw white wavelets hitting the opposite bank of the Seine. Flooding threatened if the thaw kept up.

  She’d lived here most of her life, yet the neighbors in her building were only nodding acquaintances. Not one was someone to go to for help. Of course, she was aware, as they all were from the concierge, that a retired doctor of L’École de Médecine lived on the first floor with his dog. An actor and his family resided on the second floor. An old aristocrat owned the top-floor pied-à-terre, handed down through the generations. Hers had been inherited from her grandfather. God knows she couldn’t have afforded to buy a place on the Ile Saint-Louis on her earnings from Leduc Detective.

  Along the quai, a few lit windows, like eyes peering into the darkness, showed in the hôtels particuliers, narrow limestone-facaded town houses with delicate wrought-iron balconies and high arched entrances. Most, like hers, were attributed to Le Vau, the architect of Versailles. She knew other worlds existed behind the massive carved entry doors leading to double-and triple-deep courtyards and gardens that could never be glimpsed from the outside. Life on this island took place in the courtyards, in the hidden back passages that had changed little since medieval times. The Ile Saint-Louis was a feudal island fortress, its fortifications the town houses built for the aristocracy. Five bridges spanned the comma-shaped island, which had once been a cow pasture in the Middle Ages. It was eight blocks long and three blocks across at the widest, yet so self-contained that longtime Ile Saint-Louis inhabitants—Ludoviciens—still referred to the rest of Paris as “the Continent.” Stubbornly reclusive, the inhabitants ignored the tourists, aware that they inhabited the most desirable streets in Paris, keeping themselves to themselves. They were proud of having allowed a post office to open only a few years ago, of having neighbors like a minister or two and like the Rothschilds, whom one was unlikely to visit to borrow a cup of sugar. Who was she to criticize? She’d never live anywhere else.

  A woman in trouble wouldn’t knock on the Rothschilds’ door in the middle of the night. Was that why she’d been chosen?