Murder in the Bastille

by Cara Black

  “Monsieur Csarda?”

  Vincent spun around. A waiter, his long white apron brushing his ankles, towered over him.

  “Oui?”

  No one crept up on him like that. Ever. He must focus, concentrate on the larger picture. Not become lost in minutiae.

  “Pardon, monsieur, the organizer needs your approval for the orchids. A last minute change, only purple ones arrived.”

  “Merci.” Vincent smiled. He could afford to appear gracious.

  By the time he resolved the crisis with the orchids— Malraux, the Bastille Opéra patron, detested purple—he realized Malraux was late. A no-show? Impossible . . . Malraux owed him. In more ways than he could repay.

  Wednesday Noon

  DOWNSTAIRS AT THE COMMISSARIAT, in sunlight dappled Place Léon Blum, Sergeant Loïc Bellan thumbed the fat Beast of Bastille dossier. As he had so many times. But this would be the final run-through. After this, he’d sign off on the compilation, then turn it over to the frigo, slang for the archives . . . to be frozen cold and deep in the police vault’s repository under the Seine.

  Bellan hunched over the long wooden table in the deserted operations room. Outside in the square, named for the Socialist Prime Minister of France between world wars, early morning buses, taxis and bicycles passed the grilled windows.

  Nearby, embedded in the pavement, were five stones which had once supported the wood scaffold of the guillotine. Lacenaire, the poet, had referred to them as the “flagstones of death.” Today they were part of the white-striped crosswalk pedestrians used daily.

  Bellan knuckled down to what he did best, putting the perp under his own brand of microscope. Rereading and combing the information one more time, sifting the loose ends, arranging and rearranging items. Searching for loose threads and ways to knot them. Maybe then he could let go.

  He pored over the notes made by the quai des Orfèvres’ psychological profiler, the photos of the victims, details from the forensic lab reports, the few witnesses’ and neighbors’ accounts. Then he looked at the map of the Bastille quartier . . . at the location of the attacks.

  No question remained in his mind. Vaduz had committed the murders described in the dossier. But this last one, of Josiane Dolet, smelled off. Like an overripe Brie.

  His conscience had to be clear . . . his nights were bad enough without Marie and his daughters. Whiskey deadened the pain for only so long. He’d wake in the middle of the night, thinking he had to get the girls up for school. But a yellow pool of light on the bare wooden floor was his only companion.

  Jean-Claude Leduc’s aphorisms from Loïc’s rookie year echoed in his head: “If you smell something, follow your nose. . . . When it pecks at your shoulder night and day, pay attention.”

  What had he missed?

  With the combination of his huge caseload, the few of hours of restless sleep, the endless espresso on prolonged stakeouts, and the flask of whiskey he’d taken to keeping in his vest pocket . . . he couldn’t be sure.

  Something nagged at him. Was it the remark Aimée had made about the passage . . . its narrowness? Loïc chewed the end of his pen. He stood back and surveyed the enlarged bus and Métro map on the wall.

  Vaduz’s victims’ trails aligned themselves in the few blocks where the #86 and #91 bus routes merged. This corresponded with the Bastille, Ledru Rollin and Faidherbe Chaligny stops along the purple Métro line. Loïc studied the detective’s notes verifying that the suspect and victims had taken the same bus to work; his customary bars, cafés, and laundromats in the quartier which were also frequented by the victims. This commonality had led them to Vaduz, a seasonal prop mover at the new Opéra.

  Bellan reread the file notes. Vaduz picked the same type, over and over again. All the women resembled his cousin: blonde, curvaceous, glamorous. The cousin had ignored the introverted Vaduz since childhood, refusing to introduce him to her friends. But he’d fixated on her, covered his walls with obsessive poems and drawings reflecting the fantasies he’d had about her. On weekends when he’d visited the family, she’d had boys with her in her room. Though she belittled and rebuffed him, he claimed he loved her.

  But Josiane Dolet was rail-thin, stylish, and reserved in appearance. Wealthy and left-leaning, she’d followed her family’s tradition and joined the family newspaper. When the paper merged with Libération, she went freelance, writing investigative exposés and garnering respect for solid reporting.

  Josiane Dolet seemed an unusual choice of victim for Vaduz. She was the most intellectual of them all. Had that made her the most threatening? But when he attacked women, they had no time for discussion.

  Yet, Bellan reasoned, his selection of victims showed premeditation and a pattern. Methodical, though sick, he’d taken his time. His victims either lived in a passage or walked through one to their apartments. But Josiane Dolet’s apartment overlooked the glass-roofed market in Place d’Aligré; she would walk through the open square to reach it.

  The Préfet was breathing down his neck; the report had to be submitted by noon. How did Aimée figure in this? Loïc couldn’t put his finger on it, but something troubled him.

  “Bellan! Line 3,” shouted the sergeant from the front desk.

  He picked up the wall phone. “Oui.”

  “Loïc,” Marie said, her voice faint. “Guillaume’s sick.”

  And the world stopped. All he heard was a heavy silence on the other end, then the whine of a scooter by the window.

  “What is it?”

  “Strep throat,” she said.

  Poor Marie, she must be overwhelmed to call him.

  “Marie, the girls had that last year, it wasn’t so serious.”

  “They’re worried about his kidneys.”

  “Why?”

  “For babies like him, it’s serious. We’re at the hospital in Vannes,” she said. “He’s in intensive care. As his father, I thought you should know.”

  The phone went dead.

  He couldn’t leave Marie to face this alone. Something caved inside him. And all he could think of were those little pink pearllike toes.

  He closed the files, pulled on his jacket, and hailed a taxi for Gare Montparnasse.

  Wednesday Afternoon

  MATHIEU FINGERED THE DRIED orange skin pocked with cloves, shrunken hard . . . wrinkled like a pecan. A Provençal custom, drying oranges to scent cupboards. The bittersweet remnant of the old Comte de Breuve. Mathieu’s mind went back to his last visit in early September when the Comte had summoned him to the chateau outside Paris.

  This visit was different from those on which he’d accompanied his father. The Comte, gaunt, wearing worn corduroys and an ascot tucked into his old wool Shetland vest, had aged. His nose seemed more prominent and the broken capillaries in his face more pronounced.

  “Let’s hurry, there’s not much time,” the Comte had said, his look furtive. Then he commenced complaining that he couldn’t afford to heat the château, much less dwell in it. So he lived in the Orangerie, a stone and glass construction nestled among the outbuildings housing rusted farm equipment.

  The catering firm that had rented out the château for parties and weddings had vacated, as evidenced by the dry fountains and overgrown gardens. Wild hyacinths peeked from between the columns. Now, only the municipality rented the ground floor and ballroom for adult evening classes.

  The Comte shuffled down the musty stone cellar steps of the Orangerie, which was dug into the slope below the château. Flanked by steep staircases, it anchored the slope and remained perfectly sheltered, facing due south, its windows double glazed.

  “The temperature in here remains stable, between 15° and 18° centigrade,*” the Comte said. “Even in winter.”

  Mathieu felt an even, dry warmth. Remarkable.

  “These vaults once housed orange trees from Portugal, Spain, and Italy; lemon and pomegranate trees; a winter Bon-Chrétien pear tree; even a Hungarian blue pumpkin plant.”

  The Comte lifted a glistening dried orange
from a basket and handed it to him.

  “The trees produced little fruit. Most of them were decoratively pruned into topiary balls. The gardeners wheeled the boxed trees outdoors for the summer months in mid-May, returning them to the Orangerie in mid-October. They were quite sophisticated about climate control back then. They force-ripened the oranges.”

  He led Mathieu to a vaulted warren of rooms filled with furniture covered by sagging old dust-laden sheets.

  “This was how they hid the Mona Lisa from the Germans,” the Comte said.

  The hair rose on Mathieu’s neck.

  “Do you mean here?”

  “In the Orangerie at Cheverny,“

  Mathieu knew the famous château on the Loire.

  “I’ll tell you the story,” the Comte said, glancing at his watch. “Not now, another time.”

  But there had been no other time. The Comte had left unsaid more than he had told him. Mathieu felt it, and was sure of it when the Comte lifted the sheets and he saw the furniture. Pieces that took his breath away.

  “Restore these pieces and sell them,” the Comte said. “Find a buyer, auction them off en catimini—on the sly. Take your cut, but there must be no way to trace any piece back to me. I know I can trust you.”

  Mathieu bent over the mahogany piece, with its silver-framed doors, grooved and cabled, and small, rounded tapering legs. A pieta dura commode. One of three known to be in existence.

  Exquisite.

  Beautiful striations of wood grain. Veined white and grey marble. The interior with its seven paperboards in red morocco leather bore the estampillé of WEISWEILLER. A piece from the period of Louis XVI.

  He got to his knees, touching the wood with his fingertips like a young boy’s hesitant first caress. Even if blinded, he’d know the velvety texture of the rare wood, the unique curve and supple delineation, the trademark of Weisweiler. Weis-weiler had worked for Jean-Henri Riesener, furniture- and cabinetmaker to the French monarchs.

  Mathieu’s heart jumped. The only other eighteenth-century Weisweiler commode sold after World War II had fetched close to 70 million French francs,* co-bought by a millionaire and the French State, to be returned to Versailles where it had stood in the library before the French Revolution.

  The next piece, stamped DELAITRE, was from 1738, époque Louis XV. It was a chest with two rows of drawers, in purple wood veneers with handles gilded in faille and bronze decorative hardware.

  Would the Comte reveal their history to him?

  “And the provenance . . . ?” Mathieu asked.

  “Sell them anonymously. Don’t worry, do a little work on them and they’ll sell.”

  But Mathieu had seen the telltale red G. The characteristic mark of the Gruenthal collections. And he understood.

  He might as well put the soles of his feet into the flames. Handling these would be the equivalent of waltzing with fire. All the items must be pieces the Gruenthal family had acquired from the Nazis—pieces that by rights should have been handed over to the French government for return to the original owners or their heirs. A long time ago.

  And the Comte, where had he gotten these pieces . . . was he working for himself or them . . . or both? What could have reduced him to this?

  The Orangerie’s even climate was a perfect storeroom. He wondered how long they’d been here. And he knew he’d risk everything if he helped the Comte. But he’d be a fool if he didn’t.

  The Comte, he figured, couldn’t risk using a compagnard de travail—a prestigious master craftsman apprenticed in the seven-year program that dated back to the Middle Ages. A compagnard wouldn’t touch unprovenanced pieces. Not even with a barge pole.

  Envy . . . yes, Mathieu felt a soupçon of envy for the compagnards. But after years of working with his father, even though he stayed a faubourg artisan, he knew his craft rivaled that of a compagnard.

  The Comte would know that someone like Mathieu, an ébéniste from the Bastille quartier, would remain discreet, too glad of the work to raise questions. And the Comte had trusted his father, knew the Cavour tradition.

  So he had to play this right. Not appear anxious. The Comte needed him. And Mathieu needed the francs to buy his building in order to save it.

  “Me, I repair. There’s a lot of this work,” he shrugged. “You expect me to sell it, too?“

  “You know people who can,” the Comte said. “And even you can see it’s Louis XVI . . . worth, well, a lot.”

  “What’s in it for me?” he said.

  “Your father wasn’t this difficult,” the Comte said. “Or didn’t you know?”

  Mathieu hadn’t.

  “Listen,” the Comte said, understanding in his eyes. “Once, sometime ago, your father helped me. He benefited. It’s not complicated.”

  Mathieu remembered the Comte visiting the shop, his servant in tow, and how they’d gone out for Bertillon crème glacée, the best ice cream in Paris. His father had bought the truck afterward. A Renault, top of the line. Still in perfect shape.

  “Don’t think I won’t be generous. Back the truck up, take whatever fits inside,” the Comte said, as if referring to sides of beef. “I count on you.”

  Mathieu noticed the once-manicured, now overgrown, lime trees in planters lining the vaulted walls as he carefully wrapped and dollied several pieces of furniture to the truck. When he drove out, the Comte waved to him as if they were friends.

  In the rearview mirror, the Comte, standing in the graveled court, looked solitary and sad, as if diminished by the furniture’s departure. How pathetic even very rich people could look, Mathieu thought. Even a count with a château, who had only a magnificent collection of priceless antique furniture left.

  Mathieu would need help to sell the pieces. And he knew where to go.

  The thudding sound of a flic pounding on the glass-paned courtyard door brought him back to the present. He dropped the flat-edged scraper, swore, and took a step back.

  Get a grip. Don’t lose control, he told himself.

  “Forgive me, officers,” he said, opening the door of his workshop. “The older I get, the louder I play the radio.”

  Keep calm. They’d ask questions, nose around and they’d be gone. He gestured for the three men to come inside. One, wearing a jacket too big for him, with patches on the elbows, flashed his ID.

  “Sorry for the trouble, monsieur,” he said with a small smile, one hand in his pocket. He shrugged, as if to intimate these intrusions inflicted on citizens were simply a part of life. His socks were mismatched, one brown, the other gray.

  Mathieu saw the flics surveying the cans of putty, the varnish bottles on his shelves, and the chairs hanging from the ceiling, drying.

  “Any trouble, officers?” Mathieu asked, wiping his hands on his apron.

  “We’re investigating a homicide,” he was told.

  Mathieu’s emotions were in turmoil. An irrational urge to babble about the past and point them downstairs welled up in him. To rid himself of his guilt, to get it over with.

  Instead he reached for the turpentine-soaked rag and wiped his work table.

  “Cut yourself badly?” asked the one in the ill-fitting jacket. He was older, with bags under his eyes and a bland expression. He pointed to Mathieu’s bandaged finger.

  “A hazard of the trade,” Mathieu said. “Happens more the older I get.”

  “We have a search warrant, Monsieur Cavour,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact. “So if you don’t mind . . .”

  “A search warrant?” Mathieu stiffened in fear. He tried to breathe. The impulse to confess evaporated. Had they found out about the furniture? “What do you mean?”

  The flics pulled latex gloves from their pockets, slipped their fingers inside.

  “Let’s begin with your tools.” It was as if Mathieu hadn’t spoken. “The set of chisels. Like those.” He pointed to the ones on the shelf.

  Before Mathieu could summon the will to move his legs, one of the flics pushed over a stool, climbed up, and beg
an taking his tools down.

  What about my rights, Mathieu wanted to shout. My rights!

  The past flowed over him. His helplessness. The unfairness. Those hired thugs had beat him up, tried to kick him out of his atelier, until he persuaded them he had money. And would keep giving them money if they just let him stay.

  “Monsieur . . . monsieur?” the one with the bags under his eyes was saying, tugging his elbow. “Ça va . . . you’re white-faced. Not going to pass out, are you?”

  Mathieu shook his head.

  “What are you afraid of, monsieur?” he said. “We’re just doing our job. See, we have a warrant, but we prefer to have your cooperation.”

  “Cooperation?” Mathieu rubbed his forehead.

  “A woman was killed in the next passage. We have to check everything.” The man nodded. “I understand that it upsets you.”

  And from the look in his sad droopy eyes, Mathieu thought the flic did.

  One of the flics raised his eyebrows. “Can you tell me where your chisel is, monsieur?”

  “There’s a whole set, they’re up there,” he said. “More lie in the drawer.”

  “What about the number 4?”

  Mathieu looked up. “The number 4? It must be here somewhere, detective.”

  “Actually, it’s Commissaire,” he said. “But these trademark Grifon chisels, they’re expensive . . . non?”

  “My clients, the Rothschilds, the Louvre, want good work, Commissaire. We use the best tools,” he said. “Handed down in my family.”

  “Like this?” The Commissaire pulled a plastic bag from his pocket. Inside lay what appeared to be Mathieu’s #4 chisel.

  Mathieu’s eyes widened.

  “We found bloodstains on this, Monsieur Cavour,” he said.

  “But of course, I cut myself. . . .”

  “We need to test you and see if your blood is a match.”

  “Well, it should be.” Mathieu saw the flic slide a pair of handcuffs from his pocket. His mouth went dry. “Where did you find my chisel?”