Murder in the Latin Quarter

by Cara Black

  “Easier said than done. She’s in hiding, terrified.”

  “Maybe you’re the one who’s terrified,” Martine said.

  Aimée bit her lip.

  “Tiens, I didn’t mean it like that.” Martine put her hand on Aimée’s arm. “I just want to protect you, Aimée.”

  Protect her? But that angle of Mireille’s chin, that look . . . like her father’s. Of course Mireille had to be her sister.

  “It’s best to know the truth, even if it hurts.”

  The truth. An elusive thing at best. Her father had never revealed Mireille’s existence; she had a mother whose name her father had refused to mention after she’d left, as if she had never existed. Her life was entangled by the cobwebs of the unspoken past.

  “If you have a sample—hair, saliva, skin—Gilles’s brother can test it. He works at a private lab,” Martine said.

  She wanted the truth, too. And would prove it to Martine. “Wait a minute.”

  She remembered Mireille’s hair, pulled back, with the wisps hanging over her face, her tears . . . the comb Mireille had for-gotten on the armchair in the salon.

  Aimée’s fingers trembled as she held the tiny tea glass. Did she really want to know?

  “He likes opera, Aimée,” Martine continued.

  Aimée gulped. Expensive. “You’re saying, as a personal favor, he’d test a sample of our DNA. But doesn’t it take weeks, more like months?”

  “Season tickets.”

  More expensive. “You mean. . . .”

  “He’s the lab director, Aimée.”

  “So?”

  “Certain VIPs use his private express services in paternity matters, a prelitigation maneuver. Amazing, who’s related to who!”

  Martine put on her trench coat, a essential component of the Left Bank literati uniform. “Matter of fact, I have to drop off a christening gift. Another godchild, the fourth in his brood. Shall I arrange it?”

  Aimée gulped. The hot mint tea burned her throat. “But I don’t have time.”

  “Or you’re not game?”

  Aimée wiped her mouth and shouldered her secondhand Vuitton bag, trying to control the shaking in her knees.

  “Where’s your car?”

  A SIMPLE SWAB taken from the inside of her mouth, the hair sample from Mireille’s comb delivered to the nondescript lab, and ten minutes later Aimée stood on the street. Why didn’t she feel better doing the DNA test? More sure that was doing the right thing?

  She wished her emotions would calm down. Hiding in the Latin Quarter, aware of every passerby’s gaze, nervous that at each corner café men could be watching for her.

  She raked her fingers through her damp hair. She couldn’t concentrate: impossible for her to work in that spartan room, awaiting the next threatening fax.

  Despite the darkened sky, she pulled sunglasses from her bag and a crumpled silk scarf that she knotted around her neck. Huby, the assistant professor, hadn’t returned her calls. Time to pay him a visit and find out why.

  AIMÉE, WARY OF surveillance, entered the lab by the rear delivery entrance on rue Poliveau. Lilac thickets bordered the dirt service lane; no doubt it had been a cart path in the previous century. Midges skittered in the hedgerow. The ozone smell of rain hovered.

  This was once a village, she thought, this forgotten slice of the quartier, long before cars, buses, and the Metro. The river Bièvre, now cemented over, ran underground. The tanneries and dyeing industry of the Gobelin tapestry works, which pol-luted it, were a thing of the past.

  Rounding a bend, a perspiring sanitation worker in rubber boots and a lime-green jumpsuit labeled EAU DE PARIS blocked her way. “Sewers are backed up, Mademoiselle,” he said. “Minor flooding. No one’s allowed in.”

  “But I’m meeting Assistant Professeur Huby,” she said.

  “Maybe in a few hours you will. That’s if we get the suction pump running and complete the water-quality tests.”

  “Water-quality tests?”

  “It’s required,” he said. “We test the water several times a day. Especially after a flood. The staff has left.”

  She stepped back, frustrated. A twentyish man with a brief-case headed to a car parked near the hedgerow.

  “Monsieur?” She smiled at him. “Excuse me, but I’m late for my appointment.”

  “I heard,” he said. “But one of the labs is flooded. Why don’t you reschedule?”

  She tapped her heel on the packed earth, thinking fast.

  “If I could reach him! But I don’t know his cell phone number. Do you?”

  “Huby’s?” He searched for his keys in his pocket. “Didn’t the office tell you?”

  Huby was proving more than elusive.

  “He’s at the Cabinet de Curiosités.”

  “Cabinet de Curiosités?”

  “His grandfather’s shop.”

  So far Huby had seemed intent on avoiding her. She’d prefer to call ahead to make sure he would be there.

  “Would you have his number?” she asked. “It might save me a trip.”

  “That’s private information, Mademoiselle.”

  The man unlocked his car door. If he worked here, he might have known Benoît. She couldn’t let this opportunity pass.

  “I imagine Huby’s upset,” she said.

  “We’re using facilities at the ENS.” He shrugged. “It’s a minor inconvenience.”

  Startled for a moment, she wondered if he’d heard her. Then she realized he meant the flooding.

  “I meant, considering Professeur Benoît’s murder here,” she said. “And that of the guard. For that matter, all of you must—”

  “The guard was murdered?” The man straightened up. “I’d heard it was a traffic accident.”

  “Not according to Huby.”

  His eyes narrowed. “At today’s meeting, Dr. Severat told us the guard had had an accident.”

  A spin put on the facts by the lab officials to downplay the incident? And then she remembered. Dr. Severat had heard Mireille and Benoît argue. She should contact Severat later.

  His car door slammed; the engine turned over. Through the windshield, she noticed him grabbing his cell phone. Then the tires spit gravel, raising a cloud of dust. Nervous, hurrying to warn someone? she wondered.

  She returned down the lane. A few minutes later, Information connected her to the Cabinet de Curiosités.

  “Allo, Assistant Professor Huby, please.”

  “Speaking,” a man said. “Who’s this?”

  “Aimée Leduc, the detective,” she said, glancing at the address she’d noted. “Why have you avoided my calls? Not returned my messages?”

  “What messages?” Huby said. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  “You have?”

  “I copied down your number . . . must have gotten it wrong.”

  “But I gave you my card,” she said suspiciously.

  “I’m helping my grandfather, but we should talk. Later.”

  “What about now?”

  “After you left, well . . . I thought about what you said. Asked some questions. . . .” He hesitated. “Then with Darquin’s death. . . .”

  He paused.

  “You don’t think Darquin’s death was an accident, do you?” she said. “I don’t either. He had arranged to meet me, but I got there too late.”

  “I was thinking about Benoît’s work,” he said. “I didn’t realize the test tubes—” She heard a crash, the tinkle of glass. “Non, grandpère, let me do that. Excuse me, but I have to go.”

  Excited now, she pulled out her pocket map. She needed to talk to him before he had second thoughts.

  “What test tubes, Huby?”

  “Not now,” he said.

  More tinkling of glass.

  “Are you involved, Huby?” she said. “Academic rivalry? Maybe you’re hoping to claim credit for his research?”

  “Me? Benoît’s a brilliant researcher. Was,” he said, his voice rising. “You missed the point. What
he found proved his theory.”

  “His theory? Did it relate to the metal deposits in the pig tissue on the slide you showed me? Is that what was in those test tubes?”

  A click came over the line. “Un moment, I have another call,” he said.

  She wouldn’t let him fob her off. “Look—”

  “Talk to the department head. I’m not sure I should be speaking to you.” Fear vibrated in his voice.

  “Huby, I’m leaving the lab now,” she said. “I’ll be there, say, in fifteen minutes.”

  But he’d hung up.

  Why hadn’t he mentioned this before? Was academia closing ranks? And what had made him begin, then change his mind?

  She hurried up the street behind the laboratory to catch the Metro at Gare d’Austerlitz. The Number 10 line went direct to Cluny La Sorbonne, the nearest station. But two full trains passed, before she managed to find space in the third. She hadn’t counted on rush hour.

  The burning smell of the train’s brakes assailed her nostrils, the keening whine of metal on metal her ears, as the train hurtled underground. She stood wedged, sardine-like, wishing she’d taken the bus.

  Once out of the Metro, she ran three blocks on crowded Boulevard Saint Germain to rue Saint Jacques before finding the shop. A teal-blue storefront bore the white letters CABI-NET DE CURIOSITÉS. A definite relic of the fashionable eighteenth-century craze for collecting natural phenomena. Before the advent of museums, wealthy collectors kept rooms in a château or townhouse dedicated to the burgeoning sciences of anatomy, botany, and taxidermy. A six-pronged arrangement of metal rods above the door to the shop indicated these scientific branches: naturalism, taxidermy, pale-ontology, entymology, anatomy, and botanicals.

  Bells jingled as she opened the door. She walked into a musty shop whose walls were lined with built-in glass cabinets. Deer antlers graced the walls. The lighted cabinets held yellowed human skulls, curling manuscripts, nautilus shells and fan-shaped coral, glinting minerals, and meteorite shards. Her arm brushed something feather-like, and she jumped when she saw the glassy yellow eyes of a stuffed owl on the counter.

  A white-haired gnome of a man, she presumed Huby’s grandfather, emerged from behind the counter, spry despite his bowed legs. An old Charles Trenet song came over the radio’s nostalgia channel, a guinguette dancehall tune.

  “So you’ve met Lola,” he said. “She came with the shop. Forty years now and, like all women, she still keeps her age a secret.”

  Aimée tried to ignore the gaze of those yellow glass eyes, which seemed to follow her.

  “May I interest you in something?”

  “I’d like to speak with Professeur Huby, Monsieur,” she said.

  His smile faded. “You’re the one. You should know he’s already got a girlfriend.”

  “Non, Monsieur, it’s concerning the lab.”

  The elder Monsieur Huby turned the radio volume down. “The boy’s a wonder. Don’t know what I’d do without his help. Your call disturbed him.”

  She didn’t need his grandfather to defend him; she needed Huby’s information.

  “I’m here to clear up a misunderstanding,” she said.

  “That’s what they call it these days?”

  She didn’t know what Huby had told him, but she’d make no headway denying it. Better humor him. “My fault, I know. But we need to talk and resolve this.”

  The old man stared at her. “Then you’ll stop badgering him? Promise not to keep phoning the shop?”

  Badgering . . . phone calls? “I only called him once.”

  “Not according to him.”

  She’d get nowhere arguing. She wondered whom he was referring to. Had these calls prompted Huby to clam up?

  “I think it’s best we discuss the situation,” she said. “Please, Monsieur.”

  He glanced at his watch, an old brown leather-strapped Rolex. “Wait, Mademoiselle. I’ll ask him if he wants to talk with you.”

  Five minutes later, after she’d surveyed assorted embryos in aged formeldahyde, Siberian tiger teeth, and a tall glass jar containing a coiled snake, there still was no Huby.

  She tapped her fingers on the display case. So far today she’d overslept, almost attacked a cleaning lady, and found a lab flooded. And she’d come up with theories based on nothing but “rumors,” according to Martine. But if Huby would clarify his remarks, the day would not be a total waste.

  “Monsieur?”

  Another Charles Trenet song played, this time a ballad, the lyrics describing a chance encounter, a stolen look.

  She called out again. Only Charles Trenet’s plaintive words and the moaning trill of an accordion answered her. She walked beyond the counter into a cardboard-carton-filled corridor illuminated by a hanging yellow bulb. More cartons and still more.

  At the back, the corridor opened onto a damp mossy stone yard, one of the warren of passages honeycombing the quartier that had been overlooked during Baron Haussmann’s renovations. The narrow passage tucked between buildings looked as if it had gone unchanged since the Middle Ages. It probably hadn’t been cleaned since then either.

  She heard a bell and saw a young woman on a bicycle approaching. “Sorry I’m late, Monsieur Huby,” the young woman said. “What’s the matter?”

  The old man was huddled against the wall, pointing to some boxes. Choking sounds came from his throat. Aimée couldn’t make out what he was pointing at.

  “Monsieur?” Aimée stepped forward. “Are you all right?”

  The young woman screamed.

  Then Aimée saw a figure lying outstretched on top of the cartons. Huby’s wide-eyed gaze stared unseeing, a piece of lace curtain clutched in his hands. Two floors up, a torn curtain fluttered from an open window. Aimée saw a line of blood trailing from Huby’s mouth onto the cobblestones.

  She gasped.

  “You!” the old man pointed at her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You threatened him . . . you made him . . . !” Tears streamed down the old man’s face.

  Aimée retreated. “No, I said nothing . . . someone. . . .”

  “You’ll answer for this.”

  She bumped into boxes and found herself sprawled on the stone floor and heard another scream.

  “Stop her!”

  Panicked, she pulled herself up, made her feet move, and ran.

  Thursday Afternoon

  LÉONIE SLID A franc into the tronc, the metal donation box, and lit a candle before the Virgin Mary. Under her breath she recited a prayer to Maitresse Delai, the deity who walked with the spirits. Today was Maitresse Delai’s feast day. It was good juju to honor her.

  A few minutes later, outside the medieval Saint Medard church, Léonie paused as the sky darkened over Place Monge. Charcoal clouds were threatening; the air held a wet smell. Thirteenth-century Saint Medard still felt like a village church, she thought, and the surrounding square was a gathering place for the quartier. Old men played chess on a makeshift table. On nearby rue Mouffetard, two women, string shopping bags full of leeks at their feet, discussed the price of eggs. A student hunched over a thick textbook on his lap.

  Her cell phone trilled a Kompa rhythm. Kompa, the Haitian blending of Afro-Cuban and calypso music, reminded her of her youth, when a man encircled a woman’s waist with his arm for dancing. Now the young people flew all over, never touching each other.

  Kompa brought her back to the humid evenings, outdoor galas in the hills. The lights of Port-au-Prince below were strung like diamonds, wild jasmine scents were borne on the sea breeze, the dancers’ skirts swirled among the feathered coconut palm leaves. The laughter, couples ducking into the shadows, the fire torches, Edouard’s uncle, the man she’d loved, his arms enfolding her. She was lost in memories until the phone trilled again.

  “Madame Léonie,” said Royet, the World Bank official. “Remember? We need to talk.”

  She didn’t recall giving Royet her number. Royet kept all the players’ secrets: the developers, the
corporations, the government officials to pay off. The usual.

  “I’d like that,” she said. Her spine prickled. News of the inquiries she’d made today had traveled fast. One must never look eager with a player like Royet, she counseled herself. “But I’m afraid, Monsieur Royet, my schedule’s tight. . . .” She paused.

  “Mine too,” he said. “But it’s important. Can we meet in ten minutes at the Ecole Polytechnique garden?”

  The clock tower chimed the hour. If the spirits were willing, Royet would give her information concerning Benoît’s file.

  “Of course, Monsieur Royet,” she said.

  A taxi deposited her at the former Ecole Polytechnique, where top students, referred to as Les X, were educated. Now the school itself had moved outside Paris, but Les X’s route to the ministries and to government positions hadn’t changed. Their diplomas guaranteed them a place in the upper echelon. Like in Haiti, like anywhere, she thought, the upper crust presented a united front.

  Now the imposing white stone buildings housed le Ministère de l’Enseignement Superieur et Recherche. Massive carved green doors opened to a garden with a reflecting pool, pock-marked stone benches and cone-shaped topiary shrubs.

  Royet, leaning against a pitted stone pillar, looked up from a slim novel with a smile on his face. Reading glasses perched on his nose. With his white hair, he reminded her more of a Renaissance merchant-prince than a World Bank official.

  “So many books, Léonie, so little time.” Royet put the novel in his pocket.

  As if they were here to talk about literature!

  He pecked her cheeks, lingering close to her ear. “The loan-funding meeting’s tomorrow. A scandal now is unwelcome, Léonie.”

  “Or any time, Royet,” she said.

  “A detective’s been asking questions. A woman whose name is Aimée Leduc.”

  She’d expected him to give her information about the where-abouts of Benoît’s file, not this woman. Another unknown.

  Again, she sensed Royet, like Jérôme, hiding something from her.

  And in the dense, moisture-charged air, she felt a rocking, like in a boat at sea. Like the fishing scows docked in Port-au-Prince harbor, bobbing in the current, the silver schools of fish darting among the low-lying prows in the clear blue water . . . like it had been. When flower petals floated daily on the fringed white curled waves in the ceremonies for Agwe, patron of the sea.