Murder in Montmartre (6 page)

Tuesday Morning

AIMÉE LEANED AGAINST the slick tiled Metro wall, cell phone to her ear, and clicked off. Hôpital Bichat refused to give her any information about Laure. On top of that, the
flic
guarding her still hadn’t called. Burnt rubber smells from the squealing train brakes filled the close air. She punched in another number.

“Brigade Criminelle,” a voice said after ten rings.

“Last night, Officer Laure Rousseau was injured and taken to Hôpital Bichat; I’d like to know her status.”

“Let me consult,” said a brisk, no-nonsense voice.

In the background she heard footsteps slapping across the tile.

“
Allô?
Who’s calling?” asked the voice.

“Aimée Leduc, a private detective.”

“You’ll need to inquire via the proper channels.”

“Aren’t I? I’m concerned. As I told you, she suffered an injury.”

“She’s in
garde à vue
,” said the voice.

Already? It was not yet eight in the morning.

“Check with her lawyer,” the voice said.

“Who’s that?”

“A Maître Delambre is handling this case. That’s all the information I have.”

It sounded as if Laure had been given outside representation. Unusual in these circumstances. Good or bad? Surely, a good sign, Aimée thought, gaining hope. But how long would they keep Laure in a holding cell? She consulted the directory at the phone booth in the Metro, found the lawyer’s number, and called him.

“Maître Delambre is in court until noon,” said his answering machine.

“Please, have him call me, it’s urgent, concerning Laure Rousseau,” Aimée said and left her number.

Too bad she’d let René Friant, her partner in their agency, take the morning off. She could use his help now.

She pushed open the swinging doors of the Blanche Metro. All the way up the stairs crowded with winter-coated commuters she pictured Laure, disoriented, with her bloodshot eye, hunched over in a cell.

On the wide, shop-lined Boulevard de Clichy by the Moulin Rouge, its garish neon now dark, plumes of bus exhaust spiraled into the air. A straggling demonstration blocked the street as loudspeakers shouted, “Corsica for Corsicans!”

Waiting passengers stood on the pavement with that particu- lar patience of Parisians, the collective shrug of acceptance reserved for slowdowns and strikes. Newspaper banners plastered across the kiosk read STRIKE IN CORSICAN CONTRACT DIS-PUTE. Another said ASSAULT ON ARMORED CURRENCY TRUCK LINKED TO ARMATA CORSA SEPARATISTS.

She saw a peeling poster on a stone wall bearing a call to action and the Armata Corsa Separatist trademark, the
tête de
Maure, a black face with white bandanna, in the corner.

The strident Separatist movements in Corsica took center stage these days, elbowing out Bretons demanding school instruction in Gaelic and ETA, Basque Nationalists, car bombings.

Right now, Aimée needed to speak with the person in the apartment with geraniums in a window box to discover if he or she had seen anything.

Above her, on rue André Antoine, the overcast Montmartre sky mirrored the blue-gray roof tiles. Like her heart, with Guy gone and Laure the subject of a police investigation.

Leafless plane trees bent in the wind. Steep streets wound up the
butte
of Montmartre. She stepped over puddles of melted snow. Tonight they would freeze and become slick. Tomorrow there would be articles in the paper about old people who’d fallen and broken their hips.

The gate to the upscale townhouse whose roof she and Sebastian had climbed over stood open for the garbage collectors. She scanned the cobbled courtyard, looking across to the adjoining townhouse roof and skylight. Several floors of iron-shuttered windows faced the enclave.

In this building, she figured most residents flew south for the winter to Nice or Monaco. They could afford to. She found the top-floor site of the geranium window box, a shutterless oval window.

She’d question all the inhabitants of the building, working her way up. In the entry, she hit the first button. There was no answering buzz. She stared at the numbers on the digicode plate.

From her bag she took a slab of plasticine, slapped it over the set of buttons, and peeled it back. Greasy fingermarks showed which five numbers and letters were most used. In less than five minutes, after she’d tried twenty combinations, the door clicked open.

Inside the building she climbed the wide marble steps, trailing her fingers over the wrought-iron railing. On the first floor, a young woman answered the door, a toddler on her hip and another crying in the background. Aimée saw suitcases and a car seat stacked inside the door.

“Oui?
” the woman asked.

“Sorry to bother you but I’m a detective,” Aimée said. “I’d like to question you about a homicide that occurred last night across the courtyard on the roof of the building undergoing renovation.”

“What? I know nothing about it.” The toddler pulled the strand of beads around the woman’s neck and she winced. “
Non, chéri
.”

“Did you hear or see anything unusual at eleven o’clock last night?”

“You’re kidding. My baby’s teething. I can’t keep my eyes open that late,” she said, looking harried.

The toddler clung to his mother’s neck, gnawing at her beads; the other child pounded a metal truck on the floor. “We were asleep. I put the children to bed at eight; half the time I fall asleep with them.”

“There was a party in the building, maybe your husband noticed something.”

“He passes out before I do,” she said. “I’m sorry but I have to get the children ready.”

“
Merci,
” Aimée said. “Here’s my card just in case.”

“My husband’s picking us up in five minutes. We’re leaving for a month.”

The woman stuffed Aimée’s card in the pocket of her cardigan and closed the door. Aimée hoped the toddler wouldn’t eat it.

She knocked on the doors of the two other apartments on the floor but no one answered. No answer from the other three apartments on the next floor either. On the third floor, an aproned housekeeper answered the door at the apartment where Aimée figured the party had taken place.

“
Bonjour
, I’d like to speak with the owner,” she said.

“No one’s here, I’m sorry. Monsieur Conari’s at the office.”

Even this early, the rich went to work.

Aimée showed her ID. “Perhaps you served at his party last night? I’d like to ask you some questions.”

“Not me, I come to work in the morning,” the woman said. “They use caterers for parties.”

“Did you speak with Monsieur Conari this morning? Maybe he mentioned the homicide across the courtyard?”

The housekeeper dropped her dust rag. “They’re never here when I get to work. Sorry.” She picked the rag up and started to close the door.

It’s important,” Aimée said. “Can you give me a number
“
where I can reach Monsieur Conari?”

The housekeeper hesitated, rubbing her hands on her apron. “I never bother him at work, eh, but this—”

“
Oui,
it’s
very
important,” Aimée said.

The woman took the pen and paper Aimée handed her and wrote down a telephone number.

“Merci,
I appreciate your help.”

Aimée continued up the wide stairs. Her goal, the top flat, encompassed the entire floor. Here she had to find answers.

She heard low voices, music, a radio? She knocked several times. No answer. Then knocked again until she heard footsteps.

“
J’arrive
,” said a voice.

The door creaked open. The middle-aged woman who opened the dark green door wore a flannel nightshirt and Nordic wool slipper socks, and was sipping something steaming and smelling of cinnamon.

“Forgive me,” Aimée said. “I don’t mean to disturb you—”

“No salespeople allowed in the building, I’m sorry,” the woman interrupted in a nasal congested voice. “They shouldn’t have let you in.”

Aimée flashed her identification card. “I’m a detective, investigating a homicide in the building opposite you.”

“Homicide?” The woman pushed her glasses onto her forehead and rubbed her eyes, which were a striking aqua blue. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ll need to excuse me, I’m sick.”

This woman must have been at home last night. Aimée couldn’t let her shut the door in her face. “Sorry to insist, but this will take just a moment. Probably you’ve answered these questions already,” she said. She wanted to see the view from this woman’s apartment. And there should be geraniums near a window facing the courtyard.

“What do you mean? No one’s spoken to me,” the woman told her. “What homicide?”

“Haven’t the police questioned you yet?”

The woman shook her head.

Aimée wondered why not.

“Let me see your identification again, Mademoiselle.”

Aimée handed over her PI license with its less than flattering photo: squinty eyes and pursed mouth.

“The pharmacy’s late.” The woman glanced at an old clock on the wall and handed the license back. “They were supposed to deliver my medicine by now.”

“A man was murdered last night,” Aimée said, wiping her wet boots on the mat. “I need to ask you some questions. May I come in?”

“It’s nothing to do with me,” the woman said, about to close the door.

“Let’s talk inside,” Aimée said.

“
Non.
I can’t deal with questions,” the woman replied.

“Just while you wait for the pharmacy delivery.”

“
Non
,” the woman said, alarmed. “I’m sick.”

“But if we talk now, Madame—”

“I don’t go out.” The woman smothered a cough. “I won’t go to the police station.”

An agoraphobic? Aimée heard something in her voice, was it the trace of an accent?

“Madame, you don’t need to go to the Commissariat,” Aimée said. “I’m a private investigator, we’ll talk right here. And I must see the view from your window.”

The woman pulled out a wad of tissues from her pocket, reconsidered, and blew her nose. “All right, but just five minutes.”

Aimée stepped inside the pale yellow hallway, eighteenth century by the look of it. A green plastic shopping cart was parked on the black-and-white diamond-patterned floor by a pair of worn snow boots. She expected a place dripping with antique chandeliers, but instead Art Deco sconces and Surrealist collages lined the walls. Several Man Ray silver-gelatin-print photographs hung over a gleaming Ruhlmann
secrétaire
. One appeared to be an original of
Violon d’Ingres
, the famous Surrealist image of Kiki, Man Ray’s lover, in a turban, musical notes drawn on her bare back down her spine.

“Such a lovely apartment,” Aimée said, aiming to get this woman to talk. “You’ve lived here a long time, Madame?”

“Zoe Tardou,” the woman admitted, showing Aimée to a room furnished with sleek blond-wood Art Deco pieces and
mod-erne
thirties-style rugs. Black blankets hung at the floor-to-ceiling windows. Aimée’s heart sank. How could Zoe Tardou have noticed movement on the roof with these blankets blocking the windows?

“Tardou, like the Surrealist?” Aimée asked to keep the conversation going.

“My stepfather,” Zoe Tardou said, her mouth tightening.

No wonder she could afford this expensive apartment covering the entire floor. But from the way Zoe Tardou’s mouth had compressed, Aimée figured she hadn’t gotten along with her stepfather.

Zoe Tardou switched on the light, illuminating silver-framed black-and-white photos. Beachfront family scenes from the sixties and celebrity snapshots covered the baby grand piano. A late-model television sat in front of a damask-covered sofa. But an unlived-in feeling permeated the large room.

“You’re an artist, too?”

“My mother was a Dadaist poet and did figure modeling,” Zoe said.

One of the Surrealist muses?

Zoe Tardou took a deep swallow of her steaming drink. She beckoned Aimée to a small nook behind the sofa. “Medieval scholarship’s my field.”

Here a blond joined-wood desk piled with notebooks and books angled out from the wall. Well used. Above the desk, mounted on the wall, hung an ancient crucifix and framed manuscript pages bearing ornate gold lettering and ancient black script. Definitely at odds with the Deco-period furnishings.

The cold air in the darkened apartment began to chill Aimée. Didn’t this woman ever turn on the heat?

“Were your windows open last night?”

“Always,” she said. “The human body needs fresh air at night.”

For a woman into health, she looked miserable.

“So, you would have heard the party below despite the storm?”

”I don’t know the neighbors. I keep to myself.”

“Mind if I take a look?” Aimée walked to the window and quickly pulled the blanket aside. The older woman’s eyes blinked at the sudden light.

Directly across the courtyard lay the scaffolding under the roof of the corniced apartment where she’d discovered Jacques’s body. The skylight on the roof level opposite glittered in the weak sunbeams from a sudden break in the clouds. She saw the path she’d taken with Sebastian, aghast at the steepness of the roof they’d climbed.

“Do you keep these blankets up at night?”

Aimée didn’t remember seeing them.

“
Non.
” Madame Tardou blew her nose. “Look, if that’s all you need to know I’d appreciate if you left.”

But the woman might have noticed something after all, even if she didn’t realize it.

“If you’ll permit me to clarify a few things. Think back to eleven o’clock last night. Did you hear anything unusual on the roof, see any lights over there?” Aimée pointed at the apartment windows almost directly opposite.

“I did hear snippets of conversation,” Madame Tardou replied. “At first I thought they were speaking Italian.”

Italian? Excited, Aimée took a step closer. The woman reeked of eucalyptus oil.

“Do you speak Italian?”

“
Non
. And it must have been some drama on the
télé
. I was drifting in and out of sleep with this terrible cold.”