Murder in Pigalle (16 page)

Tonette unfolded the story her way. Aimée tried not to squirm with impatience.

“So you inspired Zazie to use your techniques,” said Aimée, fanning herself in the heat. “Ways that informed her surveillance?”

“I wouldn’t call it that,” said Tonette, rolling her eyes. “Well, maybe a little.” A shrug of her elegant shoulders. Children ran over the grass. The blue-purple dragonfly fluttered by the rose trellis. “Later we mostly distributed anti-Fascist pamphlets from clandestine printing presses—all run by communists then—at cinemas just before the German newsreels. We threw them from balconies. They floated like butterflies. Then we ran. Kids.”

So far Tonette’s tale had told her little.

“We all went to the cinema then.” Tonette’s gaze softened. “Truffaut grew up right around the corner, you know. We would have been almost the same age. Everyone lived in the cinema. During the Occupation, theaters were heated. At least for the first few winters. But ’40 and ’41 were cruel. No wood or charcoal—the Germans took it, courtesy of French racketeers. Trying to obtain food and rations dominated our lives. In 1942 a D ration ticket got you a half kilo of potatoes. For a K ticket, workers got a liter of wine. Depended on who you knew.” She gave a knowing nod. “My mother heard Mistinguett sing before German troops at the Casino de Paris; a ditty about her cold apartment and empty stewpot. The next day Mistinguett received five bags of charcoal and six lamb gigots. She sold them.
Mais alors
, everyone did.”

Aimée’s collar stuck to her neck. This heat. “Our history teacher once told us Mistinguett said, ‘My heart is French but my ass is international.’ ”

Tonette shook her head. “That’s Arletty. Mistinguett said, ‘A kiss can be a comma, a question mark or an exclamation point. That’s basic spelling that every woman ought to know.’ ”

Aimée grinned. No wonder Zazie had connected with Tonette. Kindred spirits. And Tonette must have seen her former thirteen-year-old self in Zazie.

“Oh, and butter,” Tonette continued, “color was the only way you could tell if it was the real thing. My mother detested
the butcher, a black-market profiteer.” She pointed to an
antiquaire
shop visible outside of the park. “Gone now. But back then women lined up in the cold, waiting. I remember seeing my teacher shivering—no one had stockings, scarcer than diamonds. But she’d stained her legs with
brou de noix
, walnut-hull juice, to look like she did. Like a lot of women.”

Old stories of the dark years, as this generation and every generation since had termed it. She needed to listen and focus on what Zazie had gleaned and used.

Tonette shrugged. “We were so hungry, my mother contacted her fifth cousin on a farm, the snob who she hadn’t seen since before the war. Ah, then
la cousine
became my mother’s closest member of
la famille.
She furnished us with eggs, once in a while a chicken. We were lucky. We ate.”

They were walking now. “You told Zazie all this?”

“If we don’t inform the next generation, who will?” She waved her hand at the garden, the townhouses surrounding them. “Until twenty-some years ago, all this lay derelict, boarded up.”

Aimée stared.

“Hard to believe, eh? But there by the old
lavoir
is where we hid underground papers.”

Aimée noted the open-sided washhouse holding stollers and tricycles.

“And clothing for stranded RAF fliers,” Tonette was saying, “men escaping from
service du travail obligatoire
in Germany.”

“You brought Zazie here?”

“I showed her how to make a drop. See. That’s hers.”

Under a weathered stone support Aimée saw a smudge of chalk. An X. Yet Aimée found nothing in or near the stone.

“Only use a place once, I told Zazie,” said Tonette, noticing Aimée’s frustration.

“So they did follow, surveil and drop off info about this man le Weasel? Marie-Jo’s mother’s boyfriend?”

“Zazie said something about proving le Weasel wasn’t who he said he was, something like that.”

Le Weasel … the rapist? Was that Zazie’s connection to the attacks? What about the violin lessons? How did they fit in?

“I wish I could help you more,” said Tonette.

Something niggled in Aimée’s mind. Something Zazie had said, something that chimed with Tonette’s story … If only she could hold a thought in this humidity.

Tonette, oblivious to the heat, pointed to a church spire peeping over
grisaille
-blue tin rooftops. “We always met in
bistrots
,
musées
, department stores with more than one exit. Irony of ironies, in the building on Boulevard Haussmann, the Nazis’ office was on the third floor, above Simexco, a cover for the Red Sympathy organizers.”

Their walk took them back to Tonette’s building. Its dark green double doors could fit a horse-drawn carriage, and once had.

Aimée’s mind went back to le Weasel. Did the rape boil down to something close to home? Suppose the girls had discovered in their surveillance that this boyfriend, le Weasel, had assaulted their schoolmates?

“Don’t you want to come upstairs? Take a load off your feet? Drink something cold?”

Aimée nodded, grateful for the invitation.

But her legs balked at the winding Charles X staircase. Eight flights up at the dome-ceilinged last landing, Tonette reached in her mailbox and came out with a stack of envelopes. A slip of paper fluttered onto the black-and-white checkerboard tiles, landing at Tonette’s Chanel fuchsia sling-back heel.

Aimée picked it up. “Yours?”

Tonette shook her head.

Aimée recognized it as a receipt from the photo shop on Boulevard de Magenta. It was for a roll of Ilford black-and-white, high-speed film. Her mind went back to Zazie’s
black-and-white telescopic photo of men standing around the Wallace fountain.

At least the receipt gave her an address to check.

“You trained Zazie well. May I take that, Tonette?”

“
Bien sûr
,” said Tonette. “Some things never change.”

A
IMÉE STOPPED AT
the one-hour developing shop on Boulevard de Magenta. The girl behind the counter shook her head. “Not ready,
désolée
, professional film like this takes two days. The customer was told that.”

“Ah. Do you remember her?”

“I started this morning,” she said. A big smile. “Ready tomorrow,” she said, trying to be helpful.

A
IMÉE RETRACED THE
route she’d taken with Tonette, alert at every corner, shop doorway and intersection for a trace of Zazie.

The humidity and the heat—a cotton-like layer of dense, still air—wilted the irises and melted her mascara. All the walking, getting nowhere. She felt a sharp cramp. The baby turning? Better sit down.

Back in the square behind Place Saint-Georges, she checked her messages. None.

Lost in thought, she watched a young woman pushing a stroller, a toddler in a yellow dress clasping her other hand. A bouquet of red balloons was tied with red ribbon to the stroller handle.

Her eye caught on the smudged chalk X she had noticed earlier on the stone. But that could have been yesterday. Still, she checked the area again: riffled through the soil, under leaves and gravel. Nothing but dirt under her fingernails.

And what good would that film at the developer’s do if it showed more scenes of the same?

Yet she couldn’t assume anything. This was all moving like
drying glue. Her hormones, this heat … she wanted to kick something.

Police procedure, plodding investigation, waiting, checking, matching took too long. All of the many reasons she hated this kind of work. Almost twenty-one hours had elapsed since Zazie’s last sighting by Tonette.

She took Zazie’s map from her bag, dotted in pen the points she and René had marked on the map he’d enlarged. Now she added dots for the locations Tonette had showed her.

But she needed to try Madame de Langlet, leave a message even if the woman was away. She punched in the number René gave her.

Several rings later a woman answered with a breathless “
Allô
?”

Finally.

In the background Aimée heard violin notes. “Madame de Langlet,” she said, “I’m Aimée Leduc. Last night your pupil—”

“I don’t talk to journalists,” she interrupted.

“Smart, Madame. I’m a detective.”

“I don’t talk to detectives.”

“But Madame Vasseur told me to speak with you.” In a manner of speaking. “It’s important, please, your pupils have been attacked. I’m sure you’re more than concerned about the connection.”

“Connection?” Pause. “I’m teaching right now.”

She hadn’t denied it.

“And I’m sorry to bother you, but Sylvaine’s death—”

“Horrendous,” she interrupted. “A tragedy. The
flics
questioned me this morning.”

Merde
! Instead of listening to René last night, she should have listened to her gut and tracked the woman down. “But now four of your students—”

“I don’t understand.”

Of course you do. Or you don’t want to.

“Weren’t the other two victims also your students?”

“I’m not supposed to talk about this,” she said, her voice quavering. “
Désolée.
I want to help, but I can’t now.”

“The investigators told you that, Madame?”

“I’m teaching. Must go.”

Strains of a violin rose in the background.

“Can we meet when your lessons finish, Madame?”

“I can talk tomorrow.”

Aimée had to persist. “Madame, it’s important. Another girl has disappeared. Just a few minutes of your time.”

A sigh. “Call me later.” Then Aimée heard a click. She’d hung up.

She wanted to throw the damn phone. Crucial time passed with no leads to Zazie.

Frustrated, she studied the map again. The location dots formed a pattern, like the facets of an eight-carat stone. Zazie had to be in this hexagon. She felt it in the marrow of her bones.

A child’s crying interrupted her thoughts. The red balloons had become untied, escaping. “
Maman
!” The balloons hovered above the toddler in the yellow dress, floating out of her reach.

Aimée caught two, reached and caught another that was stuck in the lime-tree branches.

“
Merci
, Madame,” said the mother. “You saved the birthday party from disaster.”

“Good exercise.” Aimée’s eyes caught on the tiny pink toes peeping from the stroller. A little ball in an orange onesie.

The woman sat down next to her on the bench. She was brunette, thin with tan legs. “I’m Sybille. Your first?”

“That obvious?” Aimée patted her stomach.

“You have the look.” Sybille grinned. “Boy or girl?”

“Doctor couldn’t tell.” And she wanted to share it with this smiling mother. Yearned for a moment to forget Zazie, the horror, yearned to bask in the baby smells of fresh laundry and talcum coming from the stroller. Admire those pink toes.

Aimée pulled out the sonogram image. It took her breath away. This little thing growing inside her.

“Ah, fifty-fifty either way.” Sybille pointed to the whitish blob Aimée had seen pulse on the screen. “Strong heart. My two looked like alien pods, big heads but full of brains.” Her toddler daughter tugged her sleeve. “
Oui
,
mon petit chou.
But look how beautiful they turned out.”

“People give me advice about the birth …” She hesitated but figured why not ask a stranger something she’d always wanted to ask a woman? “So it really hurts?”

“No picnic.” Sybille leaned closer. “Far as I’m concerned there’s a reason drugs were invented,
alors
!”

Aimée smiled.

“Take all the help you can get. Like letting other people bake for you,” Sybille said, pointing to a basket with a
boulangerie
purchase glistening with apricots. “You think I made this tart?”

A woman after her own heart. Hunger lapped in her stomach. She needed to eat.

“I’m a
resto
critic. Work at night when they’re asleep,” Sybille said. “Her father,” she said, indicating the baby in the stroller, “left when I was six months along. Babette”—she nodded to the toddler—“her father takes her every other weekend. Those bobochic Left Bank
mamans
who look like they have it all, with six kids and a career? They neglect to say they’ve got staff, an army of nannies and cleaners.”

“I’m raising mine on my own, too,” said Aimée. “I run a business. Try to, at least.”

“Then you need a posse. Never too early to get one in place. I wish someone had told me that.”

Aimée took out her red notebook. “Go on.”

“And I wish someone had warned me about breast milk leaking at meetings,” Sybille said. “Never wear white silk, at least for the first six months.”

Aimée wrote that down. The little girl handed her a curled, green ginkgo leaf with a dust of lemon pollen. “For you,” said the toddler.

“My little Babette loves leaves. You’re special.” Sybille, still smiling, turned to Aimée. “Here’s free advice. On
télé
talk shows they gloss over what it’s really like for a woman to work and raise a family. But I did hear one woman from Toulouse who was interviewed on the radio in the
hypermarché
speak about how it feels being a
maman. Cela
, it felt real. She’d lost her son in the aisles for three minutes, but it felt like three years. What mother can’t relate to that? That’s daily life, three minutes feeling like three years, because you worry so much and love them so much and feel so alone being responsible for their world. Don’t picture motherhood as those perfect, coiffed career
mamans
jogging. They aren’t real people. They never breast-feed.”

Reaching people, real people. Now she knew what to do. How to kick-start this investigation into high gear. She needed to reach lots of people, like the woman on the radio.

“You’ve given me an idea,” said Aimée, putting her notebook in her bag. And she’d catch the Métro at Saint-Georges, by the theatre … all good exercise. “
Merci
for the great advice.” She stood up, adrenaline coursing. “Enjoy the birthday party.”