Murder in the Latin Quarter (13 page)

“Are you sure?” Maggie asked. “Now that you mention it, I'd love a little break. If you're sure.”

Delphine pulled Mila onto her lap. She looked up at Maggie and whatever unhappiness or distress Maggie thought she'd seen when she first entered the apartment was gone.

“We are both very sure,
Maman
,” Delphine said. “Go to a movie. Take a walk. Get your hair done.”

Maggie laughed. “You sound just like Grace.” She leaned down and kissed Mila on her head. “But a walk without my favorite appendage sounds great. I promise I won't be long.”

“Take as long as you need,
chérie
. We will be fine here.”

M
aggie knew exactly
where she wanted to go. She would have gone there this morning but it was a longer walk than she could comfortably do carrying Mila. She'd worn her sneakers again and was glad she had. She started out at a brisk pace up rue du Bac until she reached and crossed the boulevard Saint-Germain and then continued on the Boulevard Raspail.

As she entered Montparnasse there seemed to be fewer tourists and more students than in the rest of the Latin Quarter. Maggie knew she wasn't far from the École des Beaux-Arts where her sister Elise had been a student all those many years ago. She forced herself not to look in the direction of the school. But banishing the painful memories of that time was much harder.

Elise had come to Paris as a young art student, hopeful and full of youthful exuberance. She'd left pregnant and addicted to heroin. The father of her child who was also her dealer, would later steal her child away and then abandon the girl. Both Elise and the child were now dead.

But the father, Gerard Dernier, still lived.

An image of Elise smiling up at her from the living room of Maggie's apartment in Atlanta—the last time Maggie ever saw her alive—flashed into Maggie's brain and she dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands to force the image away. Elise had brought her family nothing but pain.

And it seemed she wasn't finished yet.

Maggie stopped at the intersection of Boulevard Raspail and rue de Sevres. She vaguely knew the area—at least as much as most tourists do. She thought she remembered that the Luxembourg Gardens were nearby.

And so was the apartment building where Delphine and her sisters grew up.

Maggie glanced at the photo she'd taken that morning from the silver box while Delphine slept. It was a picture of Delphine and Jacqueline standing on the street in front of an apartment building. Delphine was smiling coquettishly. Jacqueline was scowling. On the back, someone had written
chez nous
.
14 rue Canivet
.

Maggie wasn't sure what she expected to see from the building but she just knew that she needed to see it. She needed to see where the sisters had lived—where
Camille
had lived.

Maggie pulled out her smartphone and typed in the address, waiting for the data to download and direct her. Finally, her GPS pinpointed the building and she could see she wasn't far away. Following the screen directions, she turned a corner and was startled to see an enormous church in front of her. The sign read
Église Saint-Sulpice
. She shook her head in wonder.

Maggie was continually surprised that there were so many gorgeous churches in this city that most people had never even heard of. She hurried down the block, her eye on the screen of her phone as it led her past two more side streets. Like much of the Latin Quarter, this section was a maze of narrow cobblestone streets that appeared to have no logical connection to larger arteries. As she walked, it occurred to her that this neighborhood wasn't far from where her Uncle Stan had died—pushed from a seventh story window during a Paris Fashion Week party—three years earlier. Her chest ached at the thought of him.

Maybe Laurent is right about Paris
, Maggie thought, suddenly feeling her energy and optimism seep away.
Maybe it really does hold more ghosts than it does delights
.

The street she was walking on was narrow and the pavement broken and ancient. Her calves ached and she felt the hard stones beneath her sneakers.

How in the world did Grace regularly walk around Paris in high heels
? The thought of Grace didn't help Maggie's plummeting mood so she focused on her phone. The screen map indicated she should be right around the corner from Canivet.

Paris hadn't always been a memory dump of unhappiness. As a child, Maggie's mother had taken her and Elise shopping here on more than one occasion and always the experiences had been magical. She realized that if she wanted to mitigate her sad memories of Paris, she'd need to make some new wonderful ones.

I'll bring Jemmy and make sure he and Mila go to the d'Orsay and have happy memories of lunches and eating ice cream in the park and climbing the Eiffel Tower.
We'll make their papa come to hold their hands and eat ice cream too
. Maggie smiled at the image.

Drown out the bad memories with new, better ones.

She stopped at the corner and dialed Laurent's number. She was just moments from discovering the sisters' childhood home but she suddenly longed to hear Jemmy's voice. Especially after their less-than-satisfying call earlier, she felt an equally strong urge to hear Laurent's voice too.

There was no answer and eventually the call went to voice mail. She didn't leave a message. Laurent was probably out in the fields with little Jemmy on his shoulders laughing and directing his papa, the sun on his face.

She turned the next corner and there it was: a long row of the classic creamy Haussmann apartments with looming windows—each tall enough to serve as doors if they hadn't been forty feet off the ground and each with the classic black wrought iron balconies perched in front of them. At the very top were the familiar mansard rooftops with their distinctive hatches.

Maggie gazed up at the dormer windows and imagined the hidden panels or secret attics that might have been used to hide Jewish families from the Nazis…

Or shameless French girls and their forbidden lovers.

She moved down the street, staring up at the building and wondering which apartment had been the Fouquet sisters' home. Which one had been Camille's? The cobblestones were older and rougher here and Maggie wondered whether a car could make it down the narrow avenue without scraping loose its undercarriage.

She walked the full block until the lane ended in a small square hemmed in by several cafés and shops—all topped with more apartments. There was an enormous sycamore tree in the center of the square and a small dry fountain anchored off the northern side. On the wall over it Maggie saw a large granite placard. She walked closer and read the words written in French.

On this spot the Gestapo gunned down five young people who spoke for France. August 21, 1944.

She rubbed the goose bumps off her arms. That was the beginning of the liberation of Paris. The war was nearly over and yet five young men and women…She looked around at the people sitting in the café or perusing the display bins in front of the cheese and produce shops. Life was so normal. Yet once this pretty square had been a place of death and injustice.

She glanced back at Delphine's apartment building and from this angle could see that the main door to the building faced the square. She turned to see the gigantic sycamore tree growing in the middle of the square, its branches heavy and reaching heavenward.

A chill raced through her.

My God. This is where they hung her
.

N
oel stood
in Delphine's living room. He looked as if he were trying to decide whether or not to storm out or be civilized about it. For a moment, Delphine saw an image of him as a boy. The old man dissolved into the child and back again in the blink of an eye.

“I just don't know why you can't say the words,” Noel said, his hands shoved into the pockets of his rain jacket. He glared at Delphine as she spooned stewed apricots into Mila's mouth.

He'd come by just minutes after Maggie had left—almost like he'd been watching—and for that Delphine was sorry. She knew he'd behave himself if others were around.

“I don't know what words you want me to say,
chérie
,” Delphine said wearily.
Please just go. I am so tired of this game of yours.

“I know you're my mother! Why not admit it?” He took two steps toward the kitchen but perhaps the sight of the baby in her high chair stopped him. He turned in frustration and retraced his steps back to the foyer as if preparing to leave. But again he didn't.

“What difference does any of that make now?” Delphine said, feeling a pinch of ire at having to play this part over and over again. Could she not just have one afternoon where she wasn't fighting the same old battles? “You're an old man, for God's sakes. Want me to tuck you in at night?”

He slapped his hands against his sides in frustration, startling the baby. Mila burst into tears. Delphine patted the baby on the shoulder and tried to soothe her.

“Now see what you've done!” she said to him. “Just leave, Noel. I'm sick to death of you!”

“I just want to know,” he said, his voice cracking pathetically. “My God, can you not understand that?” Then he finally, mercifully, turned and let himself out the door.

It took Delphine fifteen minutes to calm the baby after that. She was sorry she'd said what she had to Noel. But he'd upset Mila and there was no excuse for that.

She settled on the couch with the baby in her lap. Mila was such a compliant child and so cheerful too. Delphine wished she might live long enough to see the girl she would become—the amazing woman she would some day be. She cupped Mila's head and stared into her beautiful blue eyes.

So like Georgette but so much more.

The baby yawned and cuddled into the crook of Delphine's arms. Delphine felt the satisfying weight of the child finally release and grow heavy in her arms. She nuzzled Mila's head and relished the sweet baby smell of her. As the baby slept, she seemed to take Delphine's worries with her wherever it was she had gone. For one brief moment there seemed to open up a vista of peace in her mind where there was nothing to fear.

And then Delphine glanced across the salon to where the telephone sat. It perched like the most malevolent of Notre-Dame's gargoyles—waiting to end her peace and carry her to the depths of hell itself.

He wouldn't really hurt Maggie would he? Or the baby? Surely, those were just threats…

She wrenched her eyes from the silently waiting telephone to settle on the baby again

…and felt her fears ease once more.

M
aggie sat
for a peaceful hour with a glass of wine in the café. The rain had held off and she could feel the weather getting warmer by the day. She tried to imagine what it must have been like to have lived in Delphine and Camille's building during that terrible time. Today only the sounds of people chatting and the muted clinking of coffee cups from inside the café filled the air. There were no air raid sirens now or screams of terror…

Her phone pinged and, thinking it might be Laurent, Maggie pulled it out to see she'd received an email from Herr Schmidt. With her pulse racing, Maggie scanned the message. He wrote that he believed the Bauer family had settled in Heidelberg. He had contact information of a relative! A wave of pleasure filled Maggie when she realized she was getting closer to solving the mystery of what had happened to Camille's daughter—and to easing Delphine's mind. She quickly responded to the email and threw down a few euros before jumping up to hurry back to Delphine's apartment.

The timing could not be more perfect!
She was going to be able to give Delphine peace about this terrible time in her life—and still manage to get back to St-Buvard before the weekend as she'd promised Laurent.

As Maggie walked down the rue du Canivet, her thoughts unfocused but infused with a feeling of wellbeing, her phone vibrated briefly. She pulled it out and saw it displayed a
Low Battery
message. No problem. She was confident she could find the way back to Delphine's without the help of a GPS.

At the cross street, she paused and frowned. She was positive she'd come this way but it didn't look familiar. Shrugging, she chose a direction and hurried down the street until she could take the next first turn she came to.

After three more turns she stopped in frustration and looked around her. There was no way she'd come this way. Worse, she seemed to have left all the activity of people and traffic behind. The street she was on was typical of the Latin Quarter—claustrophobically narrow, with the apartment windows closed tight against light and noise. There were no cars. No people.

A vein of unease throbbed between her shoulders and she began walking again. Surely she would come to a place she recognized? Perhaps the street up ahead would reveal a bustling intersection? And people who could direct her?

But the next intersection was a dead end with shuttered businesses.

Maggie turned to look back the way she'd come. Her heart was thudding in her throat now. Without her noticing it, the warm day had dissolved into an overcast one and the street was cast in shadow. A sensation crawled across her skin like ants let loose over spoiled food. She rubbed her arms and felt a thin sheen of sweat on her hands.

The minute she stopped to take a deep breath to calm herself was the minute she realized she was being followed.