Inside the cavern-like portal, she glanced at the mailboxes, high-security tungsten with each resident’s name in neat, black capital letters. SAMOUR, PASCAL, she noted. Escalier C, 3ème étage.
The concierge, trim for his fifties, set the shovel against the mailboxes with a thump. He squinted curiously.
“Looking for someone, Mademoiselle?”
In all the wrong places, she almost said.
No reason to share her goal of a murdered resident’s apartment. Sooner or later, she hoped much later, the flics would affix the notice with telltale red wax signifying a deceased resident and seal the apartment.
“Why, I just found my friend’s apartment … Escalier C.” She flashed a bright smile. “Bonne soirée, Monsieur.”
She stepped past him into the courtyard. Escalier C, the last on the left, was a circular, tower-like outcrop with a dizzying climb of seven stories. The polished brown stairs, sagging from wear in the middle, wound upward like a snail shell. This rear area around the courtyard had to be seventeeth-century if not older, she thought. And not remodeled since then.
On the third floor she caught her breath, found the longhandled key under the flowerpot. Anxious, she let herself in. In contrast to his great-aunt’s flat, Pascal’s was a cold room with a high-timbered ceiling.
Ransacked too.
She gasped. An IKEA bookcase overturned, a drawing table upside down, an armoire open, shirts and jackets littering the floor.
She reached for her keys, bunching them between her fingers, and scanned for an intruder. But the door had been locked, she remembered.
In the galley kitchen, emptied spice bottles and spilled pasta were strewn over the counter. Iron sconces on the stone walls held broken candles. Behind a battered bamboo screen she found an overturned iron bed frame, sprinkled goose feathers from a ripped duvet, a slashed mattress with ticking bulging out.
Living in a tower didn’t appear comfortable. Even the destroyed furniture gave off an unlived-in feel.
For twenty minutes she searched every nook and cranny in the single, cold room. No laptop. No green dossier.
She needed to put the little she knew together. Yet what good would that do, if the killer had the laptop or whatever Pascal wanted her to find? Non, she needed to think as Pascal would. Or at least try to.
A geek with searing intelligence, a highly trained technical engineer from a grande école, a loner. A man who taught at an adult trade school when his fellow graduates took jobs in high positions at companies like Frelnex.
Pascal, afraid for his life, had left a message two weeks ago instructing its recipient to find a green file, come to his apartment, and talk to Becquerel. But Becquerel had died. Hence, she figured, his repeated messages to Coulade yesterday.
And no green file. Or fourteenth-century document.
But why make it all so mysterious? Why not give concrete details? Unless …
Something happened yesterday. Unable to update Coulade, he’d seeded info in several locations. Pieces of a damned puzzle.
Yet, to find what?
A project his great-aunt had mentioned—concerning a museum file he’d told Coulade he’d discovered.
Frustrated, Aimée righted a chair by the window and noticed blue dust on her fingers. She smelled it. Chalk dust.
She paused at the lead-framed window and, with her gloved hands, opened it and pushed the shutters back. The view gave way to scattered low buildings, the crescent edge of a courtyard, a glass-roofed atelier below. The approaching dusk darkened exposed patches of earth. Unusual to find open space in a dense quartier like this, where every meter was utilized.
But more unusual were the diagrams in blue chalk on the curved stone wall below. Blue chalk lines intersected and arced in what reminded her of a star chart. An amateur astronomer, a stargazer? But she saw no telescope, no binoculars.
A configuration. But of what she had no clue.
Pascal would be a puzzle lover, she figured. A dreamer, Coulade had said.
But driven and edgy in his work? If this was a guide, a map, she wondered again why he’d made it so difficult. Especially since he’d suspected the danger.
Too clever for his own good? Or afraid of discovery and running out of time?
She breathed in the cold air. Her mind cleared. The diagram was so familiar. But from where?
She pulled out her palm-sized digital camera, René’s latest must-carry gadget, shot photos of the wall diagrams, a few of the room layout, the view from the window. If she hadn’t found answers here, she’d picked up a sense of how to look for them.
She locked the apartment door behind her and descended to the ground level.
Her breath caught.
Prévost, a blue-uniformed flic, and a mec she recognized from Brigade Criminelle strode across the courtyard.
She ducked into a cove containing garbage bins, crouched on the damp flagged floor behind a broken chair. Odors of last night’s fish clung in the corners.
Prévost huddled in conversation with the plainclothes, who wore a bomber jacket just like Melac’s—a definite undercover trademark. After a long moment, the mec handed Prévost an envelope and jerked his thumb upward. Prévost turned on his heel and the man headed toward the tower entrance. And toward her.
Pascal had left her the key, and his great-aunt had hired her to investigate. By all rights they’d given her access to the apartment. But try explaining that to la Crim or a flic. One she didn’t trust.
They could accuse her of violating procedure, regulations, the order of the law, or of ransacking a victim’s apartment. With no time or desire to engage in semantics, she kept her head down, hoping her knees didn’t give out.
Five minutes later, after the last footsteps sounded on the staircase above, she crossed the courtyard. She checked for Prévost or police presence on rue Béranger. None.
Turning left, she headed toward her parked scooter and called René. René was better at puzzles, loved a challenge. His phone rang and rang. Too late, she remembered the hotel …
“Can’t you give us some time, Aimée?” René answered, irritated.
“Desolée, but it’s important,” she said, checking her Tintin watch. “You’re going to get a call.”
“From who?”
“I’m volunteering and you’re going to give me a stellar reference, René.”
“Gone crazy, have you?” A sigh. “Consider our accounts, our security projects out for bid. Accounts who’ll pay real money.”
“The volunteer coordinator from the Musée des Arts et Métiers will call, can you remember that? I’m volunteering to assist in digitizing the museum holdings during their renovation,” she said. “Pro bono, of course, a service to the community. Tell her how Leduc Detective welcomes opportunities to preserve history and culture for the next generations—”
His line ticked.
“Right on time.” She prayed this worked out. “A glowing recommendation, René.”
She heard the click of heels behind her. A woman walked into an art gallery. “Call me back. I’m en route there now.”
She shouldered her bag, double-looped her scarf, and turned the key in her scooter’s ignition.
“Seems they’re desperate since the last volunteer left. You got the job,” René said, ten minutes later. “Digitizing the catalog collection, sorting through centuries.”
She figured as much.
“She wants to meet you. I said you’ve made time in your busy day, et cetera.” Pause. “This involves Pascal Samour, n’est-ce pas?”
“Bien sûr. It’s the only way to find out.”