“That tail of newt, eye of toad nonsense again?”
Saj expelled air. “This explanation of the symbols cut my work in half, let me tell you. Samour used de Locques’s book as a guide. The same Latin words appear here in Samour’s incomplete segment.”
Her excitement mounted. “Pascal searched for the missing part of the formula. He knew there was more, and where better to find it than in the museum’s archives.”
“Formula to what? Alchemical stained glass?”
“Why not? This connects somehow,” she said. “I’ll comb the museum holdings, Saj. I’ll find it.”
“Et alors, so we know everything Pascal knew?”
She paused in thought. “But not the formula’s significance,” she said. “Something so important that Pascal was murdered for it.”
This added up. But how?
“A nerd who grew up in the museum’s shadows,” Saj said, “an engineer who’s obsessed about a lost alchemical formula?” He shook his head. “It doesn’t add up.”
“As René pointed out, he lived in a tower,” Aimée said. “His former classmate spoke of his obsession with the fourteenth century.” At her desk, she downloaded Saj’s enhanced encryption, then powered off her laptop. But Saj’s words raised more questions.
“Picture Samour, tech-savvy, skilled at encrypting, spending time and energy on a lost formula.” She shook her head. “What would it get him, Saj?”
Saj stretched. “Bon, in academia he’d publish a paper, write a treatise. Or a book,” he said. “What about Becquerel?”
His last professor. “Dead in a nursing home at ninety last week.”
“So another blind alley,” Saj said, looking at the remembrance pages Aimée had copied.
“Or the usual academic battle,” René said. “Say Pascal tried to garner department funding after discovering a lost medieval stained-glass formula.”
People killed for less. But that held less water than their poorly functioning radiator.
“It’s more than just that if the DST wants me to monitor Samour’s activity at the museum.”
Saj whistled. “So any ideas?”
“Besides checking my horoscope?” She rubbed her bandaged wrist. “Keep monitoring Coulade’s computer.”
So far all that they’d discovered put her back in the dark.
“The conservator mentioned that the Archives Nationales used the museum’s storage during the war,” she said, racking her brain. “They don’t know half of what’s in it, either.”
“Pascal programmed a dead man’s switch to e-mail this encryption,” Saj said. “He insisted Becquerel be contacted. Becquerel’s role was pivotal to Pascal, yet …”
“Well, everyone talks about Becquerel’s innovation.” René pointed to the copies from the remembrance book. “ ‘A pioneer who knew no boundaries in the field of optics and technology.’ ” He looked up. “Thinking what I’m thinking?”
Aimée nodded. “Fiber optics?”
“It’s an avenue to explore,” he said.
Saj grabbed his laptop. “Let me see what I find.”
BEFORE GOING TO the museum, Aimée hoped to find answers in the stained-glass atelier in her cousin Sebastien’s damp courtyard. Disappointed, she stared into the darkened windows. Knocked. No answer, nor at Sebastien’s atelier either.
Great.
She pulled her coat tighter and in the porte cochère scanned the mailboxes. Listed under Atelier J, Stained Glass was an alternate delivery address at a Galerie Juno on rue des Archives. A place to start.
Three blocks away she found Galerie Juno, with a sign in the door that said Open by Appointment Only.
Merde. Before she met Prévost she needed answers. And a game plan.
She punched in Galerie Juno’s number on her cell phone, and heard a recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and a voice saying, “Leave a message, s’il vous plaît.”
“Bonjour, I’m interested in the stained-glass artist who has an atelier on rue de Saintonge,” she said, hoping that the gallery would answer. That she wasn’t speaking to the wind. “I’m at your gallery and want to make an appointment.”
The message clicked off. Full.
Lace curtains moved in the window next door.
Smiling, she put her face to the window.
The lace curtains parted to reveal a young woman with blue braids wound shell-like above her ears, and matching lipstick. A punkette wearing a dirndl, no less.
The window frame cracked open. “Juno’s working in back.” She jerked her thumb. The window slammed shut, and there was the sound of a lock tumbling.
Aimée pushed open the door, stepped over the frame into a courtyard lined with potted plants. Miniature bonsai trees in animal shapes—a rabbit, a bird. Whimsical.
Keeping her heeled boots out of the cracks between the worn pavers, she reached the atelier in the rear. On the wall were framed certificates from the Artisan Glassmaker Association, a notice of completed apprenticeship to a master glass-maker. Both with the names Juno Braud.
She’d come to the right man.
Hot molten-metal smells filled the atelier. Bundled lead rods stood upright like a forest against the glass walls. A man in overalls worked copper foil along the edges of a piece of blue glass using a soldering iron.
“Monsieur Juno?”
A wayward brown hair hung over a work mask that covered half his face. He looked young. “Attends,” came the muffled reply.
He set the soldering iron down on a brick, switched off the generator box. “Oui?” He’d pulled his mask off. A slash for a mouth, a cleft palate. Sad, it could have easily been treated by surgery in childhood.
“Sorry to bother you,” she said, focusing on his eyes. “My cousin Sebastien’s in the atelier next to yours.”
He tapped his thick fingers. “So?”
Impatient. She’d make this quick. “He suggested you could help me. Those for sale?” She gestured to a shelf of shimmering indigo-blue glass boxes.
“Rejects.”
“But they’re beautiful.”
“Imperfections, the glass bubbled …” He paused, a nervous swipe of his hand over his mouth. “But that’s not why you’re bothering me.”
She gave what she hoped he took for an enthralled gaze. “I need your expertise for five minutes. And I’ll buy those.” She pulled out the copy she’d made of the Latin alchemical formula. The black-and-white encrypted copy. “Could you tell me about this, besides the fact that it’s incomplete?”
“Where did you get this?”
She could go two ways here: offer some version of the truth, or coax him and see how far she got.
“Does it matter?” she leaned forward. “Is it valuable?”
“Would you ask me if it weren’t?” He stared at it. “It’s medieval symbols, an archaic formula, I’d have to guess.”
“Meaning it’s a formula for a stained-glass window in a cathedral?”
“Did I say that?” For a moment she thought she’d lost him.
But he sat down on a battered stool, ran his fingers over the paper. Nodded. “The Revolution disbanded guilds in 1791. The guild emblem’s unique.”
“Meaning?”
“This guild, deTheodric, was one of the oldest, going back to the thirteenth, fourteenth century. They were known for working with the Templars. Not much survives of their work now, though,” he said sadly.