“Look higher in the apse, Monsieur, past the left chancel columns.”
Not for the first time, René cursed his short legs. He leaned back, staring upward at the vaulted Gothic arcs of stone. He saw only soaring light framed and half blocked by the damned columns.
Rows of votive candles flickered in this cold south-wall chapel. The musky drafts of incense, fading floral scents from sprays of drooping winter lilies—all smells he remembered from childhood. And his mother’s whispered novenas in the chapel of the count’s château, where she prayed his legs would grow.
René gestured to the prayer kneeler. “Do you mind if I try a better look, Monsieur le curé?”
“Pas du tout, Monsieur. Please call me Père André, we’re modern these days.”
René untied the laces of his handmade Lobb shoes. Using the prayer kneeler’s straw seat for a step, he climbed onto the ledge of the recessed niche below a statue of Mary. He balanced on the ledge below her blue robe and craned his neck.
He saw a cluster of grisaille glass panels. But crowning it was a blossom-like luminescence of white emanating from a star shape high in the church nave. An intense shimmering.
“All of God’s children should gaze on this,” said the priest. “The unwavering radiance speaks of strength. It lifts the soul.”
René wondered why this small, glittering star shone unlike the other panels.
The priest crossed himself and waved at a few teenagers near the baptismal font. One held a guitar. “Time for our folk music practice,” he said. “We strive to involve our young community. We sing and celebrate the early Sunday Mass. You should come.”
Priests never changed. Always recruiting a new flock.
“Do you know the window’s history, Père André?” Saying that felt foreign to him.
“I’m new to the parish. We’ve run out of guides.” He paused. “Ask Evangeline.”
The priest gestured toward a room labeled Saint Nicolas des Champs Altar Society and joined his teenagers.
Evangeline, a lace mantilla over her gray pageboy coif, wore a chic purple wool suit. René found her reaching on tiptoes into the altar linen cabinet. Only a head taller than René, she was short-statured like others of the generation that grew up during the war. She gave him a lopsided smile. “I’d ask for your help, mais alors, you’d have the same problem.”
René pulled a wooden chair to the cabinet, undid his laces again, and climbed on the chair. “Pas de problème.” She handed him the ironed altar linens. One by one he organized them in the old bleach-scented cabinet. “I’ll have to ask for something in return, you know,” he said, wishing the room had heat.
“Name your price,” Evangeline said.
“Know the history of the star in the stained-glass window?”
Evangeline handed René another stack of linen. “Early fourteenth century. An anomaly, considering the surrounding sixteenth-century chapel. The records from that time … phfft, gone.” She shrugged. “We know the church’s foundations date from the eleventh century, then a hodgepodge of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and the bell tower later. Why?”
“I’m researching fourteenth-century glassmaking guilds.” That much was true. “That star window is so different from everything around it.…”
“Striking, that sparkle. So different, like you say. Not like any other glass I’ve seen. Yet you’re asking the wrong person. Who would know now?”
“Have you heard any legends or stories about this window?”
She paused in thought. “Funny, someone else asked me that.”
Had Pascal been searching for the window’s secret? René turned and looked down at her. “Reddish hair, glasses?”
“Your associate?”
Saddened, René gave a brief nod. “But what did you tell him?”
“The same as you.” Her expression became bashful. “It’s nothing, but after vespers at night, when I change the altar linens, well …”
“Go on, Evangeline,” he said.
“The light streaming from the star,” she said. “It’s almost as if the star grabs the streetlight from outside. Somehow transfuses, brightens, or magnifies it, sending a sheer white light beam. That’s not explaining it well. But there’s a radiance, a clearness. Power.” She gave another lopsided smile. “Silly, eh?”
René stepped down from the chair. Sat and tied his shoes, his mind working. “I think I know what you mean. Merci.”
THE WORDS PLAYED in René’s mind: grabs, transfuses, magnifies. Power. Pascal had found part of the formula for this special glass hidden in the museum’s archives and … what? Tried to replicate it? And couldn’t?
The question rearing up in his mind was why a fourteenth-century document had been hidden in a museum devoted to the pre- and post-industrial revolution. Pascal must have stumbled across the stained-glass window formula either miscataloged or hidden centuries ago in the Archives Nationales, stored during the war. And as Aimée had intimated, found its relevance today.
René gunned down rue Saint-Martin heading toward the Archives Nationales. The archives held a place to work in peace and find answers.
Sunday, Noon
AIMÉE PARKED HER scooter at the museum’s entrance. Her mind spun. They still hadn’t found Pascal’s laptop or figured out what the diagram meant, or heard what Clodo had witnessed. Let alone identified the murderer.
But the DST was on her tail. She’d promised Meizi protection before she could guarantee it. She hadn’t discovered the time of the raid or any other information Meizi could feed Tso. She shuddered. If Meizi got caught, René would never forgive her.
She left another message for Prévost. Why had she ignored his comment that he owed her father and not questioned him? Chinatown had never been her father’s beat.
Yet she’d set wheels in motion—herself connecting with Jean-Luc, Saj working on the encryption, René at church. But the DST expected information and she needed to give them something.
Sunday, 5 P.M.
AIMÉE WORKED OFF two laptops in the vaulted Gothic nave, wishing the faded tapestries didn’t smell their age. She’d spent hours alone in the dark alcove transferring the Musée des Arts et Métiers’ archaic database to the new digital operating system. On the other laptop, she ran a concurrent search for a fourteenth-century document. Fruitlessly.
She backed up a 1695 water pump invention to the digital archive. Hit SAVE. Done.
She pulled her silk scarf tighter against the chill and sighed. Only three more centuries to go. Her boots rested on a smooth paver engraved with Latin, a remnant of the original tenth-century abbey. Norman columns blended into the Gothic priory, evidence of the Parisian habit of building on centuries of history. She was surrounded by history.
And by ghosts.
The creakings and shiftings in the building unnerved her. What sounded like whispers came from the adjoining chapel. The wind? She stifled her unease and focused on her screen. But after several hours, her stiff neck decided for her that the rest would have to wait. Time to go.
Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket.
“Still working, Aimée?” asked René.
“Just backed up the seventeenth century,” she said.
“Any luck finding Pascal’s file?”
“Not yet, desolée,” she said. “Nor the log he supposedly signed in on. Odd. Hope you had better luck with the stained-glass window.”
“I spent the afternoon at the Archives,” he said, excitement in his voice. “Get this, Aimée. Pascal’s diagram is a map.”