“The lawyer says I’m foolish but if I found it again, I wouldn’t keep it. Those things aren’t meant to be kept by one person, one family . . . something this beautiful belongs to all. I just want to see it again. Feel the marble, oil it, like papa taught me. That’s all.”
She leaned forward, emitting a delicate floral scent. “I had to come to your atelier, yes? See for myself the pieces you work on. Smell again that furniture oil odor I remember from childhood; yes, it’s the same. Our house was filled with it, too. Funny, the things that stick in your memory. I remember it as a time when the sun seemed like a big lemon and it shone every day.”
Mathieu was torn. “I wish I could help you.”
“I’m sorry, I’m taking your time and rambling,” she said, with a small shrug. She handed him her card. Dr. Roswitha Schell, University of Strasbourg, Professor of Art History. “I’m semi-retired and teach part-time. But I’m boring you, yes?”
“Non,” Mathieu said, averting his gaze. He knew the pieta dura commode, better than she could imagine.
He couldn’t remember when he’d last had a conversation with a cultured woman. These days he rarely left the quartier. Too much to do. His niece berated him for working so hard and he’d reply “That’s how we were raised. I was born over the shop, measured chair rungs from when I could count.”
But the Cavour name, the skill and secrets handed down from father to son since 1794, would end with him if he didn’t continue with his plan. He wouldn’t let it happen.
And Mathieu realized those eyes had shifted . . . perplexed. She’d thrust something at him, her cool fingers brushing his arm. Soft like a butterfly’s wing.
“Forgive me,” he said, trying to look away. But he couldn’t.
“But these photos . . . perhaps they could jog your memory. Maybe you’d seen the piece before at the Comte’s, yes?”
But Mathieu turned away.
“Monsieur?”
Elegant and cultured and kind. Like the Comte.
“Art’s not cerebral, there’s more than that,” she was saying. Her voice rose, lyrical. “The indefinable something from the soul that most of us strive for. Few achieve it, much less describe it.”
Why wouldn’t she stop talking? And then, quiet. He looked around, afraid of her accusing glances. But admiration and something like awe shone in her face.
“You must think me a blathering fool!” she said. “But I see, you’re an artist. You, of all people, must realize how much it means to me.”
A pang of guilt pierced him.
She lifted a small folder. Inside were photos from a lost time; black and white images of a young boy in a sailor suit, a serious-looking girl with long braids holding his hand. They stood in a room surrounded by museum-quality furniture, Impressionist paintings on the wall.
Conflicted, he turned away. “I’m sorry, I wish I could help you. But I don’t know how.”
“Monsieur, forgive me, I’ve offended you,” she said, “I’m sorry this came out all wrong. I’m grabbing at a thread from more than fifty years ago.”
He saw her to the door and watched her make her way through the courtyard.
Nothing must threaten his arrangement. Nothing. Even though the pieta dura commode sat in his cellar, refinished and ready for the auction house.
Wednesday late afternoon
AIMÉE FIDDLED WITH THE bandages around her neck. The stiff awkward bulk bothered her. Her hair clumped in sticky strands from the gel she’d combed through it. Or thought she had. She never realized combing hair could be such an art. And how hard it was without sight.
She heard a familiar gait cross the linoleum: Morbier’s slight shuffle. His right foot was half a size larger than his left, so even though he wore an extra sock on it, one shoe flapped.
The breeze had stopped flowing through the window. He must be crossing on her left and have taken in her hospital gown and seen the chart at the foot of the bed.
“There’s food on your tie, Morbier,” she said, facing the window.
The footsteps stopped. “Can you see?”
“You always have food on your tie,” she said. “Grab a chair.”
“I spoke with the nurse. She didn’t say much,” he said. “How bad is it?”
Was that concern in his voice?
She let a big silence fill the space. Morbier, a master interrogator, knew how to wait.
So did she.
Trolley cart wheels wobbled and squeaked in the hallway. Lunch was over; maybe it was medication time.
“That bad?” he asked finally.
“You mean, can I see anything?”
“That’s a start,” he said.
He wasn’t one to deal well with emotion. If at all.
“Or will I ever see again?” She threw her leg over the bed, reached for what she thought was her comb on the tray. It clattered to the floor.
She heard him grunt as he bent down for the comb.
“The neurosurgeon’s procedure saved my life, but the lack of oxygen or the bleeding from the blows to my skull obscure where a weak vein ruptured.”
“Say it so I can understand, Leduc.”
“They call it complications of treatment.”
“Aha . . . clear as Seine mud.”
She agreed.
“Someone attacked me in the passage,” she said. “The force of the blow caused a weak vein wall in my brain to burst.”
“And the prognosis?”
She heard him rifling through his pocket, the crinkle of paper.
“The doctor’s becoming repetitive. ‘Just wait and see.’ ‘No pun intended,’ he says.”
She wished her relationship with Morbier was different. For a moment, she wanted Morbier to throw his big arms around her. Hold her. Tell her it would be all right and that he would make things better. Like he had once when she was little and her father was away on stakeout. After school, she’d tripped and split open her knee on the Commissariat’s marble step. He’d scooped her up, held her to his scratchy wool jacket, dried her tears with his sleeve and cleaned her knee while telling her stories about his old dog who loved strawberries and would fall asleep standing up.
She wasn’t a child anymore. And she might not ever be all right. What if the blindness didn’t go away?
“Got a cigarette, Morbier?”
“Didn’t you quit?”
“I’m always quitting,” she said. “There’s one in your pocket, isn’t there?”
“Why do you think the Beast of Bastille attacked you?”
“Did I say that?” She lay back and stared into the blankness, imagining what he looked like; the pouches under his alert brown eyes, his jowly cheeks, the socialist party pin worn in his lapel, a used handkerchief . . . she felt a thin stick wedged in her hand, then heard the sound of crinkling.
“Suck.”
“Morbier!” She smelled lemon. She aimed and hit her lip, then tasted a sour Malabar lollipop.
“Better than coffin nails,” he said. “So talk to me.”
“Sergeant Bellan questioned me already. I might feel like sharing, if I knew the murder victim’s name.”
“This case belongs to the special detail for the 11ième.” That’s what Bellan had said. But Morbier must know some- thing since he’d answered the phone there. However, as always, he’d make her pay for his information. “Not my fiefdom,” he said.
If only she could see his face!
She’d give him an edited version.
“Look Morbier, here’s what I know, maybe you can open your mouth after you listen to me,” she said. “In that trendy resto, Violette, I incurred the wrath of my big client, Vincent. Next to us sat a woman, wearing the same Chinese jacket I’d paid the moon for, talking on her phone.”