He walked into a small, damp courtyard. A sign, styled like a coat of arms, read CAVOUR MASTER WOODWORKERS, EST. 1794. Low strains of a Vivaldi concerto floated through the doorway.
“Pardon,” René said, raising his voice. He walked through a narrow entrance opening into a large atelier illumined by skylights. The sharp tang of turpentine reached him. “Anyone here?”
A middle-aged man, wearing a blue workcoat, glasses pushed up on his bald head, stood at a work table. With delicate strokes he rubbed the gilded legs of an antique lacquered chair. Small and exquisite, it looked to René as if anyone sitting on it would snap it in pieces. In the middle of the large room stood a heater, its flue leading to the roof, a water cooler, and more worktables filled with furniture in various stages of repair. From the walls hung every type of antique wooden chair René had ever seen—and many he hadn’t.
“Forgive me, monsieur,” René said, “for disturbing your work.”
The man looked up, took in René’s stature, but showed no surprise. He had dark pouches under his eyes and a sallow complexion. His pursed mouth gave him a harried look.
“Tiens! I’ve done all I can with this,” the man said, setting down a mustard-colored chamois cloth. “I’m Mathieu Cavour. How may I help you?” he asked René, picking up several cracked Sèvres porcelain drawer knobs, and slipping them into his pocket. “My showroom’s in the front, off the other courtyard, if you’d like to see our finished work.”
Should he show him the detective badge, the one Aimée left in the drawer, that he’d slipped in his pocket?
“Monsieur Cavour,” he said, flashing the badge. “A woman, my friend, was attacked outside your shop last night. Were you here?”
René thought Cavour cringed. But maybe it was just his silhouette shifting under the skylight as René looked up.
“Attacked . . . here?”
“I found her outside in the passage,” René said. “Did you see or hear anything unusual?”
“I live above the shop. I have trouble sleeping,” Cavour said. “Music helps me. I wouldn’t have heard anything outside.”
“So your light was on?”
Cavour’s brow creased. “Is this woman, your friend, all right?”
Why didn’t Cavour answer his questions?
“The attack was so vicious it blinded her,” said René.
“Je regrette . . .” he said.
René saw sadness in Cavour’s eyes.
“Do you remember if you had your light on?” he asked again.
Cavour rubbed his brow with the back of his hand, “Sorry, I drift in and out of sleep, I can’t remember.”
Did he have some medical condition?
“Lived here long, Monsieur Cavour?”
“Long? I was born upstairs. But the quartier has changed. The conniving developers want to take over.”
“More and more,” said René, nodding in sympathy.
The telephone rang. No one answered and Cavour looked flustered, as he ignored it.
“Here’s my card. In case you think of something that might help,” René said. On his way out, he saw a broom and rusted dust pan by a full garbage bin. Might Cavour have found something of Aimée’s?
“Did you sweep this morning?”
“As always. The shop, the courtyard. Some of these people don’t care if the quartier’s run down, no pride.”
He stood, René thought, like a stubborn island in sea of slick renovation.
In Cavour’s waste bin, topped off by sawdust and Malabar candy wrappers, René saw a crumpled sheet of music, the black notes faded on the yellowed page.
“Look at what they leave in the passage, even in my courtyard,” he said, following René’s gaze. “That’s not the half of it. Condoms. Once a broken guitar.”
And René heard voices, a chorus. Then a lone soprano. Their timbre softened by the stone. Timeless.
“Where’s that coming from?” René asked.
“Opera rehearsal,” said Cavour. “We’re behind the Opera, you know. A chorus from Le Barbier de Seville, would be my guess.”
Cavour was an interesting mix, René thought. A blue collar craftsman with a knowledge of opera who worked on antique furniture. He liked Cavour, and yet, without knowing why, he felt uneasy about him.
As he walked down the passage, he realized this detective business was harder than he’d imagined. He’d gotten no real information from Cavour. Cavour hadn’t answered his questions. Would Cavour have told him if he had seen anything? He wished he had Aimée’s knack for getting information out of people.
And then René realized he’d forgotten to pack all of Aimée’s things. The cell phone.
Wednesday Afternoon
MATHIEU CAVOUR LATCHED THE door behind the dwarf. His hands shook. Shook so much he dropped the old-fashioned key and had to get on his knees to find it between the stones. The pressure, the hiding, running a business . . . he couldn’t take it.
And now this.
His anxiety of last night came back.
He’d awakened in his chair in the atelier, startled by a noise, and shot bolt upright. Sweat had dripped down his shoulder blades. Slanted moonlight had made patterned rectangles on the courtyard’s uneven cobbles.
Then he had heard the scrape of the gate, like before. Fine, he’d get the furniture piece ready. Ignore the guilt he felt. The less he knew or thought about it, the better.
Then the sounds of a struggle had come from the passage, like in his nightmares. The last time he’d heard that sound the serial killer, the Beast of Bastille, had claimed another victim. What should he do? He couldn’t very well call the flics and risk exposure.
His restoration work paid the bills and kept the timbered roof over the shop. Barely. Never mind where the pieces of furniture came from or who they’d once belonged to.
When would his contact come? He’d left the metal gate open . . . but one never knew. He paused near the half-open window, his undershirt damp. The struggle had come from the small, paved inner courtyard.
He had held his breath. His hand had quivered as he tugged the limp lace curtain. He had taken a deep breath and parted the lace.
In the courtyard, a man stood in his bathrobe rocking a crying infant. Mathieu had heard cooing as the man soothed the bundle in his arms under the honeysuckle. So the screams had wakened the baby, too.
It must have been teenagers fighting, he told himself. Those sulky ones who hung around the pizza place, an upholsterer’s before the old boss died and Mirador Development had snapped up the building.
He had wanted to go down and check the cave. Make sure the piece was safe. But the old stairs creaked and the doors were rusty and stiff. The years had taken their toll. His knees had protested. And the shadowy cobwebbed basement corners, damp stone and crumbling brickwork, were things he avoided even on sunny, warm days.
He had found a Lizst piano concerto on the transistor radio on his work table. Had kept the volume low, hoping he’d fall asleep. But his eyes had stayed glued to the window until long after the baby’s cries quieted and a rosy dawn had painted the jagged Bastille rooftops.
How would telling the dwarf about it help the woman now?
Mathieu should have known, he realized later, that it was a warning. A foretaste of the next day. When the past opened like a fresh wound.
Wednesday
“BONJOUR, ” SAID A VOICE from the shop interior.