The streets were noisy. Parisians who crossed in front of carriages and carters seemed happy to be going home. Plane trees lined the boulevards, and the sky was a wash of cerulean as the driver took the Pont Royal to the Rue du Bac. Serafina listened to the clop of hooves. They turned onto the Rue Jacob filled with memories of a delicious slip she’d had in a small hotel over twenty years ago. It struck her that there was a sense of life here, an unforgettable style of color, sound, and line that merged to create an energy she no longer felt at home. Oh, to be young again and in Paris. As she watched university students gather, she warmed to the thought of adventure. But unfortunately, she had mystery on the mind.
They clopped down the Rue Bonaparte past St. Sulpice and she heard the unmistakable sounds of an organ, perhaps Charles-Marie Widor practicing for a concert. She stared at the scene fronting the church and imagined a crowd gathered around Elena witnessing one of her mad moments.
The driver stopped across from the entrance to the Luxembourg Gardens and said he’d wait for her.
With the map in her hand, she walked slowly up the Rue de Vaugirard. It was a long street and she hoped she wasn’t too far from her destination. When she found herself facing the round backside of St. Sulpice again, she realized she’d walked in the wrong direction. So she headed back, her eyes glued to her map, and bumped into a policeman who hung onto her shoulders to prevent her from falling.
He tipped his cap and smiled. “Pardon, Madame, let me help you. You’re lost.”
“Too kind.” A Parisian policeman, how handsome. What do they call them? A sergent de ville, he told her. She loved his tall kepis and said so. “I search for the Rue Cassette. I’m sure it’s nearby.”
“Visiting someone?” he asked as he led the way.
“Not exactly. I investigate the death of a woman whose body was found on that street last week.”
“Lucky for you, I’m the one who found the body.” He shook his head. “Terrible, one side of her face blown apart.”
“Then I’m doubly fortunate to have found you.”
“Some claim she was a countess from Sicily.” The policeman shook his head. “That’s what the inspector said. Valois. I called him myself, woke him up from his sleep, poor man. He was none too happy either, I can tell you. Can’t blame the fellow. But the woman, her clothes, mon dieu, she wore the garb of a streetwalker, not draped like a lady, I don’t mind saying it.”
“In this neighborhood?”
He gave her a Gallic shrug. “Those kind are all over, especially at that time of night. Sometimes you see them here in the early evening, too. There are some cafes on the Rue de Vaugirard that attract these people.”
“Like the Cafe Odile?”
He nodded.
Serafina wondered how to ask her next question. “They claim she may have been from the upper classes but enjoying herself by doing-what’s the word in French? In Italian it’s not used in mixed company.”
“No need to say it, Madame, I know what you mean. But this woman had dirt ground into her. It was underneath her fingernails and in her hair. Her hands were callused. No, this woman was not from the nobility. She was working the streets.”
“Curious the press didn’t cover it.”
He shrugged. “Why would they? Oh, they sniffed around, all right. Those journalists can smell a story before it happens. But they knew this death was not newsworthy, so they disappeared. It was the death of a woman already bitten by life, not a fresh saucy thing or someone known by the people. A pickpocket or a lady of the night, probably both. A jailbird, perhaps. But no matter, she’d fallen on hard times. They work the system, you know. They violate the health laws and must be pulled in. They’re out for a while until they’re hauled in again. In and out.”
“Would you show me where you found the body?”
They turned into a much smaller street. The Rue Cassette seemed ghostly, little more than a country lane, although it was cobbled and in excellent condition, smooth and clean. No garbage, so different from home. It was bounded on both sides by a limestone wall. The street had no gas lamps, however, and the light from the evening sky was beginning to fade. She hugged her cape feeling cold and empty in the gloaming as she followed the sergent de ville.
Presently the policeman stopped and pointed to a spot on the ground a few meters ahead, steps away from a large alcove and door. There was a dry cleaning establishment on the opposite side of the street several meters away, but no other shops, just a few gates punched into the wall on either side, leading to what looked like the courtyards of private apartments. Serafina stood still and staring at the spot. She saw the twisted body of the woman. The vision was so intense, it was as if she were here before them, her head resting to one side on the stones, a battered, broken body.
She was filled with the presence of death and foreboding. She tried to imagine what life must have been like for the dead woman; she tried to fathom what it must have been like for this young policeman to come upon a body, cold, grotesque, the street narrow and dark. Perhaps early morning mist had been rising from the ground. Even now she could feel the dankness of the place. The stone walls closed in on her. She struggled for air and realized she’d been holding her breath. Her head throbbed and her toes hurt from the cold. She wished she had worn a heavier cape, a long one like the policeman wore.
“Where does this door lead?”
“It’s the back end of an abbey.”
Serafina read the numbers-22, Rue Cassette. She looked more closely, intent on finding something on the ground left by the body or forgotten by the killer, a scrap of paper, a handkerchief, anything, but the stones had been picked clean.
She was beginning to get a feel for this murdered woman, someone having to scratch to make a living. No, if she were true to her intuition, Serafina could now affirm that the dead woman was a stranger, not Elena. Now her task was to convince others.
“How was she clothed?”
“As I said, in the garment of a streetwalker. There was dirt under her fingernails, caked behind her ear on one side of the face, a ring of dirt in back of her neck.”
“But she had a reticule.”
He nodded. “Made of expensive cloth with a gold clasp and chain. Not the bag of a woman of the night.”
“Perhaps she stole the purse?”
“Looked like it to me.”
“Was there money inside?”
“Six-hundred francs in notes and a few coins, a fortune by my reckoning.”
“Who do you think she was and why did she have that purse?”
“I’ve told you. But no one asks my opinion, Madame. You don’t want to know what I think. I’m a young policeman, on the force less than a year.”
“But I do. I care. And not because you’re helping me tremendously. No, I want to hear what you have to say because you were the first to see the body.”
“I think I might have seen her in this neighborhood before, begging, laughing, drunk, flirting with men or lurking in the side streets hoping for a…”
“A customer?”
“Yes. I might have arrested her once, along with a few others, up to no good, cuffed them all for theft, for leaving the Cafe Odile with purses and capes and fancy hats that weren’t theirs. Boastful and laughing. Slurring and swaying. Beasts really, at least for that moment. When you see men and women like that, less than human, you close your eyes and try to imagine them as sweet suckling babes. Then you take a little more care with them instead of shoving them into a wagon and dumping them into a holding cell. Next morning, it’ll be a different story for them. They’ll be sober and quiet, stinking of cheap wine and bodily waste. Life must be a hell for them.” He stopped and considered something inside himself. “No, I think she took that purse and for whatever reason, maybe even because she took it, she was killed.”