The Red Brick Cellars: A Tolosa Mystery

by R. W. Wallace

  His train left the station, but Louis stayed put.

  Who were Lucien and Ghislaine, anyway? Her parents? He’d never heard her talk about them or the fact that she still lived with her folks, but then again, that’s not necessarily something one would brag about.

  Véronique was still talking, but nothing registered with Louis.

  He shoved the papers into the side pocket of his suitcase and returned his focus to the woman on the phone. “I have an idea, but it’s a bit of a wild hunch. I’ll go check it out.” After a short hesitation, he added, “I’ll text you an address after we hang up. If you don’t hear from me within a couple of hours, I want you to tell the police I went there to look for Catherine. Can you do that?”

  “Sure. Where are you going?”

  “It’s close to the Capitole,” Louis replied, “but I don’t want to give any more details right now. I wouldn’t want to implicate an innocent person if I’m wrong.”

  There was a short hesitation and Louis could hear Fluffy barking in the background. “All right,” she finally said. “I’ll try to reach you in one hour and if you don’t answer, I’m calling the police again. At least they should be interested in searching for you.”

  Louis said goodbye and hung up. He needed to get rid of his suitcase and find a way to get to the Capitole quickly.

  Twenty-Seven

  Maxime looked up at the house he’d lived in with Catherine for three happy years. The fact that it was a Toulousaine two-floor brick-and-cobble house with white fretwork windows had brought great pleasure to Maxime, who had been born and raised in Toulouse. The narrowest house on the street, it sported only three close-set windows on the second floor, each with its foot-wide balcony and turquoise wrought iron railing. On street level, their great oak door took up a third of the space. The rest housed a kebab shop that only sold takeaway as the kitchen took up all the space. He’d moved out a week earlier. Now the windows stared empty at him, devoid of curtains and flowers.

  Maxime did something he hadn’t done once in the three years he’d lived there. He rang the doorbell.

  Even though the sale wouldn’t be finalized for another week or two, he had already moved out to let the workers start on rehabilitating the place for some Occitan association. At first he’d been happy to find another place to live. The house felt so empty when Catherine moved out. Hoping she’d change her mind and come back, he suffered the silence, cold bed, and empty closets, but once the divorce papers were signed there was really no point in holding on.

  He’d been unable to let completely go, though. He’d omitted to tell the notary of the extra key they possessed for when family visited, so unless they had already changed the locks, he could get in.

  He rang the bell again. If anybody was in there he didn’t want to get caught red-handed.

  Still no answer, so he fished the large key out of his pocket and slid it into the lock.

  The door opened. Maxime went in.

  There was that silence again. No steps sauntering into the kitchen in search of a snack. No tapping of fingernails on the laptop’s keyboard. No smell of home.

  In fact, the smell had changed radically in just a week. Where there used to be an underlying aroma of coffee and cleaning products, now there was plaster, paint, and something so strong it almost hurt his nose; probably a product to remove paint.

  Maxime stood behind the door looking down the long dark hallway at the stairs going up to the second floor at the back of the building.

  Might as well get moving. Catherine wasn’t hiding down here. When he’d received the call from Véronique saying Catherine hadn’t been home that night, he’d immediately worried. Then, as he remembered that she no longer informed him when she took off somewhere, he’d calmed down again. She’d only been away for one night, after all. He hoped she wasn’t with that Saint-Blancat upstart.

  Véronique also said she went to Catherine’s place and found Fluffy ravenous and desperate for a walk to do his business. He knew Catherine would never neglect her dog.

  The police had been called, but were of no help. So what could he actually do? The only fact they had was that Catherine went to her yoga class the night before. It wasn’t too far away from their old house, so Maxime figured he should give it a try. Who knew? Perhaps she’d been really tired or something and kept a key like Maxime. She could have come here to spend the night.

  It was reaching for straws, but it was the only thing he could think of. And all this worry had him missing his wife more than ever, so he wanted to visit their home a last time. Though by the increasing smell of paint as he approached the stairs, there might not be much left of the part of the house that had made it theirs.

  With one foot on the first step of the staircase, Maxime stopped. Where was the door to the cellar? Normally, on the left just before the stairs, an old door led down to the basement. They had never used it as the place was too damp to store anything and not even the right temperature for wine. But now, where that closed door had always been, there was a blank white surface.

  Maxime looked up the stairs toward the living room, then back to the new wall. “Catherine?” he yelled, though without much conviction.

  There was, of course, no answer.

  What had they done? Filled in the horribly impractical cellar and removed the door? He knocked on the white wall. It was painted plasterboard and sounded hollow. Knocking farther to the right where there had always been a wall, the feel of the plaster was the same, but it didn’t sound as hollow. They had put this on top of the old door? The place was certainly good for nothing, but simply blocking it off felt wrong somehow.

  How was the thing attached to the old wall? He brushed his fingers along the place where the plaster started at one of the supporting beams. He couldn’t feel any indentations from screws, but that might be because a professional had done the work. The other end was in the narrow space between the wall and the staircase. Maxime shuffled sideways until he could touch it.

  Still no indentations, but there was a bolt on the very bottom corner. With his foot, Maxime slid the bolt off—it wasn’t locked, but appeared to be there to make sure nothing moved by itself.

  And move the wall did.

  The whole thing was attached to hinges on the right hand side, so it silently slid open until it touched Maxime’s arm. He took a few steps back so the wall could slide open farther, then ran halfway up the stairs to get a view behind the plaster. Leaning across the wooden railing, he could see the old brick-and-cobble wall. And the door to the cellar.

  Taking care of where he would land, Maxime carefully stepped over the railing, then hopped down into the corner behind the swinging wall. With small sideways steps, he approached the cellar door. It wasn’t locked and swung toward the stairs going down to the cellar.

  Maxime switched on the light and went down.

  Twenty-Eight

  Louis punched in the pin-code and was finally allowed to choose a bike. Three vehicles were available at this station. One of them had the seat turned backwards—a sign from a previous user that there was something wrong with it. Louis chose the closest one and pressed the button to release it. The municipality made these bikes available for short-term rentals. The stations were scattered all over the city center and had become very popular over the last few years. The bikes weren’t made for competitions, though, as Louis quickly ascertained when he mounted. There were only three gears, none of them allowing the user to attain a speed faster than a good sprinter. The bike weighed a ton, probably in good part because of the red cover over the back wheel sporting an advertisement for the night bus, not to mention the kickstand, which looked solid enough to support both bike and anyone riding it.

  Sitting down on the wide black seat, Louis started pedaling. He promptly slid forward so he sat on only the front third of the seat. Who decided to make these seats so wide? They might be comfortable to sit on while rolling downhill, but for someone with a minimum of thigh, it was impossible to p
edal and sit at the same time. Louis stood up to pedal faster. He’d rented the bike to get to Marie-Pierre’s house as fast as possible, but would have been better off running the kilometer across the city center. On his second push on the pedals, the chain jumped a cog. Louis fell forward, his nose missing the high plastic handlebars by a mere centimeter. Though his heart hammered through his chest, he sat down on the bike’s seat and pedaled calmly down rue Bayard.

  The bikes were officially named Vélô Toulouse, Toulouse bikes with a nod to the famous song Ô Toulouse by Claude Nougaro, but had acquired the nickname Vélouze. Louis was starting to appreciate that the Toulousains were expert enough in foreign languages to understand how that translated into English.

  He was driving a loser bike.

  Ten minutes later, the bike was parked in the station on rue des Lois and Louis rang the doorbell of Marie-Pierre’s house—or rather her parents’ house. Nobody answered. Louis looked up and down the street. Not many people were out on an early Sunday morning, but a young couple strolled toward the Garonne and an old man shuffled in the opposite direction.

  He hadn’t thought about what to do if Marie-Pierre wasn’t home. He had no backup plan. Ringing the bell again, he kept the button pressed for a good ten seconds. Three buzzes later, Louis was about to give up. He’d call Véronique and tell her he had nothing, and they could perhaps go to the police together. Not that he thought they’d take him any more seriously given their previous encounters.

  The sound of a lock clicked behind him. Louis whirled to face the opening door.

  “Louis,” Marie-Pierre said. “How nice to see you again so soon. Is there a problem?” She leaned out of the doorway to look up and down the street.

  “No, no,” Louis hastened to say. “There’s no problem. I just…” He’d been so focused on getting here, he hadn’t given any thought to what to say to the woman. He couldn’t ask her straight out if she’d killed his father. Louis went with the first thing that came to mind. “I wanted to talk to you about volunteering for working with the lonely old people. Amongst other things.”

  Marie-Pierre smiled and tilted her head to the side. “You mean the elderly.” She looked behind her into the house, then seemed to come to a decision. “Come right in, young Louis. I’ll make us a cup of coffee.”

  “Thank you.” He stepped in behind her, then walked into the living room Marie-Pierre pointed him to while she closed the door behind them.

  The kitchen opened up to the living room. Neither looked like it had been renovated since the seventies. Green and white tiles, dark brown wooden cupboards, and an off-white working surface in the kitchen. A spartan brownish-green couch, crocheted white curtains, and linoleum floor in the living room.

  Louis felt anything but relaxed, so he attempted to lounge standing next to a window.

  “How often will you be able to help out with the elderly?” Marie-Pierre asked from the kitchen where she put a filter in a surprisingly modern coffee-machine. “Would once a week be okay to start out? See how you like it?”

  “Eh…sure,” Louis said. “Sounds good.”

  “Excellent. I have this very kind lady who lives quite close to your house. It wouldn’t even take more than fifteen minutes out of your time to check up on her.” She brought two cups down from one of the cupboards. “Do you take sugar in your coffee?”

  “Two lumps, please,” Louis said, eying the size of the cup. “Aren’t your parents home?” There weren’t many signs of the house being lived in by three people. And that stale smell often present in old people’s houses was absent. This place smelled of flowers and bread.

  Marie-Pierre waved a hand in the direction of the hall they had come through. “They’re downstairs.”

  “In the cellar? Have you made a den down there or something?” It was unusual for the cellars to be used for much—except the ones transformed into restaurants.

  “It’s a wine cellar,” she replied.

  “All right.” Louis glanced at the door to the hall. They should be back any minute then, if they were down there picking out a wine for lunch.

  Hands braced widely on the working surface, Marie-Pierre studied Louis. “Won’t you sit down, Louis?” She cocked her head and some of the red highlights in her hair caught a ray of sunlight slanting in through the window on her left. “Did you have anything else you wanted to discuss?”

  Louis dried off moist palms on his thighs. “Actually, there was something else.” He had to figure out how to get her to open up. If she did have anything to do with his father’s demise, she would only tell him so if he distanced himself from his father and could somehow be convinced he should be brought on board. Louis could in no way fit the parents into the scheme, though, so he started to think he was on a false trail.

  “I was going through some of my father’s stuff the other day,” he lied, looking out the window but seeing nothing. “I came across some documents with your name on them, but I didn’t quite understand what they were about.”

  He peeked at Marie-Pierre, who watched him closely from the kitchen counter.

  “It’s not unusual for my name to appear on documents that go to the mayor,” she said. “I am a deputy mayor. What was it about?”

  “Like I said,” Louis said with a self-deprecating smile, “I didn’t understand much of it. There was a mention of the old Cordeliers church and its infamous crypt.” Smooth. Way to ease into it. This would never work.

  “You know about the crypt, do you?” Marie-Pierre said. Her voice was devoid of any emotion like she was discussing weeding the garden.

  “Anybody with an interest in Toulouse history would know about the crypt. It was quite the tourist attraction three hundred years ago.” Louis himself had been so fascinated by the histories around that crypt, he’d read everything several times. Unfortunately, there weren’t all that many stories about them as the mummification of bodies was apparently so common in Toulouse back then, only foreigners thought it worthwhile to write about them.

  “Yes, it was,” Marie-Pierre said.

  Louis got the distinct feeling she was measuring him up.

  “And it probably still would be today if the crypt existed. There are plenty of necropolises around Europe where they make a great success out of showing off heaps of human bones.”

  The conversation was moving in the right direction. Louis nodded along as she talked and tried to look fascinated. “The Toulouse crypts didn’t only house bones, though,” he said. “Most of the bodies became mummies, so they looked like they only just died.”

  Marie-Pierre smiled broadly, showing off a couple of crowns on her premolars. “Don’t you think such a crypt would have all the more success? Instead of having a truckload of bones people would have trouble really relating to, there would be actual dead bodies.”

  Louis suppressed a shudder. He had visited a necropolis in the Czech Republic some years ago and found it fascinating. But she was right; he didn’t really assimilate that the bones had belonged to real people. If there had been even just one mummy in that place, the experience would have been way creepier. She thought that was a good idea?

  “What are you proposing exactly?” he asked Marie-Pierre, taking care to keep any judgment out of his voice. “That we reopen the old crypts and use them to attract tourists?” Perhaps the Addams family would come.

  Marie-Pierre tittered as if he’d told a funny joke. She turned to the coffee-machine and poured two cups of coffee, walked over to Louis, handed him his cup, and sat down on the couch. Her expression grew serious. “No, my idea wasn’t to draw tourists at first, though that could be a positive side-effect. What I’ve been working on should touch people on a more personal level.”

  “How so?” Louis asked after he forced down a mouthful of coffee. What could be more personal than looking at dead people for fun?

  She looked at him over the rim of her cup. “I’ve been working on a project for several years now and I believe it’s ready to be released to the p
ublic. But it needs to be presented in the right way and probably to the right persons. I’m not entirely certain that’s you.”

  “What qualifies a right or wrong person?”

  “The right person would be someone who can understand how this will help people. A wrong person is someone…who hasn’t suffered enough.”

  That didn’t help Louis much with figuring out what the project was. “Have you pitched it to other people yet?”

  Marie-Pierre leaned back in her seat. “A couple. One was so enthusiastic about it, he’s now my partner. The second was unable to grasp the genius of the situation.”

  “Who are they?”

  She considered Louis for several moments. “I won’t give you my partner’s name without his consent. But the person who did not want to participate was your father.”

  Louis’s heart sped up and he gripped his cup so hard he was afraid it might break. “You think I won’t agree with you because my father didn’t?”

  Marie-Pierre simply cocked her head as she studied Louis.

  “You won’t know until you’ve tried, Marie-Pierre.” Louis strove to keep his voice from cracking. He needed to appear insouciant. “As you saw at the restaurant the other day and have probably observed while working with my father, I don’t always agree with him. I’d like to think I’m capable of empathy, so even if I haven’t suffered all that much myself, I can put myself in other people’s shoes.”

  Marie-Pierre continued to stare at Louis. “Your father certainly didn’t have the personal experience needed to understand my project. But maybe you do.” She shifted on the couch and put her coffee down on a small coffee table. “How did you feel about your father’s funeral, Louis? Did you get to see his body before the cremation? Did you get closure? Was there no unfinished business between the two of you?”

  Louis froze. “What do you mean unfinished business?”