Murder on the Quai

by Cara Black

  A cast of characters and a gruesome scene.

  The oven’s warmth heated the high-ceilinged kitchen, toasted her bare toes. Miles Davis warmed her lap.

  Yawning, she closed her eyes.

  She woke up to Miles Davis’s barking, a kitchen full of smoke. Her eyes burned. Merde, she’d nodded off and burnt her dinner. She grabbed a mitt, pulled out the flaming cassoulet, dumped the charred contents in the sink. Its black edges sizzled in the cold water.

  A perfectly good cassoulet fallen victim to her baking skills.

  She opened the window, fanning out the smoke, her eyes tearing. A lone figure stood on the Pont Marie, silhouetted in the mist. She shivered, feeling paranoid. She wished her papa were here.

  Chambly-sur-Cher · November 1942

  Through binoculars Gaubert watched the small regiment in Givaray loading antiaircraft guns onto a unit of convoy trucks. Heavy bombardment had continued that week along the rail lines in the occupied zone. Now the Boches looked like they were moving out.

  Givaray was so close that he heard orders barked in German, even saw the lace curtains move at the cheesemonger’s. Heard a baby cry from the kitchen.

  On the morning of the executions, he heard the fusillade of gunshots. Sixty shot in Givaray while he’d sat in silent guilt. Word came the bodies had been dumped in a communal grave, not even a proper burial allowed. All week, he and the others laid low, expecting a knock on the door.

  Good God, what had they done but engender a village of widows and fatherless children? His intentions of confessing and taking the blame got harder and harder as he imagined more victims. What if it happened here in Chambly and his son, Gaby . . . He couldn’t finish the thought. How could he possibly make it up to the innocent victims? He’d had the idea to persuade Alain and the others to help him steal arms for the Resistance—he could get supplies to them through Fanny’s brother—but he wasn’t sure he could convince the others and pull off his plan for stealing guns from the gendarmes.

  A soft knock at the back door. “Gaubert?” He recognized Alain’s voice. “We’re meeting in your barn.”

  Now? “It doesn’t look good, you all coming here.”

  “It’s dark. Bring some candles. Bruno got a telegram from Fanny’s aunt.”

  “My wife’s aunt? Why the hell is he in my business—”

  “His mother works at the post. He saved you a trip, Gaubert.”

  Since when had Bruno become so helpful? Gaubert had been limping since the last war, but Bruno had never picked up his post for him before.

  In his barn, the mare pawed the earth. He shoved an armful of hay into her feeding trough. Her breath steamed. A flickering kerosene lamp threw light on the three men huddled near the stall.

  “Where’s my telegram?”

  Bruno opened his jacket pocket, took out an envelope of thin war-grade paper.

  Gaubert read the few words.

  Colt and mare fine.

  He bit his lip. Read the lines again. Code for “arrived and safe.”

  How he missed his little Gaby, his darling Fanny. They needed warm clothes, needed to be in their own home, with him. But it was too dangerous.

  Bruno pulled out his tobacco papers and pouch, rolled a cigarette. Gaubert knew there was something, apart from the tobacco, on the tip of his tongue.

  “Is that all? What aren’t you telling me?”

  “The horse stumbled and Gaby broke his nose, Gaubert. But he’s fine.”

  “What? How do you know that?” His little Gaby.

  Bruno scratched a match. Lit his rolled cigarette and puffed. “The whole village knows they fled, that’s what I’m telling you.”

  “Of course I made her flee. There’ve been executions . . .”

  “Idiot, didn’t you realize that if you sent them away it would look suspicious?”

  Gossip. Rumor. Every step they took was being watched.

  “We’ve got a plan, Gaubert,” said Philbert, “and we want you to hear it. To agree.”

  “You’re coming up with plans now?”

  “We have to. It looks suspicious.”

  “What does?”

  “You sending your family away. Everybody noticed.”

  “It’s wartime. Germans are executing people in Givaray less than a kilometer away across the river, and you’re telling me it looks suspicious that I want to protect my family? But what do you know about protecting a family? You still live with your parents—all of you. I won’t have any of you tell me how to live, or that I can’t keep my wife and son safe.”

  “What if Fanny lets something slip? Confides in her aunt? We’re all in danger, don’t you understand?”

  “Danger? Blame Alain for pounding Rouxel’s head in with a rock. You think the Germans won’t look for him?”

  He saw it plain as day. In their greed, all they were worried about was the damn gold they’d buried in his barn floor.

  “Did you tell Fanny?”

  Gaubert shook his head in disgust. “Didn’t we agree? We’re all dead men if word gets out. The village, too. It’s never left this circle, has it? Or have you told your mother, sister, or cousins?”

  Sheepish looks greeted him.

  “You have? Who did you tell?”

  They were all shaking their heads now. “No one, Gaubert,” said Bruno, turning to the others. “We swear.”

  “Good. My family stays away until we move the gold.”

  Philbert nodded. “There are more like Rouxel, those roaming fascists from the Parti Populaire, just trumped-up gangsters . . .” He paused, looked at each one for effect. “If anyone in Givaray found out, they’d kill us faster than the Boches could.”

  Bruno blew out a stream of smoke that swirled up to the barn rafters. “My cousin at the station and my mother at the post keep me informed,” he said. “They both heard that POWs are reconstructing the train lines, and the Germans are being pulled to Vierzon and Bourges to set up antiaircraft emplacements.”

  Big words for a chicken farmer who lived with his mother. But Gaubert had seen the Germans’ movement through his binoculars.

  “There’s a big offensive in Russia, they’re massing troops to the front.” Philbert lowered his voice. “My uncle heard it on the radio. The BBC.”

  Listening to the BBC’s Radio Londres broadcast was illegal.

  “Et alors?” Gaubert said.

  “A perfect time for our plan. We melt one gold bar and say—”

  “That it fell off a German train in the bombing?” Gaubert snorted.

  “Close.” Bruno grinned. “My cousin saw furniture and paintings lying on the rails. Incredible things flung from the trains.”

  Looted in Paris by the Germans.

  “Common knowledge, Gaubert. Whoever could helped themselves.”

  He’d heard. Now the French were looting their own.

  “So we say a POW found a gold bar on the bombed tracks.”

  “A POW? They’re all gone, non?”

  “Remember those Polish POWs who repaired the train tracks last week?” said Bruno. “We could say one of them found it and hid it. If anyone asks, we can deny all knowledge, say the POW didn’t give us exact details.”

  “Sounds thin,” said Gaubert.

  Bruno shrugged. Exhaled a rush of smoke. “We let Minou think it’s equal cuts all around.”

  “Equal?” Alain spit in the dirt.

  “Eight ways,” Bruno said. “We say there’re others who need to be paid off. So we get everything but one eighth, tu comprends?”

  Minou, the blacksmith, was dim but not stupid.

  “He’s my second cousin,” Bruno said. As if that made him trustworthy.

  “For God’s sake, Minou shoes horses and forges farm tools,” said Gaubert. How naïve could they be? “There must be special equipment for meltin
g gold. It’s not chocolate. He doesn’t have those kind of things.”

  “But the jeweler, Baret, would,” said Philbert. “Your old comrade-in-arms, non?”

  Gaubert looked at the other three men. Village leftovers: Alain, seventeen, a lug and too young for conscription; Bruno and Philbert exempted as agricultural workers on their families’ farms. The existing male village population, almost decimated in the last war, were the disabled like him and those who were too young or needed on the farm, like these.

  “Let me think.”

  “We need to do this now, Gaubert.”

  “I think better while I feed my cows.”

  In the pale moonlight, he pitched hay into the cow shed. The cows’ soft mewling floated in the night air. His thoughts were filled with Fanny. How he wished he could talk this through with her now.

  Part of him didn’t want to touch this gold with blood on it; but his hunger threatened to overcome all his scruples. Alain, Philbert, and Bruno’s greed shone through; they’d be like rabid dogs when their own hunger set in. Better to wash his hands of this as much as he could. Distance himself. Go to Fanny. Be a father to Gaby.

  That was all well and good, but he couldn’t undo the damage that had already been done, the reprisals. No matter how far from here he went, he’d never escape that cry of the cheesemonger’s baby. The innocents murdered for four men’s stupidity and greed.

  They had to give the gold back. He remembered Rouxel’s note, knew that someday, somehow the Germans would come back for the gold. The puppet Vichy government was a joke. It was only a matter of time until the Boches rolled over the flimsy boundary. They’d blitzkrieged into Poland, walked into Paris.

  He decided.

  Returning to his barn, Gaubert set the pitchfork down and nodded. “Agreed.”

  Philbert patted Gaubert on the back. “I knew you’d see reason.” The others took up shovels.

  “Only on the condition we move the gold.”

  “You’re giving conditions?” Alain, already digging, sounded spiteful and childish. “What gives you the right?”

  The right? This damn Alain, an overgrown boy with a pea brain. “Notice whose barn we’re in? And whose family’s in danger of being shot if it’s discovered?”

  “Wait a minute, Gaubert,” said Bruno. “You’re talking like you’re the only one at risk.”

  “My wife and child, your families, the people of Chambly are as innocent as those across the river,” said Gaubert, his face flushing. “Who deserves to be executed against the village wall and dumped in a common grave? It’s our fault and we have to make it right.”

  “So getting ourselves shot would make it right? I don’t know what you think—”

  “At least I’m thinking.” He took a breath. Had to get rational, explain it in a way these idiots would understand. “We need to distance ourselves, so if the gold is ever discovered it doesn’t point straight to us.”

  All eyes were on him. He had to talk fast, now that he had their attention. “You saw Rouxel’s note. Someday the Germans will come looking for that truck. They know.”

  “But they’re leaving for the Eastern Front.”

  “Not all of them.” Gaubert shook his head. “Do you honestly think whoever went to the trouble of loading a troop truck with gold bars has forgotten? What happens if the fifth German survived?”

  Quiet except for the sputter of candles. Gaubert sensed a palpable fear vibrating in the barn. He had them now. “Or that a commander who suspected won’t answer to the chain of command? Someone’s neck is on the line.”

  “Gaubert’s right,” said Philbert. “It’s chaos now, but for how long? Let’s hide this in the old Bourgault vault in the cemetery.”

  Philbert, the wheat farmer, made sense when he put in the effort to think.

  “Out there?” Alain chopped at the dirt with the shovel. “What if someone steals it?”

  “From a decrepit, abandoned crypt? It’s in the old section no one visits.”

  “Anyone could walk right in.”

  “Anyone who knew it was there, Alain. So far it’s only us four.”

  “I agree with Gaubert,” Bruno said. “Alors, if anyone tried to hawk a bar of Nazi gold, they’d be shot on the spot. We keep it away from prying eyes until we have the chance to melt it down.”

  But Bruno’s inflection raised a sliver of distrust. They had something planned. Something Gaubert wouldn’t see coming.

  Paris · November 11, 1989 · Saturday, Noon

  Aimée stumbled barefoot into the toasty kitchen. Nodded at her grand-père, who poured her a steaming bowl of dark coffee and topped it with frothy hot milk.

  “Bonjour to you, too,” he said.

  She mumbled bonjour, scrunching her toes against the warm, sunlit tiled floor. Bleary-eyed, she plopped two lumps of brown sugar in the coffee, stirred, and sipped. She sat and tore off a piece of baguette, slathering it with butter from a blue pot. Farm fresh, from one of her grand-père’s friends at the market.

  Breakfast was peaceful in her father’s absence, since the two men didn’t have to sit reading their respective newspapers in stony silence. In the cavernous apartment, they usually managed to avoid each other. More and more, her grandfather spent time at his mistress’s.

  Her anatomy book sat on the table, next to her report with the photos arranged in a row.

  Her grandfather hung up his apron and ruffled Miles Davis’s ears. “Our Prince Charming has quite an appetite.”

  “Where did you find him, Grand-père?” She dropped the butter knife. “Dognapping’s an offense, you know.”

  “Dognapping? Pah, an abandoned, hungry, homeless thing, shivering on the quai?”

  “No doubt the owner’s looking for him. Put up signs, Grand-père.”

  “Leaving him in such a condition. That’s criminal. He needs a name.”

  “He has one,” she told him. “Miles Davis.”

  “Meels Daveez?”

  “Has a penchant for barking, too.”

  “Vraiment? I didn’t hear him.”

  Of course not, he’d calmed down when she’d let him curl up on her duvet. She couldn’t afford to get too close to him; he wasn’t hers. Like so much in her life.

  “Et alors, Meels Daveez burned my cassoulet, too?”

  “Désolée, you know my culinary skills.” She tried for an engaging grin, but it came out lopsided. She’d been so tired she’d fallen asleep again before she could clean everything up.

  “Don’t tell me you take care of your lab instruments like that?”

  She winced. Couldn’t go into that now. She dunked her buttered baguette in the milk froth, the crisp brown crust soaking up the sweet coffee. Rubbed off the coffee splattered on her anatomy book, pushed it aside with her palm.

  Her grand-père pointed to the photo of the man’s body in the water.

  She shuddered. “Last night. I found him like that. Floating by the quai, the same spot where they found Peltier, our relative. I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”

  “So this man took a bullet and got left for fish food, too?”

  She gulped down a mouthful of tartine. Nodded. “Remember at Le Soleil d’Or, when the police Zodiac sped by on the river? All those flics near us responding to an emergency?”

  Her grand-père pulled up the stool. Tore himself the heel off the baguette. “You’ve got my attention.” He threw a crumb at Miles Davis, who skittered across the floor, his nails clacking like tap shoes. “Start from when you left me with le petit prince.”

  She explained her conversation with the bartender, how things didn’t add up, the terrible coincidence of Peltier’s friends dining together the night before, the man’s bloated body. She showed him the photos.

  “Coincidence, Aimée? I don’t think so. Sounds planned and methodical. The killer knew this circle of me
n meets monthly. He’s knocking them off one by one. It’s got hallmarks—conforms to the previous MO. Symbolic, I’d say, ritualistic.”

  “Or the killer’s making it look symbolic to throw everyone off.”

  “You sound like your father,” he said.

  But she heard a quiet pride in his voice.

  “Passionate, too. As I was at your age.” Wistful, her grandfather played with the pepper grinder. “It’s smart to view a murder case from different sides. Investigate until it leads somewhere—or nowhere—then pursue the next angle.”

  Aimée’s hand slipped on the coffee bowl. “A murder investigation?” she choked. “It’s not my case. Elise hired Papa to find Suzy. I stepped in. C’est tout. I’ll finish the report and deposit the check.”

  How furious her father would be when he found out.

  “Of course.” Her grand-père nodded. Stood.

  “I mean it.”

  “Bon, I’m late for a minor masters auction at Drouot. A steal if my bid wins.”

  Why did her hands quiver? Her gaze kept being drawn to the photo on the quai.

  Her grandfather paused to look down at the photo again. “Aimée, you did notice the weapon, non?”

  “The weapon?” She looked closer. “There’s no gun, Grand-père.”

  “Come, come, you’re more observant than that.”

  “I see candy wrappers. I noticed he is wearing a prosthesis.”

  Her grand-père nodded. “Anything else?”

  “A water bottle.”

  Another nod. And then she remembered once overhearing some men at the police firing range talk about silencers.

  “You mean that plastic bottle was used as a silencer? This Vichy mineral bottle?”

  “And you don’t call that symbolic?”

  Her pager indicated one call. Her father? No, Martine, her best friend since the lycée who studied journalism at the Sorbonne. Martine could wait for a few minutes. She tried the Berlin hotel, heard a series of clicks.

  “Hotel . . .” Fuzz and buzzing, then the line clicked off.

  A bad connection. Had the falling of the Wall disrupted the lines? On her third attempt she got through.