Murder on the Quai

by Cara Black

  Clément shook his head. “Who says it does? Terrible things happened then. We’d hear shots at night, machine guns across the river in Givaray.” His eyes moistened. “The Germans executed sixty villagers one morning.” Clément shrugged. “My parents never talked about it. No one did.”

  “Sixty people executed, the mayor shot, and what—everyone goes silent?” She shook her head in disbelief. “I’ve heard villages are like fishbowls; everyone knows everyone’s business.”

  “Don’t you understand? Times were different. People shut up, kept their heads down. No one wanted to be next.”

  “Next?”

  Clément shrugged again. His whole generation had such chips on their shoulders—always talking about how they’d gone hungry, worn wooden shoes stuffed with newspaper, how her generation wouldn’t understand, blah blah, on and on. If she asked questions, she’d get a long sigh and a hooded look, a murmured you wouldn’t understand. Their past only dribbled out in unguarded moments—a detail here or there when memory took over. Move on, she wanted to shout, the war ended more than forty years ago.

  She would try again—ask him specific questions.

  “Were messieurs Peltier, Royant, Dufard, and Baret involved in the Resistance?”

  “I was a kid. What would I know?”

  A kid, but not dumb or mute.

  “But didn’t you say they told you the mayor had been a traitor? That the Resistance had shot him?”

  “Like I said, I was a kid.”

  She needed to ask him something more specific, try to draw him out. She thought back to Baret’s hand, those prosthetic fingers. “Do you remember Baret? Would he have lost his hand or arm in the war?”

  “Came from the next village, a jeweler. Lost his arm at the Somme, like my uncle. The villages were full of war-wounded when I grew up.”

  “What about after the war? Has something come out recently?”

  Clément paused in thought. “There were things the grown-ups talked about when they didn’t think we could hear.”

  “What did the grown-ups say?”

  “Pah, the usual. The mayor’s wife slept around, their son wasn’t his, that the mayor had knifed the Boches over a black-market deal, or maybe he knifed them for making time with his wife . . . things like that.”

  For a kid he’d heard a lot.

  Village gossip, a necessary evil since time immemorial. Gossip equaled currency, clout in the village. Sounded like this gossip’s roots had taken hold and deepened over the decades. Still, why did it matter now?

  “What happened to his wife?”

  “She blamed the villagers for killing him. Un peu fou—you know, not right in the head. They locked her up in the loony bin, my mother said once. Never came out.”

  Convenient.

  The rain lashed the window. A steady drumming pelted the roof tiles—a veritable downpour.

  The mayor’s story connected to Peltier and Baret’s execution-style murders—she was sure of it, although she didn’t know how. Either that, or someone wanted to make it look like it connected. And the gypsy taxi was involved. She shuddered thinking of it.

  Someone was lying. Had lied for years.

  A thought formed in her mind, indistinct.

  “And their child?”

  Clément shrugged. “A class clown, accident prone—that I remember. My mother pitied the boy. No clue what happened to him.”

  Aimée tried to make sense of Clément’s words. “Why would someone want to kill messieurs Peltier and Baret in the same way the mayor was killed?”

  “How should I know? You’re not accusing me, are you?” said Clément. “Plenty of others saw the mayor dead.”

  “Then . . . why is this happening now?”

  His face sagged. “There were some who made money in the war. That’s what my parents said. What everyone says to this day—at least, the old ones who are still around.”

  Aimée turned this over in her head. “You mean wheat farmers who somehow made out during the war? Suddenly became wealthy?”

  “Rich as Croesus, the old ones say,” said Clément. “Whoever Croesus is.”

  “Croesus?” She searched her memory. “That’s right, the legendary Greek—he’s the wealthy king who first minted gold coins.”

  She saw Clément stiffen.

  The phone rang downstairs.

  “That’s Elise.” Clément hurried away and clattered down the stairs. She put on dry socks and her low-heeled Valentino boots and caught up with him. He was pulling on his overcoat.

  “Elise’s car’s stuck in the mud,” he said.

  “I’ll join you.”

  “Turn the heater on. I’ll be right back.” Then, in a blast of wet wind, he’d rushed out the door. She heard his battered Renault start up.

  Great.

  On second thought, she wouldn’t mind warming up—and it was a good chance to delve into the Peltiers’ past. With the place to herself and any luck, maybe she’d be able to find more about this corporation whose info she’d taken from the bookstore’s sleek office.

  She fiddled with the furnace controls until it rumbled to life and heat radiated from the floor vents.

  Her stomach growled. Hungry even after the rabbit her grandfather had packed for her, she peered in the pantry. Flour, rice, salt—the staples, along with glass jars of Petrossian caviar, foie gras, Fauchon tins . . . a gourmet treasure trove. One of those big jars of caviar would cost more than the rent of someone’s Parisian apartment.

  She helped herself from the tin of Hediard truffle biscuits. Picked up a newspaper lying on the faded-green linoleum floor.

  La Gazette de la Loire, dated this past October. It was folded open to an article headlined Discovery in the Cher: German WWII convoy truck found submerged near old mill of Chambly-sur-Cher.

  Not that uncommon. Farmers found war relics all the time, unexploded ordnance and even active toxic mustard gas, left in fields since the First World War.

  The military truck’s ID had been tracked—it had been bound for Portugal, bearing “recovered contents” of a German train, and had disappeared during a bombing raid on Vierzon. In the article a Georges Ducray, a Givaray resident who was quoted at length, insisted the sunken truck was linked to the execution of sixty villagers by Germans in 1942.

  This article was only a month old—why hadn’t Clément mentioned it?

  After her snack, Aimée started snooping. The chocolate-brown file cabinets yielded little besides old wheat crop reports. But according to these, Bruno Peltier’s fields belonged to a cooperative. How had he made all his money?

  Outside the kitchen window a light shone in the opposite building. Two figures were silhouetted against the curtains. Even in the pounding rain she could make out their raised arms. A fight? She unlatched the window hook a few centimeters. Inhaled the dampness, the scent of molding leaves.

  The room across the way had gone dark.

  About to turn back, she heard raised voices over the splashing. What sounded like two men arguing. Was she hearing what she wanted to hear, or had one of the men said the name Baret? She leaned forward. Tried to hear, to understand, catch a phrase.

  Impossible in the pounding rain. Concentrate, she had to concentrate. A glass shattered. “Imbécile.” The slam of a door.

  Then quiet, apart from the splattering rain outside.

  She retraced her steps as she heard the grinding gears of the Renault. Ran upstairs to get a sweater from her bag, and to pop a painkiller. Back down in the warm kitchen, she found Elise huddled at the table. Clément had his arm over her shoulder.

  Elise’s tear-swollen lids, the rings under her wide-set eyes, her drawn, pale skin made her look as if she’d aged overnight.

  Clément looked up, his brows knit. “Snooping around, kid?”

  “Shush, Clément. Tell me wh
at you’ve discovered about Suzy, Aimée.”

  “It’s all in my report. Isn’t that why you wanted me to come?”

  “Your report? But I thought your father was taking this on—”

  “Time’s essential, Elise,” she interrupted, afraid of where that was going. Worried she wouldn’t get Elise enough in her debt to ask about her mother. “It’s all here and with photos.”

  Elise opened the file Aimée put down on the table. Thumbed through, her fingers shaking.

  “So Suzy’s connected to my father’s murder?” Elise said.

  “Not that I found, Elise.”

  For a good fifteen minutes Aimée explained her surveillance report, detailing her activities up to her visit to the hunting bookstore and finding the agenda for the meeting.

  “Eh, what’s all this mean?” Clément snorted. “You solved nothing. Child’s play.”

  Aimée seethed. He gave her no credit for all her work, much less recognized the professional quality of her documentation.

  But Elise, not Clément, had hired her, and she’d delivered.

  “If you’ll just sign this contract, please. The job was to find Suzy and talk to her,” she said to Elise. “I found Suzy and talked to her. It’s all in the report. Now can we talk about my mother?”

  “Mother?” Elise looked up, startled. “What do you mean?”

  What did she mean? “But you knew my mother. Told me there were photos.”

  Elise expelled air from her mouth. “I met her once.”

  Aimée’s stomach tightened. “What?”

  “If you can call it that,” said Elise. She uncorked a bottle and poured herself a glass of wine. “You know, we never kept in touch. Your family had the nerve to shun us over Papa’s uncle’s illegitimate son. A baby who died.”

  Hadn’t her grand-père hinted at this? Yet how was she related exactly?

  “That’s nothing to do with my mother, Elise.”

  “I met her once at a resto. You were in a stroller.” She shrugged.

  “But you said there were photos. You knew she was an American.” Desperate, she was desperate.

  “A big argument, that’s what I remember. Years-old saga of the Leducs against the Peltiers, your grandfather’s complaints about the baby’s mother and support.” Elise shrugged. “Your parents left.”

  “But you led me to believe . . .”

  “Sorry, Aimée, I didn’t want to bring all that back up. Everyone stormed out. C’est tout.”

  Aimée’s shoulders sagged in exhaustion. Defeat. She’d been so foolish to hope. She stuffed the bitter pill down.

  “Renaud told me you met him last night. He’s coming here—wants to help.”

  “Then I’m finished here,” said Aimée.

  “Please stay, Aimée. Désolée, good job, you found Suzy. You’ve done better than the police.”

  She had that right. And look where it got her—attacked by a taxi driver and stranded in a country downpour.

  Elise shook her head. “Forgive me, but stay, please. I don’t know what to do now. My mother is so unwell. She keeps saying the fifth Boche came back.”

  “Boche?”

  Clément nodded. “That’s what we called the Germans behind their backs. There were other names, too—Fritz, Kraut, a Hermann. The worst was a chleuh.”

  The fifth German? Another war connection? Aimée thought of the German reprisals, the sixty dead. “Does this figure in the murder of your father and now Monsieur Baret?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Someone followed me to the bookstore tonight and attacked me, Elise. It’s dangerous.”

  “Attacked you? Mon Dieu.” Elise’s hand flew to her mouth.

  Aimée explained what happened. “But Royant and Dufard, Elise, they’re next. You need to talk with them.”

  “But it’s too late.”

  Aimée gasped. “You mean . . .”

  “They pulled out as we drove in.”

  Late again.

  Chambly-sur-Cher · November 12, 1989

  Sunday Morning

  After Clément left for the night, a distraught Elise had uncorked another good Médoc, and her words had flowed like the wine. She had told Aimée about her childhood boarding school in Montreal, how she’d stayed in Canada for university and then taught economics. She had only come back to France permanently two months ago, when her father had insisted she return home to run the family investments.

  From what Aimée could understand, that’s what the meeting was about—to incorporate the shareholdings this group of men held together. After her father’s passing, the aging members wanted her, with the accountant’s assistance, to assume daily operations out of the bookstore which they owned jointly. But Elise had passed out before Aimée got the full story.

  There were still so many questions to answer. There were still two men in danger and a dangerous killer on the loose. Aimée had the headache to prove it.

  She couldn’t leave this undone—she had to figure it out one way or the other. So she’d come up with a course of action while Elise slept.

  First thing Sunday morning, she tried the hospital. Madame Peltier remained under observation and couldn’t be disturbed, or so the nurse told her. A shame—Aimée was certain the woman would have been able to answer some of her questions. She must have known something about her husband’s affairs.

  She gave it another try, called the hospital, this time pretending to be Elise and asking for the ward directly.

  “But I just spoke with you, didn’t I?” said the nurse.

  Great. “Look, I’m sorry, but it’s important. It’s vital that I reach Madame Peltier.”

  “And I told you she’s taken medication. Impossible. Doctor’s orders: she’s not to be disturbed.”

  Click as the nurse hung up.

  Next, she left messages at the Berlin hotel—still no answer from her father. Had he found her mother’s secret Stasi files? Would he tell her if he had?

  She changed the bandage on her smarting knee, donned her boots, wrapped a wool scarf around her neck and headed to the river bank Clément had pointed out.

  Those feelings she’d been suppressing took over. The anger. How her mother hadn’t been there to cuddle with her in the window seat, reading stories and stroking their old chat, Émilie. The birthdays and graduations marked by her mother’s absence—Aimée’s classmates winged by beaming parents while Aimée stood alone, her father inevitably arriving late from a stakeout.

  No time for a pity party. Feeling sorry for yourself gets you nowhere, her grand-mère would say; put one foot in front of the other and move on.

  Her mother had. Never a word, a photo, a message.

  After her mother had first left, their old neighbor Madame Bouvier would invite Aimée over for chocolat chaud every month, and she put out paper and pencils so Aimée could draw pictures, write stories about her day. Madame Bouvier said she loved hearing her stories and shared them with a lady who lived far away and missed France. Aimée did her best to make the stories funny.

  One day she’d gone to Madame Bouvier’s as always and a man had answered the door. A man who spoke French with a strange accent. Madame Bouvier had left, no idea where she’d gone, he said. And what did she talk about with Madame Bouvier, what did they do together?

  Something made Aimée lie. Oh, we just talked about my piano lessons, she said. Madame helped her with mathematics sometimes. She ran away when the man asked her where she lived.

  The chill brought her back to the Cher riverbank. She walked in the drizzle, searching for the spot where Clément had found the mayor. Bullfrogs croaked and her boots sank in the spongy loam and sodden birch leaves. She doubted she’d find any trace after forty years. Still, her father always insisted on revisiting the crime scene—to put yourself in that time and place and imagine. Her
imagination stalled on this damp, overcast morning.

  Here on the riverbank in 1942, the mayor, Alphonse Gaubert—rumored to be a German collaborator, a traitor—had been shot in the head execution-style. More than forty years later, two of the four men who’d found him had been murdered in the same way on the quai in Paris. A symbolic reenactment, a message?

  Clément, then a young boy, the eyewitness—she’d put his name in the suspect column, along with Dufard and Royant, the survivors who’d fled. But in her head, she could hear her father asking why. What was the present-day motive?

  Her mind went back to last night. Elise, in her wine-induced rambling, had mentioned Madame Jagametti, the woman Aimée had met on the train. Aimée hadn’t been able to get anything further from Elise before she’d passed out. Better find out what the connection might be. One more try before she caught the train back home.

  Bertrand, the grandson, answered Madame Jagametti’s door. Aimée guessed she was a few years older than him.

  “Bonjour. May I speak with madame?”

  He took in her cowboy boots, leg warmers, the long shearling coat and smirked.

  “Grand-mère’s at church.”

  “Bon, I’ll wait.”

  She wiped her boots on the mat, stepped inside before he could stop her. She spotted the open books on the kitchen table and the Tetris showing on the télé screen. She realized she’d caught him playing video games instead of studying. Good, a way to get him to talk.

  “Studying for le bac is a real grind. I almost had to take it twice.”

  He stared at her. “You don’t look like most Parisians who come down to mix with the peasants.”

  She laughed. His envy was as obvious as the brand-new Converse sneakers he wore. “Parisian rats like me go for the dark side, mon ami. I’m here to try to find out about an old murder that happened here during the war. That’s what I want to ask your grand-mère about.”

  He shrugged. Bored.

  “Don’t suppose you’ve heard anything?”

  “Why should I tell you if I did?”

  She glanced around the house. A few expensive pieces—a period chair in the sitting room, in the kitchen a sparkling state-of-the-art stove. A pile of records by the high-end stereo. Heavy metal mostly, and Styx. She shrugged. “Maybe you’d like tickets to the Palladium next week. Styx.”