Murder on the Champ de Mars

by Cara Black

  Chloé had woken up several times last night. Bleary-eyed, Aimée had consulted the bébé bible the mamans at yoga swore by, a book by Dr. Françoise Dolto. The respected pediatrician and psychologist insisted every bébé can sleep through the night, be trained to use a spoon and exhibit rudimentary table manners by six months old. Otherwise it was the parents’ fault. Well, clearly it was Aimée’s fault.

  The adamant Dr. Dolto insisted that one needed to talk to one’s baby and explain to her that she shouldn’t wake up at night. Reason with a teething six-month-old? Aimée was supposed to practice la pause: “pause a bit” before going to the baby instead of responding immediately to her cries, because the child needs to learn patience. And she was meant to try that with her little siren wailing at 3 A.M.?

  Now, with her two double espressos downed and the world starting to take on some clarity, Aimée had the paper open in front of her, Chloé nestled at her side with cold compresses soothing her teething gums.

  She noted that the article about Drina’s abduction took up part of Le Parisien’s front page. In the sidebar were photos of Radu and his extended tribe filling the clinic’s courtyard, human rights groups brandishing placards condemning ethnic inequality. Another photo showed some anti-elder abuse activists marching to the prime minister’s residence, l’Hôtel Matignon, a few blocks away. Bravo, René. The headline was splashy: GYPSY KIDNAPPING SCANDAL ON PRIME MINISTER’S DOORSTEP IN EXCLUSIVE 7TH ARRONDISSEMENT.

  Exaggerated, and not the most intellectual take, but it worked. She loved Le Parisien.

  The kidnapped woman, the article read, had passed away during the night, shortly after she was located by authorities at a different hospital from the one she had disappeared from. Did she die as a result of trauma from her abduction? Her doctor, a Dr. Edouard Estienne, had left for a medical conference in Prague and could not be reached for comment.

  Convenient.

  The coverage went on. There was on ongoing inquiry into the death of a young manouche man reported to be her adoptive son in a stabbing nearby. Police were investigating a known hate group in the area.

  The sick feeling washed over her again.

  Nicu’s young life cut short. All her fault.

  What would her father have thought? His daughter had ended the life of the little boy they had brought Christmas presents to. Gotten that little boy killed because she was so selfishly determined to answer her own questions.

  She had to pick up the pieces, fit them together into a whole picture. Otherwise, Nicu had died for nothing. But even with Drina dead, Aimée was hardly out of danger. Priorities, she reminded herself. First she had to take care of the rest of her life.

  After leaving Chloé with Babette, Aimée finished the addendum to the proposal for de Brosselet and emailed it to René. Plenty of time to prepare for the appointment with the attorney that afternoon.

  What to wear? Earth mother or businesswoman?

  She chose the latter. Opened her armoire, slid the hangers draped with vintage Givenchy and worker’s overalls aside in favor of a Dior pencil skirt and an agnès b. silk blouse just back from the dry cleaner’s. A slim tuxedo jacket, silk tights and heels completed the outfit.

  She returned to the old Paris Match, still spread open on her floor. On her hands and knees, she scrutinized Pascal Leseur’s baby picture, putting it next to the one of Nicu in Djanka’s arms and then squinting to see if she caught a resemblance. Hard to tell. She looked again, studying the background. Something jumped out at her in the baby photo of Nicu. Something she’d seen before.

  She turned the page of Paris Match to the picture of the Leseur family château, the cemetery on the grounds. She recognized it now. Those matching garden urns that topped the stone wall, bearing the letters LS and the Leseur family crest. The urns on the wall in Paris Match were dead ringers for the urns in the background of the “family” photo of Djanka, baby Nicu and Pascal. Proof the photo had been taken in the Leseur garden.

  She shivered at the implication: Pascal Leseur had been Nicu’s father. She grabbed her phone. Time to talk to Pascal’s brother.

  Roland Leseur’s administrative assistant took her appointment request with an I’ll-get-back-to-you-don’t-hold-your-breath attitude. For now, Aimée would call Martine.

  But first she checked in with Morbier.

  “Leduc, I’m going into court,” he said, his voice gruff. “Another day of testimony at le Tribunal de Grande Instance. I’m the main witness, and I’m turning off my phone. If my contact turns up something I’ll let you know. Meanwhile you’ll have to hold your horses.”

  She’d found Drina herself without his help. “Might want to take a look at Le Parisien, Morbier.”

  But he’d clicked off.

  She fought off her irritation. Hold your horses. Such an old-fashioned phrase.

  But … horses. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? Going through her father’s old file, she took out the military cadet’s brief statement and the crime-scene photos of Djanka Constantin’s body in the Invalides moat. The École Militaire, only a Métro stop away, held the military stables. It was where she’d learned to ride.

  She made several calls. Revised her schedule for the morning, confirmed her afternoon appointment with the lawyer, and shot off an email with instructions to Maxence before heading for the Métro. After a twenty-minute ride, she handed in her ID at the sentry post outside the École Militaire’s limestone façade, pocked with bullet holes from the fleeing German soldiers in ’44.

  The complex was a living museum. The École Militaire had been founded by Louis XV, with a nudge from Madame de Pompadour, as an academic college for officers from poor families. The campus had mushroomed, overtaking the farmlands of Grenelle to conduct training maneuvers on what would become the Champ de Mars, named for Mars, the Roman god of war. Napoléon, who had been a cadet here, had graduated in one year instead of the usual two. Or so went the legend as passed on to Aimée by her riding instructor.

  Horses clip-clopped over the cobbles by the stables, their breath came out in puffs of steam in the crisp air. The aroma of fresh hay by the fenced dirt riding ring reminded her of Thursday lessons after lycée. Little had changed.

  Upstairs in the office, Commandant Thiely—her former instructor, now in charge—grinned. “How’s my former equestrian?”

  She kissed him on both cheeks. “Wondering about a little future equestrian of my own. Chloé’s only six months old, but I know how much competition there is for places.”

  He grinned. “Wait until she’s fourteen, Aimée. I’ll make sure she’s a shoo-in.” He glanced at his watch, a reminder he was squeezing her in. “On the phone you mentioned an investigation?”

  He sat down, gestured toward a thick-legged chair.

  “I’ll take but a minute of your time.” She sat and put the crime-scene photos on his desk. “Nineteen seventy-eight. Remember this?”

  He pulled down his glasses from the top of his head. Clucked his tongue. “The moat at les Invalides.” He nodded. “One of my cadets found her. Gave a statement.”

  “I know.” She leaned forward. “But I need more. I need to talk with him.”

  “He made commander in the army.” Thiely shook his head. “We lost him in a NATO ambush in Sarajevo.”

  There went that idea.

  “Is there anything you can tell me, any detail you remember?”

  “That’s a long time ago.” He sat up straight in his hard-backed chair. “You know I’m retiring after thirty years of service, Aimée. Best years of my life.”

  Was he brushing her off? Perhaps not, but from his tone she sensed something else going on.

  “Do you remember anything about this cadet’s reaction to finding the body?” she said. “A brutal strangulation, a young woman’s body discarded in the moat. Did any fingers point to him or other cadets?”

  “Cadets at l’École Militaire?” he said, his brow furrowed. “You don’t shit in your front yard—sorry—with a four-star g
eneral living right across the street.”

  She nodded. “What theory went around?”

  “Didn’t make sense.”

  He did remember. “In what way?”

  A sigh. “What’s it to you, Aimée?”

  “My father investigated this case. Came up with nothing. There’s been a recent murder, and there’s a connection.” She’d keep it to that.

  Another sigh. “To us—nothing official, mind you—this had a paramilitary flavor.” Thiely tented his fingers. “Lots of rumors. Des barbusses.”

  “Barbusses?”

  “That’s what we called secret agents, hired guns for dirty jobs back then.”

  “What we’d call a black-ops contractor now?”

  He shrugged. “A botched job. Bad intel, that’s what I heard, but back then, as now, the bureaucrats ran the show. Those know-it-all Napoléons with degrees,” Thiely said, disgust in his voice. “The ones who take a course and equate that with ground and field experience. A military classroom’s no match for the reality.” Thiely snorted. “But that’s the water we swim in now.”

  Bureaucrats running the show, warring factions in the military hierarchy? Aimée wondered how that fit. If it did.

  “Any name associated with the rumors?” Aimée asked.

  “My cadet might have heard. But too late to ask him now. If there was something, Aimée, you don’t want to know.”

  “I do want to know,” she said. “My father investigated this woman’s murder—”

  “Not for long,” Thiely interrupted. “They shut down the investigation.”

  Thiely was telling her something.

  “Meaning?”

  “A homicide on military ground warrants a military investigation,” he said. “But we never heard of one.”

  Odd all right. No time now to sift through the implications, but she made a mental note to revisit.

  “One more thing,” she said. “At that time, had you noticed Gypsies around here?”

  “Here? No way. Not then or now. Except those protesters, some longhairs who want to set up camp for them on the Champ de Mars.”

  “So you’re saying a mercenary might have used this as a dumping ground?”

  “Old rumors, which I shouldn’t have shared.” Thiely stood. “I have to get going. I’ve got a stable full of ninety-plus skittish colts to check on: their feed, their hooves. And I’m just talking about the cadets.” He smiled.

  Something came to her. “Sorry, last thing. According to this, your cadet discovered her body at six A.M. on a morning ride. No guards on the perimeter?”

  He shook his head. “The café tabac’s still there, kitty-corner. I do remember that the café owner, questioned at the time, had noticed nothing.”

  “Think of the weather conditions.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “If it had rained that night, she’d be soaking.” Aimée pointed to the photo. “But the report states her clothes were damp where they’d been in contact with the grass. Don’t those sparkles look like dew on her hair?”

  Thiely nodded. “Always dew on that grass. The horses try to lick it.”

  “Merci.”

  AIMÉE DOUBLE KNOTTED her scarf against the wind off the Champ de Mars. She took out her phone, called Maxence at the office. “Can I put you on hold, Aimée?” he asked.

  No time. “I’ll call back and leave a message. I want you to check something out.”

  That done, she jumped on the Number 28 bus at the École Militaire and rode for two stops on the long, tree-lined block. At les Invalides, La Tour Maubourg, she descended and walked along the fawn-colored brick-topped wall to the small square facing the moat. The weak sun broke through scattered puffs of clouds. The eighteenth-century cannons, verdigrised with age, pointed toward the Seine. She used to climb up on them; every kid did. On her right, along the grass-bottomed moat, she recognized the lichen-covered stone wall—and the corner recess where Djanka’s body had been dumped. Little had changed in twenty years. Aimée took out the photo, imagined her father when he was called to the scene, what he’d have thought, how he’d have looked at the crime scene. Tried to think how he would.

  The ringing of her phone cut into her thoughts.

  “Aimée, I’ve got something to tell you,” said Martine, her voice breathy, excited.

  “So your contact at Le Monde bit?”

  “Meet me at fifty rue de Varenne.”

  In Martine parlance, that signaled urgent. Aimée scanned the boulevard for a taxi. Saw one and waved to it.

  “Tell me Le Monde’s interested in covering Drina’s abduction and you’ll make my day,” she said, opening the taxi door.

  “Working on it. Got a call scheduled with a senior editor. And I’m learning Italian.”

  “Italian? For a moment I thought you were in love.”

  “That too.”

  AIMÉE HURRIED PAST the ten-meter Ionic columns and over the checkered marble tile of the neoclassical former Hôtel de Galliffet, now the Istituto Italiano di Cultura. A gem of an eighteenth-century mansion in the heart of Faubourg Saint-Germain. Its secluded lawned garden, fringed by marigolds and purple hollyhocks, took up most of a block.

  Smells of something wonderful drifted from an open window. She was starving. Doctor’s orders required her to eat three meals a day while nursing. How could she have forgotten?

  She followed her nose to the cooking school downstairs, a long room with an open window. Shuddering almond-tree branches dropped pale pink blossoms through the windows and onto the old floor tiles. Martine, wearing an apron, grinned from next to a blue AGA stove.

  “Hungry?” Martine spooned a heap of something from an earthenware casserole onto a blue faience plate on a long counter. “Try this white asparagus—it’s only in season for three weeks—with a farrotto primavera with prosciutto. I’m experimenting for my class project.”

  Aimée perched on a stool, inhaled the tomato, caramelized onion and basil smells.

  “This better be good, Martine.”

  “Try it.”

  “I mean whatever you dragged me out here to tell me.” She grabbed a fork and took a bite of the farrotto; it melted on her tongue. “Amazing. I’m starving.”

  Martine’s cheeks bloomed. She was wearing minimal makeup for once, and her streaked blonde hair was pulled back with a clip. “Eat.”

  Aimée’s best friend since the lycée, a career-driven journalist, had turned into an Italian mother before her very eyes.

  She obeyed. Finished off the whole plate.

  “I broke up with Gilles,” Martine said.

  About time. His ex-wife lived in the flat below them and would barge in with annoying regularity.

  “So who’s putting roses in your cheeks?”

  “Gianni,” she said. “He’s delicious. Last month I was covering Italo-French relations. Met Gianni here at the cultural institute.” Martine tore off part of a ciabatta and put it next to Aimée’s plate. “Long story, but after a big fight with Gilles yesterday, a last-straw kind of thing, I packed up lock, stock and armoire.”

  “And you’re just telling me now?” She couldn’t ignore the hurt spreading inside her. Didn’t they tell each other everything?

  “What was I supposed to do, come and stay with you while you have Melac and his witch woman on your back?” Martine took her hand. “I’m at my aunt’s around the corner on rue du Bac.”

  “Handy. You’re welcome chez moi anytime. Chloé’s mostly sleeping through the night.” She chewed the bread. “I’m also considering switching from espresso to cocaine.”

  Martine nudged her and pointed out the window. “Look, there he is. Gianni’s showing some diplomats around.”

  A voice came wafting in from the tall windows: “Adjoining the embassy you’ll find the cultural institute which houses the Italian library as well as exhibitions, musical soirées and cooking classes. Here, in the former residence of Talleyrand, where he met a young Napoléon …”

  The tall, broa
d-shouldered man with black curly hair waved to their window and flashed a big, white-toothed smile at Martine. Aimée blinked. He could have stepped out of Italian Vogue or L’Uomo.

  “Not bad, eh, Aimée?”

  “He fills out the Armani suit, Martine.” She tapped her forehead. “Anything up here?”

  “Enough.” Martine grinned. “And don’t worry, I checked. He’s got a cousin.”

  Did the cousin look like him? Aimée wondered.

  “I’m trying to engineer the four of us having dinner this week.”

  Aimée felt a flush up her neck. Martine was always trying to set her up. How long had it been? Between Chloé and starting back at work, she rated sleep higher than romance.

  Aimée wiped her mouth. “I’m all for your new relationship if it means you’ll cook like this for me.”

  The warmth and aromas gave the school’s kitchen a homey feel. She looked around at the glassed-off section with its stacked ovens, tendrils of tagliatelle in the baking area hanging from racks, and a chef deep in discussion with his white-aproned students.

  Maybe she could take a cooking class. But then maybe she could go to the moon—if only she had the time.

  “Alors, met with Maître Benosh yet?”

  “You knew?”

  Martine’s eyes narrowed. “She’s the best. As Chloé’s godmother, I recommended her to Morbier.”

  Interesting that Morbier had passed her off as his contact.

  She couldn’t keep anything from Martine for long. Told her how Donatine had waylaid her and she’d been dragged into a conversation.

  “Don’t miss the appointment. Mon Dieu, she’s booked for weeks, months.” Martine set down her wooden spoon. “But back to the Italians. I can count on you for dinner with Gianni and his cousin, non?”

  “Nervous, Martine?”

  “Can I?”

  Aimée still hadn’t found her father’s killer, or Nicu’s; she faced a probable custody battle with Melac, and her ribs ached from landing on the bakery truck.