Lisa Emmer Historical Thrillers Vol. 1-2 (Lisa Emmer Historical Thriller Series)

by Rob Swigart

  He wanted her to see something, but she couldn’t imagine what it was.

  The restaurant across the way was only open for dinner. The curiosity seekers had faded away, and the rhythm of the city gradually reasserted itself. People walked by. A car drifted up the street and disappeared around the corner.

  Lisa Emmer was just a woman in a Paris apartment idly looking out at the street.

  In the windows of the building opposite filmy curtains furled gently in the slight breeze. Along the top floor a series of planters bloomed crimson with geraniums. The roof sprouted the usual complement of satellite dishes and chimneys. In the kitchen directly opposite Lisa, a woman was preparing lunch. Once she glanced up without curiosity. Lisa lifted her hand and the woman nodded.

  It was completely ordinary, yet a few hours before, during the darkest hours of the night, Raimond Foix had coolly prepared a series of messages for her, knowing he was about to die. Then someone killed him. One or two of the messages she had understood. The easy ones, she thought. He was deep and subtle and he loved her. He was telling her something very important, and she didn’t know what it was.

  A dark shadow passed along the street, altering the quality of its colors, turning the vibrant geraniums abruptly gray and lifeless. She looked up. The sky was a flat monochrome. For some reason the increasing cloud seemed to bring more heat.

  When the doorbell rang she made her way to the landing. It must be the man she had spoken to, Rossignol’s assistant. Even from there she could see the tall man crossing the foyer to shake hands with Hugo had eyes as blue as her own and close-cropped blond hair over a lean, intelligent face. She approached them and Hugo turned. “Ah, Mademoiselle.”

  The newcomer extended his hand. “Lisa Emmer, I presume?”

  She had no choice but to shake it.

  Still holding her hand he turned back to Hugo. “You’re searching for him?”

  “His man said he left there at 11:12. He was very precise, this man, Alain, very precise, a man who attends to detail.”

  “Yes, Alain is conscientious.”

  “No one saw him after that,” Hugo continued. “The owner of a bar across the street reported a gray van parked in front of his building, but that’s all. It stayed only a short time and left. There was writing on the side but he didn’t remember what it said. I can tell you this matter has very high priority.”

  “Yes.” The blond man turned back to Lisa and said, “Steve Viginaire.”

  “So I guessed. You aren’t originally French, are you?”

  He smiled, showing even teeth. His good humor reached the corners of those sharp blue eyes. “You are astute. I’m Quebecois, from Montreal. Is my accent so strong?”

  She felt a rush of something unexpected, a sense that she was close to safety.

  She thought, this is insane, yet she found herself smiling back. He released her hand and it dropped to her side. Suddenly she didn’t know what to do with it, so she slid it into the pocket of her dress. “No, your accent is very light, lighter than mine, certainly, but there is a hint of someone not originally Parisian. Just enough, I think, to be exotic.”

  He bowed his head. “Too kind,” he murmured, and at once turned serious. “We share a problem, I believe. Our client, Raimond Foix, is dead, and now my boss is missing. The two events are certainly connected.”

  Hugo looked curiously from one to the other.

  “Raimond left a message,” Lisa said.

  Hugo said, “A tape he had wrapped around his desk lamp.”

  “Ah.” Steve hissed. “A skytale.”

  Lisa gave him a quizzical look. “You’re familiar with this?”

  “I’m a banker, therefore I’m interested in cryptography. The skytale is part of the history.”

  Hugo cleared his throat. “He said, ‘Listen to R.’ We assumed R meant M. Rossignol.”

  “I’m sure it did,” Steve agreed.

  Lisa and Steve appraised one another in the following silence, which grew awkward.

  Hugo excused himself with a slight bow, retreating toward the kitchen where they could hear Mathieu and Bernard talking on the radio.

  When the door had swung shut behind him, Lisa whispered, “That wasn’t the message I meant. There’s another one.”

  “Really?” If Steve was surprised it didn’t reach his eyes. “Where?”

  “Come upstairs.”

  In the study she leaned over the tape unrolled across the desk. “When I was a kid I loved logic puzzles, M. Viginaire. The kind that start out, The Brit lives in a red house, the Swede keeps dogs.” She smoothed the strip with a finger. “I was compulsive about solving them. Still am. Now I study old writing. Sometimes it’s literary, but mostly what I look at are letters written home by lonely soldiers, deeds to small properties, accounts, marriage proposals, invitations – daily stuff. Style of handwriting is important for dating these documents and to recognize the writer. So we look at how the letters were formed, the ‘hand.’ Raimond knew this and wrote some of the letters backwards. It’s like a logic puzzle.”

  “Backwards?” He bent over the tape. “I don’t see anything.”

  Lisa explained, “He made the strokes of certain letters in reverse, starting the lines where most people would end them. You can see a little blob at the end of the C, for instance. Most people would start at the top and curve down, but he began at the bottom and drew it back and up.”

  “Ah, yes, I see. So?”

  She took the crumpled scrap of paper from her bag and spread it out on the leather. “These letters are written that way, end to beginning: C L N O I E P Ο.”

  “An anagram,” Steve murmured. “You’re right, Mademoiselle Emmer.”

  “Lisa,” she responded reflexively, shaking her head. “It’s a warning.”

  “Warning?” Hugo asked from the doorway. “You did speak of another warning, Mademoiselle Emmer. Was it concealed in the message, the skytale?”

  Steve said, “Yes. He wrote some of the letters differently. They make an anagram that spells…”

  “It’s not important,” Lisa said anxiously.

  “No,” Steve agreed. “It’s not. It spells out ‘Nice loop,’ no doubt referring to the skytale itself.” He slipped the paper into the side pocket of his suit jacket.

  “Yes, that’s it!” Lisa gave Steve a thin smile. “Certainly, Captain Hugo. ‘Nice loop’ must mean the tape.”

  “That doesn’t sound much like a warning,” Hugo answered dubiously, entering the room.

  Lisa shrugged. “I think he was trying to tell us there’s something else about the tape, some chemical, perhaps, or even a recording.”

  “It will be analyzed,” Hugo said, holding out his hand.

  Lisa rolled up the tape and handed it to him. “Please tell me what you find.”

  Hugo bowed and left.

  “Thank you,” Lisa whispered.

  Steve nodded. “You’re welcome. Now perhaps you can explain to me why Dr. Foix would hide ‘No police’ in an already concealed message.”

  “Why did you tell me not to say more to the police? It seems you both had the same idea.”

  “I spoke of the privileged relationship between a banker and his client. This is something different. Why is he warning you against them?”

  She turned away. “I don’t know, M. Viginaire.”

  “Steve,” he said. “Please.”

  She turned back. Was he mocking her? “He had some reason, but I don’t know what it is. I do know he didn’t want me to tell the police too much. He was trying to tell me to be careful.”

  “Why would he do that? You’re innocent.”

  “Of course I am! But I’m pretty sure the police suspect me of killing Raimond.”

  Steve stared. “What?”

  She let out a long, ragged breath. “Because I know the door code. I have a key to this apartment. According to Hugo there was no sign of forced entry, which meant whoever got in here were professionals who knew how to get in undetected, or,
more probably, had a key and the code, which suggests someone who knew Raimond, someone who was close to him.”

  “I see.”

  She went to the window. The woman across the street had disappeared. She must be serving lunch. Lisa realized she was hungry.

  Could she trust Steve Viginaire?

  Did she have a choice? Her position was precarious. Raimond had tried to tell her something and she needed time to think. She straightened her shoulders and turned back.

  “Raimond had time to prepare these messages for me. He knew, I don’t know how, that the police would suspect me and was trying to warn me to keep things to myself. Now I’m concealing evidence, which must make me seem even guiltier. They would have to admit it’s unlikely I know how to blow up a door, but that only means I must have had an accomplice, perhaps someone in a wheelchair that left impressions in the carpet.” She lifted her shoulders and let them drop, suddenly drained. She went on tonelessly, “So we – I and my accomplice – broke into the study. I shot three times, hitting him twice, killing him in cold blood. Then I went home, I guess, and carried on with my day – or night. I must be a very cool customer.”

  “Cool customer?”

  Her laugh brought some animation back to her face. “Old American expression.”

  “Ah.”

  “I have to get out of here. I’m hungry and I need time to think, someplace away from Captain Hugo. I have to find out why Raimond was warning me and I don’t think I have much time.”

  “I know a place,” Steve said, taking her arm. They went down the stairs together. Voices came from the kitchen. Steve pushed open the door. “We’re going to get something to eat,” he said.

  Hugo came out. “All right,” he said. “I have your cell number, M. Viginaire. You two will remain together?”

  “Yes,” Steve said with a quick glance at Lisa.

  “Very well, for now, you’re free to go, but I’m quite certain we’ll need to see you again, Mademoiselle Emmer. I’ll call if I need you.”

  “Certainly, I’m at your service,” she said. She started toward the door, turned back, and added, “I want you to find whoever killed Raimond.”

  Hugo’s smile was bleak.

  They waited in silence for the elevator.

  “Do you know what a rossignol is in French?” he asked casually when the cage doors closed and the little box had started down.

  “A bird, a nightingale.”

  “Yes, of course.” He turned her to face him. “But it’s something else, too.”

  “What?”

  “Antoine Rossignol was cryptographer to Louis XIV. He was a master at breaking codes and ciphers, of opening locked doors. Since the seventeenth century a rossignol has been what you call in English a ‘lock pick’ or ‘skeleton key.’ ”

  Steve and Lisa turned toward the boulevard St. Germain as if propelled by the sound of the great green door of Foix’s apartment building clicking shut behind them.

  After they passed the entrance to the rue Bernard Palissy, a man in a tan raincoat dropped into formation a few paces behind them. When they turned right on the boulevard, he followed.

  At the big intersection at Odeon, Steve guided Lisa with a gentle hand on her elbow down the rue de l’École-de-Médecine toward the rue des Écoles. The follower remained twenty steps behind, looking like any member of the early lunch crowd in this popular tourist district.

  Steve stopped to admire a bookstore display. “Turn slowly,” he said. “Pretend you’re interested in books. Back there, at the corner you see the man, the one in the raincoat? He’s a cliché, one of Hugo’s hounds, I’d guess.”

  She nodded. “If I had any doubts I was a suspect, they’re gone now. Who else would wear an overcoat in June when everyone else carries an umbrella?”

  “Except us,” Steve grinned. “Shall we lose him?”

  “After lunch. I’m hungry, and if we eat he might get careless. I have a lot to think about and I can’t do it if they’re going to chase me all over the place. But do you have any money? I only have a few euros and I’m afraid my dining choices are on the side of affordability.”

  “I’m a banker,” Steve answered. “And I know just the place.” They crossed the rue Saint-Jacques, and turned onto the Impasse Chartière where they were confronted by the prow of a triangular six-storey building.

  “It looks like the Flatiron,” Lisa said. “Sort of.”

  “That would be in New York?”

  “Yes.”

  “This building is older,” Steve said. “Seventeenth century.”

  The entrance was framed in lush green vines. He indicated the sign by the door. “They say the Coupe-Chou, or in English literally the ‘cabbage-cutter,’ was a kind of razor. It seems that during the thirteenth century a barber nearby used to slit the throats of his clients and hand their bodies over to the butcher across the street to be made into paté. May I invite you to join me for lunch?” he added with a courtly bow.

  “Charming,” she replied. “I’d be delighted.” A few drops of rain fell and their pursuer took refuge in an entrance across the street. “Well,” she added, opening the door. “He has the raincoat, so I guess he can wait outside.”

  14.

  The windowless chamber was large and cold and dark. A dim electric bulb hanging from a ceiling lost in shadows was a poor substitute for the smoking torches that would have been here in another age. Somewhere water dripped and ran. Chaotic echoes, footsteps, muffled voices, a burst of raucous laughter, reverberated around the room.

  The man known as Rossignol was naked, a frail, worn man looking much older than his years. His white hair was disordered. His arms and ankles, with their prominent bones and thin, sagging flesh, were strapped to the thick wooden supports of a chair. His chin touched his bony chest and his eyes were closed.

  His head snapped back. He looked around in confusion, straining to get up.

  Inside the small circle of light the Dominican nun stood a few feet away. The glossy beads of a rosary passed rapidly between her fingers. She was staring at him.

  He stared back and nodded once. From then on he ceased to struggle.

  “For centuries now we have been forbidden to shed blood,” she began slowly, speaking English with overtones of East Texas. If the methodical deliberation of her words was designed to inspire dread, Rossignol gave no sign it was working.

  Only her face, framed severely by white wimple, form-fitting coif and stiff white headband, was visible, the lower part arranged into a bleak smile. “This prohibition against spilling blood,” she continued, “explains why so many heretics over the years were burned at the stake. No blood flows in fire.” She leaned forward and stared into his face. The beads of her rosary flowed relentlessly. The black veil above the headband fell alongside her head. Her eyes, behind yellow-tinted glasses, were blank ovals. “The blood…,” her tongue darted between her pale lips, “…goes up in smoke.”

  She leaned back with a sharp laugh and closed her eyes, as if relishing this moment.

  They snapped open. “Are you familiar with the Judas Chair?” She stabbed with her crucifix at a stool with a pointed iron pyramid in place of a seat. Vague figures stirred restlessly in the gloom beyond the circle of light.

  Rossignol lowered his chin to his chest in exhaustion.

  “In French it is called la veille,” she continued. “I understand this means the Night Watch.” She lingered over each word. The bleak smile returned. “The accused is lowered slowly onto the point. Quite painful, as you can imagine. The accused instinctively tightens the muscles of the anus to keep the point from penetrating. The examiner can adjust the amount of body weight brought to bear, varying the amount of pain. If the accused falls asleep and the muscles relax, the result is regrettable damage. Though it sheds no blood,” she added thoughtfully. “Not on the outside, at least.”

  Rossignol cleared his throat. “Historically, use of such a device is extremely doubtful,” he observed. “Even by the Inquisitio
n.”

  She barked once in what he presumed was a laugh. “We do not speak of history, we speak of the present. The Judas Chair exists; it is right there, not far away. The ropes above it are in place. The examiners are ready.”

  Rossignol said nothing.

  After a few moments she continued, “The disk we found in your pocket, the disk you collected from your apartment… this disk.” She produced it from a pocket in her habit and held it up. The tarnished bronze caught the dim light. “This is part of a fifteenth century enciphering device invented by Leon Battista Alberti.”

  “You’re very well informed.” His tone was dry.

  “We want the rest of it.” She put the disk away and resumed her rosary.

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “You will give it to us.”

  Though his thin chest rose and fell, he said only, “I’ll give you nothing.”

  She sighed. “Regrettable.” She produced a pistol from inside her habit with the same hand holding the rosary. “This is my Glock 17. I love this weapon. I know you saw what it did to the Pythos,” she stated. Her beads clicked against the metal. “We are thorough, you may be sure. This war is ending.”

  “I’m sorry?” Rossignol said. “What war? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She snapped the barrel against his kneecap. Her strength was such that the bone shattered with a dull, wet sound. She ignored Rossignol’s agonized writhing. “Don’t play with me. Foix was your client. He left you instructions and you retrieved the disk. You were going to give it to someone. Our two questions are simple: was it to the girl and where is the rest of the Alberti disk? The girl’s name, by the way, is Elizabeth Sybilla Emmer, thirty-two years old, born in Chicago. She has a doctorate in Classics and works at the Sorbonne. I believe she also does archaeological research in the Egyptian desert. She and Foix are not related, so why is she his heir? I guess that’s a third question,” she added thoughtfully. “But it’s less important than the others. If she is the heir and you were to give her the disk, then we will presume she knows where the rest of it is. Of course we will question her. If she knows anything, anything at all, she is dangerous and will be eliminated.”