Murder in the Latin Quarter

by Cara Black

  “Call me when you do.” She placed the sugar wrapper with her number on the table and walked out.

  After a few blocks, she stopped and leaned against a stone wall to catch her breath. Her pulse raced. Edouard wanted Benoît’s killer, she needed to find Mireille, and she hoped they weren’t after the same person.

  Tuesday Afternoon

  “PORCELLUS, MADEMOISELLE,” said the Ecole Nor-male Supérieure administrator.

  Latin for pig. Aimée remembered that much. But what did that have to do with Professeur Benoît?

  Looking up from the university directory, the administrator squinted at Aimée through thick glasses. “Professeur Azacca Benoît is . . . was a world authority on pigs. Renowned.”

  “Of course,” she said, blinking back her surprise. Her gaze went to the glass door open to the Ecole Normale Supérieur’s courtyard: manicured hedges, gravel paths, and busts of the learned adorned what had once been an old convent enclosing a spacious garden. The Ecole Normale Supérieur, like many of the Grandes Ecoles, was housed in an ancient edifice in the Latin Quarter. Yet for all the school’s prestige, she thought, the building could use a paint job. The walls had faded to a burnt brown-yellow; it looked run-down.

  “I assume he was on the faculty,” she said.

  “The Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique sponsored Professeur Benoît’s research. He did his lab work in the Collections Osteologiques Anatomie Comparée,” he said. “As a visiting lecturer, he conducted one seminar a term.”

  She’d just come from there! “You’re sure? A seminar on pigs?”

  “We were eagerly awaiting completion of his statistical survey with respect to the comparative anatomy of small hoofed animals in the twentieth century.”

  Talk about obscure!

  “Was his seminar well attended?” she couldn’t help but ask.

  “The flic asked that, too,” she was told.

  The administrator shut the thick directory.

  Laughter erupted in the courtyard corner where several students had gathered. Belted Levi’s, short hair, clean white shirts: typical normaliens, anything but normal. And very unlike the tousled intellectual Sorbonne type. “Just a tapir!“ one was saying; “they never let you forget it.”

  Tapir meant tutor in normalien argot. She’d worked with a tapir once, sweating out a physics course. Many normaliens became politicians, like Pompidou, or scientists, such as Pasteur, or philosophers, like Sartre.

  “I’d like to speak with someone who worked with him.”

  “We’ve cancelled his seminar. Professeur Rady, the department head, is out today.”

  Before memories dimmed, conversations and details were forgotten, she had to find out more about Benoît. “Here’s my card; please ask him to call me.”

  The man leaned forward to take it. “Academia’s cut-throat, but one never thinks. . . .” he confided.

  Aimée paused in mid-step. “Cut-throat?”

  “You know, publish or perish.” Behind his thick glasses, his eyes were shuttered. “The competition is intense. However, in the professor’s category, that was not a consideration.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “As I said, Professeur Benoît was renowned in his field. He delivered papers, wrote definitive books, consulted on economic programs. He was beyond that kind of competition.”

  The phone panel lit up and he reached to answer it. “If you’ll excuse me. . . .”

  “What about the professor’s lab? Can I get a name of some-one he worked with?”

  “I’m sorry. That’s all the information I can give you.”

  Over the Ecole Normale Supérieur’s portal in gold letters was the date of the Revolutionary government’s founding of the school, 9 Brumaire, année 11.* Once it had admitted every applicant, all citizens being equal. But not now. Outside, in the hot street, Aimée fanned herself. Pockets of air were hemmed in by thick-walled buildings lining quiet narrow streets threading the quartier. A lone child’s voice drifted from an open upstairs window, followed by the clicking of a metronome and the notes of a violin scale.

  Resolute, she quickened her pace. Several streets later she found herself on rue Mouffetard, which was thronged with milling shoppers. Once this had been an old Roman road, the artery leading to Italy. Now it was a steep market street lined with two- and three-story slanting buildings, holding wall-to-wall people drawn by the shops and vegetable stalls.

  “Peaches, Languedoc peaches,” shouted a hawker. “Last of the season.”

  Mounds of green-seamed melons and moisture-beaded nectarines were arranged in the fruit stall, protected under an awning from the afternoon sun. It was reminiscent of the Marseilles market, she thought, though lacking the sharp fishwives’ calls and lapping turquoise waters of the Mediterranean behind them. The ripe sweetness of the last fruits of summer filled the air.

  An old man with a dog bumped into her. “Excusez-moi,” he said. He smiled, with all the time in the world.

  The flics would have left Benoît’s laboratory by now. She’d have to hurry to get there before the building closed.

  She edged forward. Rue Mouffetard was filled with tourists in the afternoon. There were enough of them to make it difficult to move.

  She thought that she’d like to show Mireille this quartier. On Sundays, she and her grandfather used to cross the Seine to climb the hill of la Mouffe, as he called it. They would catch a film at the postage-stamp-sized theater nestled be-tween the shops. Afterward, he’d buy a roasted chicken from the corner charcuterie where the Mouffe crossed rue l’Arbalète.

  “Why must we always come here for a chicken? It’s such a long walk, Grand-père,” she’d asked, pouting. “I’ve bought poulet rôti from him for thirty-five years,” he’d said, “why should I change now?”

  Nearby Place de la Contrescarpe glinted in the sun; the cafés were full, the fountain gurgling. Bright paint, rattan chairs, looked picturesque. Yet the clochards philosophes from her childhood were missing. They were the soul of Place de la Contrescarpe, about whom Jacques Brel had sung. Ten years ago, the clochards had still congregated to spout philosophy or recite a poem for a drink. Not any more; the flics had run them off.

  It’s too sanitized now, she thought, remembering the grime that had lent the area character. The old Paris. Yet along with the tourists, the commerçants, the students, the old women who’d rented the same apartment for fifty years, the professors and intellos with the leather patches on their corduroy jackets frayed to look à la mode, still lived here.

  No time for memories now. The fear in Mireille’s face, the urgency in her voice kept coming back to her.

  But apart from luring her to a murder scene, Mireille had made no further contact. Aimée needed more than old photographs before she accepted Mireille as her sister. And she needed to get inside the lab to question the staff, to find out more about Mireille and her relationship to Benoît.

  Ten minutes later, Aimée buzzed the bell at the tall door of the Osteologique Anatomie Comparée. Behind her lay the gatehouse, sealed off with yellow crime-scene tape. The door creaked open to reveal a man wearing a stained white lab coat. His bulbous red-veined nose caught the light. A drinker.

  “Oui?”

  And by his frown, none too happy at the interruption.

  “Bonjour. May I speak with the director?”

  He eyed her black dress and denim jacket before asking, “Concerning?”

  Beyond him stood a dark wood-paneled vestibule housing glass cabinets. Skeletons of small animals stood on dusty shelves, their ivory-colored bones illuminated by shafts of light from the overhead skylight. Jules Verne would have felt right at home, she thought.

  Before she could answer, there was the sound of a crash.

  “Make an appointment, Mam’zelle,” the man said. His words were clipped, the sign of un vrai gamin parisien.

  She saw her chance to question the staff slipping away. The door was about to close in her face.

 
; “How unprofessional of me, Monsieur,” she said, rooting through her bag. She found a torn envelope, the first thing at hand, and forced a smile. “My fault for not explaining sooner. Professeur Rady at Ecole Normale Supérieure sent me.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you’re refer-ring to. . . .”

  “But you do know Professeur Rady, of course?” She kept talking, improvising as she went along.

  His eyes flickered in recognition. Of course he did. His self-importance irritated her.

  “Check with him,” Aimée suggested. It was a good thing Professeur Rady was out of the office. “Perhaps the director could spare me a few minutes? I’m sure, given the circumstances, he’d understand. . . .”

  “We’re a research facility. The director’s not here,” he said. “Arrange a visit through the University.”

  “Professeur Rady suggested I come to scout the location,” she said, widening her smile. “Informally, of course.”

  She kept talking. He hadn’t thrown her out yet.

  “We’re filming a documentary for Arte,” she said, hoping to impress him with the arts-and-intellectuals téle film channel. “So I need to check your facilities.

  “As I said, you need an appointment.” His mouth hardened. Was he hiding something?

  “Before we know if we can shoot here,” she said, determined, “I need to assess the utilities. Minor technical details. I had a short break en route to my next shoot . . . so I’d appreciate your assistance. I’m sure your director will understand.”

  “Understand?”

  “Monsieur, I’m squeezing this in. We’re filming a three-million-franc documentary highlighting ENS, the programs, and the world renowned . . . surely. . . .”

  “The receptionist returns in an hour. Come back then.”

  Didn’t everyone want to be filmed?

  “Tant pis!” The sound of a man’s voice, and wood creaking, then another crash. “Show her in, Fabrice, before I rupture myself again!”

  The irritating Fabrice opened the door wider, revealing a sweating man in a long white coat. “Film people!” the new man panted. “Alors, you run by a different clock. But I’m sorry, we have no one to show you around.”

  “Pas de problème. You won’t know I’m here.”

  Now she had her foot in the door. She’d chat up a lab technician, and, if she was lucky, get a lead to Benoît’s puzzling murder and a link to Mireille.

  “Give me fifteen minutes.” She smiled, glancing at an old fusebox with porcelain knobs hanging on the wall. She made a note with her kohl eye pencil on the envelope.

  Fine powder-like dust settled on the wooden floor. Bone dust, she wondered?

  The sweating man stuck his hand out. “I’m Lamartine, anatomy cataloguer.”

  She shook it and saw that her hand was now smudged with dirt.

  “We’ve got this crate to load.”

  “I’d like to see the research lab,” she said. “To check the amount of light available, and the outlets.”

  “Go through the gallery, then turn right. If you need help, come back and ask me.”

  She nodded, slipping past a tight-lipped Fabrice and by a deep old-fashioned sink with a backsplash of cracked blue tile.

  The spiral staircase in the gallery, a soaring elongated room, led to a high walkway ringing the space that provided access to ceiling-high wooden drawers upon drawers. Each drawer had a metal slot in which appeared yellowed inscriptions in Latin in fading black script with dates from the nineteenth century. Bleached animal skulls bearing horns lined the upper wainscoting. The air was musty; it was a library of bones.

  She kept going, her steps raising fine dust.

  In the next gallery, she saw small animal skeletons on long worktables covered with brown paper. There were scalpel-like instruments laid out next to them, but no technicians.

  She turned the knob of an adjoining door to find gleaming stainless-steel counters and metal ducts venting to the ceiling. A modern “state of the art” lab, in contrast to the rest of the place.

  Whirring sounds came from an autoclave on the counter. A larger, more industrial version of the sterilizer used in the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré manicure salon she visited— considering her chipped red nails, not often enough.

  A man in a blue work apron leaned over a microscope.

  “Pardonnez-moi,” she said, taking a chance. She didn’t have much time. “Didn’t Professeur Benoît work here?”

  “Aaah, the pigs. You want to see the pigs, non?” The man straightened up from the lab table.

  What was it with these pigs? Would he show her a pen filled with snorting hogs?

  “Of course, but. . . .”

  “Here.” The man gestured to the microscope. “You’re late, Mademoiselle. But I’m glad we can grab a few minutes so I can show you.”

  She bit her lip. Late? Who did he take her for?

  “Monsieur?”

  “Assistant Professeur Huby. We spoke on the phone. Benoît was right,” he said. “Amazing. The article’s already been accepted for publication in the October Anatomy Journal. So you won’t be able to steal our thunder for the science department journal. That’s why I agreed to speak with you.”

  He thought she had come from the ENS science department. If she didn’t go along with his mistake, she’d lose an opportunity. But how could she keep up this pretense? How long before the real person with an appointment appeared?

  “After your call, I thought it better you see for yourself,” he said, his brow raised, gesturing to the microscope. “Benoît was on the verge of a breakthrough in his work on Haitian pigs.”

  She played along. She took a breath and put her eye to the eyepiece. Through the microscope, she saw a pinkish-brown series of swirls with yellowish dots like nuclei in the center. A black line divided this half of the slide from a similar scene. A breakthrough? The slides told her nothing.

  She looked up. She recalled the words Martine, her journalist friend, would use.

  “Can you describe this to me in your own words?” Aimée said. “I’d like to hear it from you. First reactions . . . you know, for a sidebar giving the background.”

  “Benoît sampled two different species of pigs,” he said. “As you can see, he discovered the same epidemiology.”

  Huby ran his hands through his long brown hair.

  “To you, that proves . . . ?”

  “Not only to me, Mademoiselle, but to the scientific community. His slides show porcine liver tissue containing residues of heavy metals in quantities sufficient to damage the central nervous system.”

  Her one year in med school hadn’t covered epidemiology.

  Huby continued: “He used GFAA—graphite furnace atomic absorption—spectometry, the most sensitive spectroscopic technique for measuring concentrations of metals in aqueous and solid samples.”

  Huby gestured to an off-white machine resembling a micro-wave, hooked up to a computer on the corner counter.

  She didn’t know what any of that meant, except that it didn’t sound good. “Of course,” she nodded.

  “But I knew you’d get a better sense of his findings from viewing the actual tissue samples.”

  There must be some mistake, Aimée thought. Was the corpse she’d found last night the same man as this pig professor? Had the old security guard Darquin mistaken the name?

  “For the journal, I need a different angle,” she said. “Describe the professor for me.”

  “Eh?”

  “His physical traits, how he worked, his schedule, his students.”

  “See for yourself. Look at my copy.” Huby placed a thin journal titled Ecole Normale Supérieure Laboratoire News by the microscope.

  She glanced at the cover. PROPERTY OF ASSISTANT PROFESSEUR HUBY was stamped on it.

  Then his eyes narrowed. “But you know all this. I faxed you the article yesterday.”

  She thought fast. “That is so, but I’m writing several different articles right now. Wo
uld you mind refreshing my memory?”

  A photo on the cover showed several figures at a banquet table raising wine glasses. All men. All white men. Not the victim she’d discovered last night.

  No wonder this didn’t make sense. The flics had identified the wrong man. Never mind the professor. How did this involve Mireille?

  Any moment now, the real journalist would appear. She’d have to get out of here fast. But Huby had flipped the pages open and was pointing to another photo above an article.

  “There’s Professeur Benoît in happier times. Such a loss. I’m determined to continue the professor’s work.”

  To her dismay, Aimée recognized the man wearing a laboratory coat, squinting in the sun as he stood behind the skeletons of what appeared to be pigs. A large man, handsome and dark-complected. The man she’d found in the gatehouse with his ear severed.

  “That’s why I consented to talk with you.” A sad expression appeared on his face. “It’s only right that the scientific community knows.”

  She suppressed a shudder. “Any chance you could point me to his assistant? I believe her name’s Mireille?”

  “But I assisted Professeur Benoît.”

  “What about a half-Haitian woman? Didn’t she type up his notes and keep his records?”

  “Désolé. If she did . . . there was a young woman. . . .” He stared at Aimée.

  “My height?”

  “Like you,” he said, his words slower, “but a mulatto.”

  “Where?”

  He shrugged.

  “Did you see her yesterday?”

  “Entre nous.” He leaned forward. “The professor let her stay in the gatehouse storage room. That’s all I know. After all his research, all his trials, now when he’s poised on the brink of announcing a discovery . . . it’s a terrible loss.”

  “So you assisted Professeur Benoît,” she said, trying to put this together. “Were you his research partner?”

  “His part-time assistant. And I felt privileged to help, let me tell you,” he said. “But we’ve spoken about this.”

  She stiffened, remembering the administrator mentioning “cut-throat” competition and the words “publish or perish.” All of a sudden, the possibility of an academic murder loomed.