Murder in Montmartre by Cara Black

Author:Cara Black [Black, Cara]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2009-01-09T08:00:00+00:00

Wednesday Evening

“MADEMOISELLE ROUSSEAU'S condition remains unchanged,” said Dr. Huissard from Hôtel Dieu in a harried voice.

It had taken Aimée twenty minutes on the phone persuading a liaison at the Préfecture to give her authorization and another twenty being switched around departments at the hospital before she was able to reach the doctor who was treating Laure.

“She’s young, that’s in her favor,” Dr. Huissard said. “We’re running tests. She’ll have a CT scan this evening. For now, that’s all we can do.”

“Please don’t think I’m telling you how to do your job, Doctor, but your service provides basic care,” she said, aiming to be tactful. “Can’t you transfer her to another more specialized ward in the hospital?”

Should she ask Guy to put in a word of recommendation? Despite his surgical excision of their relationship, she could call him. Perhaps he could help somehow. For Laure she would beg.

“Doctor, I know an eye surgeon.”

“No outside specialists, they don’t allow it. She’s being treated by the specialists here.”

“Her condition’s deteriorating, as I understand, or it may. Why won’t—?”

“I shouldn’t say this.” She heard the doctor sigh. “I’ve already requested that Neurology take over. Right now, they’re overcrowded. As soon as a bed’s free, she’s next on the list for a neurology consult. She could be moved within the hour or later this evening.”

“May I see her?”

“No visitors. She’s in critical condition. We’re not equipped, as you know, in the criminal ward.”

“How soon could she—?”

“Mademoiselle, I promise you she’s next on the list,” Dr. Huissard said, his voice not unkind. “I need to get back to my rounds.”

“Merci, I appreciate all your efforts, Doctor,” Aimée said.

She opened the shoebox-sized refrigerator under the kitchen counter. On the shelf with the bottle of champagne and yogurt past the due date was a white wax-paper packet of butchers’ scraps.

“Miles, à table,” she said, putting the scraps into his chipped Limoges bowl.

Miles appeared with what looked like a rag in his mouth.

“What did you find this time?”

He dropped it on the floor, licked her leg, then bent over his bowl.

She picked it up. Guy’s washcloth. She caught the clinging scent of his vetiver soap.

“I miss him, too.” Her lip trembled.

Miles Davis looked up from the rim of his bowl, his head cocked to the side. Sometimes she’d swear he could understand.

She turned on her radio, a 1960s aqua rectangle with a JOHNNY HALLYDAY LIVE AT THE OLYMPIA! sticker she’d found on the street. She turned to a talk-radio station. But the callers complaining about their apartment neighbor’s cat or the higher tax on cigarettes didn’t drown out her thoughts of Guy.

On the next station was an interview with the breathy, vaguely sexy voice of Madame Claude, notorious for her exclusive maison close that had hosted an elite ministerial clientele in the seventies. Now Madame Claude peddled her memoirs instead of high-priced girls.

She switched the channel to Macha Meryl’s show on RTL, the intime hour for the lost, the lovelorn. For years, Macha, a brusque therapist, had dispensed advice on late-night radio of the tough-love variety, often to the rejected, loveless callers.

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