Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis by Cara Black

Author:Cara Black [Black, Cara]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2000-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

A BATEAU-MOUCHE PASSED under the supports of Pont Marie more slowly than usual because of the rising level of the Seine. The slap of water against the stone mingled with the blaring horn of a taxi. Cars, unable to use the flooded road on other bank, crossed the bridge at a snail’s pace. Fliers advertising neighboring Théâtre de L’Ile Saint-Louis performances were caught up in the wind; they swirled around her ankles. She grabbed a handful, meaning to bring them back to the theatre. Inside the building, she set them down in a corner stacked with theatre notices and more fliers. She saw a pile of MondeFocus report pamphlets, identical to the one she’d found in Krzysztof’s room and noticed in Vavin’s office. She’d better check this out.

Her footsteps echoed in the damp tunnel-like passage that led to a seventeenth-century courtyard like that of her own building. The theatre proper and rehearsal studios were upstairs. She climbed a switchback series of neo-Gothic wood-railed steps and heard a voice coming through a window that opened onto the courtyard. The words themselves were in old formal French.

I find that everything goes wrong in our world; that nobody knows his duty, what he’s doing, or what he ought to be doing, and that outside of mealtimes . . . the rest of the day is spent in useless quarrels. . . . It’s one unending warfare.

She recognized lines from Voltaire’s Candide. Valid then and today.

Loath to interrupt the rehearsal, the first drops of rain pattering in the vacant courtyard, and with nowhere else to stand but the dank hallway, she entered the small theatre. Red crushed-velvet curtains were halfway drawn. The brightly lit stage was bare except for a throne-like wooden chair and a woman mopping the scuffed black-painted floor planks, humming, her bucket beside her.

“Madame, are any of the crew about?”

The woman looked up, squinting into the darkness beyond the stage lights. She pointed. “Rehearsal.”

“Merci, I’ll wait.” Aimée pulled up a corner of the dust sheet that covered a seat, glad to take a rest, even in the cramped velvet chaise designed in the nineteenth century for a less statuesque person. She put her feet up, rubbed her calves. Checked her voice mail. No message from Vavin or René.

The woman finished mopping and left. Aimée tried Vavin again. No answer. She let the cell phone ring.

In the middle of a yawn, she heard a digitized ring-tone version of “Frère Jacques” from the stage. Then an ear-piercing scream made her sit up. It was followed by another, higher pitched.

She ran down the aisle and up the side steps leading backstage. The white-faced cleaning woman leaned, heaving, against an electrician’s stage-light panel.

“Are you hurt?”

A salvo of Portuguese erupted from the woman’s mouth. She crossed herself. “Maria Madonna” was all Aimée could make out as the shaking woman pointed to the partly open door of a broom closet.

A stout security guard arrived, red faced and panting. The ring tone was repeated. It was closer now.

“Not another mouse! Xaviera, I told you last time, old buildings have them,” said the guard.

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