Murder at the Lanterne Rouge (26 page)

“For me it’s expression, glass gives form to beauty,” he said. “A painting with light. Not like the one-dimensional painting, where light shines on it. With glass, the light shines through.”

A purist, she thought, immersed in his trade.

He gestured to the diagram and its rows of Latin. “Of course, as journeymen we visited this guild’s masterpiece, a church window, the only one left of their work.”

Her pulse raced. “But you said this guild collapsed with the Templars.”

“Rumors handed down through time hint at conspiracies, plots …”

She straightened up. “Secret lost formulas?”

“So you think you’ve got one here, eh?”

“You tell me.”

He grinned. “But even so, it’s incomplete. Worthless.”

She pulled several hundred-franc bills from her wallet. “Say the other part of the formula were discovered. How valuable would it be?”

“More than a historical treasure.” His eyes gleamed. “Think of modern stained-glass windows made from an original ancient formula. The enhancement of cathedral restoration techniques.”

Ancient techniques for new windows in old cathedrals—interesting—but not sexy enough. Or worth murder. There was more, she knew it in her bones.

“Hasn’t anyone analyzed the components of this guild’s masterpiece?”

“A hundred feet up in the nave? Any exploration would damage the glass. It’s protected under historic preservation.”

Her mind went back to the Templars, the end of the guild. An angle to explain the questions swirling in her mind. “What if this powerful guild owed the Templars for some reason? The Templars demanded their secret formulas as payment. After their downfall the formula was lost and with it the guild’s influence?”

“Everything’s possible.”

“This window’s far away?” She imagined a long trip to Chartres or to a countryside cathedral hours away.

“You call Saint Nicholas des Champs far?”

Six blocks away and across from the Musée des Arts et Métiers. A block from where Pascal spent his youth.

“
Mais non
, it’s on my way to work.”

W
ITH THE WRAPPED
indigo boxes in her bag, a perfect wedding present for Sebastien, she caught a taxi.

Her cell phone rang in her pocket. René’s number showed on her caller ID.

“Has Saj found Pascal’s file on Coulade’s computer, René?”

He sighed. “Not yet.”

Too bad. Impatient, she rolled and unrolled the encrypted page in her hands.

“Meizi keeps asking when you’ll help her,” he said, worry in his voice.

“As soon as I reach Prévost and find out the timing of the police raid. Tell Meizi to trust me, René.”

“You’re popular,” he said, sounding anxious now.

Her throat constricted. The men she’d lost in Zazie’s café?

“Two men?”

“I got rid of them.”

But for how long?

“Hold on, there’s another call,” René said.

She checked from the taxi window. If they were following her by car, they were stuck in traffic. But it bothered her.

“Pull over, Monsieur,” she told the driver.

“
Ici?
”

She paid, took her bag, and slammed the taxi door. Horns blared.

“Where are you, Aimée?” René asked.

“A block from the museum.”

She was around the corner from the church. But she didn’t have time.

“Right now you need to go to church,” she lowered her voice into her cell phone. Huddled in a doorway from the wind.

“Church?”

“Saint Nicholas des Champs. In the ninth chapel transept you’ll see a star-shaped stained-glass window,” she said. “Crafted by the same guild in Pascal’s encryption.”

“But what does that mean?”

“The glass guild disbanded with the Templars, but the formula connects somehow. The star, remember, in the formula?” She heard the rapid keystrokes over the line. It sounded like René was running searches. She tried to put this together. “If Pascal discovered properties in this alchemical recipe that could be used in something significant now …”

“Like you said, that would explain the DST’s interest.”

“Let me know as soon as you find it, René.”

She knew it existed. She was certain.

Pause. “Zazie called from the café,” René said. “Told me to tell you two men are sitting watching our door.”

Damned irritating. Aimée sucked in her breath. She needed a cigarette.

“You know what to do, René,” she said. “Go out the back.”

R
ENÉ LOOKED BOTH
ways before stepping into rue Bailleul. The thwack and scrape of the street sweeper’s green plastic-pronged broom provided counterpoint to the shouts of the man unloading crates of wine from a truck into the café’s rear.

All clear. At least his hip was cooperating today. He needed sun, heat, and the last installment for his Citroën. What he had was the DST on Aimée’s tail, the uneasy feeling Meizi was keeping things from him, and a crazy errand in a church.

He shut the Citroën’s door, keyed the ignition, and blasted the heater. His leather-upholstered seats heated up within a minute. One out of three wasn’t bad. He shifted into first and turned right into rue de l’Arbre-Sec.

“S
TAND HERE
, M
ONSIEUR.
” The young, black-frocked priest gestured René toward Chapelle Saint-Sauveur, the ninth of the twenty-seven side chapels. “Few visit our petit jewel. Or ask about it.” The priest, who had sideburns, let out an appreciative sigh. “Beautiful,
non?
”

From his vantage point, all René could see was a dance of silver-white light shivering on the worn stone-slab floor.

“Look higher in the apse, Monsieur, past the left chancel columns.”

Not for the first time, René cursed his short legs. He leaned back, staring upward at the vaulted Gothic arcs of stone. He
saw only soaring light framed and half blocked by the damned columns.

Rows of votive candles flickered in this cold south-wall chapel. The musky drafts of incense, fading floral scents from sprays of drooping winter lilies—all smells he remembered from childhood. And his mother’s whispered novenas in the chapel of the count’s château, where she prayed his legs would grow.

René gestured to the prayer kneeler. “Do you mind if I try a better look,
Monsieur le curé?
”

“
Pas du tout, Monsieur
. Please call me Père André, we’re modern these days.”

René untied the laces of his handmade Lobb shoes. Using the prayer kneeler’s straw seat for a step, he climbed onto the ledge of the recessed niche below a statue of Mary. He balanced on the ledge below her blue robe and craned his neck.

He saw a cluster of grisaille glass panels. But crowning it was a blossom-like luminescence of white emanating from a star shape high in the church nave. An intense shimmering.

“All of God’s children should gaze on this,” said the priest. “The unwavering radiance speaks of strength. It lifts the soul.”

René wondered why this small, glittering star shone unlike the other panels.

The priest crossed himself and waved at a few teenagers near the baptismal font. One held a guitar. “Time for our folk music practice,” he said. “We strive to involve our young community. We sing and celebrate the early Sunday Mass. You should come.”

Priests never changed. Always recruiting a new flock.

“Do you know the window’s history, Père André?” Saying that felt foreign to him.

“I’m new to the parish. We’ve run out of guides.” He paused. “Ask Evangeline.”

The priest gestured toward a room labeled Saint Nicolas des Champs Altar Society and joined his teenagers.

Evangeline, a lace mantilla over her gray pageboy coif, wore a chic purple wool suit. René found her reaching on tiptoes into the altar linen cabinet. Only a head taller than René, she was short-statured like others of the generation that grew up during the war. She gave him a lopsided smile. “I’d ask for your help,
mais alors
, you’d have the same problem.”

René pulled a wooden chair to the cabinet, undid his laces again, and climbed on the chair. “
Pas de problème
.” She handed him the ironed altar linens. One by one he organized them in the old bleach-scented cabinet. “I’ll have to ask for something in return, you know,” he said, wishing the room had heat.

“Name your price,” Evangeline said.

“Know the history of the star in the stained-glass window?”

Evangeline handed René another stack of linen. “Early fourteenth century. An anomaly, considering the surrounding sixteenth-century chapel. The records from that time … 
phfft
, gone.” She shrugged. “We know the church’s foundations date from the eleventh century, then a hodgepodge of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and the bell tower later. Why?”

“I’m researching fourteenth-century glassmaking guilds.” That much was true. “That star window is so different from everything around it.…”

“Striking, that sparkle. So different, like you say. Not like any other glass I’ve seen. Yet you’re asking the wrong person. Who would know now?”

“Have you heard any legends or stories about this window?”

She paused in thought. “Funny, someone else asked me that.”

Had Pascal been searching for the window’s secret? René turned and looked down at her. “Reddish hair, glasses?”

“Your associate?”

Saddened, René gave a brief nod. “But what did you tell him?”

“The same as you.” Her expression became bashful. “It’s nothing, but after vespers at night, when I change the altar linens, well …”

“Go on, Evangeline,” he said.

“The light streaming from the star,” she said. “It’s almost as if the star grabs the streetlight from outside. Somehow transfuses, brightens, or magnifies it, sending a sheer white light beam. That’s not explaining it well. But there’s a radiance, a clearness. Power.” She gave another lopsided smile. “Silly, eh?”

René stepped down from the chair. Sat and tied his shoes, his mind working. “I think I know what you mean.
Merci
.”

T
HE WORDS PLAYED
in René’s mind: grabs, transfuses, magnifies. Power. Pascal had found part of the formula for this special glass hidden in the museum’s archives and … what? Tried to replicate it? And couldn’t?

The question rearing up in his mind was why a fourteenth-century document had been hidden in a museum devoted to the pre- and post-industrial revolution. Pascal must have stumbled across the stained-glass window formula either miscataloged or hidden centuries ago in the Archives Nationales, stored during the war. And as Aimée had intimated, found its relevance today.

René gunned down rue Saint-Martin heading toward the Archives Nationales. The archives held a place to work in peace and find answers.

A
IMÉE PARKED HER
scooter at the museum’s entrance. Her mind spun. They still hadn’t found Pascal’s laptop or figured out what the diagram meant, or heard what Clodo had witnessed. Let alone identified the murderer.

But the DST was on her tail. She’d promised Meizi protection before she could guarantee it. She hadn’t discovered the time of the raid or any other information Meizi could feed Tso. She shuddered. If Meizi got caught, René would never forgive her.

She left another message for Prévost. Why had she ignored his comment that he owed her father and not questioned him? Chinatown had never been her father’s beat.

Yet she’d set wheels in motion—herself connecting with Jean-Luc, Saj working on the encryption, René at church. But the DST expected information and she needed to give them something.

A
IMÉE WORKED OFF
two laptops in the vaulted Gothic nave, wishing the faded tapestries didn’t smell their age. She’d spent hours alone in the dark alcove transferring the Musée des Arts et Métiers’ archaic database to the new digital operating system. On the other laptop, she ran a concurrent search for a fourteenth-century document. Fruitlessly.

She backed up a 1695 water pump invention to the digital archive. Hit
SAVE
. Done.

She pulled her silk scarf tighter against the chill and sighed. Only three more centuries to go. Her boots rested on a smooth paver engraved with Latin, a remnant of the original tenth-century abbey. Norman columns blended into the Gothic priory, evidence of the Parisian habit of building on centuries of history. She was surrounded by history.

And by ghosts.

The creakings and shiftings in the building unnerved her. What sounded like whispers came from the adjoining chapel. The wind? She stifled her unease and focused on her screen. But after several hours, her stiff neck decided for her that the rest would have to wait. Time to go.

Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket.

“Still working, Aimée?” asked René.

“Just backed up the seventeenth century,” she said.

“Any luck finding Pascal’s file?”

“Not yet,
desolée
,” she said. “Nor the log he supposedly signed in on. Odd. Hope you had better luck with the stained-glass window.”

“I spent the afternoon at the Archives,” he said, excitement in his voice. “Get this, Aimée. Pascal’s diagram is a map.”

“A map?” Why had Pascal made this so difficult?

Gargoyle-like stone carvings stared down at her, their disembodied faces like masks in the stonework. She rubbed the goosebumps on her arms.

“Long story,” he said. “The map leads through the medieval sewers.”

“They didn’t have sewers then, René.”

“Zut, I know. Now it’s the sewer, going right to rue Charlot, rue Meslay, and along rue Béranger, where he lived.”

“No sewers for me.”

Or army of rodents wintering underground. She’d faced enough of those already.

“There’s more,” René said. “There is one remaining Templar tower Napolean forgot to destroy. The church’s stained-glass window lies in a direct line from the south end of its old wall.

The wind rattled the scaffolding bars lining the nave. Her mind went back to her conversation with Jean-Luc at the piano bar: Samour’s message to Jean-Luc mentioning an atelier. Another piece fitting in Samour’s damned puzzle.