The Red Brick Cellars: A Tolosa Mystery (28 page)

Marie-Pierre’s silhouette appeared in the doorway. She wasn’t in the room yet, but getting closer. If she continued being so careful, she was going to spot Louis too soon. It was time to act. He waited for the next time Marie-Pierre spoke, then lit the lighter as silently as possible and set it to the fuse.

“Go to your sarcophagus, girl,” Marie-Pierre began.

Louis’s fuse hit the first pile of dried brains. Monsieur de Puymaurin from that old article thirteen year-old Louis found so fascinating had been right; it did catch fire. In fact, it perfectly illuminated one of the destroyed scenes in the back of the room. Louis saw arms and legs jutting out in all directions. Then, detonation.

It wasn’t very powerful, but in the silence of the stone crypt, it made Louis jump even though he’d expected it.

Marie-Pierre turned her flashlight on the back of the room bringing their destruction into light. “What have you done?” she yelled. “You back-stabbing, overzealous harlot! You’ve ruined years of work. You’re going to pay for this.”

Louis was taking advantage of Marie-Pierre’s attention being riveted on the back of the room. He crossed to the other side of the doorway and set light to the second fuse. Crouched down, he moved in Marie-Pierre’s wake.

Marie-Pierre advanced on Catherine. In addition to her flashlight in her left hand, she had a foot-long baton in her right. “You’re going to regret this,” she hissed. “I may have to live with a Belle Paule in agony again, but it will be worth it to see your suffering every day.” She pointed to the sarcophagus. “Get in or I’ll knock you down and beat you into submission.”

Louis thought of the second display, which Marie-Pierre hadn’t seen yet. La Belle Paule. Of course that’s what the scene was. La Belle Paule at her balcony, admired by the crowd. He couldn’t help but agree with Marie-Pierre in her choice; Catherine looked just like the famous beauty.

The second mound of brains caught fire in the Belle Paule display. Again it silhouetted perfectly the massacre. Marie-Pierre’s flashlight turned toward it as the detonation sounded. She started screaming at Catherine, but Louis didn’t hear the words. His entire world focused on getting to the madwoman before she saw him. He sprinted toward her, crouching low and aiming for her waist. Rugby-lessons from school came back to him and he went in with his shoulder first, bracing both arms around the woman’s waist, and pushed using his legs with all his might once he was on her.

They both crashed into the central pillar. Louis heard the air go out of Marie-Pierre’s lungs and her flashlight fell to the floor blinding him. “Catherine, get out and go to the left!” he yelled as he scrambled on top of Marie-Pierre in search of her pockets. He found the baton first and grabbed it with his left hand. His other hand located the keys.

Marie-Pierre stirred. She must have hit her head when they collided with the pillar, but it wasn’t enough to keep her down for long. Rising up on his feet, Louis landed a blow with the baton. Louis was right-handed and his hands were slippery with gooey brain-matter, so he only landed a glancing blow on her head, then the baton slipped from his hand. It was enough for her to go immobile again, so Louis ran after Catherine and out the door.

Thirty-Seven

Catherine stood behind Louis on the stairs, shaking from exhaustion and fear. She kept imagining what that scene would have been like had Louis not been there. She wouldn’t have stood a chance against Carrie and would probably be buried in mud in a stone sarcophagus right now. “Will you hurry up?” she whispered.

“I’m working on it,” Louis said. “There are a lot of keys here.” They jangled as he tried another one. The sound of it slipping into the lock, then the click of the lock turning, was the most beautiful thing Catherine had ever heard.

Light flooded through the open door and they rushed out. Louis went straight for the front door while Catherine shuffled after him, becoming more and more conscious of the cuts and bruises on her feet. The front door was locked. Louis looked around the handle, along all the sides— “There’s no lock on this door.” He stepped up to a small box a hand’s breadth to the left of the sturdy door. “It opens with a code.” He hung his head.

“I’ll try the windows,” Catherine said. She moved through the living room, kitchen, and something that could qualify as a home office. All the windows had locks, which she could try to open with the keys Louis had taken, but it wouldn’t do them much good. Metal bars covered all of them.

As she exited the small office, she spotted a familiar bag on the floor. Her clothes lay in pile on the other side of her gym bag. She didn’t take the time to dress completely, but pulled on her sweat-pants, feeling infinitely more secure with more than just a thin shirt to cover her up. She also grabbed the can of pepper spray from her bag, sincerely hoping she wouldn’t need it.

When she came back to the hallway, Louis had one phone in each hand: his own smart phone and the house’s landline. He looked up when Catherine approached. “I’m calling the police. Then we’ll try the upstairs windows. Maybe there are balconies or something.”

Catherine watched as he dialed 17 on both phones. The landline he left on the table; his own phone he brought to his ear. “In theory, the police should come if they get a call without anybody talking,” he explained. “
Bonjour
, Monsieur,” he said in classic polite French fashion. “My name is Louis Saint-Blancat and I need you to come to number fourteen—”

The door to the cellar shot open.

How did she do that? He locked the door and left the key in the lock!

Carrie came out, cheeks flaring as red as her highlights. “Stop talking,” she said to Louis as she pointed a pistol at him.

Louis held the phone away from his head.

“Hang up. And put it on the floor.”

Louis complied. Standing right behind him, Catherine wasn’t directly in Carrie’s sight. She brought her hand under Maxime’s shirt and slipped the can of pepper spray into the lining of her pants. She hoped they were tight enough so the thing wouldn’t clank to the floor.

Catherine studied the gun. Why hadn’t she brought that when she came looking for them in the crypt? Catherine didn’t know anything about guns, but it didn’t look like the stuff used in modern action movies. It made her think of old war movies with its dark brown handle and long, thin tube pointed in their direction.

Louis must have looked at the gun too, for Carrie got defensive. “It’s a Luger from World War II. I’m not the only one who’s been digging under the streets of Toulouse in the last century.” She narrowed her eyes at them. “Don’t worry, though, it fires just fine.” She stepped away from the door to leave the passage clear. “Now down you both go.”

Louis stepped aside to let Catherine go ahead of him. At first, she didn’t find that very chivalrous, but soon realized this meant he would be the one in the line of fire when Carrie came down behind them with the collector gun. Before she reached the bottom of the stairs, Catherine took the chance to lift the rim of her shirt enough for Louis to see the pepper spray in the lining of her pants. He might not even recognize what it was, but she hoped he understood that she would try to use it and back her up.

They went back down into the red brick cellar.

Thirty-Eight

At the bottom of the stairs, Catherine took a step to the right, ending up in front of an old moss-green couch. Across the cellar, a curtain was drawn partially over a hole dug into the wall. She hadn’t noticed that when they ran through earlier. A couple sat in each other’s arms, apparently asleep. There was something wrong with them, though. Even asleep, there should have been
some
movement from dreaming or breathing.

They were yet another tableau, like in the crypt. This one was more…peaceful, though, if such a thing could be said of what had been done to their bodies.

“Are you really planning to get us back to that crypt, Marie-Pierre?” Louis asked as he turned to face their captor.

“You think I should let you go now, Louis?” Carrie sneered. “You’ve destroyed my life’s work, but I’m a patient woman. I’ll start over. And I already have my Belle Paule.” She glanced at Catherine. Cocking her head, her lips lifted into a sneer. “And you’d probably make an excellent Capitoul.”

Catherine thought Louis kept admirably calm. “Don’t you realize you’re not going to get away with this, Marie-Pierre? By killing us, you’re only making things worse for yourself.”

“You’re no better than your father,” the woman practically spit out. “You can’t recognize a vision of grandeur even when it’s standing right in front of you.”

Louis’s jaw was working furiously, but he managed to reply. “Congratulations, Marie-Pierre. I believe that’s the first time in a very long time that I’ve been proud of being compared to my father.” After a few seconds, he added. “What happened to him, anyway?”

Carrie actually rolled her eyes. “That was all Bernard’s fault.”

Louis let out a surprised huff. “Bernard Gallego? He’s in on this too?”

“Bernard has a personal interest in this project and was able to grasp the genius of it. Unfortunately, when Pierre was here, the discussion got a little out of hand and, in a moment of panic, Bernard hit him over the head with a vase. There wasn’t much we could do after that, so we gave him a double dose of sedatives.”

Mouth dry, Catherine whispered, “Like you just did to Maxime.”

The woman’s only acknowledgment of the recent murder was a glance in Catherine’s direction.

To keep her mind off the memory of her ex-husband amidst a heap of rotting bodies, Catherine asked, “Why did you send me those pictures at work?”

The woman still held her gun steadily pointed at Louis, but she was clearly warming up to the discussion. A satisfied gleam lit up her eyes. “We had a situation on our hands and had to make the best of it. We already discussed various possibilities for creating a buzz around our work. With the body of La Belle Paule needing to be changed and the mayor being so unreceptive to our work and effort, we decided to set the both of them up on place du Capitole. We knew La Belle Paule’s body wouldn’t stay intact for long outside, so I took the pictures from a window at the Capitole before she turned to dust.”

Louis intervened. “What did all those people do to deserve this, Marie-Pierre? I understand Geraldine Hérault, but what about the others? And why did you take them for their birthdays?”

“They were all responsible for neglecting someone close to them.” Carrie’s eyes were hard as she stared at Louis. “They didn’t deserve to live, nor to have others celebrate them.”

Louis’s brow furrowed. “But with that logic, shouldn’t you also be part of your own experiment? Wasn’t your neglect in great part responsible for your parents’ deaths?”

Carrie was done talking. She motioned toward the back of the cellar with the gun and said curtly, “Get moving, Saint-Blancat.”

This was her chance. Catherine brought the pepper spray bottle up right next to the woman’s face and firmly pressed the button. There was a short lapse before it started spraying, but that actually played to Catherine’s advantage as her victim then had the time to turn her face into the spray.

“Arrrh!” their captor screamed. “You bitch!” She pointed the gun in Catherine’s direction, but the woman couldn’t see anything. Her eyes were closed and she brought her free hand up to cover them. “I’m going to kill you,” she promised.

That’s nothing new, Catherine thought. You’ve been trying to kill me since last night.

Catherine had not let go of the button on the pepper spray despite moving around the woman to avoid the gun. Now it clicked empty, all of its content presently in Carrie’s face. Catherine threw it away.

“Give up the gun, Marie-Pierre,” Louis said, his voice so strong and confident that, for a moment, Catherine thought his father was back from the dead. This certainly would be the place for it.

Carrie didn’t want to give up anything. Eyes closed and tears running, she must have localized Louis with her ears alone. The gun swung around to point directly at him.

She pulled the trigger.

“No!” Catherine screamed and threw herself onto the woman’s back.

Marie-Pierre yelped.

Catherine looked over the woman’s shoulder—still clinging on as if she would make a difference to or fro in this fight—to see the old gun blown to bits. Marie-Pierre’s hand was black and bleeding from the juncture between thumb and forefinger. Catherine stared up at Louis.

He was still alive. Eyes so wide the entirety of his irises were visible and then some, he held his arms out from his sides and looked down at himself. Catherine looked too. He was uninjured.

With a scream of his own, Louis threw himself into the fight. Between the two of them, they were more powerful than Carrie and the whole group scrambled backward. Louis, it seemed, was having something of an adrenaline rush from his near brush with death by ancient pistol. When they hit the far wall, Catherine slid off the woman’s back, down to the floor. Louis had a death grip on their captor and shoved her farther and farther. They ended up in the niche with the two bodies—this close, Catherine could confirm they were dead—and Marie-Pierre was being shoved face first in with them.

Catherine didn’t know what Louis intended to do, but given the rage of his constant scream, neither did he. So long as he kept the upper hand, she left him to it.

Carrie’s body went limp. Louis kept screaming and pushing like a six-year-old finally getting his hands on his enemy, but not knowing what to do with him except
push
.

Catherine tapped him on the shoulder. He stopped screaming. Stopped pushing.

“
Mon Dieu
,” he whispered. He held his hands up as if in surrender and took two steps back.

The woman stayed where she was, unmoving.

Once Louis was out of the way, arms still in the air, Catherine took a step closer to the niche. Carrie had been pushed so far back her head and upper torso were farther in than the two bodies. What hadn’t been immediately apparent from farther away was the broken wine bottles covered in dirt at the back. One of them had cut into the woman’s neck. Judging by the quantity of blood now flowing to the floor, it must have cut her jugular.