The Paris Architect: A Novel

Alain had disliked him the minute he’d laid eyes on him. Pierre was just supposed to clean up and fetch things, but then Lucien started giving him drawing lessons, saying the boy could take some of the drafting load off Alain, and he did. Once, to Alain’s great annoyance, Lucien said that the kid might have found his calling as an architect. The truth was that the twelve-year-old was a quick study, and he could quickly handle increasingly complex tasks. His line work was becoming quite good, and he was very detail-oriented, an important quality in an architect.

Pierre went back to his drawing board and began drawing a mezzanine plan for the Tremblay factory. After he’d finished his business in the WC, Alain walked over to Pierre.

“Your wall lines aren’t dark enough,” he told him.

“Yes, you’re right. They could be a lot darker,” answered Pierre cheerfully. It irritated the hell out of Alain that Pierre was always grateful for his advice. Alain ordered Pierre around and cursed at him on a routine basis but always out of earshot of Lucien.

“So what were you muttering in the bathroom? Sounded like Chinese or something,” asked Alain, leaning on Pierre’s drawing board.

“I was just saying a Hail Mary—in Latin.”

“Didn’t sound like Latin to me. I was an altar boy, and I know Latin when I hear it.”

“Well, it was Latin.”

“Do you always pray in the can?”

“It’s the only private place to pray in the office, don’t you think?”

Alain stared at the boy. There was something odd about the whole situation. Him popping up out of nowhere. Lucien telling him that Pierre was the son of a friend who died in the fighting in 1940. He tried to connect it to the strange goings-on with Manet and the cottage. Alain still couldn’t figure that one out. He’d followed Lucien a few times, but he hadn’t discovered anything. At least once a week, he’d gone through Lucien’s desk to look for any odd scraps of details like the one of the fireplace, but he’d found nothing. It was hard to snoop around with this damn kid hanging about all the time.

“So you’re a Catholic?”

“What did you think I was? An Arab?” answered Pierre, with surprising bravado.

“Where did you go to school before you came to Paris?”

“St. Bernadine in Toulouse.”

“How did your father know Lucien?”

“They had been friends in Paris and served together in the 25th Division when the Germans invaded.”

“The 25th Division? Where was it stationed?”

“On the Maginot Line.”

“What was your father’s rank?”

“A lieutenant.”

“So you have no family left.”

“No one. Both my mother and father are dead, and so is my brother, Jules.”

“That’s tough. What’s going to happen to you?”

Pierre shrugged his shoulders.

Alain walked back to his desk. He wanted Pierre out of here but knew that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. Alain had no choice but to put up with him. But he might as well take full advantage of the situation. His family had never had servants, but now he had one.

“Hey, shithead. Go downstairs and get me a pack of cigarettes.”





41





“I’m going to hinge this pilaster at the top so that it lifts up. It’s almost a half a meter wide, which is big enough for a hiding place behind it. I hope your guest isn’t fat.”

Manet and Lucien stood in the salon of a grand townhouse on the rue de Bassano. It was incredibly lavish, with beautiful white and gold paneling and gleaming parquet floors. The classical pilasters, a kind of flat column only fifteen centimeters deep and almost four meters tall applied to the face of the walls, divided the paneling into wide sections. The moment Lucien stepped into the apartment and saw the pilasters, he knew exactly what to do.

“You can do that?” asked Manet.

Lucien heard the concern in the old man’s voice. Ever since the disaster with the fireplace, Manet had begun to doubt him, even though he would never admit it.

Lucien looked the pilaster up and down for a last-minute assessment. “Yes, I can make it work. The pilaster has to be carefully removed then reassembled. The whole thing can be lifted up at the bottom so someone can slip into the space behind it, which we’ll hollow out from the brick. Then it can be latched shut from behind, just like we did with the stair. But this work has to be done with great accuracy to get it to hinge right.”