They were walking now. “You told Zazie all this?”
“If we don’t inform the next generation, who will?” She waved her hand at the garden, the townhouses surrounding them. “Until twenty-some years ago, all this lay derelict, boarded up.”
Aimée stared.
“Hard to believe, eh? But there by the old lavoir is where we hid underground papers.”
Aimée noted the open-sided washhouse holding stollers and tricycles.
“And clothing for stranded RAF fliers,” Tonette was saying, “men escaping from service du travail obligatoire in Germany.”
“You brought Zazie here?”
“I showed her how to make a drop. See. That’s hers.”
Under a weathered stone support Aimée saw a smudge of chalk. An X. Yet Aimée found nothing in or near the stone.
“Only use a place once, I told Zazie,” said Tonette, noticing Aimée’s frustration.
“So they did follow, surveil and drop off info about this man le Weasel? Marie-Jo’s mother’s boyfriend?”
“Zazie said something about proving le Weasel wasn’t who he said he was, something like that.”
Le Weasel … the rapist? Was that Zazie’s connection to the attacks? What about the violin lessons? How did they fit in?
“I wish I could help you more,” said Tonette.
Something niggled in Aimée’s mind. Something Zazie had said, something that chimed with Tonette’s story … If only she could hold a thought in this humidity.
Tonette, oblivious to the heat, pointed to a church spire peeping over grisaille-blue tin rooftops. “We always met in bistrots, musées, department stores with more than one exit. Irony of ironies, in the building on Boulevard Haussmann, the Nazis’ office was on the third floor, above Simexco, a cover for the Red Sympathy organizers.”
Their walk took them back to Tonette’s building. Its dark green double doors could fit a horse-drawn carriage, and once had.
Aimée’s mind went back to le Weasel. Did the rape boil down to something close to home? Suppose the girls had discovered in their surveillance that this boyfriend, le Weasel, had assaulted their schoolmates?
“Don’t you want to come upstairs? Take a load off your feet? Drink something cold?”
Aimée nodded, grateful for the invitation.
But her legs balked at the winding Charles X staircase. Eight flights up at the dome-ceilinged last landing, Tonette reached in her mailbox and came out with a stack of envelopes. A slip of paper fluttered onto the black-and-white checkerboard tiles, landing at Tonette’s Chanel fuchsia sling-back heel.
Aimée picked it up. “Yours?”
Tonette shook her head.
Aimée recognized it as a receipt from the photo shop on Boulevard de Magenta. It was for a roll of Ilford black-and-white, high-speed film. Her mind went back to Zazie’s black-and-white telescopic photo of men standing around the Wallace fountain.
At least the receipt gave her an address to check.
“You trained Zazie well. May I take that, Tonette?”
“Bien s?r,” said Tonette. “Some things never change.”
AIMéE STOPPED AT the one-hour developing shop on Boulevard de Magenta. The girl behind the counter shook her head. “Not ready, désolée, professional film like this takes two days. The customer was told that.”
“Ah. Do you remember her?”
“I started this morning,” she said. A big smile. “Ready tomorrow,” she said, trying to be helpful.
AIMéE RETRACED THE route she’d taken with Tonette, alert at every corner, shop doorway and intersection for a trace of Zazie.
The humidity and the heat—a cotton-like layer of dense, still air—wilted the irises and melted her mascara. All the walking, getting nowhere. She felt a sharp cramp. The baby turning? Better sit down.
Back in the square behind Place Saint-Georges, she checked her messages. None.
Lost in thought, she watched a young woman pushing a stroller, a toddler in a yellow dress clasping her other hand. A bouquet of red balloons was tied with red ribbon to the stroller handle.
Her eye caught on the smudged chalk X she had noticed earlier on the stone. But that could have been yesterday. Still, she checked the area again: riffled through the soil, under leaves and gravel. Nothing but dirt under her fingernails.
And what good would that film at the developer’s do if it showed more scenes of the same?
Yet she couldn’t assume anything. This was all moving like drying glue. Her hormones, this heat … she wanted to kick something.
Police procedure, plodding investigation, waiting, checking, matching took too long. All of the many reasons she hated this kind of work. Almost twenty-one hours had elapsed since Zazie’s last sighting by Tonette.
She took Zazie’s map from her bag, dotted in pen the points she and René had marked on the map he’d enlarged. Now she added dots for the locations Tonette had showed her.
But she needed to try Madame de Langlet, leave a message even if the woman was away. She punched in the number René gave her.
Several rings later a woman answered with a breathless “All??”
Finally.
In the background Aimée heard violin notes. “Madame de Langlet,” she said, “I’m Aimée Leduc. Last night your pupil—”
“I don’t talk to journalists,” she interrupted.
“Smart, Madame. I’m a detective.”
“I don’t talk to detectives.”
“But Madame Vasseur told me to speak with you.” In a manner of speaking. “It’s important, please, your pupils have been attacked. I’m sure you’re more than concerned about the connection.”
“Connection?” Pause. “I’m teaching right now.”
She hadn’t denied it.
“And I’m sorry to bother you, but Sylvaine’s death—”
“Horrendous,” she interrupted. “A tragedy. The flics questioned me this morning.”
Merde! Instead of listening to René last night, she should have listened to her gut and tracked the woman down. “But now four of your students—”
“I don’t understand.”
Of course you do. Or you don’t want to.