Murder in the Latin Quarter by Cara Black Read Free Book Online Page B

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    Laughter erupted in the courtyard corner where several students had gathered. Belted Levi’s, short hair, clean white shirts: typical normaliens, anything but normal. And very unlike the tousled intellectual Sorbonne type. “Just a tapir!“ one was saying; “they never let you forget it.”
    Tapir meant tutor in normalien argot. She’d worked with a tapir once, sweating out a physics course. Many normaliens became politicians, like Pompidou, or scientists, such as Pasteur, or philosophers, like Sartre.
    “I’d like to speak with someone who worked with him.”
    “We’ve cancelled his seminar. Professeur Rady, the department head, is out today.”
    Before memories dimmed, conversations and details were forgotten, she had to find out more about Benoît. “Here’s my card; please ask him to call me.”
    The man leaned forward to take it. “Academia’s cut-throat, but one never thinks. . . .” he confided.
    Aimée paused in mid-step. “Cut-throat?”
    “You know, publish or perish.” Behind his thick glasses, his eyes were shuttered. “The competition is intense. However, in the professor’s category, that was not a consideration.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “As I said, Professeur Benoît was renowned in his field. He delivered papers, wrote definitive books, consulted on economic programs. He was beyond that kind of competition.”
    The phone panel lit up and he reached to answer it. “If you’ll excuse me. . . .”
    “What about the professor’s lab? Can I get a name of some-one he worked with?”
    “I’m sorry. That’s all the information I can give you.”
    Over the Ecole Normale Supérieur’s portal in gold letters was the date of the Revolutionary government’s founding of the school, 9 Brumaire, année 11. * Once it had admitted every applicant, all citizens being equal. But not now. Outside, in the hot street, Aimée fanned herself. Pockets of air were hemmed in by thick-walled buildings lining quiet narrow streets threading the quartier. A lone child’s voice drifted from an open upstairs window, followed by the clicking of a metronome and the notes of a violin scale.
    Resolute, she quickened her pace. Several streets later she found herself on rue Mouffetard, which was thronged with milling shoppers. Once this had been an old Roman road, the artery leading to Italy. Now it was a steep market street lined with two- and three-story slanting buildings, holding wall-to-wall people drawn by the shops and vegetable stalls.
    “Peaches, Languedoc peaches,” shouted a hawker. “Last of the season.”
    Mounds of green-seamed melons and moisture-beaded nectarines were arranged in the fruit stall, protected under an awning from the afternoon sun. It was reminiscent of the Marseilles market, she thought, though lacking the sharp fishwives’ calls and lapping turquoise waters of the Mediterranean behind them. The ripe sweetness of the last fruits of summer filled the air.
    An old man with a dog bumped into her. “Excusez-moi, ” he said. He smiled, with all the time in the world.
    The flics would have left Benoît’s laboratory by now. She’d have to hurry to get there before the building closed.
    She edged forward. Rue Mouffetard was filled with tourists in the afternoon. There were enough of them to make it difficult to move.
    She thought that she’d like to show Mireille this quartier. On Sundays, she and her grandfather used to cross the Seine to climb the hill of la Mouffe, as he called it. They would catch a film at the postage-stamp-sized theater nestled be-tween the shops. Afterward, he’d buy a roasted chicken from the corner charcuterie where the Mouffe crossed rue l’Arbalète.
    “Why must we always come here for a chicken? It’s such a long walk, Grand-père, ” she’d asked, pouting. “I’ve bought poulet rôti from him for thirty-five years,” he’d said, “why should I change now?”
    Nearby Place de la Contrescarpe glinted in the sun; the cafés were