"There was a superb foie gras, that I remember. But the other guests?" He shrugged. "Desole."

She'd try another tack. "Can you remember anything else about the last time you saw Monsieur Peltier?"

"You mean at the dinner?" Renaud's brow furrowed. "It's terrible, but . . . I can only picture Elise. How happy we were. But now . . . it's tearing her apart."

"Can you give me the date?"

Renaud paused under the streetlight and consulted his calendar. The taxi stand stood deserted.

"October eighth. We dined early since I had rehearsal."

The night before his murder.

"If I'd only paid attention," he said. "But I gave Elise a promise ring and her mother seemed happy and her father, alors, happy in his own fashion."

A Noctambus, the rare and infrequent all-night bus, approached on the boulevard. "Desole, this bus stops at my door. I have to catch it."

"Here's my card, Renaud." She'd found him to be a condescending showman at first, but now he seemed like a caring fiance. A nice catch for Elise. "Please, call me if there's anything you can think of."

Renaud took it.

Her grandfather's comment on the Sten gun came back to her. She'd try one more time, fish for one more thing. "I wonder if that evening Monsieur Peltier mentioned anything about the past. Maybe the war?"

She sensed Renaud hesitate. Then he shook his head. "Non, but I overheard a remark at the theater benefit."

"Et alors?" Right away she wished she'd kept the impatience out her voice.

"Just gossip, really."

The bus pulled up. Doors opened and a few passengers stepped off. Renaud de Bretteville edged toward the bus door.

"I'm listening. Please, everything's important."

He paused, pulling out a bus pass. "You won't mention this to Elise?"

"Everything stays confidential," she lied.

"I heard a rumor that Bruno had made out well during the Occupation. That that's why he had the money to be a benefactor of the arts."

"You're saying Elise's father collaborated with the Germans during the war?"

"It's only an overheard conversation," he said. "Not for me to slander the dead. People made fortunes and no one asked questions then." In the bus's doorway he turned back to add, "No one wanted answers."

As the bus lurched away, she pulled on her helmet. She thought about Vortek's father, the Polish resistance fighter, and his story about executing collaborators in the Polish forests. She took a last look at Chapelle Expiatore's dome, the glint of the gold-tipped fence. It was time to call it a night.

Crossing Pont Marie, she shuddered at the memory of what she had seen earlier, not so many bridges away. Why would the police have contacted Elise unless this second murder connected to her father's? Of course it did. Afraid, Elise must have packed up her mother and left in a hurry.

Afraid of what?

That they were next?

Did that mean Elise knew who might be after her? Did she already know who'd killed her father? Had she withheld part of the truth when she'd come into Leduc Detective?

Or was it just that the grief and stress were too much for her, and she had decided to get away for a while? A second murder, the police calling in the night-it would have taken a toll.

On the Ile Saint-Louis she turned left down the quai d'Anjou and parked. She saw a light on in their window.

The Leduc family flat took up the third floor of a seventeenth-century hotel particulier built on the island where once the king's cows had grazed. Inhabited now by aristos and old families whose descendants had inherited an architectural jewel but couldn't afford to redo the archaic heating and plumbing. She'd grown up with it, so she was used to it-used to keeping her coat on indoors in the winter, used to remembering to turn off the sagging chandeliers before switching on her hair dryer so as not to blow a fuse.

Over the years, rising humidity had dampened the three-hundred-year-old walls and warped the inlaid parquet floors. The eight-room apartment's walls were lined by smoky age-patinaed mirrors, granite fireplaces, and cracked marble busts that had been left to her grandfather. He'd told her the original owners had sadly taken a one-way trip in 1942. Now he bought lotto tickets, hoping to win enough to renovate the place.

Her shoulders sagged with tiredness. She crossed the cobbled courtyard, passed the glistening pear tree, and made her way up the age-worn marble stairs. Cursed when, as usual, the key stuck in the old lock. She kicked off her boots on the creaking wood floor of the foyer, hung up the jacket, and rubbed her sore finger with the blood blister. She heard barking.

Mon Dieu, he'd brought the stray home.

In the kitchen, a wet nose popped out of a little nest of blankets by the radiator. On the wood table, her grandfather had left a note: Fed, walked, and needs love. See you in the morning.

"Mon pauvre." She picked up the little thing, a warm ball of now clean white fluff. "What can I do with you until tomorrow?"

Licks on her cheeks answered her. He had the pinkest tongue she'd ever seen. She nuzzled him back, held him for a while, trying not to think about the body she'd seen on the quai, thinking instead about her father and wondering why he'd kept back the truth about his trip to Berlin. Why the hell did her mother have a Stasi file?

A keening whine came from the little dog. Her grandfather's note said the puppy had already been fed, but . . . "Thirsty?"

She peered in the cupboard and came up with a chipped Limoges bowl she hoped her grandfather wouldn't mind her using. Filled it with Evian, which the dog lapped up.

Her own stomach growled. She turned on the radio to jazz classique and shoved yesterday's cassoulet in the old oven. She tore off a piece of baguette and uncorked the bottle of red wine on the table. Strains from a ballad from Miles Davis's Kind of Blue album. The melancholic notes matched the gusting wind outside the window, the leaden hanging clouds. Any minute it would pour.

She picked the puppy up again, felt his little bones shaking. He was warm and comforting in her arms. He barked.

"Voil," she said. "I'm calling you Miles Davis for now."

Sipping from the glass, she moved the salt and pepper, spread out her notes and photographs on the table.

A cast of characters and a gruesome scene.

The oven's warmth heated the high-ceilinged kitchen, toasted her bare toes. Miles Davis warmed her lap.

Yawning, she closed her eyes.

She woke up to Miles Davis's barking, a kitchen full of smoke. Her eyes burned. Merde, she'd nodded off and burnt her dinner. She grabbed a mitt, pulled out the flaming cassoulet, dumped the charred contents in the sink. Its black edges sizzled in the cold water.

A perfectly good cassoulet fallen victim to her baking skills.

She opened the window, fanning out the smoke, her eyes tearing. A lone figure stood on the Pont Marie, silhouetted in the mist. She shivered, feeling paranoid. She wished her papa were here.

Chambly-sur-Cher * November 1942.

Through binoculars Gaubert watched the small regiment in Givaray loading antiaircraft guns onto a unit of convoy trucks. Heavy bombardment had continued that week along the rail lines in the occupied zone. Now the Boches looked like they were moving out.

Givaray was so close that he heard orders barked in German, even saw the lace curtains move at the cheesemonger's. Heard a baby cry from the kitchen.

On the morning of the executions, he heard the fusillade of gunshots. Sixty shot in Givaray while he'd sat in silent guilt. Word came the bodies had been dumped in a communal grave, not even a proper burial allowed. All week, he and the others laid low, expecting a knock on the door.

Good God, what had they done but engender a village of widows and fatherless children? His intentions of confessing and taking the blame got harder and harder as he imagined more victims. What if it happened here in Chambly and his son, Gaby . . . He couldn't finish the thought. How could he possibly make it up to the innocent victims? He'd had the idea to persuade Alain and the others to help him steal arms for the Resistance-he could get supplies to them through Fanny's brother-but he wasn't sure he could convince the others and pull off his plan for stealing guns from the gendarmes.

A soft knock at the back door. "Gaubert?" He recognized Alain's voice. "We're meeting in your barn."

Now? "It doesn't look good, you all coming here."

"It's dark. Bring some candles. Bruno got a telegram from Fanny's aunt."

"My wife's aunt? Why the hell is he in my business-"

"His mother works at the post. He saved you a trip, Gaubert."

Since when had Bruno become so helpful? Gaubert had been limping since the last war, but Bruno had never picked up his post for him before.

In his barn, the mare pawed the earth. He shoved an armful of hay into her feeding trough. Her breath steamed. A flickering kerosene lamp threw light on the three men huddled near the stall.

"Where's my telegram?"

Bruno opened his jacket pocket, took out an envelope of thin war-grade paper.

Gaubert read the few words.

Colt and mare fine.

He bit his lip. Read the lines again. Code for "arrived and safe."

How he missed his little Gaby, his darling Fanny. They needed warm clothes, needed to be in their own home, with him. But it was too dangerous.

Bruno pulled out his tobacco papers and pouch, rolled a cigarette. Gaubert knew there was something, apart from the tobacco, on the tip of his tongue.

"Is that all? What aren't you telling me?"

"The horse stumbled and Gaby broke his nose, Gaubert. But he's fine."

"What? How do you know that?" His little Gaby.

Bruno scratched a match. Lit his rolled cigarette and puffed. "The whole village knows they fled, that's what I'm telling you."

"Of course I made her flee. There've been executions . . ."

"Idiot, didn't you realize that if you sent them away it would look suspicious?"

Gossip. Rumor. Every step they took was being watched.

"We've got a plan, Gaubert," said Philbert, "and we want you to hear it. To agree."

"You're coming up with plans now?"

"We have to. It looks suspicious."

"What does?"

"You sending your family away. Everybody noticed."

"It's wartime. Germans are executing people in Givaray less than a kilometer away across the river, and you're telling me it looks suspicious that I want to protect my family? But what do you know about protecting a family? You still live with your parents-all of you. I won't have any of you tell me how to live, or that I can't keep my wife and son safe."

"What if Fanny lets something slip? Confides in her aunt? We're all in danger, don't you understand?"

"Danger? Blame Alain for pounding Rouxel's head in with a rock. You think the Germans won't look for him?"

He saw it plain as day. In their greed, all they were worried about was the damn gold they'd buried in his barn floor.

"Did you tell Fanny?"

Gaubert shook his head in disgust. "Didn't we agree? We're all dead men if word gets out. The village, too. It's never left this circle, has it? Or have you told your mother, sister, or cousins?"

Sheepish looks greeted him.

"You have? Who did you tell?"

They were all shaking their heads now. "No one, Gaubert," said Bruno, turning to the others. "We swear."

"Good. My family stays away until we move the gold."

Philbert nodded. "There are more like Rouxel, those roaming fascists from the Parti Populaire, just trumped-up gangsters . . ." He paused, looked at each one for effect. "If anyone in Givaray found out, they'd kill us faster than the Boches could."

Bruno blew out a stream of smoke that swirled up to the barn rafters. "My cousin at the station and my mother at the post keep me informed," he said. "They both heard that POWs are reconstructing the train lines, and the Germans are being pulled to Vierzon and Bourges to set up antiaircraft emplacements."

Big words for a chicken farmer who lived with his mother. But Gaubert had seen the Germans' movement through his binoculars.

"There's a big offensive in Russia, they're massing troops to the front." Philbert lowered his voice. "My uncle heard it on the radio. The BBC."

Listening to the BBC's Radio Londres broadcast was illegal.

"Et alors?" Gaubert said.

"A perfect time for our plan. We melt one gold bar and say-"

"That it fell off a German train in the bombing?" Gaubert snorted.