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look.
    “Tiens ! I’ve done all I can with this,” the man said, setting down a mustard-colored chamois cloth. “I’m Mathieu Cavour. How may I help you?” he asked René, picking up several cracked Sèvres porcelain drawer knobs, and slipping them into his pocket. “My showroom’s in the front, off the other courtyard, if you’d like to see our finished work.”
    Should he show him the detective badge, the one Aimée left in the drawer, that he’d slipped in his pocket?
    “Monsieur Cavour,” he said, flashing the badge. “A woman, my friend, was attacked outside your shop last night. Were you here?”
    René thought Cavour cringed. But maybe it was just his silhouette shifting under the skylight as René looked up.
    “Attacked . . . here?”
    “I found her outside in the passage,” René said. “Did you see or hear anything unusual?”
    “I live above the shop. I have trouble sleeping,” Cavour said. “Music helps me. I wouldn’t have heard anything outside.”
    “So your light was on?”
    Cavour’s brow creased. “Is this woman, your friend, all right?”
    Why didn’t Cavour answer his questions?
    “The attack was so vicious it blinded her,” said René.
    “ Je regrette . . .” he said.
    René saw sadness in Cavour’s eyes.
    “Do you remember if you had your light on?” he asked again.
    Cavour rubbed his brow with the back of his hand, “Sorry, I drift in and out of sleep, I can’t remember.”
    Did he have some medical condition?
    “Lived here long, Monsieur Cavour?”
    “Long? I was born upstairs. But the quartier has changed. The conniving developers want to take over.”
    “More and more,” said René, nodding in sympathy.
    The telephone rang. No one answered and Cavour looked flustered, as he ignored it.
    “Here’s my card. In case you think of something that might help,” René said. On his way out, he saw a broom and rusted dust pan by a full garbage bin. Might Cavour have found something of Aimée’s?
    “Did you sweep this morning?”
    “As always. The shop, the courtyard. Some of these people don’t care if the quartier ’s run down, no pride.”
    He stood, René thought, like a stubborn island in sea of slick renovation.
    In Cavour’s waste bin, topped off by sawdust and Malabar candy wrappers, René saw a crumpled sheet of music, the black notes faded on the yellowed page.
    “Look at what they leave in the passage, even in my courtyard,” he said, following René’s gaze. “That’s not the half of it. Condoms. Once a broken guitar.”
    And René heard voices, a chorus. Then a lone soprano. Their timbre softened by the stone. Timeless.
    “Where’s that coming from?” René asked.
    “Opera rehearsal,” said Cavour. “We’re behind the Opera, you know. A chorus from Le Barbier de Seville, would be my guess.”
    Cavour was an interesting mix, René thought. A blue collar craftsman with a knowledge of opera who worked on antique furniture. He liked Cavour, and yet, without knowing why, he felt uneasy about him.
    As he walked down the passage, he realized this detective business was harder than he’d imagined. He’d gotten no real information from Cavour. Cavour hadn’t answered his questions. Would Cavour have told him if he had seen anything? He wished he had Aimée’s knack for getting information out of people.
    And then René realized he’d forgotten to pack all of Aimée’s things. The cell phone.

Wednesday Afternoon
    MATHIEU CAVOUR LATCHED THE door behind the dwarf. His hands shook. Shook so much he dropped the old-fashioned key and had to get on his knees to find it between the stones. The pressure, the hiding, running a business . . . he couldn’t take it.
    And now this.
    His anxiety of last night came back.
    He’d awakened in his chair in the atelier, startled by a noise, and shot bolt upright. Sweat had dripped down his shoulder blades. Slanted moonlight had made patterned rectangles on the courtyard’s uneven cobbles.
    Then he had heard the