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scrape of the gate, like before. Fine, he’d get the furniture piece ready. Ignore the guilt he felt. The less he knew or thought about it, the better.
    Then the sounds of a struggle had come from the passage, like in his nightmares. The last time he’d heard that sound the serial killer, the Beast of Bastille, had claimed another victim. What should he do? He couldn’t very well call the flics and risk exposure.
    His restoration work paid the bills and kept the timbered roof over the shop. Barely. Never mind where the pieces of furniture came from or who they’d once belonged to.
    When would his contact come? He’d left the metal gate open . . . but one never knew. He paused near the half-open window, his undershirt damp. The struggle had come from the small, paved inner courtyard.
    He had held his breath. His hand had quivered as he tugged the limp lace curtain. He had taken a deep breath and parted the lace.
    In the courtyard, a man stood in his bathrobe rocking a crying infant. Mathieu had heard cooing as the man soothed the bundle in his arms under the honeysuckle. So the screams had wakened the baby, too.
    It must have been teenagers fighting, he told himself. Those sulky ones who hung around the pizza place, an upholsterer’s before the old boss died and Mirador Development had snapped up the building.
    He had wanted to go down and check the cave . Make sure the piece was safe. But the old stairs creaked and the doors were rusty and stiff. The years had taken their toll. His knees had protested. And the shadowy cobwebbed basement corners, damp stone and crumbling brickwork, were things he avoided even on sunny, warm days.
    He had found a Lizst piano concerto on the transistor radio on his work table. Had kept the volume low, hoping he’d fall asleep. But his eyes had stayed glued to the window until long after the baby’s cries quieted and a rosy dawn had painted the jagged Bastille rooftops.
    How would telling the dwarf about it help the woman now?
    Mathieu should have known, he realized later, that it was a warning. A foretaste of the next day. When the past opened like a fresh wound.

Wednesday
    “BONJOUR, ” SAID A VOICE from the shop interior.
    In the workshop, Mathieu paused, stretching the band of ash to fit in the grooved notch. He lifted his foot from the foot pedal, halting the rotor blade saw. Sawdust and the smell of freshly sawed wood filled the dusty space.
    “Suzanne . . . Suzanne, someone’s in front,” he said, as the metal saw teeth ground to a stop.
    But no answering footsteps came from his assistant’s desk.
    Where was that girl? She’d gone on an errand more than an hour ago.
    “A moment please, and someone will help you,” he called out. He dabbed glue mixed with wood resin in the crack, stretched the wood taut, and slid it gently in place. After wiping off the excess, he sanded the rough edge until no distinction could be felt, as though it were one piece with the wood.
    “Delivery!” Another voice shouted. “I need a signature.”
    Where was Suzanne? He had an art nouveau rosewood desk drawer to repair and the façade of a console to finish filing. . . . He couldn’t do that and run the shop too. He’d gotten behind since his apprentice Yvon had gone on vacation.
    “Oui, ” he said, wiping his hands on his stained apron and peering over the reading glasses perched on his nose.
    “Shall I deliver at the rear as usual, monsieur?”
    Mathieu went to the front shop, signed the receipt and stuck it on the counter. He dimmed the chandelier, a remnant from his grandfather’s day, and assumed the customer had left.
    But when he looked up he saw a slender older woman, wearing a tailored black suit, her blunt-cut steel grey hair brushing her shoulders. She watched him from behind the marble-topped mahogany commode.
    “Exquisite!” she said.
    Her fingers traveled over the marquetry wood decorated sides.
    Though she spoke French well, he detected a slide in her sibilants. She