Elusive by Linda Rae Blair Page B

“Please, what is it? What has happened?”
    “Mademoiselle, you are the niece of one Rodée
Delamare?” he asked her. Blair noticed that he had mangled his
pronunciation of her dear uncle’s name.
    “Yes, of course she is, you twit,” Madame
responded to him tersely. “I already told you that. Spit it out,
boy! Spit it out! Do not torture the poor girl.”
    The young gendarme’s face turned scarlet, and
he continued, “Mademoiselle, I am sorry to advise you that your
uncle was killed today.” Looking at his watch briefly, he
continued, “It happened about an hour ago…at the market place near
his apartment. A flower vendor, he checked his notes, a Claude
LeGard, told us where to find you.”
    The Paris sky and all around her turned white
and became silent as if she were under water, as her body simply
floated to the ground.
    ***
    She opened her eyes and could not imagine how
she had gotten onto the small settee in Madame’s back office.
How…then it all came rushing back. “Oh,” she cried out in grief.
“Uncle Roddy! Uncle Roddy!” The cry became a keening plea as tears
streamed down her face, while Esmée held her and Madame looked on
with tears of her own.
    Madame's heart broke for the girl. The tie
between the uncle and the girl had been so very strong. She stepped
forward with a small glass of wine ready for her. “Here, Blair, my
dear, drink this. It will help,” Madame said, as she held the glass
in front of Blair who—wondering if she would be able to swallow—did
finally manage to do so.
    “Madame, please tell me all you know. I must
understand what has happened,” Blair pleaded when she realized the
gendarme was no longer with them. Madame took the time to tell her
everything the gendarme had told her. It grieved Madame to know
what this slip of a girl would need to handle over the next few
days.
    “Do not worry, Chéri,” Madame continued,
“Esmée and I will assist you in every way we can.” She looked over
at Esmée’s pale face as the girl nodded in agreement.
    “Blair,” Esmée said quietly, “Let me take you
home now. You need to rest. You’ve had a terrible shock.”
    Later Blair did not even remember how she got
back to her apartment. It would be several hours before she
realized that anyone—currently Mssr. LeGard—had been hovering with
tea, cookies, anything they could offer to try to get some food
into her system.
    Esmée had left the sweet old man in charge of
watching over Blair late that afternoon, while she returned to
assist Madame in closing the shop for the day. She had promised
Mssr. LeGard that she would return later that evening, to take over
again. He, of course, was glad to be of some service to Blair and
would not rest easy until she was herself again.
    As he tried once more to get her to eat
something, he had to reassure himself that he had heard her speak.
“What is it, child?”
    “Why?” She barely whispered, with her voice
scratching and raw from hours of crying. “I do not understand why.
Everyone loved him. Why would someone kill him? It must have been
some terrible accident—a mistake. He was such a loving, gentle,
peaceful man. Perhaps they thought he was someone else?” She seemed
to be pleading when she raised her chin and looked into Mssr.
LeGard’s face.
    “Yes, my dear, I am certain you are right,”
he tried to assure her. His true opinion was very different. He had
learned from his grandnephew, Claude, that the killer had been
right next to her uncle when he fired the shot. No. The killer had
known what he was doing and to whom he was doing it, LeGard was
certain.
    Unfortunately, the crowd had been thick, and
Claude’s attention had been on Roddy, not the passersby. Someone
did not love him, he thought. LeGard was afraid that the ‘who’ and the ‘why’ of her uncle’s death might never
be known.

    **************************

    Chapter 7: From a Distance
    Paris, France – April 1912

    As soon as Alexandre got to Paris, he