Description:
Haunted by a name from the past, Inspector Morel visits a forgotten apartment in Montmartre. There, the silence tells a different story — and an old melody reveals that Sophie Lemoine may not be as dead as the files say.
Chapter 4: The Pianist Who Died Twice
The building on Rue des Martyrs was the kind of place where ghosts paid rent. Paint peeled from the shutters, balconies sagged under rusted iron, and the door buzzers had long since stopped working. Morel rang nothing, waited, then pushed.
The stairwell smelled of boiled cabbage and old books. He climbed slowly, his left knee complaining — a souvenir from the Liberation, courtesy of a sniper who hadn’t gotten the memo.
Apartment 4B. The door was closed, the number crooked. Morel knocked once, twice. No answer.
He waited, then took a thin piece of folded wire from his coat. Old habits. The lock clicked open like it had been waiting.
Inside, the air was stale and dry. Dust coated everything, but the piano in the corner had a shine to it. Recently played. Keys still warm.
On the desk beside it: a half-empty bottle of absinthe, a metronome ticking. But no one in sight.
Then he saw it. A small envelope tucked between two pages of sheet music. Red wax. Broken.
He pulled it out gently. Inside was a single photograph: Émile Vasseur, sitting at that very piano — with a woman whose face had been half-torn away. The corner of the image still showed the name scrawled in pencil: Sophie, rehearsal – Oct. ‘54.
Morel’s pulse tightened. Sophie Lemoine had died ten years ago in a Resistance safehouse bombing. He’d seen the report himself. But if she was in this photo — and that photo was dated just two weeks ago — either the file lied… or someone had gone to great lengths to fake a ghost.
He turned to the metronome. Still ticking.
A sound behind him. A floorboard creaked.
He turned, hand instinctively going to his pistol.
Nothing. Just a breeze from the cracked window, and a note left on the floor, folded once, like a forgotten thought.
He picked it up.
“He played the wrong song.”
No signature.
Morel looked again at the piano. A single key had been pressed and held by something wedged inside.
A broken violin string.