The Paris Architect: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

the beautiful wainscoting along the walls. The wide recessed panels could be removed, opening up a space big enough for a man to fit through. But was that too obvious a hiding place? Probably. There had to be a twist. What if the person had to go through the panel opening and crawl down the length of the wall to hide within another hidden compartment? If the Germans found the removable panel, there would be just an empty space behind it. Unfortunately, as Lucien inspected further, he noticed the walls behind the wainscoting weren’t deep enough for a man’s body.
    Then Lucien noticed how unusually tall the baseboards along the floor were. Using the small tape measure he always carried with him, he confirmed they were almost forty centimeters high. Maybe they could be hinged like a flap on a mail slot, so a man could pull them up and slide on his belly into a hollowed-out space. That would’ve been a solution if the wall had been the right depth. Too bad, the Germans never would’ve looked down there.
    Lucien moved on. There was a wall along a corridor that curved out in the center, creating a semicircular niche where a small bronze statue of Mercury sat on a meter-high base. A man could crouch inside the base, unless he was really tall. The statue and the wood top of the base would have to be lifted up then put back into place in order for the man to hide. That would be quite difficult to do. Even if the statue was fastened to the top from underneath and the top hinged to the base, it would be very heavy. Lucien picked up the statue and guessed it weighed around fifty kilos. Would Manet’s guest have the strength to open and close the top?
    Lucien walked across the room to get a better look at the niche. Lighting a cigarette, he leaned against one of the very tall wooden Doric columns that framed the opening between the salon and the dining area. He looked it up and down and saw its fluted shaft was made from one piece of exquisite chestnut. If only it sat on a tall pedestal, he thought, a person could fit inside the pedestal to hide. Then Lucien noticed how big the diameter of the column was and measured it—about fifty-six centimeters. An incredible wave of euphoria swept over him. Using his own shoulders as a guide, he calculated that the column was just wide enough to fit a normal-size man upright, even accounting for the thickness of the column wall.
    Lucien was giddy with excitement. The two columns, which he knew were nonstructural and merely decorative, must be hollow. Smiling, he ran his hand over the column’s shaft; a narrow hinged door could be cut in, with its vertical joints hidden by the fluting. There couldn’t be any horizontal joints showing so the bottom joint would have to align with the base. The top joint had to line up with the column capital above. Though the shaft of the column was almost four meters high, a door could be made that tall if he used a piano hinge. Lucien had once designed a door with standard hinges that stood three meters high. If Manet’s men were as good as advertised, this could work.
    He’d done it! It was such a brilliant, elegant, and ingenious solution.
    He’d fool those fucking Nazi bastards.

4
    Two hours before meeting Manet and Lucien was already on his fourth glass of faux red wine. The euphoria of tricking the Germans had worn off, and the reality of being murdered by the Gestapo for getting involved in this scheme returned. A thousand things could go wrong. He knew that Parisians were betraying Jews to the Germans every day. Suppose someone tipped off the Gestapo about Manet’s Jew and the column didn’t work? The Jew would give up Manet, and Manet would give him up. He’d be crazy to do this.
    Before he’d left the apartment on rue Galilée, Lucien had sketched out the details of the column on a scrap of paper. He turned it over now and began sketching out the building for the factory in Chaville, a suburb west of Paris. He imagined a sawtooth roof to let