- The death of a young man in the organ of the Maison de la Radio leads our investigators on the trail of a killer melody.
- In a large auditorium a young woman called Pauline Fauvelle is practising on a concert organ - it's Bach's Toccata and Fugue, BWV 565. She seems to be on her own. During the practice she notices that one of the notes doesn't play properly, so she goes to investigate. As she goes, she encounters a man whom she knows, called Jacques Leibnitz; he looks unwell and she asks if he is all right. He says he is just coming back from his inspection. The woman goes to the swell box where the pipe system is located, and as she does so we notice that there is a peephole in the otherwise-enclosed chamber, giving a view of the console at which she plays. Suddenly sees the body of a man, Hugo, lying amongst the pipes. Astrid Nielsen works at the Criminal Records Office in Paris. She suffers from autism, and in particular she finds social relationships difficult. She is playing a board game with her Mother, Mathilde. Mathilde abandoned Astrid early in her life, and Astrid's autism prevents her from having emotional feelings toward her Mother, and she calls her Mme. Nielsen. It is only recently that Mathilde has contrived to get contact with Astrid through the medium of the board game. Astrid's phone rings; it's a call from Raphaëlle. She is a mid-level police detective, unconventional and combative. She has found Astrid a valuable collaborator, as Astrid notices small but significant details and makes unlikely but useful connections, which are often missed by others. They meet on the way to the national radio studios where the death occurred; Raphaëlle is trying to reach Mathias Forest, the Prosecuting Magistrate who is also her lover, but she can't get through. Establishing her extremely literal interpretation of words, Astrid criticises Raphaëlle as her message said there had been a death in a musical instrument; she should have said with or by a musical instrument. No, says Raphaëlle, it really was in an instrument. The go into the huge organ room at the Radio Studios. Dr Fournier, the police pathologist, is arranging for removal of the body. It was a simple accident he says; the man tripped and fractured his skull. He died instantly and haemorrhaged from his ear after death. But Astrid points out that the man has blood on his finger; if he had died instantly he would not have touched the blood. Raphaëlle interviews the woman who found the body; she states the basic facts of the note that did not play properly. Another, somewhat older woman is standing with her and adds that the Bach music requires tremendous effort to play well. She is Bénédicte Grélin, the "registrant" - the person responsible for ensuring that the air is fed to the organ pipes. But today she had an early medical appointment. Raphaëlle asks if she heard anything unusual, but since she wasn't there, she refers Raphaëlle to Karim, the sound engineer. Bénédicte seems to have a controlling relationship with the young woman. Karim says that when the music is playing, that's all he can hear. He can play a sequence from the recording now. Yes, he records rehearsals as well. He plays a very short sequence but Raphaëlle wants to hear it refined to the background noise. Despite his protestations, Karim manages that quite swiftly and almost immediately we hear a man's voice saying, "If you do that again, I'll kill you." Karim identifies the voice as belonging to Leibnitz. Leibnitz? What's he like? Well, you know he's a bit odd. Raphaëlle says what do you mean odd? Well just odd; an iron fist in a velvet glove; unyielding, you know? Raphaëlle asks why she did not see him at the scene, but Karim says he felt sick before you arrived and went home. Raphaëlle asks for a copy of the recordings. On the way back to the HQ, Nico is telling Raphaëlle over the phone that Leibnitz is the star of the Conservatoire. But he has a murky past - he uses very rough methods on his students. Raphaëlle tells Nico to go and arrest him, and to get the dead man's house searched. Astrid is listening to the tape and she says something is odd about the playing. She'll have to go and work out what it is otherwise she won't be able to concentrate on anything else. Raphaëlle interviews Leibnitz. She tries to bully him into a confession but he is calm, and simply explains what happened. He got angry with Hugo because he shouldn't have been in that part of the organ. Nico has come in; at Hugo's house he found a computer memory stick; he plays it now, and it is a view of the organ console taken from the peephole in the swell box. It shows Leibnitz ranting wildly to Pauline about the quality of her playing. Raphaëlle suggests to Leibnitz that it is bad for him especially with his past, but Leibnitz simply says that if Pauline didn't like his methods, she would have gone elsewhere. Now Fournier, the police pathologist phones. Raphaëlle says she will go to consult with him, but she tells Leibnitz that if Fournier phones during an interview, it must be bad for the interviewee. Leibnitz clearly thins this is a vain insult, and is not intimidated. At the police mortuary, Fournier says that there is no sign of violence on the body, just a ruptured aneurysm: a stroke. It caused him to lose consciousness and fall off the ladder. The bleeding in his brain leaked from his ear: it's best to let Leibnitz go. Raphaëlle is frustrated and angrily leaves. Back in the police office, Leibnitz has been told he can leave, but he is demanding the return of a notebook, that is vitally important to him. In fact it is lying on the desk near him and Raphaëlle hands it to him after looking inside it briefly. Leibnitz goes back to the organ auditorium, and suddenly someone switches on the floodlights and plays part of the Bach music. Leibnitz immediately stumbles and flounders around and collapses. Meanwhile Astrid has been analysing the taped music from the rehearsal and she is conferring with Karim; there is interference on the tape at certain moments. She has the ability to hear certain sounds that are inaudible to most people, and she has detected. He plays the tape and sure enough, Astrid is able to detect certain sounds at the places she identified. As they play through the places, we hear a woman scream, and say, "Oh my God". That's not on the tape, says Karim. Indeed it isn't for a cleaning woman has now found Leibnitz's body. Fournier is explaining to Raphaëlle that it is another simple case of a heart attack; he thinks he can see a scar on the man's neck where an artificial aortic valve has been inserted surgically, but Astrid can see a symbol on the floor by him. It is the musical notation "fermata". He must have written it before he died, but there is no pen or pencil nearby. His notebook is also missing. And it had a pencil inserted into it. Maybe he wrote with that, but it has been removed. Raphaëlle and some police colleagues go to Leibnitz's house and Pauline Fauvelle is there, looking in the window. She says something is wrong - Jacques Leibnitz usually picks her up, but he didn't today. Raphaëlle tells her that Leibnitz is dead and she is distraught. They all go in, Raphaëlle intending to search the place. Every wall has a rack containing tapes of every performance of every student of Leibnitz. He catalogued everything. Each had a "neume", a medieval musical notation system. Raphaëlle talks to Pauline about Leibnitz, and then she picks up a book of sheet music; it is the score of the Bach Toccata. She notices the fermata symbol and asks Pauline about it. She explains that it marks a prolonged note; the Toccata is full of them. While this is going on we see that Astrid is analysing the music at the Criminal Records Office where she has a room to herself. She has chalked some of the music on the floor and she too has marked the fermata. Now Karim the sound technician phones Astrid; he has discovered a sequence in the recorded music where there is an unexplained pause; he has sent Astrid a cleaned-up version of the recording at that point. Astrid has already worked out where in the recording this musty be, and Karim is duly impressed. At the police mortuary, Fournier the pathologist is showing Raphaëlle what he has discovered in the body of Hugo. He had an artificial aortic valve; his natural valve had failed. The artificial one malfunctioned and he had a heart attack as a result. Now Astrid is waiting in the swell box at the organ auditorium and Raphaëlle is looking for her; for some reason she has her gun in her hand. She finds Astrid, who says that she has worked out what killed Hugo Marchand and Jacques Leibnitz. It was an infrasound generator; it creates sound below 20 Hz, inaudible to most people. It creates resonances in the human body. Raphaëlle asks whether that could jam a heart valve or rupture an aneurysm? Yes it could. When a certain key was depressed, the sound was generated. Astrid worked it out from Leibnitz's mark on the floor - the fermata. Astrid is now at the autistic support group; she has been describing the case. At the end, William, the kindly organiser, gives her ten beans. He suggests that she can use the beans as a reward system for herself; is she accomplishes a social interaction, for example, she can take away a bean. If she has to retreat to a quiet place she must put one back. This system helped William a lot, he says. Raphaëlle and Astrid visit Fournier at the mortuary again. He is impressed with Astrid's explanation of both deaths, and attributes the credit to Astrid. He points out that Marchand had Lavyxal in his system, which is used as an anti-depressant, but it is contraindicated for aneurysms as it causes hypertension. So if he knew he had an aneurysm he wouldn't be taking it? So how did the killer know, if Marchand didn't? Now Nico and Enguien, Raphaëlle police colleagues come to see the Commissioner. They have searched Marchand's flat and found the medication referred to by Fournier. The Commissioner concludes that Marchand was never the target - it was Leibnitz. This suggests that it was a student of his who arranged his death. They decide to investigate Pauline Fauvelle's background. Three months ago she was involved in a head-on car crash. It was unexplained, and there were no tyre marks. The crash took place a few hours after one of her rehearsals at the organ. Interviewing her, Raphaëlle puts to her the theory that she had tried to kill herself, but she denies it. Astrid grabs the music score and discovers the impression of a message that must have been written over it - it reads "Don't cry for me." Pauline finally opens up. I kept quiet so as to avoid tarnishing Jacques' memory. I knew about the video. But I didn't kill anyone. The inscription in the score that Astrid found was not written by me. I obtained the score from someone else. Whoever it was given the code name Salicus by Jacques. I don't know who that was. The only way of finding out, is that Jacques would have it indicated in the little black book he carried around. Raphaëlle and Enguien search Leibnitz's house again, but fail to find anything; the key is the little black book, and that was taken by the murderer. But Astrid is with them and notices that there is no cassette player in the room. A third of the recordings in Leibnitz's system are on cassette, but there is no cassette player. However Enguien has noticed that there is a note in the house for the repair of the cassette player; it must be at the repair shop. Enguien goes to the repair shop; the player was broken, but it had a tape in it and the repair shop gave him a Walkman to play it. For a moment at the police station no-one knows how to play a tape in such outdated technology, but eventually they manage. It's yet another recording of the Bach music, and Astrid points out that from the timbre of the recording, it's in a church. We are not told, but apparently Raphaëlle and the team are sure that this tape was made by Salicus. Astrid is able to narrow down the location where the tape was recorded from a number of features relating to the specific sounds made by the organ, and from the date when the physical tape was made. They are able to narrow it down to three churches, but there were nevertheless a huge number of organ concerts in the possible time frame. But Nico points out that the Toccata is a secular work, and that many churches only permit religious works in concerts. That narrows it down to a single church, but Enguien discovers that the priest there at the time is dead. He does more searching and discovers a news report; "Marie Renard gets a standing ovation minutes before falling." It is expected to spell the end of her career. There is a photograph of Leibnitz. Astrid recollects that Marie Renard is the maiden name of Bénédicte Grélin, the registrant at the organ auditorium. She must be Salicus. Raphaëlle says that it wasn't an accident, and that she must be at the auditorium now with Pauline. In fact we see them at the church: Bénédicte is playing and Pauline is with her. At Police HQ Astrid is increasingly affected by the stress of the situation. But Raphaëlle has deduced that Bénédicte considers Pauline to be responsible for her fall, and the end of her career. The team have been unable to contact Bénédicte or Pauline, and Raphaëlle realises they must be together at the church. Bénédicte was devastated when Raphaëlle told her about Hugo's aneurysm: she must have intended the fermata infrasound for Leibnitz. At the church Bénédicte is playing the Toccata and Pauline is at her side. Bénédicte says she can't play any more due to a nerve injury from the fall, and she stops. She tells Pauline that she gave up everything for the music. At the recital where she fell, she felt she had played better than ever before, but Leibnitz criticised her playing, as it has "no soul". She asks Pauline to leave her alone. Bénédicte climbs on to the parapet of the gallery and is clearly going to jump and kill herself. Raphaëlle and Astrid arrive; Astrid was having a meltdown at the Police offices but evidently has recovered. Raphaëlle sees Bénédicte on the parapet, ready to jump, so Raphaëlle shoots her. She is clearly an excellent shot from distance with a handgun. Clearly the Paris police don't permit suicides. Astrid has observed all this and is now having a meltdown; Raphaëlle explains, "I shot her to protect her, Astrid." Back at police HQ Bénédicte explains that she wanted to kill Leibnitz to protect Pauline. She didn't know about Hugo's aneurysm. We see that Raphaëlle's relationship with Forest, the Prosecuting Magistrate, is rather rocky, and Raphaëlle is upset because Astrid has had such a problem; Raphaëlle is trying to protect her but it has not gone well. Astrid is recovering at home, and her estranged Mother has been calling in trying to help. Also Mr Tanaka, a Japanese man who runs the grocery shop that Astrid uses, has been visiting, ostensibly delivering supplies to her.
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