A Stranger In Paris. Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery #9. Pt. 4. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

Dr. Poirier was young and brash, perhaps an understandable adaptation to his present employment.

A door slammed open, and then he was with them. A pathologist by nature, he’d been on the job since the retirement of the much-beloved Dr. Guillaume, now said to be enjoying his retirement on the nude beaches of the Cote d’Azur. As for Doctor Auger, new senior examiner, he was at a big coroner’s symposium in Lucerne, and hadn’t arrived back yet. He might even be having a good time—now, there was a thought.

“Ah. There you are. Inspector—Andre.”

“Ah, yes, here we are. The, uh, anonymous corpse from the Allee des Repulsives—”

It was a joke, and a lame one at that.

“Ha. Regarding our victim.” The young fellow grabbed a handle, number nine, depressing a catch in the mechanism, and pulled out a big silver drawer, all stainless steel and modern, sterile efficiency.

He pulled back the linen sheet.

They stood, listening.

“We’re still waiting on lab tests. However, we can safely say that a series of stabs to the face were not the primary cause of death, perhaps not even simple loss of blood. No, our victim was stunned or drugged into a stupor before the act was carried out.”

“Ah.”

“There is a contusion on the back of the head, which may have occurred when he was dumped, but more likely it was a deliberate blow.” The hair was still matted with dried blood. "He bled out on the ground, as you may have already surmised.”

A cold night. Shock. An unconscious victim, wearing thin clothing. Loss of blood, the time that passed, had all contributed to the demise of their subject. And yet—and yet, there was little doubt that homicide had been the intention all along.

He shrugged.

“We will have to probe in as closely as possible, and, hopefully, see just how far some of these wounds go, but in my initial assessment, not that far. You can kill a man, with a sharp object through the orbit of the eye, yet my instinct tells me otherwise, in this particular case—” Some of the cuts had penetrated bone, which would have caused death eventually.

Assuming no medical treatment and penetration of the meninges. Dr. Poirier would know more after cutting in, as he put it.

Hmn.

“…the victim was between twenty-eight and thirty-four years of age, a Caucasian male of good social background, judging from teeth and hands…” Their victim would have stood about one hundred eighty-five centimetres or a little over six foot.

He weighed in at just over seventy-six kilos buck-naked as the young man put it.

They listened, hearing nothing that was very new.

“He was in good health although sedentary in habits…not underweight, not overweight, but soft in muscle tone…”

He looked up.

“A man of some means, although that is just an interpretation.”

“Tell us about the teeth.”

“Well, yes, Inspector. They’re very clean—very well looked-after.” Very little plaque, and this in a smoker.

Only one or two missing. Definitely not working class or outright poor—

“Giving us one possible lead.” There were only so many good dentists in the metropolitan area.

“Yes. I would definitely say so.” He seemed pleased, in that they were following him so far.

“He hadn’t eaten in a while, I would say a late lunch maybe. The time of death was definitely between eleven p.m. and one a.m.” That was based on blood pooling in the lowest part of the body and the degree, or lack, of rigour mortis.

The body had been discovered late the next afternoon, as they already knew from the reports from the scene…

“The hair, recently cut, and a very nice job too. Fingernails, toenails, all point to a person of some means, and some sensibility. He hadn’t shaved since that morning, accounting for the two-day stubble.” It was known that a man’s beard continued growing for some time after decease, which would vary from individual to individual based on body chemistry and to some degree based on race, although racial science in general was something else—something almost completely bogus in the doctor’s words. “Other than that. No tattoos or hairy moles or roseate birthmarks.”

“So, in other words, people in races with less facial hair would vary. That seems fair enough.”

“Right, Inspector.” Useless information—there was nothing to indicate that their victim was anything other than Caucasian. “As you can see, this one has been circumcised.”

This did not necessarily indicate a Jew; as other races and religions also practiced it for reasons of personal hygiene…there was a modern movement towards it, in fact. If nothing else, it was one more detail.

All of this would be in the report, with no need to take notes, although a good memory helped.

There was more, of course. There always was. And none of it worth a damned thing until they had an I.D.

“All right. Now, what about the stomach contents?”

***

Madame was waiting on the long hard benches along the hallway when they returned to the office.

Rosine Daniau was a tall, slender brunette in her early to mid-forties. It would have been impolite to ask directly, although it was right there on her passport. She’d had the foresight to bring it along. No driver’s license, although she must have had a birth certificate to get the passport, or some other form of identification. Enough sworn affidavits, from the right sort of person, and you get could get one with no real documentation. If nothing else, another line of inquiry, perhaps—

She lived in the fashionable 6th Arrondissement, Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

Clearly high-maintenance, but she also seemed to be the genuine article—her money stemmed from a father who had gone into the chemical service and supply industry just before the last war. With the rapid expansion of weapons manufacturing brought on by that event, he’d quickly prospered, joining that class of new money parvenus, very much taken with the good life and almost completely uncaring of the sneers of older, more established names.

She would be accepted now—

Tall but not too tall, shapely and yet not too shapely. She had good bone structure judging from the exposed collar-bones and then there was the elegant curve of the neck, set off by what looked like emerald ear-rings—small, but emeralds nevertheless. A larger stone hung on a pendant around her neck. That one must have cost some real money.

Deeply emotional, she’d turned in a missing-person report the stipulated forty-eight hours after her lover had gone missing.

He studied her, they all did, as she dabbed at the tears.

For her to take the extraordinary step of contacting police, well. It must have been extremely difficult for her.

From the elegantly coiffed tresses, smelling of something vaguely floral, to the dress from some house he didn’t immediately recognize, all tasteful black silk in a fine but tactile knit, to the shoes on her feet and the painted nails poking out the ends. Long, bare arms, once the mink slipped down, as it was meant to do…honey coloured skin and those big blue eyes. One could almost walk to the nearest news-stand and find the exact magazine. She did not exist in a vacuum, after all—

Every inch a lady, a modern one of the best sort, and with money, real money, written all over her.

Her Paul, a Monsieur Jean-Paul Saulnier, had disappeared Thursday night. He’d gone out early, and never came home. It was in about the right neighbourhood—Paul was known there, according to her, and she’d seen it in the papers on Saturday. Or Friday—whichever it was. Maintenon thought Friday, at least initially. There had been further, somewhat more lurid coverage, in the bigger, Saturday edition. Not that any new information had come forward—the newshounds were making the most of it, on a slow news day as it were. There really hadn’t been much there for them to print, purposely from his perspective. It was always best to keep their killer in the dark as much as possible. Her Paul—her Paul, had blue eyes, brown hair.

That matched with what little the police knew. 

Poirier had found enough ocular tissue to confirm that much. Their victim was male, if nothing else.

She was utterly convinced, of course, from the descriptions printed in the weekend newspapers.

Gilles wasn’t so sure, but he was prepared to listen…

“He was deeply devoted to me.” Her grief, while real, had some element of narcissism, a revelation that Gilles, more than ten years after the passing of his own beloved Ann, found a little uncomfortable.

What a shitty little personal revelation that was.

Dark, wet eyes glared at him, all of them.

“Paul did very well for me. In my investments. I tried to pay him for his time. But he would have none of it. Everything I gave him, a very small allowance, almost down to the last penny, went into savings—he lived most frugally in a loft in Montmartre, that is, ah, when he wasn’t with me.”

“I see.”

“Yes.” She sighed. “Of course, you will never understand.”

Not yet, anyways—

And yes, the dead—for them it was over, it is the living that must somehow soldier on. As he had—in his own case, as he was almost sure she would.

Yes, she would get over him, on some level, and relatively quickly. To a woman like this, a handsome young man would be a kind of fashion accessory. Proof that she still had that ineffable something.

The young fellow, from a remote village in the Jura, had few living relatives and had come to Paris to make his fortune—which, to hear her tell it, he had definitely been in the process of doing.

“Was Paul Jewish, by any chance?”

The question hadn’t embarrassed her. He made no mention of circumcision.

“What? No, no. Of course not. He was a good Catholic.” According to her, he occasionally took her to Mass, but not always.

Neither one of them was much of a church-goer.

“Can you think of anyone who might have wished him harm? Someone who might have had cause to hate, er, Paul?”

“No. Not at all. Everyone seemed to like him very much. He was a charming and agreeable young man.”

“No jealousy…perhaps from former lovers?” Yours or his, the unspoken words hanging in the air.

“No, not really—of course not. Paul had few friends, although he had some. He talked about them, so-and-so is writing this piece of music, or that other one who got a really good job—I think they call it a gig. He’s now first horn at a little club in Montmartre…” It really was quite good.

Everyone was raving about it—

“I see.”

“Paul was—or was becoming, a rather successful composer of light opera.” That, in addition to reading the papers and giving the lady some rather useful stock tips.

“Oh, really.”

“He hadn’t sold any real shows. He’d worked for other people, you understand. But he’d received quite a bit of interest and some positive criticisms of his own work, ah, from the sort of people that he admired…”

“Ah.”

She went on.

“Paul told me once that poor people study the sports pages and that rich people study the interest rates. Quite frankly, he has never steered me wrong. No, this was love, that which was between us, and yes, I know. I know what you, and the world must think. Or have thought—” More sobs.

So, the young man hadn’t been totally useless, then.

“Just to clarify. You made him an allowance, but other than that, he took nothing for his, er, work with your investments?”

She nodded, tears and snot still flowing.

“Can you think of any reason why he would be carrying such a large sum of money?”

“No. No, of course not. Paul had no real need of money.” Money wasn’t such a big thing with him, according to her. “I don’t know if it was even fame. More like, he just wanted to be good at it. To write good shows, shows that were worthwhile.”

It was just something he loved.

He nodded.

“We found one key in the victim’s possession. It strikes me that this might be, ah, the key to an identification.” Other than that, they had his clothes, particularly the shoes. She’d mentioned one or two shoe stores, where Paul might have bought them.

If she thought she was strong enough, she could come down to the morgue and have a look at the body.

Put in those terms, it was pretty stark.

The truth was, he had his doubts. In spite of all that she’d said so far.

END

Louis has all kinds of books and stories on Google Play. Many are free.

Images. Mostly stolen.

Part One.

Part Two.

Part Three.

Thank you for reading.