Wednesday, August 14, 2019

A Stranger In Paris. Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery #9. Pt. 5. Louis Shalako.

As if life wasn't depressing enough.


Louis Shalako


Gilles put the phone down, after giving instructions to Doctor Poirier. The lady would be allowed to examine the body for birthmarks, although she said she couldn’t recall anything in particular—a mole on a shoulder, a small scar on the shin or a knee perhaps, (and half the young men in the world had such scars), and so, even if it was there, it could hardly be conclusive. Poirier would keep the face and hands bagged and covered, and sometimes that was the best that could be done, and horrifying enough under the circumstances. She’d said the young man hadn’t been particularly hairy.

Unfortunately, that lined right up with what the Doctor was saying, and the evidence of their own eyes. Again, totally inconclusive. It was also the sort of thing that would not be in the paper, for what that was worth. 

Doubts, doubts…always there were doubts. Without fingerprints, there wasn’t much point in checking police records or for military service. The name might be there…that name had to match up with a body, therefore fingerprints or a mug-shot were essential. It was low-priority work, and yet someone had to make the phone call…jot that down on the list.

And, as long as the lady was in a car headed to the morgue, Detective Hubert could nip around to her place and just see if that nasty old key fit in the front door-lock…according to her, this was Paul’s habitual mode of entry. No sneaking around back doors for them, apparently.

Ah, but Paul, rather their victim, had only had one key—there was her place and then that loft in Montmartre. It was truly unfortunate, but she’d only been there once and couldn’t really remember much. Certainly not the address, although it was just off of a main street. They’d gone there after a night on the town, and they’d both been quite tipsy. He didn’t inquire any further, the deepening colour on her cheeks had been enough. Such memories might help to keep her warm at night in her old age—another shitty little thought, but it was there nevertheless.

He looked inquiringly at Andre, just coming in the door with a certain look on his face. He’d been called out on some mysterious errand…

Looks like we got us another one...
The younger man hung up his coat.

“Okay, boss. It looks like we got ourselves another one—”

“Oh, really.”

Andre looked smug.

“Oh, yes, sir. Indeed we do.”

***

“Tell me more—”

“The only major wrinkle here is the lack of a weapon. It’s early yet, but the body was found Thursday morning. Time of death appears to be ten to fourteen hours previously. It was a chilly night, and wet, the low body weight, all of that affects rigour mortis. Face obliterated. Fingers and thumbs gone. Scene similar to our first victim. An alley, not much frequented except by the householders along the way. The trash disposal people, the odd wino, a homeless person maybe. Killed or dumped in the night, although the whole place is such a shambles it’s hard to read the blood spatters.”

Andre quickly gave his impressions, barely consulting his notes, which to be fair would be competent enough, and admissible as evidence in a court of law.

“Nice clothes, hair and teeth. Good shoes, not quite as nice as the last ones. Again, robbery does not seem to be a motive—” The victim had some cash on him, again no identification, rather expected considering the attempt (or presumed attempt) to make an ID difficult if not impossible.

All of those stab wounds—conforming, at first glance, to their previous victim.

“Go on.”

There was the smell of alcohol, enough that it would probably show up in autopsy results. 

There was the one poker chip, albeit a big one, five hundred francs, in the jacket pocket. It was either winnings, not even cashed in at the end of a night, or one hell of a big tip—

This one had been handled by a thousand people, which added up to about a million smudges.

That was the hell of such objects.

“Let’s have a look.” Gilles studied it through a magnifying glass.

Totally generic. One could buy them in almost any toy or department store in the city.

Compression-molded of clay and other materials, shellac for example, with their colourful inlays—the latest technology, light, colourful and almost indestructible according to the makers…Andre uttered a deep sigh.

No one was listening. It was like he was the only one really there.

“Hubert says the key didn’t fit. I guess you knew that—”

Maintenon: It's all bullshit.
Andre shook his head. It was like he just wasn’t getting through, sometimes.

“Madame made no comment on the circumcision…”

He sighed.

“Well, I mean, the question is motive. Why, Gilles, why?”

Maintenon nodded, eyes on the ceiling where the dead flies and cobwebs still held their sway after all of these uneasy years...a cob was a British spider, as someone had once put it.

He was still clutching the poker chip.

“Well, Andre. I should think that would be obvious.” The next words came in what was a bit of a bombshell. “I mean—well. It’s all bullshit, of course.”

***

And, of course, there had to be another woman—another bereaved—another lover.

She was waiting in the wings, a little less than forty-eight hours after filing her complaint.

“And the lady?”

“Mademoiselle Bernier.” She was waiting in one of their interview rooms.

“All right.” With a sigh, Gilles stubbed out his cigarette and heaved himself to his feet.

It was very quiet in the interview rooms, with barely a hum coming through walls, the occasional muffled voice in the hallway outside.

Maxine Bernier was different in some ways. Mid-fifties. Owned the home she lived in, tall, narrow and jammed in between all the others, but five floors including an unused loft. Never married. A sister in Orleans, a brother in the Levant, where he was said to be doing very well.

Prosperous enough, the clothes were much more sedate, perhaps that was the wrong word. 

The clothes were of good quality but sexless. This one would be a church-goer…a real do-gooder, unless he missed his guess.

She sat there, bolt upright on the hard wooden chair, hands clasped in her lap, feet flat in the low heels, on the floor, knees tightly together.

A good girl, in other words, with her education by nuns and staid, upright older virgins written all over her.

This one was already dressed for mourning, as if life wasn’t already depressing enough.

“So. Mademoiselle. What is this all about?”

In a soft yet precise voice, barely able to look him in the eye, she began.

“Jean…Jean didn’t come home at his usual time, and at first I thought he’d just missed the bus and that he’d be home soon enough.”

“I see.”

She nodded.

“Of course, after a time, it was getting late—and I just went to bed.”

“And he lives with you?”

“Er—yes. That is, he rents the flat above, but of course, he was—he is such a nice young man, and in some respects, he is almost a member of the family.” A family, which, upon inspection, would turn out to be a live-in maid, a cat or two, or three, and a bunch of faded pictures on the mantel-piece.

“Go on.”

She was blushing, but managed to look Gilles in the eye before quickly darting away again.

“Quite frankly, he has never stayed away, I mean overnight before. I’m worried that something terrible must have happened to him.”

“And what did Jean, er, do for a living? What is his last name, if you don’t mind?” The pen hovered over the page.

“Cariveau. Jean Cariveau. He is a machinist.” She mentioned the name of a company.

He’d never heard of it, but she gave him an address—the street name, at the very least, and police would undoubtedly check it out. Cariveau would have to take a bus, a tram, and the Metro to get all the way over there, to the industrial southeastern quarter, but it was a skilled profession. 

For such a young member of the working class, he’d be making real money, hand over fist, as she put it. It was worth an hour and a half or more of travel per day. His father, now deceased, had been a dock-worker along the quays, and his mother a seamstress. The mother, apparently, had liked books, that love of learning rubbing off on the son. He had two younger sisters, and a brother who lived in Marseille. They had been very proud of him, but their flat was small and so, looking to get out on his own, he’d answered an advertisement of Mademoiselle Bernier’s.

“It’s not that I really needed the money. But it seemed a shame, just to leave a perfectly good flat empty, and of course people are flocking to the city these days.” There was a small storefront on the street level, a man and his wife, green-grocers for the last twenty-four years, according to her.

The rent was helpful.

“Ah. I see. Thank you. Does he go out often?”

“Oh, no. Not really, although he does have a social life.” Many of his evenings, according to her, were spent in her flat, which was much bigger and nicer than his. “He enjoyed playing the piano, and of course he didn’t have one of his own.”

A musical connection, thin though it was. Gilles had a piano—Ann had wanted one, and so he’d reluctantly gone shopping with her. Anne had taken lessons as a girl. As it turned out, Gilles was the one who had taken some small interest, perhaps even exhibiting some talent.

“..and of course it’s so very difficult, cooking for one I mean.”

He still had it. It was still there, in the back room, and a place where he hardly ever went, except to look for the cat, or to open a window to catch a cross-breeze on the warmest summer nights.

The place was so quiet these days, to tinkle a few keys seemed a shameful disruption, and so he never did it anymore…the notion that half the street might hear him, had been more than enough to stop the impulse dead in its tracks.

“Was he good-looking? Or non-descript, perhaps?”

An innocent enough question, but the sudden blush said much.

“Yes. Yes, I suppose so—he was a, ah, very personable young man.”

“I see. So, he had working clothes, and street clothes?”

“Yes, of course.” She hesitated. “He’d just taken out life insurance.”

“What?” What? Heavy thumps from the hallway had half-drowned the lady out.

Apparently, someone was getting a new desk…something big and heavy.

“He’d just taken out life insurance. Oh, please don’t think what you are thinking—but, he was a very thoughtful young man. He’d heard someone, some speaker, on the subject. It might have been some magazine article. Anyhow, it was a good deal, according to him, and yet, he had to have some kind of beneficiary.”

“And so, he made you his beneficiary?”

“Er, yes, Inspector.” Shame flooded her cheeks. “I didn’t know what to think, but his poor mother—perhaps he knew something I didn’t, perhaps she was already provided for.”

“It’s all right, Madame. I understand.”

She put her head down and cried.

All one could do sometimes, was to wait them out.


END

Thanks for reading.

Images. The Internet(s)

Louis has all kinds of books and stories here on Smashwords, many of them free. Or at least pretty cheap.



No comments:

Post a Comment

Please feel free to comment on the blog posts, art or editing.