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Saturday, December 4, 2021

A Stranger In Paris, Pt. 16. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery. Louis Shalako.

"...can you say that again, please...???"

 

 Louis Shalako



It was mid-afternoon at this point. With the help of Alphonse and a city map, they had reconstructed his route as best they could. It turned out the block in question, where their Amazon, as Alphonse insisted on calling their Holmes look-a-like, had disappeared, was the address of a large, modern hotel. It took but a short leap of imagination, a phone book, and then Hubert made the call.

“Yeah, that makes sense. I’m pretty sure it was right along in there somewhere.” Alphonse was comfortably seated, legs crossed, tie loosened and jacket hanging off the back of the chair.

Gilles had noted fresh manila envelopes on the blotter, and he set about opening the first one as Hubert spoke quietly in the far corner.

“What? What?”

“Can you say that again?” And a hand jammed over an ear.

Hubert’s tone and volume were going up…and then up some more.

He listened, and they all sat there, rapt.

“A week! Holy, crap. Well, thank you. I guess—”

He hung up in a kind of disgust.

“Well.” Taking in a deep breath, he tossed his unused pen down on the desk. “Okay. According to them, they have about two hundred Sherlock Holmes staying there at the present time. There are some others that come and go—presumably they’re not all in the same hotel. Also according to them, they have at least eighty Doctor Watsons, a couple of dozen Moriaritys, several femmes fatale, presumably based on the characters, and there is even a smattering of Baker Street Irregulars.”

There was only so high that several sets of eyebrows could go…

Apparently, there was someone there with a couple of really big hounds, on a leash, but hounds never the less.

He spoke in a dry tone—

“The Hounds of the Baskervilles, ah, sir.”

The Hounds of the Baskervilles...

Gilles stared at him, coffee mug halfway to his mouth.

“What…what in the hell are you talking about?”

“It’s a convention, sir. People from all over the world, to hear him tell it. It’s the annual Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Festival. It brings a million francs into the city every year. Er, they give out some sort of French-language literary award. Best mystery, best foreign book, all that sort of thing. A mystery-writing award. So, it’s all writers, publishers—bookstore representatives, all kinds of buyers, collectors, they have all kinds of what they call discussion panels. Hospitality rooms. Wine and cheese bashes. A big banquet on the final evening, and it’s a black-tie, sort of ball thing. Waltzing with the lady friend, sort of thing. Lots of autographs, authors rubbing elbows with the rabble. Oh, tables full of books and magazines for sale, and then of course there are all the fans. Some of whom can be quite intense, as you already know—”

Alphonse cracked up.

“Ha! Ha, ha.” He reddened in the face. “Sorry, sir.”

He chuckled again, more of a giggle, really. It was contagious, Gilles realized…

“Well, don’t that beat all.” Alphonse rose, taking his cup to their little brew-up area. “Well, at least the coffee is good. You boys do pretty well for yourselves up here.”

“Yes. Yes, thank you, Alphonse. I will see you tomorrow.” Gilles would be taking the Metro home tonight, or maybe even just walk it.

It had been dry for a whole day now, and it might be good to get some exercise.

“Anyways, I really am sorry about all that, ah, sir…”

“No. No. Don’t be. Don’t be—at least now we know, eh?”

Alphonse grinned.

“Right. Just one more little mystery, ah, solv-ed.” Coat now on, he gave the room a quick salute.

“Alphonse.”

“Sir?”

“Get that tire fixed. Ah—both of them.”

“Sir.” He hesitated. “Actually, I was thinking all new rubber…”

Maintenon nodded.

“Fine.”

Alphonse took his hat and bolted, and Gilles’s chair tipped back, the feet came up and it was time to read the fucking reports.

***

A quick sniff before coming in...

Langeron poked his head in the door and had a quick sniff before committing.

“Ah. Sir.” Hubert got up to shove a chair into place, still a bit warm from Alphonse, and turned to see if there was coffee in the pot.

“Roger.”

“Gilles.”

He nodded.

Maintenon straightened up. He indicated the documents.

“Toxicology reports. A strong opiate, probably morphine. Taken orally. Possibly in a drink. Possibly shoved down their throats, as far as we know. No other evidence, for example needle-marks or partially-dissolved pills in the, er, innards.” In the gizzard as his old man would have said.

“Okay.”

“Stomach contents. Not exactly starving to death, but nothing extraordinary. What difference does it make, when you have no other clues otherwise.”

“Understood.”

“Notepaper, cheap domestic product, available at ten thousand stationers, and that’s just here in town. Only fingerprints on it are our own. Not a smudge, otherwise.” The actual ink, pretty much the same thing.

Ball-point pens were made in their millions these days.

“As surmised.”

“Yes. We’re going to need one hell of a lot of manpower. I’m glad you stopped in.”

Roger digested this.

“I ran into Alphonse in the hallway. That’s quite the story.”

“Yes. But also, it raises certain flags. I’ve already noted, these killings are bullshit, all the way from A to Z.”

“What do you mean by that, Gilles?”

“A few francs in a pocket. A poker chip. A modus. A profile, at least of three victims.” People returning from the dead.

People who may, or may have not, left town. People who fit the description…a list of names, shoved in his pocket, among other things. And famous fictional detectives, male or female, popping up from time to time.

“Ah. Yes. I see.”

“Virtually none of it really means anything. Then there is the list. We need people to shadow each and every one of our potential victims. Their alleged love interests, even their landladies. And yet, it may come to nothing, in the end. It may be a joke—it may be misdirection.”

“So. All right. How can I help, Gilles.”

“We need a good judge. We need a shit-load of surveillance. We need wire-taps, and a lot of them. We need a break, as much as anything.” Someone, (probably God), would have to sign off on that.

Simply flooding the town with gendarmes, none of whom knew what to expect or what to look for, none of whom knew anything, and could not really be given anything, in the way of real information, was not going to catch their killer.

They needed to get ahead of the curve, and they were still behind. Way behind—

“And now. Handwriting analysis. A confident person. An educated person. The actual style, is indeterminate. If this was written by a German, one might expect certain unconscious variations, bearing in mind the German S, for example. Which I always thought was a B. This is one reason why we look things up…rather than embarrassing ourselves on the stand.” Interestingly, the list had been written with one pen, black ink.

The lines through the first three names had been another pen, blue ink.

“Once again, it’s a kind of bullshit.”

Then there was the whole problem of the presentation. The whole aspect of Sherlock Holmes look-alikes, that one was just plain ludicrous.

Roger sat there, nodding thoughtfully.

***

END

 

Chapter One.

Chapter Two.

Chapter Three.

Chapter Four.

Chapter Five.

Chapter Six.

Chapter Seven.

Hmn. Interesting, very interesting. But mostly bullshit...

Chapter Eight.

Chapter Nine.

Chapter Ten.

Chapter Eleven.

Chapter Twelve.

Chapter Thirteen.

Chapter Fourteen.

Chapter Fifteen.

 

Louis has books and stories on Amazon.

See his audiobook Speak Softly My Love, an Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery.

He has some art on ArtPal.

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday, December 1, 2021

A Stranger In Paris, Pt. 15. Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery #9. Louis Shalako.

The car.

 

 

Louis Shalako



***

The day hadn’t begun all that badly, but it had slowly deteriorated. All of those hard benches, all of those hard chairs. Hard light, hard noises in the stone-lined corridors, the floor polished by a million footsteps, with all the nervous ones smoking like chimneys, even the air was hard to breathe. Someone, somewhere, had decided it was better to let them smoke.

Waiting, waiting, always waiting…

Four hours, sequestered, then a full hour and a half for lunch—half the fucking court, including sequestered witnesses, theoretically equally-sequestered jurors, court officials, flunkies, hangers-on and family members, almost inevitably ended up at the new, cafeteria-style eatery half a block down the road. It was all modern efficiency, stainless steel and bright colours. Rotating stools and newfangled plastics. The dull roar of all of them talking at once, the clink of spoons and the clang of tin trays sliding down long, stainless-steel tubing, the cakes, the pies, the sandwiches and the salads, all lined up in a row under glass.

The best thing that could be said about the food, was that it induced heartburn immediately, rather than at two a.m.

Some of them awkwardly eyeballing each other, in the hopes of getting a clue—as to their fate, perhaps, or perhaps from the opposing point of view, as to their guilt…their veracity, their credibility. Not a good time to spill one’s soup on one’s trousers or to get a big splash of mustard on one’s tie.

One wanted to make a good impression; for better or for worse.

Try not to look too nervous—

In the end, it was all for naught. Hopefully it had all been worth it, but defense and prosecution had come to an agreement. The defendant, with their goose mostly cooked, had chickened out of the trial process at the last possible moment, opting for twenty-five to life, with some small possibility of parole.

This would be served on Devil’s Island, rather than facing the uncomfortable possibility of death by guillotine in a metropolitan prison, all too close to judicial gears, which ground exceedingly fine at times.

Life in a cell, versus life in a hovel, on some hell-hole of a tropical island. Growing turnips and scratching at fleas might look pretty good sometimes…all you had to do, was to survive long enough. You could scratch out writs of appeal by the light of a smoky fire, munching on vegetable marrows, with plenty of time in between to await the replies.

One look into the eyes of the jurors, that was enough sometimes.

Here’s looking at you, kid.

...here's looking at you, kid.

A total waste of his time and the meticulous preparation that went into a major court appearance. In the case of the defendant, also a total waste of time, and the meticulous preparation that went into what had clearly been premeditated murder.

And now, standing on the pavement, looking up and down in the glare of a rare blaze of autumn sunlight, his driver was nowhere to be seen.

The car was radio-equipped, but Gilles wasn’t. The heavy briefcase was making one arm longer, or so it seemed. He couldn’t stand there forever, but he could at least change hands.

Sighing deeply, he was about to go back in to find a phone, when the dusty black Citroen appeared around a corner and came along at its usual sober and industrious pace. No, Alphonse was not one to be hurried.

***

“Sorry about that, sir.” Alphonse was one of the few that never called him Boss.

It was one way of keeping the senior officer in his place, thought Maintenon.

“That’s all right. Just—”

“If you don’t mind, sir…”

“Hmn. What.”

“You won’t believe it, so I will just tell you anyway. I saw your Sherlock Holmes personator. Seriously. I had to follow. It seemed like the thing to do.”

Gilles studied the man’s eyes in the rear-view mirror.

“Go on, Alphonse.”

“Well. It was about ten-forty. I was reading the paper and smoking.” A bit early, he’d been eyeing the brown-bag lunch on the seat beside him…

Gilles suppressed any irritation. He’d get there, sooner or later.

“Anyhow, on the other side of the street, going the other way…there was this person. And as soon as I saw them, I thought of your friend. The one that stuck the note in your pocket.”

“And how did you know about that?” Gilles sat there open-mouthed.

A bus roared by at full throttle, and acrid black fumes came in the window.

It was better to let the vehicle sit than to have the man report in traffic, while driving.

“Really, Inspector.” He grinned. “I’m still a cop, you know.”

“Okay, okay.” So, he had his sources. “More than just a pretty face, then.”

Alphonse snorted at that one. He cleared his throat.

Not just a pretty face.

“Sir. It sort of took a minute to sink in. By this time, they were well past, and I was craning my neck like crazy. The mirror was just all wrong, there was no way. Anyways, I don’t think they realized I was following. I had to pull a quick U-turn, and then just creep along beside the parking lane…and this is the part you’re not going to believe, uh, Inspector.”

“What? What am I not going to believe.”

“It was a woman, Inspector. Unbelievable. Brogues, sir.”

“Brogues?”

“You know—sturdy English walking shoes…long socks with garters, the britches, the hat and the cape—fucking everything.” Wool socks and all tweed, mostly. “Hell, I’ll bet she even had wool underwear.”

“And you say it was a woman?”

“Yeah. I could only go so slow. Also, I am supposedly waiting for you, right…and I’ve gone off on my own. For reasons which might be hard to explain.”

“And so?”

“She was on the right side, going east mostly. The traffic light was red, and there I was. First in line, dead stop, and then she turns and crosses the street right in front of me.” Heading south, at this particular intersection.

“You got a good look?”

The eyes came up in the mirror, as Alphonse reached for the key and the starter-button.

“Yes, sir. A real fucking Amazon. I suppose it was the makeup, the eyelashes…ruby red lips. Yes, it was a woman all right, or as near as makes, well, not much of a difference.”

Alphonse nodded.

“That one is built, ah, like a brick shit-house.”

“Really. Ha.”

“I did a few blocks, trying to follow along, but she shook me off…it’s real hard to say if it was deliberate. She may have just, er, gotten to where she was going. And then, I had a fucking puncture.”

“A puncture!”

“Yes, sir. It never fails, does it. The spare was flat.” Alphonse had jacked her up and pulled the wheel. “I had to hoof it, rolling a fucking wheel along and looking for any kind of service station.”

Which, as everyone knew, could be damned hard to come by in this ancient, central part of the city. He’d huffed and puffed his way for three-quarters of a kilometre and then got lucky, as he put it.

“Very well. Hmn. Interesting, Alphonse—thank you, thank you very much.”

The engine fired up and he began checking the mirror for traffic. He eased her out and they were going.

A real fucking Amazon.

It was like Alphonse read his thoughts.

“Tall, sir. Real tall. But a woman, ah—almost for sure, sir.”

“Alphonse.”

“Sir.”

“This may seem like an odd question, but in your impression…has anyone been paying us any sort of special attention? I mean lately.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“I mean, like has anyone been following us lately.” Merde.

Alphonse craned his head and gave Gilles a direct look.

Turning back, he gave a quick shake of the head. Wordless.

Their eyes met in the mirror, and Alphonse gave a nod. If nothing else, he’d keep an eye out back, as it were.

END

Chapter One.

Chapter Two.

Chapter Three.

Chapter Four.

Chapter Five.

Chapter Six.

Chapter Seven.

Chapter Eight.

Chapter Nine.

Chapter Ten.

Chapter Eleven.

Chapter Twelve.

Chapter Thirteen.

Chapter Fourteen.

 

Images. Le Citroen Traction Avant.

(Otherwise stolen from the internet. - ed.)

 

Louis has books and stories on Amazon in ebook and paperback.

Get his audiobook free from Audible.

See his art on Fine Art America.

 

 

Thank you for reading.