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
Thank you for reading.
