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| "Oh, well, that's handy." |
Part One
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten
Part Eleven
Part Twelve
Part Thirteen
Part Fouteen
Part Fifteen
Louis Shalako
Speak Softly My Love
Chapter Sixteen
“Oh. Sorry.” Hubert almost rammed the door into the
back of Inspector Maintenon.
Maintenon turned and looked at him inquiringly.
“You guys are back pretty quick.”
Levain spoke up.
“Not much to it. Whole thing solved in five minutes.
By the time we got there, a witness had coughed up a name. They saw the whole
thing.” Uniformed gendarmes went straight to the fellow’s front door, where he
was apparently waiting for them to arrive.
He had surrendered peacefully enough. He was still
being processed and would quickly become another statistic.
“Well, that’s handy.”
Tailler was standing there, chewing his lip as Gilles
took his hat off and hung up the jacket again, moving at a measured pace and
clearly with his thoughts elsewhere.
Finally he turned.
“So. How are we doing?”
“Oh, yeah.” Tailler nodded firmly. “We got a hit, Gilles—Inspector.
We never would have expected it, but Jeannine, one of the lady cops, actually
spoke to the guy.”
“Oh, really.”
Tailler stood there with this lost expression, not
quite wringing his hands, but clearly a little stunned by the development. After
all they had put into it.
Hubert quickly explained how Jeannine had handled it,
to an approving nod from Levain.
“Okay.” Maintenon went to his desk and sat. “So. What
do we do now?”
Tailler nodded. He licked his lips and tried to think
it through.
Gilles leaned back, put his hands behind his head. His
eyes closed. Hubert thought he’d better help his friend.
“He was located in Chalons de Champagne. We have our
people calling around, sort of backtracking. We’re trying to get confirmation
of his movements—cities, hotels, wine producers, that sort of thing.”
He gave Tailler a look.
“Sir. We think maybe it’s time. Time to ask Monique to
identify the body—if that’s all right with you?”
Gilles nodded, without opening his eyes. They all saw
it.
“So in other words, play dumb? We know nothing until
someone tells us otherwise…?” Maintenon nodded again. “Hmn.”
A
wise policy.
“Ah…yes, sir.”
“We have one or two other questions we’ve been meaning
to ask her. Also, we might get a few more people sent up over the course of the
day. For our little phone project. Then we have this itinerary from Monique to
check out.”
Hubert looked at Tailler with a raised eyebrow.
“I think that’s about it.”
Gilles nodded.
“Very well.” He sat up and opened his eyes, blinking
and then giving them a quick rub with long fingertips.
He looked at the clock and then he looked at the
coffeepot.
He looked at Hubert, still standing there as Tailler
dropped down into his desk chair in anticipation, one way or another.
“Very well, gentlemen. Carry on.” His eyes fell.
Gilles lifted the cover of a dusty buff file folder.
He took out the first page and began to read.
Tailler opened up one of several notebooks lying on
his desk.
He was looking for her phone number.
“Monique, Monique…Monique.”
***
They were playing their cards very close to their
chests.
Hubert had been the one who called Monique Godeffroy.
He told her very carefully that they needed to speak to her and asked if she
had any major appointments for the day.
_01_Crisco_edit.jpg) |
| "How did I get to be second banana?" |
When she said that she didn’t, he arranged for the two
of them to go around straight away.
How in the hell he had become second banana
was a good question, but Tailler was the one with all the ideas today.
When she answered the door, their initial impression
of the woman was confirmed. Monique would spend forty-five minutes in front of
the mirror every morning, regular as clockwork, every day, no matter what
happened. It would have killed her not to. It was like she had just spent forty
francs, not on her shoes but on the feet themselves.
Tailler’s own feet, encased in those hard leather
clod-hoppers all day long, pounding hard pavement as often as not, could, on
occasion, be a bit gruesome.
Her toes looked like little candies to his suddenly
depraved eyes—he had no idea of what was happening to him lately, and there
were times when the bizarre juxtaposition of psycho-sexual elements was just too much.
It was just too much to bear sometimes.
It’s not that Tailler didn’t feel terrible for her.
Obviously, he did.
Of course he did. He very much did.
The trouble was that little element of doubt.
He was also a cop, and this whole thing stank to high
heaven.
Even a missing husband wasn’t enough to interfere with
what was clearly a strong need to present a carefully-composed face to the
world. Not for one such as Monique. In a way, it wasn’t very likeable. It was
merely beautiful to look upon. Tailler knew he would never really understand.
He doubted if anyone ever had.
“Thank you for seeing us so promptly, Madame.” Hubert
took off his hat and stepped over the threshold.
She led them to the salon but Tailler jumped right in
with the questioning before she could properly get them seated. The two
detectives remained standing as if time were precious, which it was, actually.
“Madame Godeffroy, we were wondering if Didier had a
passport. He must have traveled outside of the country from time to time.”
Tailler’s tone was pleasant.
The longer they could keep her mystified the better.
“But yes, of course.” She stood there in forlorn,
hopeless beauty.
She had intuitively picked up a hint of something, right out of thin air. They
stared right back.
“Would you like me to get it for you?”
“Ah, yes, please. Really, it’s strictly routine…ah,
Madame.”
The lady turned and stepped out of the room. They
could hear her rummaging in a desk or dresser in a room somewhere near the
back, on this floor still.
There was a little flip of the guts when she came back
and she had the passport in her hand.
They desperately tried not to let on. Tailler nodded
encouragingly.
Tailler extended his hand and she gave it up readily
enough. He took a quick look at it, various dates and stamps going by in a blur
as he riffled through the pages.
“If you don’t mind, we’d like to hang onto this for a
while.” Tailler uttered a deep sigh. “Monique. I’m afraid we might have some
bad news for you. And yet we don’t really know. In such matters, it is always
best to be sure.”
She looked like a scared rabbit.
He slid the passport into his right-hand jacket pocket
as her eyes followed.
Her hand went up to her mouth. Her eyes were wide with
shock, and somehow she knew—just like the other one, Lucinde.
She knew.
“It’s Didier.”
“We don’t know that for sure, Madame.” Hubert to the
rescue, but there were only so many ways they could play it.
Tailler pulled out the morgue photo, their best one,
and showed it to her.
She gave a quick sob, and then slowly subsided onto
the couch.
Tailler turned abruptly, going to the window. He put
his hands behind his back, striking a pose of commanding rigidity. He’d been sort
of wondering how to act. This would have to do.
Hubert settled down beside her, knees close to hers
and taking her lovely hand into his own.
Those lush, curving eyelashes batted
back tears.
“This is very hard for you. But we need to have
someone, someone who knows Didier very well, to come down and have a look at the
body. Honestly, we can’t even really say if it is Didier—your husband. There’s no identification. The trouble is,
Monique, that it might be, and we
really need to know for sure.”
Tailler turned, sighing again, as Monique Godeffroy’s
face fell into her hands and those lovely shoulders with their perfect,
bird-like bones heaved and shook with the shock and the grief.
With a look at Tailler, biting his lip and kind of
hating himself for that moment, Hubert reached over and put an arm around the
lady.
“It’s all right. Just take all the time you need.”
She wept, falling over against him and there wasn’t
much either one of them could do about that. He had a left hand so he brought
that one up as well.
He had to admit, it was stimulating.
“There, there.”
Tailler’s guts were tight. There was such a thing as
duty. Unpleasant as that might be sometimes.
“We have a car waiting outside, Madame Godeffroy. Is
there someone we could call for you?” The lady was dressed well enough, he
suggested rather gruffly, as if overcome with his own emotions.
It might even be true.
“We could call a friend. You don’t have to do this
alone.”
Tailler was all mixed up inside, at least to a certain
extent. It wasn’t easy for any of them, but they still didn’t know. Telling her that seemed to help,
for she sat up again.
Hubert patted her wrist.
“We really don’t
know. We really do need your help.”
She looked at poor Hubert with tears streaking her
mascara and leaving two big trails down her cheeks.
“Thank you, gentlemen. I shall be quite all right.”
The lady would do her best.
Hubert stood as Tailler turned and headed for the
front hallway.
“Okay. Let’s see about finding you a coat.” Some kind
of a hat, maybe.
***
 |
| "Oh, the poor man. But that's not Didier." |
“It’s not him.” The lady sniffled, then her face
turned and there was this look.
“What?”
She smiled. Teeth showed. She giggled and sniffled
some more.
The lady sagged in relief.
“Are you sure about that?”
She turned and had another look.
“Oh, God. Poor man—but it’s not him. This is not my
Didier.”
The two detectives regarded each other, as if in a
state of mild astonishment.
“Okay, well. Huh. Well. What do you know?” Tailler was
making an ass of himself and he came to a full stop.
“If the lady says it’s not him, then it’s not him.” For
a minute, it looked as if Doctor Auger was going to shake Monique’s hand.
As it was, he gave a quick, odd little bow. Then he
stood at ease, hands behind his back.
He had all kinds of experience dealing with this sort
of thing. The detectives were caught a bit flat-footed.
He crossed his arms and gave them a happy nod.
So.
What are you going to do about it?
Hubert and especially Tailler, were relative newcomers
to the game.
“Oh, thank God. It’s not him. Huh.” Hubert took her
arm. “Terribly sorry about all of this. Madame Godeffroy. Thank you so much for
helping us out. Uh, huh. I guess we’d better get you home, eh?”
She turned, hugging herself in the cold and the damp,
still looking at the man on the slab. The sheet was drawn down only enough to
show the face.
“Tell me something, Madame.” Tailler figured it
couldn’t hurt to press a little.
She was still giddy with the relief, and for whatever
reason, perhaps disappointment, he couldn’t quite help it.
“Yes?”
She stopped and waited, Hubert right there, standing at
her side. He regarded her with clouded, questioning eyes.
“Does this gentleman look anything like your husband? Didier? Anything at all. I mean…he’s
the spitting image, at least in our opinion, in the photographs and such.”
She took a step back again. She looked at that cold,
dead, waxen face, eyes mercifully closed.
“Oh, yes, I can see why you wondered—there really is a resemblance. But that’s not my
Didier.”
Auger gave a subdued nod. That seemed clear enough.
You couldn’t really do much better than that.
Tailler bit his lip.
He looked at Hubert.
“Okay. It looks like we are out of here.” He turned
and gave the Doctor a quick and rueful grin. “We’ll give you a call. Thank you
for all of your patience.”
“Not at all, my dear boy. It’s why they keep me around, after all.” He gave one last
look at Madame.
They weren’t exactly messing about with that one, were they? The door was slow
on its double-sprung hinges. Their voices faded off down the hallway.
“…we’re
so terribly sorry, Madame. We know how very upsetting this must be, and we
thank you for your forbearance…”
He could still hear their footsteps.
Her response was muffled and indistinct, but there
were only so many things she could say.
His gut twitched and he snorted gently,
careful not to be overhead by a sensitive public. The door touched the frame
and the latches clicked into position. He could go back to being himself again,
a true scientist, for only then was he happy.
It was in the nature of his job, but he was always the
last one to find out why.
As an expert examiner, giving testimony in court, he
had always managed to keep a special kind of detachment. It didn’t pay to get
too involved. He was not paid to speculate.
All he ever did was look at the body and write a
report. He read it back in court and then answered questions as best he could.
That’s it. Job done.
He had to wait until it was in the paper just to find
out what really happened.
But there was more here than met the eye.
Thoughtfully, he covered the face of their anonymous
victim, and put the poor fellow away again.
With an internal monologue that never seemed to quit, Dr. Auger was never lonely.
END
