Dead Reckoning, Chapter Twenty-Four. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

The pair of detectives had one last stop on the way back to the office. It was to the home of LeBeaux, on an upper floor of a pension-style apartment in a central part of the city.

As it turned out, Hubert barely had the chance to explain himself, as the lady of the house was out. Her daddy was still sick in bed, where he had been battling some sort of respiratory infection for weeks, and Éliott’s little sister had the bored composure of the typical fifteen year-old. Unluckily for them, any older siblings were also out at the moment. She took the envelope and the short explanation at face value, asking no questions and making no statements. A radio blasted away in the background, popular music no doubt, but it wasn’t helpful in communicating and it was clear they weren’t all that welcome in her little world.

After a quick thank you and a promise to draw it to her mother’s attention, she shut the door in their faces, and none too gently, either.

“That didn’t take too long at all. The fact that we simply reek of alcohol probably has nothing to do with it—” Garnier followed him back down the stairs again, and out onto the street.

And, of course, by the time they got back to the car, Alphonse had taken another radio call, and this time it was two more hits on their news story. The first, a man who claimed to have sold two large freezers to the same customer on the same day, and the second was a little more mysterious but it involved a low-level employee of the custodial department of a prominent Paris teaching hospital, Les Sœurs de la Charité de Sainte Marie, asking to meet them anonymously at a location of his own choice, assuming arrangements could be made.

Craning again, Martin kind of shook his head. He looked at his watch too.

“So. What do you think?”

Reviewing the addresses in question, they might do one, but they couldn’t do both, not before quitting time. This was a real thing when the case was going along at a certain pace, and this one had looked sort of hopeless all along. They were not gendarmes responding to a fire or a bank robbery in progress. They were detectives on an investigation. This was the long game, rather than the short game.

It was Alphonse who had the answer.

“Tell them we’ll get back to them.”

“He’s right.”

Martin picked up the microphone, clicking over to Channel D for secure communications.

An executive decision—but Hubert had been going all gangbusters for quite some time now and there was the need to prioritize. He did have a life of his own. He did have a wife to consider, and it had been quite a while since he’d spent a quiet evening at home. And just when you started to get comfortable, you thought of LeBeaux. That one was enough to make one’s stomach churn. There was nothing he could do about that, but he still wondered…and then there was Gilles.

Even so.

It could still wait until tomorrow.

And thank God for Alphonse and his no-bullshit attitude.

 

***

 

The girl had departed, which might help in some ways. It was also something of an emotional wrench, but one could only hope and pray on that one. He’d just have to sweat it out. Éliott had made a bit of a show, taking his sweet time, doing a real thorough job of it, in washing up the dishes, and in giving one hell of a good scrub to the pots and pans. He’d uttered a few cusses of his own while doing that, but it was like the old man just didn’t care. Then, heating more water and giving himself a proper shave. He’d topped it all off with another bit of performative theatre. He had taken off the boots and the socks, rolled up the pant-legs, all while sitting on the chair in front of the hermit, with the big bowl on the floor, and washed his feet in the leftover shaving water.

“Oh, thank God.” Finally—

Toweling the feet dry, changing into fresh socks, rinsing out the old socks, hanging them up to dry near the stove, it seemed the hermit couldn’t care less—or maybe he did; but he seemed to be lost in a world of his own.

“Oh, Charles. Oh, Darwin.” Fuck—

The hermit had laughed at that one.

Strong liquor would do that to you. This was especially true if a person hadn’t had any in a while. A full belly might have helped as well.

With nothing else to wear, he’d pulled the tongue and the flaps of the boots wide, stuffing the long laces down inside so he wouldn’t trip on them. This wasn’t the sort of place where you could go barefoot, there simply wasn’t the luxury. That floor was grubby indeed, and the socks were white and brand new.

They’d agreed to switch over to beer for a while and conserve the cognac. The hermit was half-pissed anyways. It was more a question of maintaining that buzz, without going overboard, so to speak. Éliott had dumped the scummy water outside, a good distance from the front door. He’d immediately filled up their big pot and began heating more water.

“Sir. There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

“Huh. The answer is no.”

He grinned, but the man really was like that. He simply didn’t care as to how he might be perceived.

“Ah, I don’t mean to pry, ah, but, uh. I was just wondering how you got that awful wound on the head, ah, on the old noggin there. That’s downright nasty-looking. Also, I was wondering. Would you, ah, have such a thing as a broom around here…”

A little psychology, a little human understanding. A little compassion might go a long way in a situation like this. It bordered on animal psychology. A little bit of the carrot, and a little bit of the stick. A direct question, and an indirect question, a rhetorical question, and one that was right to the point, always ready to back off, to circle around again, and try it on again another way—

“Huh?”

“A broom. A broom, sir. I was just saying, do you have any kind of a broom around here…”

“Yeah? And who the fuck are you.”

“I am Éliott, sir, and who the fuck are you, anyways.”

The hermit chuckled. This was about as close as Éliott had gotten to the direct question.

But surely the man would have a name.

“You’re an idiot.”

 Éliott laughed, whether it was a joke or not, he wouldn’t care to speculate.

“Yeah. Well. Someday, perhaps, I will tell you my hard-luck story.”

“Huh.”

That’s how it had been going with the hermit, one step forward, and two steps back.

Éliott could only wonder at what had happened—at what must have happened.

“So. When was the last time you figure you had a bath, or anything like that—”

When was the last time you had them fucking boots off.

And—

What in the hell am I going to use for a blanket tonight.

That one didn’t bear thinking about.

 

***

 

The first time the two detectives had knocked on the hermit’s door, the whole thing had been so unexpected. The muzzle of a shotgun poking through a crack in the doorway and right in your face will do that to you.

There was a certain shock value. There was a certain immediacy, one which ruled out all other considerations, if only for a time.

But the hermit hadn’t been wearing a hat, and through the gap in the door, Éliott had glimpsed the greying hair, clumped with dark, clotted blood. Hubert had been in no position to see it, it was only him. It had meant nothing at the time, and they’d gotten out of there while the going was good. It was only when the man had passed them on the trail, with Hubert not paying too much attention, eager to get going. He’d taken a second to look, really look, and that wound had looked pretty damned bad.

Even then, he still hadn’t gotten it.

It was just one of those things. The man was such a prickly character, clearly not seeking company or attention, and in some sense, he’d figured it was none of his business.

It was only later, belatedly recognizing that they were, in fact, police officers, with a duty to protect and to serve. They’d sworn an oath to that effect. That was when that sneaky little guilty feeling had sort of caught up with him.

Even then, he still hadn’t caught on. It was only in the pre-dawn hours, laying there in that hotel room, still in that state, halfway between dreaming and wakefulness, it was only then, that the coincidental aspect of that wound had come to him. They’d gotten up, thrown their stuff in their bags and buggered off to the train station, and he’d still been thinking about it.

Had Maintenon fallen down, hit his head on a rock, rolled or slid into the river, and drowned, his body washing downstream and ending up caught under a logjam further down, as Hubert had so strongly come to believe? Or maybe he hadn’t, which left an awful lot of other possibilities, a lot of other theories. It left a lot of other doubts.

What if they were wrong?

What if every fucking one of us is wrong…

What if Maintenon hadn’t died after all? In which case, what in the hell had happened to him.

And what about that alleged ghost. Dolores’ ghostly apparition of her childhood crush, Gilles Maintenon, walking down the road in front of her house. High noon, or shortly thereafter.

What about that, eh.

Ghosts mostly came out at night. They preferred the darkness. Right? Not the broad light of day.

It wasn’t like he didn’t know Gilles. The changes wrought in the man were such, that all previous resemblances, all previous mental images were now somehow rendered obsolete, to the extent that he still wasn’t really certain. If nothing else, the man’s very behaviour would have cast doubt.

In that sense, it really wasn’t the same man.

Not anymore.

He had the scissors, he had the bandages, and he had an ointment to put on that nasty old wound.

But what he wanted, more than anything, (besides the girl), would be to gain the man’s trust, by any means necessary, and to give him one hell of a good shave—to cut that hair to something more closely resembling Maintenon’s hair, which was trimmed fairly regularly, but not obsessively, not with Gilles, that was for sure—

If he could shave his own face, he could shave someone else’s. Confidence was everything, in that sense.

And patience was everything else.

Maintenon did it when it was necessary, and only when he could get around to it. His hair had been fairly longish, weeks ago, when he’d been sent off on vacation. Getting his hair cut would have been just about the last thing on his list at that point.

One thing Éliott had figured out well enough—to get the man drunk, knock him out with the narcotic pain pills he had in his coat pocket, hanging by the door there, and then to just to go ahead and do it, would be pretty invasive of the man’s rights. It might not be very well appreciated, and for that reason, he was going to need at least some cooperation. If he was right, all well and good. If he was wrong, it would be morally reprehensible, and possibly even a kind of assault. An assault on human dignity, if nothing else, and how in the hell one would define that in the current situation was anyone’s guess.

If he could get that cooperation, that really would be some kind of a miracle.

And then there was the girl, an unknown quantity, and one who had no very good reason to trust him. He’d shown up out of nowhere, a complete surprise in every sense. He must be downright threatening to one such as her—every hound-dog in the village must have taken some kind of a crack at that one.

Once upon a fucking time—

No wonder she was so shy.

Right?

If she came back tomorrow, that would be a very good sign, otherwise, she would be gone for good—or at least until Éliott had given up, presumably to go home or just moving on, or something like that. It would be very hard for her to avoid the place and abandon her friend the hermit. Not for very long. Odds were, she just couldn’t do it, but then he hadn’t been able to do it either. Knowing that she didn’t have too many real friends herself didn’t help much either. Then again, everyone in town probably knew her—and sympathized without quite knowing what to do about it. This was, of course, merely an assumption.

Fuck.

 

 

End

 

 

Previous.

 

 Chapter One, Scene One.

 Chapter One, Scene Two.

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.

Chapter Fifteen.

Chapter Sixteen.

Chapter Seventeen.

Chapter Eighteen.

Chapter Nineteen.

Chapter Twenty.

Chapter Twenty-One.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

 Chapter Twenty-Three.

Louis has books and stories available from Google Play.

 

Thank you for reading. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dead Reckoning, Chapter Twenty-One. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

Their next stop was to Madame d’Coutu’s new place of employment, the result of some simple telephone work, and the lady would be expecting them at some point in the morning. For whatever reason, traffic was sheer hell this morning. It was halfway across town.

Good old Alphonse, sitting bored in the vehicle, had been listening with the radio actually turned up for a change, (rather than having it down real low and simply ignoring it), and had taken the call while they were inside the store. One more hit on their planted news story, and now they had another little errand on their plate. He had it all down in his own notebook, in writing that was surprisingly legible. Knowing Alphonse, he would have taken his sweet time with it.

Things were looking up.

And of course, Yvonne wasn’t too happy to see them. Truth was, they were late, and an appointment was an appointment. Real gentlemen would have been punctual above all else. For her, it was just so much bother, and she wasn’t shy about telling them that, either. She’d had one or two calls from the reporters, and she was still spitting mad about those people as she called them. It was also the height of embarrassment for an honest working woman to be visited by the police. Especially as her lady had been out all morning and had arrived home at exactly the wrong time and naturally, she had questions. One could only sympathize, not that it had done much good. For the working classes, to be out of work for any length of time would very shortly lead to personal disaster and naturally the police understood that. The dress was shapeless, the hair grey-brown and mousy, and there were lines around the eyes and the mouth. One wondered if she had smiled in days.

Hubert doubted if the lady had been out of work more than two or three days, what with having signed on with an employment agency and all. Still, one had to listen for a while out of politeness. Funny thing was, she seemed to have done all right with her current assignment, one wondered if she saw that much herself. Three times the size of Maintenon’s place, bright and airy and well-lit, the paint was the work of professional decorators rather than a mom-and-pop project. Hopefully, her current boss-woman wasn’t a real tyrant.

They were in the kitchen of a fine old flat, in a very fashionable part of the city, with the cook and the maid having made themselves scarce, and the lady of the house sort of fussing and fuming in the sitting room out front.

So far, she hadn’t been of much help, but then it had always been a long shot.

“Anyways. I’ve told you everything I know.” She was adamant, and her eyes strayed to the clock on the wall.

Having lost her previous employment, through no fault of her own and at some inconvenience to herself, she had only reluctantly given up the key to Maintenon’s apartment. The three of them were seated around the kitchen table…

Hubert, known for a certain charm of his own, was doing his best to soothe her down.

“Naturally we understand, Madame, and of course we understand your feelings…”

He patted her forearm and she snatched it away. It was all he could do, just to try again.

“Now, is there any little thing, any funny little detail, anything that might have struck you about those men, ah, that afternoon.”

“No. Not really.” She’d just taken her one-hour lunch break, gotten back to work on the dot of one o’clock, and she had been dusting and sweeping, just thinking about her shopping list, (and killing time strategically, or so he thought), when the knock had come at the door.

There was nothing new in any of this, it was all in the original report. It was time to call it a day with this one. Neither one of them had ever met the lady, and whatever ideas one may have had about the typical housekeeper, Yvonne had turned out to be a harried woman, old-before-her-time and with few skills and perhaps not too many friends. Unmarried, her only emotional outlet would be a cat and perhaps her sister’s children and grandchildren. That and a lot of knitting.

“Hmn. Okay. Would you mind taking a look at this photograph, please. Do you recognize any of the men in this picture.”

“Non.”

“Are you certain? Not even the slightest resemblance?”

She pursed her lips and shook her head.

Hubert picked a random face and brought it in a little closer.

“This man?”

She shook her head.

“Or this one?”

“No.”

“What about this one—” Monsieur Samaha.

Again, she said no.

“…or this one…”

“No.”

“Okay.” Taking a different tack, he mentioned that the cat, Sylvestre, was being well looked-after, and she made a face but said nothing.

The cat was no longer any problem of hers, and that seemed clear enough.

“Also, Madame, we have been wondering, well, if you have been paid, that is to say all caught up in terms of your employment at the Maintenon household…er.”

She flushed, went rigid, and then allowed that she had, in fact, been paid, in full, in advance, up to the end of the month by the inspector. This was before he went down south. Gilles hadn’t even been gone a week, but as soon as she’d heard the news, she had bolted for new employment.

“What would you have had me do?” Although she seemed a little nicer now, and the truth was, she might even owe Gilles a fair chunk of money in purely legalistic terms.

The lady didn’t actually come out and say that part, but it was a fair inference and no big revelation, personality-wise. It might explain her whole demeanour so far, what with having a conscience after all, a little touch of the guilt, and this in what could only be assumed to be a good Catholic. Especially if one got caught—

He nodded sagely, resisting the urge to try patting her on the arm again.

“Okay. Well, thank you, Madame, we will not waste any more of your precious time.” A thought struck him. “Normally, people would get severance pay anyways…and the circumstances are nothing if not unusual, right?”

He could see her consider it, latching on to it perhaps.

It wasn’t much of a surprise, really, but they’d had no option but to try her out.

He snapped the notebook closed, preparing to rise.

“There is one thing, though.”

“Oh? What’s that Madame.”

“It’s about the name on the coveralls. I distinctly remember now—it was Montgolfier Brothers.” She gave a firm nod and that was that—

Right up until the point when you realized she’d been lining the bottom of the birdcage, budgie-birds or parakeets, or something very much like that and quite musical…and that sure looked like a page from Le Temps in there.

It was hard to say if she was being deliberately obtuse, or maybe she was just genuinely stupid—she hadn’t mentioned Gilles by name in the entire time they’d been there, admittedly that really hadn’t been very long at all. It was like she had problems of her own and simply didn’t give a damn—

They clambered to their feet, repressing deep sighs or any expression at all.

Sometimes it was all one could do, but to remain polite, perhaps even gracious.

“Thank you, Madame d’Coutu. We are, of course, very grateful for your time.”

The poor woman had been alone in that kitchen, for at least some time, with a freezer full of dead people. That had to be taken into account as well—of course she had fucking well run for it, and who could blame her. It was perfectly understandable, and no shame in that. Except in the mind of the lady herself. It was a story she would tell and retell, and it would no doubt grow into something quite extraordinary over the years.

He really should have told her all of that, but, the problem was that the words just wouldn’t come out.

***

It was almost like they were getting somewhere.

“Yes, sir, we made the patches here. Montgolfier Brothers. They ordered a dozen patches, and paid cash up front. I’d never heard of them, we’ve never dealt with them, and they had no account. Our policy is clear on that.” Monsieur Renaud was the owner and manager of a very small factory, a sweat-shop, with about a dozen women at sewing machines in a loft on the eastern outskirts of the city. “A Monsieur Bisson. He came in person. A rather ordinary fellow, middle-aged, slight of build, average height and average weight. Well-dressed. A small mustache, hair fairly light but not real blond if you know what I mean…”

He thought further.

“Oh. Little round black glasses. The hair was combed straight up and over. I looked it up, that was about May twenty-first.” The gentleman had worn a hat, but he’d taken it off while coming in the door.

“Ah, I was just going to ask.”

The big, open room was on the top floor and very warm, although every window in the place seemed to be open. A fly buzzed here and there, curious and hungry, or maybe even just friendly, as Hubert brushed one off of the tip of his nose. The thing seemed to be in love with him—

He could feel the sweat all right, running down inside the shirt and he wondered how they did it sometimes.

The office itself was a glassed-in enclosure, where the employees were never out of sight, and neither was the boss. It was a little quieter in there with the door closed, with a fan to at least stir the air a little. Sewing wash-cloths and hemming hand-towels and fucking tea-towels for a centime apiece and things like that…cash paid daily, or so it said on a sign down below at street level.

No wonder the working classes were unhappy.

Without much hope, he pulled out the picture and let the man have a look at it.

“Do you recognize any of these men? Does anyone in particular look familiar? What about this one…or this one…or this one here…?” It was an old and familiar routine.

The gentleman took a moment to study it carefully.

“Ah, no. I’m afraid not.”

And in this particular case, not much joy to be had. It was routine police work, nothing more, nothing very exciting and not all that informative in terms of solving cases.

Perhaps sensing their disappointment, and wishing to be helpful, the gentleman spoke.

“Would you like to see how they are made?”

Apparently, they had an automated embroidering machine, which worked off of punch-card type templates and they could produce team and commercial patches in many fonts and sizes. These ranged from name patches on a mechanic’s work shirt to shoulder patches and breast patches, hat-badges, for police, fire, ambulance, sports teams and commercial enterprises all over the city. They could use any colour of thread, in any combination, and promised two-day completion on the smaller orders. The bigger the order, the steeper the discount. Custom design was a specialty.

Martin Garnier gave him a nod. What the hell, they had nothing to lose but time.

“Sure, why not. We’d be delighted.” Think of it as good public relations, or planting the seeds of tomorrow’s success today.

Not everyone was so willing to talk to the police and that sort of thing ought to be encouraged. It was a small place, the machine was right there, and it really didn’t take all that long. With an assistant, and at least one damned sharp mind, the pair had quickly thrown in a few steel letters in a particular font, changed a couple of spools of thread, cut a patch of flannel, a simple rectangle, clamped all that in place, and set the machine to work. They watched, open-mouthed, and finally, switching off, the fellow reached in with scissors, snipped a few extraneous threads, and pulled out a long, skinny patch, all set to be sewn on to a garment.

Montgolfier Brothers.

Nice.

The gentleman handed it over with a nod and a smile.

“And there you have it…”

“Thank you for the tour.” If nothing else, they had another pretty generic description of another suspect, and a name which would probably turn out to be bullshit. “I have to admit, that was all very interesting.”

They would have an odd little exhibit to show off when they got back to the room.

Martin wasn’t trying to be smart, but to see a little follower-thingy, a vertical rod on the end of an arm, tracing an outline on a row of steel templates on the one side, and the needles going up and down, tukka-tukka-tukka-tukka, around and around on a piece of fabric on the other side, and seeing the letters appear in three colours, as the whole apparatus sort of slid along on tracks above it; on a patch of felt, (or whatever), was fascinating enough in its own way.

At least he thought so—

It was all very illuminating.

END

Previous.

 

Chapter One, Scene One.

Chapter One, Scene Two.

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.

Chapter Fifteen.

Chapter Sixteen.

Chapter Seventeen.

Chapter Eighteen.

Chapter Nineteen.

Chapter Twenty.

Louis has books and stories available from Google Play.

 

 

Thank you for reading.